Witch on the Run: A Blair Wilkes Mystery Book 14 (Paperback)

The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It would have been a perfect day, if not for the very drunk elf lying in a bush and yelling at the lake as Nathan and I walked back to Fairy Falls. 

When we passed him, Thistle the elf let out a muffled yelp of pain, possibly because the bush in question was covered in pointy spines. Thistle wasn’t known for making wise life choices.

“Are you lost?” I asked him. “You can’t be comfortable lying in there.”

Thistle looked up at me peevishly. “I had an itch I couldn’t reach, so as a matter of fact, I’m perfectly comfortable.”

“All right. It’s up to you.” I rolled my eyes and continued towards the glittering expanse of the lake that bordered Fairy Falls. Thick forest gathered on its northern and western shores, while rolling hills lay to the south and east. I’d always felt the town had a storybook-like appearance, and that was particularly true on a clear-skied day like this one.

As Nathan and I walked on, the elf let out a strident scream. “Help! Get me out of here!”

“I thought you didn’t want to get out,” I said over my shoulder.

“So cruel,” he wailed. “You are very cruel to walk past someone in need of your help.”

“You just told me to leave you alone,” I pointed out. “Unless you want me to get you out of that bush?”

I didn’t particularly want to put my hands into a mass of spiky leaves to rescue a temperamental elf whose clothes stank of alcohol, but magic came in handy in these types of situations. When I pulled out my wand, though, Thistle yelped and dove under the bush, further entangling himself in the spiky leaves. “Help, I’m being attacked!”

“I’m not attacking you. Don’t be absurd.”

“Help! The witch is attacking me.”

I raised a brow at Nathan, who strode over to the bushes and reached out, grabbing the elf by the scruff of his neck. Thistle’s legs flailed and kicked, but he scarcely got out a yelp before Nathan planted him on the hillside. When his feet touched the ground, Thistle swayed on the spot, almost face-planting into the bush again. “I demand you unhand me!”

“I already did.” Nathan lifted his hand to demonstrate. “You’re welcome.”

And with that, we left the gibbering elf behind and continued to walk towards the cobbled streets and neat houses on the edge of the lake.

“Not the homecoming I expected,” I remarked. 

“No, but it could be worse,” Nathan said. “At least you didn’t have to fish him out of the lake.”

“Don’t give him ideas.” This was the first time Nathan and I had been on a holiday as a couple since the New Year, and I’d known we’d be coming back to a set of fires to put out, but I hadn’t expected a drunken elf to be one of them. 

As Thistle followed our trail along the lakefront, his out-of-tune singing caused the merpeople basking in the shallows to come and goggle at him. From what I heard of the lyrics, the song told a meandering tale of an elf who fell in love with a human. Hadn’t Thistle himself done the same? I wondered if his human girlfriend was aware of how he’d decided to spend his afternoon as I scanned the shore of the lake for my familiar, Sky. He usually came to meet me when I returned from a trip away, but if he’d heard the elf singing, he might have decided it was wiser to keep his distance. 

“What’re you looking for?” Nathan shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun reflecting on the glimmering lake.

“Sky,” I answered. “I thought he might be outside, since it’s a nice day, but I guess he’s off doing cat things.”

I’d asked if he wanted to come with me, but he’d declined for reasons I could only guess at. Being a cat—a fairy cat, in fact—Sky communicated mostly in meows. However blissful it might have been to have a few days of peace, I’d missed my familiar as much as I’d missed the town itself.

“Maybe he finally made friends with my cats while we were gone.”

“That’d be nice.” Sky tended to ignore other cats, viewing them as beneath him, though in fairness, being a fairy cat made him a little different than the average feline. He wasn’t a typical witch familiar either, but he was still mine.

“Thistle—what are you doing?” Nathan addressed the elf, who’d waded into the shallows of the lake. Given his short stature, the water had almost come up to his waist, and it wouldn’t be long before he was completely immersed.

“I’m not sure we can rely on the merpeople to pull him out,” I muttered to Nathan. “Thistle, get out of there.”

He ignored me and continued to wade into the water. The merpeople, as I’d suspected, gawked and pointed and laughed rather than volunteering to help turn the elf around before he got any deeper.

