17. Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Seb

I t was late as hell by the time I finished helping with the leftover cursed objects, and Ailin got the elves settled at home—I was pretty sure they were there to stay. Afterward, we met back at HQ where they’d taken the siphoner and incubus and got to work on IDing the perps and finding out absolutely everything we could about them.

God, did I feel like such an asshole for letting my staff overtake me like that. I’d left the staff at home, in the basement, where it was going to stay for a little while because that had been… terrifying.

I needed to evaluate my connection with the thing and make sure that never, ever, ever happened again. If I couldn’t control it, I was going to put the damn thing in our basement under lock and key for the rest of time.

But… hopefully, I’d be able to figure out what the fuck happened because that staff had saved our asses on more than one occasion.

Over the course of a couple of hours, I had Ailin take two more healing tonics, so he was feeling a lot better by the time we were finished gathering everything we could find on both the incubus and the siphoner.

Since the siphoner was still waking up from the tranq, Ailin and I went to interview the incubus first, taking both folders filled with information on the perps with us. I wasn’t sure how Ailin had made Alec agree to let us interview both of them, but I wasn’t about to complain. I wanted to know what the hell was going on here.

As soon as we sat down, Ailin asked the guy, “Why were you at the factory tonight?”

The guy stared at Ailin, saying nothing.

“Were you planning on hurting the elves?”

Still nothing.

“Were you going to take them back to the siphoner?”

The man said nothing, but he did sort of twitch, which made me think Ailin was onto something there.

My viramore glared at the man. “I’d ask you your name, but we already know everything since you had your ID on you. I was honestly surprised it was your real ID. You have a record, Emros Vakal. Mostly petty theft and trespassing. It looks like you’ve been living a little rough the past ten years, but your arrest rate went up significantly five years ago. What exactly happened to you to make you take such risks? Usually you’re arrested with a succubus named Olrithe Ennelis. We have people bringing her in now.”

The incubus—Emros—jerked in his seat and glared hard at Ailin. “Why would you do that? She has nothing to do with this. She wasn’t even there.”

“Finally, a reaction,” Ailin said privately to me.

Ailin shrugged like he didn’t have a care in the world. “Maybe, but it seemed like it was worth pursuing. I’m sure we can find a reason to hold her for a while.”

True anger crossed Emros’s features. “Leave her alone. Olrithe had nothing to do with any of this.”

“We’ll see about that.”

The man growled and banged on the table. “Leave her alone! She had nothing to do with this fucking plan Mor—” He grunted in pain and bent over, raising his cuffed hands to his throat as he groaned.

I asked Ailin, “This fucking plan Mortimer came up with?”

“That’s exactly what I think he was gonna say.” Ailin nodded and spoke out loud to Emros. “That’s what I thought. He has you under a compulsion too, doesn’t he?”

Emros sent Ailin another glare and managed a minute nod before groaning in pain again.

“Well, fuck.” Ailin sighed, long and loud. “We’re not going to get anything out of him as long as he’s under the compulsion.” In my head, he added, “We’ll have to question him again once we break it.”

“You really think you can break the binds?”

“Yes. I’ve done it before, and I’ll figure it out once we talk to fucking Mortimer.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Ailin and I stood as he spoke. “Someone will take you to a holding cell.”

“Wait. That’s it? Can’t I go home?”

“Not yet.”

“But I didn’t do anything.”

My viramore leaned down to meet the guy’s gaze. “We want to keep you here until we sort everything out with the siphoner, okay? We want to help.”

The incubus blinked in surprise before sitting up straight. “You want to help… me?” He sounded so surprised, as if no one in his whole life had ever helped him.

From the look of his profile, I was afraid that might be true. It made me feel for the guy. He truly hadn’t done anything wrong at the factory, and I was sure he hadn’t been there by choice. We were going to figure out a way to help him, and the elves too.

“Yes. We don’t want to help. We’re going to help.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh-okay.”

I gave the dazed guy a nod, and the two of us headed out of the room. Ailin didn’t hesitate to walk to the next interrogation room, so I followed him inside. He didn’t even check in with Alec, despite the poor werewolf coming out of the observation room and heading in our direction.

