Page 12 of Tattered Huntress
Rehab wouldn’t work. I took spider’s silk for a reason and, much as I didn’t want to be addicted to the damned stuff, I couldn’t allow myself not to take it. ‘I’m perfectly fine. I don’t need any help – and I don’t need rehab.’
McIlvanney twisted the pen in his hands, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles turned white. ‘The complainant?—’
‘Hugo Pemberville,’ I muttered. ‘You can say his damned name.’
McIlvanney began again. ‘The complainant is an important person. He’s highly placed and he has a lot of influence. SDS has a great deal of competition and we can’t afford to piss off the wrong person. We certainly can’t afford to piss off someone who can drive away our business. I’m responsible for two dozen employees at this branch alone, Daisy. They depend on their jobs to put food on their tables.’
I didn’t take my eyes from him. ‘You’re firing me, aren’t you?’
‘If you agree to submit to a drugs test and the results are clear, then no.’
I didn’t say anything. McIlvanney didn’t hide his disappointment. He ran a hand through his greying hair and tried a different tack. ‘I can hold your job for you until you complete rehab. It’d only be a temporary suspension.’
I set my jaw into a tight line. I could try and explain, but McIlvanney didn’t have magic. He wouldn’t understand.
When it became obvious that I wouldn’t agree to rehab, he looked sad. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘you’re leaving me with no choice. You’ll still receive your holiday pay and your full month’s wages, but I’m afraid that this is where we part company. I’m very sorry. It’s not personal.’
For the first time, I lowered my gaze and turned my head so he wouldn’t see my unshed tears. ‘You’re wrong,’ I said shakily. ‘This is nothingbutpersonal.’
Chapter
Five
Icould have gone home, buried myself in my duvet with a giant tub of ice-cream and thrown plates at my wall. I could have gone to the Hanging Bat and drowned my sorrows in a vat of heavy-duty gin. I could have called my parents and poured out my heart to their sympathetic ears. But I didn’t do any of those things. I am a solution-focused kind of person and the bastards weren’t going to grind me down. Neither was Hugo sodding Pemberville.
By the time I walked out of the warehouse, I knew exactly what to do. I couldn’t blame McIlvanney for firing me but I did blame Hugo Pemberville, and I certainly wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking he’d won.
The van I drove belonged to SDS so I had to gather my things and return the keys, but I wasn’t without transport. Living in Edinburgh generally negated the need to own a car of my own; usually I took the bus or cycled.
Without spending any time over-thinking what I was doing, I unlocked my bike from its usual position at the SDS gates and rode it to the nearest train station. The journey would be a proverbial pain in the arse – and potentially a literal one aswell, given how far I’d have to cycle – but I reckoned it would be well worth it.
The train time from Edinburgh to Lockerbie was under an hour. Given the lack of news headlines about the recovery of a mysterious lost necklace, I was fairly certain that Hugo Pemberville hadn’t found it yet. All the same, I used my time on the train to trawl various news websites and social media to confirm that the search was ongoing and to find out where Pemberville was at that moment in time.
When I discovered that he was deep in the Pentland Hills with his group of stupid Primes, I pumped the air and crowed aloud, startling the family opposite me to the point where the youngest kid dropped his limp cheese sandwich and stared at me while his father glared. I waved a brief apology but my thoughts were elsewhere. Hugo might indeed be a talented treasure hunter with resources I could only dream of, but I knew that part of the country like the back of my hand. He’d not yet been to Devil’s Beef Tub – and that was where I was sure the necklace was hidden.
I hadn’t actually made any deliveries to Devil’s Beef Tub because nobody lived there, but I had been to the nearby town of Moffat on several occasions and I’d seen the road sign. The name had intrigued me enough to look it up and, when I’d passed by in my delivery van, I’d noted the geography of the four hills that surrounded it. From those hills, Devil’s Beef Tub appeared to be a deep dark hollow that once upon a time had produced sulphurous water that was carted to Moffat for use in its famed sulphur baths. Based on what I’d seen from those notes in the Neidpath Castle drawing room, apparently it was also a great place to hide treasure. Or at least a stolen necklace.
I carried my bike off the train at Lockerbie station and grinned at the still-disturbed family as I disembarked. I re-checked the route and set off. It was a good fifteenmiles to Devil’s Beef Tub but the sun was shining and the sky was clear – perfect treasure hunting conditions.
I pedalled hard and reached the track that led away from the main road, and from where the black hole of Devil’s Beef Tub was visible, in better time than I’d expected. I continued cycling for as long as I could and then, when it became too difficult, left my bike on a grassy verge and continued on foot. I paused only twice: once to tie back my hair when the breeze grew too irritating and I kept ending up with mouthfuls of red curls, and the second time to swallow my day’s allowance of spider’s silk. As the drug took hold, my steps became faster until I was all but sprinting to the deep hollow.
It was all very well knowing the general location of buried treasure, but once I reached the edge of Devil’s Beef Tub I realised that finding the exact spot would be considerably harder. Its converging slopes no longer looked like a black chasm but were a verdant delight of dancing insects, swaying grasses, low-lying scrubs and rocky outcrops. There were definitely no handy Xs to mark where the necklace was hidden.
I took out my phone to see if I could research further but the lack of signal stymied that idea. I tucked it away again and nibbled on my bottom lip. I’d been so determined to get here before Hugo Pemberville showed up that it hadn’t occurred to me that I might need some tools. I didn’t even have a shovel. Perhaps treasure hunting was more difficult than it looked.
If the story were true, the necklace had been here for over a hundred years. I didn’t look for any marks in the ground that might indicate where something was buried; it had been too long and any such marks would have been smoothed over by the elements long ago. Besides, if the necklace was in a noticeable spot somebody else would have found it by now.
I swivelled around slowly. There was a vast area to cover and all I had were my bare hands to work with.
I grinned suddenly. And magic.
I didn’t possess the formal magic training or superior powers of a high elf, but I knew enough. I’d taught myself all the basics through a combination of blood, sweat and tears and I was proud of what I was capable of. Unlike true witches, whose skills lie in brewing plants and working with small animals and insects, or sorcerers who rely solely on runes, elven magic harnesses the four ancient elements: air, earth, fire and water. That was how I’d managed to channel water from puddles and set alight scraps of paper. Neither fire nor water would help me here – but I was surrounded by earth. All I had to do was put my natural magic to good use.
The only visible path had been created by previous visitors. High up on one of the hills to my left, I glimpsed a monument to a long-dead covenanter, but nothing else hereabouts was man-made. If I focused, I could use my power to scour the earth for anything that didn’t belong. No problem.
I half-closed my eyes and concentrated, rippling out magic in front of me like some sort of heat-seeking missile. In less than a minute, pain jabbed at my chest as the magic faltered. There. There was something to the right, next to an oddly shaped boulder and some scree.
I made a beeline for it, abandoning the narrow path for the uneven ground. Ha! I’d been wrong: treasure hunting was actually a piece of piss.
