by Robin Moray
The young man from the bookshop had been sweet, really, obviously nervous, perhaps wary of strangers. Peter couldn't blame him. Small towns, he supposed, were the same everywhere. He'd seemed keen to take Peter out, though, and show him around. Again, Peter appreciated it; it made his task easier, and, well. The young man, Kevin, was very … pleasant. Altogether so, and his bookshop too, pleasant and soothing, a balm for Peter's ragged nerves. His essence also had been sweet, the fresh uncontaminated sweetness of a good soul untouched by the evils of magic, and Peter had basked in it a little, if he was honest with himself. The essences of normal people were usually tasteless and bland, but very good people, the kind-hearted and selfless, sometimes tasted like this. And Peter … enjoyed it, despite himself.
But, it was unimportant. He reminded himself how unimportant, reminded himself that he was here for One Thing and One Thing alone. For Miranda
The sandwich was good too. He ate it slowly, half out of respect for something so delicious, and half because he was so very tired he had to concentrate to keep his eyes open. He kept blinking, beginning to doze off, and jerking awake again. It would be a bad idea to sleep so soon after eating, but if he did not he feared he would be in no shape to drive.
A nap, then. Just a short one. Forty minutes should be enough. And then perhaps an unhealthy dose of coffee to keep him alert.
He felt like he'd barely closed his eyes when the foul impact of magic jerked him up out of sleep, the weight of it smothering, stealing the breath from his lungs and choking him. He struggled up, nearly fell from the bed, his limbs heavy and head fogged, and it took a moment for him to catch his breath and remember where he was.
But that magic he would know anywhere.
He didn't need the compass yet, not with the tug of magic dragging him to his feet. This time he would catch her, if he were quick enough. This time, she wouldn't get away.
* * *
It was surprisingly un-melodramatic, in the end. Kevin leaned up against a tree-trunk, glad he'd brought the cake along, and made a dent in the food while Bella looked worried and Artemis poked at everything.
The Ash Grove had a reputation around Haversham for being creepy, which Kevin chalked up to the uncanny quiet out here, amongst the trees, and the fact that the Grove itself was so obviously artificial. Someone, a long time ago, had planted thirteen ash trees in a circle about twenty yards across. Now they'd grown up, branches intertwined, and the effect was like walking into a private garden, walled about and silent. The ground cover was low, nothing much else grew in here, and there were never any birds.
So, of course, the local kids decided it was haunted. Fourteen-year-old Kevin hadn't been at all impressed when they'd dared him to spend a night in the Ash Grove. Nanna Abigail had been taking all three of them up here for years, after all.
This time there were no grisly grease marks in the shape of corpses to be found, but there was a definite residue of something rank and nasty. Kevin staved it off with chocolate.
"Question," he said, having finished slightly more than a third of the cake and saving the rest for the others. "Whatever dark thing this warlock's doing," which he thought couldn't be all that dark if he was doing it in the middle of the afternoon while the sun was out, unless that somehow made it so much darker, "what if we'd showed up and he was still here? I mean, he could be here right now, behind a tree."
"No-one else is here," Bella said firmly.
"But what if he was?"
Artemis sighed, frowning. "Well, we'd deal with him."
"How?"
"For pity's sake, Kevin," and now Artemis was cross with him, again. "We'd deal with it."
"Have you ever dealt with a warlock who murders other witches before?" Kevin asked, because that was a reasonable question, wasn't it? Especially when he knew the answer was no.
Artemis just gave him a put-upon look. "We trapped that rabid werecoyote."
"Yeah, and she nearly took your arm off."
"The fire elemental?"
Kevin snorted. "I don't think it counts if you're the one who unleashed it. And it burned the shed down before you got it in that vase." He paused. "What happened to that vase?"
"We sold it," Bella said sweetly.
Kevin … didn't like the sound of that. "Isn't that dangerous?"
"We sold it for a lot of money," Bella reassured him, which wasn't much of a reassurance at all.
