I’d more than failed. I’d flopped. I’d flopped so hard.
“Malutka, please. Arkady Bagrov cannot bear your sadness. Let us go inside where it is warm and we will think some more. We are three heads. We will figure this out.”
But I’d heard that more times than I cared to count these past couple of days. I just couldn’t hear it anymore.
And then I had an idea. If Adam was responsible for kidnapping Belfry, if his motive had been to ruin my best Christmas ever and kill me, he was watching me. Or he had someone watching me. If what Arkady had said the other day was true, then he was watching me right now.
The hunted was officially tired of being hunted, sick and tired of tiptoeing through life while she waited for the dirtbag warlock who’d stolen her life to take her by surprise.
No more.
Throwing the car door open, my rage, my frustration at an all-time high, I stumbled out onto the driveway just as sleet began to pour from the sky. “Adam! Adam Westfield—I compel you to make yourself known!” I screeched into the night, flying across the driveway and onto my soggy lawn, my arms open wide. “You want a piece of this? Come and get it, coward!”
“Stephania! Stop it! Stop it this instant!”
“No, Win. No more! No more living in fear. No more waiting and wondering. If that weakling wants a shot at me, stop playing games and come and get it, warlock!” I bellowed, punching the code to the front door into the security system app on my phone and shoving my way inside.
The house was dark but for the lights on the Christmas tree, and still—so still, not even Whiskey came to greet me.
“Daffodil, you will listen to Zero and stop this behavior now! Arkady Bagrov begs you to keep mouth shut!”
“I won’t watch that again, Stephania! I will not watch you be hunted!”
But I wasn’t listening. Not anymore. If Adam Westfield wanted a fight, he was going to get one. A big, ugly, knock-down-drag-out fight.
Gritting my teeth, I ran back into the entryway and spread my arms wide, raising my eyes to the ceiling. “Adam Westfield! By the power of the coven, by the laws of Baba Yaga, I compel you to show yourself!” I roared, the echo of my words flying upward to the vaulted ceiling.
“Miss Cartwright?” someone squeaked in what sounded almost like disbelief.
Both Arkady and Win gasped just as I lowered my eyes and blinked. “Edmund? Oh, sweet Pete, Edmund, is that you?”
Sure as the day is long, Edmund stood in the entryway to the kitchen, still in his uniform from Petula’s, shivering, dripping wet, with a puddle of muddy water forming at his feet.
“I’m so glad to see you, Miss Cartwright,” he murmured, his words coming out choppy from his convulsive shivers.
“Oh, Edmund!” I called, my hands outstretched as I raced toward him. “What happened to you? Where have you been?”
Just as I reached him—I mean the moment my feet stopped short in front of his—was the moment I realized my enormous mistake.
This wasn’t Edmund. The eyes that stared back at me weren’t shiny and kind. They were glassy and lifeless, almost zombie-like.
Well, technically it was Edmund. The shell of his body, anyway.
But the rest? The sudden murderous gleam in his chocolate-brown eyes, the flash of the biggest kitchen knife I owned?
That was all Adam Westfield.
Chapter 14
“Stevie, look out!” Win howled, just as Edmund reached for my hair, sinking his fingers into my scalp and dragging me toward him.
I tripped, falling to the ground and spinning around on my knees until my back was to him, thus, giving him the perfect opportunity to capture me.
Adam’s fingers sank back into my hair, gripping it so hard, my scalp stung and burned.
“Let me go!” I cried as I struggled and made an attempt to jab at his ribs with an uppercut of my elbow, only to meet the sharp point of the knife he held at my ribs.
“Oh, no, no, no, my little ex-witch,” he cackled, the soft edges of Edmund’s voice totally gone, now replaced with the deeper, menacing strains of Adam’s. “I’m never letting you go, Stevie. You’re right where I want you after all this time.”
“Malutka, you listen to Arkady! Go limp. Do not fight. Let him drag you. Keep your body this way, so your back is to him, then when he least expects it—whammo! Right in his kissy face. Put your fists together and drive them upward into his nose!”
