Witch Hunt, A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy (The Maurin Kincaide Series) (12 page)

“I know who you are, Maurin Kincaide.
We all know who you are,” Rhyan replied.

“I’m not here on police business.
And you’re right - I don’t work with SPTF anymore. I’m with the Council now,” I declared, hoping that would carry some weight with her.

“The Council doesn’t scare me, Miss Kincaide. I belong to a much older organ
ization,” she shot back with a menacing glare.

“Cryptic,” I said to Oberon.

Rhyan
was starting to get on my nerves. I was running on empty and wasn’t getting any closer to finding the Inquisitors or lachadiel hanging out in her storeroom. I didn’t have time for games.

“Mahalia really did send us here to get an amulet,”
Oberon said, sensing that I was losing my patience.

“Did she now?
Why didn’t she come here herself?” she asked him.

“You’ll have to ask Mahalia that.
She told us to come here to buy the amulet. So now we’re here. Are we going to be able to make a deal or not?” Oberon asked.

“If I believed every witch who came in here dropping Mahalia’s name…”
She laughed.

He set a vial filled with half of Mahalia’s
allicorn on Rhyan’s desk. Her eyes widened as she realized what was in the glass container and that Mahalia had, in fact, sent us here.

“She was right to send you to me.
No one else in town can get you elven wares,” Rhyan said.

I looked at Oberon.
He didn’t seem bothered by her statement. Doesn’t deal with stolen goods, my ass. I’d bet more than one of the jars on her shelves contained black market magical items.

She spun around in her chair, stood up and went to the shelves behind her.
She slid the bulk packs of paper towels to one side, revealing a small safe. She opened the safe and pulled out a small jewelry box. She set the box down on her desk and snatched up the allicorn, quickly putting it in the safe. I had a moment of panic. What if the box was empty? She had already locked up the allicorn and something told me that we’d have a hell of a time getting it back from her now.

I reached for the worn velvet jewelry box.
The hinged lid creaked a little when I opened it. Relief flooded me as a silver chain with a black and white stone pendant came into view. I decided to wait until we were outside to put it on. Rhyan knew who I was, even though I’d never met her before. It seemed like a bad idea to let her know that I was the one who needed the amulet, and that got me thinking.

“How do we know that this is the amulet that Mahalia wants?” I asked, regretting my haste to leave the house and not getting more information from Mahalia.

“I’ve got only one amulet in my safe worth what she offered for trade,” Rhyan answered.

“So you say,” I replied.
“But…” Oberon reached for my arm, stopping me.

“Are you trying to insinuate something, Miss Kincaide?
Why don’t you ask your friend if this is the right one?” Rhyan said.

“I wasn’t trying to imply anything.
I just want to be sure it’s the right one,” I said.

I looked at Oberon.
He nodded in agreement with Rhyan.

“Our business is concluded.
See your selves out,” she said, busying herself with the stack of papers on her desk.

“
Th-” I started to speak, but Oberon grabbed my arm firmly enough to make me stop.

“Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t thank her.” He held on to my arm and led me out of Rhyan’s office and Idiosyncrasy.

“Damn, Maurin, don’t you know better than to thank the
Fae?” Oberon asked, once we were outside. He ran his hands through his cropped hair, exasperated by my blunder.

“She was
Fae?” I asked, relieved that he had stopped me before I owed a debt that I could probably never repay.

“Her glamour was really good, but I thought that you’d be able to tell,” he said, unlocking his truck.

“What kind of Fae?” I said, climbing in the passenger side.

“The scary kind.
Now put the amulet on. That’ll be one less thing that we have to worry about,” he said brusquely.

I slipped the silver chain over my head, tucking the pendant in my shirt.
The black and white stone felt cool against my skin. Other than that, putting the amulet on was pretty anticlimactic. For some reason, I thought that I’d feel something when I put it on, but nothing happened. There was no astral wind blowing my hair back, no thrum of magic, not even a goose bump. I buckled my seatbelt and stared out the window at Idiosyncrasy’s storefront.

“Are you sure that this is the right one?” I asked, trying to hide my disbelief.

“It’s black and white agate on a silver chain,” he responded, as if that explained everything.

11

By the time we got back to Mahalia’s, I was utterly exhausted.
I went inside and headed straight for the guest bedroom, leaving Oberon to fill Mahalia in on our trip to Idiosyncrasy. Amalie was sprawled out on the bed, listening to her Ipod and reading a book. I threw my jacket on the trunk at the foot of the bed and sat down to take off my shoes. Amalie tugged her earbuds out and closed her book.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Like shit,” I told her, yawning.

“Well, I figured that.
You’ve been up for nearly two days. I meant since getting the amulet. How are you feeling?” she asked again.

“I’ll let you know after I go to sleep.
He doesn’t seem to bother me when I’m awake. At least not yet. Maybe if we hadn’t tried the glamour, he wouldn’t have bothered me at all,” I said.

“Guess I’ll leave you alone and let you get some shut- eye,” she said, sliding off the bed.

“Hey, Amalie,” I said, stopping her at the bedroom door. “Do me a favor?”

“Yeah, sure.
Whatever you need,” she replied, always eager to help.

“Can you call the hospital and see how Matthison is doing?” I asked.

I had thought about asking Oberon to stop when we were on our way back, but had chickened out. I was afraid of running into Matthison’s wife. I didn’t think that I could stand to see the blame and hate in her eyes again. Not to mention I hated hospitals and didn’t want to see Matthison hooked up to all those machines and tubes. If he didn’t make it. then I didn’t want to remember him like that. The memory of what he had looked like before we got him there would haunt me enough.

