Page 68 of The Vampire and the Case of the Baleful Banshee

‘Exactly,’ he looked pleased that I was getting it.

I thought back to those terror-filled moments. There was a flaw in his argument; the monster had flung rocks and trees at us and struck Fluffy. There was no way either of the Grimes was strong enough to chuck a tree – but neither was there any way I’d convince Ezra of that. It was time to change tack.

‘Talk to me about Nora.’

He blinked. ‘What about her?’

‘You’re seeing her, aren’t you?’ It was a shot in the dark based on Aoife’s teasing of her mum.

He sighed. ‘Nora and I are friends. Like me, she knows the truth about the barrier.’

‘And was it your idea or hers to break into my house?’

He grimaced and glanced again at the camera to check it was off. ‘It was an error in judgement,’ he admitted. ‘I see that now.’

‘You smashed up my metal shutter mechanism whilst she sprayed the threat.’ It was one of the things that had nagged at me. Shadow had woken me pretty quickly but my intruder had done a lot of damage in a couple of different areas. It made sense that there were two of them working together to do so much damage in such a short space of time.

‘As I said,’ Ezra said mildly, ‘it was an error of judgement.’

‘And Aoife?’

‘I had nothing to do with that girl’s death. Absolutely nothing.’

The worst thing was that I believed him.

Chapter 42

I pushed Ezra some more and questioned him about the theft of the wind gem, too. I was almost certain he’d conspired with Nora to steal the fire gem but Aoife had beaten them to it. And he was giving off annoyed vibes: he was annoyed that someone else had the gems rather than him. He wanted to be the hero, the one who saved us all from the barrier, but some other prick would get the glory. No, I didn’t think he’d stolen the gems – but not for want of trying.

Frustrated, I pulled in the wind witch, Elsa Wintersteen. I still remembered when my own house burned; I’d been so traumatised I’d spent a couple of days on Sigrid’s and Gunnar’s sofa bemoaning my lot in life. I understood that Elsa would need a few days to get over her own house fire, but time was short and we needed to crack on.

Whilst I was waiting for her to turn up, I dug into her background and turned up some basics: she had a husband, Larry Wintersteen, and two teenage kids, Jaxon and Betty.

When Elsa arrived, she gave me a weak smile. Her dark hair was curled and hung to her shoulders and her makeup was neatly applied. I’d have put her in her early thirties, though the age of her kids made me push that to her late thirties. She still had a lost look in her eyes like I’m sure I’d had after my fire. Luckily, she hadn’t also seen two people burn to cinders, and her family was all safe and sound. Saying ‘it could have been worse’ seemed callous, so I kept that one to myself.

I started the recorder. ‘Please state your name and what supernatural type you are.’

She gave me a disbelieving look. Supernats didn’t like being open about what they were or what power they had, but we didn’t have time to dick around. Finally, she cleared her throat. ‘My name is Elsa Wintersteen. I’m an elemental air witch. Up until the fire, I was in charge of the wind gem.’ She folded and unfolded her hands anxiously.

‘How long have you been in charge of the gem?’ I asked.

‘Um,’ her eyes looked up to the right, as she thought, ‘I think it’s been seventeen years now. Give or take.’

Seventeen? Kostas had only been guarding the fire gem for three years. ‘That’s a long time. You don’t look very old – how old were you when you started the job?’

She gave a girlish giggle. ‘Thank you. I’m thirty-nine, but witches age well.’

‘You still took on that responsibility very early.’ Liv must have trusted her a lot.

‘Well, I was done with school and expecting my first baby so it was easy. I didn’t have anywhere pressing to be. It made sense for me to be the guardian.’

‘But seventeen? Wasn’t that hard?’

‘Sometimes,’ she said honestly. ‘But it’s my duty. I help protect the town so it’s worth a little sacrifice. I even raised my babies at home so I wouldn’t leave the gem for long. Home schooling was a gift to us all.’ She smiled.

That was nuts. How could Liv have asked that of her? No one should have to bear that sort of responsibility for so long. I scribbled a note to ask Liv about it later. ‘What protections surrounded the gem before the fire?’ I asked.

‘The usual – a basic warning ward, and I added stronger ones after you warned us to. But it was rarely out of my sight.’

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