by Silver Nord
“Great,” I said, genuinely turning to walk for the door now that he’d decided to speak in riddles again.
“Wait! I’ll tell you. I said I would. You’re not going to like it…”
I looked back over my shoulder. “Since when has that stopped you from sharing anything?”
The smirk suddenly grew to include shining white teeth. “You think you’re so clever. I suppose we’ll see if you’re really your father’s daughter or not.” He cleared his throat, looking more smug by the second. “I wear my heart outside my chest. I stand alone in a sea of me. In a place of magic and a place of rest. Knock three times, then six, then three. Only then will I speak to thee.”
I frowned. “What was that?”
“A riddle. The riddle your father spoke to me before he disappeared in a puff of smoke,” Constantine said, looking thoughtful at the memory.
“A puff of blue smoke? My father wasn’t a magician, was he?” I’d seen zero signs of magic when I’d looked around his house. My house now, I remembered. If Wormwood made it through the next week I’d have to figure out something to do with it.
“Oh, no, not at all. Had he even possessed an iota of magical talent we might have been able to make an exception for your poor, dear mother. Instead, she chose to dilute the Salem line with non-magical blood.” He looked disapprovingly at me.
I rolled my eyes, fed up with conversations that revolved around the supposed purity of the Salems. It was weird, outdated, and frankly gross. “That’s all he said? Just some rhymes?”
Constantine grinned. “He seemed very agitated. Perhaps he’d gone mad. It’s probably mindless gibberish and not some secret way to find him at all. But please… do waste your time with it. I would love to hear how you get on.”
“That’s not likely,” I said, standing up to leave. I fully intended to abandon Constantine in his cell until I forgot he even existed. The world would be a much better place for it.
“You can’t escape your heritage, Hazel. You will always be a Salem,” he called from his chair.
I couldn’t resist turning back and shrugging. “I don’t know about that. It’s pretty easy to get your name changed these days. Who knows? When I find my father, I might break the family tradition and take his name instead. It’s what normal people do.”
“Good luck with the riddle,” Constantine said, back to being smug. He didn’t think I could crack it. Or perhaps he really did think my father had cracked when he’d recited it.
I wasn’t certain he was wrong about that.
“Goodbye, Constantine,” I told my great-uncle, ardently hoping it would be the last time I saw him.
“You don’t trust the Council, do you? After all I’ve said?” There was a desperate edge to Constantine’s voice now. Perhaps it was the prospect of loneliness for the rest of his life finally hitting home.
“Why shouldn’t I trust them?” I asked with my hand on the cell door. I’d never said I did trust the Council, but it would be interesting to see if Constantine did know anything useful.
“You do know that there was a good reason the Grand Coven got together to turn the Council ringleaders into slime, don’t you? Consider this… if they were corrupt enough that someone like me wanted to be rid of them, they must be the most evil organisation to ever exist.”
I hesitated again. Strangely, Constantine had made a valid point. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what the Council actually did that was so evil?” No one seemed to want to talk about the past or any of its specifics. All I knew was what I’d managed to piece together, and there were definitely pieces of the puzzle that didn’t fit.
“I’d just advise you not to trust any of them. Remember, we were all taken in once upon a time. It’s popularity that gets you into the inner circle. But it’s ruthlessness that’s kept them all there.”
I raised my eyebrows, pretty certain that Constantine was just jealous of the group he’d failed to manipulate his way into leading. “Don’t trust them? That’s all you’re going to say?”
Constantine smiled again in his nasty, predatory way. “You can always come back here if you want to know more. Maybe bring some bolt-cutters and grappling hooks with you.”
I shook my head at him. He could dream on.
“All I’ll say is that they are undoubtedly up to their old tricks again. Watch out. You can never be quite sure who’s working for them until it’s too late,” he finished.
I opened the cell door and walked out of the room, glad to be leaving Constantine behind for good.
It was a surprise to find myself inches away from Aleister Root.
6
Hidden Agendas
“May I have a word?” he said, greeting me with his usual well-spoken style.
I felt a jolt of panic run though me as I wondered how long he’d been standing outside the door… and how much he’d overheard.
“Of course,” I said as neutrally as possible, shutting the door on Constantine and following the Witch Council’s leader down several more winding corridors, leading ever deeper beneath Oxford. “What did you want to talk about?” I asked when we’d walked in silence for several minutes. I was starting to wonder if he’d forgotten I was there.
“This,” he said, stopping outside of a stone wall and running a hand across it. It shimmered and turned transparent, revealing a room that lay beyond the solid stone. It was occupied, but not by anyone I recognised.
Or so I initially thought.
“Is that…?” I started to ask when it finally clicked.
“Kimberly Marshall,” Aleister confirmed. “Her recovery from her ordeal is taking more time than anticipated.” He looked sideways at me. “We’ve never spoken about what happened to her. I believe you might be able to assist.”
