by Robin Hale
They hadn’t bound my hands, but that was the only thing that suggested I wasn’t quite under arrest since seven ‘marshals of the Council’ had burst through the front door of Absalon’s house and shouted at me to stand against the wall.
From my position seated alone and facing a raised, semicircular bench with seats for seven, it certainly looked like I was about to have a sentence passed — even without something as perfunctory as a mock trial.
No one had told me anything since they’d sat me down and told me not to move — was I waiting for someone? Were they? What time even was it?
Did I have the right to a phone call — oh god, Jean was going to freak out when I didn’t show up at the Wyrm. I cringed and sank further into my chair. Now that the immediate danger had passed, I felt every inch of my bruised and battered body and I wanted nothing more than a shower and a long sleep.
Unfortunately, it was clear I wasn’t going to be able to make that happen for a long while.
Minutes or hours later, I couldn’t tell, a door opened in the back of the chamber. It’d fitted so seamlessly into the wall that I hadn’t realized that a door was there until people were pouring through it. They wore robes that hung to their ankles and slid into obviously pre-ordained spaces behind the bench. There was one space left open.
“Laurel Pearson — is that you?” A woman with dark curls and wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose looked down at me over the edge of a file folder.
“Yes. Uh, ma’am. Councilor. Madam.” Yes, I was off to an excellent start.
“Councilor will be fine,” she said and there was a hint of a smile in the way her eye wrinkled at the corner — that, or the blow I’d taken to the head had done more damage than I’d realized.
The man to her left didn’t share her hint of amusement and the way the air silvered around him told me that I was staring at another vampire. “I think we ought to begin.”
There were nods, general murmurs of agreement, and I waited for the formal proceedings that I’d seen on television shows or in movies. I wanted a bailiff to announce what sort of hearing I was in or what the charges were. If I was under arrest.
But they didn’t do any of that and I wilted under the force of six individual stares.
The woman by the door, golden-skinned and surrounded by echoes of ear-splitting shrieks and the snap of powerful talons, cleared her throat and saved me from falling into a black hole formed by the weight of my own embarrassment. “Councilors, Ms. Pearson is only recently returned to the community and is unfamiliar with our traditions.” There was a beat, a pause as six faces stared down at me in expectant silence. “She’s waiting to be asked a question.”
“Oh, how polite!” A younger-looking man at the far right of the bench said brightly. “Wonderful. Yes.” He peered down over his vintage-styled glasses at something that I couldn’t see then looked back at me with what he probably supposed was a reassuring smile. “Ms. Pearson,” there was a pause and at my nod he continued. “We’re here to determine exactly how you came to be standing in the middle of Absalon of Clan Leinth’s now-destroyed residence, with his now-deceased body.”
The words fell from the high bench like baseball-sized hail and I suddenly, desperately wished for someplace to hide.
“Can you, ah, could you explain that, please?”
The middle three members of the council stared sidelong at the pleasantly-smiling younger man with expressions that didn’t hide their distaste. There was clearly something else they’d prefer to be asking — or at least some other way they wanted to ask it.
“Absalon invited me to come to his house,” I began. Evidently, star-born courts weren’t big on legal representation and I had no idea what to expect from the room itself. Was there a truth charm hanging somewhere that I couldn’t see? Would I be force-fed a potion of some kind if they suspected that I was lying? But even with the worries of that moment pressing down on me, I couldn’t help but wonder if Rhea had made it home, if she was safe.
She’d been incredible, the way she’d come through that door and rescued me. Her magic had been the most glorious thing I’d ever seen, and I knew the ruling body in front of me was the reason she hadn’t used it in the time I’d known her. Not until that day. “He said that he had something to show me — something that had belonged to my mother.”
“We have access records from the archives — you’ve been doing quite a bit of research into Absalon, these past days,” one of the middle councilors — both of whom were wrapped in the silvery-dark sheen of a vampire’s aura — broke in. “Are you telling us that Absalon coincidentally invited you into his home after you’d insinuated yourself into his records?”
