“Same glamour as the statue, just a bit weaker,” he says, reaching out and touching my face, “you look so beautiful.”
“Glamour, as always,” I say.
“Without the glamour. Michaela-”
I kiss him, my face burning at the compliment. We press our bodies together, lying out on the blanket in the warmth of the circle. I touch him all over, stroking his back in the way I’ve learnt he likes, kissing his neck and the soft place where it meets his shoulder.
Bit by bit we take each other’s clothes off and put our hands on each other. I’ve never seen anything as perfect as his body in the starlight, and when he kisses his way down my body, hands warming my belly, I feel my heart clench and my skin flush. I still can’t believe he wants me, that he loves me.
Chloe and Tasha both said that it hurt, when they did it for the first time. It’s a bit uncomfortable for a second or two, kind of like a hot, crampy feeling. I’ve had my fingers inside myself before and it’s like that, but more. Cray kisses me and we move together, his hand between us, stroking me. I hadn’t thought I’d actually come my first time, but I do, and it feel so good, clenching around him and gasping against his neck as he goes still over me and groans.
Afterwards, wrapped in his arms, I listen to the birds slowly waking up in the bare trees by the lake. It’s stupid, but I feel older, grown up, not because Cray and I have done it, but because I’ve made my choice. Today isn’t the day I’ll run back to my parents, it’s the day I’ll fight for my friends, for myself.
It’s the first day that I’ve started out knowing who I am.
Chapter Twenty One
We don’t go back to Waywood, instead we glamour our clothes back to normal jeans and hoodies and catch the bus into town. I don’t let go of Cray’s hand, even when we get off the bus and have to wait in the finger-shredding cold for another one. It takes us two hours to reach Bristol and when we leave the station Cray leads the way through the town centre.
There are lights blinking and Christmas songs blaring from every shop, the streets crowded with people struggling along carrying huge brown Primark bags. Cray takes me over a complicated crossing of busy roads and up an uneven street to a grassy square with big Georgian houses around it. It’d be like a tiny piece of Bath, if it wasn’t for the off-and-on blare of sirens in the distance.
“Why did Sophia even tell you where this place was?” I ask, walking beside him across the square.
“When we got our first new member after Nara, Finch I think, Sophia decided we needed a second location, you know ‘spread the coven’s influence’. She had us move some things over here, you know, candles, some books we were done with...I brought them over here.”
We’ve stopped in front of the last house at the end of the left-hand row. Beside it is a warehouse with a corrugated roof, huge white letters have been painted on one side: ‘I don’t give a damn. I don’t give a fuck’. The house has one of those metal fences they have at festivals put up all around it. Behind that is another lot of metal fences laid over the steps down to the house’s basement. There are bottles and can littering the ground around the house, rusting and with their labels peeling off. The windows of the house are shuttered with metal gratings, the ones on the ground floor sprayed over in purple and silver. The stone is marked with thick trails of green slime and it’s all blackened from the pollution, while all the other buildings have been sandblasted blonde again.
“In there?” I ask.
“Yeah. There’s a way in round the back, or at least there was, a few years ago.”
“How do we get around there?”
“This way.” He leads me around to the side where there’s a narrow gravel path littered with cans. As we squeeze down it I step on a VK bottle and it bursts under my boot. We crunch glass and rubble until we’re behind the building, where Cray kneels in the wet grass and starts moving mossy bricks away from the tiny basement window beside the back stairs. I look across the overgrown swatch of garden, lots of tall dead grass bent over with the weight of past weeks of rain.
“There,” Cray pushes the last of the bricks aside, revealing the only unshuttered window in the building. There’s no glass in it and it’s only about a foot square. “I’ll go in first.”
Cray gets his legs through and shuffles backwards until he can lower himself to the floor. I hear a bit of scraping and crunching, like he’s hit something and jostled it across the floor.
“Alright?”
“Yeah, come down.”