From the forest, a winged human-sized figure flew over the lake and seized the elf around the middle. Thistle kicked and splashed in protest, but the fairy kept a firm grip on him until she deposited him on the shore.

“Thanks, Ani,” I called to his rescuer, recognising her as one of my friends from among the town’s new population of fairies.

“Anytime, Blair.” She landed in front of the bewildered elf. “Go home, Thistle. I’m sure Argyle is worried about you by now.”

“He’s still dating that gardener witch?” I whispered to Nathan. “I’m surprised she puts up with him if he does this regularly.”

Then again, it still surprised me sometimes that Nathan was willing to tolerate my own habit of landing myself in trouble, and we’d been together almost a year. Speaking of…

“Watch out, Blair.” He caught my arm as the merpeople dove back into the water with a splash that would have soaked both of us if Nathan hadn’t hastily pulled me out of the way. Most of the water hit him in the back of the head instead, while Ani leapt into flight to avoid being splashed too.

“Oops.” I stifled a laugh when I saw Thistle had been knocked flat onto his back, and he raised a fist and yelled expletives at the lake. “That might wake him up a little.”

“Might.” Nathan pushed a handful of wet hair from his eyes. “He should be glad nobody was at the town’s border. I’ll have to talk to Steve about that.” 

“You want to check in with Steve already?” The grumpy gargoyle was head of the police force in Fairy Falls, which unfortunately meant he had authority over Nathan’s security team. No doubt Steve would have invented an excuse to pile a bucketload of paperwork on Nathan’s head in protest at his leaving town at short notice, so if I were him, I’d want to avoid going near the police station until the last possible moment.

“I don’t want to, but I figure I should get it over with,” Nathan replied. “Besides, we’re near your dad’s house, and you wanted to see him, right?”

“True.” I did need to see my dad, though the conversation I’d been waiting to have with him would bring down the mood as effectively as a chat with Steve would. Since I’d be back at work tomorrow, though, this might be my only chance. “I’ll see you later?”

“Of course.” He gave me a hug and kiss goodbye. “Assuming Steve doesn’t put me on back-to-back shifts for the next week.”

“He can’t do that, can he?”

“Nah, he’s more likely to drop them on the new recruits. Which is unfair.”

I pulled a face. “Your team works far harder than he does. He doesn’t even do much crime solving.”

“True, but at least it’s easy to know who to blame when things go wrong.”

“There is that.” Steve might be a royal nuisance, but at this point he was a fixture here in Fairy Falls, and the town had been through enough change and upheaval in the past year not to want to shake anything else up. Besides, he at least stayed out of Nathan’s way when his team was protecting the boundaries of the town from any meddlesome paranormal hunters who hadn’t been invited in. 

The original purpose of the town’s security was to make sure oblivious humans didn’t wander past the warding spells that covered the village, though since said oblivious humans included my own foster parents, I had mixed feelings on the secrecy rules that governed the magical world myself. I’d spent the first twenty-five years of my life clueless about my birth parents’ origins precisely because discussing the magical world with regular humans was a big no-no, and the couple who’d raised me hadn’t had the slightest idea that I was half witch and half fairy. 

Telling Mr and Mrs Wilkes the truth would certainly be bending the rules, but after they’d had a narrow escape from some particularly nasty fairies a few months ago and had ended up having that experience erased from their memories for their own sanity’s sake, I’d wanted to bring them into the magical world again on my own terms. Once things had calmed down a little… which might be hoping for too much.

“Hey, Blair.” Ani caught up with me as I entered the forest, which concealed the pathway into the fairies’ home. “Did you have a good holiday?”

“I did, thanks,” I said. “Has Thistle been causing trouble all week?”

“Nah, only the past couple of days,” she said. “I had to fish him out yesterday as well.”

“Honestly.” I shook my head. “How’re things going with your new job, anyway? I never asked.” I’d helped Ani get the job at the local university campus library myself, but life had been so hectic lately that I’d forgotten to check up on her progress.

“I’m enjoying it,” Ani said. “Samuel keeps erratic working hours, but then again, so do most of the students, so it works out. Though I wish he didn’t like to sneakily appear behind me when I’m not looking.”

