by Joyce
“Like he has a conscience,” Elsie murmured close to me.
I half expected Abdon to point her out and say, “I heard that,” but he continued without acknowledging her remark or glancing her way.
She put her hand to her mouth and glanced at me with laughter in her green eyes. Elsie took very few things seriously.
“We have the witchfinder searching through all the clues that have been left by Makaleigh’s killer. I urge all of you to consider what you’ve seen since you arrived. Anything out of the ordinary should be reported. If a witch seems suspicious, he or she could be guilty of murder.”
A chill went through me. It seemed apt that the witchfinder from the Inquisition should be here at a time that sounded like witches turning against witches. What had we become?
A riot of questions and comments erupted from the group when he’d finished speaking.
“I don’t know anything about Makaleigh’s death,” one woman shouted. “But you can’t just hold us here for another eleven hours. I want to leave now.”
“We all want to leave, madam,” Abdon said. “But the spell is cast. We will be here until it is done. We have to find the killer before that moment.”
“I’m afraid to say who I think the killer is.” The thin witch with long gray sideburns glanced from side to side at the witches around him. “You’ve taken so much of my magic, I’m not sure I could defend myself.”
“That is why we have security,” Abdon said. “Just tell one of my security men if you suspect someone. They don’t need to know that it was you that turned them in. I guarantee your safety.”
“I think we’ve heard enough,” Dorothy whispered. “We have a big cat to catch.”
“Do you suppose she could be responsible for killing Makaleigh?” Elsie questioned.
“Why bother using a knife?” I queried. “She could have done it with one swipe of her claws.”
“Wait a minute.” Brian laughed. “We must be talking about a different cat. Kalyna has sharp claws, but I don’t think she’s dangerous. Come on. She barely weighs a pound or two.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t see her rapid weight-gain issue,” Dorothy warned. “I’ll fill you in while we look for her.”
Brian and Dorothy went to find Oscar and tell him about the situation with Kalyna. They were more afraid of Kalyna attacking other witches than I was. I felt as though she’d set her sights on Brian and would come back for him. We needed to watch him.
Had the mysterious man who’d given Dorothy the cat purposely done so for this reason? Or was it a simple mistake? At this point it was hard to say, since so much had happened since we’d arrived.
“It’s hard for me to imagine that Dorothy with all her young magic didn’t even notice the cat was a shifter,” Elsie said.
“None of us did when we first saw her,” I added as we walked slowly up the stairs, leaving the main group still asking questions as we looked for the cat.
“But that was different, Molly. We barely saw the cat for a few minutes. She had been living with Dorothy before Dorothy gave her to Brian. I think there’s more to it.” She shook her faded red curls. “What if Makaleigh’s death has something to do with the cat? In her human form, she could’ve put that knife in her. We’d all think about her killing as would a cat and dismiss it. What if that’s the whole point?”
I nodded, thinking about what she was saying. “And we sneaked her into Brian’s birthday bash where we all knew the council would be.”
“Exactly.”
A servant went by with glasses of pink champagne and matching pink cupcakes.
Elsie took one of each. “At least they feed us well.”
I sipped some champagne. “That’s true. I’m surprised they don’t conjure the food instead of making it the old-fashioned way.”
“You know it never tastes as good. This cupcake is delicious. Want a bite?”
Her upper lip had pink frosting on it. “No, thanks. Here’s a napkin.”
“Have you ever noticed that the best-tasting foods are also the messiest?” She wiped the frosting from her lip.
We’d been wandering through the hallway for twenty minutes or more. We were never going to find a creature who could slip between being a cat and a woman whenever she felt like it—at least not this way.
“We really need an incantation to locate Kalyna,” I insisted. “Let’s try to find Brian and Dorothy and summon the shifter with magic. It’s bad enough trying to decide who killed Makaleigh without looking for a shifter at the same time.”
Elsie agreed, and we returned to the main hall. We zigzagged around the ballroom, where too many witches were drowning their sorrows and still complaining about being trapped in the castle. Neither of us wanted to get caught up in that.
“They should put that energy to better use,” Elsie remarked. “Too bad we can’t harness the witches into a group that could get things accomplished.”
“As usual, we think a lot alike.” I smiled. “It must be because we’re both retired schoolteachers.”
“Maybe so.”
We took a set of back stairs that were away from the ballroom—there seemed to be hundreds of stairs and hallways throughout the castle. We hadn’t gotten lost yet, but most witches did have an inner sense of direction even in the dark.
This set of stairs led us to a short hall with a balcony that overlooked the ballroom. We could see another set of stairs only a few yards from where we stood. It seemed like someone had mistakenly added an extra flight of stairs that weren’t needed and didn’t quite fit in.
Elsie sniffed and sneezed. “I smell something. It’s the same scent from the pink room where Makaleigh was killed. What about you?”
My amulet had begun to glow as though it was agreeing with her. “I don’t smell anything except that cupcake, but I feel something. The hall and the stairs are wrong. They shouldn’t be here. They aren’t part of the castle.”
