by Holly Ice
The door behind the coven opened, and a guard escorted Cameron in.
Finally, I’d have a day of a witness backing me rather than tearing me down. He’d been there through it all. He’d even been the one to pull Shane into the undercover operation.
I tried to catch his gaze, but Cameron didn’t look at me, or the public.
He shuffled through the room, shoulders slumped, eyes fixed on the floor. The life had seeped out of him, like a starved dog.
My stomach sank. Why hadn’t Shane told me Cameron was in such a bad way? I’d thought telling Cameron not to visit me in prison would protect him.
I nudged Julian. ‘Is he okay? Have people said anything to him? Bad press? Family problems?’
If Shane’s family weren’t happy, Cameron had to have had some reaction.
Julian shook his head. ‘Brace yourself.’
‘What?’
He clenched his jaw. ‘This won’t go well.’
‘Is this a hunch, or something else?’ I whispered.
Julian didn’t say anything.
But we were directly in front of the public, and they already hated him enough for defending me. Admitting any kind of spirit ability would only put a bigger target on his head. And he’d hardly admit if he had insider knowledge on the prosecution.
Cameron crossed the courtroom and stumbled into the stand. The lone black candle lit his eyes, the flame sparkling in them.
Was he… tearing up? What the hell happened?
The prosecutor glanced at the coven, then turned to the stand. ‘Cameron Murphy, you’re here today as a witness to much of Ms Nash’s actions within the academy. Can you confirm that you were close to Bianca Nash and Shane McKee?’
‘That is correct.’ His voice was quiet, strained.
He glanced over the prosecutor’s shoulder, to the coven, then to someone in the corner of the public pews, and then back down, to the candle.
He stared at it hard enough it had to be leaving imprints on his vision.
I checked the pew and shivered.
Russell McKee watched Cameron, a dark smirk painted on his lips.
He’d done something. A stone dropped into my stomach. Now I was as sure as Julian. This wasn’t going to go well. But how much could they twist Cameron’s arm?
‘I understand Justin Holt was a friend of your family?’
‘Yes.’
‘And was he acquainted with Ms Nash?’
‘Yes, they’d met.’
So far, so good. They couldn’t do much with a simple yes or no.
‘Were they friendly?’
Cameron swallowed hard enough his Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Yes. From what I saw.’
My skin tingled, and pinpricks attacked my gut. My psychic danger alarm.
But as much as aether warned me, I couldn’t stop whatever they’d planned. I had to watch it happen. Shite, but this sucked.
They’d torn Shane’s character apart in the trial like they had in the inquest, but this set of questioning was new. Like they were trying to make Cameron credible. The turnaround meant he knew something useful to them. But what?
‘I see. Did they ever meet without you?’ the prosecutor asked.
‘Once or twice.’
‘So something could have happened between them that you weren’t aware of? A dispute, or a disagreement?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Yes or no, Cameron?’
‘Yes.’ His shoulders hunched, his head ducking even further, his chin almost touching his chest. ‘It’s possible.’
Julian stood. ‘This is conjecture.’
‘Different tack, please,’ Tibor said.
The prosecutor nodded. ‘Cameron, do you recognise this story Ms Nash tells about working with Justin Holt and the WMCF on an undercover operation?’ The prosecutor stared at Cameron until he finally met her eyes.
‘No.’
I gasped for breath. No? What the hell? He was outright lying!
Julian jumped to his feet. ‘During the inquest hearing, this witness attested to the existence of the operation.’
Tibor straightened. ‘Mr Murphy, why did you change your testimony?’
‘I was scared,’ he mumbled.
My ears rang. What did they have on him? Lying in a case like this had serious punishments attached. He didn’t want to. He was all turned in on himself like he didn’t want to be there, but that didn’t change the result.
The coven and the public would gobble up the excuse that he was scared of me rather than look into the obvious witness tampering.
