Staring at Luke, I said, “Can you honestly say you believe Potter is Elias Munn?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he said, shaking his head. “I believed Potter and I were friends. I thought we were like brothers. What sort of brother would go after the woman I had fallen in love with? Tell me that, Kiera. What sort of friend is Potter when he does something like that to me?”
“But it wasn’t just Potter,” I tried to explain. “It was me too.”
“I don’t believe that,” Luke said. “Potter has seduced you – tricked you like he has tricked me. He’s tricked all of us. I thought I could trust him, but while I was imprisoned, which only happened so I could save your life, Kiera, he went behind my back and stole you from me.”
“I’m not some kind of prize, you know,” my frustration starting to boil beneath the surface. “Potter didn’t steal me from anyone – I knew what I was doing. I couldn’t help the feelings I had for him.”
“So that’s it then?” Luke said, and again his eyes were awash with that look of hurt. “It’s you and Potter.”
“I do care about you Luke, honestly I do,” I said, I wasn’t trying to soften the blow; I did really care for him.
“You have a funny way of showing it,” he snapped, then at once he shook his head, and added, “I’m sorry, Kiera, I didn’t mean that. I’m just hurting you know. I’ve lost you and my best friend in the space of a few minutes.”
“You haven’t lost me,” I told him. “I’m your friend.”
“But friendship isn’t enough for me, Kiera, I’m in love with you,” he said.
“Please, Luke, don’t say that,” I whispered.
“But it’s true.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he whispered, turning and heading back towards camp.
I stood alone in the woods and felt totally and utterly lost. Covering my face with my hands, I started to sob. What had I done? Had I really been tricked by Potter? Had I really been responsible for the death of Kayla by telling him Coanda’s plan?
Why had he disappeared when Coanda realised I hadn’t kept his confidence? There were so many questions and I hated myself. Not because of what I had done, but because I just couldn’t see. All my life I had been able to see what others had missed – the finer details – but now when I needed to the most, I couldn’t see anything, it was like I was blind.
I couldn’t believe that Potter had deceived me. But was that just me trying to convince myself I was too smart to be deceived by him? Was it my pride and own arrogance getting in the way? Was that what was blinding me?
But still there was something deep down that told me
Potter was not part of this. It was something very small, but big enough for me to grab onto. All I could see in my mind’s eye was that cigarette butt left by the weeping willow in the woods. And it was that single cigarette butt which kept me hoping that Potter wasn’t Elias Munn.
Chapter Twenty-Four
There was a sound behind me and I spun round to see Isidor coming back through the trees into the clearing. I could see that he had been crying, and he cuffed away a stream of snot from beneath his nose with his sleeve. Wiping my own tears away, I went towards him, but before I got to him, he raised a hand indicating for me not to come too close.
“I’m so sorry, Isidor,” I said.
He stood and stared at me and he had that haunted look again, the one he’d had since returning to The Hollows.
“What’s wrong, Isidor?” I whispered.
“What do you think is wrong?” he came back at me. “My sister has just been murdered.”
“But there’s something more than that,” I told him. “You’ve not been right since we got here. Please talk to me, Isidor.” Again, I tried to move closer to him, but he stepped backwards, maintaining the gap between us.
“Whatever’s wrong, Isidor, you’re going to have to talk about it sooner or later,” I said. “Keeping it to yourself won’t help.”
Lowering his head so I couldn’t see into his eyes, he said, “It’s Kayla…” then stopped.
“What about Kayla?” I asked him.
Straightening up, he looked at me and said, “It’s nothing.” Then, he was gone, slowly walking back to camp with his crossbow slung over his shoulder.
Alone again, I peered back into the dark in the direction Isidor had come. I wanted to say my own goodbye to Kayla. I couldn’t just leave her lying alone on the side of the mountain. So, following Isidor’s tracks back through the trees, I came across a mound of disturbed earth. Kneeling beside it, I ran my fingertips over the dirt and it was hard for me to accept that she lay just beneath my touch, battered and bruised, heart and ears missing. How had it come to this? This wasn’t the way her life should have ended. Kayla deserved better than that. I remembered the time I’d watched her giggling in the dark at Hallowed Manor as she taught herself to fly, and tears began to roll down my cheeks.
