Holy cow. I don’t know how I was still breathing, because it felt like all the air had left the room. It felt like we were in a vacuum, just me and Dylan Quinn. The uneducated witch hunter didn’t matter a jot. Nothing did. Even if I could move my eyes away from Dylan’s, I’m not sure I’d want to.
‘Ahem. It’s time for you lovebirds to stop looking at each other and focus on me.’
Criminy! I reluctantly switched my gaze to the leather-clad twerp. His smile had grown even creepier since I last looked his way. This probably goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: guys who have a problem with witches are total scum. Dean Danger wasn’t just seeing this through out of some misguided sense of witch hunter duty. He was loving every minute of it. He could call himself a witch hunter all he liked, but all he really was was a sicko serial killer.
‘Stand up, Aisling.’
I worked up every ounce of will I could, and gripped my hands to the sofa cushion.
He ground his teeth together. ‘Witchy See, Witchy Do, Aisling,’ he said as he stood up, slowly and deliberately.
I wished that I could make him sit on a pound of dynamite and swivel, but instead I mimicked his action and stood.
He raised an arm and walked towards Dylan, reaching his hand out to the holster.
‘Take the gun, Aisling.’
I glared at him. Forcing me to tell Dylan how I felt had been bad enough, but this? It wasn’t going to happen.
‘Take. The. Gun.’ He blew into his flute again, and played.
Oh, my stars. How did this hurt so much? And I don’t mean the physical pain it caused me as I tried to resist. There was something far, far more painful than that. There had always been a dull ache in my core. The part of me that yearned for my mother. The part of me that wished I could belong somewhere, anywhere. Since arriving in Riddler’s Edge, that ache had been healing by a little bit every day. But the thought of saying goodbye to Dylan … it was making the ache flare up all over again. And it wasn’t dull, either. It was a million sharp knives worth of pain.
And when I did it – if I did it – I wouldn’t just have to say goodbye to Dylan. I’d have to say goodbye to the town that had made me feel welcome, for the first time in my life. I’d have to say goodbye to all of the friends I’d grown to love. I’d have to say goodbye to Fuzz. To my broom. I’d have to say goodbye to the only place I’d ever felt at home.
I. Would. Not. Do. This. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. And yet … my hand was moving, mimicking Dean Danger’s movement. My eyes burned with hot, searing tears, but I couldn’t do a thing to stop myself. I looked at my hand like it was an alien appendage, horrified to see it reaching onto Dylan’s holster, and taking the gun.
He smelled like coffee. Like the rich, strong espresso that gets served in a teeny tiny cup. The kind that fills you with jittery energy, and leaves you always wanting more.
‘Is the gun loaded?’ Dean asked. ‘Is there any safety mechanism?’
The detective swallowed. ‘It’s loaded,’ he said with wet eyes. ‘There’s no safety to pull.’
Dean Danger smiled. ‘Your heart is broken,’ he hissed in my ear. ‘You want the dishy detective so much,’ he went on, his nose twitching with excitement. ‘But you know you can never be together, so it’s killing you. There’s only one thing for it, Aisling. You’re going to kill him, and then you’re going to kill yourself. This is going to be the most tragic murder-suicide that Riddler’s Edge has ever seen.’
For a moment I almost felt relieved. If I was dead, too, then I wouldn’t have to live on without him. I wouldn’t have to see people look at me and believe that I was a murderer. I wouldn’t have to believe it myself.
But … screw that! I wasn’t a murderer. And a twerp like Dean Danger wasn’t going to turn me into one.
I shook my head, trying to free myself from his thrall. My throat was hurting again, but I wanted more than anything to scream in the little weirdo’s face. Maybe to point the gun there, too. I felt my body turn, just a millimetre or two, in Dean Danger’s direction.
He looked frightened for a moment, but he quickly collected himself and blew into his flute. ‘Witchy See, Witchy Do.’ He paused to grimace at me. ‘Now you’ll do just as I do.’
