Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Betrayal
Page 10
By Thursday, she couldn’t take the tension any longer. Needing to do something, she allowed herself a single call to Sebastian’s cell phone. He didn’t answer, however, and after leaving a studiously calm message requesting he call her right away, she realized she felt worse, not better. She was sure something had gone wrong. Whether it was a broken phone or Richard getting caught trying to distribute classified files, it didn’t matter. She promised herself that if she didn’t hear anything by the time she got off work on Friday, she was going to call anyone and everyone until she got an answer.
Friday passed in an anxious blur punctuated by many more cups of Assam tea than was healthy. By five o’clock sharp, she was dialing Sebastian’s number again and pressing the phone tightly against her ear, stomach twisting with worry. It rang and rang, but there was no answer. She left a slightly less calm message than the last, then hung up. Five seconds later, she changed her mind and dialed again, this time hanging up as soon as it went to voicemail. After repeating the process several times, she finally gave up and tried to leave another voicemail, only to hear a polite voice state: “This mailbox is full and cannot accept messages at this time. Goodbye.”
Mentally cursing Sebastian six ways from Sunday, Lily looked up Richard’s number—she had deliberately deleted it from her contacts—and waited on pins and needles as it rang.
“Hello, Miss Singer. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Apparently Richard had not deleted her contact information, but she didn’t have time to dwell on that fact as she tried to regulate her breathing and speak in a normal, not-freaking-out tone of voice. “Hello, Agent Grant. Have you been able to get together those case files yet?” she asked, skipping over the pleasantries. “I know things move slowly where paperwork is concerned, but we really need to get to work before things get worse.”
“I—I don’t understand. I gave the files to Sebastian last Saturday, since he insisted I copy them straight away.”
A sudden icy dread flooded Lily’s body and she felt paralyzed, the hand clutching her cell phone frozen to her ear. Sebastian had lied to her.
“Hello? Lily?”
Her ears were ringing, and she barely registered Richard’s increasingly frantic attempts to get her attention. Something terrible must have happened. Why else would Sebastian have broken his promise to call her? What if he’d gone off to chase witches without her and gotten hurt? Or—
“Lily!” Richard’s sharp tone snapped her out of her daze and she finally gasped in a breath, her lungs aching.
“Y-yes, sorry. It’s just…have you heard from him?”
“No, I’m sorry, I haven’t. Not since I gave him the files. He said he would let me know if he had any questions and not to worry about the situation. And…well…he rather threateningly ordered me not to call you under any circumstances. I chose not to take offense from his remark, as he seemed rather agitated at the time. I didn’t want to make things worse by checking in on you, but perhaps I should have. Is something the matter? Do you need my help?”
“No! No, nothing is the matter,” Lily said, fighting to keep her voice calm. “Just a little miscommunication, I’m sure. Thank you, Agent Grant. Have a nice day.” She hung up before he could reply, alarm bells ringing so loudly she thought her head might split. Or was that just the ringing in her ears? She was probably being paranoid, but some instinct made her reluctant to trust Richard. After all, she reasoned, it might be nothing. Perhaps Sebastian was just holed up in his house trying to find a solution for all this, and had become so preoccupied he’d forgotten to call. Of course that was it. It would be silly of her to cause unnecessary alarm by bringing Richard into it. She would just go to Sebastian’s apartment and see him in person. They would work things out. Everything was going to be fine.
But no matter how many times she repeated those things in her head as she rushed out of the library, jumped into her car, and sped away from the parking lot, her heart knew. She knew.
Something was very, very wrong.
By the time Lily neared Sebastian’s apartment, she was struggling not to fall apart. Where had her cool, levelheaded practicality gone? Ever since she had allowed herself to start caring for Sebastian, every little thing seemed to stress her out. At least, everything involving her friend—her boyfriend. He was, wasn’t he? Then why did she feel awkward even thinking about him that way? And why was she debating semantics with herself when her friend—boyfriend?—was in trouble? She only managed to hold things together by plotting how many different ways she could sneak spinach into her scone and muffin recipes. Sebastian never ate enough vegetables anyway, so it would do him good to ingest a little extra green.
Parking on the curb in front of the cheap, one-story complex where Sebastian rented an apartment, she paused to take several deep, calming breaths. She shouldn’t show up at Sebastian’s doorstep in a state of frenzy. or should she? If she collapsed into his arms sobbing, would he finally open up to her? No, that was ridiculous. She was an adult—a professional—and such a show of emotion would be embarrassingly childish.
Wouldn’t it?
As calm on the outside as she was going to get, she finally climbed from her car and hurried along the broken sidewalk, oxford heels and pencil skirt keeping her from breaking into a run like she really wanted to.
The sight of Sebastian’s perfectly normal, if rather beat-up, front door did little to allay her fears. All of his front windows had thick curtains, tightly drawn, so she couldn’t tell if there were any lights on in the apartment. Taking another deep breath, she knocked firmly on the door.