“Yes,” I insisted, heat rising in my cheeks. Had I broken some taboo by looking into what the archives knew about Absalon? I hadn’t thought it was any worse than doing a quick search of someone’s name on Google, but maybe it was more like going to a courthouse and requesting all of their public records? That wasn’t going to go over well. “He’d — I’d met him briefly and I’d been having these dreams about him —”
“Dreams. It is my understanding that you are Olivia Bradley’s daughter, yes? Greenhollow Coven has registered you as a new member with a probationary designation of ‘Seer’. Are you claiming that these were prophetic dreams?” The vampire on the left spoke sharply and I had flashes of a star-born principal’s office.
“I — I don’t know,” I admitted. “I haven’t known about my magic for very long. I — I think he was sending me the dreams.”
“Sending them to you,” the vampire said flatly.
One of the witches, a woman whose aura shimmered with green and blue and whose eyes followed me with the patience of a cat, interrupted me when I opened my mouth to respond. “I understand that you’re quite new, but vampires do not possess magical talents in the way that witches do, Ms. Pearson. He could not have cast a spell to send you a dream.”
“No, I know that.” My face, my neck must have been bright red and I couldn’t get my feet under me. Couldn’t get my thoughts in order. “But he — there was a charm left outside my apartment. I’d thought it was a gift from — a friend. But —”
“Are you saying that there was a magical artifact left outside your home and you, what? Brought it inside and used it without confirming its provenance?”
Well, that clinched it. I certainly wasn’t getting top scores from the vampire judges.
When he said it like that, it sounded obviously idiotic. But it’d felt like Rhea’s magic, like it’d been steeped in her power. It hadn’t seemed stupid at the time. “It felt like someone I recognized,” I explained. “But —”
“Then why do you now believe it was sent by the deceased?” The nameplate in front of the vampire read ‘Councilor Krateros’.
“At his house, Absalon said something that — he kind of alluded to the idea that he’d sent it,” I finished weakly. It’d been so obvious in the moment, but how could I prove any of it? If they were right, if Absalon couldn’t have invoked magic on the item itself, how would I ever prove that it had come from him?
“Does this matter?” The witch, Councilor Spears, asked. “I don’t see how the question of sending a charm that may or may not influence dreams justifies murder.”
Murder. The word passed through me chilling my blood and leaving every hair on my body trying to stand on end. I was there because they thought I’d murdered Absalon. The image of Rhea held tight against the vampire’s body, eyes wide and panicked, flashed in my mind. He’d been about to kill her. I was sure of it. And before that, he’d been about to forcibly bind me to him the way he’d wanted to bind my mother. The way he might have bound Mary all those years ago. I shuddered. Was that enough justification? That he wouldn’t let me leave, that he was trying to force me to bond with him against my will?
“Ms. Pearson, I’ll be frank,” Councilor Krateros said. I was in real trouble if what I’d seen so far was ‘coy’. “There is no record of you having
anything approaching enough raw, elemental power to cause the destruction seen at Absalon’s home. We know that there was someone else with you.”
Oh no. They knew. Could they prove it? Did they have to? What was the magical standard of proof? Suddenly, I wished that I’d prioritized learning a bit more about the civics involved in finding myself star-born after a lifetime of mundane education.
“I went there alone,” I insisted. It was technically true. Would that matter? I didn’t have a prayer of beating a polygraph test — surely they had something at least as effective.
“Are you claiming responsibility for what happened there?” Councilor Ramirez, the witch who had first spoken to me, asked. “That storm was quite the light show, after all. Significant clean-up work will need to be done to ensure we are not exposed. Are you responsible for the destruction of Absalon and by extension, Clan Leinth’s, property? For the death of a member of Clan Leinth?” Her brows rose higher.
I was going to be sick.
