An Arrogant Witch

by E M Graham

  ‘How’re your readings going?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, you know...’

  ‘You haven’t touched them, have you? I bet they’re still on your kitchen counter.’ He pulled out of the parking lane, the wipers at full speed.

  ‘I have looked at them! They’re all words though, no pictures or diagrams. Not even any spells in them,’ I said, turning to look out at the rain drizzling down the glass. ‘Jeez, it’s just been so busy lately.’

  He waited, indicator light flashing to indicate his left turn onto the busy road.

  ‘I have to go to Paris,’ he said.

  ‘Have to? What a drag that must be. I’d hate to have your life.’

  He smiled without looking at me. ‘Work calls.’

  ‘What do you do, anyway?’

  ‘I told you before,’ he said. ‘I work with the EUROs, sort of an Interpol, an international policing for the Witch Kin. Any more than that, I can’t explain.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  ‘Legally prohibited,’ he said. ‘I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘I’d like to do something like that, after I graduate all this, and after I finish up in Scotland. I’d love to travel and be right in the heart of things like that.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ he said. ‘You’d have to apply yourself a lot harder than you’re doing presently.’

  ‘You said I have natural ability,’ I reminded him.

  He gave a cynical laugh as he shot out into a break in traffic. ‘Ability doesn’t count for much unless you know how to apply it,’ he retorted. ‘And you seem to be having difficulty with the old nose to the grindstone part.’

  ‘So,’ I said, just a little annoyed. ‘You wanted to speak with me?’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe over a little late lunch?’

  ‘We can do that,’ he agreed. ‘Have any place in mind?’

  ‘Smitty’s,’ I said decisively. ‘A late, late breakfast is actually what I need for today.’ Breakfast at two in the afternoon was a rare treat. As the car splashed down the hill and through a puddle, the idea of greasy sausages and hash browns and toast with red jam was now firmly in my mind and my stomach didn’t want to let it go. Raspberry, preferably, but strawberry jam would do.

  The pots of tea were strong with endless refills, and we were in my favorite booth overlooking the Square. I hung my wet coat on the hook at the side and settled back with a smile. Hugh did the same with his leather jacket, then rolled back the sleeves of his white shirt, showing wrists which were wiry but strong, like a pianist’s, and his fingers were long and sensitive.

  I liked that everyone in the Square could look in and see me with him.

  ‘So what did you want to speak to me about?’ I asked, drawing in the warmth from the mug with both hands. The overhanging light between us cast a dome of intimacy, the soft yellow light contrasting with the gloomy greyness outside.

  ‘Just thought I’d touch base with you,’ he replied. He leaned forward, with his hand on his chin and his thoughtful gaze on me. The white of his shirt brought out the touch of gold in those eyes which saw everything. I mentally tucked away anything I didn’t want him to know, for this witch could read my mind effortlessly, hear every thought I broadcast through my head if I wasn’t careful. ‘How’re things?’

  ‘Y’know,’ I shrugged, sliding my eyes away from his. ‘I still have that paper to write, exams coming up.’

  ‘And your math course – you keeping up on that?’

  ‘Yes, Hugh.’ I caught my eyes beginning to roll, and brought them to attention to match the smile I pasted on my face.

  ‘There’s something bothering you though,’ he said, cutting through all my facial contortions. ‘What is it?’

  There was no way I was going to tell him about the medallion that whispered my mother’s name. I don’t know why, but I had the feeling he would immediately ban me from further exploration of this without telling me why. I hated how he treated me like a kid sister sometimes. We’d only known each other a couple of months, and he really had no right to do that.

  And there was no way I was going to tell him what I had experienced the other night. No frigging way at all.

  ‘Willem,’ I said, having made a decision. ‘That guy is creepy.’

  He raised an eyebrow as he sipped his tea. ‘You’re finished with the craft fair, are you not?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Then why is he bothering you? Surely you’re not still in contact with him?’

