by M. L. Briers
“As close as makes no odds,” I shot back, putting a protective arm around Gran’s shoulders, and turning her away from the scene of the crime, the scene of Jack’s crime.
If he thought that he was going to railroad my grandmother into taking the blame, then he was dead wrong.
Stupid man — with the stupid job — from a stupid place.
“It’s just a few questions, Maggie,” Jack’s voice was a little less official, and a little more placating.
I clicked my tongue against my teeth, snorted my contempt for him, and steered Gran towards the parked vehicles. Unfortunately, my car was not among them.
“If you want to talk to my grandmother, then you can do it at our house — and only once she’s settled. Picking on the elderly — shame on you,” I shot back over my shoulder, hoping to shame him into retreat, and hoping that my fellow islanders would back one of their own.
“She does look a little shaken up, Detective,” Dougie said, and my spirits soared.
“Fine — take them home, and I’ll speak to her later.”
Jack didn’t sound too happy about that, I think I even heard him sigh, but that was his problem and not mine. I had a family to protect, from him, from dark magic, and I didn’t have a clue how to do it.
The first step was to get home. The second step was to rally the troops.
This was us against them — all of them — and we were the only ones that could protect them from the darkness beneath their feet.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
~
Moira looked at me with a strange combination of amusement, accusation, and warning. Sure, when I did eventually tell the family about zapping Jack; the poop was going to hit the fan, but we had more important things to think about than that.
Leonna was dead, another clan witch gone by revenge at the hands of dark magic, and Gran was probably prime suspect in the eyes of Jack Mackie. Now that was bad news on an epic scale.
“I don’t understand,” Gran said.
She’d been tight-lipped on the drive back from Leonna’s house because Dougie was all ears and his girlfriend was part of the gossip mill. Now she was home she was alternating between shock, anger, and disbelief.
On the one hand, she was ready to roll up her sleeves and get down and dirty in the magic department with whatever was killing people, and on the other, she wanted to curl up and rock herself to sleep.
There was that blissful deniability again. It had a sweet lure to it.
“Without speaking ill of the dead.” I thought to slip that in their first because I knew what was coming if I didn’t. “Perhaps even with the warning that you gave her on the phone last night, Leonna was just unprepared for it when it attacked. She had been going a little squirrel’s breakfast over the last few years.”
“Moira!” Gran berated me with the wrong name. It sometimes happened that she’d list most of the family before getting to the right person.
“That’s me!” Moira said holding up her hand like she needed the bathroom at school.
“Don’t…” Dad warned her, and she dropped her hand and bit her tongue.
“It just means we need to be more prepared,” Mother said, turning her gaze to the doorway as Eileen came rushing in, all red-faced and blowing hard breaths.
“Did you hear?” She breathed out then gulped in another breath.
“Leonna…” Mother nodded.
“Gran’s the prime suspect!” Eileen said, and not one person spoke a word. With any luck, Gran hadn’t noticed.
“I’m what?!” Gran shrieked, and pandemonium ensued with everyone talking over the top of everyone else.
~
Moira was hard on my heels after having the bumper of her car practically kissing mine as I raced towards Portree, and where I’d been reliably informed by Isla that Detective Jack and Constable Dougie’s car were parked up outside the police station.
I’d parked in the square and was stomping towards that building with every inch of me ready and willing to rip off a few heads and shove them up a few backsides.
“Tell me how this is going to help…” Moira pitched at me, and I could have growled at her like a rabid dog given half a chance.
“Nobody messes with mine and gets away with it,” I shot back over my shoulder, and then I was forced to pull up short as that devious, conniving outlander himself strolled out of the building as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
Pah!
“Mag…?” he stopped in mid-flow when he saw my face and well he might. I was spitting nails.
“I’d duck and kiss your backside goodbye,” Moira called to him, and his gaze snapped from me to her and back again.
“What’s…?” he started, but I was ready for him.
“Make my Gran the talk of the isle would you?” I bit out, and I should have zapped him, but years of training myself not show my magic had kicked in this time, so I swung at him with a fist instead.
Of course, Jack’s reflexes were just perfect, and I almost fell on my face when I connected with nothing but air.
“Ooohhh, she’s mad,” Moira chuckled.
“Magg…” Jack might have got further that time, but I swung my other fist back at him and missed again.
“Stay still, you muppet!” I hissed at him to the sounds of Moira’s chuckles.
“Yes, stand still and let her thump you,” Moira chuckled, “she hits like a girl.”
“I’ll ask you to kindly shut your trap,” I hissed back over my shoulder, swinging my right fist at him again, Jack pulled his head back on his neck just in time, but I’m sure I felt some beard stubble against my knuckles.
“Maggie!” Jack bit out, and I tossed up my hands and bit down on a curse or two.
Then I took one step forward and stomped down on his toes. He let out one hell of a yelp, and I still didn’t feel any better.
“Maggie McFae!” Dougie bit out as he tried not to chuckle at the sight of Jack hopping on one foot while grasping the other.
