16

My butt was numb.

Not from falling on the ground or from sitting on a cold surface outside for an hour, but from sitting on a hard chair inside until my buttock muscles stiffened, tingled, ached, and then finally went completely dull like I’d just shot myself with an anesthetic needle.

With my back to the wall, my right knee bounced up and down for the past hour and a half as I stared at the large black metal door to the conference room, waiting to see Ruth’s smiling face as she walked out.

Today was December seventh, and the Gray Council had arrived and set up their court proceedings in the Hollow Cove Security Agency’s conference room.

As it turned out, I was not allowed to attend the proceedings. Only Dolores and Beverly could attend since they’d been witnesses to Ruth’s gingerweed making.

Speaking of gingerweed, for the past two days I’d been in the kitchen, trying to remake Ruth’s tonic she’d given Bernard. Potions weren’t my forte, and I’d managed to mess up thirty different tonics. Ruth wouldn’t help. I’d asked her at the beginning of my experimenting, but she’d just smiled at me and continued staring out the window in her bedroom.

The idea was to remake the potion and test it. See if it was as dangerous as everyone thought it was since I couldn’t get my hands on the real thing.

Even Dolores, Beverly, and Iris jumped to my aid. We’d finally gotten the potion to work, but the color was wrong. At the baker’s shop, the color had been a light cream, and this one, no matter how many times we tried—always came out orange.

I shifted over to my left, putting more weight on that butt cheek to try and get some blood flow, and caught Iris staring at me on the next chair.

“What?” I said. “I’ve got numbbutt.”

Ronin laughed. “Numbbutt. I like it. Sounds like nun butts.” The half-vampire sat in the chair to my left. He’d come to show some moral support. Cauldron knew I needed it, and so did Ruth. We all did.

“Maybe we should go for a walk?” Iris shifted slightly to her left, signs that she too was experiencing numbbutt.

I thought about it for a moment. “No. I want to be here when Ruth comes out.” Which was true. No matter the outcome, or my degree of numbbutt, I needed to be here.

“Have you spoken to Marcus?” asked Iris, and I looked up to find Grace staring at us from her desk across the hallway. I glared at her and kept glaring until she looked away. I did not need her to eavesdrop right now.

I sighed. “You mean, have I spoken to the jackass since I threw him out?”

“Yeah.”

“No. And I don’t plan to either.” A flicker of anger rose in me at the memory of what happened five days ago. I had been an idiot to think Marcus would save Ruth. I’d put all my faith in him, and I’d been confident he would.

He was in there right now, in the conference room with the rest of them while we sat here fearing the worst, my imagination getting the better of me.

Again, I was an idiot. Every time I thought about the chief, I felt a deep, throbbing ache in my chest like someone had landed a side kick in my abdomen. I hated how he made me feel whenever he was around me, like I couldn’t control my emotions. Like I was weak.

But I wasn’t weak. And so far, I had grown some serious lady balls in the past few weeks. I didn’t need him.

Ronin let out a long sigh through his nose. “You can’t blame the guy for this.”

Angry, I turned in my seat to glare at him directly, narrowing my eyes at the half-vamp. “Are you freaking kidding me right now?”

“Ease down, broomstick,” he said, a small smile on his face that I wanted to slap off. “I’m just saying what happened to Ruth wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t even here. And from what you’ve told me, he did try.”

“Not hard enough.” I shook my head. “He didn’t try to remove the charges.”

“I’m sure he did,” answered Ronin. “But if he couldn’t… it means he couldn’t find any grounds for a dismissal. There was nothing he could do about it.”

My stomach clenched. “I don’t believe that,” I said. “There’s always something you can do. He’s the chief. If the chief can’t remove charges, what good is it to have a chief? Might as well tell him to pack up and leave.”

Ronin leaned his head back against the wall and ran a hand over his hair to make sure it was lying flat. “I’ve known Marcus longer than you, Tess, and believe me, he loves Ruth. I know he did everything he could.”

“Well, it wasn’t enough,” I said bitterly. “Not nearly enough. I expected a hell of a lot more coming from him.”

“He did drive all day and night to get here for Ruth,” said Iris.

I glared at her.

Iris shrugged. “Just saying.”

“Don’t.”

“It means he cares.”

I rubbed my sweaty hands on my thighs, my blood pressure skyrocketing the longer we sat here without any news.

News. “Grace?” I called out. “Do you know how long it’s going to be?”

Grace looked up at me from whatever she was doing. A glimmer of annoyance crossed her face, like I’d just interrupted her crossword puzzle. She pressed her thin lips tightly and glanced back down at her desk.

“Thanks,” I called back. God, that woman was infuriating.

