Broomsticks and Burials

by Lily Webb

  She’d drunk too much — far too much.

  “I’m sorry, Zoe,” Grace sobbed. “It’s too late.”

  “No, it isn’t. Everything’s okay. We’re gonna get you out of here, it’ll be fine. Just stay calm and come with me. I know you weren’t in control of yourself, I’ll tell the police,” I said, carefully getting closer to her. For a moment, she looked like she believed me, like she wanted to come with me.

  But then Grace’s eyes went wide. She jumped off the headstone and backed away from me, glass shards crunching under her feet as she shook her head. Her mouth opened and closed repeatedly like she wanted to say something, but the words never came.

  “Zoe, ma chérie, I was beginning to worry you’d never join us,” a velvety voice drifted through the night from behind me, and the blood in my veins turned to ice.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Valentine stared at me, a smirk splitting his face, and as I looked into the emotionless crimson pools that were his eyes, it was impossible to forget the vampire was literally a cold-blooded killer.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I was. Valentine chuckled.

  My palms were slick with sweat, and my throat had tightened so much it hurt to swallow. I didn’t know the extent of Valentine’s powers, but I knew he could shred me like a piece of paper if he really wanted.

  Valentine sniffed at the air and unfastened the first few buttons on the black suit jacket he wore like he was getting ready to move.

  “You smell as frightened of me as ever,” he said.

  “I’m not,” I insisted. Valentine clucked his tongue and shook his head.

  “Zoe, ma petite, what have I told you about trying to lie to me?” he asked. “It’s physically impossible. As we speak, I hear your heart hammering in your chest; I smell the blood coursing through your veins.”

  “I know what you did,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt you do,” Valentine said. “You’ve been quite busy. I must say, I’m impressed.”

  “Good for you,” I said. Valentine smiled, the razor-sharp tips of his fangs peeking out from his upper lip.

  “The police are on their way,” I said, hoping it was true. “We won’t be alone for long.”

  “That’s more than enough time,” Valentine said. He linked his fingers together and cracked them before tilting his neck to both sides to crack it too. My heart rate doubled. I needed to stall him, but the only thing I could think to do was keep him talking.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked.

  “I had no choice,” Valentine said.

  “Of course you did. You could’ve, you know, not murdered anyone,” I said. He laughed.

  “I suppose that’s true, but then I would’ve been seen as weak,” Valentine said.

  “By whom?”

  “This entire town,” Valentine said. “For more than four hundred years, I’ve walked on and around these grounds, and never once have I been given the respect I deserve. Never once have I been thanked for my decades of service.”

  “Respect is earned, not demanded,” I said.

  “No one has done more to earn it than I have,” Valentine said.

  “Well, murdering two witches probably didn’t help your odds,” I said. Valentine snarled, and I flinched, but I didn’t back down. I couldn’t now.

  “You’ve been a real stake in my side recently,” Valentine said.

  “Sorry, not sorry,” I said, shrugging. Somehow, I’d found my confidence.

  “I was so close to real power, so close I could taste it,” Valentine said. “But then that insufferably nosy reporter wouldn’t leave well enough alone. It seems to be a disease among all of you journalists.”

  “So you did kill Harper,” I said.

  “She left me no choice. Her ceaseless pursuit of my business with Councilwoman Cromwell led the reporter to discover the Councilwoman and I had struck a deal, and that wasn’t a piece of knowledge I could afford to let linger,” Valentine said.

  “What sort of deal? What did Opal promise you in return for your money and help on her campaign?” I asked. It was the one part of the puzzle I hadn’t been able to place.

  “A permanent seat on the Council as representative of the vampires when she won,” Valentine said. Well, that explained Opal’s pro-vampire stance.

  “How did you think to glamour Grace?” I asked, pointing over my shoulder at her.

  “Glamour? Zoe, you’ve done your research. You continue to impress me,” Valentine said. “I assumed no one would suspect me if Councilwoman Magnus were caught somehow. She seemed like the perfect host, what with her unabashed hatred of vampires and fear mongering. No one would have trouble believing she was deranged.”

