Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1)

by W. V. Fitz-Simon

  She put the mortar down on the workbench, took out a thick pink quartz crystal from her pocket and jabbered in her unintelligible Jamaican accent. The buzz of Johnny’s joint was almost gone, but enough remained that Gosha could see a shimmer of Influence coalesce around Rosamund and puff out toward her. Her skin tingled.

  “Holy crap,” said Johnny from the edge of the room. “She’s glowing.”

  “Quiet, fancy boy,” snapped Rosamund. “Don’t interrupt.”

  The shimmer took on color, a deep blue glow that sparked and swirled over Gosha.

  “Oh!” Rosamund stepped back in surprise. “Oh! Oh! Oh! You didn’t tell me.”

  She clapped her hands. The sparking and the glow vanished.

  “Had I known, I never would have! That was a terrible trick to play on me. You get me into terrible trouble.”

  “What is it?” said Gosha, her head clear enough to sit up.

  “The weaving of another witch, and a strong one at that. There’s sigils painted on you. That’s why you weren’t knocked flat when the hant hit you. Woven itself around them, it has. Can’t help you, ducky.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Johnny. “You just told us she’ll die.”

  “Leave it, Johnny,” said Gosha. “This is how it works. They give you a big story, show you a taste of what they can do, and then hold back until you’re ready to pay any price.” She turned to Rosamund. “I’ve seen it done by much better than you.”

  “You have a bad attitude, lady.”

  “Yes, I’ve been told.”

  Gosha pushed herself up to her feet, her limbs heavy, her knees and hands still aching from her fall.

  * * *

  “You are so close,” Emerson whispered.

  The afternoon sun beats down on them, their heads almost touching.

  “Freedom is there, ready for you. I know you feel it. But the process is dangerous. Luckily, I have one more gift to give you, one more blessing from the old sage who helped me.”

  Emerson pulls from his pocket a small envelope. Mick has seen a stack of them on Emerson’s desk in his study.

  “This will guarantee you shall find your way. Will you accept this gift I offer you?”

  “Yes, I accept your gift.”

  “Good boy. Open it, but don’t take out the contents.”

  Inside is a small phial of powder and a slip of paper with a single word hand-written in an alphabet he doesn’t recognize.

  “You will know when it’s time. Soon, perhaps only a matter of days. The torc will grow hot and the word will make sense to you. Speak it out loud once, only once, and then you must burn the card. The word is only for you to see. When you’ve done that, inhale the dust. Just like snuff.”

  Emerson pantomimes tapping snuff out on the back of his hand and sniffing it. His eyes light up with impish humor.

  “Do everything exactly as I say. This is a secret rite passed down from teacher to student for millennia. The rite will guarantee that you realize yourself at the correct moment before the jealous world can reclaim you. I know it’s a simple thing, but do it wrong and I may not be there to help you.”

  21

  “No!”

  Gosha came to looking down at Rosamund waving a finger at her, a stern schoolmarm putting her foot down with an unruly child. With a start, Gosha realized she was suspended in mid-air an inch from the ground and unable to move. The blue glow swirled and sparked around her.

  “Dammit, Dammit,” Rosamund whined. “There you go again, getting me into more trouble. I would help if I could, but there are very strict rules. Another witch has marked you, and I will not help without her consent. Those sigils are very old. They’re what you would put on a child to keep her from getting into trouble. Do you know who it was?”

  “Yes,” said Gosha, fury twisting in her gut. “I can guess.”

  “Then you’d better find her, quick.”

  Rosamund spoke another word in her Jamaican patois and Gosha was able to move again, her feet floating back to earth.

  “Here, take this.” Rosamund slipped a pendant off a stand on her workbench and offered it to her.

  Gosha reached out to take it, but when she saw it properly, she snatched her hand back. Made up of a silver ring about an inch wide, the irregular silver lattice at the pendant’s center shifted and curled like a cluster of slow-writhing worms.

  “What is that?”

  “A wode sump.”

