I said, “Sir, if I may. Might I inquire where this new information came from?”
“I’m not prepared to discuss it.” The warning was clear in his tone but I chose to ignore it.
“What happens if things go wrong and there’s an inquiry? Will we be able to say – hand on heart - that our intelligence came from a valid source?”
Valeria’s eyes grew wide.
Kinsella frowned. “I’ve made my decision and that’s the end of it.”
I spoke clearly and concisely as if the whole conversation was being recorded. “Can we be assured that this information came from a verifiable source and was not gained as a result of…”
“Don’t!”
“Necromancy.”
The word hung in the air.
Kinsella raised his hand.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Now Valeria, you need to start moving those Novices out as soon as possible. Marcus, I’d like you to take Bronte back to the main house and stay with her until her car arrives.” He levelled his next comment directly at me. “Are we all clear on that?”
Marcus started bustling me out the door.
“One last thing,” I said but Kinsella was already starting to pack away. I had to shout in order to make myself heard.
“Is this about Kosi?”
“What?”
My mouth felt very dry but I had to finish what I’d started.
“You let her down once before. Has this become personal for you now?”
Kinsella was shaking his head. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy with sarcasm.
“Yes, Bronte. That’s right. It’s personal – just like in the movies.”
Marcus had hold of my arm and was half carrying me toward the stairs.
“Well done, Bronte. What was it I was saying about your emotions get in the way of your decision making?”
I was breathing heavily after our altercation. Valeria was close behind as we started down the stairs. “That could have gone better.”
“I know, but I had to ask about the Necromancy thing. And, you’ll notice, how he didn’t try to deny it.”
“No, but he did seem pretty determined.”
I pulled myself away from Marcus’ grip. “And that’s just the problem: he’s not thinking straight. When was the last time he led a field operation? Six, seven years?”
“Seven years,” Valeria said as we left the stairs behind. “It’s been seven years since he broke his back.”
“He broke his back?” I looked at her with fresh eyes. “Really!”
“People don’t like to talk about it. No one wants to think of their boss as being fallible.”
That had me feeling even more confused. We walked the rest of the way back to the house in silence and then headed back to the Summer Room. Marcus took a seat nearest the door and sat glowering at me. Valeria walked me over to a sofa standing in the sunshine.
“I’m going to have to start getting organised,” she said. “What about you? Are you going to do as he says?”
“Oh, God! I don’t know. Looks like I’ve burnt my bridges as far as Kinsella’s concerned.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to judge. What you did back there was very gutsy. I couldn’t have done it.”
She gave me a hug and, for a moment, everything felt fine. “I think I’ll just wait here for my lift to arrive. Then I’ll take it from there.”
Valeria got up to go but then she stopped herself.
“You know what you were saying back there: about this being personal?”
“Like in the movies?” I laughed at myself then.
“Well, you might be right. I think that there’s more going on between him and that Kosi girl than he’s telling us.”
“What sort of thing?”
She started to say something and then waved the thought away.
“Don’t listen to me. I’m getting paranoid: seeing threats everywhere.”
Yeah, you and me both.
*
I was sitting there for an hour and a half before my cab arrived. In that time I’d become so bored I’d started leafing through the back copies of National Geographic covering the coffee table. There was only Marcus and me sitting there in the end. About an hour previously everyone had mysteriously gotten up to leave. In retrospect, I realised that they must have been called away to another meeting. One to which I hadn’t been invited.
Was that another sign of paranoia? I was starting to suspect everybody: Marcus, Szabo, Kinsella. There was even a moment when I’d thought that Valeria was going to turn on me, but that had been my fault. I’d startled her.
What had really thrown me was the idea that she’d studied at Erasmus. As a college, it’s got a reputation for real austerity. They take their work very seriously up there. Everyone I’ve ever met who’s studied at Erasmus has struck me as being slightly odd. Perhaps Valeria was the exception.
It had been a day full of surprises. Everything was moving so quickly that I couldn’t help but feel that I was being side-lined. I’d thought that I’d found an ally in Valeria but there was no escaping the fact that she still answered to Kinsella. It was all getting to be too much. I was tired of thinking about it.
When the message came that my car had arrived, Marcus didn’t hang around. He got up and left without saying a word. No doubt he had preparations to make himself.
I stood up and caught sight of myself illuminated in the window. Everything, apart from my bag, had been loaned to me. I looked a mess. No wonder they didn’t take me seriously. It would be nice just to get back home so I could be amongst my own things again.
With Marcus gone, I decided that it would be safe to take a little excursion out towards the squash courts. Good manners dictated that I should at least tell the driver that I’d be delayed but common sense told me that might not be such a good idea. Only, when I did try and sneak out the back way, I was confronted by one of the men from the previous night’s hunt ball. He firmly asserted that my car was waiting by the front entrance and that I should go that way.