  “And you fed her your own blood to reinforce it, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “I’d hardly call it feeding. That sounds far too forceful. No, she was already fighting a fearsome addiction to the substance, which I presume is what fueled her hatred for us as a species from the start,” Valentine said.

  “It’s so much easier to blame others than to take responsibility for our own actions, don’t you think? I was only the Councilwoman’s willing supplier.”

  “Who also took advantage of an addiction to manipulate a powerful witch. So all those times she was ill or missed meetings—”

  “She was getting, shall we say, treatment from me, yes,” Valentine interrupted. My entire body shivered. He really was sinister.

  “Why did you have Grace steal Opal’s broomstick? Were you trying to frame Opal?” I asked.

  “That was brilliant, wasn’t it?” Valentine asked, beaming as he paced from side to side. “More than anything, using the broomstick to murder Miss Woods was intended as a message to Councilwoman Cromwell, though it was also a good way to keep suspicion away from me.”

  “What kind of message were you trying to send, exactly?”

  “I’d heard rumblings the Councilwoman was getting cold feet when rumors began swirling that Harper was investigating the both of us. She needed to stay the course, or else,” Valentine said.

  “Then why did you kill Opal too? Didn’t that ruin any path to power you might’ve had?” I asked.

  “I have you to thank for that, ma chérie,” Valentine said. My heart skipped a beat.

  “What?”

  “Yes, indeed. It was you who told me of Councilwoman Cromwell’s betrayal in this very cemetery the first time we met,” Valentine said. “You said you’d heard she’d made a deal with Lucien Bellerose. I later found out, in fact, she had.”

  “To help her cover up the rumors about her family,” I said.

  “Exactly, which would’ve been fine with me had she not decided to reward Lucien’s service by offering him the position I was promised first,” Valentine said.

  My mouth fell open. Lucien had gone behind Valentine’s back to try to usurp him politically.

  “As I’m sure you can understand, that created a problem.”

  “So you sent me on a goose chase after Opal’s family and her deal with Lucien,” I said.

  “Yes, I needed more time. I knew the rumors about Opal’s family were impossible to validate and that pursuing them would tie you up for quite a while,” Valentine said.

  “I used that time to verify what you’d told me, wittingly or otherwise, and when I realized I’d been double-crossed by both the Councilwoman and the one vampire I trusted with my soul, well, I couldn’t allow that to stand,” Valentine said.

  “Then why didn’t you kill Lucien too?”

  “Oh, believe me, I would’ve loved to have done so. Unfortunately, vampire creed makes the murder of one’s fellows a crime punishable by staking. If word spread I’d had anything to do with Lucien’s passing, it would’ve cost me my crown and my immortality,” Valentine said.

  “So Opal was the next best thing, and you knew Lucien would get the message,” I said. Valentine nodded.

  Did Lucien know or suspect Valentin
e had glamoured Grace? Was that why he’d pointed me in Grace’s direction when I talked to him? He must’ve been trying to help me because he knew Valentine was unhinged but couldn’t take action against his King himself.

  “You’re not going to get away with this. You can’t,” I said. “I know too much, and if I figured it out, the police will too. They’ve already found it was your blood in the potion you had Grace concoct to kill Opal, and they know it was Grace who made it.”

  "Zoe, ma petite, why do you think I had Grace meet me here?” Valentine asked. “I knew as soon as she went missing you’d come running after her, convinced you could do something to save her. But I’m afraid the cemetery will be gaining two new occupants this evening.”

  We’d see about that.

  Focusing without closing my eyes, I reached out with my mind to try to find Grace’s, hoping against hope Valentine’s glamour over her was weakened enough that I could get inside. After a few moments, I heard her thoughts, but they were distant and muffled as if they were coming from underground.

  I pushed harder with my mind, and as if he’d sensed me trying, Valentine dashed around me in a blur to Grace’s side. With his hands on her cheeks, his sharp black fingernails prodding into her skin, he stared into her eyes and mumbled words I couldn’t understand.

