by Lily Webb
“Uh, yeah, that’s the plan,” I said. Flora laughed and shook her head at me.
“What about the guys?” she asked.
“Don’t tell them where I went. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said and headed for the door. Beau called after me, but I ran as fast as my feet could carry me down Swiftsage toward Crescent Street, wishing I knew how to fly the entire time.
But when I got there, nothing seemed to be going on at the school. None of the medics were present, and most of the lights were off in the castle — so where had they gone? Shouts carried through the night, and without really knowing if I was right, I dashed past Veilside in the direction of the Warlocks’ Quarter and The Magic Touch, doing my best not to trip on the cobblestone streets along the way.
As I approached, winded and in pain from a stitch in my side, I found a group of warlocks surrounding the entrance to the pub and twelve medics’ broomsticks resting against the wall outside. Though I hoped it was just a stupid bar fight between two warlocks who’d had too many Magishakes, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. They wouldn’t need so many medics for something like that.
I shoved my way through the group of warlocks, who all looked at me like I was a crazy woman — not that I could blame them thanks to my dirty bare feet and the heels I’d strapped together and slung over one shoulder. Not even Lazar the warlock bouncer, who looked more dangerous and stern than ever, tried to stop me.
I made it to the entrance just in time to watch the medics carry out a body on a stretcher made from two broomsticks. A white blanket covered his body, but long, greasy black hair peeked out, and as the medics walked the pallet, a hand fell out from underneath, revealing a wrist tattooed with a triangular formation of teardrops.
I didn’t need to see under the sheet to know Seth Highmore was dead.
Chapter Thirteen
Investigating yet another murder wasn’t exactly how I wanted to start my Friday morning, but there I was, hunched over my computer screen at the Messenger poring over any and everything I could find about Seth Highmore.
Who would’ve wanted to hurt him? It didn’t make any sense. Seth was the person I most suspected of having something to do with the death of Delia, but now that he was dead too I felt like I’d run straight into a brick wall on a broomstick traveling at more than two hundred miles per hour.
“You okay? You’ve been awfully quiet today,” Flora said, pulling me out of the online wormhole I’d fallen down. I looked up to find her staring down at me with a concerned frown on her face, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Is it about what you saw last night?” she asked.
“Of course. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s so weird,” I said.
“How so?”
“Well, okay, Seth was a pretty big jerk to more or less everyone around him, but I haven’t run into a single person who’d have a reason to kill him,” I said. “No one hated him that much. Besides, how could he have been killed in the middle of a crowded pub?”
“Going after the grandson of the Head Warlock in a public place like that does seem bold,” Flora said. “Maybe whoever did it was trying to make a statement about how powerful they are. If they thought they could get away with killing someone that high profile, it would say a lot about them.”
“Good point,” I said. I hadn’t thought about that. “The weirder part is that no one seems to know what happened.”
“Have you talked to the police?”
“Not since they questioned me about Professor Frost’s death. I figure I’ve called in a few too many favors over there already, so I don’t know that they’ll be willing to cash in another one for me,” I said.
“Maybe, maybe not. Who else could you talk to then?”
“I’d love to ask the Head Warlock some questions, but I’m sure that’s going to be a non-starter. A reporter is probably the last person he’d want to speak with right now,” I said.
“Probably,” Flora sighed. “Heath can’t seem to catch a break, the poor guy. First Harper and Opal died, now Delia and his own grandson just a few weeks later… I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes trying to manage the fallout.”
“Neither would I, but hey, I guess that’s the sort of thing you know you’re getting into when you run for office,” I said.
“I guess. Is there anyone else who might know something or have a lead?” Flora asked. “Any other friends or relatives of Seth’s?”
A lightbulb went off in my head. The best people to talk to would’ve been Seth’s friends Aidan and Callum. Unfortunately, I had no idea where to find either of them — but Aurelia would.
