Witch War in Westerham

by Dionne Lister

  He smiled. “Say no more, Miss Bianchi. I have somewhere very safe to store your goods. We have the latest non-witch tech, and I have a security department of witches that rivals the world’s best. If anyone tries to steal these goods, they’ll get a nasty surprise.” He laughed. Hmm, seemed he had a similar sense of humour to Angelica.

  “Thank you so, so much, Mr Sorokin.”

  He waved a dismissive hand. “No. How many times do I have to tell you; call me Maxim.”

  I smiled. “Only if you call me Lily.”

  He tipped his chin up. “Okay. It’s a deal.” He held out his hand, and we shook on it.

  “Agent Blakesley, Will, will be in touch tomorrow, and you can discuss where you’ll be moving everything to.”

  “Excellent.” He drained the last sip of his tea and turned to Millicent. “Thank you, Mrs Bianchi.”

  She smiled, albeit it gingerly. “My pleasure, Maxim.”

  Maxim stood, as did we all. James held out his hand to shake Maxim’s. “Thanks again. You’re saving our skin. Resources are rather limited at the moment.”

  He frowned. “So I’ve heard. In any case, lucky you’re on the job.”

  James cleared his throat. “I’m not, actually. I’m doing this in my spare time. I’m on… leave.”

  Maxim gave him an assessing gaze. “Well, that’s good of you, then.” Maxim turned to me. “If you need anything else, give me a call.”

  “I feel bad about putting you out, but we really need your assistance. Hopefully, I won’t have to call on you again. You’re really saving us.”

  He smiled. “It’s my pleasure. I will see you soon.” He made his doorway and left.

  James turned to me. “He seems like a good bloke.”

  I nodded. “He does. I guess I should go home. It’s been a long day. I’m going to have an early dinner and get to bed. All the excitement has made me tired.” I gave Millicent another hug. “I hope you feel better tomorrow. Love you.”

  I didn’t think she’d had dry eyes since we kicked Dana out of the barn. “Thank you, Lily. I love you so much. I don’t know how I can ever make it up to you.”

  I shook my head and smiled. “You’re the mother of my gorgeous niece. You’ve given James and I the gift of family. I can never pay you back either, so why don’t we call it even?”

  “You’re too good to me.”

  “Ha! I wouldn’t go that far. Anyway, let’s forget today ever happened, except for the part where I’m holding an extra huge grudge against Dana witchface. She’ll get hers soon enough.” I gave James a hug, made my doorway, and went home.

  This week had been some of the most painful and scary times of my life. If only I knew it was all behind me, but, somehow, I knew it was just the start.

  Chapter 15

  I yawned and rolled over.

  “Good morning.” Will grabbed my hand and kissed my palm.

  “Mmm, what time is it?”

  “Just before eight. I got in at midnight, but you were fast asleep.” His magic tingled my scalp, and the blinds opened just a smidge, letting enough light in to see without blinding anyone. Although, the sky was so grey, I didn’t think we were in much danger of it being too bright. I still blinked and shut my eyes because I wasn’t quite awake. Will grunted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’ve still got the head of that damned snake on your wrist.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been pretending it’s not there. Maybe it can’t do anything without the rest of its body?”

  “After yesterday, let’s not underestimate their ability to control people from a distance.”

  Damn it. How could I not be awake now? I opened my eyes and looked at Will. “If they get control of me, kill me.”

  “What? No!”

  I hurriedly sat up and looked down at him with way too much intensity for first thing in the morning. “You have to promise me. I’d rather die than be forced to kill any of you. Seriously, Will, you cannot let them use me like that.” I didn’t know what they could do, but if I were them, I’d use me to kill my friends. That would be the ultimate control and revenge. Piranha would just love that. Crap. Maybe I should go into hiding and stay away from everyone? Gah. Why did it feel like I was back to when I first got the tattoo and everyone was worried about saying anything in front of me in case RP were spying via the tattoo?