  “No!” I shouted and flung my hands out in front of me to stop him. A burst of energy flew from my palms and sent Valentine sailing through the air. He crashed into a nearby headstone, which shattered into a dozen pieces. His body laid motionless in the rubble.

  I ran to Grace, who’d sunk to her knees, and tried to pull her up before Valentine recovered. Her pupils were dilated, and the red shade I’d seen in her irises had expanded. I wasn’t sure if Valentine had done something to her or if all his blood she’d drunk had finally gotten to her system.

  “Grace? Grace, can you hear me?” I asked, patting one of her cheeks. She stared straight ahead, her eyes unfocused, and I worried I’d already lost her. We had to get away from Valentine and the cemetery as quickly as possible, but I couldn’t carry her.

  Panicked, I looked around for something, anything, to help and gasped when I spotted Grace’s broomstick in the grass. I wouldn’t be able to use it to fly myself, but if I could keep Grace on it long enough, maybe her magical bond with the broom would be enough to get us both into the air and as far away from here as possible.

  I only hoped Valentine couldn’t fly too.

  My fingertips tingled with energy, and I focused my eyes and mind on the broomstick some fifteen feet away. With one hand outstretched, I imagined an invisible fist clenching around its handle, and to my amazement, the broom shuddered and raised off the ground.

  “Yes!” I shouted and pulled my hand toward me. The broom zoomed through the air — only to be intercepted by Valentine. He snapped the broom in half over one of his knees and threw the pieces to the side as he stalked toward us, his jacket torn in several places.

  He opened his mouth, and his fangs shot further from their sockets.

  “I’m going to enjoy feeding on the both of you,” Valentine said. He crouched, resting both hands on the grass, and used his arms to launch forward.

  My eyes squeezed shut, and I clutched Grace in my arms while I screamed, waiting for the moment Valentine’s claws and fangs tore into me — but the pain never came.

  A strange warmth radiated through my body, and when I was sure I wasn’t already dead, I opened my eyes to find a shimmering purple dome surrounding Grace and me.

  Valentine laid twitching on his back in the grass, his eyes rolled into the back of his head. What the…? Was it my magic? My fear must’ve sparked something inside me, something powerful.

  “Zoe!” a voice cut through the darkness, and I jumped. The magical shield around us vanished in a cloud of smoke, and Beau charged through it to throw his arms around me. “Are you okay? Oh, thank Lilith, you’re okay! Barrett! Mueller! She’s over here!” he shouted.

  Two flashlights bounced in the night as Ewan and Mueller approached, their guns drawn. Mueller held some sort of netting along with his flashlight, and several shining silver chains were draped over his shoulders.

  When he saw Valentine lying beside us, he ran forward and threw the metal netting over Valentine.

  The vampire’s skin hissed and sizzled as the mesh made contact and Valentine jerked upward, a high-pierced shriek filling the night and rupturing my eardrums. Ewan and Mueller pounced on the vampire and held him down while they wound the chains around his arms and legs and bound them together with magical locks.

  “Nothing’s more powerful than silver when it comes to vampires,” Beau said, still holding me.

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “Raina tipped us off. She called Mueller and told him you hung up on her abruptly after asking about Valentine. I put two and two together from that,” he said. “Is Grace okay?”

  Her head rested against my shoulder.

  “I’m not sure. We need to get her to the hospital. She drank a ton of Valentine’s blood,” I said. Beau pulled me away from her and planted himself firmly between us.

  “Sorry, she could be dangerous when she turns,” he said.

  “Turns?”

  “Becomes a vampire. If she’s had that much blood, it’s almost guaranteed,” Beau said.

  “The magic doctors or whoever can’t stop it?”

  “They’re doctors, not miracle workers, but we’ll see,” Beau said. “What were you thinking, Zoe? You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

  “Better it's just me than you and the cops too,” I said.