“Aurelia!” I shouted, slamming my hands against the desk. Flora jumped, her wings fluttering.
“Who?”
“Aurelia Riddle, Seth’s ex-girlfriend,” I explained as my mind raced. “I’ve spoken to her once already, but if anyone had any insight into Seth’s friends, good or bad, it would be her. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.”
“Good idea,” Flora said.
“And I know just where to find her,” I said as I scrambled to grab my bag and shut down my computer.
“Do you think this ex of his could’ve done it herself?” Flora asked, and I froze. The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but now that it had, things took on an entirely different light.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” I said, and Flora chuckled.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s an old saying. Anyway, I don’t know if Aurelia had anything to do with Seth’s murder — she likely couldn’t have gotten into The Magic Touch anyway — but I wouldn’t put anything past her. She’s a talented witch, she’s cutthroat, and if they really did end on bad terms, it would give her the perfect reason to want to kill him,” I said. “Maybe these murders aren’t connected at all.”
“Or maybe they are,” Flora suggested, shrugging. My blood turned cold in my veins. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Aurelia wanting to kill Delia too, especially after the way Delia had allegedly slighted her by choosing Phoebe as her apprentice.
The pieces were falling into place.
“Yeah, maybe. It’s hard to say at this point. Anyway, will you tell Mitch I stepped out if he asks?”
“Of course,” Flora said. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but I will anyway: be careful.”
“Thanks. I’ll try,” I said, and headed for the door.
I raced to Crescent Street and tore south toward Zaria’s, the clothing boutique where Aurelia worked. What if Aurelia hadn’t heard yet? I didn’t want to be the one to break the news — but if Aurelia was the one who killed Seth, she knew already anyway. I’d just have to play it by ear.
When I got to the corner of Crescent and Étoile streets, Zaria’s gaudy neon sign was on. My heart jumped into my throat when I spotted Aurelia inside helping a middle-aged witch slip into a new pair of robes.
After Aurelia finished cashing the witch out, I took a deep breath and stepped inside. Aurelia glared at me, her hair pulled up into a bun.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the stray come begging for scraps again,” Aurelia said, smirking as I approached the counter.
“It’s nice to see you again, Aurelia,” I said.
“The feeling isn’t mutual,” she said. “What do you want now?”
Had she not heard about Seth yet?
“There was an incident at The Magic Touch last night,” I said, watching her face for any sign of a reaction.
“What sort of incident?” she asked, her brows furrowing. She really didn’t know.
“Seth is dead,” I said. Aurelia’s eyes went wide, and she gripped the counter so hard her knuckles turned nearly as white as her eyes.
“What?” she whispered. “How? Who did it?”
“That’s what I came to ask you about,” I said. I couldn’t give her answers because I didn’t have any myself.
Aurelia collapsed down onto a stool behind the counter, deflated. I’d never see
n her this shaken before — she was always so composed, so confident.
“Are you sure? I don’t believe it,” she said.
“I’m sure. I saw it with my own two eyes,” I said. “I was wondering if you had any ideas about who might’ve wanted to hurt him.”
“Well, he wasn’t exactly popular around Veilside,” Aurelia said.
“Yeah, I noticed,” I said. “But besides Delia, did he fight with anyone else?”
“Not really, no. He mostly kept to himself and his two weirdo friends,” Aurelia said.
“You mean Aidan and Callum?”
“Yeah, those two trolls, no offense to trolls,” Aurelia said, and I had to bite back my laughter.
“How long have they been friends?”
“For as long as I can remember,” Aurelia said. “They’re practically inseparable. Wherever Seth went, they followed.”
“Would either of them have wanted to hurt Seth?”
“Are you kidding? No way. They’d sooner lick his broomstick to a shine than lay a finger on him,” Aurelia said. “I still can’t believe this.”
“I have to say, I’m surprised you hadn’t heard,” I said. “You seem pretty plugged in around here, and he was your ex, after all.”