“She tried to kill us,” I said. “And then she touched something she shouldn’t have touched.” That was it in a nutshell. Kimberly had unwisely stuck a hand into the dark dimension and it had pulled her in. I’d hoped ‘never to be seen again’, but here we were…
“She’s displaying a lot of power. I did note there was a spike in her abilities relatively recently, but this is the kind of power a person uses when they are bordering on madness. She won’t speak to anyone and all she’s willing to say is one thing…”
He waved his hand again and sound echoed out from behind the wall.
“…Azel Salem… Hazel…” He muted it again.
Bordering on madness? More like completely loopy! I privately thought. “I guess she’s not willing to forgive or forget,” I muttered, watching the mad witch fire off another blast of her greyish magic. Aleister was right. It had changed, Before, it had been a blinding white stream of light. Now, there was something wrong about it. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel shards of darkness woven in. A twisted kind of darkness that didn’t belong in this world. It wasn’t normal magic - devil given, or otherwise.
“It’s almost like she’s been infected with something,” I muttered, wondering if that really was Kimberly in there.
“We fear the same. We tried to remove her magic for her own safety, but the usual methods failed. That’s why she’s cut off behind these walls and no one goes in. We spell food and water to travel inside, but she has no real contact with anyone… just in case. I keep hoping things will change and she’ll be able to tell us more about what she saw… wherever she was. Wouldn’t that be something interesting?” He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
I frowned back. I hadn’t forgotten that the man I was sharing company with had been meeting with Mayor Starbright. The mayor had claimed he was intending to step down and make him the new Witch Council leader. These days, the mayor’s attention was focused on bigger things… like global domination, but I still wasn’t sure what game Aleister had thought he was playing. I still didn’t know what game he was playing right now.
“In my opinion… you should probably throw away the key,” I said, giving Kimberly one more dark look before walking back alo
ng the corridor. It was too bad she’d been sucked into another dimension and completely lost her mind, but in all fairness, she had been trying to kill me and Minerva at the time. It had been us or Kimberly, and I’d picked us.
I bit my lip. Maybe I was more of a Salem than I liked to admit.
“Hazel…” Aleister called after me.
I grudgingly stopped walking and turned back to look at him.
“I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but how about a deal? No more plotting against each other. If you keep an eye on the magical community in Wormwood and their feelings towards the Council, I’ll keep an eye on things here.” He patted the wall behind him.
I kept my expression blank, knowing this was bordering on blackmail. “It’s a deal,” I said, knowing that no one had the time to plot against the Witch Council at the moment. It would be an easy promise to keep.
He smiled warmly. “Let me know how things turn out in Wormwood - especially if you see any familiar faces. I wouldn’t want to miss the chance to welcome any long-lost family members back into the fold.” Something glittered in his eyes, letting me know he knew exactly why I’d come to visit Constantine.
“Of course,” I said, as vaguely as possible.
If I’d needed any compelling evidence that Aleister Root had known my father, this was it. I’d need to be blind to not realise something had happened a long time ago between the pair.
For once, I thought Constantine might have been telling the truth.
Aleister Root was up to his old tricks again.
The only problem was… I had no idea what his old tricks had been.
Wormwood wanted me to come back.
The taxi had left me on the edge of town when the driver had inexplicably remembered that he had an important appointment to attend. He’d even been in too much of a rush to remember to ask for the taxi fare. It was only when I’d walked over the bridge that led into town, bracing myself for another push through to the other side, that I realised I hadn’t felt a thing. It had been next to impossible to claw my way beyond the town’s border, but on my return it almost felt like I was being embraced. I was supposed to be here.
I was not foolish enough to think that was a good thing. It was likely that my own power was a significant contributor to the punch the mayor was able to pack. I was no more than a magical battery fuelling that stupid deal Jesse Heathen had made with the mad mayor.
I did some grumbling when I thought about the devilish deity. He’d lain it all on the line when he’d fought his brother, but aside from petty pranks, he was making himself scarce. I inwardly debated whether or not I should check on him, but it was almost a blessing to not have him around. Either way, no ground had been gained in the fight against the mayor’s evil plan.
I shook my head as I walked back into town through the streets I knew like the back of my own hand. Strangely, the more I thought about it, the more I realised the mayor and I were not too different from one another. Both of us had been given the ability to open a way through to the dark dimension without initially wanting it.
The mayor had always craved power and the gods had twisted his deal to fit their own ends. Similarly, I’d never had a say in my own abilities. In-between all of the failed ideas I’d come up with on how to halt this mess, I’d spent a fair amount of time considering what made us different.
I’d decided that it all came down to choices and moral compasses. The mayor still genuinely believed he was doing what was best for witches and magicians everywhere… or something like that. He wanted to change the world. I wanted the best for everyone, too… but on a much smaller scale. That was the key difference. I loved my town and many of the people in it. It was home, and I liked things the way they were because I understood that you can’t fix everyone’s problems for them by telling them what to do. People should be free to make their own choices… including the choice to not be eaten by a marauding monster.
I hesitated outside of Wormwood’s surprisingly normal hardware shop, feeling the air shimmer and bend. A thin place? Here? I thought, feeling a rush of panic rise up. I took a calming breath and ran a hand over the spot, willing the fabric of reality to sew itself shut again before anything could probe the weakness further.