  “What on earth does that mean?”

  “Wode is the old English word for madness. A sump is…” She waved a hand behind her backside as if shooing away flies. “A cesspool.”

  “Oh, god.” Gosha cringed.

  “Don’t be a baby. It’s nothing dangerous if you use it right. Do you understand what I mean by Influence?”

  Gosha scowled.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “When your friend died, he released a vast amount, all charged with his memories. A strange thing, especially if he wasn’t an oath-bearer. Someone must have gone to great lengths to boost his aura. Would have to be a powerful one, maybe even a saint.”

  Gosha accepted the pendant, mesmerized by the twisting silver knot.

  “Now you’re losing me. What do you mean by a saint?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Another person’s memories and experiences powered by a vast amount of Influence are pushing at you, trying to make you their host, but it’s messing you up. This little thing,” she pointed at the pendant, the wode sump, with her plastic ruler, “is a reservoir. Every time the hant charges up enough to give you another zap, the wode sump will bleed the Influence off. That will give you more time to find the witch who can help. Just be careful. Wait too long and it will store too much and become unstable. It could go off like a grenade.”

  “And how much will it cost?”

  Rosamund recoiled, offended.

  “Nothing. You need help, and help is mine to give, so I give you the help I can.”

  “Really.” Gosha raised an eyebrow, unconvinced.

  “Lady, you are a hard and damaged creature. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it back. Give.”

  She thrust out her open palm.

  Gosha knew full well the witch could take it back herself, or force Gosha to hand it over with another secret word, and yet she didn’t. Perhaps Gosha had misjudged her.

  “No, thank you for your help. I do feel a lot better.”

  Rosamund cocked her chin in triumph.

  “See? A hard-working woman’s house is her own to clean, but there’s always wiggle room. Find the witch that marked you. What I’ve done for you has bought you time, but not much. The amulet will soak the Influence off you like a sponge, but it only works until it doesn’t. Then either it goes bang or you do. I wouldn’t tarry.”

  Rosamund’s workroom was at the bottom of a narrow staircase at the back of the shop, hidden from general view by overlapping bookshelves. When they reached the top, the witch uttered one of her secret words and the portcullis opened, allowing them to leave.

  Outside, Johnny took the bag of books from Gosha.

  “Are you really okay?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Who’s the other witch who marked you?”

  They got in the car.

  “My mother.”

  “Oh, that’s all right then.”

  “Yes, just how she would want it, I’m sure.”

  Did her mother have her where she wanted at last? Or could Gosha find another solution to this mess before she was forced to return home with her tail between her legs and beg for help? She did feel better, better than she had since the widow’s weeds showed up.

  “Like that, is it?” Johnny grimaced. “I get you. You should see my mum whenever she sees a photo of me standing next to a girl.”

  Gosha laughed. Before today, she wouldn’t have believed it possible to be so open about herself around another person. It was a welcome relief.

  22

  Gosha dropped Johnny off at the nearest tu
be station so he could get to rehearsal for Mick’s memorial service that evening.

  “I wish I knew someone else who could help you.” He leaned into the driver’s side window from the curb. “My Auntie Greta is into all sorts of weird stuff, but I don’t think she’s an actual witch. See you tonight? I’ll put your name on the list.”

  As she drove back to Canterbury Gardens, her mind reeled with everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours. Three things troubled her more than anything else, all of them so intertwined they couldn't be a coincidence, but how did they all hang together? First, the passage she’d read in the Margrave book and the visions of Mick at the country retreat convinced her that these were Miranda’s group. Second, was the carved wooden box that contained the bracelet in the hant’s vision the same box in George’s luggage? Or was her memory addled by the continued assault of the hant? And third, this Emerson Margrave himself, most definitely the man Cressida met the day before. How were Miranda, Cressida, George and Margrave all linked?

  One of those questions she could lay to rest easily enough, she thought as she walked into the house and sat at the telephone extension in the foyer.

  Miranda picked up by the second ring.

