Water & Flame (Witches of the Elements Series Book 1)

by Alejandra Vega

  Abbie held the little angel figurine tight in her hand and rubbed its smooth surface with her thumb. “Scared? Maybe. I like to think of it as cautious, though. I told you the things Margaret has done. Those are just the things we know. I suspect there are many other things we don’t know. You know better than anyone how ambitious she is. Our lives are insignificant to her.”

  “That I can agree with,” he said. “I’m just not sure about the other stuff. Your information could be false, or misunderstood—”

  Abbie tried to object, but he held up his hand to stop her and continued. “I know, you believe it is all true, but as mad as I am, as much anger as I have boiling inside me trying to get out, I have to make sure. I have to talk to her now, try to read her when I confront her with it.”

  “Let’s just assume for a second that you believe everything I’ve said,” Abbie said. “Don’t you understand the danger you’ll be in by confronting her? There is a long history of accidents happening to those around Margaret Huntsman. Arranging one for you won’t be a problem for her.”

  “I’ll have my father’s gun. And you to watch my back. We’ll be fine.”

  “A gun is a poor weapon when faced with a skilled witch.” She needed to find a way to talk him out of this. She had a very bad feeling about what they were doing.

  “Abbie, you don’t have to come with me. I can drop you off somewhere before I go to the estate. It’s fine. I am going there, right now, to talk to Margaret. Nothing you can say or do will stop me, unless you plan to use magic to hold me or something. I would hope you would never do that. I don’t know that I could ever trust you again if you did.”

  He had her there. She had been thinking of how she could use her magic to stop him without actually assaulting him with it. It was clear now that she couldn’t do that. She recognized that set in his jaw; he would not give in. She sighed.

  “Fine, I’ll stop trying to talk you out of it.” She switched the angel into her other hand and felt the warmth it had absorbed from her handling.

  “Thank you,” he said with a forced smile. He was nervous, too, but he was trying to hide it from her. “Abbie, what is that you have in your hand?”

  “Oh, this,” she held up the little pale blue angel and chuckled weakly. “It’s something I carved for my mother when I was a girl. It’s an angel, carved by my water magic out of a piece of aquamarine. It’s sort of a worry stone for me. I hold it and rub it and it calms me down, makes me feel connected to my mother.”

  “Can I hold it?”

  “Of course.” She handed it to him.

  Ben flicked his eyes to it and then back to the road. He rubbed it lightly with his thumb as he had seen her do and a smile came to his face. “I see what you mean,” he said as he handed it back to her. “It is soothing to rub it like that.”

  “My mother carried it with her always,” Abbie said. “She had it in her pocket when she was killed. It was the only thing left of her, covered in ash and soot and lying on the ground. Isabella gave it to me after she tested the residue of the magic used on it.”

  “Margaret’s?” Ben asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Abbie, I’m so sorry. I wish I had known. I wish I could have done something.”

  “I know.” She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “There was nothing you could do. There may be nothing you can do now. She is a very powerful witch.”

  “Something has to be done, Abbie. I have to try, at least.

  “Um, Abbie,” he scratched his head. “Something confuses me.”

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Why did you use your real name when you got the job at the estate? I’m glad you did, because it was how I found where you lived, but what if my mother recognized your name, your mother’s name?”

  Her face got hot. “I know, it’s stupid to go undercover and use your own name. I just couldn’t bring myself to go by another name. I figured with all the Hendersons there are in the state—”

  “You’re right about that,” he said. “Over five hundred of them listed.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but then shook her head and continued. “Anyway, with all those, it’s a fairly common name. I didn’t figure Margaret would notice. I also counted on Mrs. Roberts being the only one who would see my application. It just didn’t seem like a big risk. It worked out. Margaret didn’t recognize me.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said. “It just seemed strange to me.”

  They were silent for a few minutes, each with their own thoughts.

  “What is your plan?” she asked. “You surely have some kind of plan, right?”

  “Sort of. I’ll park outside the grounds. No use in causing a ruckus by appearing when I’ve been gone for so long. We’ll walk to the house. My mother will be in her favorite sitting room. She always is this time of night, if she’s not away on business. I’ll ask her about my real mother and about my father. I’ll judge her reaction and go from there. Simple.”

  Abbie hoped the woman was out of town on business so they could take a longer, more measured approach. “And the gun?”

  “Oh, yeah, first stop when we get in the house is the room with my dad’s gun collection. There are two or three that fit the bill perfectly. I’ll grab a couple and then go talk to Margaret.”

  Abbie noticed that he had already seemed to accept that she wasn’t his real mother, referring to her as “Margaret.” That was good. She wasn’t sure how much of the rest of it he believed. If he confronted Margaret Huntsman, he would have to admit belief in a great many things. Hopefully that admission wouldn’t be the last thing he did in this world.

  They arrived at the property boundaries at just after 10:00 PM.

  “Are you ready?” Ben asked her.

  “As ready as I can be, I think.” She found herself furiously rubbing her angel figurine and forced herself to stop. She wanted to ask him to reconsider one more time but had promised him she wouldn’t.