It was a master stroke. They’d already thoroughly shredded Shane’s reputation. Without Cameron to back him, give him more credibility, I was out of friendly witnesses and doomed to lose this trial.
I felt weightless, my legs numb.
What else would they make Cameron say? Or invent? He was present for enough of my stay at the academy to do serious damage if he threw truth out the window. They could tie my death in a pretty bow.
‘They have something on him,’ I whispered.
Julian nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can.’
I wasn’t optimistic. Shane had chased potential witnesses for weeks. Whatever Russell and his allies had over them, it was big. So whatever they had over Cameron would be big, too. Big enough to risk an innocent friend’s death. But it hurt. Cameron had been one of my few friends at the academy, and I’d trusted him. Too much, maybe.
‘Tell me, Cameron,’ the prosecutor continued, ‘has Bianca ever claimed to have strong spirit ability?’
Oh, no. They wouldn’t get him to say that. My throat froze over.
Cameron’s eyes flicked up, meeting mine, and I saw the anguish there. Something was very wrong.
‘Yes. Our last meeting together with Justin, she said she’d had a vision.’
My heart stuttered. They’d planned this. Cameron was who Russell ‘broke’ before his visit. Then Russell visited my cell to confirm my vision ability for himself.
Shit, how had I not seen it coming?
‘A vision! Those are incredibly rare, aren’t they?’
She eyed Cameron and slowly tapped her foot, waiting for an answer.
‘Yes. Very rare.’
‘Even for a Wildes.’
The prosecution’s strategy was all about comparing me to Lyall and his team of rebels. Testimony that I had visions added to her narrative. The crazy seer, Seeing things that weren’t there.
Stars jumped into my vision. I closed my eyes and took deep, slow breaths until the dizzy spell passed.
‘Did you think she was making her visions up?’ the prosecutor asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’ She cupped her chin in a thinking pose. ‘You weren’t convinced by her statement?’
‘Visions are… hard to prove. Without investigating what she Saw, I couldn’t be certain she was telling the truth.’
She nodded. ‘Of course. And what was the focus of this vision?’
Cameron raised his chin. ‘She said she shook Russell McKee’s hand and Saw a woman in squalid conditions, her waste in a bucket beside her. And a locked, barred door between her and whoever Bianca Saw through.’
I bit back a bitter smile. I hadn’t completely lost him.
‘Quite the story!’ The prosecutor faced the public, then the coven. ‘One which sounds familiar, doesn’t it? A Wildes, implying respected, influential witches are guilty of terrible crimes without any proof beyond what she’s “Seen”…’
She let the words hang, but the mutters of ‘bitch’, ‘madwoman’, and ‘liar’ proved she’d hit her mark. Like I’d known she would the moment Cameron mentioned my vision.
Julian elbowed me and scrawled across his notepad, his pen eating into the paper. ‘We have to talk about this.’ He underlined it three times.
I nodded. I’d told Julian about my visit from Russell, but we never thought he’d compel a witness to mention my visions. He’d only had Shane or Cameron to choose
from.
And we couldn’t prove my visions were real. The WMCF wouldn’t investigate. Not now Justin was dead. Not when the WMCF made key evidence in my case – like the CCTV – disappear. And especially not when a vision was all the evidence I had against Russell McKee. My word was worth nothing to them.
Russell had outplayed us. I gritted my teeth. If I wasn’t before, I was a lying manipulator to the coven now. Like the Wildes. And I didn’t see a way out.
Chapter 4
Two slices of an extra-large pepperoni pizza cooled in the cardboard box atop the meeting room table.
Julian hadn’t touched a slice, but my hands dripped with grease. I grabbed a tissue and gave them a good wipe but I still felt the oil between my fingers. It was worth it. The tasteless crap I got in the prison was barely edible.
I was amazed Julian got anything this good through the doors without the guards claiming a security risk. And I had to give him brownie points for appealing to my stomach.