  ‘It’s not just him,’ I told Hugh. ‘Mark, Edna’s boyfriend, he went and bought one of his trolls to give her for Christmas.’

  Hugh didn’t move a muscle but I could feel his interest sharpen. ‘I heard about those creatures. And?’

  I told him about my feelings of discomfort and dread which had culminated in my trip to the attic and the discovery of the parcel by the Christmas decorations. About how it rattled and moved as if trying to free itself, and how I could feel it trying to draw me in.

  ‘So there’s something weird going on with that guy,’ I finished. ‘And he gave Mark a big discount when he found out his connection to me. Practically gave it to him, after his booth was closed down.’

  ‘It’s out of the house now?’

  ‘Yeah, Mark took it out that same night.’

  ‘Good,’ Hugh said. ‘Trust your senses. And stay away from Willem, don’t have anything to do with him.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said, nodding to show that I was on board with him.

  He sat up straight in the booth, his height towering over me even when we sat. The lamp glowed around his dark hair like a halo and his eyes were shaded.

  ‘Dara! I mean it,’ he said, the soft Scottish accent hardening with force of his feeling. ‘Will you not listen to my advice for once? I’m not trying to control you, this is for your own benefit. You have not got the skills to be messing around with Willem. And what are you looking to get out of it?’

  I could tell him about the medallion now, I could pass it all on to him and he would take care of it, I knew, but that’s not what I wanted. He would just forbid me to get involved. I sat tall in the booth too, as tall as I could and drew my shoulders back. This was my journey, my business, my mother. Not his. Hugh would never understand. He could stick his arrogant ways up where the sun didn’t shine.

  ‘Don’t be so bossy all the time. Stop telling me what to do!’ My words didn’t nearly convey my feelings and I hated how I sounded like an undignified toddler, stamping her foot on the floor and refusing to eat her vegetables. I hated how Hugh had this effect on me.

  ‘I will tell you what to do,’ he shot back. ‘Because you’re obviously bent on doing the absolute wrong thing. How are we going to work together if you won’t listen? Why are we bothering, if you’re just going to embarrass me every step of the way? I refuse to waste my time if you’re not one hundred percent dedicated to this venture.’

  His fist slammed on the table just as the waiter came up to us with our food. The young guy bravely looked at Hugh, then me.

  ‘Everything okay here, miss?’

  I sat back, stunned, then collected myself enough to nod at him. ‘We’re good,’ I said in a small voice.

  When the food was steaming in front of us, I reached for the ketchup and started to shake it over my potatoes. Hugh’s outburst and physical display didn’t bother me. It was the meaning behind the words which had floored me.

  ‘We’ll be working together?’ I asked him, trying to get my head around it. ‘What? How?’

  He sat back with a deep sigh. ‘That’s really what I wanted to discuss with you today,’ he said. ‘I’m to be your tutor when you go north in the New Year.’

  Those fine lips turned down at the corners as he gazed at the darkening skies outside the window, as if he was not relishing the prospect.

  My heart, however, let out a little bubble of delight. Yes, Hugh was bossy, but he was familiar. I’d ne
ver been anywhere but my home at the edge of the ocean, never even been off this island before. Never been anywhere where I wasn’t known as Dara Martin, bastard child of Jonathan de Teilhard.

  The one thing I hadn’t been looking forward to with leaving the country was the fear of the unknown – going to a strange land with unknown faces, where nobody knew me. It actually terrified me, but I’d been squashing that fear deep down inside me and telling myself I’d be okay.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, trying to sort out all the questions which were jumping into my head. ‘But... but what about your job?’

  ‘I’ll still be working,’ he replied with a sigh. ‘But closer to home, to keep an eye on your studies.’

  ‘That’s great news,’ I said. And I really meant it.

  He looked at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Is it?’

  Then he took his focus away from me and used his fork to pick at the food on his plate without eating anything.

  ‘Yeah, for me it is,’ I said. ‘Sorry if it doesn’t thrill you.’

