Page 71 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

“Please state your full name,” Adelaide ordered.

“Soheila Lilly,” she replied.

“Is that yourfullname?”

Soheila sighed. The sigh turned into a musical trill of wind that passed through the room, carrying with it the scent of cardamom and cloves and the warmth of a desert night. I saw Frank smile when the breeze reached him—we all smiled, I think, warmed by its touch in this cold, hostile room, even Loomis Pagan, who looked like she hadn’t smiled in decades. But then Adelaide lifted a hand and the warm gust turned icy cold.

“You are not allowed to perform magic at this meeting,” she roared.

Soheila’s eyes widened but she spoke with controlled grace. “I was not performing magic. You asked me my full name and I gave it to you. My name belongs to the wind. I cannot help what effect it has on you.”

“It hadnoeffect on me,” Adelaide snapped, a smug look on her face, “because I am warded against such tricks, but I imagine the effect is most seductive to unwarded humans…or to a witch unaware of your nature.” Adelaide turned to Frank. “Were you aware, Dr. Delmarco, that your colleague Soheila Lilly is a succubus?”

Frank shook his head, his eyes on Soheila. Her eyes were wide and glassy with pain.

Liz made a strangled noise. I glanced at her and saw that there were tears in her eyes. I looked at the other members of the board and saw that they were looking at Soheila intently.

“We are waiting for your answer, Dr. Delmarco.”

“No,” Frank said, “I wasn’t. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t changewhoshe is.”

“But it does.” Adelaide’s voice was almost soft now. “She merely had to say her true name to make you swoon. Who knows what effect her power has had on you, or how it has compromised your judgment?”

“I have never wielded my power over Frank,” Soheila cried. “Nor over any other man—not for decades. I have abstained from that sort of contact for more than sixty years.” Soheila lifted her chin.

“Ah,” Adelaide purred, “but you just said you don’t have control over your power. Merely saying your name is a prelude to seduction. It is what you are. The Grove cannot blame you for that, Dr. Lilly, but it can take steps to protect humanity from you.”

Beside me Liz made a noise that started as a sob but then turned into a snort of laughter. “Humanity!” she cried, rising to her feet. “This proceeding is a mockery of humanity. I call for a recess…”

“We all have to agree to call a recess,” Delbert Winters said. “And I, for one, would like to hear what Dr. Lilly has to say.”

Liz glared at Winters. “This is my college. I won’t stand by and let my teachers be interrogated.”

“And yet you stood by and let an incubus prey on one of your teachers. Your judgment has been rendered invalid, Dean Book. As has Dr. Delmarco’s. You have both been seduced by those creatures from whom you are pledged to protect humanity. Why, less than one week ago you, Dean Book, let into this world an undine who has been rampaging through the woods, preying on young men.”

“That wasn’t Dean Book’s fault,” I said, rising to my feet. “I let in the undine—inadvertently—and Dean Book has done everything in her power to apprehend her. In fact, this rogue undine was apprehended last night. She’s being held under guard until tomorrow when she will be escorted to the door and brought back to Faerie. It’s that kind of cooperation between witches and fey that makes Fairwick work. If we close the door and force part of our population to leave, the town and college will lose its heart. We’ll be diminished.”

“A very heartening sentiment, Dr. McFay,” Delbert Winters said, his voice thick with disdain, “but since you are not a member of the governing board of IMP, you have no standing in these proceedings.”

“She’s been called in as an expert witness—” Liz began.

“I hardly think that writing a book about the sex lives of vampires makes her an expert in anything but…” Delbert Winters sneered. “…sex. If anything, her proclivities make her a suspect witness. Didn’t she have a relationship with an incubus last year?”

“That was months ago. I banished him—”

“And yet you still wear the marks of your dalliance with him!” Adelaide waved her hand and I felt something rough brush against my cheek. I was reminded of an incident when I was fourteen and Adelaide caught me wearing makeup toschool. She’d scrubbed my face with a washcloth. I felt the same shame now, coupled with a tightening of my wards as I realized that Soheila’s protective makeup had been wiped from my face, but I held my head up.

“This was no dalliance,” I said. “It was an attack from a creature I was attempting to unmask.”

“However you acquired the marks, dear, it’s clear you are unable to protect yourself, let alone your friends and neighbors.” She looked down at the report in front of her. “Since coming to Fairwick, you’ve let in a liderc who fed on students and faculty. You let in an incubus who fed onyou. And now you’ve let in an undine that has been attacking fishermen.”

Adelaide snapped her fingers and the slide projection of a bucolic wood changed to a graphic depiction of a body of a young man, his legs twisted at an unnatural angle, his arms splayed out to either side, lying beside a forest stream. His face and chest were covered with blood and gore. Lydia Markham and Talbot Greeley gasped.

“This body was found in the woods near the source of the Undine,” Adelaide said into the stunned silence of the room. “As was this one.” She snapped her fingers again and another corpse appeared on the screen, this one without a face.

Frank stood up and moved closer to the screen, the red gore spreading over his own face as he scrutinized the picture.

“Do we know for certain that this was done by an undine?” Liz asked.

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