“She just gave you all this stuff for free?” Gosha asked as they walked back to the car.
“Oh no. We negotiated a fair price.”
“You only talked about the weather and the ducks in the park.”
“Yes, she’s shrewd, that one. Very hard to haggle her down. I’ll be up late every night for a week to meet her price.”
In the car, her mother handed over all their purchases and set to work. Occasionally, she asked Gosha to pass an item of shopping as she constructed her bundle. Each new addition she wrapped in another layer of newspaper to make a surrealist version of pass-the-parcel. The first bundle contained things she’d bought at W. H. Smiths: words cut out of the book of poems and glued to paper to make gibberish phrases, confetti, metal screws and washers, strips of ribbon, buttons, and thread. The second parcel was smaller. Into bright green plasticine—Edmund’s favorite—she kneaded crushed aspirin, witch hazel, soap, and a handful of smarties, and bundled it all up in a strip of gauze bandage.
“This one is for you.” She held it up for Gosha to take. “The mother fetish. But you must finish it yourself. After you drop me off at High Coxcomb, go back to the house and find something of his, something from his body. Anything will do.”
“From his body?”
“Yes, fluids are best. Piss, blood. You had sex with him. Are the sheets still dirty? Just wet the stains and rub the fetish on them.” Gosha felt her face flush. “Don’t be such a prude, Małgorzata. When you’re finished, come and pick me up.”
* * *
High Coxcomb was twenty minutes from the market, Canterbury Gardens, and home. When, finally, she got back to the house after the prolonged detour, she saw the living room light turn on as she parked in the driveway. George was home.
How did he get back so quickly?
The country house was fifty miles away, and George had been taken there in Margrave’s car. She’d hoped to set her mother’s protections in place without seeing him again, but he’d found his way home somehow. The laws of physics had been crumbling around her for days. Why would now be any different?
She couldn’t sneak in. Everything she needed was in the bedroom or the en suite bathroom, and the stairs were the only way up. There was no way to avoid walking past the living room. The wode sump was gone. She had no way to protect herself if he used his Influence against her. The cursed lug wrench was stowed in the car boot, but going in strong like an action hero from the flicks would guarantee a strong defense. Perhaps there was another way.
She mounted the front steps with the gauze bundle in the inner pocket of her leather jacket. As she went up, she gnawed at a fingernail and ripped off the tip of her manicure, leaving an edge ragged enough to break skin. The front door was ajar, the lock still severed by her attempt at breaking in to save Cressida. The heavy, creaky old door resisted as she pushed her way in. The hinges made more noise trying to open the door slowly than if she’d burst in.
“Gosha,” called George from within, “is that you?”
She tucked the lipstick in her bra, took a deep breath, and walked into the living room.
She found him slumped in the armchair by the fireplace, a dark and charred hole they hadn’t brightened with a fire in years. A tumbler of whiskey dangled in one hand.
“You came home.” He slurred his words. Taking far too big a quaff of liquor, he finished the tumbler in one gulp. “I’m surprised. Can you bear to look at me? I must be a disappointment to you.”
Not a disappointment. You’re a complete stranger, nothing like the man I thought I married.
She pushed the George sitting before her from her mind and imagined he was the man with whom she fell in love.
“What are you talking about? I love you. I’ve only ever wanted the best for you.”
“That’s horseshit.”
He threw the glass into the fireplace. It shattered.
The dim, armor-like aura of his Influence was weak and cloudy, either from the booze or as a lingering consequence of what Margrave had done to him.
“You’re the father of my children,” she said. “You made this amazing life for us. You’re everything to me.”
“That’s a lie. How you and your harridan mother must have been laughing at me all these years. Poor, pathetic George who doesn’t know the truth of what’s going on. Are you and she even estranged?”
Not anymore, she thought.
Her mother was another person with whom she was supposed to be close that she didn’t know at all. For years she had nursed a burning hatred for her mother, but only because she never knew the truth about the things her mother had done for her. She wondered what different choices she might have made in her life if she had.
She recognized George’s behavior. He got like this around birthdays and Christmas, or whenever anything triggered memories of his childhood and his father. He would drink, become sullen and impossible to be around. Only coddling him would brighten his mood. He hadn’t fallen into one of these funks in years.
Was it Margrave’s influence that made him tolerable?
“I’m sorry I tried to keep it all from you.” She edged closer. “You saw how dangerous Margrave and his kind can be. I grew up with that my whole life. I was terrified.”
“I thought you trusted me. I could have helped you.”
“Yes. I can see I needn’t have been so frightened. If only I’d known what you’d become. Miranda’s alive because of you.”
She kicked herself for saying something so ridiculous, but he was drunk and needy. She doubted he’d do anything but allow her to feed his ego. For someone who loved to torture himself, he was only too happy to be uplifted by flattery, no matter how absurd. She could see how he would have been an easy mark for Margrave.
“She got away?”
“Yes. She and everyone else.”
“Everyone? What happened to Margrave?”
“I’m not sure. I think he’s dead.”
He slid deeper into the chair and pushed himself upright against the plush back.