“Sure.
Try to get some sleep. I’ll give you a full report when you get up.” She smiled and shut the door.

I lowered the blinds and pulled the heavy drapes closed, darkening the room just enough to trick my brain into thinking that it wasn’t going on noon.
I put her stuff on the nightstand, grabbed the Retaliator from beside my duffel bag and crawled into bed.

Oberon came in just as I was falling asleep.

“Scoot over,” he said.

I rolled over to the middle of the bed.
Oberon climbed in, spooning me.

“Are you going to sleep with your sword?” he asked between yawns.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you do that a lot?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered, too tired to explain that most nights I couldn’t fall sleep without it.

“Okay,” he said, squeezing me tighter.

There was no sign of lachadiel when I closed my eyes, so I let the sleep that I so desperately needed take me.

There were flashes of red.
The color completely filled my mind. It was everywhere; it saturated everything. I looked down at my hands and they were dripping with red. My clothes were soaked with it too. I could hear a gurgling sound and someone screaming. In fact, the ear-piercing screams felt as if they might actually split my skull. I covered my ears trying to muffle the sound, but it didn’t help. I wanted to find the screeching person and help, but I couldn’t see anyone in the sea of red. The unseen victim just kept screaming until all traces of a true voice were gone. Even then, the hoarse, ragged attempt at a scream still reached my ears.

Familiar voices broke through the sounds of that poor tortured soul.
I heard my name. I could hear someone calling me.

“Maurin!” a scared female voice called out.
She knew me, but I couldn’t place her voice at all.

“Don’t startle her!
Back up, Amalie! Don’t touch her!” His voice was strained; he sounded panicky.

Oberon!
I jolted awake. He grabbed my wrist. I looked down to see him under me, with the Retaliator pressed against his throat.

“Whoa!” Amalie said.

“Amalie, why don’t you go downstairs and put some coffee on,” Oberon suggested.

She didn’t move.

“We’re okay. Right, Maurin? It’s okay,” he said. He sounded calm and confident, but he never took his eyes off of me.

I sat there frozen, unable to move from the fear that
Graive’s predictions were coming true.

“Oberon, I…” Amalie started.

“Just go make the coffee please, Amalie,” he said.

“But I need to…” She tried again.

“We’re fine. Just give us a minute. We’ll be right down,” he said, trying to reassure her.

Amalie left, closing the door behind her.

“Maurin, it’s alright. You can put the sword away now,” he said calmly.

He didn’t move.
He just lay there, still holding my wrist firmly enough to keep the blade from pressing down into his neck.

I couldn’t seem to find my voice, so I just nodded.
I slowly pulled the sword away as he let go of my wrist. I dropped the Retaliator on the bed beside him and collapsed on his chest.

“Maurin, look at me.
Hey, look at me,” Oberon said gently.

I didn’t deserve his kindness or compa
ssion right now. I had almost killed him while he slept! While I slept. I couldn’t look at him.

“Are you, did I hurt you?” I asked, with my face buried in his chest, afraid to hear the answer.

“No. I’m fine. Really - I’m fine,” he said softly.

“I could have killed you,” I whispered.

“But you didn’t,” he said, trying to reassure me now.

It wasn’t working.

“Only because you and Amalie managed to wake me up in time. What if I didn’t wake up? What if you didn’t grab a hold of my wrist in time?” I asked.

“I’m not totally defenseless, you know.
If I thought you were really going to kill me, then I would have - well. I would have stopped you,” he replied.

“You should have,” I said, knowing what he meant even though he didn’t say it.

“Don’t say that. Why would you want me to use my magic against you when I didn’t need to? I knew you weren’t trying to hurt me. You weren’t even awake; you didn’t even know what you were doing. Would you please look at me?” he pleaded.

I rolled off of him and onto my back, but I wouldn’t look at him.
I just stared up at the ceiling. He propped himself up on his elbow, his face close to mine, waiting for me to turn my head. I didn’t. A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye; before it touched my cheek, Oberon wiped it away. He kissed my temple.

“If you’d look at me, then you’d see that I’m fine.
Maybe then you could forgive yourself for what didn’t even happen?” he asked.

Graive’s
voice was on repeat inside my head. All I could hear was her saying, “ She’s going to kill you” over and over again. She was pretty convincing. I had hoped that the amulet would work, but it obviously wasn’t enough. I knew that this was more than just a bad dream. lachadiel was still getting inside my head.

“Maurin.”
Something had changed in Oberon’s tone. It was more forceful now, which made me finally look at him.

I wished that I hadn’t.
He looked at me like I hung the moon for him and all I could see was the trickle of blood on his neck from my sword. I wiped the blood away, trying to undo the harm I’d done, and failing pathetically.

“You lied,” I said.

“What? That’s just a nick. It’s nothing,” he said.

“It’s not nothing,” I mumbled.

I got up and walked around the bed toward the door.

“I can feel you putting your wall back up between us.
Why do you keep walking away from me?” he asked.

“Did you ever think that it would be better if you didn’t keep trying to stop me?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he responded.

“I need you not to follow me right now.
I just need a few minutes to clear my head,” I said.

“Maurin, you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” he said.

“This is not nothing. Can you just…” I sighed. “Just let me have a cup of coffee and a few minutes to think. Please?” I asked.