The Bone Witch

by Harvey, Alyxandra;

  Gretchen felt better about Rowanstone’s chances than about her own, frankly.

  Tobias met them at the school gates, serious-eyed with concern. His kiss of greeting was brief, but it burned with promise. “Are you ready?”

  She lifted her eyebrow. “Of course I am.”

  His brother emerged from the shadows. “I’ve got the Carnyx in place.”

  “Good.” She handed him an enormous basket filled with spell bundles. There were more tucked into pockets and packs. Emma’s mother wore hers on a ribbon around her neck like strange jewellery. “These should break the hypnosis spell.”

  “Should?”

  She shrugged. “Dead witches sometimes mumble.”

  “That is not reassuring.” He exchanged a glance with his brother before turning away. “Don’t die, big brother.”

  “Watch your back,” Tobias returned as they climbed into the carriage Cormac had liberated from the stables. Emma and Theodora were already inside. A woman on horseback galloped down the empty streets towards them.

  “Aunt Bethany,” Gretchen greeted Penelope’s mother as she slid out of the saddle. She wore breeches with a pistol secured in her belt.

  “Let’s get this bastard,” she said curtly, climbing into the carriage. There was a pause and a tiny shriek. “Theo?”

  Tobias looked down at Gretchen. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk to your mother?”

  She shook her head. “Not until I can tell her Godric was avenged. That he didn’t die for nothing.”

  Tobias touched her cheek. “Gretchen.”

  She shook her head again. “Later,” she said, forcing her voice not to crack. “After we stop Sophie and the Sisters and that bastard Beauregard.” She would mourn then. There was only fighting now.

  London was frozen. Ice coated the lampposts and the garden gates. Horses and stray cats and three dandies stumbling home were stuck, glistening with ice. Birds dropped from the sky, wings frosted and beaks frozen shut.

  They made their way to the house the pendulum had shown them. The windows were dark, the horses quiet in the stables. Emma kept her mother close with her since no one else knew what to do with a woman wearing mostly leaves and mud, and carrying a sword. Emma couldn’t fathom where she’d found it.

  Theodora scowled. “I don’t see why we’re helping the Order,” she said as they crept down the lane. “They banished your father to wander the Underworld. They might have banished you too, if I hadn’t cast that spell. They might have stopped you from being born at all.”

  She glared at Cormac who was doing his best to pretend his future mother-in-law wasn’t currently mostly naked and snarling at him. Emma had tried to get Theodora to wear a dress but she’d stabbed it with her sword. They’d compromised on a cloak.

  The Greymalkin part of her heritage might be the most problematic, but it certainly wasn’t the strangest.

  “We have to try,” Emma said. “The Order is still better than the Sisters. You have to agree with that.”

  She shrugged bad-temperedly.

  “And if this works, you’ll get to see my father.”

  “Ewan.” Theodora’s head snapped up, as alert as any deer hearing wolves in the woods. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  Cormac glanced at Emma, but didn’t say anything. What as there to say? Her mother cared more about Ewan Greenwood than the bodies the Sisters would leave in their wake. Emma didn’t have time to wonder about it. She could feel grateful her mother was finally here and able to help at all. Aunt Bethany’s determined expression wavered into sadness, before hardening again.

  Rain and mist shrouded them as they crept into the Mayfair garden bursting with lilies and lined with white gravel paths. “I hope the tunnel isn’t inside the house,” Emma said.

  “It’s this way,” Tobias said quietly. She’d forgotten that tracking was his speciality.

  Theodora looked excited. “He’s right.” She disappeared into the yew hedge. The others followed through the archway three feet to the left.

  Theodora was crouched in front of a shed. “It’s inside,” Tobias said.

  “I can smell it too.” She wrinkled her nose. If she’d still been a deer, her white tail would have flagged the dangerous magical scent.

  The shed was crowded with gardening tools and a broken wheelbarrow. The ground was unremarkable: earth and crushed acorns. Emma wondered if the pendulum was wrong when Theodora scraped the tip of her sword through the dirt. The sound of metal on metal shivered in the small place.

