“I thought our purpose here was to discuss the attacks, not throw mindless accusations at every supernatural who strikes you as suspicious,” said Lady Montgomery. “As it is, I fear you’re wasting your time. The necromancer’s guild keeps track of our people far more efficiently than the mages’ guild. Isn’t your second-in-command currently on holiday playing golf?”
Drake snickered loudly, while Ivy gave a satisfied nod. “There you have it.”
Lord Sutherland’s face reddened. Despite his loss of control over the situation, it was hard to feel triumph when it couldn’t be plainer that the mages wanted one rule for themselves and another for everyone else. And what if they did haul the psychics in for questioning? Not to mention the vampires, whose safety depended on anonymity? It wouldn’t help them catch the person responsible, that was for sure.
“I think we’ve heard enough,” the Mage Lord said. “No shifters will serve on our council until we get to the bottom of this. That includes ambassadorial positions.”
As one, the shifters rose to their feet, and a wave of tension swept through the room.
“Why should we be punished for the actions of others?” asked a stocky male shifter. “Has no mage ever committed a crime? What about the witches—will they be removed from the council as well?”
“The witches are necessary allies for us to get to the bottom of this violent and depraved attack on our council,” Lord Sutherland snarled. “However, unless we can find conclusive evidence that the spells were entirely responsible, both of the killers confessed to their crimes and were executed for it. That is reason enough to put a temporary ban on shifters entering our headquarters until this sorry business is cleared up.”
My hands clenched, my temper brewing. Evelyn rose to the surface, and I was on my feet before I’d quite grasped that she’d taken over. “This is witchcraft,” I said loudly, or Evelyn did. “They aimed to destroy us from within. Have you forgotten your history so easily? Have you forgotten that you were almost destroyed?”
Whoa. Hey there, Evelyn. I’m not old enough to know that.
Lord Sutherland whirled on me. “And you feel better qualified to speak on the matter than those with much more experience than you have, do you?”
“I’m—related to the mages,” I said, wishing I could yank Evelyn back in control to explain herself. “I know some of their history.”
Thanks a bunch, Evelyn. Having lived in a limbo state for the last twenty-one years meant she was technically older than a fair few of the mages and probably did know more than they did. About the world before the invasion, certainly.
“This meeting is over,” Lord Sutherland said. “Council, come with me.”
Translation: he wanted to hold a secret meeting only for his own mage council, without the rest of us.
The shifters left the room first, and a group of mages immediately followed, probably to escort them off the premises. Lord Sutherland might claim the ban was temporary, but it was one step from there to a full ban on any non-mages from serving on the council at all. And if they intended on interrogating every coven leader in the city—what about Asher?
I have to do something. I watched the room clear, one eye on Lord Sutherland, but when Ivy moved to waylay him, Evelyn rose to the surface again. I bit my tongue and half-ran from the room, turned sharply to the left and ran through the entrance hall until I found an alcove under the stairs to duck into.
Tapping into the spirit realm, I turned to Evelyn, who floated beside me.
“Really?” I said to her. “I know you have opinions, but nobody in that room knows you’re alive. Stop risking both our necks because you can’t keep your mouth shut.”
Her eyes narrowed, her hair streaming back in a non-existent breeze. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Try me. You know who’s behind this?”
She shook her head, her mouth tight with anger. “Not a Hemlock. And by the way, we’re not alone here.”
I turned on the spot, seeing two spirits not far away from me, hidden behind a closed door. Two very familiar spirits. Frowning, I opened the door, and two people fell out in a tangle of limbs. The first was Morgan, the only Lynn not invited to the meeting, and the second was Lloyd.
“Hey, Jas,” he said. “Thought I heard your voice.”
“What the hell?” I peered behind them into what looked like a broom cupboard. “What are you doing eavesdropping on secret council meetings?”
“It wasn’t deliberate,” Morgan said, disentangling himself from Lloyd. “We had to hide when people started leaving the meeting room.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Of course it was your idea. How did you get in here to begin with?”
“Shadow spells,” said Morgan. “We followed a couple of the mages when they went through the gates. I heard a noise in the spirit realm. You guys didn’t seem tuned into it, so I thought I’d check it out.”
“You heard what in the spirit realm?” I asked. “What was Lloyd even doing here?”
Lloyd looked down, his ears reddening. “I was going to wait outside for you anyway, Jas. But we had to hide when everyone came out of the meeting room. Are you sure they’re gone?”
“For your sakes, I bloody hope so. What exactly did you hear?”
“A noise,” Morgan said. “Kinda like howling. I think there’s something dead in here.”
“Do you want to be the one to tell the mages their headquarters is haunted?” I shook my head. Then it hit me. “Shit. They killed the shifter who attacked the mages.”
And his ghost must have stuck around.
“Killed him where?” said Lloyd, looking faintly perturbed.
“In the jail or wherever they were holding him.” Damn. After Evelyn, the last thing I needed was to give the mages another reason to target me and my friends. “I expect this nonsense from Morgan, but you should know better than to piss off the council. You know they expelled all the shifter ambassadors?”