“That’s vampires for you.” The vampire librarian also happened to be dating my best friend, Alissa, so I was doubly invested in the job working out for both Ani and him. Not to mention her employment would also work towards my long-term goal of making any sceptical residents of the town see that most fairies were harmless.

I still needed to do some more work in the other direction, though. The fairies remained skittish of most other paranormals and mostly kept to themselves without inviting visitors into their parts of the woods. There was a reason even Nathan didn’t usually come with me to visit my dad. While Dad himself wouldn’t have minded, most of the other fairies were disinclined to trust both the paranormal hunters and the local police on principle, and the fact that Nathan was technically neither of those things didn’t erase their understandable wariness around authority figures.

When Ani and I reached the shimmering path that was only visible to those of us with the ability to see through glamour, I snapped my fingers and shed my own illusion. Wings stretched behind my shoulders, and I savoured the chance to exercise my fairy magic for the first time in a while as I glided above the path into the bubble universe the fairies inhabited. 

While I could still hear the birdsong in the trees and the crash of the waterfall near the lake in the background, the forest had vanished entirely. Instead, vibrant flowers filled a clearing of neat cottages. I waved goodbye to Ani and knocked on the door to the home my dad had claimed for his own.  

He answered a moment later, smiling, and swept me into a hug. As I wrapped my arms around him, I was struck by a wave of gratitude that my dad and I had reconnected after a lifetime apart. It had once seemed like the entire universe was set against that happening, and even after I’d learned of his existence, I’d been resigned to never seeing him in the flesh. Dad had been incarcerated in the Lancashire Prison for Paranormals for a crime he’d never committed after having spent the early years of my life on the run following my mother’s death at the hands of the paranormal hunters. That he now lived in a cosy cottage in a veritable paradise was nothing short of a miracle. 

I followed my dad into the living room and settled in one of his comfy armchairs. He perched on another, his own wings folded neatly behind his back. He and I shared the same dark-brown hair and pointed ears, though like all the fairies I’d met, my dad looked much younger than his actual age. I often forgot he was probably older than the town itself; while half humans like me had a regular life span, he and the other fairies were as everlasting as footprints on the surface of the moon. 

“I take it you had a nice break?” Dad asked me. “I hope you enjoyed a bit of peace.”

“I did, yes.” Nathan and I had left in enough of a hurry that I hadn’t had time to say more than a quick goodbye to Dad and the others, but it had been one of our last chances to get away before the next inevitable storm hit the town. “How’re things here?”

“Quiet.”

“Only because I wasn’t here.” I grinned. “It’s all right, you can say it. I’m the one who brings chaos with me everywhere.”

“Not at all, Blair.” My dad shook his head, curtains of long hair falling to either side of his face. “It was quiet when you were at the Head Witches’ meeting too.”

“Which proves my point.” The meeting itself had been anything but quiet.

His smile faded. “Yes… we didn’t have much time to talk about the meeting before you went away.” 

“I know.” I lowered my gaze, absently fiddling with a loose thread on my coat. Following the coven meeting—which had ended in two people dead and another arrested—it had been revealed that there was a portal into the fairy realm itself in the home of a local coven. While I hadn’t a clue how Arabella Knotgrass had obtained the portal, the slightly more concerning issue was the fact that someone on the other side had stolen a Head Witch’s magical sceptre from under our noses.

“You told me…” Dad began. “You mentioned a portal into the realm of my kin is currently owned by the Knotgrass Coven. Is that right?”

“Yeah, a portal to Fairyland.” I lifted my head to meet his concerned eyes. “I assume that’s not the actual name of the place. Or is it?”

“No—there’s not an official name for the various realms of the fairies,” he answered.

“Various?” I echoed. “There’s more than one?”

“Thousands.” When my mouth fell open, he added, “It depends on how you define ‘realm,’ as the fairies’ clans are as numerous as your covens and each occupies its own territory. You’ve seen for yourself that we dislike being pinned down.”