  “Zoe?” Grace croaked. She massaged her throat and looked around like she had no idea where she was.

  “Grace! Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Why are we in the cemetery?” she asked. “I don’t feel well.”

  “It’s a long story, but everything’s going to be okay. You haven’t done anything wrong,” I said, though I wasn’t sure the Council would agree. She looked confused, but I couldn’t blame her — who wouldn’t be after living under the effects of a vampire’s blood and hypnosis for weeks?

  The sound of sirens echoed from above, and when I looked up, a fleet of witches and warlocks in white robes embroidered with red crosses descended toward us on broomsticks. Mounted red lights flashed from their tails, and as soon as they landed, they were on Grace and me.

  A witch in Coke-bottle glasses with wild, frizzy brown hair, checked every inch of my body for cuts and scrapes, despite the fact Valentine had never touched me. The name tag pinned to her robes read “Mirna.”

  “I’m okay, really,” I said, shooing her as I stood.

  “I’ll be the one to determine that, young lady,” Mirna said. “Even the smallest scratch from a vampire could be a problem if left untreated.”

  In the end, she didn’t find anything on me, but Grace wasn’t so fortunate.

  “Is she going to be okay?” I asked. I couldn’t say why I was so concerned, but in a lot of ways, I felt sorry for Grace. She was just as much a victim of Valentine’s as Harper and Opal were.

  “It’s hard to say. We’re going to have to airlift her to Willowvale and keep her for a few days while we watch her progress,” Mirna said.

  “Can I visit her?”

  “I doubt it, not for a while anyway. Sorry, dear,” Mirna said, frowning. She and a short young warlock I didn’t recognize helped Grace up onto Mirna’s broom, which levitated a few feet off the ground while it waited for her.

  “Hold on tight,” Mirna said as she sat on the broom behind Grace and wrapped her arms around her to grip the broom herself. Grace’s red, watery eyes met mine, and I couldn’t find words.

  “Thank you, Zoe,” Grace said. I smiled, and they were gone, disappearing into the night sky.

  “You got a death wish, Miss Clarke?” Mueller’s gruff voice asked, bringing my attention out of the clouds.

  “Hey, I’m still alive, aren’t I?” I asked. Mueller smi
rked at me.

  “Maybe I was wrong about you,” he said. “You’re tougher than I would’ve guessed. What did you do to the vamp anyway?”

  “Good question, I’m not really sure what happened. I closed my eyes and the next thing I knew he was on the ground flopping like a fish out of water. Desperate times, desperate measures, I guess,” I said with a shrug.

  They say that when we’re scared, our fight-or-flight response kicks in and pours adrenaline into our systems, making us capable of things we’d never be able to do otherwise. Maybe that’s what happened with my powers.

  “Then we should be thanking you. If you hadn’t decided to go rogue, Valentine might’ve killed again and gotten away with all of it,” Mueller said. I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “So I take it that means you’re sorry for tattling on me to Mitch?” I asked. Mueller chuckled.

  “Sure am,” he said. “And for the way I treated you the last time we met here.”

  “Last time?” Beau asked, furrowing his brows at me. “Why did you meet Chief Mueller in the cemetery?”

  “Reasons. I’ll tell you later,” I mumbled. “What’s going to happen to Valentine?”

  “That’s for the Council to decide. Until then, we’ll make sure he’s nice and uncomfortable in a cell underground at the station,” Mueller said.

  “And you’re sure there’s no way he can get out?” I asked. The last thing I needed was for Valentine to spring himself and come after me.

  “Positive. The bars are made of silver,” Mueller said, smiling.

  “Smart,” I said.

  “This isn’t our first vampire rodeo, Miss Clarke. Anyway, I think that’s enough excitement for one night,” Mueller said.

  “He’s right. Come on, let’s get you home,” Beau said, reaching for my hand.

  “You mean I’m free to go?” I asked Mueller.

  “You haven’t done anything wrong, as far as I’m concerned,” Mueller said. “Reckless, maybe, but you caught the killer. Well done.”