“I’ll miss you, Kayla,” I said.
Then I felt a hand fall on my shoulder. Stifling a scream, I looked up to see Potter standing behind me. I jumped up, and within an instant my claws were out, as were my fangs, and I launched him across the small clearing. Potter flew backwards under the weight of my punch and slammed into the trunk of a large tree. It shook in the ground and leaves showered down from above. Before he’d had the chance to regain his composure, I was on him, my claws around his throat, my fangs inches from his face.
“Did you kill her?” I screeched.
“No!” he groaned beneath my grip.
“Why did you run?”
“Because I’m being set up,” he wheezed.
“By who?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?” I spat, spittle spraying from my fangs and covering his face.
“You don’t, but you’ll have to trust me,” he croaked.
“Who did you tell about the Light House?”
“No one, Kiera.”
“So if only three of us knew about it, one of us is the killer and I know it isn’t me,” I hissed.
“Do you really believe I killed Kayla?” Potter mumbled, and I could see his lips were turning blue.
In my heart I didn’t believe he had murdered Kayla; so slowly, I released my grip on him. I looked at him as he rubbed his throat and prayed I had done the right thing by letting him go. Stepping away, I went back towards Kayla’s grave.
“I didn’t kill Kayla,” Potter said joining me, his voice still sounding raw from where I had strangled him. “But somebody wants you to believe I did.”
“Who?” I asked, not looking at him.
“Elias Munn.”
“And who is he?”
“Someone close to us,” he said. “I didn’t think I would ever say this, but I think Murphy was right, someone in our group is a traitor.”
“So what’s changed your mind?”
“Being framed for Kayla’s murder is probably a good start,” he said, taking a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it. Then looking through the cloud of blue smoke at me, he added, “You don’t look too surprised by the whole idea of me being framed.”
“Put the cigarette out,” I ordered him.
“What?” he said, looking bemused. “I’ve only just lit it.”
“Put the goddamn thing out, Potter!”
Without taking his eyes off me, he took the smouldering cigarette from the corner of his mouth, dropped it onto the grass, and ground it out with the heel of his boot.
Staring down at it, I asked, “What do you see?”
“A waste of a perfectly good smoke,” Potter grimaced.
“Tell me what you see,” I pushed.
“You’re doing that Miss Marple thing again, aren’t you?” he sighed.
Ignoring him, I knelt down and ran my fingertips over the cigarette and the blades of grass. In my head I could see the cigarette left by the tree where Kayla had been crying. I compared the two images in my mind. “Come here,” I told him.
Sighing, Potter knelt beside me.
I picked up the cigarette butt and held it up to him. “It’s crushed to pieces.”
“Even I can see that,” he said.
“Just like the other one,” I whispered.
“What other one?” he asked me.
“The one by the weeping willow,” I breathed. “But there is a difference.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, gripping me by the shoulder.
“There was a cigarette left by the weeping willow where I discovered Kayla crying. She had been talking to someone. At first I thought it was the ghost of her father, just like mine had visited me. But when I went to her, I could see that it hadn’t been a ghost at all, but a living person, as I could see their footprints in the grass as if they had run away. Whoever had been standing there left one of your cigarette ends. Knowing I would see it, they hoped I would think it was you she had been talking to.”
“So what makes you think that it wasn’t me?” he asked.
“The cigarette had been ground out beneath the heel of your boot, because it was crushed just like this one,” I told him holding up what was left of the cigarette. But look at the grass. See how it is all bent over and disturbed where you ground it out with the heel of your boot? Well, the grass beneath the willow wasn’t. The cigarette hadn’t been put out there; it had been planted by whoever wanted to frame you. But by who, I don’t know.”
Standing, Potter looked at me and said, “And whoever put it there killed Kayla. Somehow they knew you had confided in me about the detour to the Light House, so they planted the cigarette and then killed Kayla hoping you would put the facts together and would suspect me.”
