Page 66 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

“A Scottish ballad?” I asked, feeling a strange chill. “Was it ‘Tam Lin’?”

“How did you know?” Soheila asked, clearly surprised.

“My parents told me the story when I was little…” I stopped, trying to recall something on the edge of my memory. Some other time when I’d heard the ballad recently, but the thin filament of memory had slipped away.

I continued, “I thought about the story last night. How Jennet has to hold on to Tam Lin while he becomes a snake, a lion, and a burning brand, and how that was what I’d have to do…Only I didn’t. I let go.” I heard my voice wobble on the last words. Liz patted my arm and Ann took out a tissue from her purse and handed it to me.

“How could you help but let go when he lashed out at you? That’s what Angus discovered. He believed that if he tracked the incubus down to where he had been created and waited for him on Halloween night, as Jennet does, he could turn him into a human being and then kill him. But when he grabbed hold of him he became the one thing that Angus couldn’t fight—his sister, Katy.”

“Oh,” I said, “that must have been awful.”

“It was. He was so shocked that he let her go—and then the incubus became a horrible beast with claws that struckhim down. Angus lived through the attack and came back to me, but he was already dying from the poison. I tried to save him, but I couldn’t.” Soheila touched the marks on my face. “But I don’t sense any poison in you.”

“There was,” I said, blushing as I remembered how Bill had rubbed my skin to release the poison. How had he known how to do that? “But it passed out of my system.”

“You were lucky,” Soheila said. “Angus died within a month and in great pain. But the fact remains that Duncan Laird attacked you.”

“And,”Liz added in a despairing wail, “all this time that we thought he was helping you gain power, he’s probably been draining you. You haven’t gotten rid of your wards, have you?”

“Not completely,” I admitted, feeling the coils lash inside me at the question. “But they’ve been loosened. I think they’re almost gone. And,” I added, remembering the footnote I’d read in Wheelock last night, “I think I’ve found a way to keep the Grove from closing the door.”

“Good,” Liz said. “We may need it. The Grove and IMP have announced a schedule change. The meeting is today.”

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