  “I just wanted to check you’re okay,” said Gosha. “You ran off so quickly. Did you make it to your meeting?”

  “Oh, yes.” She sounded a little spacey, like she did when she was using. “It did the trick. I need to be so careful. Any little upset and off I go.”

  “Did you know Mick Trash?”

  “Yes,” said Miranda after a lengthy pause, her voice a hoarse whisper. “He was one of us. We’re supposed to see death as a joyous thing, a passing on to the final freedom, but he was so young. And he’s the second person we’ve lost in only a few weeks.”

  “Is the leader of your group a man called Emerson Margrave?”

  “Why, yes.” Her voice brightened. “Have you heard of him? Oh, Gosha, you must come and meet him. He’s the most special person you could imagine.”

  Miranda was just the kind of lost, broken seeker upon whom a vampire like Margrave would prey. How did he get his hooks into her? Gosha had to get her away from him, but Miranda was fragile. She needed to be careful. Blurting out what she saw in the visions this afternoon would only drive a wedge between them. Johnny might have been open enough to take the truth about her in his stride, but she couldn’t trust lightning to strike twice.

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Oh, extremely well. He’s like a father to all of us. A gentle, loving father.”

  With any luck, he hadn’t begun to groom her for the horrendous fate he devised for Mick and the other girl, a fate which Gosha didn't understand. Why go to such lengths to boost a person’s aura, only to kill them? Gosha knew there were others like the witch hunter who used Influence, but she knew less about them than she knew about witches.

  “You know how George and I have drifted apart since the boys were born?” Yet another lie. As far as Miranda was aware, George and she had merely been suffering from the exhaustion of having young children.

  “How has it been? I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you.”

  “Not good.” Finally, something she didn’t need to lie about. “I’m beginning to suspect he has an entire life I’m not aware of. I’m sure he’s having another affair.”

  “Another affair? Oh, darling. Why did you never tell me?”

  “You had your own troubles. I didn’t want to burden you. It’s with the nanny, of all people. Such a cliché. Miranda, is there a young woman by the name of Cressida in your group?”

  Gosha took Rosamund’s amulet out of her pocket, mesmerized by the writhing lattice. The silver was cold against her skin.

  “Not that I know of, but I’ve only been with them for a year. The group’s been meeting for a long time. Some of us have been with him since the sixties.”

  Gosha thought about the wooden box and the ornate torc Margrave gave Mick.

  “Is George part of your group? Is he involved with Emerson Margrave?”

  “Oh, darling, I would never keep a secret like that from you.”

  She slumped back in the chair in relief. She knew so little about how George spent his time. He could easily have joined a cult without her knowing it.

  A key turned in the front door lock, the door opened, and in stepped George, suitcase in hand. Gosha slipped the wode sump back in her pocket.

  “Darling, I’m back! I told you I wouldn’t be away long.”

  He set his suitcase down by the door and stood over her, arms open for a hug, his eyes sparkling and his face flushed. He couldn’t have come home at a worse possible moment. She had to warn Miranda.

  “I should go, darling,” she said into the receiver as she smiled up at him. “George just came back. Can we have lunch again tomorrow? I need to tell you something.”

  “Of course, sweetie, but can we make it dinner? I have a meeting with the group in the afternoon. See you at the club at seven?”

  “Yes, perfect.”

  As she hung up the phone, George stooped to wrap his arms around her and pulled her up into his embrace, kissing her full on the lips.

  “Did you sign the band?” she asked.

  He looked at her, confused.

  “The band? Oh, yes. That’s all under control.” He nuzzled her neck. “We were in the middle of something.”

  Cupping her buttock with one hand, he pulled her hips into his and kissed her again, slipping his tongue into her mouth.

  “Come upstairs with me.”

  The hairs on her arms stood on end and her skin tingled with the effervescence of an electric current.

  * * *

  The vision of Mick is jumbled this time, a confusion of images, fragments of experiences: with Margrave’s circle, with Johnny and the rest of the band, with Mick’s parents and a pretty girl by the water. Gosha is pulled from one to the next, an assault of memories that linger scarcely long enough for her to register.

