Witch Oracle in Westerham

by Dionne Lister

  Will’s brow wrinkled. “What?”

  “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Who the hell were you talk— Ah, your stomach?”

  I grinned. It was scary how well he knew me. “Bingo!”

  He laughed. “It’s never boring with you; that’s for sure. So, let’s go visit the church.” He stood, dragging me up with him.

  I magicked my camera into my hand, then set it on the floor and did the same to get my boots and jacket on. Will magicked his coat on, and we were ready. It was freezing and overcast but not raining. We strolled, holding hands. It was quite pleasant— well, except for the fact my best friend was locked up. I hoped the Kent police had less stinky cells than the PIB. The smell was almost as traumatising as being confined. “If… if they don’t let her out, can we go visit Liv later?”

  He squeezed my hand reassuringly. “Of course. But if it happened as you described, chances are, it will be an involuntary manslaughter charge, and she should get out on bail.”

  “How did we even end up in this situation? I mean, one minute you’re minding your own business, and the next, someone accosts you, you react, and you’re in jail?” Not to mention how Liv would feel. As much as Kate tormented her, Liv would be sick to her stomach, as I was when I killed those guys who tried to kidnap me, and Jeremy’s mother. It didn’t matter if the person was evil—it stayed with you.

  “Wrong place, wrong time. Don’t worry. Beren’s grabbed the best solicitor he can, and with the video evidence, it should be cut and dried.”

  I wanted to believe him, but there was the matter of whether she knew Kate was going to be at the movies or not. “Just say she was found guilty of the unintentional manslaughter one. Would she go to jail?”

  “Possibly, but as this is her first offence, maybe not. She might get a suspended sentence, which means she won’t go to jail.”

  “And, not that I believe this is the case, but what if she’s charged with intentional?” My stomach tensed in anticipation. Will looked down at me, his gaze assessing. “Just give it to me straight. I can handle it.” I actually didn’t know if I could, but nothing had been decided yet, so I just had to have faith that it would all work out.

  “Somewhere between two to ten years.”

  The frigid air scoured my throat as I sucked in a shocked breath. This couldn’t be happening. This would ruin her life. Beren would move on without her, she wouldn’t be able to keep her job, and the chances of her getting another one when she got out were slim to none, not to mention the experience of being incarcerated with tough-nut criminals. That wasn’t her. She wasn’t a killer. As long as I’d known her, I’d never witnessed her get angry about anything, except when she was poisoned by that spelled tea. My eyes widened. Could that be it? Could someone have put a spell on her to make her more aggressive? Not that she’d been super aggressive—she’d only defended herself. But who, and why? Dana maybe? “We need to talk to Liv. I know a lot about her, but I didn’t know about the teasing when she was in high school. Maybe there’s someone else who’s out to get her? Maybe magic caused her to push Kate harder than she’d meant to, or made Kate trip? It’s not like Liv pushed her that hard.” If it was caused by magic, the PIB could take over, and it would be likely the charges would be dropped since it wasn’t her fault.

  “Maybe. We’ll have a chat with her later, okay? Until then, try not to think of all the what ifs. I know it’s not easy.”

  “The last few months have been anything but easy. I’ve had plenty of practice at waiting. I’m not saying I’m any better at it than I was before, but at least I know that I can handle the excruciation of it. Not knowing what was happening with you was horrible.” I looked into his battleship-grey eyes so he could see the suffering. Um, not because I wanted him to feel bad, but I wanted him to know how much I cared.

  He stopped walking and pulled me in for a big hug. “Knowing you were waiting for me kept me going. You were the one light I had to hold onto.” He nuzzled his cheek against mine, his stubble scratchy, but his skin and nearness warmed me both inside and out. I thanked the universe for returning him to me alive and well.