Apparently, the witches’ spring festival, imbolc, was a time to give to those in need and to feast. Have to say, it was my new favourite holiday, even if it did help fill the public pews on trial days.
‘Can we discuss this now?’ Julian asked.
I sighed. ‘Cameron put my vision out there. It’ll change the course of the trial. Make it easier for them to vilify me, make me one of the dangerous, crazy Wildes witches. What’s left to discuss? What we need is a good witness. And we don’t have one.’
Julian tapped his pen on his pad and gestured to his phone. It was vibrating for maybe the twelfth time since the pizza arrived. ‘Do you know who’s calling?’
I shrugged. ‘Haters? Other clients?’
He shook his head. ‘The supernatural press.’
‘Makes sense. They visited me in the cells until I repeatedly told them to piss off.’
Someone else in my team meant someone else to pester for insider information. Another route to a payday.
‘This isn’t just about the trial. It’s about the visions. And it’s not just the press. Dozens of desperate people are reaching out. They’re hopeful you can help them, like the Wildes used to.’
I blinked. ‘On demand? That’s crazy.’ I’d had two visions, and more by accident than design. I had no control over this. I wasn’t even sure I’d See anything about someone not involved in this mess. I’d not Seen anything from the guards.
‘Think about it. If you help these people, especially if your visions are proved truthful, it changes the trial narrative. It brings back the decades of positive things the Wildes did before the rebels banded together. It shows you weren’t lying about your spirit ability. That maybe there is something to investigate when it comes to Russell McKee. From there we might even get the authorities to reassess the case.’
I doubted it. Whatever I did, the authorities weren’t going to turn on each other. A corruption big enough to accuse an innocent person of murder and take it to trial didn’t crumble overnight.
‘No.’
These callers might even be part of the plot against me, faking their problems to ‘prove’ I didn’t have any spirit ability. And if they were genuine, I couldn’t give them false hope. I didnae ken what I was doing.
‘At least talk to Shane.’ Julian pushed his phone towards me.
I scrolled through the endless texts and calls, barely registering more than the words help, desperate, begging, last hope. But I’d made up my mind. Shane wouldn’t change it, and I wasn’t dumping this on his plate on top of everything else. We’d have to find another way to turn this trial around.
* * *
I bounced from one dream to another. First I careened full pelt towards a cliff with broken brakes. Then my teeth fell out. A crowd laughed at a speech I’d made. I was trapped in a burning building… Classic anxiety and stress dreams.
Each time I woke to one of the resident mice, or to the wooden bed slats poking my ribs. Again and again, I brought the thin blanket over my shoulders and tried to sleep.
And then darkness claimed me. I was back in that woman’s cell. This time, only a glimmer of light lit her, seeping from the bottom of the door. I tried to take her hand but I still wasn’t corporeal here. I tried to speak but, again, nothing came out.
‘You can’t talk. No energy,’ she said, her voice raspier than my last visit.
I pointed to my throat and mimed drinking.
‘They didn’t leave water.’
I opened my arms as if to ask who they were.
‘Russell McKee has me and at least three other women. But I don’t know where we are.’
The door opened a crack. Someone placed something on the floor.
She bolted for the gap, but the door slammed in her face. A glass of water tilted on its base and almost spilled.
‘This is the second child I’ve had here. I can’t last much longer. Please, help.’ She held my eyes, pleading. ‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.’
I bit my lip. She was so desperate. I highly doubted she’d had two children in captivity by choice.
Justin’s words came back to me: ‘we think a group is orchestrating more throwbacks’. He’d said the uptick in non-sentient fae attacks matched the increase in throwback numbers.
The cowards had activated the throwbacks’ magic with supernatural attacks rather than the risk-free methods at their disposal in order to hide their involvement in the throwbacks’ lives. We’d wondered why they’d go to such lengths to avoid revealing an unplanned pregnancy. But what if it went farther than that? This was her second child in captivity. That wasn’t an accident.