I get down on the wet ground and shuffle back through the window, worried that Cray’ll see all the light being blocked by my bum. I hit the floor and stumble, kicking a big chunk of wood across the floor. It’s dark everywhere apart from directly under the window and the floor is slippery with God knows what.
“There’s a door over here,” Cray says, “should be, yeah, here it is.”
I follow his voice and he pushes open the door with his shoulder, shoving the damp wood out of the frame.
“It stinks in here,” I mutter, following him into the dark corridor, “and I can’t see a sodding thing.”
Something sparks a few meters away and I jump. It’s Cray, holding up a lighter and two pillar candles.
“Left these here last time, they don’t look like they’ve been touched.”
In the silence that chases his words I listen hard for any sign of life, but all I hear is distant traffic and the cooing of pigeons overhead. Cray hands me a lit candle and I peer around at the walls, where the paper is sloughing off and black mould has bloomed in huge circles across what remains.
“Looks a lot worse than Waywood,” I say, inching further up the corridor, “let’s have a look down here before we chance the stairs.”
“Right behind you,” Cray says.
We go through all the downstairs rooms and find only more signs that the house is uninhabitable. The carpet is squelchy with leaking water, there’s green goo oozing in under one of the windows and everywhere there’s the rank smell of mould and stagnant water. We arrive back at the stairs, our candles burning tiny pinpricks in the darkness, sending huge distorted shadows over the walls.
“I’ll go up first,” I say, “you stay here.”
“No way.”
“If I fall through you’re going to have to get help. If we both go up we might both get hurt.”
Cray sighs, but stands aside so that I can go upstairs. Each step creaks alarmingly, and a couple of times I feel the wooden treads start to give, but I make it to the top without incident. All the doors on the landing are closed, and there’s even less light here than there was downstairs. I can see my breath in the light from the candle.
“Michaela?”
“I’m fine,” I call back, “come up.”
I turn and the light from the candle catches on something silver – a symbol sprayed on one of the doors. It’s not one I recognise, but then again my knowledge is far from complete.
“Shit. My candle’s gone out. Hang on I’m going back for the lighter,” Cray shouts.
“OK.”
I move towards the door. Anyone in the house would have heard us moving around by now. The place really is deserted, so why is my skin crawling? I twist the door handle and push it open, holding my breath as I raise the candle to get a better look at what’s inside. I don’t know what I’m expecting – a circle set up with ritual ingredients, a secret Grimoire, perhaps even the belongings of all those missing witches.
I’m not expecting the huddled shapes of five bodies to be lying in a row on the floor.
I’m not expecting one of them to be Cray.
A scream rips its way out of me and into the cold, rank air. I cover my mouth with my hand, choking off the noise as I take an involuntary step towards the bodies on the floor – towards Cray’s body. It’s really him, there are his clothes, the same ones he was wearing when we met, his hands in their dark green mittens. His straight, black hair, his...
I bring the candle closer
to his face and grip my mouth tighter with my palm. His eyes. He doesn’t have eyes, just...crystals. The same kind of black crystal Sophia used at her ritual. His face is flat, the features drawn on with ink. It’s a mannequin, a life sized doll made of old clothes. I look at the others, recognising Ilex by his sneering mouth, Chronicle by the red wig, Nara has her headscarf and there are moles drawn on the pale fabric of her face, Campion’s face is drawn in white chalk on brown felt, her university hoodie stained and mouldering.
A hand grabs my shoulder and I scream, dropping my candle and throwing myself to one side to fight it off.
“Michaela, what....” Cray trails off, looking down at the body on the floor. The copy of him made from scrap cloth. “What the hell is that?”
I don’t need to inhale the scents of herbs and incense to know. I’ve got one tucked into my pocket after all.
“A fetch,” I say, getting slowly to my feet, “they’re fetches.”
Cray shakes his head. “Why? Why would she need to make them look like-”
“I don’t know.”
He kneels down by his double and looks at it more closely. “I don’t like this, it’s so...it’s weird.”