“What happened?”
“Something went wrong, badly wrong. There was an explosion. I don’t see how he could have survived. I’m so happy you got out of there. He would have killed you.”
George leaned forward and sank his elbows onto his knees.
“He’s gone.”
His eyes flickered, giving away the scheming going on behind them. The aura of Influence around him brightened just a tiny bit. He was regaining control. She needed to move fast.
She walked to the end of the sofa, leaving just the overstuffed arm between them. He looked up at her and draped his arms over the sides of the chair, a king lounging in his throne.
“There’s no one who can stop me now.”
She cast her gaze down to the floor in an attempt at feigning contrition.
“George, I said things I regret. I was frightened. For you, for the boys. I hope you can forgive me.”
He regarded her for a long while. She didn’t dare look up at him.
“You’re my wife,” he said. “You came home to me.”
He reached out a languid hand to beckon her to him and interlocked his fingers with hers.
“A wife needs to stand by her husband,” he said.
She caught herself before she could grunt her disgust and pull her hand away.
“There can’t be secrets between us anymore.”
She nodded.
“You were right to be afraid of your mother. She’s a terrible influence. I’ll call her and tell her she’s no longer welcome around us. I don’t want you to talk to her. You’re too easily swayed.”
“Thank you.” She nearly choked on the words.
“Are the boys still with her?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll send a driver around to pick them up. You’ve been far too lax with them. They’ll grow up soft. I’m going to take them out of that ridiculously permissive school and put them somewhere that will teach them discipline.”
/>
“Whatever you think is best.”
Her mother’s words before Gosha’s audience with the Queen of Secrets rang in her ears: A witch need only keep the word she gives to herself or to another witch.
“And we need to reconsider your career. Your photographs are too wild, too strange. You should find a job that reflects better on me. You’ll turn down anything new that comes in until I decide where you’ll be better suited. Time at home will do you good.”
“Yes, George.”
He pulled her down into his lap. She would have gladly struck him again with the skillet.
“Things will be different in this house. We’ll both need to get used to it, but you’ll be much happier. Kiss me.”
She leaned in and pressed her lips against his. He opened his mouth and thrust his tongue into her, filling her mouth with stale breath and whiskey fumes. She reached up as if to run her fingers through his hair, but brought her hand down hard, slicing deep into his cheek with her ragged fingernail and drawing blood.
He swore and pushed her off the chair.
“Fucking hell!” He pressed his hand to his face and brought it back bloodied.
A smear of his blood had caught on her finger. She took out the mother fetish and wiped it onto the gauze, a gash of red against the delicate white fabric. The effects of the fetish took hold immediately. George’s aura brightened into a glow that existed in the real world, and not just in Gosha’s second sight. Golden light flickered across the polished surfaces of the brass antiques spread about the room. The ghostly suggestion of medieval armor around his body dissolved in the glare.
“What have you done?” He fell to his knees and pressed his hands into his ears, his voice raised as if to hear himself above a din.
“Yes, Lord,” he said. “Yes, I hear you and obey. Make it stop!” He looked up at her, distraught.
The glow of his aura flickered and dimmed as George’s eyes rolled back into his skull, leaving only white. He fell on his side and shook. Saliva frothed from his mouth.
The seizure only lasted a few seconds. When it passed, George rolled onto his back, moaning as if he were on the sharp end of a bender, his face ash pale.
“Make it stop,” he whimpered, a groaning lump on the floor.
Her mother hadn’t told her what would happen when she brought the mother fetish to life. Gosha hadn’t considered she’d need to get George outside the wards. In no condition to walk to the car, he didn’t resist when she hooked her arms under his shoulders and dragged him out to the foyer. His body was a dead weight, arms and legs heavy and loose like half-empty sacks of wheat. It took every fiber of muscle she had to move him. By the time she got him to the front door, she was exhausted and drenched in sweat. Getting him to the car was easier. All she had to do was keep his head from hitting the front steps as she dragged him down.
When she arrived at High Coxcomb, she found her mother sitting with the other witches at the bus stop, chatting and reading copies of the Evening Standard. To look at them, it was hard to believe they were witches.
“Good.” Her mother slid into the passenger seat. She glanced back at George curled into a fetal position in the back. “It’s working. The boundary is around the corner.”
She parked, at her mother’s instructions, just past a large red post office box a few yards from the high street.
“Push him out and drive the car to the other side of the postbox. Quick. We’re past the boundary. He’ll right himself in no time.”
Color returned to his face as she rolled him out of the back seat onto the tarmac. By the time she had driven the car the two yards to safety, he was already up on his feet.
“Fucking cow,” he sneered as he wiped the drying spittle from his mouth and stumbled toward them where they stood by the car.
“Step past the letterbox and see what happens,” said her mother.
“Don’t threaten me, old woman.”
He walked toward the car, but his knees buckled, and he fell to the ground with his first step across the boundary.
“Perhaps you ought to be threatened, though,” said her mother as she came around the car to look down at him.
Gosha stooped to roll him back over to the other side of the postbox, but her mother put a hand on her arm.
