by E M Graham
‘Au revoir, then, dear one,’ she said to me. ‘I’ll keep in touch. And... tell Nachtan that Margaret sends her regards.’
With that, she let herself drift off on the air currents up to the North. I didn’t know where she would land, maybe Shetland or the Orkneys, the isles off the coast, or perhaps even Russia, where the Kin had no treaties. It would no doubt be somewhere isolated where she could lay low until she knew which way the Kin were blowing.
I floated down to land beside Hugh and Nachtan and Johanna, my head bowed. This was the moment of truth. I even held out my hands slightly, ready to be cuffed. Not that I was offering myself as a sacrifice, but I wanted to do this with the most dignity I could muster.
Hugh silently appeared at my side and placed his arm around me. It was warm inside his grasp.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Johanna. My voice was low.
She brushed my apology aside. ‘Dara de Teilhard Martin, you are under arrest by order of the Kin for... for just everything.’ I’d never seen her so flustered before.
Johanna looked at the pair of us, and then over to where Cromwell was being subdued. She brushed her blonde hair off her forehead and sighed. ‘Christ. What a mess,’ she said. ‘Time enough to talk tomorrow,’ she continued, her voice weary. ‘Hugh, don’t let her out of your sight.’
I would have to face the music, but she was giving me a grace period. As I was escorted into the army vehicle, I sent a last glance skyward. Margaret was no longer in sight, but the Venerable Nachtan still stood rooted to the spot, gazing upward in the direction she had gone, a misty tear forming in his eye.
I slept solidly for the whole drive back to Edinburgh, nestled snuggly within the safety of Hugh’s arm.
26
JOHANNA SURE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE WHOLE THING BEING A MESS. I had almost single-handedly stirred up a huge stinking pile of wasps nest.
Willem, well, I’m still pretty proud of that. It felt so good to drop him in the middle of the Kin, and Cromwell had a black eye for the next week. The Kin are interrogating him for terrorist activity, but it’s also tangled up from a lawsuit with the Sorcerer’s and Practitioners Society (SAPS) because they think they should have first dibs on Willem as he was practicing sorcery without a license, despite the terrorism charge which should be at the forefront. Sorcerers are a bunch of entitled buggers, even worse than the Kin, and I’m just hoping they don’t give him a legal loophole to escape custody. That’s one magical being who should be kept in the deepest, nastiest, smelliest dungeon of the Edinburgh Vaults, but they transported him to the Tower of London. I truly hope he rots there.
A small East European country is also trying to get their hands on Willem, but the Kin suspect this is the hub of the terrorism, Willem’s boss and cohort of the Ice King. That fearsome creature is temporarily out of the picture, for his court being destroyed by my action, and that is another good thing that came out of all this mess. He and his dimension were always a touchy subject politically for the Kin, as there were strong suspicions he was looking to come into this world, aligning with said small Eastern European country to overturn the Kin.
Trevor – I still think of him, and I feel guilty about his fate. Yes, he was a goblin and a pretty treacherous one at that, but it was a rotten way to die. I’d never seen anyone murdered before, right in front of me like that, I still have nightmares of the goblin blood oozing onto the stone floor. Hugh said he deserved what he got, for Willem had paid him to befriend me and lead me to Auld Meg. But still. He was only being a goblin trying to better himself.
Johanna and the Kin are trying to sort everything out. Cromwell, after a short stay in a ‘recovery‘ centre, is back on the scene even though he broke the Pact with Aonghas by sending his Uncommon Forces onto the hill and then having the temerity to fire shots over the border. If it had been anyone else, I’m sure he would have been locked away for this unreasonable use of force, but Cromwell still has the support of the Covenanters section of the Kin behind him and he is Baron of Something-or-Other so Johanna has to use kid gloves when handling this one, even though Aonghas is demanding retribution. Cromwell and his cronies give me the hairy eyeballs whenever they see me around Edinburgh Castle, and I make sure to stay out of their way.
The Kin have their hands so full that there hasn’t even been repercussions for me yet. Mrs Mac wouldn’t take me back, she claimed I lowered the tone of her establishment, so they found a secure place for me in the Regimental Headquarters on the grounds of Edinburgh Castle, far away from Cromwell’s offices.
And Mom, well, we were allowed to spend a few days together, catching up on all those missed years, and honestly, one part of me is relieved she wasn’t around for my teenage years. We would have driven each other nuts. I was sad and not-sad to wave her off at the airport when she returned to Canada, sharing the Kin jet with Dad who had been summoned over to help deal with all the political mess. Now that must have been an interesting flight back home. Fortunately, magic is forbidden during flights as it screws up the electronics of the plane, so they had to talk out their differences. What with all the excitement, and its aftermath, I never did get the whole story of why and how Mom was in the Ice Kingdom, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll be allowed to go home for a visit later next year, and I’ll make her tell me all then.