“And what if it was your Gran that everyone was gossiping about Dougie? Hmm?” I demanded and watched him do a goldfish impression. “Exactly!”
I swung once more and ouch did that hurt when I hit his jaw? Maybe not him, but it hurt me.
“It’s an offense to hit a police officer,” Dougie reminded me.
“I’m not hitting the muppet as a policeman; I’m hitting him as a stain on society and an affront to my personal sense-a-bloomin’-bilities. Do you have a problem with that Mac-Dougie?” I placed my hands on my hips and glared at the weasel.
“Now that you mention it…” Dougie said with a shrug. “If the Detective says it’s a personal matter…”
“Oh, it is,” Jack growled out, looking at me like he wanted to wring my neck. Well, he could bring it on.
“I’ll arrest you both for brawling in a public place then,” Dougie grinned.
“You toe-rag!” I hissed.
“We’ll take this somewhere more private,” Jack said, and before I’d so much as turned my attention back towards him, he’d scooped me up, tossed me over his shoulder, and I was staring down at that taut backside of his.
“Put me down!” I bellowed to the sound of my sister’s howls of laughter and Dougie’s chuckles.
Traitors.
There I was, swinging down the man’s back like a sack of potatoes. The shame of it, and did my kin lift a hand to help me? Pah!
“You make great food, don’t ever give up your day job to become a Ninja warrior, Maggie McFae.” Jack tossed back at me, rubbing salt in the wounds of my pride.
“Aye, well, Deputy Dog, watch when we’re in private that I don’t zap your backside again,” I hissed, half whispering.
“They’ll be talk of magic, but no doing of it.”
“Oh, really?”
“Aye, I’m telling you now, Maggie, you keep that mischief to yourself.”
“Or what, you’ll be blabbing?”
“Or I’ll be adding you to my suspect list
.”
“You wouldn’t…”
“I didn’t blab or add your Gran to my list yet, but for you, Maggie McFae, I might just make an exception.”
I did what any self-respecting woman did at times like these; I mimicked him back in baby-talk. That told him – not.
~
“Well, it’s about time, you numptie,” I bit out as I found my feet hit the floor and I begrudgingly had to grip onto his arms for support to steady myself as the blood rushed back out of my head. “Acting like some big mucho-hero Highlander type…”
“I’m a Highlander, it’s in my blood, and I’ll thank you not to forget it,” Jack grumbled back.
“Not completely a waste of bones then, you do have one redeeming quality about you,” I tossed back when what I really wanted to toss at him was my fist in his smug little face, but that hadn’t worked out so well for me.
I needed brothers – when you had brothers you could swing a punch – my sisters zapped, and that was tempting, but … no.
“More so when given a chance, Maggie. You’re like a Highland Terrier…”
“What was that?” I could no more stop my eyebrows shooting upwards towards my hairline than I could wind my neck back in as I glared at him. No woman likes to be compared to a dog.
“Snappy, ankle-biter…”
“I’d stop right there if you don’t want a case of the poison ivy down your trousers.”
“Witch!” He tossed his hand towards me.
“And then some,” I bit back and offered him the evil eye just to get my point across.
If I had put any magic behind that look, well, he would have been cinders.
“And why was your Gran at Leonna McVie’s house?”
He narrowed his eyes at me like he had the power of sight. I snorted my contempt for him and that look.
“Because she didn’t know the woman was going to be murdered.”
“Murdered, is it?” He folded those big arms of his and looked wider than the door to his bedroom.
I suddenly realized where I was. I was in Jack’s hotel room. Oh, the gossips were going to be dining out on this one for a month of Sunday’s.
“You’re the Detective; you figure it out. Now, get out of my way!” I practically squealed as I started towards him, towards the door.
“We have nae finished, yet,” Jack said.
“I have, now move or I’ll put you on your backside, you big eejit!”
Jack did the wrong thing entirely; he offered me a smug look of pure disbelief. Muppet.
“Another swing and miss, Maggie Mc…”
He yelped when I used my magic to take his legs out from beneath him. His backside hit the floor and with it, his pride.
Stupid man and his stupid good looks – smug looks! I meant smug.
The man looked like a sex God, and there was no getting away from that, but did he have to flaunt it?
He’d riled me up and made me use my magic again, and the only upside to that was that I’d defied him again. Tell a witch that she couldn’t use her magic and see what happens to you.
Well, now he’d found out the hard way that I was no pushover, and I wouldn’t be dictated to by anyone. It served him right. The man was definitely a Highlander, he had the attitude of a bull.
I’d won that one, and he’d lost.
The only problem with that was that I might have dropped Mr. MacTiddles down on his pride, but he was also blocking the only exit out of there with his stupid sexy body.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
~
You would have thought that I’d sprouted snakes for hair and was turning people to stone around him, not that there was anyone within the confines of Jack’s bedroom with us, but still, he reacted to one little tiny bit of magic like it was the apocalypse and zombies were attacking. The man was an eejit of the worst kind.
Pride. That’s what it was, pride and the fall, instead of before it.