  They easily made their way to the house. Surprisingly, the estate’s security wasn’t that extensive. Ben had not really thought about it before, but it seemed barely adequate for an estate that size. He guessed that if all this was true, Margaret was confident in her own abilities to protect herself and didn’t want others monitoring what happened at the estate, including some of her activities she might want to keep private.

  As he opened one of the side entry doors—he still had his keys, after all—and allowed Abbie to go in, he thought again about what he was doing. He had played the entire thing off as if he was in complete control of the situation, but fear lurked in his middle. His mouth seemed dry, though his palms were starting to sweat. If all Abbie said was true, he could be killed tonight. Worse, she could be harmed. He’d never forgive himself for that. He almost wished she would ask him if he was sure about what they were doing one more time. He just might let her talk him out of it.

  She wouldn’t ask, though. She promised not to. She would loyally stand by him. The least he could do was pretend to be calm.

  “It’s this way,” he said, motioning down the hall toward the room with his father’s collection. It was all he could do to keep his voice steady as he spoke the three words.

  A few rooms down, he stopped in front of the door to his father’s collection room. Taking out his keys, he put the correct one into the lock and turned it. He took a breath, used the knob, and pushed the door open.

  Ben entered the room first to flip the light on and turned to see Abbie crossing the threshold. Once he had closed the door, he surveyed the chamber he had not been in since the day he had been there with Abbie. She looked toward the black powder rifle they had discussed but then shifted her eyes away from it.

  It was a largish room, probably twenty feet by twenty-five. A couch and two comfortable chairs sat in front of the empty fireplace, a long low table between them and smaller tables next to each chair. The walls, lined with photographs and paintings of natural settings, many of his father’s
beloved Yellowstone, seemed to close in on him. In glass cases and in a few carefully curated collections were handguns and rifles, ranging from antique black powder weapons to more modern firearms. Scattered throughout were edged weapons, too, knives, even a few swords.

  Ben surveyed the cases, all the things his father had loved and collected. He sighed. He missed his father. So much.

  The rage he had felt earlier began to stoke anew as he thought about his father and what Abbie said had happened to him. How different would Ben’s life had been if his father was still with him, or even better, if both his father and mother were?

  Ben set his jaw and retrieved the two handguns he had come for. He had already decided which he would use. He was familiar with all of them, having spent hours in this room talking with his father over his collection. He had fired every one of these guns, multiple times, and knew them well.

  The two he reverently removed from their cases were a Beretta 92 and a Walther P99. He only glanced at Abbie as he did so, registering that she was watching him carefully, as if she was evaluating his resolve.

  “Do you want to use one?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve never fired a gun and wouldn’t even know what to do, let alone be able to hit anything. If it comes down to a situation where one might be needed, my magic will serve me better.”

  Ben nodded and opened another cabinet with ammunition.

  As he worked, Ben saw Abbie fidgeting with her little angel figurine and smiled at her. She returned the smile, stroking the curve of the angel’s wings with her thumb.

  After loading the ammunition into the clips for the guns he had taken, he put extras in his pockets and slipped one of the guns into the waist of his pants and the other into a shoulder holster under his jacket.

  Mentally inventorying his weapons, he confirmed he was prepared. Or as prepared as he would likely ever be.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Abbie.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s get this over with.” Patting his waist to make sure the gun was secure, and smoothing his jacket over both of them, he took her hand and squeezed it, then released it as he reached for the doorknob.

  Ben was hoping he wouldn’t be seen by anyone. He wanted to confront Margaret with no one else around.

  His luck was in, it seemed, because he didn’t see a soul as he and Abbie moved through the empty hallways like wraiths. Ben had to fight the urge to slink, as if he was trying to sneak into his own house. Abbie seemed calm and comfortable, walking with a normal gait, no indication at all they might be facing danger within the next few minutes.

  The two reached the ground-level sitting room Margaret favored. As Ben reached for the doorknob, he heard muffled voices through the door. His hand froze and he looked over at Abbie.

  She shrugged.

  Ben pointed to a location just down the hall and walked five steps to get there. Abbie followed him.

  “I don’t know how many people are in there,” he whispered. “I don’t want to confront her with a bunch of witnesses. What if she has reasonable explanations? It’ll make me look like an idiot.”

  Abbie frowned at him. Maybe she took offense to him even suggesting that everything she told him might be false. The expression disappeared quickly, though. She was smart; she understood what he meant.

  “Hold on,” she said. Looking toward the door, she waved one of her hands in a gesture almost like she was waving something away from her. “There are only two people in there.”

  “How do you—”

  “I’m a water witch. People are made mostly of water. I can get a rough sense of where people are and how many. Trust me. Only two.”

  “It must be Helen. She’s Margaret’s oldest and best friend. They are inseparable. Or it could be Frank. He’s one of her main assistants. Whoever it is, maybe I can just ask them to leave. I don’t think we’ll have a better opportunity than this.”

  Abbie didn’t say anything.

  “Okay,” he continued, deciding. “Let’s do it now.”

  He led her back to the door and knocked solidly on it. The voices stopped.

  “Come in,” Margaret’s strong voice said.