“Listen to Arkady, Dove! Bide your time.”
I remembered this lesson, the go-limp theory. I think I’d even used it once before with a modicum of success. So I relaxed, letting Adam drag me trembling into the kitchen, past the island, the heels of my nylons tearing on the hardwood floor until we were at the kitchen table by the bay windows overlooking Puget Sound.
That was when the lights flipped on and I saw everything very clearly. So clearly, my heart jumped from my chest to my throat, pounding out a beat of sheer terror.
Bel hung in the middle of the kitchen from one of the pendant lights, a noose around him, fashioned to tighten around his tiny neck if disturbed. Whiskey…oh my poor, sweet Whiskey. He barked somewhere off in the distance from upstairs, his growl full of fear and anguish.
Dragging my head back even farther, Adam forced me to look up at Bel, shivering and small. “You make one wrong move and that noisy, overstuffed wad of useless cotton dies, hear me?” he whispered in my ear.
Yet, it was all I could do not to scream out Belfry’s name in relief. Tears rushed to my eyes, falling down my face at how helpless he was, but I fought the urge to call out to him and focused on Adam and his simmering rage.
“Let him go and you can do whatever you want to me, Adam. Just let him go,” I said with a calm that even surprised me. “He had nothing to do with what happened between us.”
He gripped my hair harder, yanking my head back so far toward his chest, my neck ached from arching upward. “Didn’t you hear, Detective Stevie? There’s no negotiation here. There’s no give and take. I’ve waited a long time for this moment. I planned. I practiced. I practiced hard to get this possession just right, and then I picked the perfect moment to execute. Your favorite holiday. You took everything from me, Stevie Cartwright, and now I’m going to take everything from you—and when your family shows up here tomorrow, they’re going to find you dead. Just like my family found me!”
“Why?” I croaked, my throat on fire. “Why not just kill me and get it over with? Why the elaborate plan? Why the show?”
I’d learned a thing or two since murder had become a consistent part of my life. Most killers wanted a voice—to be heard. They enjoyed spelling out their motives, and talking over their meticulous machinations with their victims just before they dropped the hammer.
It was like murderer code or something.
Adam’s breathing became rapid, his chest rising and falling in harsh rasps. “It’s all a means to an end—a bitter end. What better way to make your last days on Earth miserable than by taking everything you love at your favorite time of year, Stevie? It’s poetic justice, don’t you think?” he growled.
“The decorations, the phone calls changing all my plans, the turkeys. That was all you. And that pastry,” I hissed out, the sound strained and harsh. “That was meant for me, wasn’t it?”
Hauling me upward, Adam pressed his lips to my ear, sending a wave of revulsion through me. “Beautiful, wasn’t it? It could have all been over then if Edmund here hadn’t ruined everything by calling that chef to ask how it got there.”
“Stephania, don’t you dare…” Win warned, low and threatening.
Gosh, he knew me so well. Of course I was going to ask how the pastry got there. “How did it get there?”
Win’s inhale was sharp in my ear. “Bah! Stephania, bloody well knock it off! Have you paid no attention to the shiny weapon this madman wields?”
Adam’s cackle was cold, so cold and devoid of anything but hatred, I had to fight the tremors my body so wanted to expel.
“I possessed the chef at first, of course. His deft, lying, cheating hands helped me make it then I snuck it into your order and tucked the note away under the bottom layer of the pastries you ordered. What kind of sleuth are you if you couldn’t even figure that much out? I’m a sad panda you didn’t have the chance to taste it just before all that flaky crust and smooth custard shut down every organ in your body. Now that would have been delightful to see. Alas, things got sticky.”
“I will kill him with bare hands!” Arkady roared so loud, it made me stop and wonder why Adam didn’t appear to notice.
And then I remembered, because he’d possessed a human, his powers became dimmer on this plane.