  He sighed again, and let the fork fall with a clatter against the plate.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘The only way it’s going to work is if you really want to be there. And by that I mean you have to be prepared to work hard and apply some discipline. I have no desire to fight with you in order to force you to learn. If I see that you’re not focused, I’ll advise for you to be failed out and sent back home. You’re an adult, and I’m going to treat you as one. I’m not going to stand for your tantrums.’

  I was left with my hand in midair and my mouth wide open. I quickly shut it and looked down at my plate.

  ‘Got it,’ I said shortly, my face burning with embarrassment by now. I let my hair fall around to hide it. My late, late breakfast was quickly congealing on the plate and the milky tea left a ring around the mug. I really wasn’t hungry anymore. ‘Loud and clear.’

  The silence between us was growing awkward, as it does when someone unexpectedly gets something off their chest, holding up a mirror and forcing the other to see herself through his eyes. It was the clarity of the air exposing nerves that had been safely buffered for years in a cloak of childhood.

  So it wasn’t just me who hated when I whined like a child.

  ‘Why were you asking about Willem?’

  ‘This girl I know, Carrie,’ I said quickly. There was no way I’d tell him about the medallion now, for sure. And I silently made the promise I wouldn’t hold anything else back from Hugh, never, after I got my hands on that medallion. ‘I’m worried about her.’

  ‘That the silly rich girl who fancies herself a Rastafarian?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘The thing is, she’s glommed on to Willem like nobody’s business, and it’s not natural. She’s all over him like some kind of groupie.’

  ‘Stay out of it.’

  ‘But really, he’s not her type. She goes for the flashy guys, the musicians and the artists...’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘Why don’t you consider that I am already your tutor?’ Hugh’s voice was dangerously patient, his eyes daring me to disagree. ‘As of this moment forward, that is how we will act. Two adults. One respected teacher, and one student striving to show her maturity and to prove she is an appropriate choice for the opportunity she has been given.’

  I bit my lip to stop the outburst which had already formed on my tongue.

  ‘This will give me an opportunity to see how much you really want this education,’ he continued. ‘Before we go to the expense of shipping you out to Scotland. If it doesn’t work out, well then, we will have saved everyone some bother, don’t you agree?’

  His stare was burning into the top of my head and I nodded, still hidden behind my veil of hair. This was all so grossly unfair.

  ‘Good.’ He hailed the waiter. ‘I think we’re done here.’

  ‘But Hugh...’

  ‘Yes?’

  I wanted to plead with him for reassurance. I really wasn’t so awful, was I? I was trying to do good, I wasn’t evil or creepy like Willem. I just wish Hugh didn’t see me as an arrogant little snot.

  And he might not, if I told him everything.

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. I stood up and shrugged on my jacket.

  THE MINUTE HUGH’S boring red car left our driveway, I got on my bike to head down to Alice’s house on Southside Road. I knew she would be home at this hour because this was the one day of the week she didn’t have classes or labs, and she would be spending the whole day in her pj’s doing catch-up chores like laundry and lab reports.

  I needed to get Alice on board since Hugh wasn’t going to be of any help to me, and while I was coasting down the hill, my mind worked fast.

  How could Alice help? She could pretend she wanted to join the coven. Willem would eat that up. All she had to do was open those big grey eyes of hers and act like she was latching on to every word he spoke. He would be a goner, for no man could resist her. It was strange how my friend had no idea of the effect she had on the opposite sex or how frigging gorgeous she was - Alice firmly believed she was unattractive and that this was the reason she didn’t have a boyfriend. The reality of the matter was that her beauty and strong intelligence intimidated any guy who dared approach and they were too tongue-tied to say anything halfway intriguing enough to catch her interest. Alice saw only what she wanted to see in her personal life, which was a weird characteristic for a scientist.

  I threw my bike down in her driveway and banged on the back door before bursting through it. Like most homes, the front entrance was reserved for strangers to the home, ones who acknowledged they needed formal permission to approach. For a long-time friend like myself, it would be considered rude not to just walk right in the back, as if I thought myself above them all and on a different social level.