  Taking a deep breath and reaching up to squeeze Abbie’s shoulder, Ben turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  Chapter 38

  Abbie had been in the room before, the time she went searching for magical residue. It was smaller than most of the rooms in the house. She could have crossed the room in five or six steps and covered the distance of the other wall in maybe a pace or two more than that. As with many of the rooms, there were several bookshelves with books, assorted pieces of pottery, and other pieces of art. This particular room had furniture all of dark wood, mostly highly polished cherrywood.

  The large fireplace—all the fireplaces in the manor house seemed to be very large, big enough for a person to walk into without ducking too much—held several fiery logs. The heat of it washed over Abbie from where she stood at the door. A fair-sized desk sat just off center of the floor, and three ladderback chairs were arranged in front of it. Behind the desk, sitting in a leather executive chair, was Margaret Huntsman.

  She looked as she always did. Her severe face was pinched in displeasure at the interruption, especially when she saw who had knocked. As her dark eyes shifted from glaring at Ben to her, they seemed to grow harder. She was not happy to see Abigail. Not at all.

  The other person in the room was Helen Shapiro. Abbie had seen the woman a few times, but not from this close. She was taller than Abbie had realized, and much more muscular. The woman was intimidating. Her eyes were like a hawk’s, but her face held a slight smile, an almost hungry look that told Abbie that the woman was anticipating a fine conflict, maybe the resolution of an ongoing one.

  “Benjamin,” Margaret said.

  Ben didn’t address her as either as his mother or by name, but simply started speaking. “I need to ask you about some things. Alone.”

  She raised her chin and tilted her eyes down so it seemed like she was looking down at him even though he was standing and she sitting. “Anything you want to say to me can be said in front of Helen. I hold no secrets from her.”

  “It’s family business,” Ben said. “Personal.”

  Margaret looked toward Abigail as if to question her presence. “Helen is like family to me. Out with it. I have things to do.”

  Ben sighed. Abbie knew he was getting frustrated. She was, too. She calmed herself and then willed calming thoughts toward him, as if she could telepathically lend him her peace.

  “Fine,” he finally said. “Are you my real mother?”

  Abbie’s mouth dropped open before she could stop it, but she recovered quickly and smoothed her face so it held a neutral expression. Margaret’s eyes tightened, but she didn’t register the shock she must be feeling. Helen’s eyes grew wide and she shifted her stance as if she was getting ready for battle.

  Abbie wakened the magic in her and prepared to defend herself and Ben.

  “Why would you ask such a thing?” Margaret said. Her quick glance at Abigail revealed that she thought she knew why.

  “Answer me,” Ben said.

  “I have raised you since the death of your father, and before. I am your mother.”

  “Are you my biological mother?” Ben asked again.

  Abbie felt magic building in the other woman. Helen crouched down slightly as if she was ready to spring.

  “She’s using her magic,” Abbie whispered to him. She was already weaving an invisible shield of water around herself and Ben. Invisible water shields weren’t as strong as thick, visible ones, but she didn’t want to tip the other witch off to her powers just yet. It was unlikely Margaret had the talent to detect magic users, since she hadn’t detected her when they had met before.

  Ben drew the gun from his waistband and pointed it at Margaret. “Did you kill my mother?” he asked. “Did you kill my father?”

  “Benjamin,” Margaret
said, not even flinching at the gun pointed at her. “You have made your final mistake. I have tried so hard, so hard, to bring you around. I realized you would never truly agree with me or be part of some of my…weightier projects, but I had hoped you would be controlled enough to be allowed to live. It seems that you will be the victim of an accident. Such a pity.”

  As the final word was still in the air, Margaret looked to Helen and nodded.

  The other woman burst into flame.

  It was so abrupt, so unexpected, that Abbie could do nothing but stare in astonishment. Ben’s gaze was locked on the flame, too, the gun seemingly forgotten in his hand.

  Then the living flame smiled a fiery smile and began to walk toward them. Ben blinked and shook his head. He fired four shots directly at the head of the human-shaped flame. The bullets flared into little meteors as they came close and then winked out. The creature continued her progress toward them unharmed, as if she had all the time in the world.

  There were a few legends—most of them so wildly unrealistic as to be completely unbelievable—about elemental shifters who could turn into creatures of pure elemental magic, but Abbie had never believed them. They were fairy tales to tell young witches and warlocks to entertain them or to teach them lessons. They couldn’t be real. Could they? Obviously, the vision of living flame in her mother’s death memory was accurate, not some psychosomatic fabrication. This woman, this Helen, was as responsible for her mother’s death as Margaret.

  Abbie could wait no longer. She strengthened her shield, allowing it to become visible—Margaret’s eyes did widen at that—and Abbie called into being a lance of solidified water and projected it toward Helen. It caught the flame creature unaware and threw her back against the far wall of the room with a shriek. Whether it was from pain or frustration, Abbie couldn’t tell, but it gained her a few seconds before the shifter could re-enter the fray.

  “Now,” Margaret hissed, punctuating her word with fireballs thrown at Abbie, “I finally understand. You will die, too, water caster!”