"So your plan, then," Kevin went on, gesturing with his fork, "is the same plan as always? No actual plan, and we just hope things turn out?"
Bella laughed. "It always does, though."
"That's not the point!"
Artemis held up a hand. "Listen. No, shut up, Kevin. Listen to this." He had a short staff in one hand, about the length of a walking stick, and he used it to strike the ground to one side of the circle of trees as if striking a drum. The sound it made was bright, with an edge of desperation to it that made Kevin's throat clench, and it rippled in the air like chimes, clear to muddy to clear again.
Kevin shrugged. "Okay? It's a magic signature. What does it mean?"
Artemis ignored him, striding over to a spot near one of the biggest trees, and striking the ground in the same way.
Immediately Kevin tried to cover his ears. It did no good, of course; it was magic, and in any case he was still holding the cake-box so one of his hands was full. The sound that time was awful. It made Kevin feel filthy, greasy and wrong, like his mouth was full of tinfoil. "Gross, Artie, do the first one again."
"Definitely two signatures," Artemis said, as if it wasn't completely obvious. "The second one's stronger, but it's fractured, and there's notes in it that … I felt the same thing up on Cairn Hill, only there it wasn't part of the dark magic, but woven into the scattering around the corpse-mark." He looked up, disgust rippling across his face. "I think the warlock consumed them."
Kevin felt ill at the thought. "What, literally?"
"Mmmm, I think so. Poor bastard."
"Like a vampire?"
"Like a warlock." He looked so grim, and Kevin shuddered because, well, warlocks were terrifying.
"That's awful," Bella said quietly, her discomfort shuddering through the link. "That's terrible, Artie, we have to stop him."
Artemis nodded. "We do. And we have to find whoever it is he's tracking. They got away from here alive, but … well. Who can tell how long that will last?"
"How are we supposed to find them?"
Bella gave him a fondly exasperated look. "We'll look for their signature." She took the cake from him, leaning up against his tree, and he shifted to make room.
"What if they're not doing any magic?" Kevin argued. "How will we find them then?"
"He's got a point, actually," Artemis said, much to Kevin's surprise. "Especially Kevin. He's practically blind, after all."
"Oh, thanks!"
"Anyway, if they were masking it, I don't even think I'd be able to tell," Artemis went on, ignoring him. "You might, but even then."
"So, what?" Kevin shrugged. "We just wait until they do something and hope to catch them at it?"
Artemis huffed, folding his arms primly. "Do you have any better suggestions?"
"No," Kevin admitted, "but it just—"
"Hush," Bella interrupted, one hand going out to test a ward, the magic flaring gold and green beneath her hand. "Someone's coming." She pulled Kevin close to her and did something, like tugging a curtain around them both, magic knotted in her fingers like twine. Everything went bright, washed out, sound coming thick and muffled and from far away.
"What did you do?" Kevin hissed.
Bella touched his mouth with one slim dark finger. "I hid us," she whispered.
"What about Artie?" Their brother was nowhere to be seen.
"I think he hid himself. He's fine."
Kevin leaned against her, feeling along the wards she had tangled around her wrist. Someone was coming, someone—"Holy crap, it's him."
Bella stiffened. "The warlock?"
Kevin would know that aura anywhere, dark and dry and spicy, like cinnamon or nutmeg. "Yeah, definitely. Bella," he warned, muttering low in her ear, "shouldn't we go?"
"We should stay," she said, watching the pale figure of the warlock as he resolved out of the trees. He'd come the long way, clearly hadn't known about the path up from the other side of the ridge, which was just as well because if he'd come that way he'd have seen their car parked down there.
"Can he hear us?" Kevin demanded in an undertone.
"No," she murmured. "He can't see us, or hear us, or sense our magic. We're hidden."
"Then why are we whispering?"
"Because it feels weird not to," she said, "now hush, and listen."