I battled to speak, to keep Adam in a place where he thought he had the upper hand. “Okay so, too bad, so sad,” I husked out, my throat growing raw. “I didn’t eat the pastry. I see your crushing disappointment and raise it with a question—actually two. Why was the chef here?”
Securing the knife in his hand, he let the tip dig into my side with enough pressure to break the skin. “Oh, that,” he said dryly. “He was certainly a jealous, egotistical man, that Pascal. Everything was going so smoothly. Edmund here uncovered your delicacy during setup, but he thought it strange the moronic chef had left you a pastry and a note, probably for the same reasons you did. So he called him up and that buffoon drove right over here to see what Edmund was making such a fuss over.”
Click. Click. Click. Everything fell into place after that. Well, almost. Still trying not to fight the tide, I asked question number two. “But why did he eat it?
Adam chuckled, dry and rife with menace. “Because your chef couldn’t believe someone other than him had created something so beautiful. He thought someone named Henri made the pastry. Naturally, he couldn’t resist sampling the competition’s artistry before I was done possessing Edmund to stop him. And then of course, you know the rest. That oaf of a man showed up with his brainless wife. Alas, it required a change of plans.”
“Like kidnapping my familiar?” I gritted out.
Gosh, my back ached, the muscles along my sides were on fire. I’d been in spy training for months now, but there was still always a muscle or tendon I somehow missed in our workouts, and found out about when I was in the most precarious of positions.
He rubbed his cheek against the top of my head and sighed. “Ah, well, I needed a little time to work out a plan B, seeing as that nitwit chef ruined everything. Why not break your heart while I was at it? Your little friend’s still alive—for the moment, anyway.”
My fists clenched as Adam dragged me again, my body threatening to tense up as the instinct to fight back continued to grow stronger.
“Limp like cooked spaghetti, dill pickle. Do as Arkady says,” he soothed, his words easing my wish to flee.
“So how is this all going to end, Adam? Where do we go from here?”
The knife he held in his free hand arced upward, catching the light in the kitchen as he backed up past the table and toward the laundry room door. “I slit your throat, Stevie Cartwright, and you bleed out all over the floor. I take from you just the way you took from me,” he seethed. “That’s how this goes.”
Every muscle in his body tensed in tune with mine. The white-hot threads of his hatred for me seeped into my bones and made me clench my teeth.
“Limp, stay limp, Dove. Please,” Win encouraged, his voice dredged in concern. “Just keep playing along.”
“But wait! You took my powers in return! Do you remember that night, Adam? The night you slapped them out of me? I lost everything, too! I lost my friends and my home, my job, my entire life!”
“Can one really compare the two, Stevie? You lost some powers. I lost my life!” he screeched so loud, I think my bones rattled.
My breathing had become rapid now, too, the tension in my chest almost unbearable. And of course, that made me angry. I’d been attached to this warlock and his vengeance far too long.
“But you were a bad man, Adam—a bad, mean man! You abused your wife and son! You deserved to die!”
“Shut up!” he screamed, jerking me against him again, raising the knife once more until it hovered in front of my eyes. “Just shut up and prepare to die, Stevie Cartwright! See you on the other side!”
What happened next is rather a blur. I remember hearing Win call out, “Arkady—on three!” and feeling like the door to the laundry room sort of blew outward, knocking Adam into me with such force, we both fell to the floor.
The knife he’d threatened me with skittered across the hardwood, clattering against the cabinets and landing in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen.
Then I remember the race was on to see who could get to the lethal weapon first. I was on my feet and launching myself at it in a moment’s notice, grateful Win had taught me the value of kettlebell lifting—they did indeed keep a core strong.
I landed just shy of the knife as though I were sliding into home base just as Adam caught my ankle and began to drag me back toward him. Whiskey’s frantic barks from upstairs became louder, his fear making my heart pound.
“Right heel to the jaw, Stevie!” Win bellowed, and I followed suit, taking great satisfaction in Adam’s howl of pain.
“To your feet, malutka!” Arkady directed, making me scramble to get a foothold and make a break for it.
