AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Joy gasped, horrified and alone, as Neil bled out, another tea-towel soaking through.
She screamed, jumping hard when a loud sound startled her. It took a panicked second for Joy to realise it was her phone ringing.
Joy frantically swiped to accept, smearing blood across the screen.
Mrs. Stone’s cool voice was a blessed relief. “Tell me exactly how he looks.”
Joy described it all, the bleeding, the cuts. Her voice shook. In the background of the call she could hear traffic, a horn screaming, and Victoriya swearing.
“We’re almost there, Joy,” Mrs Stone said, her voice soothing. “You’re doing a really good job. Keep pressing on the wound. Just another minute.”
Joy gasped out a pathetic reply, crying too hard now to see. She was so beyond relieved that someone was coming who could properly help Neil. Mrs. Stone was a professional. Everything would be okay.
Joy was a damned idiot for not carrying healing spell ingredients. A basic one wouldn’t save him, but it might help increase his chances. Or at least she should carry healing crystals—those would heal a papercut. Anything was better than the nothing she had now. The only crystals Joy had with her were for calming, and they’d thoroughly failed her.
Joy pressed the towel to Neil’s chest for two agonising minutes, and she started to suspect help would never arrive. The ticking of the clock on the wall seemed endless, each tick driving her mad. With every second, he lost more blood.
But footsteps rushed up the ramp outside, and then Mrs. Stone burst through the door, looking capable and assured. The sleeves of her grey shirt were already rolled up and her black hair was swept into a bun. She was calm in the face of the blood and injuries, a contrast to Joy’s pure panic.
Joy stumbled to her feet and moved out of the way as Mrs. Stone took over, saying her colleagues from the clinic were on their way. A long ebony wand was in her hand, and the other busily lined up bottles of green and pink and clear tonics.
Victoriya stood in the reserve doorway, gripping the frame with white knuckles, her face slack as she stared at the bleeding man. She came closer on unsteady legs, looking so unlike herself that Joy could only gape as Victoriya dropped to her knees beside Mr. Ivers and swore softly in Spanish.
Everything was a blur after that; the gift shop was suddenly full of people, Joy was ushered out onto the beach, and she ended up hugging Victoriya as her friend silently sobbed, shaking hard.
Joy sensed when Victoriya’s shock turned to fury, her whole body stiffening like iron.
“Thebitchdid that,” she snarled, her voice raspy and hoarse and somehow more dangerous than normal. “Did you see? His cheek? If you hadn’t come when you did, she’d have killed him.”
Victoriya grabbed Joy’s hand and squeezed hard enough to realign her finger bones, her eyes bright and wild. “You saved his life.”
Joy opened her mouth to argue but quickly shut it, realising Victoriya was right. She’d interrupted the killer. They’d slit Neil’s stomach, had begun marking his face, but whatever witchcraft had poisoned the beach around Freya, that her coven had sensed on the girl’s body … Joy had stoppedthathappening to Neil.
The person who’d run out of the reserve, who’d shoved Joy into the sand, and fled. That had beenthe killer.
Oh, god. Joy had been so close.
She shuddered, gripping Victoriya’s hand just as tightly even as burning pain throbbed through her forearm. She used her blood-smeared phone to call Gabi.
TWENTY-FOUR
GABI
Gabi resisted the urge to bang her head against the frosted window. This morning with Joy had been awkward; Gabi left after breakfast, claiming she had to get to work. Which wasn’t a lie. A full morning later, Gabi was hungry and frustrated and inadequacy was starting to set in. Every time she didn’t accomplish something fast enough or good enough, she felt like she justwasn’tenough.
Freya’s sweet boyfriend was not only innocent but had been revising with his geeky friends the evening Freya was killed and had stayed at the friend’s house until the following morning. No chance for him to sneak out, either—suspicious parents had locked and alarmed all the doors, thinking the lads would rifle the booze cabinet and sneak off to the beach.
His mother, however much she hated Freya, was with her toy boy all night and the following morning, while her husband was away at a ‘golf retreat’ withhisbit on the side.
Gabi had finally got home from questioning them, with a headache the size of China for her trouble, and a failure complex even bigger.
She should have known she couldn’t do this, couldn’t solve a murder.
Plus, the worst part of all this: her theory of Paulina being the killer had gone out of the window when the coven glimpsed the killer in their mirror. Blonde hair could be easily faked with a wig, but to go from Paulina’s size to rail thin … it wasn’t possible. Which meant Gabi had no cluewhatsoeverwho had killed Freya.
Why now? This time she did bang her head against the window, knocking a fine dusting of snow onto the path below. Why had Freya been killednow? What had changed? What had triggered the murder? Freya had been the same as ever, according to more than ten people, and she’d got back together with Macon Brent. Which meant the catalyst had been in thekiller’slife. Not the victim’s.
Gabi gnashed her teeth. She’d never figure this out. A killer would go uncaptured, free to hurt someone else, and it’d be all her fault. She’d fail herself, her mum’s memory,andPaulina’s trial week, all at the same time.
