Witch's Spirit (The Hemlock Chronicles Book 3)

by Emma L. Adams

  “He did?” It shouldn’t surprise me that he knew at least one shifter—those who weren’t part of a pack were loner types, like vampires.

  Keir and I crossed South Bridge, heading for Princes Street. “Do you have the stone with you?” he asked.

  “No, I left it with Isabel. A spell that can force shifters to lose control outside of the full moon, though—if it’s true, we have to warn the other shifters they might be next. And I bet it’s not a priority to the mages. They’re more concerned with saving their own skins.”

  “Agreed.” Keir took the lead, and we stopped outside a mechanic’s shop. The shop was called “Auto-Magic.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Who can even afford a car these days?”

  “Rich people, obviously,” he said. “Clancy works for the mages mostly… another reason he doesn’t live with the other shifters. But they’re good business. Looks like he’s awake—the light is on.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “One thing.’ Keir caught my arm before I opened the door. “Don’t bring up the register if you don’t have to. He’s like anyone who was a kid during the invasion. He won’t react well to the idea of having to go into hiding again.”

  “I’ll just ask him about the stones, that’s all.”

  We entered the shop, which was staffed by a big man whose muscular arms implied he’d once been a wrestler or something similar. Now he resembled more of a cuddly teddy bear—softer, but no less dangerous-looking.

  “Hey, Clancy,” Keir said. “Sorry we’re here so early. This is Jas—”

  The man lifted a hand. A hand that was suddenly scaled.

  “Oh, shit.” I took a step back.

  There was a blinding flash of white light. I leapt for the door, but he moved fast, swiping at me with a claw. I dove to the ground, narrowly missing being skewered, and Keir jumped onto the desk, grabbing a piece of metal and hitting the shifter in the back of the head. Clancy blinked once, dazed, then recovered. I grabbed a chunk of metal from the floor and hurled it at him, ignoring the prickle of Hemlock magic at my fingertips. Keir wouldn’t appreciate me killing his friend, even if he was out of his mind. I couldn’t even tell what animal he was—some kind of wolf-like creature, covered in thick grey fur, but with scaled hands and claws.

  Keir crashed into him from the side and the shifter staggered, off balance. I glimpsed a gleaming band on his wrist, so tight that it’d melded into the scaled skin deeply enough to draw blood. I knew it.

  I activated a shield spell, angling it so the shifter flew backwards, crashing into the desk in a heap. Before he could recover, I threw a trapping spell at him. Red lines criss-crossed the desk, pinning him down.

  “Get that wristband off him!” I yelled at Keir.

  Both of us scrambled over the collapsed desk, and I grabbed the shifter’s clawed hand. The shifter roared, clearly in pain.

  “He’d have to shift back to get it off,” Keir said.

  “Hang on.” I searched the spells on my wrist. “This might work. Unlocking charm.”

  I found the right spell and threw it at the shifter’s flailing claw, but nothing happened. The red lines of the trapping spell strained as he fought to break free.

  Keir swore. “I can’t drain him, not like this. And he’s too strong for a vampire to bring down.”

  Damn. “Fine. Evelyn, you’d better behave this time. Keir, can you hold his arm still?”

  Keir grabbed the shifter’s arm. “Jas, what’re you—”

  “You might want to duck.” I tapped into my Hemlock magic and pressed my hand to the shifter’s wrist.

  The band exploded, throwing both Keir and me off our feet. Keir was up first, catching the piece of stone as it flew through the air, while the shifter slumped over sideways.

  Then his fur receded and so did his scales. In seconds, a man lay panting in the trapping spell circle, behind the wreckage of the collapsed desk.

  “Sorry about that,” I said to him.

  The man’s eyes rolled back in his skull and he passed out.

  “Wonderful.” I deactivated the trapping spell with a quick flash of my Hemlock magic. “He’ll be sore as hell when he wakes up, but I’ll be seriously pissed if it turns out he put that thing on deliberately.”

  “He won’t have.” Keir turned the stone fragment over in his hand. “Someone did it to him.”