“It doesn’t happen often, but I’m kind of scared, Molly. We’ve wandered into someplace we shouldn’t be. How are we gonna get out? I’m sure there’s a reason behind this magic. I don’t think I want to know what it is.”
We both heard footsteps—heeled shoes—coming from the other end of the hall.
“Quick. Let’s hide behind this drape.” I pulled aside the heavy red velvet and stepped behind it. Elsie joined me. We were both breathing hard.
Another set of footsteps, this one without heels, made a soft swishing noise on the stone floor. Elsie and I stared into each other’s eyes. She touched the silver sword that she wore around her neck as a symbol of her power as a fire witch. I wished that she had a real one.
I put my hand on my amulet. It was as much a symbol of my power as a water witch as the tiny cauldron that I wore around my neck. Maybe together if we had to, we could fight off a more powerful witch if that was who was coming toward us.
“This is very dangerous.”
I knew that voice. It was Hedyle. Was this her magic?
“Everything we do is dangerous now.”
The man’s voice made both my brows and Elsie’s raise in surprise. It was Drago Rasmun, Dorothy’s father. Why was he there with Hedyle? How could he even be at the castle, since he was reviled by the council? Drago and others like him lived their lives outside of the council’s purview. That made him a danger to them, since he wouldn’t obey their commands like the rest of us.
There were some noises I interpreted as kissing sounds, and then Hedyle sighed.
“What have we done, Drago? What have we done?”
CHAPTER 22
It was difficult to stand there with a hundred questions in my brain. Were they responsible for Makaleigh’s death? I wanted to know, but I also wanted to stay alive. Both Drago and Hedyle were very powerful witches. My amulet might have no defense against them, although Hedyle seemed impressed b
y it.
“Dearest heart.” His voice was tender as he tried to soothe her. “We’ve done nothing wrong. There can be nothing wrong done in the name of love.”
“But if we’re discovered, it could mean an end to us both.” She wept softly.
I could imagine him holding her in his arms. I couldn’t see them—didn’t dare try to peek around the velvet drape.
“I won’t let anything happen to you. What we’ve done has been necessary. There was no other way.”
They had to be talking about Makaleigh’s death. What else could this pertain to?
Elsie pinched her nose closed so she wouldn’t sneeze.
“I fear some of them, particularly Abdon, already know the truth. We shall be found out, Drago. There will be nowhere to hide from their punishment.”
“There will always be a place to hide,” he assured her. “What about the witch, Molly, who was with Makaleigh when she passed? Does she know?”
“She would not allow the discovery spell, and I believe her magic comes from a greater source than a witch’s magic. I don’t think we can force her to tell us.”
Drago made a hissing noise like a cat. “It doesn’t matter. She obviously doesn’t plan to tell anyone what she heard, or she really doesn’t know what it is. When the castle doors open, we shall be free.”
There was more kissing and cooing before they parted.
Elsie and I waited soundlessly behind the curtain, not moving. I helped her keep from sneezing with my hand over hers at her nose. I wasn’t sure when we’d decide it was safe to emerge.
“Do you think we can get out of here now?” she barely whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“I have to go, Molly. You know? Too much champagne. I can’t wait any longer.” She threw open the curtain, and I followed her lead.
The hall had changed. The real stairs were still there but farther away. The magic that had created the short, intimate space where the lovers met was gone.
“Good thing we didn’t disappear with it,” Elsie said, sneezing. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Brian and Dorothy were in the room when we got back. Elsie made a beeline for the bathroom.
“No luck finding Kalyna,” Dorothy said. “And I wish you’d back me up on what happened with her and Brian, Molly. He doesn’t believe me about her mesmerizing him and getting to be the size of a panther.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Brian defended. “It’s just that it’s hard to imagine. Back me up here, Molly—witches see shifters. It would be impossible not to have noticed that Kalyna was more than a house cat.”
“Witches do see shifters, in most cases,” I replied, hoping I wasn’t adding fuel to their disagreement. “The whole situation is odd. Even Elsie and I noticed something off about the cat but couldn’t say what. You didn’t know either, Brian. I think someone spelled the cat so we wouldn’t know it was a shifter.”
“But why?” he asked. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why bother?”
“Because whoever did it knew we were going to be here at the castle,” Dorothy guessed. “They knew we could sneak Kalyna in as your birthday present.”
“That’s possible,” I agreed. “It’s even conceivable that Kalyna shifted into her human form, killed Makaleigh and then shifted back into a cat. No one would know.”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Brian replied. “And who’d do such a thing? Why not just kill her themselves?”
Olivia nodded, agreeing with Molly as she was floating near the ceiling. “I’ve heard odder things in my time.”
“Elsie and I might have something even stranger to add to it,” I told them.
The toilet flushed, and Elsie ran out of the bathroom. “You didn’t tell them yet, did you?”
“What?” Olivia came down to be sure to hear what was going on.
Elsie and I glanced at her and shrugged. There was no way to keep this from her. Hopefully she was over Drago.
“We overheard Drago meeting with Hedyle.” The words burst out of Elsie. “And not just any meeting. This was passionate.”