Hugh is allowed to visit me, though, and he spends a lot of time here, ostensibly ensuring that I don’t escape and also that Cromwell doesn’t have another lapse in judgement and attack me before the trial.
There will, of course, be a trial. Or should I say Official Inquiry. I dread the thought of the days and weeks this will consume, sitting on those hard benches at Inverness Castle watching the dour faces of the Kin as they take apart every single thing that happened over the month leading up to the Incident, and then muckrake into my past while they’re at it. However, that’s in the future, for the wheels of bureaucracy turn excruciatingly slowly. Hugh strongly believes my case can be argued that although I removed Margaret from her dungeon and used magic when I was expressly forbidden to, I mitigated the damage by handing over Willem and disrupting the Ice King’s plans to move in on Kin territory.
I’m thinking of structuring my story to paint me as the hero, letting them believe that I lured Willem up to the Ice Kingdom, and that it was all a carefully laid trap in order to deliver him back to the Kin. Well, it was all planned out – just wasn’t me doing the planning and luring. That was pure Willem. Hugh scolded me when I told him that, said I wouldn’t be able to keep up the lie. And I’m afraid he’s right. He knows me too well.
Surprisingly, I’m still under his and the Venerable Nachtan’s tutelage, which has to be a good sign for my future. That old witch has warmed up to me a lot since the early morning on Tomnahurich. I think it did him the world of good to be out in the fresh air, to lose the stink of the tower, and he holds me responsible. He walks with a lighter step, there’s a gleam in his eye, and although he still smokes just as much, as least all the crap in his lungs has loosened a bit. I even saw him at Starbucks the other day with his beard brushed and in a clean robe drinking a chai latte. I passed on Margaret’s regards, as I promised her, but he went all silent on me, with a faraway look in his eyes. There’s another story there, between those two, and I’m going to find that out one day, too.
Oh, and he rescinded the curse on Margaret, much to the dismay of many in the Kin. But no one could argue with him on that, because after all he is the Venerable Nachtan and is accordingly revered, and also because he was the one who placed the curse on her. No one else in the Kin had the power to do that, or to remove it either.
After all we went through, Fergie’s decided not to speak to me anymore, she’s not answering her phone or my texts. No surprise there, although she wasn’t arrested that night. Not really. The handcuffs were just to keep her in one spot till they figured out what was going on, then she was let go within a couple of hours and given a limo ride back to Edinburgh. You’d think she’d
thank me for adding a bit of excitement into her humdrum life, but no, Fergie really meant it when she forswore the Kin life and decided to stick to Hedge Witchery. She prefers to add temporary glamour to people’s lives, make wedding days and hen nights special and leaving it at that. I heard through the grapevine that she’s at the top of her class, and I’m happy for her.
And Hugh, well...
‘Writing again?’ He’s found me in my favorite spot, the little stone balcony at the end of the hallway. The low walls are crenellated, I guess that was to make it easier to shoot at enemies from this height, and they’re so ancient they’re covered with gold and orange lichen. From here, when I look down to the west, I can see Fergie’s apartment if I crane my neck. The days are getting longer and warmer, and we’re coming into the full moon phase again. Hugh has hardly left my side this whole week.
I’m looking forward to working within the Kin some day for real, if they’ll let me. With their power and influence, they can do anything they put their mind to. Sure, they’re not all good guys, and I know this level of power can be corrupted, (and as the VN says, ‘Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely’) but it’s going to be a hell of a ride. If they’ll take me, of course, but Hugh says the general consensus seems to be they want me inside the organization where they can keep a close eye on me.
We’d talked about that night at the foot of Tomnahurich, when I’d overthrown him with such strength. He’d been shocked.
‘Shocked that you could, yes, though intellectually I knew that anything was possible with your powers at their height,’ he admitted. ‘But I was more shocked that you would do it, that you would turn your force on me when thwarted.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ I confessed with a grin. ‘But then again, you were in my way.’
‘Remind me never to do that again,’ he said dryly, rubbing his shoulder where the bruise was fading from purple to an interesting greenish blue colour. He looked at me with a new respect these days.
Our relationship has matured since that night, perhaps because I feel different these days. When he’d met me the previous year, I’d still been a child, really, still stuck in resenting my father, resenting his rules which I can now see made perfect sense for him. Dad had thought that by denying my magic and hiding it, I would avoid the exact kinds of things that had happened because I meddled in magic. I can see from my new standpoint that he hadn’t made the wisest of decisions, like Margaret pointed out. But I no longer hate him for it.