  “I know.” I sent a silent thanks to Evelyn for not causing more harm to him than she had to. “Guess we should wait for him to wake up so we can find out who did it.”

  “Might as well fix the place while we’re at it,” he said, lifting the end of the collapsed desk.

  By the time the shifter returned to consciousness, his workroom was almost back to normal.

  “Keir,” said Clancy, crawling to his knees. “What… mate, what’s going on?”

  “You shifted and nearly skewered us to death,” I told him, still feeling less than charitable towards the guy. My whole body hurt, while Keir bore scratch marks on his face that he refused to use a healing spell to get rid of.

  “Who are you?” He scrambled to his feet. “You… you attacked me.”

  “Jas—Lyons.” What was it with me tripping up over my name lately? “Do you remember who put that wristband on you?”

  “What wristband?”

  “This was part of it.” Keir held up the gleaming stone. “Where’d you get it?”

  Clancy frowned, his brow wrinkling. “I… it’s vague. Someone came into my shop last night…”

  “What did they look like?” Keir asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember. It’s all a blur. I was supposed to… there was somewhere I was meant to go.”

  I glanced at Keir. Both of us were thinking the same: the enemy couldn’t possibly have known that Keir and I were coming here today. They hadn’t targeted him through his connection with Keir and me—but he did work for the mages. My blood went cold.

  “You were ‘meant’ to go somewhere?” I asked. “According to whom?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t remember anything?” I asked. “All right, would you object if I used a tracking spell?”

  It might not work, considering we’d made a mess of the place, but Clancy nodded. “Go ahead. I’d like to see what the fuck happened. I think I hit my head.”

  “I hit your head,” Keir said. “To stop you from trampling Jas. You might have a headache for a bit.”

  He waved a hand. “Never mind that, I’m just glad you’re not hurt.”

  I found a clear spot on the floor to use the spell, glad I’d brewed up a new batch of trackers.

  Crouching down, I activated the spell, and immediately, the shop appeared in black and white. Then I pushed some of my Hemlock magic into the circle.

  The scene snapped into colour, and I jumped when the door clattered open behind me. I turned around to see the newcomer, a youngish man with a freckled face. He wore a waterproof coat with the hood pulled up, and walked slowly, his feet dragging.

  “Excuse me, can I help you?” Clancy said from behind the counter. “We’re closed.”

  There was a flash of white light, and Clancy’s hands shifted to claws, dropping the pieces of metal he was fiddling with. The man shuffled to the desk, leaning forwards to grab Clancy’s hand. A gleam lit up the air and he shoved the wristband onto the bigger man’s rapidly shifting wrist.

  “The next time you see a mage,” he said. “You’re to activate that band. You hear me?”

  “I… hear you,” Clancy said, his eyes glazed.

  The newcomer turned and shuffled away. Not slowly, but in weirdly off-balance steps. Is he being controlled, too? My mind reeled. Not only had my worst fears about those stones been confirmed, but the intruder had also forced the shifter to partially shift without even touching him.

  The spell cut out, and I looked up at Keir’s frowning face.

  “What did you see?” He crouched at my side. “Jas, you okay?”


  “I can draw a picture of the person who came in,” I said, becoming conscious that my hands were shaking. “But—Clancy, he told you to activate that band you were wearing the next time you saw a mage. It’d have forced you to shift, and…”

  Clancy fell back into his chair, looking aghast. “Someone wanted me to act as their personal assassin?”

  “Whoever it is, they’re working against the shifters as a collective,” Keir said, as I got my notepad out. “There have been two other attacks this week. Each of them has involved a shifter under some kind of mind-control spell, attacking the mages seemingly of their own free will. Now we know for sure what form those spells take.” He put the stone into his pocket.

  I sketched the man from the vision onto the notepad page, while Keir gave Clancy an abbreviated explanation of our suspicions about the stones’ role in the enemy’s plan. I’d blown the rest of the wristband to pieces when I’d used my magic on it, but the stone was bad enough on its own.

  “This place is warded,” Clancy said. “Heavily. I got the spells from the market. But he just walked in.”