I remember my fetch, the one I’d created to bring me knowledge and wisdom. A cloth body to house the spirit that I’d created to serve my goal. I feel sick.
“Cray…you said about Finch...about all the others. Did you, find them, like you found me?”
“Uh, some of them,” Cray says, frowning, “me or Nara, or Ilex or...no,” he says, stopping, “you can’t be thinking that.”
“You’re a fetch,” the words catch in my throat, “you’re her fetch.”
“Michaela,” he gets up and comes towards me, but I step back, holding my arms up, “Michaela, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Think about it. Think about all the people you found for her, about the ritual she uses to control you. She made you; she created you so you’d bring her more people. That’s why you’re still in Bath, that’s why none of you were sent here.”
Cray shakes his head. “It’s not possible. To do that would take power, a huge amount of power. Michaela, your fetch is just energy, it’s not a physical being. You’re speaking to me, you’ve touched me, I’m right here – I’m not a fetch.”
“Whatever threw me away from my parents was powerful,” I say, “and when I was on the astral, when I looked at all of you, you all had this...aura. I thought it was because you were witches, but what if...what if you’re not real?”
“But I can do magic,” Cray argues.
“Who’d believe in magic if they couldn’t see it? How would you convince people?” I say.
“Stop it!”
“I don’t want it to be true!” I shout back, “but why else would these things be here? What other possible reason could she have for making them?”
Cray turns to the mannequin on the floor that wears his clothes, he kneels down, takes the lighter out of his pocket and holds it to the mitten on its hand.
“Cray!”
“I need to see,” he says, striking the light and holding the flame to the wool.
I hold my breath, wishing like anything that nothing will happen.
Cray shouts and drops the lighter, cradling his hand. The hand that hadn’t been holding the lighter. He holds his fingers up, they’re burnt, red and raw.
“Oh my God,” he stares at his own hand in horror. “I’m not...I’m not real, am I?”
“Cray...”
He looks at me, and all I want to do is put my arms around him, but I can’t force myself to move. He’s not real. I love him, I’ve trusted in him more than I have in anyone, I’ve given him my virginity...and he’s a fetch. Sophia’s puppet.
“Michaela...I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t know. How the hell could you have known,” I look at the other four bodies, “none of you knew.”
“She did this,” Cray stands up, “she made us. She...we have to stop her. Whatever she’s used us for, it has to stop, today.”
“But what if...” I can’t finish the sentence, but Cray already knows what happens to a fetch when it’s no longer needed.
“It’s that or keep helping her to trap people. If they’re not here, if there is no other coven, she must have done something with them.”
My stomach revolts, bile climbing my throat. We haven’t found any bodies, yet, but there are more rooms we haven’t been inside of. My mind is reeling, I can hardly look at Cray, every time I do it feels like the bottom is falling out of everything. He looks so real, if I hadn’t seen his fingers blistering with my own eyes I’d never believe he was the result of a spell.
“You should check the other rooms,” he says, as if reading my mind, “we don’t know what else she’s hiding.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I just need to stay here for a second and...process this.”
Truthfully the only thing I want is to get out of the room and away from the fetches. I nod and skirt the bodies on the floor, heading back out onto the landing. All the shock and fear has cushioned my mind, it feels like I’m seeing everything from really far away. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to feel like when you find out your boyfriend is an enchantment come to life.
I try doors blindly. The first two are swollen shut with damp, but the last opens easily into a smaller room with a cupboard like a medicine cabinet mounted on the wall. Aside from that the room is empty, but there’s a feeling to the air, a kind of charge like there’s just been a massive row. I go to the cupboard and reach for the little handle. My fingers prickle with energy, it makes the hair on my arm stand on end.
There’s a book inside the cupboard, and it falls out as I open the door; a plain, dark blue exercise book, which was not what I was expecting. On a shelf in the cabinet there’s a glass jar. It’s just a normal, large jam jar. But the sight of it makes me feel sick.