This was it. This was the end of my journey into finding my community. I’d come all the way from Nebraska, found my coven, found the people that my birth parents had been. I’d discovered that I had a soul mate. I’d found that I had magic, that an amazing world was waiting for me beneath the surface of the one I’d always known.
And I’d lost it in months.
A shudder ran through my body, painting dread and fear along every inch of my bones. So be it. If that was the end, I’d accept it. Anything to keep Rhea from the Council. They didn’t know what had happened, and I knew that I couldn’t convince them that Rhea had been a hero.
“Yes,” I said at last. “It’s my responsibility. I went there alone. Absalon tried to bind me to him. He had some sort of charmed rope and a — a potion that he’d soaked it in. He said that he was going to force me to form a soul bond with him.”
“That’s impossible,” Councilor Spears sniffed dismissively. “There’s no magic to do such a thing.”
“He said that he could do it,” I insisted. “And like you said, I’m new. I didn’t have any reason not to believe him. Everything that happened there happened because he was going to try to make me bond with him and I wanted to get away.” My heart beat faster; my skin shivered between the nervous sweat and the intense air conditioning. I was terrified. But I was doing the right thing.
“And you went there alone,” another councilor mused. She was older, with lined features and the aura of fluttering wings hanging around her in a cloak of feathers.
“I went there alone.” It was true. I had gone there alone. And Rhea only showed up, only got dragged into my mess because I’d been so sure that I could handle myself, that there was nothing in that strange, beautiful world that I needed to fear. It was my impulsiveness, my arrogance. My fault.
Silence hung in the air, stretching a terrible tension so tight that I could feel it pulling at my lungs.
It was okay. I’d make sure that I was able to contact my mother. I’d find some way to explain to her what had happened. Surely the Council had some procedure for notifying non-magical family members? My heart ached at the idea of leaving my coven, my new friends behind — was there a prison somewhere? Would I be locked away? Or was this — how did the star-born feel about executions?
“By the fucking goddess, if you don’t let me through this door I will bring this building down around our ears. Do not test me.” A familiar growl shattered the silence and broke through the door with the roar of a hurricane.
My heart leaped and I was torn between elation at the thought that Rhea had come for me again, and horror that she had. She couldn’t be there. She couldn’t. I wouldn’t let her risk the little that remained of her family, her freedom.
The doors burst open, battering the walls and Rhea stood in the opening: chest heaving, eyes wild, and her magic shimmering in the air around her like she’d brought the storm itself with her instead of just its potential.
I’d been wrong before, she wasn’t an angel.
She was a goddess.
“Ms. Barnes!” Councilor Heggeman burst out in surprise, blinking over his glasses at her and casting curious looks at the shifter who stood by the door.
The marshal had reached out a hand and wrapped it around Rhea’s shoulder, but she wasn’t dragging Rhea back. She didn’t try to muscle her out of the room. She waited for instructions.
“It was me,” Rhea said and my heart sank.
“Rhea —” I broke in, shaking my head desperately. “No, I’ve already told them that I went there alone, it’s — it’s okay, Rhea. They know it was me.”
I stared into Rhea’s eyes, willing her to understand me, to let me do what I was trying to do. I’d never be the sort of powerhouse who could tear down Rhea’s enemies for daring to look sideways at her, but I could protect her from the Council. I knew that I could.
“I’m not letting you throw away your chance at a community that understands you, Laurel,” Rhea hissed, eyes fierce and burning with the sort of intensity I never thought I’d see directed my way. “You belong here.”
“So do you,” I insisted.
“This is all very sweet,” Krateros broke in with a dangerously lazy drawl. “But am I understanding correctly that you were at Absalon of Clan Leinth’s residence — and involved in his death?”
“No!” I blurted out, trying to keep Rhea from talking, from ruining the one thing that I could do for her.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “Absalon attacked Laurel. And I protected her.”