  “You know him?” I held up the notepad to show him the picture. “Would you be able to pick him out of a crowd?”

  “It’s fuzzy. Until—you broke the wristband.” He looked down. “Then my thoughts became clear again. But I don’t know that man. Should I report this?”

  “No,” Keir said quickly. “Not with the mages as trigger-happy as they are at the moment.”

  “But—” I bit my lip. The mages wouldn’t believe any of us, but if Clancy hinted that he planned to attack them, they might lock him up as a precaution. “Do you know anything about that stone?”

  “No bloody clue. I fix cars, not magic.” He slapped a palm on the desk. “Bloody cheek of them, destroying my wards. I didn’t spend the last fifteen years building this place from the ground up only to be forced into hiding again.”

  “I can redo your wards,” I said. “But that’s not to say the enemy won’t break through them again.”

  He eyed me. “Witch, are you?”

  “Yeah, I am.” What the hell. The enemy would probably know I’d been the one to remove the wristband. I was pretty sure no regular witch magic could have done it.

  If I hadn’t come here with Keir, he might have killed someone and been executed like the others.

  I went outside to reset the wards, adding a few tripwire security spells for good measure. I hadn’t actually seen how the intruder had undone the wards, but that seemed the least pressing issue.

  After I’d thoroughly warded the place, Keir and I left. As we walked, I pulled out the notepad to examine my drawing of the man’s face. “I wish I could track someone through the spirit realm using this. It’d be much more efficient.”

  “We know he’s a witch,” Keir said. “That’s a starting point.”

  “Even then, he might have been wearing someone else’s face,” I said. “Would Clancy object if I told Vance, at least? He’s part shifter. He won’t turn him in.”

  Keir’s brows rose. “I suppose if I’m going to be forced to put my name on a register in the near-future, I might as well make acquaintances of the mages.”

  “Keir—” I broke off. What could I say? He might well be right. “The mages I’m friends with aren’t local, and they oppose the very idea of a register. If they can work out what this stone is and track down who created it, we’ll be able to stop it.”

  But Vance and the others had no say in what Edinburgh’s Council of Mages thought was best for the city.

  He gave a short nod. “For everyone’s sakes, I hope you’re right.”

  I messaged Isabel and Wanda telling them I was on my way to the hotel.

  Wanda replied first, so when we reached the hotel, Keir and I went to her room.

  The smell of burning wafted out when she opened the door. “Come in. Drake and I are burning Lady Harper’s old crap. It’s fairly therapeutic.”

  “Uh, it’s not the useful old crap, is it?” I said. “Not the journal?”

  “No, of course not,” said Wanda. “Oh—it’s your… friend?”

  “I’m Keir,” he said. “The vampire.”

  She blinked. “Vampire?”

  “You didn’t tell them about me?” Keir gave me a mock hurt look.

  “It slipped my mind.”

  “I’m devastated.” He made a big show of turning around, and I grabbed his shoulder and yanked him into the room.

  “Keir, this is Wanda, a childhood friend. That’s Drake, a pyromaniac.”

  “She means the most badass fire mage in all the realms.” Drake held a piece of paper over a flame in his palm. “Should I burn the map, or have you not ruled out buried treasure?”

  “Leave the map. And the journal. Is Vance in?”

  “Is he ever?” said Drake. “I don’t think he’s stopped for a minute outside of a council meeting the whole time we’ve been here.”

  “I need to talk to him. Urgently,” I said, beckoning to Keir. “You still have that stone?”

  He pulled it out of his pocket, and I took it. “Isabel has the other one in her room. This is what’s causing the shifters to lose their minds.”

  “Let me see that.” Drake walked up and picked the stone out of my hand. “This looks valuable.”

  “Can your fire damage it?” I asked. “I couldn’t put a dent in it.”

  Blazing orange flames engulfed the stone, but it remained in one piece. “Shit, it’s fireproof.” Drake shook his hand and the fire went out. If anything, the stone gleamed brighter than before. “Where’d you get it?”

  “The shifter who attacked us was wearing a wristband with that stone embedded into it,” I explained. “When it flashed, he shifted. He said the dude who put the spell on him told him to attack the next mage he saw.”