  * * *

  She came to in the bedroom, sitting on the loveseat at the end of the bed. A spike of pain strong enough to leave her reeling lanced through her head. The wode sump in her pocket was hot against her leg. George paced into the bathroom and back, stopping whenever he passed a mirror to admire himself as he removed another piece of clothing.

  “It was magnificent,” he said from the bathroom as he unbuttoned his shirt. “In my entire life I have never seen that man show fear.”

  What happened?

  Her heart raced with panic Was this the wode sump lessening the effects of the hant? If so, the visions had become an incomprehensible jumble. The one thing helping her figure out what happened to Mick was now useless.

  “He couldn’t stop me.” George returned to the bedroom to toss his shirt on the dresser. “Even his precious emperor couldn’t help him. I cut through his pathetic show of power without even breaking a sweat.”

  “George.” She steadied herself on the arm of the loveseat as she stood. “Something’s been happening to me. It’s been terrible. I think need to ask my mother for help.”

  “He was so surprised.” He barreled on without paying the slightest attention to her. “I pinned him down like he used to do to me when I was a boy. I held him down with my knees pressed against his chest and he couldn’t do a damn thing against me.”

  He stripped down to his underwear as he talked, his erection pushing through his underpants. She realized what he was saying.

  “What did you do?”

  “He tried, though.” He stroked himself absently through the fabric of his underpants. “I’ve never seen such madness. I understand why it frightens you. I saw things that should have sent me running screaming, but all that hate and anger I’ve pushed down since I was a child just flowed out of me.”

  “George!” She grabbed his arms and shook him to break his rambling, but he was off in another world.

  “Hush, my darling. No one else matters now. Everyth
ing’s mine, all his money and his power. It’s all mine. I killed him and took it all for myself.”

  He smiled at her, his expression happy, exultant, like one of the boys when they were proud of something they’d done.

  “Stand up,” he said.

  Her skin rippled with goosebumps.

  * * *

  A winter afternoon, huddled together with a bunch of his mates against the cold as steam wafts off the bodies of rugby players and pools in a cloud above them.

  An evening in the chapel at the meeting house on Barge Street. Disappointment as Walker in his fake Egyptian robes drones on about angels and spirits.

  Raucous laughter in the squat as Johnny cavorts down the stairs in a top hat and shocking pink feather boa singing an old Fleetwood Mac song.

  Johnny and Mick playing music together on a tiny stage in a bar somewhere.

  A school playground, a much younger Johnny’s face bruised and swollen, blood oozing from a cut above one eye.

  Mick’s parents at Christmas around the dinner table, pulling crackers and laughing.

  Mick standing in the large empty room in Margrave’s retreat with all his other victims. Across the crowd a face Gosha recognizes, her face alight with bliss as she shifts from side to side like tall grass in a summer breeze: Miranda.

  * * *

  This time she came to herself in the bed, fully clothed, next to George lying on his back as Cressida, nude, undulated on top of him.

  Gosha lay there as quietly as she could, not daring to breathe as she thought through what happened. Before George came home, the visions the hant showed her were of Mick and Margrave. Now they were all over the place. She lost time whenever George gave her a command, and the wode sump in her pocket grew warmer every time. He had somehow come back from Liverpool with control over Influence and was using it against her, but something allowed her to slip free of his control. If it was the hant, the wode sump, or the bloody sigils Rosamund said her mother had drawn on her, she didn’t know, but something was giving her the barest sliver of an edge, and she couldn’t squander it.

  Whatever it took for George to gain access to the kind of power he came home with, it seemed unlikely simply killing his father would suddenly have granted him so much. The Craft in her mother’s kitchen involved an endless set of rules, and she never stopped blathering on about the ritual necessary to become a witch. If Robert Armitage were anything like the witch hunter who came for her mother, a normal human being wouldn’t stand a chance against him.