He held his hand up, miming the shape of a gun. He’d stopped playing again, but the ugly tune was still screeching away in the background, as he pulled a pretend trigger and said, ‘Bang!’
20. Witchy See, Witchy Don’t
Just a few weeks ago I felt my first surge of power. If you were there with me, then you know what happened. I grew angry with Arnold Albright. So very,very angry. And that anger pushed up inside me, and then pushed its way right out, sending the old goat flying against the wall of his library.
But there are more powerful emotions than anger.
Fancying the pants off someone is one such emotion.
Sure, I’d done a good job of hiding my feelings (pipe down in the peanut gallery, will you). But I wasn’t hiding it anymore. I’d told Detective Dreamy the whole, cringe-worthy truth and, to my surprise, he actually felt the same.
He fancied the pants off me, too. Yay for lust. So, like I said, fancying the pants off someone is one heck of a strong emotion. But right then, it was battling for supremacy with an even stronger emotion – and that was extreme and utter irritation.
I narrowed my eyes at the detective. Sure, I wanted to scream at Dean Danger – but I wanted to scream at Dylan even more. It was annoying enough that he’d taken his sweet time to admit the truth, but I’ve never been one to shift the blame. When it came to denying the vibe between us, I was just as guilty.
But Dylan Quinn hadn’t just kept his romantic feelings to himself. He’d kept schtum on some things that were a lot more important. He was well aware that I’d gone out with Jared. For all he knew, I could have slept with the guy by now. I mean, what was he going to do? Wait until I gave birth to Jared’s babies before he told me that he’d slept with Darina?
If there’s one thing a nosey journalist hates, it’s not knowing the full story. Well, I knew it now, and I was more than vexed about it. But shooting the detective because he’d been a total jerk about Jared? Nope. Never going to happen.
Why would I let him off so easy?
I pushed my irritation away, saving it for later, and I stilled my hand. Just like when I fought off Arnold Albright, I was feeling my power. But unlike when I fought off Arnold, this time I felt cold and in control.
Beside me, Dean was shivering with excitement. There was a little stream of saliva escaping from his mouth, and he sucked it up and said, ‘What are you waiting for, witch? Do I need to play my flute again? Shoot!’
I turned to him, pointing the gun his way. ‘No.’
≈
I’d love to be able to tell you that it all ended there – with me being the heroine of the day, maybe shooting Dean Danger in the kneecaps and sending him off to Witchfield, and afterwards guzzling champagne while everyone told me how wonderful I was.
Yeah, that would have been nice. But it’s not what happened.
The creepy choirmaster didn’t shrivel up with shock and hesitate. He reacted like … well, like the devilish little demon that all witch-haters are. I barely had the ‘No’ out of my mouth before he twirled his wand at Dylan and said, ‘Fine. You take the gun, Detective Quinn, and shoot her with it.’
We really do fall for the most undeserving of men sometimes, don’t we? Because as much as I wished Dylan would have resisted Dean’s orders just as I had, he did exactly as he was told. He immediately rushed me, snapping the pistol from my hands before I could react, and pointing it at my chest. His eyes were wide and filled with tears, and he was shaking his head at me, but all the crying in the world wouldn’t change the fact that he was about to kill me.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ I told him. ‘Fight it. I did. You can too, I know you can.’
He stuck a finger on the trigger.
‘You’re a vampire,
you idiot!’ I cried. ‘I mean, I know he’s forcing your every move, but you do have certain abilities of your own. Can’t you compel him to stop treating us like his personal puppet show?’
Dylan’s eyes widened, but no sooner had he turned them on Dean, than the choirmaster raised his wand and said, ‘You will not compel me. I’m completely in charge of your every action. So shoot.’
There might not be much I could do about the outcome, but I could at least make this difficult, couldn’t I? I looked around for places to run. Dean Danger had wandered to the front door and was blocking it, but the sliding doors that led out onto the deck were open. Just a crack, but a crack was better than nothing.
