Rise of the Night Witch

Chapter 5.5 - Confession

Recap: After deducing the Erlking's real name, he's now trapped in an iron circle, surrounded by our heroes.

The candlelight flickered into Lukas Weber's sharp and angular face. I wasn't judgy towards redheads (I mean it, Isa), but his flaming hair would've branded him as a witch back then.

His sharp ears pointed upwards like those of a horse sensing danger. He looked left and right, seeking a way out of the circle where there was none.

Once he stopped turning his head, I looked him dead in the eye and said, "Call back the Headless Horseman!"

Nathan, his hand bandaged, had his revolver. "These are steel bullets. They're as dangerous to you as to me,"

Weber smiled. "I'm wearing a bulletproof vest underneath my woolen cloth."

Nathan pointed the gun at his head.

"How boring," Weber said. "I suppose you will have me turned into an ugly cockroach by your superiors. This is how you hope everything will go. Ist das nicht so?"

"Well, yeah," I said."Just one final thing before you go. The lovely gentleman who's pointing a gun at your head said my Mom wrote her name in your book. Is this true?"

"This really isn't the time for that," Nathan said.

Weber laughed. "It is precisely the right time for that."

He pulled up the shirt he wore. As he promised, he wore a kevlar jacket underneath, and, sandwiched between the wool and the mesh, I saw the familiar edge of a red envelope.

A cracking tome so thick I couldn't even finish it on a plane trip to Australia fell to the ground. Weber picked it up without breaking a sweat and held it with a grin like that of a child showing his A-grades to his parents.

He opened the book in the middle. In what can't have been an accident, he showed the "Carter" that had first been written in Dad's handwriting and then in mine.

He turned the page to the previous entry and showed the name "Alice" in my mother's handwriting.

"You are lying," I said.

"I do not lie, Ms. Carter," Mr. Weber said.

"This is a trick. This is some twisted kind of glamour."

I punched the book out of his hand. I balled a fist and reached behind, but before I could punch his face, Isa grabbed my sleeve and pulled my arm down.

"Don't," she said.

I tried to pull my wrist free, but she was stronger than me. I needed to calm down, calm my body, calm my breathing. I needed to process what I just learned.

It explained so much in retrospect. Like why my new familiar didn't harm me like it harmed the previous victims. I assumed it was because risking my life for knowledge impressed her, but it wasn't that.

It was a far more banal reason. She, or whatever entity she served, had already hurt my mother and I was connected to her by blood.

I never knew my mother all that well. I knew she was born in Summer Hill and that she moved to New York where to meet Dad before we moved back. I didn't know who her parents were or what her background was. I now feel like I hardly knew her at all.

I thought I could tell apart good from evil. Mom saved me from a friggin' demon, showed me the beauty of magic, and showed that she was always with me, even if it didn't look that way at a first glance. There was no way she had made a deal with this monster.

Isa let go of my wrist.

Darcy was typing on her Magia Phone. "Can we hand him over now?"

"No!" I said.