There was no answer.
She knocked again, louder, and called out Sebastian’s name. Her voice echoed in the crisp stillness, seeming amplified by the cold. Nervous, she tried the doorknob—locked—then glanced behind her at the dilapidated buildings and dark street. This wasn’t exactly the most savory of neighborhoods, so it would probably be unwise to make a scene on her friend’s front porch. Instead, she went around the side of the building, peering into windows as she went. Sebastian’s apartment was on one end of a long row, so he had more windows than most. But in every one of them, the curtains were drawn just as tight.
Behind the row of apartments was an unkempt jungle of weeds leading to an empty lot full of rusted shopping carts and discarded, smashed appliances. Everything was dead this time of year, but that didn’t stop the dry stalks from snagging on her woolen skirt and sticking to her thick tights. Fortunately, she didn’t have far to go to reach Sebastian’s back door. It, too, was locked, but at least she finally found a window where the curtains were cracked. The sill was larger than normal, and several dirty glasses lined it, as if someone had been drinking and forgotten to clean up. Of course, Lily knew what the glasses were for: Sebastian had a fondness for pixies, and his pixie friends had a fondness for alcohol—the stiffer the better. Payment for their services was usually in the form of mixed drinks, a delicacy among pixies since only humans could make them. According to Sebastian, there were sometimes drunken parties on this particular windowsill, which might have explained the open curtains: so he could better keep an eye on his fae guests.
Now, however, the windowsill was abandoned and silent, and as Lily peered through the dirty window, the apartment appeared just as quiet. It was so messy she couldn’t even tell if someone had broken in and trashed the place, though the securely locked front and back doors made that seem unlikely.
“Curse you, Sebastian. Where are you?” Lily whispered into the cold air, hugging herself tightly against the creeping chill. A tingling burn built behind her eyes, but she rubbed them, refusing to give in to tears. She still didn’t know for sure if there was something amiss, even if every instinct in her screamed that there was. Sebastian’s car was gone, so it made sense that he wouldn’t be home. But if he wasn’t home and wouldn’t answer his phone, how was she supposed to find him and make sure he was all right?
There was only one thing to do: pick the lock.
With a guilty twinge in her stomach, Lily looked around, then set down her carpet bag and crouched, laying her hand against the back door and closing her eyes. Neither gesture was strictly necessary, but she found it helped her concentration, and she hadn’t had much practice tripping locks with magic. In fact, the only times she had done it had been in the company of Sebastian, after he had gotten them into some ridiculous mishap or another. The thought made her eyes burn again, but she pushed the feeling away and focused on her spell. Calling forth and controlling energy from the Source was a tricky business, one that had no room for distractions. The thing that everyone called magic was simply another energy source, one that certain people—wizards—were born with a connection to. Not even wizards understood how, or why, and most were content to simply focus on making magic work in the safest, most efficient way possible. Lily was no exception. Concentrating on the glowing thread inside her that connected her to the Source, she drew on her magic, letting its power fill her. Then she used her will and whispered words in the ancient tongue of Enkinim to guide it into the door, focusing on the locking mechanism until she heard a click. Knowing Sebastian was not a one-lock sort of person, she reached out with her senses, searching for, and finding, the deadbolt. And the backup deadbolt. And the security chain. After another minute of careful maneuvering, she was able to undo all three.
Letting the power sink back into her, Lily took a moment of deep breathing and meditation to settle herself. It was a safety measure that wizards practiced to help keep the euphoria of channeling such power from causing hysterics or a sudden proclivity for rash decisions. It was different with battle magic—that is, having to cast on the fly in response to an emergency or attack. Then, adrenaline kicked in and triggered an iron control that she had been forced to rely on more often than she would have liked over the past year. Most wizards never encountered a single such dire situation in their entire lives. Lily wished she could be like “most wizards.” Getting into dire situations was becoming a habit she would dearly like to break.
Lily finally rose from her crouch and placed a hand on the doorknob, but found she could not force herself to turn it. What would she find inside? What if Sebastian was home? What if his dead body was lying on the floor?
She shook her head violently, trying to dislodge the mental image that made a tear well up and slide down her cheek. She could not think about such things.
Before she had a chance to chicken out, Lily tightened her grip, then turned the knob and pulled the door open with a single jerk. No sound greeted her as she cautiously stepped into the dark kitchen. Her nose wrinkled at the smell—it was a mess, of course. But the mess hardly registered as her eyes swept every shadowed corner, dreading what she might find.
One by one, she located the light switches and illuminated each room. Living room. Bedroom. Bathroom. All were full of her friend’s mess, but empty of Sebastian himself. At least there were no blood, scorch marks, or signs of a struggle, either. There was a hole in the wall by the door, as if someone had punched through the flimsy drywall in a rage. But there was no way to tell how recent it was, or who had put it there.