I bolted in that direction, praying to the goddess that I’d make it outside before Dean played his flute again. Sure, I didn’t know much about this goddess, but every other supernatural prayed to her so why not me?
‘I don’t want to do this, Ash,’ Dylan cried out, sounding hoarse. ‘Just keep running, okay? There’s a radio in my car – you can use that to get in touch with Grace.’
Dean crossed his arms, laughed out loud and then said, ‘Faster, Detective Quinn! You’re not going to let her get near your car. You’re going to kill her inside this house.’
I had longish legs, but Dylan’s were a whole lot longer. He ran after me, racing across the floor of the lighthouse, following me to the doors.
He had his finger on the trigger, too. I knew that as soon as he had a clear line, he was going to shoot. So instead of making a straight run I changed my tactics, zigzagging my way around the room, dashing behind tables and chairs, grabbing a tray from the kitchen counter and holding it like a shield.
Considering how wide Dean Danger’s smile had grown, I guessed he was finding this all very entertaining. But I was terrified. Those sliding doors were my only way out, and they were right in the open. As soon as I got there, Dylan was going to have a clear shot.
For the second time since moving to Riddler’s Edge, I was moments away from being murdered. But this time was so much worse. Miriam murdering me, that I could take. She was murdering me out of pure, cold evil. But Dylan? Somewhere beneath that spell, he liked me. He might not respect me enough to have told me the truth about Jared, but he did like me. In the two seconds or so that Dean Danger was going to allow him between shooting me and shooting himself, he was going to feel really bad about it.
As I began to pull the sliding door aside, I gave him one last look, and said, ‘I know you’re going to kill me any second now, but I just want you to know something. Dylan Quinn – it was very annoying to know you.’
He had his shot now. I was right there in his sight. Even as I pulled the door wide enough for my exit, I could see his finger, squeezing down.
Farewell, dear world, I thought. I may not have had a long life, but at least I’d lived one full of lust and loathing.
Dylan shot.
The glass in the sliding door shattered.
And I had one more thought: my life wasn’t just filled with lust and loathing; it was filled with the strangest surprises, too.
21. Deus Ex Machina (AKA The Cat on the Broom)
The glass had shattered from Dylan’s bullet. But it had already been shattered just before that, too, by a fraction of a second. It had shattered because the most surprising deus ex machina had arrived.
I stared at the scene before me, feeling my heart thrum strong and fast in my chest.
Things probably do move very slowly when you’re about to die, but when you’re being rescued, they move very, very quickly. Or at least when you’re being rescued by a cat on a broom they do.
And when things move so fast, they can be difficult to process. But I slowed down my heart, looked around, and tried to get a handle on exactly what had happened.
Right now, Fuzz was on top of Dylan, scratching at his face and hissing. The force of the cat jumping in his face must have sent his arm off aim. He had made a shot – there was now a hole in the glass next to my head to prove it, and little lines were pushing outwards, making the door look like cracking ice.
It was the glass panel next to that one, though, through which my fuzzy cat and flying broom had entered. And when they crashed through, they had made a much bigger mess than Dylan’s bullet. Wind and rain were rushing into the room, drenching me and blowing my hair in my face. Typical Irish weather – it had been a pleasant evening when we arrived.
I brushed the messy strands away and scanned the room for Dean Danger, swallowing down a laugh when I saw him. He was by the front door, on his knees, desperately struggling to stand while my broom battered him over the head.
This was … this was … this was one of those times when even a writer like me was going to have to accept that actions speak louder than words.
And it was also one of those times when I couldn’t drink in those hilarious actions for too much longer, because a scratchy cat and a feisty broom could only hold things off for a while.
Just as Dylan was grappling for his gun again, I swooped down and picked it up, before running to the front door to deal with Dean. And this time, I reacted a lot quicker than the choirmaster. I kicked his wand out of his hand and, just as he was about to raise his flute to his lips, I shot a bullet towards the door.
