Page 38 of Hexes and Hiccups
She gulped. “I-I didn’t know that, Wesley.”
“No,” he muttered. “‘Course you didn’t. The Elders…the Witch Council…they fear power.Realpower. Always have,always will. Petrification, turning creatures to stone, takes real power. Something they’d never have.”
Daisy eyed him. “You…you petrified them? Riven and –”
“Don’t say the woman’s damned name!” Wesley flung the potion about again, forcing Tessa to pause about halfway towards Sasha. “I writhe at it…Harper…Iwritheat it!”
“Tell me, Wesley,” she called out. “What is it about the Harpers that does this to you? What do they have to do with the Book of Gossip?”
“Weren’t you listening, Ms. Fields?” Wesley shook his head andtskedher. “Lotta should’ve taught you better.”
Daisy’s hands clenched into small fists. “My grandmother taught me everything she knew.”
“Not enough, it seems.” Wesley kicked the Book of Gossip away. “Riven might’ve been a gossip, but he sure had an inclination towards the truth…finding the truth…no matter what stood in the dragon’s way. But aren’t secrets meant to be hidden? Secrets and cars and bodies are meant tostay hidden!”
Daisy shook her head as he returned to rambling, unsure of what it was he was trying to say. “What did Riven uncover, Wesley?”
“That boy,” he muttered. “That boy Tyler is incapable of silence, did you know that? He’d flaunt his findings all over town. Once, and that was all it took for Riven’s ears to perk up, to hear something he wanted to know.”
Daisy stepped closer as her heart slammed against her chest. Something, she realized, lay at the tip of his tongue. “What was it?”
“Dragons live a long time, did you know that?”
“Wesley –”
“How was I supposed to know that he was there?” he shouted, his weak voice echoing through the room. “How was I supposed to know that it was Riven, thirty years ago?”
Daisy’s eyes went incredibly wide. “Wesley…thirty years ago? That’s…you…”
“That’s right,” he hissed, a frightening expression on his face. “Tyler dove deep into Lake Silverpine and found the car. He boasted about town, and Riven overheard. But he was there, you see, thirty years prior, when Evelyn made her choice, and when I made mine!”
“She disappeared,” Daisy whispered, her eyes flicking over to Tessa. “She disappeared and they found her…” The realization slammed into her like a ton of bricks. “It was you, Wesley, wasn’t it? You were the man the police were after, the man who admitted to being obsessed with her. You couldn’t let her go, could you? Couldn’t let anyone else have her,could you?”
Wesley shook and trembled like a madman. “The dragon figured it out,” he whispered. “So I turned him to stone and took the book.”
“A distraction,” she murmured. “To keep us off your trail.”
“And when that littlerottenboy managed to tell Fern,” he paused to shake his head, a rattling breath caught in his throat, “she threatened me.Me!‘Your time has finally come, Wesley,’” he mocked in a sharply feminine voice. “‘Everything I knew you did, everything they never believed. Your time has come.’”
Daisy could hardly wrap her mind around it. “Riven,” she whispered. “He knew everything?”
“I wouldn’t sayeverything,” he said. “But enough. Enough to start a fire, enough to begin another rumor. His theory, it was backed up enough, and I remembered him, then. He was there, and I couldn’t let another thing stand in my way.”
“So you petrified him,” Daisy said. “And used the rumors to confuse the town.”
Wesley nodded. “I knew the Council might return him to normal eventually. By that time, the town would be so overcomewith his foolish book that they’d hardly turn my way. But it was –”
“Tyler,” Daisy whispered. “All this time. Tyler figured it out without even realizing it.”
“And now,” he growled, holding the potion out towards her, “now I am left withyou.”
Daisy glanced in Tessa’s direction. The empath was crouched down beside Sasha, just in arm’s reach of her. Wesley was far too distracted by Daisy’s voice and presence to look away, to notice that they were closing in upon him. Daisy held Tessa’s stare and caught the empath’s nod, her hands reaching for the examiner within seconds.
Wesley let his head drop into his hands, his shoulders trembling. Short and incoherent murmurs left his lips as he stood there.
While he wasn’t watching, Daisy reached into her satchel, fishing through the bottles till she felt a familiar one, her hand wrapping around it instantly. Across the way, Tessa was grasping onto Sasha, pulling the girl away from Wesley as fast as she could. The man was beginning to notice, his attention slowly inching in their direction.
“Wesley!” Daisy shouted as she fully pulled the potion out from her pocket.