Trying to squelch the rising panic in her chest, she searched for a note or sign that might indicate his whereabouts—at this point, she would have been happy to find anything, even a stick figure drawn in crayon. But all she found were the case files Richard had given to him, laying open and strewn about on the bed. Though she was tempted to riffle through them in the hopes of finding a clue, it didn’t feel safe to linger. Instead, she gathered them all up and slid them into her carpet bag.
Sebastian’s apartment revealed no further clues, and with each passing minute, Lily grew more desperate. Something was wrong. She didn’t know how she knew, she just did. A feeling of acute dread clung to her like a suffocating blanket. Not even when Allen had been kidnapped, or they were preparing to face Morgan le Fay, had she felt this terrible. A desperate urge to do something came over her, brought on by the knowledge that time was slipping away—and with it, Sebastian.
In a last-ditch effort, Lily started digging through the mountain of mail left in an untidy pile on the floor by the front door. But it seemed just as much a heap of trash as a pile of mail. Most of it was obvious junk, credit card offers and the like, which had been tossed aside, unopened. Sitting back on her heels, Lily forced herself to calm down and think. Her eyes strayed over the door, the lamp and table by the door, then down to the floor. That was when she noticed the crumpled piece of paper just beside one of the table legs. It was hardly alone on a floor littered with trash, but this particular bit looked newer. Fresher.
With trembling fingers, she picked it up, unfolded it, and read:
We have your brother. If you tell anyone or alert the authorities, you know what will happen to him. You have something of mine, and I want it back. Bring it to me. You know where. You have twelve hours.
There was no keeping the tears back this time. They streamed down her face in rivulets as she sank to the floor, body trembling with suppressed sobs that were more than half panicked gasps.
She had never known she could be so afraid, and angry, at the same time—angry at Sebastian for lying to her, angry at whoever had threatened him, angry at herself for letting it happen. Obviously Sebastian had justified his lie as necessary to keep her safe or some such nonsense, and now he had gone off, alone, to save his brother. But something had gone wrong. Otherwise, he would have been back by now, teasing her and scarfing down her scones. She didn’t know how long ago the note had been slipped under Sebastian’s door, or when he had found it and crumpled it up. But something told her it had been more than twelve hours ago.
Sebastian needed her, needed help. And she couldn’t do a thing about it.
“W-where are you, you s-stubborn idiot?” she whispered through tears and hiccups of panic. “I c-can’t help you if you w-won’t let me. Where are you?” The last bit she shouted, frustration, hurt, and betrayal finally starting to warm the ice in her chest.
There was literally nothing she could do. No tracking spell would work, not without the parameters set up beforehand. Madam Barrington couldn’t help. Even if her contacts could eventually track down Sebastian’s location, it would be far too late. She would be better served going to the police, and, of course, that wasn’t an option. Sebastian might already be dead, or dying, and who knew what state his poor brother was in.
She had no time. No time! Who was there who could help?
A sudden squeak made her jump. It had been so faint it might have come from outside. Or perhaps she had imagined it. But it reminded her of the cups on the windowsill.
“Pip! Is that you? Are you there? Pip?”
The tiny pixie who had been Sebastian’s closest friend and ally in the fae world had been killed last year in the fight with Morgan. As was the way of the fae, her magical essence had been reabsorbed into the Source, and the high fae over Pip’s domain had remade her form anew, ensuring that Pip’s little plot of green would always have a caretaker. But it was not the same Pip. She had the same body and name, perhaps. But the tiny fae hadn’t remembered either Sebastian or Lily, and it had taken months for Sebastian to regain her trust. Lily had seen the new pixie once since witnessing her first death, but the little fae had not even deigned to speak to her. The rejection had cut deep, especially when Lily remembered how the old Pip had devotedly stayed by their side during the final battle and had given up her life to help protect them.
&nb
sp; There was no answer to Lily’s calls, and she finally quieted, scouring her memory for the phrase Sebastian normally used to summon fae when he wanted to talk to them. There was no guarantee Pip would respond, but at least she might notice, if Lily used the fae tongue.
“E-elya Pilantara? No, that’s not right.” She tried again. “Elya Pilanteera? Elwa? Pip? Are you there? Please, I—I’ll give you something if you talk to me.”
There was a long, long silence, and Lily’s heart despaired. If she couldn’t get Pip to talk to her, there was no hope any of Sebastian’s other fae friends would help either. She thought of Grimmold, the mold fae. With his tracking ability, he would surely be able to find Sebastian. But even Sebastian had trouble working with the grumpy little creature, and Lily couldn’t remember the rascal’s full fae name anyway.
“Pip?” she tried again, voice breaking as unwanted tears continued to slide down her cheeks. She held her breath as an eternity seemed to pass, ears straining for any sign of hope.
Suddenly, she heard another squeak, closer this time, and a tiny light zipped into the living room from the kitchen. It hovered about her head, flitting back and forth like a hummingbird, moving too quickly for her to get a good look. But she knew who it was.