I glanced around at the cottage—which was a construction of glamour that had sprung up out of thin air—and saw his point. “There’s got to be an actual place on the other side of that portal, though—however you define ‘place.’ How else can someone have sneaked out and stolen the sceptre?”

“Are you sure that’s what happened?” he asked. “I wasn’t there, granted, but I would have thought the portal would have drawn more attention if it had been in active use.” 

“I don’t know much about the Knotgrass Coven, but everyone else seemed pretty stunned that they had a portal hidden in their home.” I thought back to the confusion that had followed our scuffle with Meredith, the killer who’d been set on obtaining the portal for herself. “The sceptre rolled under the cabinet during the fight, and when the witches came back after Meredith’s arrest, it had disappeared. Where else did it go?”

“It’s certainly concerning,” he said. “I can’t speak to the sceptre, but the portal itself… those artefacts aren’t easy to get hold of.”

“I don’t know much about the Knotgrass Coven,” I said. “I’m not sure if the portal was originally Arabella’s or if she inherited it from someone else like pretty much everything else in that house of hers, but I’m guessing the latter.” 

“You didn’t ask?”

“No. We were in the middle of an arrest, and… and Arabella herself supported the paranormal hunters disbanding the Head Witches.” A bitter note entered my voice. “She isn’t the kind of person I’d trust with a pathway into the fairy realm inside her house, even if she’s never used it herself. Let’s put it that way.” 

Arabella herself might have turned out to be innocent of murder, but she’d been happy to throw everyone else under the broomstick to gain security and power for her own coven. She’d even been willing to look the other way when Rebecca had been mistakenly arrested in Meredith’s place, which I wouldn’t forget in a hurry.

“Tricky,” Dad mused. “The hunters aren’t under his control any longer, but I don’t like the coincidence of a portal being in the home of a coven with connections to them.”

“I didn’t even think of that.” An involuntary shudder ran down my spine at the memory of a fairy I’d be quite happy to never set eyes on again. “The problem is, she kind of had a point about the rules around Head Witches being a mess. The fact that Rebecca ended up being chosen when she’s only a kid is proof of that, but if I had to pick an alternative, I wouldn’t choose the hunters. Neither would anyone else here.” 

The fairies had suffered most of all, as they’d been driven out of Fairy Falls by a coalition of hunters and witches and had remained exiled for years until I’d started to help undo the damage. While the witches had generally learned from their mistakes, the hunters lacked that tendency towards self-reflection, and many of them were actively trying to be more aggressive towards paranormals in general and not less. There was a good reason Nathan and his sister, Erin, had left their ranks and never looked back.

“True,” said Dad. “I’m glad her plan backfired, but I can’t fathom what the average witch would do with a portal into our realm. It’s possible for it to be an unused heirloom, but if she has contacts over there, or if someone is watching her…”

My breath caught. “Who? You mean—him?”

It was a bit ridiculous that I couldn’t bring myself to say his name aloud after all this time, as if he were Voldemort, but I’d feel a lot more secure if the hunters’ former leader was sitting in a cell and not lurking in the background like a bogeyman underneath the bed. The man I’d once known as Inquisitor Hare had been unmasked as a fairy several months ago and had slipped through our grasp before we could take him to account for his crimes. 

For all I knew, Rowe Clearwater had dropped the mask of Inquisitor Hare entirely after being ousted from his position and had gone straight back to being a fairy prince again. I’d initially dismissed that theory, since he’d spent decades disguised as a human and had even gone as far as to persecute the other fairies to bolster his own power. That ought to have excluded him from being accepted by his former allies, but the thought of him hiding behind a portal in a witch’s house—a house I’d been in—strayed close to the worst-case scenarios that had been brewing in the back of my mind since his disappearance. So did the thought of a powerful instrument like the sceptre ending up in his hands.

No way. He can’t even use it, can he? Or could he? This was why I’d needed a holiday, even if I’d only delayed the inevitable.

“I don’t know any more than you do, Blair,” Dad added. “Nobody has mentioned him recently, but they also haven’t spent time in the fairy realms either.”

“I wonder if Arabella has?” I drew my arms around myself, goosebumps springing up on my skin despite the warm weather. “If not to meet with the fairies, then to look for the sceptre?”