  Wanda had gone white. “That’s sick. Who put the spell on him?”

  I held up my notepad. “This man. Recognise him? He’s a witch.”

  Drake’s mouth twisted. “Nope, doesn’t look familiar. What the bloody hell is this stone?”

  “I kind of hoped one of you would know,” I said. “A stone that affects shifter powers… surely someone’s encountered it before.”

  There came a knock on the door. I got there first, and opened it.

  Isabel stood on the threshold, wild-eyed and staring. “Jas, get out of here. All of you. There’s a—”

  The whole hotel trembled, and the lights went out.

  Then, howling came from outside.

  13

  Flames burst into life behind me, illuminating Drake’s hands. “Isabel, what is chasing you?”

  Isabel’s eyes were wide, her pupils dilated. It was rare enough that I saw her terrified that I knew what it was before the howling started again. The air chilled, and greyness began to filter in.

  “Ghosts,” I said. “Is it them? Shifter ghosts?”

  I knew the answer. The chill was unmistakable.

  “One of them appeared in my room,” she said, her hands clenching. “My spells went right through him. I know it sounds absurd, but when his claws almost touched me, they felt real.”

  “I’m going to check it out.” One glance at Keir’s distant expression told me he’d already left his body behind. I did likewise, plunging into Death.

  Grey fog unfolded, swamping the room and furthering the chill that permeated the building. Glowing lights marked the presence of the others close by, and as I blinked, Keir’s spirit came into focus. He hovered at my side, frowning into the grey.

  A tall man appeared, his hands covered in grey-black scales and claws.

  Another shifter ghost.

  He threw back his head and howled, and two other howls answered from elsewhere in the building. Crap. More shifters must have died.

  “Hey,” I said loudly. “Get out. Go beyond the gates of Death.”

  The shifter’s gaze snapped onto me, then he pounced.

  As a ghost, dodging was harder, and he land
ed on me, his huge paws knocking me over in mid-air. I flipped over, wincing. Ow. I shouldn’t be able to feel pain as a ghost.

  “Jas!” Keir shouted.

  I flipped the right way up, alarm flickering through me. He shouldn’t be able to hurt me, but my chest stung where he’d swiped. Sure felt real to me.

  Luckily, so was my magic.

  I drew on my necromantic power and gave him a firm shove, knocking the shifter back a few inches. He roared, the noise echoing through the spirit realm, and I spotted Keir grappling with another. Like the first shifter, he looked solid, even though they shouldn’t be.

  Something is seriously wrong.

  Hemlock magic surged to the surface, forming a whip in my hands. I lashed the shifter ghost around the neck, holding him still. “How are you here?” I snarled at him. “You’re not supposed to be able to touch me.”

  The shifter struggled, fighting against the whip around his neck. My Hemlock magic was clearly hurting him—but he remained in one piece. He had no reason to fear physical threats.

  “Tell me!” I said urgently. “Tell me who sent you—”

  Claws stabbed me in the spine, protruding from my chest. Red. Glistening.

  Keir shouted my name.

  And then I was flying backwards, into oblivion.

  Death called, but someone caught my hands before I could fall into its jaws. I held on tight, unsure if the screaming in my ears was coming from me or the shifter. The hotel room seesawed, my ears ringing with screams, crashes, the sound of breaking glass. The spirit realm came into view again, and in front of me, Evelyn blasted the shifter with Hemlock magic. The shifter flew back a few metres, then lunged at Evelyn.

  “Don’t!” I croaked, but my body and spirit hurt so much, the words were barely a whimper.

  Death faded once more and the grip of a hand on mine solidified. “Jas, hang on! I’ve got you.” Isabel took both my hands and I clung onto her, her healing magic flowing over the wounds in my chest. Through the haze of pain, I saw Wanda’s hands glowing blue as she aimed her icy magic at—

  Holy shit.

  The back wall of the room had gone, the window reduced to nothing but shattered glass. My wards—the shimmering glyphs that’d covered the entire building… they’d vanished. The floor trembled beneath us, threatening to collapse.