  Cormac used one of the shovels to dig out the wooden door set into the ground. It was marked with faded sigils, mostly shielding magic. The house’s inhabitants would never guess magic even existed, never mind that a tunnel to a notorious warlock house lay in their back garden. Emma reopened the cut on her finger, pressing her blood to the iron latch. Her mother’s bloody fingertips pressed against hers. Magic was a pressure behind Emma’s eyes. The lock heated up, glowing red.

  The hinges protested when Cormac pulled the door, but they opened.

  The tunnel was damp and thick with mildew. Cormac had to duck his head down to fit. His shoulders brushed the sides, dislodging dirt. The stench of burnt lemon balm and blood was thick in the shivery air. Water trickled somewhere in the darkness. Cormac lit the oil lamp but it only showed the corpses of rats underfoot. Tobias followed last, walking backwards to make sure no one followed.

  They followed the underground corridor until stopped abruptly in a puddle of murky water. Cormac shoved at the trapdoor overhead and Emma held her breath as he peered through the opening. After a moment, his shoulders relaxed and he motioned to her. She followed him up the half-rotted ladder. He took her hand to help her out, then her mother, though she spat at him.

  They were in a cave of bones. Spines dangled like windchimes. The walls grinned at her with open jaws and eyeless sockets. There was the crunch of bones underfoot and a small strange sound.

  The sound of kissing.

  “Penelope!”

  Penelope pulled away from Cedric, who had already pivoted to shield her. She peeked over his shoulder. “Emma! Gretchen! Mother?”

  Aunt Bethany hugged her fiercely. “We thought…” She raised her eyebrows. “But I see you’re not suffering overmuch.”

  Penelope’s cheeks were pink. “I’m not going to die without being properly kissed.”

  “How did you get in?” Cedric asked, not quite meeting Aunt Bethany’s eyes.

  “Secret tunnel,” Cormac said.

  “Welcome to the creepiest cellar in London,” Penelope said. She winced. “I found two more of the Sisters. Their spirits crossed back before I could stop myself. I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Cedric murmured.

  “Daphne is binding Sophie’s magic and we sent word to Moira,” Gretchen said. “We need to hurry.”

  “It smells like death in here,” Theodora interrupted. She blinked at Cedric. “Hello.”

  He blinked back. “Your ladyship.”

  She patted his cheek. “Him, I like.”

  Penelope blinked. “Um.”

  “Penny, meet my mother,” Emma said. “We need to get to the portal. Are we locked in here?”

  Theodora pushed on the door. “I can break it.” Magic sparked like fireflies around her. The red bird of her familiar circled over her head. She closed her eyes, sweat beading her forward.

  “What’s she doing?” Penelope whispered. Emma could only shrug.

  Theodora muttered something under her breath. Her cloak parted to reveal a bare leg turning to deer hoof.

  “You should take the tunnel,” Cedric told Penelope, though was staring at the hoof. Theodora kicked at the wooden door. “Get out of here while you can.”

  “Yes,” Aunt Bethany agreed. “Cedric, get her out of here.”

  “No,” Pen
elope said very clearly.

  Aunt Bethany’s badger-familiar circled Penelope. “Then you’ll stay with me.”

  Penelope shook her head gently. “No, Mother. You all have your parts to play, and I have mine. I let Lucius do this to us all, and I shall be the one to stop him.”

  “Penelope Chadwick.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You can’t scold me while we’re trapped inside a dungeon. And you can’t save me from this. But I might be able to save you.” She hugged her mother again. “So less talking,” she said. “More stabbing.”

  “You’re not really going to stab him?” Cormac asked, impressed.

  “We’ll call that the backup plan.” She bared her teeth as Theodora’s hoof finally kicked through the door. “But you can leave Lucius Beauregard to me.”

  “He’s coming,” Cedric warned, after a mouse circled his boots frantically.

  Penelope looked at the others.

  “Hide.”

  They didn’t hide for long.