“Damn, really?” said Morgan. “I’d have thought the boss would have put her foot down.”
“The mages make the rules,” I reminded him. “Fine, I’ll find us an empty room. One quick look, and if there’s no spirit in here, we’re getting out. Deal?”
I took them to the library, where I sealed the door shut with a locking charm, hoping the mages had already started their top-secret council meeting and wouldn’t come barging in. Then I set up some candles, mostly for Lloyd’s sake. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
Then again, if the shifter’s ghost was haunting this very building and had unfinished business? Technically, it was my job to look for the wayward spirit.
I plunged into Death, looking around the blurred greyness. “Where did you hear the howling?”
“Uh… over there,” said Morgan, pointing ahead. “I think.”
“Really helpful.” I turned on the spot, ghostly figures drifting past us, and turned off my spirit sight to get my bearings. The problem with Death looking exactly the same everywhere was that it was hard to pinpoint a specific ghost, especially if you’d never met the living person. I’d seen the shifter in the vision, but it wasn’t the same. “If he’s actually haunting the place, we’d have better luck searching on foot.”
“Except for the part where we’re screwed if we get caught?” said Lloyd.
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s why you should have texted me so I could ask the boss to search the place—”
A howling noise came from the grey fog. I quickly tapped into the spirit realm again, floating out of my body through the closed door into the entrance hall.
The shifter appeared. It was him, all right—the same guy I’d seen through the tracking spell, right there in the middle of the mages’ entrance hall.
“Hey,” I said to him. “You—”
The shifter looked up at me, his pupils dilating. Then a horrible howl tore from his throat, chilling my blood, and scales rose to cover his arms, his hands becoming clawed.
&nbs
p; In one bound, he turned and sprinted towards the doors of the mages’ guild, disappearing the instant he passed through them.
“Hey!” I shouted after him. “Come back.”
“And you nag me about taking risks,” Evelyn hissed in my ear.
I ignored her, and blinked back into my body. “He’s gone.”
“Was he, like… possessed?” Morgan frowned, staring through the door with the vacant expression that indicated he still had his spirit sight turned on. “He didn’t look like he shifted on purpose.”
“Same as the other guy,” I said. “But—what the hell is going on?”
“I think we all want to know that, Jas,” said Lady Montgomery’s voice from the spirit realm.
10
“What were you thinking?” demanded Lady Montgomery.
Lloyd, Morgan and I faced the boss, who’d thankfully elected to wait until we’d left the mages’ headquarters before she launched into yelling at us. It was a small miracle none of the Mage Lords had seen us doing the walk of shame out of the building.
As a top-ranked necromancer, of course Lady Montgomery could sense if anyone else decided to go for a wander around the spirit realm if she paid close attention. I should have known she’d have one eye on me after the meeting. At least she hadn’t heard me talking to Evelyn.
“The shifter’s ghost was in there,” I told her. “I don’t know where he ran off to, but he moved in and out of this building of his own accord. A ghost shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“Not only did you find a ghost and decide not to tell me, you let him free to roam around the building?” she asked.
“He wasn’t tied to the place,” I said. “Not like a regular ghost. I didn’t see him pass through the gates, either. He was just… gone.”
“And you invited your friends to help, despite their not being official council members?”
“It was me who heard the ghost first,” Morgan said. “I heard howling from the spirit realm. That’s why Lloyd and I came in to tell Jas.”
“Howling?” she said, in tones that suggested she thought he was talking bollocks.
“I wouldn’t have gone in there, otherwise,” he said defensively. “I know we’re not on the council—it was my idea, not Lloyd’s.”
Lady Montgomery’s mouth pinched. “As you might have gathered, the peace I’ve worked to maintain for my entire career is in danger of collapse, and breaking into the mages’ headquarters to use necromancy without guild permission was a foolish and selfish move.”
Morgan’s face flushed. “I came to meet Ilsa after the meeting. And Lloyd came to meet Jas. We’re not on duty until later, so—”
“You’re not on duty at all,” she said. “Morgan, you’re to clean the training room. Lloyd, you’re to clean the summoning chambers. And Jas, you’re on archive duty until this evening. No arguments.”
There were none to be had. The shifter’s ghost had disappeared without a trace, leaving yet another basket of unanswered questions behind.
Three hours into my stint in the archives and I was about ready to scream. I normally found archive duty fairly relaxing, but the dusty books seemed to mock me with their reminder that I still hadn’t found out anything about the shade or how to undo the curse binding Keir and me.
Evelyn sighed. I tilted my head, turning on my spirit sight to see her floating beside me, her blue-grey eyes darting around.
“There are some disadvantages to being conscious,” she muttered. “I can’t get away from the boredom either.”
“Hey, Evelyn,” I said. “You were alive thirty-one years ago.”
“Well observed,” she said dryly. “I was a child, but yes, I was alive then.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know where Lady Harper might have hidden the code for her journal, would you? She wrote it the same year the Hemlocks ended up stuck in the woods.”
“No,” she said. “And before you start asking probing questions, let me reiterate that I was a thirteen-year-old child at the time. Leila was four.”