Peter walked into the Ash Grove, looking about curiously, with something small and silver held out in his palm. He consulted it, frowned, and tucked it into a pocket. Then he took a deep breath, shoulders going back, and Kevin saw it though he didn't understand what he was seeing. Peter's aura … fissured, tendrils going out, seeking something. Kevin took a breath, surprised and wary, but the dark threads brushed over them like ghostly fingers and then away, investigating the Grove. Kevin watched, transfixed. He'd never seen anything like it before. Could all warlocks do that? What was he doing?
It was over in the time it took for Peter to exhale again, and then the aura shrunk back down to something normal, at least in size. Peter tilted his head, eyes still closed, and strode across the clearing to the place where Artemis had discovered the first magic signature. He put out a hand, let the smoke of his aura spill down to the ground, like a seeking tentacle. Then he turned, and let the tentacle lead him to the second place, the place that … wait, something wasn't right. Why was he doing that?
Peter looked disgusted, but he bent down, investigating. Kevin winced. He'd found Artemis' powders, recklessly pinching some between thumb and forefinger and holding it up for examination. He made a face, dusted his hand off on his leg, and then he took from his pocket something white and plastic. Kevin squinted at it, confused, but Peter twisted the top of it, tipped it up and … oh. It was a salt-cellar. Kevin felt Bella tense. But all Peter did was sprinkle the ground with it, looking worn and weary, before doing the same for the other place. Kevin winced; salt would cleanse the last of the magic, and he could practically feel how annoyed Artemis must be at having his experimenting cut short.
Peter stood up, taking one last look around the Grove before he turned to go.
Kevin waited until he had vanished into the trees before squeezing Bella and hissing, "What the hell was that? What was he doing?"
"I don't know, but," and she let go of the cloaking spell, the colour and sound rushing back in alongside a feeling like his ears had just popped. "I don't think he's a warlock. Artie? What do you think?"
Artemis appeared on the other side of their tree, suddenly snapping into reality in a burst of glittering sparks. "No, he's not a warlock." He looked furious though, eyebrows beetling down together over his nose. "I almost wish he was."
"What does that mean?"
Bella shook her head, reaching out to tug at Artemis' sleeve, and their big brother let out all his breath like an angry teakettle. "Possibly the only thing worse than a warlock. A witch-hunter."
"What?"
Artemis shrugged. "It's the only logical explanation."
"So … then there isn't a warlock?"
"No, there must be." Bella looked so grim about it, folding her arms and frowning. "He's definitely not the one who killed the witch up on Cairn Hill—that was done with magic. And he was investigating. He's looking for them too."
"What do we do?" Kevin looked from one to the other, willing his siblings to come up with a brilliant plan because … holy crap. "We can't just … kill him and dump the body in the Quarry."
Artemis looked appalled, but Bella just frowned at him. "Why is that your first option?"
He shrugged. "Too much Agatha Christie?"
"Oh, for goodness sake," Artemis muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Will you be serious? Now we have a warlock and a witch hunter, and—aren't you the least bit worried about that?"
"Well, yeah. What are we going to do about it?"
Because Kevin had no idea. Werewolves he could deal with; you just drugged them up with wolfbane and took the issue to the nearest alpha. It was all about respect and honour and their barbaric pack law, and you could argue your way out of pretty much anything, if they hadn't already eaten you. Vampires? Well, if they were killing people you put a stake in them and if they weren't you cut some kind of deal, or just laced the woods with garlic. But warlocks were human and witch hunters were too, and their weaknesses were the weaknesses of regular people and … well. You couldn't just kill them. It was murder. Plus, just imagine explaining it to the police.
"Can you spell him so he just forgets about it and goes home?"
"It's dangerous," Bella sighed. "If we messed it up we could lobotomise him. It's too risky."
"Anyway, it's difficult," Artemis added. "The potion for that is quite complex. What? Don't glare at me, it's true."
"I don't want to know why you know that," Bella said huffily. "No, I think … I think the best idea might be to leave him alone. Let him track down the warlock and do whatever he's planning to do, and hope he goes away satisfied."