Between Kinsella and Lady Laing, I didn’t appear to be having much luck.
I thought at first that there’d been a mistake as there was no car at the front entrance, only a white panel van. I turned back to appeal to my guardian but he just pointed me towards the driver who was leaning against a wall holding a bottle of water.
It was my dad.
He seemed almost as pleased to see me as I was to see him. He’d come to take me home. He held me while I had a good cry. You don’t get that with real taxi drivers.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was just starting to get dark as we left the grounds of the estate. I had absolutely no idea where we were going so I just sat back and relaxed. It was lovely and snug in the van and my dad had thought to bring one of my old coats with him. It smelled a bit of his hallway but I found that quite re-assuring. It was also just nice to have something which belonged to me for a change.
“So, who rang you then?”
“Nice woman. Quite a posh accent.”
“Valeria?”
“Oh, that was her name then. I thought she was called Valerie and I’d just misheard.”
“No, it is Valeria and you’re right: she is very nice.”
“Yes, so she said you’d ended up in Scotland – something to do with work. It’s always to do with work. She thought that it would be nice for you to see a friendly face. Otherwise they would have had to call a cab and that would have cost them a fortune.”
“Least of their worries.”
“Anyway, I didn’t have much on…”
“And you wanted to see your lovely daughter.”
“Just what I was about to say: ‘And I wanted to see my lovely daughter.’ So, here I am.”
I was so delighted that I rubbed his arm just to reassure myself that he was there.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked. “You must be exhausted driving all this way.”
“Yeah, I thought
it might be too much driving back and forth so I booked us into a little Bed and Breakfast.”
It took us just over an hour to find the place located in a quiet village. There were no street-lights, just the glow from the hotel’s windows. Dad had brought a holdall with a change of clothes but that was it as far as luggage was concerned.
The woman who ran the place was in her forties, attractive with short cropped hair. She showed us to our rooms which were across from one another. I took a couple of minutes to make myself look presentable and then we went down to dinner together.
The dining room was quite small with only one other couple who were just leaving. There were only four items on the menu and while I went for a steak and ale pie with mash, my dad opted for fish and chips. The owner brought us our drinks and we made small talk until our meals arrived. Dad was keen to talk and I was happy to listen. I liked listening to his stories because not only were they funny but they stopped me having to think about everything else that was going on in my life at the moment. Whenever my thoughts drifted back to either Carlotta or Silas I forced myself to concentrate on what my dad was saying, asking questions to keep myself distracted. But when dinner arrived – mine came with its own gravy boat – it was all change as Dad started to quiz me about what had been happening in my life.
That was the difficult bit.
“The lady on the phone was a bit vague about arrangements. Obviously, I could take you back to London but then she was saying that you’re on extended sick leave.”
I didn’t want to talk about that but now had little choice. “It’s been dragging on for a couple of months now.”
“But there’s nothing wrong is there? Nothing I should know about?”
I squirmed. “They want me to meet with some psychiatrist, that’s all. Don’t look so surprised. They’re just trying to cover themselves.”
He leaned forward, his meal forgotten. “Is it to do with all that stuff?”
He wiggled his fingers in front of his face mimicking a cheap stage magician. I mimicked him right back.
“Yes, that stuff.”
“You’re not dabbling in the Dark Arts are you? That was your mother’s mistake. That kind of stuff can take its toll on anyone.”
I covered his hand with mine in an attempt to re-assure him. I could see what he was thinking. My mother had pursued a similar path to me as a younger woman: endeavouring to help people. It was really only after I was born that she started down a different path.
“Dad, you have my word. I’m not being seduced by The Dark Side. In fact, I’m going out of my way to confront it.”
He grasped my hand with both of his, his eyes suddenly urgent. “You’ve more in common with your mother than you know. I remember having the exact same conversation with her just after you were born. I was trying to get her to give up ‘work.’ She was as adamant as you are now that she could stay on the side of the angels.”
“So what changed?” We’d never had this conversation before. I knew about what happened later of course because I had been directly involved but I was still unsure about her motivations.
He dropped my hand and sat back in his chair. He looked down at the tablecloth as though he might find the answer there. When he looked up again I could see the pain etched in his face.
“After you were born something changed. I’m not talking about her attitude, that came later. It was like she was a different person. All of her previous reservations seemed to disappear and she became fully committed to her practice,” he looked at me apologetically. Only he had nothing to apologise for.
My mother was hardly ever home when I was growing up so my father had taken on much of the responsibility of my upbringing. He was the one who picked me up from school. In fact, I could only remember one time when my mother had collected me. It was winter and she had arrived wearing a bright red coat and a beret. None of the other mothers would go near her, she was far too intimidating.
But that wasn’t the oddest thing. The oddest thing was that she didn’t come to the gate to collect me like the other mums. Dad liked to push himself to the front, chat to the teacher if possible, make sure I’d had a good day. My mother wasn’t like that. She stood in the centre of the playground, she didn’t come to me. I had to go to her.