  Will sat up and swung his legs over the bed. “Let’s get dressed and have this discussion over coffee.”

  Mmm, coffee. I wasn’t going to say no to that. We magicked our clothes on and went downstairs, Abby and Ted following. Abby always slept on the end of our bed, and Ted in his dog bed in our room.

  “Sit, Lily. Let me make breakfast.”

  I smiled. “Okay. Thanks!” Yes, he didn’t have to put in as much effort as a non-witch, but it was still nice that he asked. He magicked cappuccinos into being and a plate of pancakes with all the accoutrements—chocolate sauce, strawberries, cream, sugar, lemon, jam, butter, ice cream. My mouth watered. “Who’s going to eat all this?”

  He grinned. “Us. I’m sure I can finish it off if you get full quickly.” Ted looked up at Will and wagged his tail. “This stuff isn’t great for you, buddy. I tell you what, I’ll give you a tiny bit, then you can have a lovely bone.” Will gave the dog a bite of plain pancake, then his magic tingled my scalp. A huge raw bone appeared in Ted’s bowl and fresh chicken in Abby’s dish.

  I put a couple of pancakes into my plate and heaped strawberries, ice cream, and chocolate sauce on top. “Mmmm. Yum!” The first bite was divine. I shut my eyes and savoured it. My stomach was cheering. “You’re so good at pancakes.”

  He gave me a cocky grin. “I know.”

  I laughed. “You’re lucky modesty isn’t on my list of partner must-haves.”

  “And you’re lucky that compliance isn’t on the list of my partner must-haves.”

  Gah. I made a bubble of silence. “Which brings us to the fact that RP could use me against you. You really know how to ruin a really good breakfast.” I frowned. He gave me his best sad face. What hurt most was that I knew he meant it. If anything happened to me, it would break his heart. “I don’t want to die, you know. I’m going to do everything in my power so that doesn’t happen, but how would you feel if they made you kill everyone?”

  “Well, if I have to kill you, it will be their fault.” He shook his head. “I’m a trained agent. I’ve done things I wouldn’t wish anyone to do, things that have stopped me sleeping at night, but I could never do that, Lily. I don’t know that any of your friends could. And James certainly wouldn’t.”

  I put my knife and fork down and placed my elbows on the table. They made a comfortable stand for my head, which didn’t feel like holding itself up anymore. What the hell were we going to do about the tattoo?

  “We could get Millicent’s dad to try again?”

  I shook my head. “He said it’s too deeply embedded. Trying to remove it could kill me, although….”

  “No!” He ran his fingers through his hair and made part of it stick up the wrong way. I chuckled and smoothed it down. He looked at me with so much love that I just had to return it and not say anything for a moment. I hoped he could see in my eyes how I felt… would always feel. “I know.” He gave me a sad smile and linked his fingers with mine.

  “So, what are we going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll call a meeting. This needs to be dealt with. We can’t go into this fight with any unknowns. We have to prepare for every scenario imaginable.”

  “I don’t know that that’s possible. There will always be surprises.” And we all knew how much I loved those, but dealing with things on the fly was normally my strong point… except for when I found my father. I sagged back into the chair.

  “Come on. Enjoy your breakfast. There are enough things to worry about when we’re finished.” He leaned over and kissed me.

  When Will was right, he was so right. I tried to push everything
out of my mind so I could enjoy my ice-creamy, chocolatey pancakes because letting food go to waste was a sin. Okay, so it wasn’t, but it should be. The rules according to Lily. I smiled. At least I could still find the humour hiding around the place. Sometimes I had to dig deep, but it was always worth it.

  I didn’t need a psychic to tell me that I was going to need a lot of it in the coming days. Bummer.

  The next morning, we all sat around James’s dining-room table. Thankfully, Millicent seemed to be almost back to normal. She’d only apologised once in ten minutes, which was an improvement.

  James smiled. “So, we’ve managed to inventory everything that was left, and it’s safely in Maxim’s hands. Well done for that one, Lily.”