  “I’m just glad you’re here.” I smiled up at him. “I guess we should get this over and done with.” We kept walking. Soon, we’d turned a couple of corners, and there was St Mary’s Church with its pretty stone walls and iconic-style arched windows. Inside was cold. Bereft of Christmas trees—the event had finished—it seemed very empty. Even though the muted winter light still illuminated the stained glass, causing a stunning, colourful glow at every window, there was nothing soft about the church. Hard floors, hard walls, no people. Well, there were two people chatting in the aisle—the priest and maybe a parishioner.

  The priest looked over his companion’s shoulder at us. “Can I help you?”

  I smiled and jumped in. I was sure my storyline would be more plausible with my Aussie accent. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind, but I’d love to take some photos and have a look around. I love old churches, especially the windows. We were here about a week ago, for the tree festival, but it was rather crowded, so I couldn’t get a sense of the architecture.”

  He smiled. “Certainly. Have a wander around. Take your time.”

  “Thank you.”

  Will leaned down, putting his mouth near my ear to whisper. “Nice work. I should let you tag along more often.” He straightened and smirked.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Who’s tagging along with who, Agent Crankypants?” I smiled and took the lens cap off the camera. I went back and stood near the entry. Facing the interior, I said, “Show me who used magic to hurt the old lady the other night.” I pictured the incident, just to make sure my magic showed me that event, and not some random thing. Hopefully no other old ladies had been hurt here lately, but you never knew.

  Nothing. Hmm. Maybe I needed to go back to basics to find some direction. I’d take anything I could get. “Show me someone casting a spell here in the last month.” Whoa! That was new. Two overlapping images. I snapped two shots, then walked forward slowly, taking pictures as I went. I ended up at the pulpit end of the church, taking photos back the way I’d come. I seemed to have every angle worked out, but it would take an effort to decipher the mess. One of the pictures had Christmas trees, the other didn’t, from what I could see. The jumbled images were confusing.

  I had one more thing to try. “Show me someone casting a spell in the last month to hurt someone else.” I couldn’t say I was disappointed when nothing showed up. What a relief. I took a few photos of the stained-glass windows—just so the priest thought I was a legit sightseer. After a few more minutes of admiring the architecture—I even took a shot of the vaulted timber-lined ceiling because it was interesting, and I was only human—I gave Will the nod to leave. I called out a thank you to the priest as we left.

  Once we were outside, Will asked, “Did you get anything?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. Wanna grab a coffee from Costa and talk about it?”

  He grinned. “You left out ‘and a double-chocolate muffin.’”

  “Ha! That goes without saying, surely.” Just the mention of my favourite junk food had me almost smelling its smooth, rich fragrance. My mouth watered.

  Costa was warm and busy. We got our food and ended up at a table in the centre of the room because it was so busy. No window tables for us. “Here.” I handed Will my camera so he could flick through the pictures. While he did that, I sipped my coffee and let melancholy seep over me. This was where I’d met Liv, that day many months ago, when that stupid witch with the clawed talons was being cruel. It turned out she was actually dating Liv’s fiancé, and they were both swindling money out of retirees. I sighed. We’d both had a rough year. Hadn’t she been through enough already?

  Will gave me my camera. “I see what you mean. That jumbled mess is almost impossible to decipher, but the point is, no one had tried to hurt anyone, so we have nothing.” He sipped his coffee and stared
at the table, thinking. His gaze wandered back to my face. “I think we’re going to have to interview the two men from the Christmas tree event, and the family of the old lady. We have to start somewhere.”

  “But how could they possibly be related to what Liv is going through?”

  “I don’t know. Just a hunch. Besides, we’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll have to okay it with Ma’am first. I’ll drag James along too. His lie-detecting skills are second to none.” I didn’t know if he had the power to summon Ma’am, but his phone rang, and I’d just bet it was her. “Hello, Ma’am. Yes?” Ha, I knew it! His brows drew down as he listened to her. His mouth dropped open, then he contorted his face into the look you make when someone’s just vomited in front of you. “Right. I’ll see you there. I’ll be about fifteen minutes. I’m just at Costa with Lily, and I can’t go straight from here. Okay. Bye.”