It’s full of blood.
The sudden awareness that I’m looking at something that I was never meant to see makes my neck prickle with unease.
I pick up the book and open it to the first page, on it is a list of words; Abbadon, Astaroth, Azazel, Balaam, all the way down to Tchort, Tezcatlipoca, Thamuz, Tunrida, Typhon, Yaotzin, Yama and Yen-lo-Wang...on and on through the alphabet. Pages taken up with nonsense words. The heading on the first page is the only thing that makes the strange gibberish makes some kind of sense, The 40 Shades.
A list of forty ‘shades’. I know from a stupid film I saw ages ago that Tezcatlipoca is a Mexican God, and Astaroth might be from the Bible, it definitely sounds familiar.
I turn more pages.
There are spells written down, but they aren’t vague conjurations like the glamours and charms that the others have taught me. One of them is titled, To Call on the Dead another To Raise a Black-shuck Dog.
I stop on one particular spell, To Speak with the Voice of Another.
My heart punches the inside of my chest as I read. The spell requires a small object be placed near the person you are attempting to deceive, while the witch speaks into another, almost identical object. Two stones, a pair of bird skulls...
Two acorns.
I remember the acorn that fell from the coin return slot of the payphone I used to call my mum. Had Sophia used this spell on me? Why? To make me think that I was speaking to my mum, when I wasn’t. To convince me that I wasn’t welcome home.
Feeling cold, I turn another page.
There’s a list of numbers with words next to them – 1. Finch, 2.Gossomer, 3.Blaze...
Finch. The name of the first witch to come to the ‘Bristol coven’. I look down the list, reading the random words that must be the names of other witches, until I reach the bottom. 39. White Hart, 40. Stone.
My name. My craft name, the last one on the list. I look at it for a long time, and wonder what the hell it means – forty names, forty shades. There are more pages and I scan them with growing fear. The ‘40 Shades’ are mentioned
again;
The forty grant their power in exchange for the sacrifices, one for each. The power they have left behind can be summoned, bound with the power of the witches and granted to the caster.
Forty sacrifices. I look at my name, the last name on that list. I look again at the jar of blood. This is what Cray and other others were created for. That blood, I’m willing to bet, had been collected from every sacrifice. Their personal power, their life force.
I drop the book and stumble away from the altar, intent on running downstairs and out into the open, all the way home to my parents, away from shades and Cray and witchcraft – away from all of it.
I slam into Sophia instead.
Or, at least, into the wall of energy that surrounds Sophia.
There’s a sound like a hive of angry bees in my ears, a sound that’s sickeningly familiar. I hit the floor and the breath is knocked out of me, leaving me gasping, clutching at my chest which feels bruised and hollowed out.
Sophie comes over to look down at me. “I never thought you’d be the one to work it out,” she says, “smarter witches have been through here...and not one of them ever guessed.”
I suck in air and try to get to my feet, but I’m pinned to the ground by her energy.
She smiles thinly and drops something onto the floor next to me. I flinch and close my eyes for a second before I dare take a look. It’s a ball of fabric, spewing sawdust. There’s a piece of black crystal winking at me in the tiny bit of light let in by the cracks in the window grille. I recoil.
“Cray...”
“They get so troublesome if you keep them around long enough,” Sophia says, “you can’t trust a fetch that starts trying to keep things for itself. Don’t worry, he didn’t feel a thing.”
“Let me go,” I say, my voice cracking, tears blinding me.
“I can’t,” Sophia says, taking a knife, the same knife from my initiation ceremony, from within her velvet drapery “I need you. You saw the book. You know I need forty witches to make this work.” She tests the blade’s sharpness with her thumb. “I did try it with ordinary runaways, but it wasn’t enough. The forty need powerful blood, witch’s blood. Do you know how long it’s taken me to find and initiate people with even the smallest talent for the craft? I thought I’d be stuck in that awful house for years.”
Waywood Page 16
