“Oh, dear Lilith, if Tate Kane, the unofficial spokesman of the pro-warlock movement, is here then this really will be good,” Wesley laughed. His name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d heard it at first — until I matched it to the voice and realized Tate Kane was the anti-witch radio host I’d heard Derwin Moriarty listening to when I’d found him asleep in his shop weeks prior.
Tate sat in the front row of seats fanning out from the dais and pulled a recorder from his inner jacket pocket. He rested it in his lap and adjusted the distinctive silver cufflinks that twinkled from both his suit sleeves. I shuddered to think how he’d sensationalize whatever was about to happen, but I knew he’d find a way. I saw in the way Heath’s body language changed that he wasn’t happy to see Tate either.
But it was nothing compared to the way Adam seemed to fold in on himself when a witch his age entered the chamber and immediately locked her angry, watery eyes on him. She had a recently drowned look about her. Her face’s shade was a pale blue, her eyes were puffy and ringed by smudged mascara, and her locks of graying hair were stringy and clumped as if mermaids had braided them together while she floated below the surface.
“Morgan…” Adam gasped, and Heath helped him sit down at the table they’d prepared for him to make his statement from.
Wesley leaned toward me again. “That’s Adam’s ex-wife. Rumor is she divorced the poor slob after black magic got their son killed. You remember Seth, Heath’s grandson, don’t you? If I have my facts straight, I think you had something to do with that.”
I didn’t reply, more because I couldn’t than because I didn’t want to. I remembered Seth too well — and the way his pale hand had hung out from under the sheet covering his body after blood magic had drained it of its essence.
No wonder Morgan looked drowned; she’d probably been drifting in a sea of grief for months after losing Seth, and now she had to deal with the added anguish of learning her ex-husband had gotten involved with the same group that killed their son.
Once again, my hand instinctively found its way to my stomach. I didn’t know what I’d do if one of my kids got tangled up in something as awful, and I couldn’t begin to imagine the pain of losing either of them — and they hadn’t even been born yet.
More reporters and members of the public continued to flood the chamber. I couldn’t take my eyes off Morgan, who sat directly in front of Adam and seemed unable to remove her boiling gaze from him. I couldn’t definitively read the look on her face, which was a mixture of anger, revulsion, and sadness, but I didn’t blame her for any of the feelings.
Before I realized it, someone had taken every seat in the chamber. Heath nodded to the gargoyles at the door, and they pulled it closed to keep anyone from interrupting. The excited chatter among the attendees died immediately as the chamber darkened, illuminated only by the candles overhead. The silence grew so thick I heard the humming of the cameras below already recording everything in the room.
Virgil sat down next to Adam. Heath placed his hand on his son’s shoulder and leaned down to speak into his ear. “It’s time, Son. Make things right,” he whispered, but I still heard it. I hoped no one else did, for Adam’s sake.
Adam nodded and pulled several folded pieces of paper from his robes. He smoothed them out on the table and lifted them up with trembling hands. Every person in the room sat on the edge of their seats while they waited for him to speak, including me.
“G-good morning, everyone,” he stuttered, his voice strained and cracking like he hadn’t spoken in months. As soon as I heard it, I knew it was the same voice of one of the men who’d attacked me in the dungeon under Derwin’s shop. Goosebumps rippled across every inch of my skin at the realization.
I rubbed my arms to shoo them, but they returned stronger and my hands felt like ice, so I raised them to my mouth to blow on them — and froze when I saw the moisture of my breath in the air. Had the temperature in the room dropped, or was I that unsettled? I couldn’t tell.
“My name is Adam,” he continued and paused again like he’d stumbled on his tongue. “A-Adam Highmore.” A collective gasp tore through the room, and Heath squeezed Adam’s shoulder to encourage him to keep going.
Adam opened his mouth to speak further, but a draft of air surged through the room and seemed to steal the breath from his lungs as the candles overhead guttered and extinguished one by one, plunging the chamber into frigid darkness. The last thing I saw, Heath reaching for his wand in his robes, seared into my eyes as the darkness overtook them.
“What’s happening?” Wesley asked, his voice full of fear. For once, I agreed. Anxious chatter stirred up among the attendees, and I heard Heath trying to calm everyone down, but it didn’t seem to work. People were already heading for the door, stumbling over each other and knocking over chairs in their rush to escape.
“No,” Adam whimpered from below, sending a fresh round of goosebumps cascading down my spine. “Oh no, no, please, NO, I—AAAGGGHH!” His shout becoming a horrific, blood-curdling howl. A wave of screams came from the audience and I jumped from my chair with my wand drawn, ready to fire.
Then, as suddenly as the candles had gone out, they burst back to life, flooding the chamber in warm light and returning the warmth that’d disappeared. I glanced down at the table in front of the dais and clapped a hand over my mouth at what I saw.
Adam lay face down on the table, motionless, and Heath stood over him with his wand drawn. Virgil stared up at Heath, horrified, and suddenly the chamber erupted into chaos as the realization of what’d happened sunk in.
Heath whirled to face me as the gargoyles soared through the air toward him. “I didn’t do anything! I know what it looks like, but I swear to you Zoe, I had nothing to do with this! You have to believe me!” he shouted as the gargoyles descended on him and knocked his wand from his hands to twist them behind his back.
Wesley stared down at the scene with his eyes wide and his skin as white as powdered snow. “What else does he expect us to believe?” he whispered through the fingers over his mouth, his voice vacant and distant.
Light poured into the chamber as the doors flung open, and once the gargoyles had hauled Heath out of the room, panicked people streamed out, eager to get away from him and what they’d just seen.
I stood rooted to the spot, unable to believe my eyes and ears. Virgil seemed just as stunned as me and sat still as stone, staring at Adam. Tate looked as if he’d just woken from an awful nightmare and didn’t know how he’d gotten there, while Morgan sat with what I swore was a smirk on her face.
I should’ve done or said something to reassure everyone, but I couldn’t think straight. No matter how hard I tried to form an explanation, and no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that what I’d witnessed couldn’t have happened, I couldn’t deny the grim way things looked: Heath Highmore, my mentor and the one warlock I most looked up to, might have just killed his son.
Chapter Four
After hours spent waiting on pins and needles in my office, my desk phone finally rang. I knew it was Mueller, Moon Grove’s werewolf police chief, without having to guess.