  I grabbed my half-eaten muffin and wrapped it in a napkin before picking up my coffee, which I’d ordered in a takeaway cup. Standing, I said, “Come on. You can tell me about it on the way home.”

  Outside, the glacial air struck my face. If it was this cold, why couldn’t it just snow? I mean, what was the fun of freezing weather otherwise? Chilly temperatures without the fluffy white stuff was like ice without the cream—bland, cold, and unsatisfying. “Spill.”

  “Two men in their twenties were at a local, private big-cat park. You can arrange to get up close and personal to lions, tigers, that kind of thing. One of the tigers went berserk and killed one of the men. He was a non-witch, but his boyfriend was a witch, said he felt a brief moment of magic just before the attack happened. While the big-cat place called the regular police, the witch called us.”

  “Have they ever had any other accidents at the park?”

  “I have no idea. I’ll find out soon.”

  “Will you let me know everything, you know, just in case any of it is similar to Liv’s case?” I grabbed his arm, hugged it, and looked up at him with the best pleading gaze I could muster.

  “I’ll clear it with Ma’am first, but I’m sure it will be fine. Maybe we should call a meeting for this afternoon. Which reminds me, we’re due to have one about the you-know-what soon.” He meant the snake group, but since he was too lazy to put up a bubble of silence, he spoke in code. I imagined if they weren’t listening in all the time, they might have a trigger-word alert set up, like big corporations and governments did while they spied on us from our electronic devices. And I wasn’t paranoid. I’d just had too many face-to-face conversations about obscure things, like twenty-year-old books and squirrel Christmas tree ornaments to then see them advertised when I logged into social media.

  I sighed loudly. “Do you ever think life will get easier? I could do with a holiday in France, or maybe Austria. I just wish everything was happy for a change. Is that too much to ask?”

  Will gave me a sympathetic look and shrugged. “Well, if it never happens, it won’t be for lack of trying. But first things first. Let’s figure out how to clear Liv’s name.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Well, we had to start somewhere, and freeing my best friend was the best idea ever. The only problem: we had no clues. We were definitely floundering.

  By the time we reached home, I realised how helpless we were and how much we were relying on Luck, and if she was as moody as the universe, things were going to get messy.

  Chapter 6

  We sat around a PIB boardroom table in our usual meeting room. Beren, who sat opposite me and next to my brother, was in the middle of explaining why we couldn’t go and see Liv. “She’s asked for no visitors, except for me and the solicitor. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice, but Beren raised a brow, indicating I probably hadn’t succeeded. “She needs us, and I need to see her, make sure she’s okay.”

  “I know, Lily, but that was her request. I think she’s still trying to process all this, and to be honest, she’s in self-hate mode right now. She blames herself and thinks she deserves to be in jail.” Beren ran a hand through his blond hair, mussing it. “She’s lost her appetite and just lies in her bed. The only times she gets up is when I visit, which has only been twice. The Kent police are being as nice as they can, but unless I have the solicitor with me, they’re not going to let me in five times a day. Anyway, they’re holding her for an extra twenty-four hours while they gather more evidence.”

  “What, they’re still not sure what to charge her with?” I looked at Beren, my face showing every bit of incredulity vibrating in my body. “She clearly didn’t intend to hurt Kate. I mean, if I pushed someone away, I would never do so thinking they were going to fall and smash their head. If I wanted to do some damage, I’d at least punch them first.”

  James fixed a worried gaze on me. “Since when did you get so violent?”

  I waved one hand. “I’m not. I just mean, who ever thinks pushing someone is going to kill them, unless they’re standing next to a cliff, of course? This whole thing is ludicrous.” I folded my arms with angry enthusiasm. My frustration was rising. While we sat there discussing things, Liv was in a tsunami of self-hate and despondency. Did she believe she was going to go to jail for ten years? I wished I could say I didn’t know how horrific that felt. Maybe knowing made it worse.

  “Yes, it is ludicrous, dear, but it’s the situation we have. Rather than ranting about it, maybe we should better use our time to brainstorm how to fix it?” Ma’am had her teacher voice activated—mildly scathing yet calm.