This situation was going from bad to worse, and there was nothing I could do. Ruth had still been in her depressed state as I watched her walk into the conference room. My heart broke at the pain that flickered in her eyes.

I let out a frustrated breath and pushed to my feet. Moving to the conference room’s door, I placed my ear to it and listened. Nothing. Not even a murmur. They’d spelled the room with a sound barrier spell like the one Marvelous Myrtle had done when I was in her tent to keep Ronin from hearing what was going on inside.

Knowing it was pointless, I moved away and let myself fall back into my chair.

“Any luck?” inquired Ronin.

“Nothing. The room’s been spelled with a counter-hearing spell.”

“Bummer.”

“I just wish I knew what was going on in there,” I said, exasperated. “The not knowing part is the worst.”

“I know.” Ronin leaned forward and said, “Tess, your face is really red. You need to calm down or you’ll give yourself a heart attack.”

“How am I supposed to calm down when Ruth’s life is at stake? I can’t. I don’t know how.”

“Well, sex is the best stress reliever I know,” said the vamp. “It can even cure chronic hiccups.”

“He got that from me,” interjected Iris.

I let out a laugh. “Well, I’m not suffering from hiccups.”

Ronin laughed. “No. But you do need to relax.” He nudged my messenger bag on the floor with his foot. “You got a vibrator in that bag?”

I choked on my own spit. I stared at the vampire, not knowing what to say.

Iris burst out laughing, winning a deep scowl from Grace.

“What?” Ronin flashed me a smile. “An orgasm right now will lower your blood pressure. Just saying.”

I knew my friend was just trying to make me laugh to ease the tension. “You’re insane.”

“You love me,” said Ronin happily and put his hands behind his head as he leaned against the wall.

I moved my gaze over my friends, my heart slowing as it swelled with gratitude that I wasn’t going through this alone. By myself, I probably would have had a heart attack or a stroke. I didn’t want to lose Ruth, not when I’d only just started to get to know her better. I loved my aunt fiercely. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Nothing.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” said Iris. Her tiny hand reached over and squeezed mine. “Ruth didn’t kill Bernard. And if he died from ingesting her potion, it was an accident. The Gray Council will understand.”

“What do you think they’ll do?”

Iris thought about it a moment. “They’ll dismiss the charges if Ruth wasn’t even involved. And if she gave Bernard something that he was deathly allergic to, she’ll most probably never be able to work potions for anyone ever again.”

“Right. Well, that’s not so bad.” I thought about how Ruth would be upset, but if she did accidentally kill Bernard, that would be the best outcome. I looked at Iris again. “And if they charge her?”

From her cloth bag at her feet, Iris pulled out a small photo album and opened it on her lap, her hands moving over the clear plastic overlay sheets. “We use these.”

I leaned over for a better look. “We’re going to use your family portraits to smother the Gray Council to death?”

“Portraits?” Ronin got to his feet and moved around me to sit next to Iris’s other side.

Iris moved her hands away and I gasped.

“Not family pictures,” I said, my eyes moving from one side of the album to the other.

What I first thought was an album with pictures of Iris’s family was something else entirely.

I stared openmouthed at strands of hair and cut-out pieces of cloth that looked like they once belonged to a shirt. Some were small pieces of denim, teeth, strands of eyelashes, drops of dark maroon stains that looked a lot like dried blood, and various other small items I couldn’t decipher. They were all placed in neat rows, all with labels neatly printed below each item on strips of white paper. Each was cataloged with names and dates.

“Iris,” I said, my eyes still pinned on the eerie human toenail I’d spotted. “What is all this?”

Iris met my eyes and beamed. “This… is Dana,” she said lovingly, as though the book was an actual person. “My little black book of curses. I’ve been collecting material from different half-breeds and humans over the years. I’ve done some of my best work with Dana. Biggest, baddest curses.”

Ronin whistled. “Is it wrong that I’m so turned on right now?”

I wasn’t sure what was more disturbing, Ronin getting excited at the toenails and teeth on display in Iris’s book or the fact that she’d collected them.

I stared at what looked like a small piece of dried flesh. “Huh. And why do we need this?”

“Dana,” Iris corrected.

Okay. “Why do we need Dana?”

Iris flipped the pages to somewhere near the middle. She pointed at a piece of gray cloth. “This is a piece of Hubert’s gray robe. He’s on the Gray Council. I recognized him earlier before he went in with the others.”

“And we would use that to… what exactly?”

“To curse him.” Iris’s eyes were round with excitement. “Heart attack. Stroke. Brain aneurism. Explosive diarrhea. Projectile vomit. You name it. It can be done.”

I was both impressed and a little scared. “Wow. Well… that’s… great… uh… it’s just…”

The door to the conference room opened.

