Witch Way Out (Witch Detectives #3) (15 page)

“They came to see me after you did. They wanted…I’m not sure if I should say too much.”

Because she was a relatively minor witch, I was able to reach out and push her emotions, just a little. Not much, I didn’t think she deserved that. Just enough to get her talking.

“Nina,” I said, “I’m just trying to get to the bottom of all this.”

“They…they wanted to know about you coming to see me.”

“They were checking up on me, then?” Honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course, they would want to know what I was up to when I was working for the coven. And if they wanted to take steps beyond just listening to Rebecca’s reports, well, maybe that just said something about the position Rebecca was in right then.

“Yes. They also wanted to know what I’d seen. They wanted to know if I’d seen goblins.”

“They did?”

“They said the other diggers wouldn’t know what they were seeing, but that as a witch…” She looked around again, as though terrified that someone might hear what she was. “I told them, I don’t know. I don’t know what a goblin looks like, and I don’t really remember that much. They seemed so…disappointed when I couldn’t say anything for sure.”

Well, maybe they were just eager to solve the case. Even so, it felt like another thing to add to the long list of things that didn’t quite fit for me.

“And the digger…that was moving by itself. I mean, that’s a spell, isn’t it?”

It was odd, hearing Nina echoing what I’d thought.

“What does it mean if the goblins have magic?” she said. “Are they…will they try to retake the surface?” I could feel the fear coming off her as she talked about that. “I…I don’t know anything about fighting.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” I told her.

I went over to the trench at the heart of all this. Diggers were hard at work in it when I got there, but since they were in there, the mechanical digger was sitting at the side. I’d tried feeling for magic and emotional residue when I first got there, but now I wasn’t sure if I’d checked well enough.

I leaned against the machine, closing my eyes and reaching out with my power. Around me, I could feel the emotions of everyone there, the concentration and the boredom, the small bursts of excitement that came when people found something and the hard effort that came with scraping away the dirt. I reached down past that, focusing just on the machine behind me. This wasn’t something I’d done before, but I had to know. I had to at least try to feel for the answer. I reached back, ignoring the residue of emotion from the drivers, trying to feel something more. Something older.

I knew what I was feeling for:
magic
. The same magic I’d felt the first time I was there. Then, I hadn’t been able to feel anything more specific. Now, even with the additional time that had passed, I was hoping that I could feel something that might tell me more about who had been casting spells. I found the taste of the magic, almost on the edge of what I could sense. I dove down into it as deeply as I could, and I felt…nothing. Nothing I hadn’t felt the first time, at least.

“Are you meditating or something?” I opened my eyes to see Lisa, the mature student, standing there looking at me.

“Or something. How’s the dig going?”

“Not bad. I’m just getting down to the bottom of a post hole.”

“A post hole?”

“It’s exactly what it sounds like. A hole where a post used to be. This early, you’re mostly talking about wooden buildings, and the wood doesn’t survive. It rots, and you get stains in the soil. Darker patches.”

“It sounds like it must be tricky to spot,” I said. Not as tricky as spotting any definitive evidence in this case, of course.

“It’s kind of a knack. It just looks
different
, you know? I guess it must look weird from the outside, finding all our evidence from where things
aren’t
, but that’s archaeology in Britain. Stains in the soil.”

I stared at her.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Only, we need the digger to move one of the spoil heaps so that we can extend the trench, and we can’t do that if you’re leaning on it.”

“No, I’m fine. It’s fine. Thank you.”

“For what?”

For helping tell me something I should have realized all along. That sometimes an
absence
could tell me as much as a presence. I’d felt the magic that was used. I’d felt it, and there was nothing unusual about it. Nothing about it that I hadn’t expected. I’d thought that told me nothing, except…didn’t it tell me exactly what I needed to know?

Even if goblins
had
acquired magic, no goblin had cast the spell that did this. I was almost certain of it. After so much time living in the same place as Siobhan, I knew the distinctive emotional tang of goblin. I’d met so many goblins in the last few days, too, and always, under the surface, there was a little hint of something extra. Something that just felt different to a human, or a witch. If emotions and magic were so closely connected, and I, of all people, knew exactly how closely connected they were, then if the goblins were using magic again, wouldn’t that taste come through there too?

It was tenuous. It wasn’t quite proof, but it was more than enough to get me looking elsewhere. I headed over to the spot where the Wisp attack had been. Rebecca and I had picked up most of the fragments of pottery after the attack, but I was sure there had to be something left.

There was. It took me a couple of minutes of searching to find it, down on my knees, worrying all the time that one of the archaeologists might think I was trying to steal precious artifacts from their site. Finally, once I was more covered in dirt than I’d ever wanted to be again after the attack, I found a tiny piece of rough earthenware.

I held it in between finger and thumb, concentrating. I could feel the Wisp on the inside, the fury of its power etching a ghost of itself into the clay. I had to block that out to feel the faint power on the outside, old symbols etched into it to give it power. The symbols weren’t any that I knew, but I was more interested in the faint trace of magic they had created. Magic that I was certain didn’t feel anything like a goblin.

I looked up to see Professor Muir approaching.

“What are you doing, touching what could be important archaeological finds?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, I just spotted it down here on the ground.”

“So, you picked it up, removing it from its proper context? Ms. Chambers, you may be from the insurers, but you have no right to do that. As I understand it, your report is already in, so please do not return to my site.”