  I grinned. “Thank you. I guess it was lucky that I got kidnapped by Tommy.”

  Imani screwed up her face. “You’re so twisted, love.”

  “Gotta look at the positives.” I winked.

  She shook her head. “Seriously, love. You’re a nutter.”

  Will stared at me. “Unfortunately, she has another major issue, and we need to discuss it.”

  Liv giggled. “Are they picking on you? Do you want me to make them go away?”

  “Yes please.” I smiled, but then it disappeared. “Will’s actually not joking.” I held my arm up and lowered my sleeve so they could see the snake head. “We have no idea what this is going to do, and not trying to put Mill on the spot, but we know they’re exceptional at controlling people from afar. I’m worried they might force me to kill one, or all, of you next time we come face to face.”

  Beren blew out a huge breath. “Wow, that’s heavy. But you’re right. Damn.”

  “That’s about it.” What else could I say? At least I’d thought to bring it up before it was too late. Millicent looked at me and opened her mouth. I put my hand up to stop her. “If you’re going to apologise, don’t. You have nothing to apologise for.”

  “I wasn’t going to apologise.” I gave her an “are you sure?” look. Her chagrined expression said it all. I laughed. “Okay, so I was. You’ll just have to get used to it.”

  I shook my head. “Nope, I won’t because you’re going to stop. Now, instead of that, why don’t you give me a good idea so I don’t end up killing you all.”

  “Hmm, let me think. Maybe one of us could have the job as babysitter, so to speak. We can be ready to slap the cuffs on you if something happens.”

  I raised my brows. “That’s actually a great idea!”

  Will and James shared a satisfied nod. “That is a good idea,” said Will. He looked at Imani. “I think it should be our job. One of us will be next to her at all times.”

  “Maybe we should both be next to her at all times?” said Imani. “As extra protection as well as caution.”

  “Well, since I’m not working at the moment, I’ll volunteer to be with Lily at all times except when she’s here or at home. Our wards have proven to be strong enough to withstand what they have. Other than that television incident, which proved they can’t touch her physically, we’ve had no breaches.”

  “I’ll get Dad over to check the wards if you like.”

  Any extra checks to our security made me feel way safer. “Thanks, Mill. That would be awesome.”

  “So, how close are we to weeding them all out and arresting people?” Ah, Beren, always the sweetie. Surely, he knew deep down that they weren’t going to go down without a fight and that a lot of them would end up dead.

  James took a sip of water. “We need to find out who the main players are. Dana’s father and Dana, obviously, and likely Toussaint, but who else? We don’t want to miss any of their leaders. We need to squash the potential for them to restart. I have some interesting information, though.” His magic tingled my scalp. A piece of paper appeared in his hand, and a picture of a brunette woman wearing a pink designer suit and walking along the street talking on a mobile phone popped up on the wall screen. “Cardinal has dug very deep into Toussaint’s affairs. Other than having close contact with Dana’s dad—who’s been buying weapons in bulk from him over the last ten years—there’s another person involved. A woman… Katrin Brandt.” He pointed at the screen. “She’s a multi-millionaire witch who runs a manufacturing company. She has factories in Germany, England, and France—interestingly, she used to operate in China, but eight years ago, she closed that down. She’s also bought weapons from Toussaint, and from email correspondence, it appears she and Dana’s father regularly meet with Toussaint. Unfortunately, the German and French governments also buy weapons from Toussaint’s company, so we can assume he may be protected in some way. Whatever we pin him on, it’s gotta stick. We have the skeletons and gems from his stash, but until we have hard proof he was involved, we really have nothing. There were no fingerprints, no magic signatures. We can only hope for some DNA. What we really need are some witnesses.”

  Damn. Typical that this wasn’t going to just happen easily. “Yeah, well, considering witnesses tend to die en masse, that’s not going to be easy.”

  Imani pressed her lips together. “There has to be a way. This is ridiculous.”

