A/N: Guess what readers? I'm back! (Cue screams and rounds of applause) Yes indeed. I'm not going to go into much detail as to why I disappeared for 3 months, but to cut a long story short my exams started and that sort of thing, and I just basically forgot about it for a while. Then suddenly out of the blue a couple of people reviewed to some of my stories saying "please come back!" and so I'm here! In case there are some of you out there who have read my other Narnia multi chapter Lying In Wait that will be continued too so don't worry! I just had a rough draft of this chapter just lying around on my computer waiting to be edited, so that's why I decided to do it first. Sorry if my writing style had changed a bit btw: blame the effects English coursework had had on my brain.

Okay, so to recap: Edmund's stuck in a basement under the London Underground with an unconscious Peter and a nut bag magician who want to reincarnate the White Witch. Got it so far? Let's continue on with the story and as usual review as well please :)

Disclaimer: As usual I don't own the canon characters in the story…blah blah blah…

The Just King stared venomously at the detestable grin that spread across his captor's dull complexion.

"It was you." The words caught deep in his throat as the former Duke began to pace slowly around his chair, forcing the unfortunate boy to twist his neck to face him. The Just King tried to keep an eye on his unpredictable captor but his attention was still drawn to the crumpled shape of his brother's unconscious body lying on the floor. What had Jareth done with his sisters? Were they even still alive? There were so many questions running through the boy's head, but only one thing was certain: he had to find a way out of here. Now.

Edmund tried to keep looking as calm as possible but all the while, inside of his mind fear was screaming to get out. It couldn't be possible that Jareth had been stalking them all this time! And yet, as he thought about it more and more, soon pieces of a lost jigsaw suddenly fell into place- sudden noises when he and his siblings were alone, twigs snapping and other disturbances that were left unexplained, and of course, that paranoid sinking feeling that someone was watching them. If only he had realised back then how his suspicions had been correct…

He turned his attention back to his captor, who had deftly spun behind him and was now bending over his restrained form. "You're still as smart as I remember, even though you were a lot older back then," the Narnian traitor stated, placing his hands paternally on the boy's shoulders. Edmund groped angrily against his touch, and Jareth let out a cold, mirthless laugh. His hands trailed slowly down the back of the chair and clasped themselves onto the dark haired youth's wrists, squeezing them so that the blood seeped out from the deep cuts made by the chicken wire, causing Edmund to helplessly cry in pain. After a few seconds of waiting for the throbbing in his hands to stop, the boy opened his tear brimmed eyes and saw that his enemy was now once more standing before him. He stared determinedly into the sorcerer's haunting grey eyes, breathing heavily.

"You're sick!" Edmund yelled, and he began violently squirming against his bonds to free himself, but even with all the effort left in him he only just managed to shift the chair a little. Jareth watched the boy struggle, and smiled malevolently.

"I'm sick? No, Edmund. You're the sick one." The man moved closer to the former King of Narnia, until he was barely a few centimetres away from his nose. His prisoner twisted his face in disgust when the distinct aroma of tobacco smoke mingled with alcohol tickled his skin, as the sorcerer breathed heavily. He laughed again for a moment, his face void of any signs of emotion, but his brow quickly knotted in a furious rage. "You gave your loyalty to our true ruler, and then you went and betrayed her! You didn't even have the decency to sacrifice yourself instead of the Lion."

His voice rose to a sharp hiss as he sharply reached out a dirty hand and slapped Edmund across the face. The boy managed to repress a whimper as he felt his cheekbones vibrate against the sudden force, but still he gritted his teeth and gasped suddenly as the rush ran through him. He could already feel tears of anguish escaping from his eyelids and tried desperately to blink them away, but they still fell down his face and dripped onto his shirt. Jareth chuckled. "See? You're just pathetic."