I could have reacted angrily to that, but instead, I just smiled. “It’s all right, Professor, I don’t think I’ll need to.”

I thought about what I’d found as I drove back toward the city. More specifically, as I drove back toward Niall’s place. I wanted to make things up to him. More than that, I didn’t want to go around behind his back more than I had to when I knew how worried he was about this whole investigation. I pulled up outside his place, and he opened the door to it himself.

I kissed him by way of a greeting.

“If that’s an apology,” he murmured against my lips, “I should be the one apologizing to you.”

“That’s the good thing about apologizing with kisses,” I said. “Everybody gets to be involved.”

“But someone gets to take charge.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

Over the next few seconds, he showed me that he had a point. Very thoroughly. He would probably have led me away upstairs if I hadn’t pulled back at the right moment. Or maybe the wrong one, depending on how you look at it.

“I wanted to talk to you. I don’t want to keep you in the dark when I’m investigating.”

“Ah.” Niall looked at me carefully. “Is that what you do when I upset you? Throw yourself into your work?”

“Something like that. I went back to the archaeological dig.”

Niall waited patiently. “And?”

“And I think I found something, but I need to be able to prove it.” I let that hang there for a second or two.

“Why do I get the feeling that I am not going to like this?” Niall asked.

“Because you probably aren’t. I need a goblin to cast a spell for me.”

“And you aren’t talking about your little thief, are you?”

I shook my head. As far as I knew, Siobhan didn’t have any talent for magic. She’d certainly never been taught any. I only knew about one goblin who had talked about the possibility of using it.

“I think we need to see Ulm.”

Niall’s expression was unreadable, but I could feel everything running through him in that moment. I could tell how worried he was.

“I don’t want to argue with you,” I said, taking his hands, “but I want to be honest. I know how much you hated it the last time I went there alone, and I want you with me.”

“This is dangerous, Elle. Very dangerous.”

“Is there anything in our lives that hasn’t been?” I shot back.

Niall laughed at that, kissing me again. “You have a point there.”

“So, you’ll come with me?” I asked.

Niall paused, and I suspected that if anyone else had asked him, he would have refused. Yet, I could feel his decision almost before he said it.

“I will go with you wherever you need me to go, Elle. I love you.” He paused. “Things are getting dangerous, though. I have heard…rumors.”

That word brought with it another wave of worry. Except for my safety, it normally took quite a lot to worry Niall.

“What kind of rumors?”

Niall licked his lips. “Whenever I stay in a place, I make sure I have information on the coven’s more…violent members.”

“Like Evert, the coven hunter.” The warlock who had been sent to the city to kill Niall.

“Exactly like him. People like him have been moving into the city. Too many. The coven is preparing for violence.”

That seemed inevitable. After everything that had happened in and around the city, of course the coven would be building up its people in the area. They wouldn’t want to risk losing Edinburgh to the goblins.

Niall’s hand touched my cheek. “Things are getting dangerous here, Elle. It feels like we are on the verge of something. If we need to go Underneath now, if we need to ask this goblin to cast a spell for us when that will be a further provocation, will you at least tell me why?”

I nodded. I wasn’t about to ask Niall to run into danger without at least telling him that much. I tried to collect together the thoughts I’d had back at the dig, trying to make sure I was right. Trying to be certain about it. But that was the point. I wasn’t certain. I needed to know.

“It’s simple,” I said, and it was. “I need to know if the attack at the dig site was a goblin, or if it was all done by witches.”

Luc wasn’t waiting to guide me down into the darkness this time, but I had seen him opening the doorway, and I knew the way in now. Niall was there with me, right beside me, just as I always hoped he would be. Siobhan was with us, too. I was a little worried about that, given everything, but she’d nodded as soon as we’d asked her.

“You’ll need me to show you the way,” she said. “I know you won’t let anything happen to me.”

I wished I could be so certain. I didn’t
think
Ulm would do anything to hurt her. He thought Siobhan was special. I knew he wouldn’t allow her to stay Underneath, because that didn’t fit with his precious prophecy, but I also thought that he would want to see her. I was hoping that it might make him more inclined to help me, although frankly, the chance to show that his goblins weren’t involved in this ought to be incentive enough.

We headed down into the tunnels beneath the secret door in the Vaults, trying to be careful, but not trying to sneak along. We didn’t want the goblins thinking that we were trying to steal into their home unannounced.

“So, tell me about this goblin we’re going to see,” Niall said as we walked.

I smiled, because he was obviously trying to make the trip down into the dark seem less threatening. Walking down Underneath in silence would have made it seem far too sinister.

“He’s a leader,” I said. “And he’s clever. I think he’s genuinely trying to do the best thing for the goblins.”

“People like that are rare,” Niall said. “They can also be dangerous, if they think that the best thing for their people is to kill you. Do you trust him?”

“Not completely,” I admitted, and it was mostly for the reason Niall had just given. Ulm would do whatever he thought was best. I
thought
he liked me. I knew he respected my mother. I knew he needed Siobhan. But I also knew that he was playing his own game, because he’d made no secret of it. “I don’t think this is a good place to start trusting people completely.”

Niall leaned in to kiss my neck, just below the ear. “That is wise. Although I have more people around me now to trust than I have had in a long time, I would trust you with my life.”

That meant more to me than almost anything else he’d said to me. And he was right, we both had more people around us we could trust than we’d had a few months ago. We had each other, Siobhan, Fergie, Marie, Kelly and David.