“Passionate?” Olivia frowned. “What does that mean?”
“You haven’t been dead that long,” Elsie countered. “You know—smooch, smooch, smooch—‘Oh, Hedyle. Oh, Drago.’ You get it.”
Dorothy and I sat on the bed together while Brian leaned against the wall.
“You mean the two of them are lovers?” Olivia queried. “But she’s so old. Ancient Greece, ladies. Thousands of years. What can the attraction be?”
“How old is Drago, Mom?” Dorothy asked. “You said he was really old too.”
“But not that old,” Olivia quipped. “I mean, I was with him. And look at him. He’s just a perfect male specimen.”
“But how much of that is magic?” Brian asked. “With enough magic, anyone could look young forever.”
“Anyway,” I continued, “the story isn’t really about their ages.” I repeated what we’d heard from behind the velvet drapes. “It sounded like they could be guilty of killing Makaleigh.”
“It’s true.” Elsie backed me up. “I’m sure they were talking about Makaleigh, and about Molly hearing her last words.”
“So you think Makaleigh found out about Hedyle and Drago?” Brian summed up. “There’s no doubt the council would be furious if they knew she was dating someone considered beyond their reach. We all know that he’s a renegade. The council hates renegades.”
“She might have been asked to leave the council,” Olivia added. “Maybe Makaleigh found out somehow and threatened to tell.”
“People in control always hate renegades,” Elsie said. “Trust me. I taught history for many years.”
“That would mean Drago and Hedyle murdered Makaleigh to keep her quiet, not to keep her from changing policies on the council,” Dorothy said. “This is big. But how are we going to prove it to the council? The two of them could kill us if they knew that we knew.”
“Just like they did Makaleigh,” Olivia repeated.
I hated to agree with her, because I would have liked nothing better than to turn over the whole mess to Abdon and the council and let them deal with it. I didn’t want to be in the middle of this feud, if that’s what it was, and I didn’t want my friends there either. It was a risky place to be.
“You’re right,” I finally said. “We’re going to have to keep this to ourselves. At least until we can find something to corroborate our information. Maybe it’s in the three words Makaleigh whispered. It makes sense now why Hedyle was so intent on getting them from me. She had a lot to lose.”
“Good thing you didn’t let her do the discovery spell on you,” Elsie said. “You could be floating around on the ceiling with Olivia right now. I’m sure Hedyle and Drago wouldn’t let you live once they had the words.”
Brian put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Molly. We won’t let that happen to you.”
“That’s fine,” Olivia whined. “Where were you when I was killed?”
“I’m sorry, but we didn’t know each other that well,” Brian said. “We’re family now. We have to look after one another.”
“Which is why we have to find that cat,” Dorothy reiterated. “I know proving who killed Makaleigh is important too. But I don’t want to ever see Brian looking like a zombie has eaten his brain again either. Besides, we don’t know for sure that she didn’t shift from cat to human and kill Makaleigh. If that was the case, we’d probably have to take the blame for that too, since we brought the cat here and Abdon saw her here. Anybody have any ideas on how we can find a woman who can become any size cat she wants in this huge place?”
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Elsie said, “but I was thinking that Molly could do some scrying. She’s very good at it, being a water witch and all.”
“But her magic is l
imited,” Olivia argued. “How is she supposed to manage it?”
“As much as I hate to admit it, she’s got that amulet that is nothing but water magic,” Elsie continued. “She should be able to skirt the castle’s magic, at least in this case, since she’d be using water directly. It’s worth a try anyway.”
“Scrying, huh?” Brian grinned. “I love the old-fashioned magic. I’ve never done it, but I have an uncle who used to find water with a willow wand.”
“Oh, the dark sheep in the family.” Elsie laughed.
“That’s true,” he agreed. “My parents never wanted him to visit. They were afraid I’d grow up like him. He wasn’t exactly a renegade, but he never went along with the council’s edicts either. I’m not really sure what happened to him. It’s been years since I saw him.”
“I suppose we could do some scrying,” I said. “It is old-fashioned but also doesn’t take as much magic as creating something out of nothing. And Elsie’s right about the water magic.” I didn’t go into how right she was. “We’ll need a large bowl—silver would be nice. And some water. The purer the better.”
“There’s a well right outside the castle,” Brian said. “I can draw it from there. It’s supposed to be very pure.”
“You must have forgotten that you can’t leave the castle.” Olivia giggled. “Glad I’m not the only one with a bad memory.”
“Sorry.” He laughed. “I guess we might as well get water from the bathroom. I’ll go to the kitchen and get a big silver bowl and be right back.”
When Brian was gone we talked about his affinity for the missing cat.
“I guess they really meshed,” Dorothy mourned. “I hate that she’s evil. She should have been the perfect birthday gift.”
“She’s probably not evil. Someone may have put her into this position, and she might have had no choice. We don’t know yet what the situation was. She certainly didn’t cloak herself from witches seeing her as a shifter,” Elsie told her. “But she’s definitely not familiar material. Shifters are a whole other thing. They don’t hang around with witches much.”