The darkness drew in again before I could ask anything else. I stared hard at the edges of the woman. I didn’t see any kind of spell, but when I woke in my cell, I was still sure she was real. This wasn’t a dream.
Whoever she was, she must have a family. If I found them, maybe I could help her, and get to the bottom of the investigation Justin started.
* * *
Shane stormed into the meeting room behind Julian and thumped the table.
He’d skipped pizza last night to demand an explanation from Cameron and he hadn’t lost any steam since.
His dark eyes didn’t hold a drop of their usual care and affection. He was all protective beast, Mira tracking his every step, full predator.
I rubbed my arms. The white-hot anger rolling off him had changed his face, emphasised the hard angles and shadows. He seemed like a different person.
‘He knows what they could do to you. And he did it anyway. I should’ve seen it. Known he was going to change sides. How did I not see it? We walked right into it!’
‘Russell got to him,’ I said, licking my lips. ‘Whatever he does works. His company has power, influence, connections…’ We knew that. They’d set me up for murder. ‘We should’ve expected they might get to one of us.’
I’d wondered if Julian was in their pockets, too.
‘Why aren’t you angry? This is your life we’re talking about! And he’s lying through his teeth. If he’d stuck to the truth, maybe…’
Damn it, tears blurred my vision. I drew back from him, my voice wavering. ‘Because it’s not his fault. Or yours. He didn’t want to say all that. It was all over his face. Gads, his whole body. This is all on Russell, okay?’
I understood his anger. But blaming Cameron was pointless. We needed to ken more about our enemy’s reach and tactics. Otherwise they’d keep stealing our allies.
Shane paused, then crouched beside me. Mira pawed my leg, her golden eyes soft, contrite. Shane’s matched, the pinch to his lips undoing my stupid fear. He wasn’t angry at me.
He kissed my forehead, then claimed a seat, where his anger fumed inside rather than out. Like a damned microwave. He had to step back soon, take a breather, or he’d burn out.
‘Julian, did you find what they have over Cameron?’ he asked.
‘Nothing yet.’
As I thought.
I tried to hold a yawn back an
d failed. It was so wide my jaw cramped. I rubbed the sore muscle, careful not to stretch my neck or jaw too far again.
Shane narrowed his eyes. ‘What’s with you? Every time I see you, you look more tired.’
I bit my lip. I didn’t want to give him more things to rage about.
‘She doesn’t sleep well,’ Julian said.
Shane nodded, his broad shoulders relaxing a fraction.
I looked between them.
Julian hadn’t done anything to sabotage my case, that I’d seen. He’d been quite convincing in court, and supportive. Even his advice to act confident reduced the insults from the public pews.
Can I trust him?
Lyall fluttered into my lap and waddled onto my knees.
He knows I’m human. He knows you’re a Wildes. Your visions are already out in the open. And the trial is in the toilet. You’ve not got much to lose.
True.
‘It’s not exactly that I don’t sleep well.’ I bit my tongue. ‘Well, some of it is that. I get these stress dreams sometimes.’
Shane opened his mouth to comfort me, but I waved off his concern. This wasn’t a call for sympathy.
‘Let me finish. I’ve also had two… strange dreams. But I’m not sure I should call them dreams.’
‘Visions?’ Shane asked, eyeing Julian with a hint of suspicion.
My lawyer was scribbling new notes into his pad. ‘You don’t have visions when you sleep. It’s a different ability,’ he mumbled.
He’s done his research.
Maybe he has some ability. He knew what’d happen in the courtroom. Well before I did.
He could be watching body language.
Maybe.
Cameron had been tense from the start. Julian might have enough experience to realise that was more than nerves over his testimony. Whatever the case…
‘It was a message, a call for help,’ I said. ‘Another woman. She said there were others, and the setup looked the same as the vision I got from Russell. Desperate woman. Small cell. Waste bucket.’
‘Someone summoned you?’ Julian had an excited gleam in his eyes. ‘That’s unusual.’