Sure, in Jack’s world he could take on the big baddies with fisticuffs and brute force. But faced with something not of his world – well, let’s just say the man could give my Grandmother a run for her money with his lectures.
I left that bedroom with a flea in my ear and the solemn promise that he wasn’t done interrogating me, Gran, or anyone else in my family of heathens. Numptie.
Murderer, Gran, Pah! She’d rather keep you alive and make you suffer every day with one of her hour-long speeches.
As for me, I could kill whatever was doing this to my beloved isle and the people on it. Maybe even Jack, under the right circumstances.
Moira was standing by her car looking gleefully smug. With her arms folded, she was giving me a knowing look as I stalked towards her.
“Not one bloody word!” I got in before she chuckled and wound me up further.
I swear that every muscle in my body was clenched so damn tightly that I could spit out a diamond from my you know where.
“You like him,” she teased, and I zapped her because I could, because I needed to do someone harm, and because of that smug look. “See, point made.”
“Was not, and not another word or I’ll make sure that strawberry blonde hair of yours has a tight weave permanent, and I mean perm-anent, fuzz to it.”
Moira gasped, and her hand went straight to her hair. “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, aye, I would.”
And I would. I’d make her look like she’d licked her finger and shoved it in an electrical socket alright.
“Someone’s not feeling the love,” she said, turning her nose up at me.
“Magnify that by the power of a thousand suns,” I snapped back, reaching in my pocket for the keys to my cars, yanking them a little too hard, and sending them down to the roadway at my feet. “Eejit.”
I berated myself and snapped down to retrieve them when I felt the rush of air around me.
Something big, furry, and magically powerful shot over my body and knocked me to the ground. My hands hit the hard surface, my head snapped up on my neck, just in time to see the thing heading right for Moira.
“Whoa!” Moira shrieked. Her hands came up, and she forced her magic out of her palms at the thing, catching it in the chest, and flipping the beast into head over tail summersaults back across the lot towards me.
“Don’t throw it at me,” I bit out, and tossed myself sideways, only narrowly missing being steamrollered by the beast.
“What the f…?” Moira spat out, and I didn’t have the will to look her way as I took in what I can only describe as a damn big wolf, but not. It was so much more than that.
“Moira, get in your car,” I hissed out, lifting my hands and aiming my palms in its direction.
“Not leaving you,” she said, stubborn to the last.
The beast pulled back its lips and exposed two rows of razor-sharp fangs that glinted in the few lights still left on in the area.
“Allow me.” The voice was soft for a man of these parts like he was trying to woo a lass, but there was nothing soft about what came next.
I didn’t see where he came from, but he was standing between me and that beast in the blink of an eye – not that I blinked, who could blink at a time like this?
“It’s…” I started but swallowed my own tongue when he grabbed hold of the snarling beast and tossed it through the air away from him. “That’s…”
I wasn’t sure what word could possibly come next in that sentence, so I shut up.
“Holy bloody hell’s bells and Satan’s minion,” Moira bit out on a forced chuckle of disbelief. My sister was very seldom lost for words; some would say that she had too many.
“Run along.” Our new hero said, brushing his hands off as if he didn’t like the feel of the beast against his skin.
The beast took off like a bat outta hell, and I didn’t blame it. Frankly, if it hadn’t of been that my sister wouldn’t have gotten the memo – I would have been running as well.
“Vampire…” I muttered. I mean, what else could it be?
>
“Shocker,” he grinned, playfully.
That was all I needed, a sarcastic, bloodsucking nightwalker to add insult to injury. But, I have to admit, he wasn’t hard to look at.
Still, he was younger than me by a few years … or … not? I guess age was relative to one of those things, but he looked more suited to Eileen’s age group than have the likes of me drooling over him. Still, it never hurt to look, right?
“Fiona called and I – begrudgingly came,” he said, starting towards me and I cocked my head and clicked my tongue to warn him of impending doom and death by fiery magic should he get too close. I was grateful when he stopped in place. “And just in time too. No need to thank me.”
“Thank you…”
“No need…” he shrugged and looked pleased with himself.
“It was a question…” I shot back.
“How are we to know that the mutt-thingy isn’t yours,” Moira said, eyeing him with one of her famous death glares.
“Fur allergy,” he said and put his hand to his throat and coughed.
I must admit that I snapped my gaze to Moira then. The woman spat out a chuckle at the same time that I did.
Vampires were not only real, they actually were sarcastic, and there was now one on the Isle of Skye. I felt less blessed and more skyrocketing towards insanity. I might have laughed at his funny, but it sounded more like the cackle of a mad woman that got stuck in my throat.
It felt like some kind of joke, a vampire, a werewolf and a witch walk into a bar; only I couldn’t think what the punchline could be. My life had become surreal, and if I could think straight, then I don’t think that I would actually be appreciating it much.
“Let’s go see your Granny!” he said and clapped his hands together like he relished the prospect.
“Oh, that’s not going to end well.” I bit out as I pushed up to my full height.
“Nonsense, we’re old friends from waaaay back. We even dated once…”
“What!?” Moira squealed, but only because she got there before I did.