“I have my doubts. She knows the realm of the fairies is dangerous for humans.”

“I guess.” Arabella’s deal with the hunters proved her unscrupulousness, but the fairies wouldn’t agree so readily to help a witch, would they? Not according to my dad, who’d left their realm when he’d met my mother and had been accused of betrayal as a result. The reaction of some of the other fairies to his choice did not promise a warm reception for his half-human offspring, aka me.

Dad hadn’t talked much about his former home, but I gathered that it was like the goblin market taken to extremes. Namely, packed with enchantments that played havoc with the senses and ruled by beings who wouldn’t hesitate to punish any intruders who dared to enter their lands.

“All we can do is keep our ears open for news,” he added. “It’s not ideal, but I’m sure Madame Grey is formulating a plan now that she’s aware of the portal’s existence.”

“Yeah.” She wouldn’t be planning to go there herself, but it was nice to know that our own coven was under strong and clear-thinking leadership. “I’ll ask her.”

“You’re going there now?” Dad rose to his feet. “I know you probably want to catch up with your friends, too, so I won’t keep you any longer.”

“I’m happy to spend time with you.” I did need to check in with Madame Grey, who’d have the news on whether any new Head Witches had been promoted to take the place of the two who Meredith Norwood had killed—and if any new developments had come from Arabella Knotgrass’s direction concerning the portal and the missing sceptre. “I’ll try to drop by and visit later in the week.”

Dad saw me off at the door, and I followed the path out of the clearing into the regular forest. The brightness of the fairies’ home faded, and the sound of human chatter reached my ears. I donned my human glamour again with a snap of my fingers before approaching the centre of Fairy Falls. Everyone already knew me as the fairy-witch, of course, but it had become habit to keep on my glamour when in human company.

The witches’ headquarters was my first stop, a large brick building that towered over its neighbours. While Rebecca wouldn’t have any official lessons on a Sunday, I figured I was more likely to find her here than anywhere else. My eleven-year-old mentee of sorts took some of her magic lessons alongside me, though she also had private tutoring on the matters of being Head Witch from Madame Grey. 

Or Aveline Hollyhock. The former Head Witch had announced her intention to give her successor a helping hand, but I hoped Madame Grey had talked her out of it. While Rebecca undeniably needed the assistance of a former Head Witch to help her deal with the responsibilities resting on her young shoulders, Aveline’s last visit to town still haunted my nightmares. She’d wrecked my flat, tormented my cat, and driven both me and Alissa out of our minds. Anything but that.

The lobby of the coven’s headquarters was deserted, nor did I find Rebecca in any of the classrooms, while Madame Grey didn’t answer when I knocked on her office door at the top of the staircase dominating the ground floor. Maybe she’d taken the day off. She deserved the break, far more than I had, but it was more likely that she’d been called out on some errand or other. The head of the town’s lead coven was in high demand.

After another circuit of the lobby, I reluctantly left. I’d have to talk to Rebecca tomorrow and see if she’d got any further with her decision concerning her future as Head Witch. Nobody wanted her to keep the title, but it was Rebecca herself who’d have to make the call, and it was anyone’s guess how events would play out now that Aveline had stuck her wand in.

All right. I’d have a quiet evening in with Alissa instead. The two of us lived in one of the ground-floor flats in a property owned by Madame Grey, a grand Victorian-era house that would have been far outside my budget in any other circumstances. Being best friends with the coven leader’s granddaughter had its perks.

The first thing I saw was my suitcase, which lay upside-down near the fence. I’d magically sent it home before Nathan and I had left the hostel, so it was a miracle that it hadn’t landed in the middle of the lake instead. Transportation spells were not my strong point.

After grabbing the suitcase and flipping it the right way up, I pushed open the door to the house and fumbled in my pocket for my keys. I unlocked the door on the right-hand side and entered my flat.

“Hey, Alissa…”

The words left my mouth before the sight before my eyes fully sank in. Aveline Hollyhock sat on a sofa that wasn’t mine, in front of a roaring fireplace we didn’t own, while Alissa herself wore the resigned expression of someone anticipating a march to the gallows.

You have got to be kidding me.