The magician snorted grotesquely, turned his back on Edmund and began to pace across the room. He squatted over Peter's body and to Edmund's disgust leaned closer to the boy's face, mockingly singing into his ear, "Now then, what to do with you neeext…"

"Don't touch him!" Edmund burst out, and Jareth for a moment sat up rigidly, acting surprised. His mouth however, metamorphosed into an almost demonic grin and he started giggling insanely. "Oh Edmund, my sweet naïve young brother-in-law…I don't need to touch him, or hurt him physically in any way. Haven't you guessed by now?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Edmund shifted uncomfortably in his seat as the words tumbled uncontrollably out of his mouth; he regretted them as soon as they stopped, although he wasn't exactly sure why. Jareth's grin widened, and he slowly reached into the folds of his jacket, the material rustling as his bony fingers searched desperately for something concealed within it. A look of delight smoothly passed over his face as he grasped an object from within and he drew it out clasped tightly in the grip of his fist, revealing only that it was a bottle of some kind. He took a step back from the body and walked back over to the dark haired youth, who stared with morbid curiosity at the object clutched in the magician's fist. "Do you recognise it?" the sorcerer inquired. Edmund shook his head. Jareth smirked, and then dropped the object onto the boy's lap.

It was a small glass vial, probably only about the size of a small glass of whiskey, that seemed to be made of diamond and encrusted with a silvery metal at the top as a lid. What made Edmund more interested in it however, was the fact that it glowed: literally. It was as if whatever was inside the vial had a life of its own; a cold blue glow gently pulsated from within and speckled the boy's lap with dancing waves of light. Yet, rather than dazzle or bemuse the Just King, it made him gasp with realisation and horror.

"You still have the potion!"

The magician reached out for it, brushing the boy's knee as he took the vial in his palms, and leaned in closer to Edmund so that the boy began to feel his hot breath condense against his warm skin. Jareth answered, "Not exactly the same potion. As you probably well remember your council confiscated the original draught from me before the trial and since I arrived here the ingredients have been a little harder to find than I expected." He seemed to chuckle at the thought of it, sending Edmund's blood cold in his veins. "It still has many of the same effects; it allows me to prepare a body or two for my Queen and her many deceased follower's arrival on the Earth, and in some ways it allows me to have control over them before that time. Unlike the original though, instead of causing an enchanted sleep it makes my victims have…hallucinations."

Edmund froze; his bleeding hands curled into shaking fists as he put two and two together, finally understanding. He glared at his captor, but when he could bring himself to speak the words came out trembling slightly.

"You're the reason we keep seeing the Witch…Why Lucy got possessed and came all the way here to you…You've been giving us potion all this time and we never knew…"

"You wouldn't believe," interrupted a smirking Jareth, "How easy it was to sneak into the common room at Hendon House and let the bottle slip over some of those secret biscuits you had been hiding in your cubby hole since Christmas, and that conveniently no one but you had access to. It was only a matter of time before I bumped into your brother on the train, in disguise of course, and offered him a packet of liquorice that I apparently bought by mistake. The idiot didn't even realise that the packet was already open."

"He's not an idiot!" Edmund tried to force the words out of his mouth, but they merely came out as an unintelligible moan. How could this have happened? He felt contaminated, destroyed from the inside out by foul magic, and the thought made him shiver. What about the rest of his family? They could be anywhere, completely unaware that some insane devil worshipper had the power to make them do whatever he wanted…

"And, finally, I only had to sneak into your house and spike some of Lucy's food, and my plan was complete. You see, once I led her here I knew that you and your siblings would soon follow, and well guess what? You did. Now then, I can finally finish what I first set out to do…"

Jareth stood up again, and turned away from the dark haired boy. "You see, Edmund, I'm having a bit of a dilemma at the moment." He paused. "Unfortunately, a lot of it has to do with you."

"You see, as you perhaps may have noticed the potion worked perfectly on your two siblings; I was in full control of their actions and my Queen could communicate with them quite easily. However, with you there was literally no effect. You did eventually hallucinate, I believe, but it was weak and merely a flashback of your past. To be straight with you, the potion doesn't work on you Edmund. This causes a problem for me, as I can't have you interfering with my plans later on. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to switch to Plan B."

The sorcerer turned round, and to his horror Edmund saw that he was now holding a large knife in his hands.

"You can't continue I'm afraid," Jareth muttered as he approached him, "You just can't."

So there we go a cliff hanger! This is where it starts to get interesting…

I have two ideas of how to continue it from here. Either the next chapter takes us straight back into the action where Jareth is about to supposedly kill Edmund (eek!) or we go to Lucy's point of view for a bit. Let me know somehow if you desperately want me to do one and not the other.

Until then though, I will try and update as soon as I can, I promise! :)