Yet, the moment I was on my feet was the moment Adam took me back down again, grabbing me around the waist and flattening me with a grunt.
We slammed into the floor with a bone-crunching crack, my face smashing against the hardwood, leaving me dazed. But somehow, even as my eyes rolled in my head like a slot machine, I managed to walk my fingers across the floor and locate the knife.
If I’d learned nothing else from my two favorite spies, I’d learned you could compartmentalize a certain amount of pain if you kept your eye on the prize—defeating your opponent.
“Don’t let go of that knife, Dove!”
But Adam ground his body into my back, slipping his arm around my neck and latching on to the wrist of the hand that held the weapon. He yanked my forearm up toward him and twisted it at an awkward angle until I screamed out in pain, the sharp stab of white-hot agony making my eyes water.
But I anticipated his plan to wrest the knife from me by simply letting it go, the satisfying ping it made when it hit the floor music to my ears, as was his scream of rage when I drove that same hand upward and clocked him square in his face.
“Nice job, Dove!” Win cheered while Arkady whistled his approval.
His arm loosened around my neck upon impact, giving me the opportunity to brace both my palms against the floor and rear up, knocking him from me with a blood-curdling howl of my own rage.
And then I turned the tables, launching myself at him and flattening him against the floor. Scrambling to a sitting position, I straddled his waist and reached down to grab a handful of his curly hair, my eye on the knife just to the left.
I gave his head a good bounce against the hardwood, good enough that his eyes rolled to the back of his head, giving me enough time to latch back onto the knife.
“Beautifully done, malutka! Bravo!”
“I’ll kill you!” he screeched, clawing at my hands with desperate fingers.
“Not before I kill you!” I screamed back, my heart a heavy throb in my chest as I, without qualm, prepared to plunge the knife into his chest.
But it all ended there when Win cried out, “No, Stevie! You mustn’t. You’ll kill Edmund!”
Technicalities, technicalities, right? I’d forgotten about possession and the rules. Host bodies don’t like it if you kill them.
Naturally, that was all it took for me to lose my killer-instinct focus and the tables turned once more. Adam flipped me so fast, I almost stopped breathing, and then his hands were at my neck.
Sweet, gentle, awkward Edmund was now red-faced, bulging-eyed killer Adam. As his hands wrapped around my neck and he began to squeeze, white lights f
lashed behind my eyes.
Win and Arkady screamed directions but I couldn’t make out their words for the pounding of my heart as I bucked under him, heaving my hips upward to no avail. My hands went to Adam’s wrists, clinging to them, tearing at them, and somehow I managed to loosen his grip, but only for a moment.
He latched back on to me by way of my necklace, gripping it and pulling it tight around my neck until I saw stars.
I knew unconsciousness was mere seconds away. I knew this was the end if I didn’t do something—anything.
Which was why the rumble of thunder came as such a welcome surprise.
Just as Adam tore at my necklace, the room quaked and rolled, forcing him backward with a jolt. When he ripped the chain from my neck, my flesh stung as it tore across my skin.
A flash of light sliced through the room, silhouetting Adam, his teeth clenched, his arm raised toward the ceiling, his fist balled so tight his knuckles were white. The strain of his muscles, the frozen agony on his face, lasted a split second before there was an explosion of color and a tendril of smoke.
Using my elbows, I forced myself upward, only to watch Adam collapse to the floor, his muscles finally relaxing and releasing as he crumpled in a heap of limbs.
I blinked as the moment remained suspended, while the silence settled.
And then Win called out, “Stephania!”
I held up a hand with a cough, getting my first whiff of the air that had grown so still. “I’m okay. Just give me a sec,” I said, hauling myself to my knees.
“What was this that just happened before my very eyes?” Arkady asked, his disbelief lacing his words.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Then I coughed because wow, Edmund was strong. “That was a little bippity-boppity-boo.”
“The necklace!” Win shouted with a laugh. “The necklace your father gave you saved you?”
How the Witch Stole Christmas (Witchless In Seattle Book 5) Page 15