“No. Let him drag himself to safety.”
He groaned as he crawled away, collapsing panting onto his back as soon as he passed the post box.
“The whole of Cheyne Heath will do this to you,” said her mother. “Step inside the borough and you will be powerless.”
He rolled onto his side and reached a hand toward them. A thin beam of Influence followed the line of his fingertips, but dissipated as it reached the boundary.
“That won’t work,” said her mother. “You and anyone who carries the burden of your oath will be powerless here. Cheyne Heath is now off limits to your sphere.”
She turned to Gosha and whispered so George wouldn’t hear.
“A work like this will have consequences. You’ve staked a claim on the neighborhood. It’s your responsibility now. If they find out, the other saints will not like it. There will be a reckoning. But that’s for later. Tell him your terms.”
“The boys are off limits.” Gosha sidled up as close as she dared to the post box. “I don’t want you having anything to do with them. If you try to get to them, in any way, I’ll tell them the truth about what you are. I’ll tell them you murdered their grandfather.”
“Gosha, please.” He staggered to his feet, his face smeared with blood and grime. “Don’t do this. I’m so sorry. You know what it’s like. You understand. All this business with Influence and spheres, it’s dangerous. Please forgive me. We could be so strong together.”
His eyes softened as he begged and made her remember the day he got down on one knee and proposed to her in front of the Royal Albert Hall.
“You know what? No.” His face hardened again, returning to the petulant, murderous child. “Fuck you. I am the saint of Authority. I have actual power. You will not bar me from my own home. You’re nothing without me. If I hadn’t pushed you, you’d still be doing people’s makeup and living in a garret somewhere with your junkie friend. I’ll ruin you. I’ll have you blacklisted. You’ll never work again, ever. I’ll turn everyone you ever loved against you. Then you’ll see how much you need me. You’ll beg me to take you back.”
His face turned red, spittle flying from his mouth as he stabbed at the air with his finger, but she felt calm. The sky darkened as he ranted. The streetlights flickered into life. She breathed in deep and filled her lungs with fresh evening air.
She took the lipstick from her bra, turned the screw base, and pushed up the stick of reddish-brown pigment. As he raved about all the things he would do to bring her to heel, she spread the color on her lips, and pressed them together to coat them evenly. She closed up the lipstick and put it back in her bra, the hard plastic against her breast a comfort to her.
Beckoning George to come closer with one black, manicured fingernail, she approached the boundary. His eyes flickered nervously between her and her mother as he edged toward her. She reached across and pulled his face to hers, pressing their lips together in a hard, chaste kiss. When they separated, the dark pigment had smeared across his lips.
“Goodbye, George.” She turned on her heel and walked back to the car, her mother looking on with fiery pride. “Get in, Mamusha. I want to see my sons.”
AFTER
The sense of relief didn’t last. True to his word, George poisoned London against her. Within the week her gallery and her agent dropped her without even the decency of a phone call. Letters informing her of their decision arrived by registered mail on the third day after his banishment. She tried calling the production company of the music video for Johnny and Mick’s band, and Darren at the record company, but no one would take her call. When she went to the bank to get cash, the teller informed her their accounts had been drained. That afternoon, when she went
to pick the boys up from school, the headmistress was there to inform her she didn't think it appropriate for the boys to continue attending, and they wouldn’t be welcome there anymore. Gosha tried her best to find out what George had told her, but she refused to say. She just turned a bright shade of pink and asked her secretary to see Gosha out.
With no money, Gosha should have abandoned the house and let George deal with it, but that would have been admitting defeat. Instead, her mother put her own house on the market and moved in to help take care of the bills and look after the boys.
Some things stayed the same. The papers still came every day, the Times in the morning, the Evening Standard in the afternoon, and Time Out once a week, the subscriptions paid up to the end of the year, as was the membership to the Cheyne Arts Club, although she couldn’t afford to pay for drinks or dinner, and she dreaded what rumors George might have spread among their friends.
She checked in on Miranda on her return from High Coxcomb. Miranda made it home safely, a kindly old couple picking her up and driving her home, a sign that perhaps her friend’s unbreakable bad luck might be changing. Gosha found her standing in the middle of her tiny living room, the body of Margrave’s henchman gone without a trace, the rubble of her life spread out around her.
“I’m fine,” she said when Gosha stooped to help pick up the mess. “Thank you for coming to check on me.”
“Let me help you get all this straightened out.”
“I can’t… I want…”
Miranda stood there with her mouth open for a long minute before crumbling into tears.
“No.” She pushed Gosha away when she tried to comfort her. “It’s too much. I want you to leave.”
* * *
With nothing to fill her time, all she had to occupy her was the boys and endless lectures from her mother on Craft. They had come a long way since her mother’s kitchen in the village by the sea. She was grateful for everything her mother had done for her, all the hard choices she made that Gosha never could have understood as a child, but which she now saw for the sacrifices they were.
None of that helped being under her mother’s thumb. They quickly fell into old habits, old ways of speaking to each other that would have escalated into arguments were it not for the care they both took to walk a path of peace.
Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1) Page 32