  James turned to Liv. “If you could do some more research into Katrin Brandt, it would help immensely.” He magicked a file onto the table in front of Liv. “There are the details on what we already know. I want you to dig out info on her friends, family, what she does on the weekends… everything.”

  Liv nodded. “Okay. I’ll get started as soon as we’re done here.”

  James smiled. “Excellent.”

  Will’s phone rang. “Hello, Agent Blakesley speaking.” He listened for a moment. “Okay, thanks. I’ll be there soon.” He hung up and put his phone in his pocket. “That was Agent Roche. He’s tracked the phone that sent that message yesterday back to an Agent Fontaine. He’s in custody, but it doesn’t look like he has a snake tattoo, and since he’s not dead, looks like he’s not a member of RP. I’m going to help interview him.”

  I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but…. “This could be the breakthrough we need.”

  Will looked at me. “It could, but maybe it isn’t. Let’s not get our hopes up.”

  James said, “Be careful, and let me know what happens.”

  “Will do.”

  “In the meantime, I’m going to go through Mum’s diaries again and see if there’s any mention of this German woman. If there is, Lily and I will do further research.” Yeah, further research meant putting ourselves in danger, but whatever. I didn’t think there was a time where we weren’t in danger anymore. I just hoped I didn’t get killed while I was on the toilet. How embarrassing would that be? James looked at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Uuuuuuuum. Nothing.”

  He gave me a weird look, then shook his head, dismissing the comment. “When everyone leaves, Lily, please stay, and we’ll get started.”

  “Okay.”

  Imani looked at Beren. “We have PIB work to do. Let’s go and pretend we’re on the job. Maybe we could spend some time surveilling Toussaint’s place?”

  Beren smiled. “Sounds good to me.” He turned to James. “If you need anything, just buzz.”

  “Will do, mate.”

  “Okay, I’m off. I’ll be back when I’m done.” Will made his doorway and left, taking a piece of my heart with him. What a cliché, but still…. What if something happened to him? I hoped it wasn’t another scam call. Although we were pretty sure Roche was on our side, what if someone had stolen his phone and was impersonating him?

  Deep breaths, Lily. Deep breaths.

  One by one, everyone said goodbye and left, and then Annabelle started crying. Millicent went to feed her. And then there were two. James magicked Mum’s diaries onto the table. “Okay, so Mum hasn’t been obvious about the information she’s given us. Why don’t we look for code names for people?”

  “Could you do it using magic?”

  “Not unless I knew what spell she used to create the code, if she even did. That one about Gabriel was
your garden-variety clue.” He opened one of the diaries and slid one over to me.

  Hmm. “James?”

  “Yes?”

  “From what we can see, back when Mum was investigating this, the PIB knew about it. Right?”

  “I think so. From what Angelica said, it was a PIB assignment, but after our parents disappeared, they swept it under the rug.”

  Suspicious much? “That’s just weird. Why wouldn’t they look into it?”

  He shrugged. “Apparently they did, but another agent went missing, and then it all got shelved. One of the old directors died… not under suspicious circumstances, and a new one was appointed. There was a fair bit going on at that time, so they decided to leave it alone.”

  “That’s crazy. Agents were killed! Didn’t they care? So much for protecting their workers.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Lily. Anyway, why ask?”

  “Well, maybe we should go through Mum’s old files. She might’ve had something in there. If it was an investigation, she must’ve had evidence in some files at work?”

  “I’ve already looked for it. Everything to do with that case was destroyed.”

  “What?”

  He sat back and looked at me. Eventually, he said, “You’re right. It’s all too weird.” His eyes widened. “There were records of when it was destroyed too. Hang on a minute.” He magicked his laptop to the table in front of him and typed away. When he was done, he turned the computer so I could see the screen. It was separated into two images. One showed a document with a date: Two thousand and fourteen. The other was a screen with a small picture of Dana’s face in the top left corner. Employee start date: 2nd February, 2014.