‘Don’t forget to mention going back to Lewis and Harris,’ Hugh adds. He’s looking over my shoulder, how dare he? I quickly cover the paper with my elbow and glare up at all delicious six feet of him.
No, I’m not going back to Scarp, no one feels comfortable about that yet. When all of this is over and done with, providing of course that things go as Hugh predicts, we’re going to visit his family estate so I can meet his folks and siblings and cousins and the menagerie. Don’t ask me to pronounce the name of the place, let alone spell it.
‘Mum is eager to give you the ring,’ he reminds me.
‘Oh right, the famous family heirloom ring, passed down to the wives of the Earls of Garmoran since the time of the Stewart Kings.’ He’d shown me a photo of the jewellery the other day, it’s a huge hunk of gold with an egg of a ruby stuck in the middle. Not attractive, but fortunately it only comes out for formal occasions. The ring is supposedly the property of the reigning Countess, but it’s a family tradition to offload it on to the wife of the oldest son at the first opportunity.
‘You could sound a little more enthusiastic.’ That’s a pretend scowl on his face.
‘Well, you haven’t asked me to marry you yet,’ I pointed out very reasonably. ‘And besides, I’m way too busy for that. I have a career to think about.’
‘So perhaps sometime in the next decade?’
‘Maybe, we’ll see. That’ll give you some time to work on convincing me.’ I grin up at him, and offer him my cheek to kiss. He bent down and lingered, his soft breath minty and mixing with the smell of the potted roses blooming in my sun catching, heat-trap private balcony. I wriggled my toes with pleasure. ‘Now, go away, I’m writing.’
‘The next Chronicle?’ He placed his hand on my notebook.
‘Sorry, that’s out of bounds,’ I said as I closed the journal and held it against my chest with both arms. I stood up. ‘Did you make fresh coffee after taking the last cup?’
Of course he hadn’t. I followed him back into my room to oversee the brewing of a fresh pot, for I couldn’t trust him not to just whip up a cup of instant. Hugh had many talents, but none of them were evident in the kitchen.
Speaking of Chronicles, my mind often goes back to that night. Margaret flew off north into the dawning day, and she got off easy. The Kin aren’t looking too hard for her, for it turns out that her transgressions of one hundred and more years ago aren’t very serious offences in this day and age of equality of women, and Johanna could hardly lock Meg back in her dungeon without another big Inquiry. I really don’t think the Master of Scarp wants to set that in motion for she has enough on her plate.
The Covenanters don’t feel that way, of course, but they’re a miserable bunch of traditionalists and nobody really cares much what they think.
And as Nachtan lifted the curse, she is free to return and get her trust sorted out.
I want to hear the rest of her tale. In fact, I want to see her again, I want to learn from her and work with her. She’s my hero, and I have a strong feeling that this story is not finished yet.
When I return to the balcony, there’s a dragon-fly resting on my journal. A twinkling, jewelled brooch. Margaret’s brooch. I hold it up to the sun, the better to see the colours of the glass which make up its wings.
The skies all around me are empty, but I know she’s around, and I smile.
Hugh returns with my coffee, temporarily blocking the sun as he lays the cup on the table.
‘Who’s that making you grin from ear to ear? Your mom telling you to behave?’
I shield my eyes as I look up at his shadow. ‘Nah, just thinking of... an old friend.’ I smile brightly at him, for some reason unwilling to share Meg with him, my dearest and beloved. Not yet. I guess I’m really an enigmatic witch at heart.
The end.
Other Books by Liz Graham:
The Witch Kin Chronicles
(Paranormal Suspense mysteries by E M Graham, published by OneEar Press)
An Ignorant Witch
An Arrogant Witch
An Errant Witch
An Obstinate Witch
The St. Jude Without Series
(Murder mysteries by Liz Graham, published by Cozy Cat Publishing)
The Cut Throat
The Garrotte
The Iron Dog
The Unlikely Heroine Series
(Humorous mystery by Liz Graham, published by OneEar Press))
An Imperfect Death
A Portuguese Death (Look for it in 2022!)
The Auction (An Unlikely Short Story)
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Liz Graham, Author and E M Graham
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As with any book, a lot of people helped bring this story to life. The germ of the idea for Book 1 began with Karen, who is the very font of so many wonderful, creative things. Alexa Opal Hamilton – thank you, and I truly hope this book meets your high standards. A huge bow to Bob Sirrine, who kindly lent his eagle eyes yet again to catch the sneaky gremlin typos. (Any remaining errors are all my own.) And thanks of course to Daisy and Silas, for your company throughout this journey.
And to all my readers, of course, you are very special. And you know what? You already have the power inside you.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
E M Graham is a voracious reader of all genres and writes out of her home in St. John’s, Newfoundland which she shares with an ever changing menagerie.
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