“You really are an asshole sometimes,” I muttered under my breath.

Ailin shot me a wink. “I know.” He sat at the table across from the siphoner, and said, “So… Mr. Mortimer Tombend, is it?”

The man in question smirked at my viramore but didn’t say anything, and I eyed the man. He looked so… normal now that his magic wasn’t swirling around him in a storm of destruction. The guy had short brown hair, brown eyes, light skin, some scruff on his cheeks, and was probably around five-ten-ish, if I had to guess. He was skinny as all hell, to the point that he almost looked unhealthy.

All in all, if I walked past him on the street, I never would’ve guessed he was some evil asshole, let alone a rare creature I’d never really heard about before now.

That was probably how he was able to steal someone’s powers. He looked so innocent and non-threatening that I was sure people let their guard down around him. Then he could strike without the other person ever realizing he was a threat.

What a dick.

“What was the plan here, Mortimer? You decided to attack the city and gain all that power? For what purpose? What did you intend to do? Take over? Run the city?”

The man just shrugged, but he still looked smug.

Ailin shuffled some papers around in the folder he was carrying, putting on a little show for the dickhead. “Or… maybe you wanted to break into the prison and get your baby brother out? I hear he’s serving two life sentences for murder, breaking and entering, and assault. Maybe he can share his cell with you.”

The man’s smirk fell, and he glared daggers at Ailin.

“Ohhhh, so that was it, huh? You wanted to break your brother out of prison, but you don’t have enough power on your own. You needed to steal a shit-ton of power from others, and to do so, you terrorized the entire city for a week.”

“You have no proof it was me. Those elves are the ones who cursed everything.”

“True, true.” Ailin leaned in close. “But I can feel the bind you put on them and the incubus, and you know what, Mortimer?”

Mortimer made a little growling sound.

“My word holds a lot more clout than yours, and I’m not the only witch in this building who can feel it. We have more eyewitnesses to your bindings than you can count.”

The man let out a small laugh and waved him off. “Yeah, sure. If you say so.”

Ailin ignored him. “You know what else, Mortimer?”

The man met my viramore’s gaze, lifted a brow, and shrugged one shoulder.

When Ailin spoke, his voice was quiet but rang with power. “I’m gonna break each and every bind you have.”

The man actually laughed at that, like it was the funniest thing he ever heard. “Even if what you say is true, that I have binds on other people—and I’m not claiming I do—you wouldn’t be able to break them. No one can break a bind but the person that laid it.”

Ailin smirked. “Wanna bet?”

Then my viramore stood, released his magic in a wave of green, and leaned over the table, putting his hand on the siphoner’s chest. The man tried to back away, but Ailin’s magic was already wrapped around him, holding him tight and not letting him go.

Because of the supernatural handcuffs, the siphoner’s innate magic didn’t work, so he couldn’t siphon Ailin’s magic, thank god. He was completely at the mercy of my viramore.

A small part of me enjoyed that, enjoyed the fact that this horrible man had zero control right now.

I watched Ailin’s green magic slide inside Mortimer’s mouth, nose, and ears, and I had no doubt that it was seeking out the siphoner’s heart and soul.

“Let go of me,” he growled out, wiggling around, still trying to break free.

Ailin didn’t say anything. He simply closed his eyes and concentrated while I watched on. There wasn’t really anything I could do to help him unless he needed an extra boost of magic.

Through our link, I asked, “Do you need my help to break it?”

“Maybe. I might be able to do it myself, but I wouldn’t mind your help.”

Since I was sitting beside him, I reached over and placed my hand on Ailin’s back, then I released my magic and asked it to find Ailin’s. It didn’t really need the direction because it always sought his magic out, no matter what we were doing.

My blue magic mixed with his green, and I watched it float its way into the siphoner’s mouth, nose, and ears. Then I closed my eyes and let myself feel.

Ailin led the way, and I let him. He wrapped our magics around the man’s heart before it permeated through it. It didn’t take long to feel the very core of Mortimer, and I kinda wished I hadn’t felt it because it was sort of oily, like his magic had been.

But even with the oiliness, his soul was a soft glow inside his chest. A dark one, sure, but there was still a glow there.