I shouldn’t have been shocked. The gate was going to open bang splat in the middle of town, and I’d already been seeing weaknesses cropping up in the forest. Was it any great surprise that they were spreading to the town? At the rate they were cropping up, the party might be over before the party actually happened if enough things managed to break through. It was only a matter of time before I wasn’t quick enough. It was only a matter of time before I wasn’t strong enough.
I gritted my teeth and continued onwards through the dark night, rounding the corner of the street that led to my shop. To my surprise, there was a small crowd outside, hammering on the still-broken door.
“Hazel!” they shouted, peering into the shop with worried and gleeful faces (depending upon where I looked).
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked running over to the group of witches who formed Wormwood Coven.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Ally said, her face lighting up when she saw me. “We all thought they’d got you. The broken door…”
“Who’d got me?” I asked, cutting in on what I knew would be a long, rambling description. Ally was not someone it was easy to have a quick conversation with.
“The group of thugs who are running around town messing things up. They tried to hex me when I answered the door,” Natalia Ghoul explained, looking peeved that I was fine. “Obviously, I made them regret it, but I think it’s shocking that they were allowed to run around unchecked in the first place. As our high priestess, it’s your duty to put a stop to this. Instead, you were off running around on some sort of jolly. We’ve been here for hours!”
I bristled, but I knew better than to tell them the truth about where I’d been after the way I’d drilled it into them that the Witch Council was not to be trusted. Natalia and her sister Aurelia would have a field day if they discovered the truth.
I wondered where Aunt Linda was, before remembering that she was trying a new sleep regime that involved listening to loud thunder noises. No wonder she hadn’t come to see what the racket was, she’d probably thought it was just the thunder getting going.
“What exactly happened?” I asked, wanting to get to the bottom of this as fast as humanly possible, so I could get rid of the Ghouls.
“Thugs in balaclavas,” Heather said, stepping forward to give me a better account. “They seem to be going round targeting coven members. At least… I haven’t heard of them attacking anyone outside of our group.” She looked around at the other members. They shrugged and shook their heads.
“So… I’m guessing this is all your fault,” Aurelia announced with a smug smile on her lips.
I considered the broken door and the bullet holes. I remembered the words of the leader of the group who’d wanted to rob me. They were looking for a safe that I knew didn’t exist. Aunt Linda was right, I definitely should have asked them to be more specific about the safe’s contents.
“Are you going to bring that nice detective in to sort it out?” Natalia asked, flicking her hair back over her shoulder in a shining sheet.
“No, he’s busy,” I said unthinkingly, my mind still on these invaders. If they were going after the coven, it definitely meant they were still in town. I might have scared them off once with Erebus’ help, but it looked like I could have done with being a little more firm in my rebuffing of their robbery… like letting him sink his teeth in.
“Busy?!” Natalia said, looking horrified. The concern spread around the group. “A crime’s been committed! Isn’t that his job to fix?”
I bit my tongue, wishing I hadn’t been so flippant. “You must all know by now that there’s an invisible barrier around Wormwood. He can’t come in by the front road, and now the forest is starting to change, too,” I told them all. They deserved
to know the worst. After all… our doom was coming quickly now.
“Are we trapped here?” Hannah asked, sounding more curious than scared.
“You know… I haven’t thought about going into Witchwood to do the shopping this week,” Heather commented.
“I got a delivery of groceries just the other day, but the delivery driver seemed confused. He said it took him two days to get here. My strawberries were already mouldy!” Rebecca jumped in.
Natalia looked at me accusingly. “Haven’t you sorted this all out yet? You’ve had long enough.”
Now I had to bite my tongue to keep from shoving her through the thin place I could see shimmering just beyond the shop. “I’ve told you all about the mayor’s plan. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them. We are a coven, and it’s our duty to unite against tyrants like Gareth Starbright to save our town.”
“Sure… sure…” Aurelia said insincerely. “But nobody said we were going to be trapped here on this sinking ship with all of you rats!”
I raised my arms in what I hoped was a placating manner. “We can talk about all of this at the next coven meeting. I’m calling one tomorrow night. Let me know if you see the thugs again. I don’t mind being the law around here,” I said, putting myself forward.
Aurelia rolled her eyes. “So you get to be the hero? How convenient. You’re just trying to grab the headlines for your stupid magazine. Everything’s working out just the way you planned, isn’t it? I’ve got news for you. This gang of miscreants is a transparent ploy. It’s clear that you’ve set it up to make you look good when you knock them down and save the day. It’s pathetic,” she said, looking utterly envious that she hadn’t come up with the idea herself.
I chose to ignore this ridiculous conspiracy theory.
“We’ll meet in Wormwood Forest tomorrow evening,” I said, shooting a less than happy glance at a bunch of tourists, who were out late tonight. “No one tell anyone.” I was well aware that the mayor would surely jump at the chance for his tourists to witness a real-life coven meeting… and mess up our plans in the process.