“Thanks to school being canceled, I picked up another gig at Willowvale doing room cleaning and bed pushing. I’ve been working a ton, so I haven’t been able to stay on top of things as much as I normally do,” Aurelia said. “Unless there's a spell I'm not aware of, my student loans aren’t going to pay themselves.”
“I see. Back to Aidan and Callum, do you know anything about them personally?”
“Not really. Honestly, I have no clue how they ever even got admitted to Veilside. Even if they wanted to hurt Seth, they wouldn’t have a full brain between them to pull it off,” Aurelia said.
“Sounds like you aren’t really a fan of either one of them,” I said.
“No, I’m not. Never have been. It annoys me when people who don’t deserve to be at Veilside get in and don’t take it seriously,” Aurelia said, looking down her nose at me.
It took everything I had not to fire back because as soon as I did, Aurelia would clam up on me.
“Hey, I get it. We don’t have to be friends. I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Seth and Delia,” I said.
“I have no idea, I really don’t,” Aurelia said. “But maybe you should talk to Aidan and Callum. They share an apartment in the Warlocks’ Quarter.”
“That’s good info,” I said, reaching in my bag for a pad of paper and pencil. “Where specifically?”
“A few doors down from The Magic Touch. It’s a slum, you can’t miss it. That’s part of why they always hang out at that an excuse for a pub,” Aurelia said. “But I don't imagine they'll be spending much more time there now that Seth is gone.”
“I wouldn't blame them. That reminds me, the last time we talked, you said Seth was involved in a warlocks-only group started by Professor Grimm. Do you think the group could’ve had anything to do with this?” I asked.
“Probably. That group was always weird,” Aurelia said. “It didn’t help that Seth never wanted to tell me anything about it.”
“Were Aidan and Callum in the group too?” I asked.
“I think so, but I’m not sure. Like I said, anything Seth did they did too, so I can only assume,” Aurelia said.
“Do the words Black Brotherhood ring any bells for you?” I asked. Aurelia’s brows furrowed as she thought about it.
“I think I’ve seen something about it in one of my history textbooks, but I can’t remember anything about it if I have,” Aurelia said. “Why?”
“Just curious,” I said. Aurelia smirked at me.
“Maybe I was wrong about you, stray,” she said. “You’re clearly more talented than I thought.”
“Uh, thanks, I guess?”
“It was a compliment,” Aurelia said. A few moments passed in which I didn’t know what to say — what could I say to that? — but eventually, I cleared my throat and kept going.
“I spoke to Seth before he died, and he told me it was you who broke up with him, not the other way around,” I said. Aurelia scoffed and rolled her eyes.
“Right, because nothing is ever his fault,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s childish, always was. He can’t take responsibility for his actions. It’s way easier to blame me for the breakup than to admit he was a selfish jerk,” Aurelia said.
Regardless of what either of them said, the truth was probably somewhere in the middle.
“So who broke up with whom, then?”
“He broke up with me, and I swear it was because I was asking too many questions about Professor Grimm and their weirdo warlocks’ group,” Aurelia said.
With my eyes locked on hers, I concentrated and slipped into her thoughts.
But it was for the best anyway. If I’d stayed with him, I might be dead now too, she thought. Her dread splashed over me like cold water. She wasn’t lying — she really was afraid.
“Did Professor Grimm scare you?” I asked. Aurelia hesitated but let out a sigh and nodded.
“How couldn’t he? The man was always creepy,” Aurelia said.
“How so?”
“I dunno, I can’t put it into words, there was always just something… off about him. He never had anything nice to say about anyone, and passing his class was almost as impossible as breaking into the Bank of Moon Grove,” Aurelia said.
I didn’t know anything about the security of the town’s bank, but given the magical nature of Moon Grove, I took Aurelia's point — and based on my own interaction with Nolan, I didn’t blame Aurelia for being afraid of him. He was strange, no doubt about it.