Our magics wrapped around it and through it, and after a few seconds, I sensed something that felt like a string that was tied to his soul. I let my magic tug on it, and when it vibrated, I could feel the essence of the elves on the other side. It was strange because this end of the string was one solid string wrapped around his heart, but when I followed the strand, I could tell it broke off into multiple ones, flowing into each and every elf on our coven land.

I could only guess that Mortimer had conned his way into binding the whole troupe as a group instead of doing each individual separately.

“Nice work, baby,” Ailin said as he used our magics to form almost a large knife. Then he lifted it and chopped it through the string.

I felt the snap reverberate through the siphoner’s entire body, and I heard the man scream out in shock and pain.

Then he started cussing up a storm and thrashing around even more than before. He sounded like a rabid animal. But we ignored him and went searching for the other binds.

It didn’t take long for Ailin to find the string attached to the incubus, and after a few seconds, we cut that one as well, setting Emros free.

The siphoner was even more pissed off now.

But that didn’t stop us from searching for any other binds in his soul.

We needed to make sure this evil man couldn’t control anyone ever again.

We found two more—one that felt like it was attached to a satyr, and one to a succubus who was likely Emros’s friend. We snapped those two as well, freeing everyone from the siphoner’s hold.

It felt good, knowing we’d freed so many people from a life of misery under this evil siphoner’s rule.

When we pulled away, Mortimer was a sweaty, horrible mess. He looked pale, exhausted, and pissed off beyond belief.

He looked ready to attack us, but snapping those bindings had worn the man out—not that he could hurt us when wearing cuffs and magicless anyway.

“Now that that’s done, you wanna tell us more about your brother?”

The man let out a loud growl before jumping up and diving across the table, aiming for Ailin’s throat. I threw up a shield without thinking and used a small power orb to push the bastard back into his seat.

When he landed on his ass, he looked surprised and dazed, and I turned to my viramore, saying, “Can we go home now? We know why he did it. Let’s let someone else take over the interrogations. I want to be done with this miserable dickhead.”

Ailin blew out a breath. “Fine.” In my head, he said, “Let’s check on Emros first, just to make sure he’s alright before we leave the premises.”

“Sounds good.”

As we headed for the door, the siphoner yelled, “I’ll kill you for this! This isn’t over, Ailin and Sebastian Ellwood! You better watch your backs because I’m coming after yo—”

Ailin slammed the door before the horrible man could continue his rant. Neither one of us was worried about the dickhead coming after us because he wouldn’t be seeing the light of day for a very, very long time.

We headed back to the holding cells, and when we reached Emros’s cell, I was a little surprised to find him crying.

Oh god, did we hurt him when we cut the bindings?

Shit . Were the elves hurting too?

I didn’t think it’d hurt them. Shit, shit, shit. That was the last thing I wanted to do.

The incubus looked up at us, met Ailin’s eyes, and smiled through his tears. “You… you freed me.”

Ailin gave him a slight smile. “Are you alright?”

Emros nodded. “I… you… thank you. Mother of All, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Emros stood and moved closer to the edge of his cell. “I’ll tell you everything you want. Everything. Mortimer tricked me. We met at a bar, and I went home with him. I thought we were gonna have a fun night together, but when he got me on his bed, I realized he’d trapped me in a witch’s circle. I couldn’t get out, and he bound me to him against my will.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I said, an ache in my heart for everything he went through.

Emros nodded. “Thanks. Um… he did pretty much the same thing to Olrithe about three years ago, I think. It’s like he’s been collecting… slaves for years.” He shook his head, looking upset. “He’s made me do so much horrible shit. Oh, and he’s trying to break his brother out of prison—that’s why he’s doing all this crazy shit.”

“Thank you, Emros,” Ailin said, cutting him off. “Would it be okay if you came back to the interrogation room so we can record everything?”

“Of course.”

We ended up speaking to Emros for a few hours, detailing everything the poor man had been forced to do for the last five years. Everything we’d discovered and pieced together about Mortimer’s motives were confirmed by the incubus. Breaking his brother out of prison had been his main motive. It sounded like Mortimer had lost his mind a little along the way, and we ended up with all this horrible shit happening to the citizens of our city.