“You lived in hiding in Edinburgh, right?” I said, mentally calculating. That meant Leila had barely been a teenager in that vision I’d seen of her in the forest during the invasion. “Hang on—but the Hemlocks weren’t stuck in the forest for all your life, then.”
“They spent enough time in there that they might as well have been,” she said sourly. “The rest of us lived in hiding long before the invasion. That’s why we weren’t able to access the full extent of our power. And that’s why I will free our magic, so we can become what we deserve to be.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said. “I let you create a scene in front of the mages—which almost got me into a lot of trouble, I might add—but you have got to stop acting like both of us won’t be deep in the shit if the mages find out you exist. You know that. Do you really not care if they lock us up?”
“Soon there will be no prisons to contain either of us,” she said. “The mages are heading full-tilt towards their own extinction. They barely believe the Ancients still exist.”
Yeah, she’s probably not wrong there. “I thought it was witches doing this. Or the Orion League. Have you had personal experience with the League?”
“Before the Sidhe came, everyone had heard of them, and everyone feared them. The one good thing the faeries did was wipe them off the face of the earth.”
“Now you’re praising the faeries who destroyed the world?” I said incredulously. “All right, I’m done.”
I tapped out of the spirit realm and turned back to the mountain of files on the desk. No rest for the disgraced.
After a few silent minutes passed, the door opened and Keir walked in. At this point, I was so relieved of the distraction I didn’t care that he was probably breaking the rules by being here.
“Hey, Keir,” I said. “I’m in the doghouse.”
“Looks like the archives to me.”
“Ha.” I put my head down on the desk. “Would you believe I got stuck on probation for attempting to find a ghost at the mages’ headquarters?”
“A ghost?” he echoed. “Of who?”
“The shifter, who they executed for attacking them. I take it you’re actually allowed to be in here?”
“I came to talk to your boss, actually. She wanted to… well, warn me about what was said at the meeting. The registers, and vampires.”
“Ugh.” I lifted my head. “And she told you I’m in disgrace?”
“More or less, but I want to hear it from you.”
“You probably heard it already. Shifters banned from the council, witches probably next, Isabel and I got dismissed, and the mages had the shifter who attacked them at the hotel executed. Then his ghost showed up after the meeting and ran off, and the boss caught me.” I heaved a sigh. “In fairness, it’s as much Morgan and Lloyd’s fault as it is mine, but this is the second time I’ve seen a shifter ghost run around in shifted form and then just disappear without being banished.”
Keir frowned. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a shifter ghost transforming, either. Did you tell the boss that?”
“I did, but she’s pissed beyond measure at the council and probably concerned we’ll be next,” I said. “Besides, I can’t say I’ve ever banished any shifter ghosts before. Not in shifted form, anyway. They always look human.”
Keir rested his hands on the desk. “Maybe we could poke around later.”
“Keir, I’ll lose my apprenticeship if anything else goes wrong.”
“All right,” he said. “How about I take you out after your shift and we conveniently wander in the right direction?”
“What direction?” I asked. “That’s the problem, I don’t know where the shifter ghost went. He wasn’t tethered to the mages’ guild at all.” Which would make him a high-ranked ghost. Pity the boss didn’t believe us.
“Hmm.” He lifted his hands, stepping back from the desk. “I don’t know, then. Were you near a spirit line?”
“Nope,” I said
. “The only explanation I can think of is that it might be an aftereffect of the spell someone used on him to make him attack the council. But that’s a stretch. There’s no proof.”
Keir tapped his fingers on the desk. “Why would a witch want to start a war with the council?”
“They might not have had a choice in the matter,” I said, thinking of Asher.
His brows shot up. “Oh?”
I told him what Asher had shared about the signature, the lost coven, and the link to the Orion League.
Keir’s mouth thinned. “I can’t say I ever had the pleasure of meeting anyone from the League in person, but they’re one of the reasons my family lived in hiding before the invasion.”
“Really?” It shouldn’t surprise me. I might not remember my own early childhood or my family, but it sounded like the League had been the bane of the supernatural world at large before the Sidhe had come along.
He dipped his head. “The invasion wiped most of us out, but the League picked off the remains. There was an attempted revival once, but that was when I was a child.”
“Might it be linked to what’s happening now?”
“I couldn’t say.” He turned to the map of the UK on the wall, a distant look in his eyes.
“I think they terrorised my coven, too.” I thought of Evelyn’s words, the expression on her face when she’d said they’d forced my family into hiding. There was guilt in there, and shame. Not emotions I saw from her often. “I wouldn’t know, because Lady Harper decided to write her journal—written nine years before the invasion—in a code with no translator.”
“Seriously?” He pulled his gaze from the map. “Where’d you find this journal?”
“Under the floorboards in an old country house balanced on a cliff in the Highlands. There’s paranoia and there’s being downright impractical.” I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, it’s not much help now. She worked for the Council and the other Hemlocks didn’t, so I assume she’d be ticked off if it did collapse. On the other hand, the original Council all died. Maybe this one will, too.”
Witch's Spirit (The Hemlock Chronicles Book 3) Page 11