  Instead of answering, I pushed my aggravation out in a huge blast of air through my nose. It was times like this I wished I was a dragon shifter. I knew they didn’t exist, but they should. Then I could burn everything to the ground, get Liv out of there. Hmm, maybe that’s why dragon shifters didn’t exist—too many things would get burnt to a crisp. I could imagine driving along and you let someone cut in front of you, and they don’t even wave a thank you. Instead of swearing, I could engulf their car in flames. Hmm, maybe I was getting violent. I needed to calm down before I lost the plot and ended up in jail with Liv.

  Will squeezed my hand. “Just be patient. We’ll get to the bottom of this.” He turned to Ma’am, who was sitting on his left. “I think it’s time to update everyone on this morning’s case.” She nodded. Will turned to address the rest of the table. “The man mauled to death this morning at the big-cat park had been living his dream. His partner told us that he’d always wanted to interact up close with big cats. He was feeding the tigers this morning with park staff present. Everything was going well, and he leaned in to pat one, which also went well—that tiger has been declawed and is tame, having been brought up from a kitten.”

  “Declawing is cruel.” I knew I should let him talk, but I just had to get that out there.

  “Yes, Lily, it is, but that’s not the point.” Will shook his head. “As I was saying… everything was going well, but then, after being warned not to smother the animals, the man’s partner, Alfred, says he felt a hiss of magic. Then his boyfriend, after promising not to, leaned in to hug the tiger. It didn’t take kindly to that and mauled him. It all happened so quickly that Alfred didn’t have time to use his magic to save Irving. He was also aware that the owners of the park were non-witches, and he would have had some explaining to do, but he says he would have used his magic had he been thinking clearly. We obviously would have done damage control because saving a life is a special circumstance.” It was nice to know the PIB weren’t absolutely cruel when it came to enforcing the no-magic-in-front-of-non-witches law. “We couldn’t find a magic signature, but Alfred assures us there was a faint golden aura around Irving just before he died. It wasn’t there by the time we arrived.”

  I scratched my head. There were definite similarities with this, the church case, the dance case, and Liv’s. The brief pulse of magic was present at all of them, although I hadn’t seen a golden aura around anyone at the movies. “Imani, did you notice any golden auras at
the dance recital?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t looking with my other sight. Seeing auras all the time gets overwhelming, especially in a dark hall. The brightness would’ve been distracting.”

  I knew what she meant. I only checked out people with my other sight if I needed to know whether someone was a witch or not. Ma’am had finally taught me how to block it out without turning my magic off. I looked at Will. “Did Alfred tell you anything else?”

  “No, but he was distraught. We’re going to try and talk to him again tomorrow. We did ask if any witches had it in for either of them, but he said no. So, whilst we haven’t found the source of these pulses of power, we’ve established a common theme in these incidents. Now it’s time to dig deeper, see what else we can discover.”

  James jumped in. “To that end, this afternoon, Will and I will interview the two men and the old lady’s family from the Christmas-tree incident. I think we can assume the source of these crimes is coming from a single person or group.” He looked at me when he said “group.” Regula Pythonissam had been unusually quiet the past few weeks. Maybe they were regrouping, or maybe they’d been making more mischief like this. “In the meantime, Lily, you need to go home and wait. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing more you can do right now, and you never know—Liv might change her mind and decide she wants to see you this afternoon or tomorrow.”

  “Could I go and visit Millicent?” My sister-in-law was about five or six weeks from giving birth. The baby was due in January. Maybe she needed help with the housework. Oh, that’s right, she was a witch and could just magic everything clean. Well, maybe she’d like the company. I sure as hell could use it.

  “I’m sure she’d love to see you. Just text her first to make sure she’s not asleep. She still hasn’t been sleeping well at night. Our baby loves to kick up a storm at two in the morning.” He grinned. He couldn’t wait to be a dad, and he doted on Millicent when he wasn’t at work. Unfortunately, he couldn’t sleep for her, so she was tired most of the time.