Strange what you remember. The little things.
“She was away from home but that wasn’t the problem. It was when she was home that things got difficult. There was never any question that she loved you but you frustrated her. She lacked the skills, the patience, to cope with a young child and she resented that. She was normally so good at everything and yet there you were: a four year old child and she couldn’t get you to do anything. But then that was hardly surprising. I was home all the time and I couldn’t get you to do anything either.”
He laughed.
“You were a wilful child. It aggravated your mother. And then, one day she came home and she’d lost interest. She wouldn’t pick you up; said you were too big for that. Didn’t like being left alone with you. She was having to make some hard decisions about the Coven. Remember, it was set up in direct opposition to The Bear Garden. They revelled in the fact that they had no direct links to the government. That was their big idea. But then things started to go wrong. She was under an enormous amount of stress. A breakaway group of witches was trying to undermine her. They made an attempt on her life and that was when everything changed.”
I sat back and stared at him in a mixture of dismay and disbelief. “Why haven’t I heard this before?”
“You were too young, that’s why I’m telling you now. Now that you’re old enough to make sense of it.”
“What happened?”
“To your mother or the other witches?”
“Both.”
“That was the year we took our holiday early, when you should have been at school. We stayed in that cottage on the East Coast.”
“Brancaster beach.”
“That’s the one. After the attempt on her life your mother went on the offensive. Lasted about four weeks, that’s all I know. When it was over she joined us at the cottage.”
“And what happened to the other witches? The one’s who opposed her.”
“I never asked her straight out,” he made a non-committal gesture. “But one time she said she’d done what she had to do in order to protect her family.”
“Yeah, right. But what did she do that was so terrible?”
“She called it the Nuclear Option. Whatever it was left its mark on her. It may have cemented her position as head of the Coven but it also altered her as a person. After that she was capable of anything.”
Yes. Even sacrificing her own daughter.
*
I was up at six thirty the next morning, driven awake by fearful dreams. I struggled to recall some of the details but the effort of remembering only served to fragment them further. I was left with one clear recollection: I was with a group of women following Carlotta along a railway track. Kohl was up ahead and I ran to catch up with him. But when I did manage to reach him he spun around and I saw that it wasn’t Kohl but Silas. A sense of guilt and helpless anger threatened to overwhelm me then as I thrashed my legs about under the sheets.
Only when the dream started to fade did I feel a sense of a more focussed urgency. I had to think. There was something important I had to do but I couldn’t remember what it was. No matter. Once I was under way I was sure it would come to me. First, I had to contend with the smell of cooking from the kitchen. I went in and woke my dad up. He was bleary eyed but didn’t protest. I took a shower while he got dressed. My hair was still wet when we went down to the dining room.
Sitting at our table we could look out through a side window onto a small paddock field and beyond that to a fast flowing brook. It looked to be a wonderful place. The sort of place I’d have loved to explore given a little more time, but that was something we were very short of.
My dad was consulting an Ordnance Survey map he’
d brought specially. He has a thing for maps.
“So, what’s the plan?” he had finished his cooked breakfast and was scraping marmalade across a thin slice of toast.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, where are we headed? Are we going straight to your place or do you fancy a couple of days at mine. I can’t promise you a breakfast as good as this but you won’t starve.”
I hadn’t thought about that. There really was no desperate rush to get back to London other than to check up on Millie. There was nothing else pulling me back to the capital. Yes, it would be nice to get back to the flat and amongst my own things, but then what? It wasn’t as if I even had a job to go back to. None of that could be resolved until Kohl had been found. The pressure had just been to get me off the estate. There was nothing else for me to do now.
My over-riding urge was to go and see Silas. I really regretted not pushing for that the previous day but I couldn’t see how I could get back into the estate now without putting my dad at risk. Valeria had been very clever in recruiting him. I couldn’t think of anyone else I would have gone with other than, perhaps, Millie. Perhaps I’d under-estimated Valeria. Perhaps we all had.
I didn’t want to go back home that much was certain. Not just yet. I had unfinished business still in Scotland. I just didn’t know what it was.
“London or Chester? What’s it to be?”
I twisted my lips in thought.
“That story you told me last night. About my mother. Why are you only telling me that now?”
“I wondered that myself.”
He made as if to dismiss what he’d said but I shook my head.
“Look,” he said. “I’ve not said anything, but you’ve clearly not been yourself lately.”
“I know and I’m sorry for not returning your calls.”
“That’s okay, I know you’ve had a lot on. But that’s perhaps why I told you. I don’t pretend to fully understand your world and the demands it makes on you but I can also see that you’ve had some difficult decisions to make.”
I didn’t know how to respond - he wasn’t normally this candid - so I just nodded.
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