I jumped to my feet, my heart bouncing inside my ribcage like a Ping-Pong ball as five gray-robed individuals stalked out the conference room, looking as out of place as Jedi knights at a tea party. They moved with a swiftness that belied their years. All had seen past their ninetieth birthdays, and they all carried themselves in a way that only really important people did.

“It’s now or never,” said Iris, suddenly next to me and shoving that creepy album on me. “Dana hasn’t let me down yet. But you have to give her a little heads-up.”

I shook my head, my eyes on the conference room. “I’m sure we won’t need it—her.” I wasn’t sure at all, but I was sure cursing a member from the Gray Council was seriously illegal.

Next came Adira, followed quickly by her vamp cronies, the three males and the one female who were forgettable—and Marcus.

Our eyes met, and yes, I might have even stopped breathing, but before I could pull my eyes away, Marcus flicked his gaze at Adira and began a conversation with her, putting his back to me. I had a feeling he’d done that on purpose.

I felt a tearing in my chest that surprised me, like my heart was forming hairline cracks. I might have overreacted a tiny bit yesterday, but it was done. I had to accept it. Right now, I didn’t have time to think about the consequences of my actions, or what it meant for us. If there had been an “us,” there wasn’t anymore.

Dolores came through the door next, and then Beverly with Ruth on her arm. Every muscle on my body went tense. No one was crying, thank the cauldron. I took that as a good sign.

With a sigh of relief, I rushed over, putting myself in front of Beverly and Ruth. “And? How did it go? What did they say? Ruth? What did the Gray Council say?”

Ruth met my eyes, and I couldn’t understand what I saw in her face. “It’s finished. It’s over. Finally over. I am happy about that. The waiting… the waiting is the worst. But now I know.”

I looked at Beverly. “What is she talking about?”

“She means the Gray Council ruled,” said Dolores as she stepped in, staring at me, unblinking, her irises so dark I couldn’t tell where her pupils were.

My heart was pounding, and my knees felt like they were about to give out as I searched Dolores’s face. “What did they rule?”

Dolores’s lips trembled, and she swallowed hard as though trying to reel in her emotions and having a hell of a time. “Ruth’s been found guilty—”

“What?” I shouted, seeing Iris and Ronin pop into my peripheral vision to my left.

“The coroner’s report stated that black belladonna was in her mix,” instructed Beverly, her arm still hooked around Ruth’s, and I couldn’t tell which witch needed the support most. “It’s what killed Bernard.”

From my intense studying, I knew belladonna was used as a sedative, and sometimes it helped with asthma and severe coughs, even hay fever. Black belladonna? That was used as a pain killer and for paralysis. And if used too much, it would definitely lead to death.

“But Ruth would never put that in the gingerweed,” I countered. “She knows better. And it’s not like she hasn’t done this a thousand times before. This is a mistake. They’ve got it wrong.”

“The evidence is clear,” continued Dolores, her voice drawn and tired.

I shook my head, staring at Ruth. “Ruth? Talk to me.”

Slowly, Ruth lifted her eyes to me. “I… I don’t remember if I put in the black belladonna or not. My mind’s not as clear as it once was. I… I could have accidentally put it in.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I refuse to believe it.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter what you believe,” announced Dolores. “The Gray Council found her guilty of negligent homicide. Of killing Bernard.”

I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t gasp as I started to shake. “What does that mean?” Panic jerked through me. Part of me knew this might could happen, but I never thought it would.

Tears fell from Beverly’s eyes as her lips trembled. She opened her mouth, but only a whimper came out.

“It means,” said Dolores, her voice higher than usual. “That at the end of this month… on December twenty-third… Ruth will begin her five-year sentence in Grimway Citadel.”

The witch prison. This time I gasped. A wave of nausea hit me, and I couldn’t breathe. My eyes flicked back to Marcus and I found him staring at me, his eyes sad and filled with regret. I looked away before I started bawling.

“This can’t be happening,” I managed to say. “They can’t do this. Ruth is innocent.”

“They can and they did. Ruth confessed. She’s agreed to do her time.” Dolores clamped her mouth shut, and I knew it was her way of saying she didn’t want to say more.

“How can she confess to something she didn’t do?” The band around my chest tightened and I took a gasping breath that sounded like a sob.

“Ruth, no,” I told her, tears finally escaping my eyes, in thick, heavy drops.

“Yes.” Ruth smiled at me, but there was a bit of a grimace in it. “I killed him. I poisoned Bernard, left his wife a widow, and now I’m going to pay the price for my foolishness.”

I stood there with my heart breaking as Dolores, Beverly, and Ruth made their way down the hall and out the front door.

How could things go so wrong so quickly? But it’s like they say, it could always get worse. And they were right.

Tomorrow was my second witch trial.