  The house was exactly as Emma remembered it, even without the decades of dust and neglect. A quick lick of fear tremored in her belly. She’d come too close to being trapped here. To becoming a Sister herself.

  This time they didn’t have a Lacrimarium to trap the Sisters into witch bottles as was traditional. They didn’t have an army. Or the Order.

  What they had were three people with varying degrees of Greymalkin blood and this portal.

  It would have to do.

  Sophie stood beneath the portal with Lucius at her side, bewitched Keepers in a ring around them. Lucius had dragged Penelope up to the drawing room, cursing at the desecrated cellar. His eyes sparked a dull, poisonous green. Emma and the other were only moments behind, but Penelope was already on her knees in front of the altar. There was blood on her lip.

  The lilac light throbbed, gilding the bones of the Sisters gathered on the table in front of her. They were set in front of painted cameos and shards of broken witch bottles. Agnes and Anabelle, Rosmerta, Lark, Magdelena and Seraphine. Only Cressida was missing, because Penelope had broken the cellar into as many pieces as she could.

  At the top of the cellar stairs, Gretchen and Tobias went right, Cedric went left. Aunt Bethany and her mother stood behind Emma.

  Cormac, the only one without magic of his own, went straight into the circle of Keepers.

  She had to physically stop herself from leaping after him. She couldn’t quire control the thunder that rattled the windows. He caught the first Keeper off-guard, shoving a spell bundle into his mouth and then turning one his heel to punch the next in the face. Emma and her mother slipped through the opening in the circle. Theodora kicked her hooves, snapping the back of a Keeper’s knee. He crumpled, a bundle exploding on the floor by his nose. Blood mixed with herbs.

  Cormac staggered under a blow of magic, the amulets around his neck sparking.

  Emma forced herself to turn towards the portal. She wouldn’t squander the diversion he was bleeding to give her, to give them all.

  And blood magic had given the truth about her family. She hoped it might now heal some of the wounds that still bled in that same family.

  She thrust the silver branch into the portal shouting “Ewan Greenwood!”

  He’d come to save her once, through this very doorway. He’d known it led to Greymalkin House even then. She hoped it would be enough.

  “I call Ewan Greenwood Greymalkin to this place, by right of blood.”

  Her mother watched the portal with a desperate hunger that was difficult to witness. The house creaked and groaned like an old woman waking in the middle of a cold winter’s night. Ice thickened the windows.

  “I call Ewan Greymalkin Greenwood to this place!”

  The portal throbbed.

  “I call Ewan Greymalkin Greenwood to this place!” Her mother’s voice joined hers, feral and demanding.

  The branch burned in Emma’s grasp so suddenly that she snatched her fingers away.

  Ewan filled the gateway. He pulled the bars of violent light apart, stepping through them and into the house, antlers crowned with light. Ropes of fire kept him tethered to the Underworld. Theodora gasped.

  Finally, after too many years and too many secrets, they were a family.

  Hunted by vengeful warlock Sisters.

  And possibly about to have their spleens eaten.

  But still. Emma smiled, however briefly. Still.

  Aunt Bethany tipped the burning oil lamp over the bones of the Sisters. She used her magic to feed the fire so it burned white, unaffected by wind or water. The bones turned black.

  Something shivered through the house.

  Punching Sophie in the jaw wasn’t precisely part of the plan but it felt damn good.

  She sprawled on the marble floor, her fine gown tangled around her legs. She pointed at Penelope, blood running from her nose. “Sicken,” she ordered.

  Only Penelope felt no fever, no illness, no wounds from her past. She only felt Cedric watching her. He’d taken Lucius by surprise. They all had.

  “How did you get inside?” he demanded, even though he had to know they wouldn’t answer him.

  Sophie snarled, more beast than girl. “Sicken, damn you.” The ghosts wrenched at their magical chains. Inside the house and so close to the portal, Penelope could see the ghosts clearly. Margaret York, Sophie’s first victim. Alice the seamstress, Lilybeth. And Godric.

  “What’s happening to me?” Sophie snapped. “Lucius!”

  But Lucius was too far away now, pulled away to re-hypnotize Keepers. He glanced over, shouted something.

