Page 45 of Bewitched By the Wicked Witch
"But this?" she continued, her voice carrying across the crowd with supernatural clarity. "This particular crime isn't mine. Though if you insist on having an evil witch..." The cuffs disintegrated into dust around her wrists as she rose into the air, dark energy crackling around her like captured lightning. "I'll give you one worthy of your nightmares."
With an explosion of smoke and stars that left everyone temporarily blinded, she vanished.
The silence that followed felt heavier than tombstones.
Slowly turning to face the crowd that had just made the worst mistake of their collective lives, I raised my voice with the authority of someone who spoke for powers they couldn't imagine. "You have all made a grave error today," I announced, my tone carrying the weight of inevitable consequences. "The High Council will be informed of this attempted witch hunt, and I assure you, they take a very dim view of vigilante justice."
"No, they won't be informed of anything," Councilman Bishop said as he materialized through the crowd like a bad omen. He raised a finger in my direction with dramatic authority. "Apprehend him. He can no longer be trusted, he's been corrupted by dark magic."
"She doesn't practice dark magic, you fool," I snarled, planting my feet firmly as I channeled every ounce of power within me. "She has a light inside that has managed to keep shining despite all of you trying to extinguish it for years."
"How would you know?" someone yelled from the crowd. "You just arrived!"
"Exactly what someone bewitched would say." Cate's voice cut through the noise as she stepped forward, arms crossed and glaring at me with vindictive satisfaction. "I witnessed her perform a spell on him with my own eyes at the coffee shop."
There was something deeply unsettling about how readily Cate appeared with her testimony, how perfectly her accusations aligned with Tommy's orchestrated performance. The timing felt choreographed.
"Then we have sufficient evidence to detain you, Agent Renshaw," Bishop announced with oily satisfaction. "I'll be contacting your superiors immediately." He gestured, and four sets of hands reached for me, clasping metal shackles around my wrists before I could react.
Just as the restraints made contact, my power surged in response to the immediate danger. The gift that made me valuable to the High Council, the ability to see truth, flickered to life like a dying lightbulb. For one crucial second, Beverly's lifeless body flashed in my mind, but this time I caught a glimpse of hands, a partial face, someone standing over her corpse.
The vision vanished before I could identify the killer, leaving me with frustrating fragments.
The man now holding my chains was someone I'd never encountered before. A tall, muscular man who was clearly a warlock with substantial magical reserves. His grip was firm but not unnecessarily brutal.
"Meet Hank, Agent Renshaw," Bishop announced with proprietary pride. "He's our locally appointed enforcer, sanctioned by the council for situations exactly like this."
I met Hank's steady brown gaze, searching for any hint of recognition from my vision. His expression remained professionally neutral, not unkind but absolutely unyielding.
"Time to go, Agent Renshaw," he said quietly, his tone carrying the weight of someone accustomed to being obeyed.
The iron shackles kept my powers suppressed, preventing me from identifying the killer I'd glimpsed. My eyes swept frantically across the crowd, searching faces for any match to the fragments I'd seen.
"Who helped apprehend me?" I demanded, my voice carrying across the gathered mob. "The person who killed Beverly is standing among you right now."
"That's quite enough of that nonsense," Councilman Bishop growled dismissively. "We already know who's responsible, and she'll be dealt with appropriately."
"You will not touch her!" I snarled with such vehemence that several people stepped back instinctively. I let my voice drop to a warning that promised apocalyptic consequences. "I will bring the full weight of the High Council down on this town and burn it to the ground before I let you harm one hair on her head."
"You see?" Bishop addressed the crowd with dramatic gesturing. "What more proof do you need of her evilness? She's corrupted a High Council agent to her will, turning him against his own kind to escape justice for kidnapping and murdering our children."
Shouts of agreement rose from the mob, and I tried desperately to make them understand Sage's innocence, but Hank was already forcing me away through thecrowd. Within minutes, I found myself deposited in an iron jail cell, the door clanging shut with the finality of a coffin lid.
As Hank's footsteps faded away, leaving me alone with the terrible knowledge that Sage was out there somewhere, hurt, angry, and more dangerous than she'd ever allowed herself to be, I realized that our investigation had just become infinitely more complicated.
Because now we weren't just hunting a killer.
We were racing against time to prove Sage's innocence before her newfound embrace of darkness made that impossible.
Twenty-One
Sage
Imaterialized in my upper house through a combination of rage-fueled magic and sheer stubborn will, my heart pounding while residual power still crackled around my fingertips like angry fireflies. The absolute nerve of those narrow-minded, pitchfork-wielding ostentatious rejects! Accusing me of kidnapping and murder without a single shred of evidence all because some centuries’ old family prejudice had given them permission to be horrible people.
The transition from festival chaos to my sanctuary felt like stepping from a nightmare into a slightly more manageable bad dream. At least here I could process the evening's delightful developments without worrying about spontaneous combustion via mob justice.
Cosmo shot through the door with a growl that suggested he was planning various creative revenges. "Those absolute imbeciles! I'm going to shred them with my claws and use their remains as scratching post material,"he announced, extending a clawed paw for emphasis as I pressed the elevator button with perhaps more force than necessary.