Yeah, yeah – I know what you’re going to say. I should have shot him through the kneecaps at the very least. Wait? I’m the only one who was thinking that?
Either way, I decided against doing bodily harm. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that I turned out to be a terrible shot. Ahem.
The goddess I had prayed to was clearly smiling down, because my terrible shot turned out to be a decent distraction. Dean dropped his flute in shock, and I quickly snatched it away.
‘You can leave off now, broom,’ I said as I gathered the flute and baton together and shoved them into the belt of my jeans. ‘He can’t hurt me anymore.’
The broom paused, swivelled my way for a moment as though it were considering what I said, and then gave Dean one last swipe across the face before retreating to a corner.
‘You too, Fuzz,’ I said. ‘Dylan didn’t want to kill me. He was under a spell, but it’s over now.’ I looked at the detective. ‘Isn’t it?’
He gave me the most guilty and miserable look imaginable as he nodded. ‘I never wanted to hurt you in the first place. I don’t know how he managed to control me like that, but it really is over. I swear.’
The cat kept on hissing. With one eye still on the choirmaster (and the gun pointed his way) I walked over to Dylan and plucked Fuzz off his face. ‘I appreciate it, kitty cat,’ I said. ‘Believe me. I am more than grateful that you’ve come to my rescue – yet again.’ I took a brief moment to snuggle into his soft black fur. ‘But I think that this time around, I’m going to have to get you to tell Grace how on earth you knew I needed rescuing.’
The cat rolled his yellow-green eyes. ‘Duh,’ he said with the most perfect, purring sarcasm. ‘I’m your familiar, dum dum. I can always sense when you’re in trouble.’
My eyes goggled. My mouth gaped. But unlike my sarcastic little kitty, I was lost for words.
22. What’s With All the As?
The thing about surviving a battle with a psycho witch hunter, is that you can’t just go home to bed afterwards. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball with Fuzz, but there were things that needed doing – official things, exhausting things. And calling the Wayfarers and having them arrest Dean Danger – or Henry Kramer – had only been the beginning.
On the plus side, it had also been the most fun. The Wayfarers used a magical, golden rope to bind criminals when making an arrest, and Dean Danger had not taken kindly to being manhandled by supernaturals.
His hatred of witchcraft had become all the more hilarious once Greg arrived and used his tech to read Dean’s aura. Dean Danger, the man who hated magic, was most definitely a wizard.
Once the choirmaster was gone, Dylan and I had to answer questions and be assessed by a
healer to make sure we weren’t still under his control. While we were suffering through that (and carefully avoiding each other’s eyes) his house remained buzzing with people. Grace had arrived at the same time as Greg, and she was busy with the Wayfarers, discussing how to present the crime.
I heard bits and pieces of the conversation. Because Dean was being processed by the supernatural system, covering up the truth was going to be no easy task. There seemed to be two options being bandied around – they could tell a version of the truth in which Dean had set Margaret up for Rachel’s murder, and let it be known that he was in a maximum security prison. It would involve the least magic, and the least amount of lies, but it wouldn’t stop people asking about him, perhaps looking him up online and discussing the case. And, more importantly, it wouldn’t remove the memories from Margaret’s mind.
I had a big problem with memory spells, seeing as I’d almost been on the receiving end of one, but in this case even I had to agree that it was the best option. Margaret was already dreaming about murdering her best friend. It didn’t matter how carefully the Wayfarers and the Daily Riddler weaved their stories – unless someone took those memories from Margaret she was never going to sleep easy.
So the Wayfarers finished their work in the lighthouse as quickly as possible, and headed out into the night to alter the human minds of Riddler’s Edge. With them gone, I hoped that I could finally take Fuzz home and get some sleep. But although the Wayfarers made decisions quickly, the experts they had called in did not.
Witchy See, Witchy Do (A Riddler's Edge Cozy Mystery #2) Page 14