By the time we were leaving HQ, the sun was up, and I was dead on my feet. Ailin was even worse than me because he’d been so injured earlier. He needed sleep. Badly. We both did.

So once we finished the interview, I told Alec we were going home and would come back later for any paperwork or anything else he needed. Then I grabbed Ailin’s hand and dragged him out of there.

When we parked the car at home, Ailin was half asleep, so I walked around to the passenger’s side, pulled him to his feet, and wrapped an arm around him to help him into the house.

I’d already sent a text in the family chat, letting everyone know we needed to sleep today and to wait until dinnertime to contact us or come to the big house. They all agreed, and I figured half the usual culprits—Bas, Thay, Jor, and Clover—would be sleeping the day away too since they were on the case with us, so hopefully, we’d have a good bit of rest today.

After all of that, I was surprised to hear voices when I pushed the front door open. I sighed and tugged Ailin along toward the living room but paused when I realized I didn’t recognize any of the voices and that they were speaking Fae’lee.

Had… had someone broken into our house? But how? No one could’ve gotten through our wards.

I heard another voice that sounded mildly familiar.

“What the fuck?”

Ailin stiffened for only a second before blowing out a breath. “It’s the elves.”

I froze. “What? You let the elves inside the house?”

Ailin shrugged a little. “Only the first floor. Just…” He waved me on. “Go look.”

I pulled him with me the rest of the way, then froze at the sight before me.

There was Winter Solstice wrapping paper, ribbons, tape, and bows all over the living and dining rooms. And elves were… everywhere . On the couches, rolling around on the floor, on the dining table, literally climbing the wall, hanging from the ceiling, and jumping from a bookshelf to land on the couch. Just… just everywhere.

“Ailin, what have you done?”

He sighed. “Baby, look.” He motioned to the corner of the room, and I blinked.

There was a pile of presents, all wrapped up neat and beautiful and perfect.

“Are those…?”

“Yep. Our gifts. When I brought them back from the factory, I asked the elves if they wanted to go back to Faela. But they like it here, surprisingly after everything they’ve been through. They asked to stay here with us—I think they’re taking over the shed officially—and they wanted to repay us for our hospitality and help capturing Mortimer. Nimeroni overheard us talking about needing to wrap presents, and she offered. I checked that you had stickers with names on each gift, and you did, so it was easy to hand it over to them.”

I glanced around and took a better look, realizing that some of the elves on the floor were actually in the process of wrapping more of the presents. I mean, they looked like they were also playing by rolling the wrapping paper around themselves and dancing around with ribbon, but if I looked closely, I could see them wrapping a gift at the same time.

I glanced at the gifts in the corner again.

They seriously looked beautiful. Almost too pretty to rip open and way better than anything I’d ever wrapped in my life. Wow.

It looked like absolute chaos, but apparently, they still knew how to get shit done.

“Holy shit.” I sagged in something like relief. “We have time to actually prepare the food and everything else.” I’d been getting overwhelmed with the amount of shit we needed to do before Winter Solstice, so this was an immense help.

“Yep.” He squeezed my waist. “Now, let’s go to bed.”

I gave him a nod, but before we walked away, I loudly said in Fae’lee, “Thank you all so much for your help.”

Nimeroni looked up from where she was taping some wrapping paper and sent me a wide smile. “It’s our pleasure.”

A bunch of the others said similar things, all of the elves smiling at us as they continued to play.

She rushed over and wrapped her little body around Ailin’s leg, then around mine, giving us hugs.

I patted her back.

“Thank you for freeing us. We… we’re so very grateful.”

That made me smile, and Ailin offered her one too. “No problem. I’m glad you’re free, and I’m happy to have you here on our land.”

She let out a small squeal of excitement, then gave our legs each another hug before rushing back over to help with the wrapping.

Ailin said, “We’re going upstairs to sleep for a long time. Help yourselves to the kitchen.”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea? It’s going to be a disaster.”

“I know, but I’d rather them do that than try to wake us up because they’re starving.”

I hummed. “Or, god, have them find Bramble and ask him for food.”

That made Ailin snort, and I sent him a smile before leading him up to our bedroom where we could fall into our bed for a very, very long time… hopefully.