“Protected her,” Councilor Spears said. “To the tune of summoning a storm inside Absalon’s house in a residential neighborhood full of humans and killing a member of a vampire clan? Because he claimed that he could do an impossible bit of magic? Is that accurate?”
The muscle in Rhea’s jaw jumped. “He’d thrown her into the wall. He wasn’t going to let her leave.”
“And when Rhea tried to help me,” I broke in. “He threatened to kill her if I didn’t do what he wanted.”
“Is that true?” Heggeman asked, wide eyes blinking. “Councilor Ramirez, can you confirm that?”
Something in my neck popped when I snapped my attention to Councilor Ramirez. Was she — like me? If she could read the things that had happened, why were they bothering with the interrogation at all?
“Not quite, Ms. Pearson,” Councilor Ramirez said as she met my eyes. “Telepathy, not divination. I can read thoughts. Memories in a living mind. But that doesn’t touch your gift, I’m afraid.” She gave a soft, sad little smile. Maybe she regretted that I was probably going to end up in prison. Or maybe she was only sad that my powers were slipping from the star-born just like my mother’s had.
“If Absalon threatened to kill Ms. Barnes, she was within her rights to defend herself,” Councilor Heggeman insisted.
Something misty passed in front of Councilor Ramirez’s eyes, something gray and cloudy and distant, then they cleared back to the deep brown they’d been a moment before. “No,” she shook her head and that word was a hammer to the chest. “I understand how you interpreted it that way, Ms. Pearson, but Absalon’s words do not constitute a direct threat to Ms. Barnes’ life.”
“That’s insane!” The words were out of my mouth before I could dream of reining them in. “He was going to kill her!”
“That may be,” Ramirez allowed. “But what he said was that Barleywick would fall at last.”
Councilor Krateros scoffed audibly. “That could very well have meant that he intended to stop Clan Leinth’s purchasing relationship with Barleywick!” He sounded angry, angrier than I would have thought a person could be while lying so badly.
Absalon meant to kill Rhea. I knew it. I knew it. If Councilor Ramirez was capable of reading Rhea’s memory of that moment, how could she possibly have any doubts?
The marshal to my left leaned in closer to me and muttered beneath her breath. “Star-born law is different from human, newcomer. Our history is full of violence. You and Ms. Barne
s have left that home more or less unscathed, where a member of a vampire clan is now dead. The law requires that they consider it murder without proof of an attempt on one of your lives, or evidence of worthy vengeance.”
“Worthy vengeance?” I whispered back.
The golden shapeshifter nodded.
My mind raced, tripping back over the things that Absalon had said, his every terrible sentence, looking for the thing that would get Rhea out of the mess I’d made.
“Rhea Barnes has been after Absalon since we last saw her before this council,” Krateros sneered.
“She came to my office to make a complaint against him,” Councilor Spears agreed. “I found it groundless.”
“Which is more likely: that a productive member of our community lost his mind and attacked some unknown witch girl, or that Rhea stalked Absalon and took any excuse she could find for her baseless and delusional revenge?” Krateros continued.
I had to stop it. Rhea’s neck was red, sweat beading on her temples and her upper lip. She was cornered, desperate for a way out. But she’d come. She’d come there for me and I wasn’t about to abandon her. “Absalon killed my parents!” I shouted above the sound of Rhea’s impending doom drawing closer.
The older shapeshifter furrowed her brow and leaned forward in her seat. “The deceased confessed to these crimes?”
I wanted to say ‘yes’, wanted Ramirez to look into my mind and be able to find the exact moment that I had been sure — but no. He hadn’t quite said that, had he? He’d talked about ‘punishment’. He’d been vague and elusive, had danced around the subject so long that I’d known what he meant but he hadn’t — damn it! Was that how the bastard would win? That I couldn’t prove that he’d said exactly what he’d done, so it didn’t matter that it was true that he had done it?
“You said they found you in the car with your mother,” Rhea said, eyes snapping to mine in a startled glance.