  “He can’t help you,” Penelope said. “You’ve been bound.” Dozens of mice skittered across the floor, surrounding Sophie. She froze, making a moue of disgust. Cedric called more mice, more insects, a confused grackle from the garden through an open window. Horses kicked their stall doors next door.

  Penelope stepped on Sophie’s hem when she tried to scramble to her feet. She hooked her fingers in the back of Sophie’s pearl and diamond collar, ignoring the burning pain of the magic licking at her knuckles like fire. She snapped the necklace off and smashed it to bits under her heel. Cedric’s mice scurried away with the pieces. Sophie shrieked.

  The ropes of magic tattered like mist, releasing the ghosts. They swarmed over Sophie, pinning her down and sucking the heat from the air around her. Her teeth chattered, ice glittering in her eyelashes. Lucius shouted her name again.

  Penelope launched herself at the table of burning bones, even as Cedric tackled a Keeper who grabbed for her. She brushed away the herbs, the crystals of Sophie’s spell. There was a symbol carved into the floor, outlined in violet and stinking of sulfur. It was the Greymalkin magpie crest, inside another sigil. Penelope scratched at it, trying to break the pattern but only breaking her nails and coming away with bloody fingertips.

  Cedric slid a dagger towards her, even as a Keeper sent him spinning in the other direction. She grabbed for it, using all of her force to chip at the marble. Slowly, so slowly, the mark was broken. Lemon balm and iron seared her nostrils. Her witch knot might as well have been a pattern of stinging ants and hornets. Pain made her gasp.

  So did Lucius’s hand in her hair.

  Her mother’s spell-fire leapt from the bones to Lucius’s trousers at almost the same moment. He jerked back, cursing. Penelope drove Cedric’s dagger into the same foot. He released her abruptly, howling. Penelope crawled away, just far enough to reach for her mother’s pistol.

  The musket ball hit Lucius in the shoulder, slamming him into the staircase.

  “What?” Penelope looked at Cedric innocently. “I didn’t kill him.”

  He didn’t reply.

  He was too busy choking on ice.

  The first spell bundle missed.

  Gretchen slipped out of the front door into a crowd of
bewitched Keepers, Tobias right behind her. They would expect the attack to come from the street.

  She might have expected the attack to start a little more encouragingly.

  The spell sailed uselessly past a Keeper’s head but the second hit him right in the face when he pivoted in surprise. The powdered herbs exploded and he coughed himself out of hypnosis. The other Keepers turned as one, dead-eyed and reaching for various weapons. On the street, The Carnyx pressed at the gates. There was nowhere to go.

  Spell bundles fell like rain.

  The Keepers slowly found their way back to the right side of the battle. Too slowly. Everything smelled like cloves and rain and scorched lemon balm. The air crackled with cold; snapping at her nose, her fingertips, her lungs.

  The Sisters swept down the street, called back by whatever magic linked them to the house. Everything glittered like knives: tree branches, iron gates, even the flowers in their clay pots. A carriage turned to ice and shattered.

  “Stay sharp,” Tobias ordered the Keepers who were Keepers again.

  Ice and dark magic came for them, for the wolves, for everyone.

  Magdalena, Rosmerta, and Lark were the first to descend, as always. Phosphorescent snakes invaded the garden, a skeletal osprey pecked at eyeballs, death-moths made a crown in Gretchen’s hair. A Keeper fell, coughing up shards of ice. Seraphine trailed wasps like a black ballgown. Banishing powder fought with the snow and the mist, creating a herd of white horses who struck at the Sisters with their hooves. A wolf howled. Agnes paused to read the omens in a twitching Keeper.

  And though Gretchen never would have admitted it out loud, the Sisters were winning.

  Tobias stabbed at the moths, even as Gretchen skewered a glowing snake wrapping itself around his ankle. His lips were blue. She tasted snow. The witches in her head suggested salt, iron, running away. She didn’t have energy for any of it. She was slowly freezing to death. Keepers dropped around her, struggling for frozen breath.