“He seemed to get his jollies from making witches’ lives miserable, but he gave all the warlocks, even dumb ones like Aidan and Callum, a free pass,” Aurelia said.
“Did Seth ever tell you anything about the book Professor Grimm gave him?”
“No, but like I told you before, he was always writing or drawing in it, so it must’ve been important for something,” Aurelia said.
Lilith only knows what he was writing about though, Aurelia thought as she chewed on her lower lip. Goosebumps rippled up her arms.
“What about Seth? Did he ever scare you?”
Aurelia looked at me like she thought I’d read her mind by asking the question — hopefully she didn’t realize that was exactly what I’d done.
“Honestly? Yeah, sometimes,” Aurelia said.
“How?”
“He was always a little rough around the edges, and at first that’s what I liked about him. You know, everyone loves a bad boy with tattoos,” Aurelia said, shrugging.
I wanted to ask her about Seth’s teardrop tattoo, but we’d have to come back to that.
“But then what?”
“Well, like I said, he got really involved with that group, and it just… it changed him. He went from being emotionally unavailable in a cool way to an angry jerk,” Aurelia said.
“What was he angry about?”
“Everything, but mostly about how he thought the witches had their heels on the throats of warlocks and how the vampires were helping them keep everyone else in Moon Grove down,” Aurelia said.
“He said that?” I asked, incredulous.
“Yeah. I told you, that group did something to him. I didn’t recognize him anymore,” Aurelia said. “I think Professor Grimm put ideas in his head, and not good ones.”
“Hence his clash with Delia,” I said, and Aurelia nodded.
“Exactly. He never would’ve done something like that before he joined that group,” Aurelia said. “He was in a band with Aidan and Callum. They were all awful musicians — I went to one of their practices once — but Seth loved performing. The warlocks’ group seemed to take his passion for that and redirect it to hating everyone that wasn’t a warlock.”
“Sadly, that’s not an original stor
y,” I sighed. “So you think the group radicalized him somehow?”
“Definitely. He was never the same after he started spending all that time with Professor Grimm and the other warlocks,” Aurelia said. “And I swear that’s why he broke up with me. It was almost like they made him choose between the group and me.”
That explained why Seth had told me Aurelia was the one who’d initiated the breakup — it took attention away from how much the group had impacted his life.
“I noticed that Seth had a tattoo on one of his wrists, three teardrops in a triangular shape Did he ever say anything about it?”
“No, but he got it after he joined the group. I think they all have tattoos like that,” Aurelia said.
I sat bolt upright. That more or less confirmed the link between the Black Brotherhood and this warlocks’ group. Why else would all the members get matching tattoos of a symbol shared with an ancient brotherhood?
“Professor Hallewell told me Seth was failing both her and Delia’s classes. Was that true?” I asked. Aurelia sighed and nodded.
“It was, and I think it’s because he got involved in that cult,” Aurelia said, and I shuddered at her use of the word — it’d occurred to me too, but now it was more apparent than ever that the Black Brotherhood, if that’s what I was really dealing with, was definitely a cult.
“I tried to help Seth with his homework, but he lost interest. I think he just accepted he was going to fail their classes and be held back a year,” Aurelia said. “Nothing mattered more to him than the group and that dumb book.”
It all kept coming back to the book. Clearly, it held some sort of secrets, but what? I’d looked at it more times than I could count, but no matter what I tried, it was always blank. I couldn’t forget about the bloody shard of glass I’d found at Nolan’s house either.
Was it possible the book I’d lifted from Delia’s office wasn’t Seth’s? The thought had crossed my mind more than once. Then again, what if Delia was killed because she’d taken the book — and what if someone murdered Seth to punish him for letting the group’s secrets free?
Was that why Phoebe was attacked too? She’d obviously seen something, and whoever killed Delia wanted to make sure she didn’t repeat it to anyone. But why wouldn’t the killer have just killed her too instead of wiping her memory?