  The whole family was seated round the kitchen table when I opened the mud room door. Mr. Hoskins with a beer in hand, priming himself for an evening at his local bar; Mrs. H still in her drugstore uniform, the shadows under her eyes showing the burden of being the breadwinner of the home; Sal, Alice’s younger sister; Benjy her skeety older brother, and Alice herself, dressed in her fuzzy pj’s as I had predicted. No one said a word to me, but that was just their way. I didn’t greet any of them either.

  ‘Alice I need to talk with you,’ I said. But I couldn’t do it here in the kitchen, not with the whole clan listening in, and I still hated to go in the parlour which was the domain of her dead great-grandmother’s ghost.

  ‘What?’ She was pouring canned milk into a mug of tea.

  ‘Can you come outside?’

  ‘It’s raining out there,’ she told me with dismay. ‘You’re all wet.’

  Her persnickety fear of getting mussed and uncomfortable in the elements was just another evidence in favour of her elf blood, but she would never admit it.

  ‘We’ll just go across the road,’ I said. ‘Come on!’

  She sighed and threw her winter parka over herself like a hooded cloak, then shoved the nearest pair of rubber boots on her feet. I could hear her shuffling behind me and slurping her tea as we made our way across the road to stand under the overpass. Cars whizzed overhead, their tires splashing in the rain, but we were so used to the sound over the years that we no longer heard it.

  Once she was firmly ensconced with her back against the concrete pillar, Alice looked at me warily as she continued to drink her tea.

  ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘I need your help,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ she replied. ‘The last time you asked for help your sister almost killed me.’

  ‘That’s not really fair,’ I said, stung. I faced her with my hands on my hips. ‘It was her boyfriend who abducted you. And if you remember, I was trying to get Benjy away from the fairies? And Nan Hoskins was terrorizing your family?’

  Alice shrugged off any mention of the supernatural as her personal force field only allowed in scientifically proven facts and
anything outside of her narrow ken bounced off that bubble as if it didn’t exist. She was funny like that, even if she did acknowledge her dead great-grandmother’s ghost.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ I continued less vehemently. ‘How is Nan Hoskins?’

  ‘Quieter these days,’ she said. ‘Except we all have to watch Coronation Street or she kicks up a ruckus.’

  ‘I thought she hated the TV,’ I said.

  ‘Go figure.’

  We had a moment of silence in respect for the unaccountable ways of the family’s matriarch, dead though she was.

  ‘So...,’ I began.

  ‘Before you start, I’m letting you know that I’m not getting involved in any of your weirdness again, okay?’

  ‘Nothing supernatural, I promise you,’ I said, holding my hands up as if to show I was unarmed. At least, she wouldn’t have to get involved in magic, I would handle all that side of things. ‘It’s just, this guy has something I have to have. He’s not going to give it to me, so I have to pretend to go along. And I want you to come and distract him while I take it from him.’

  ‘Steal from him?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘What he has, it sort of belongs to me. It... I think it used to be my mother’s.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A medallion, or coin or something.’

  ‘How do you know it was your Mom’s?’

  ‘It’s magically charged. I can hear her voice when I touch it.’

  ‘For frig’s sake, Dara!’ She dashed the dregs of her tea to the ground and turned to go back home.

  ‘I’m not asking you to get involved with the magic part of it,’ I said in a rush as I grabbed the sleeve of her parka to stop her from leaving.

  ‘Who is this guy then?’

  ‘He’s a sorcerer, but don’t let that bother you,’ I said. ‘He’s not very powerful, he just thinks he is. He flunked sorcerer’s college! I know you can do this, all you have to do is pretend to be fascinated by him, he’ll be candy in your hand. And that’ll give me time to get the medallion from him.’

  ‘No magic or shit?’

  ‘Nah, there’ll be nothing,’ I said, hoping it was true. ‘Just a bunch of people pretending they’re witches. Pathetic weirdos, really.’