And that, it seemed, was going to be the plan.
It was nonsense. What if Peter didn't track down the warlock at all? What if the other witch—and Kevin had been thinking about that, actually. Where did the victim come from? There weren't any other witches for miles! Anyway, what if Peter was too late to save them? What if they died? Wouldn't Kevin and the others be, in a way, responsible?
He tried to explain all this to Bella in the car, but she just shook her head at him. "Leave him alone. Just stay out of his way. It's too dangerous. Just tell him … tell him you have family responsibilities and you can't go with him and then don't talk to him again."
It made him scowl. Well, screw that. "Listen, what if we could help? Isn't that what we do?"
"Help a witch-hunter? Are you crazy?"
"Well, it would really be helping the witch, right? Because then they wouldn't end up dead. Isn't that a good thing?" He put on a serious face. "What would Nanna say?"
Bella made an exasperated noise, eyeing him sidelong. "Don't even."
"Mallory witches first," he said cheerfully. "Mallory witches for life." Because that's what they were. And while it wasn't technically their responsibility to police Haversham and her surrounds for magical shenanigans, in practice it sort of was. That's what Mallory witches did. That's what Nanna Abigail had tried to teach them.
Helping people with magic. It wasn't so bad. Kevin liked it, in fact, because he liked it when people were happy. The hard part was not hexing the crap out of people he didn't like, people who kind of deserved it. But he knew where that path led.
Magic was, in Nanna Abigail's words, "a shortcut with a conscience and a wicked sense of humor." If you did right by it, it did right by you. It didn't mind being used for the occasionally selfish end, but if you used it to hurt people, even people who deserved it, magic always found a way to bite you.
Which made the idea of a magic-eating warlock completely wrong. Surely they'd have to pay for it, wouldn't they? Killing someone with magic?
Theoretically though, Kevin thought, slouched in his seat as Bella drove him back to the shop, you could mitigate the damage of a self-interested spell when you cast it, by offering something up in sacrifice. And if it was enough, you might get away with it. But what could possibly be enough to mitigate murder? And why would the murderer consume their victim's magic?
"Bells," he said thoughtfully, eyeing her sidelong. "What would happen if you tried to eat someone else's magic?"
She shuddered. "I suppose you mean the universal 'you', and not actually me," she said archly. "Because I wouldn't. But if I was reckless enough to do it, then I expect I'd have to make room for i
t in my head. It wouldn't be like when we link at all, because it would always be there, just lurking. It sounds awful. I'd probably lose track of where I stopped and they started."
"No, I mean," he said, "what would happen? You're not getting magical murder for free, are you? How are you going to offset something like that?"
Bella considered it, mouth pursed into a pretty moue. "I don't know. I don't do that kind of magic, so I'm not sure. But, I suppose it's like when you … well, with anything. You can generally tell what's needed, can't you, before you start?"
"You can," he said, crossly. "The rest of us have to think about it. But, I think I know what you mean."
They went back to the shop, and Bella strung wards around, dormant ones again that wouldn't actually stop anyone from coming in and ought to lie quiet and undetectable until someone triggered them with magic. She set up a second set out the back, around the book-cage. These ones were different, designed to stop an intruder, with a secondary layer that would absorb and diffuse any magic thrown at it.
Kevin thought it was a bit like having a magica panic-room, and incredibly paranoid, so he said so.
She gave him a Look. "It's not paranoia when there really is a warlock murdering witches out in the woods."
"Yeah, but, why would they ever come in here?"
"Well, if they keep going on like they are," Bella said, calmly practical, "they're going to run out of witches soon. Then who do you think they'll come after?" She reached for his arm, fingers warm and comforting. "And who'll they choose first, of the three of us?"
He knew she didn't mean it cruelly, but it really did hurt. "Why would they bother? They'd get just about the same magic from, oh, anyone." Anyone normal.
"Yours is nice, though." She smiled, patting his arm in a way that probably oughtn't to have made him feel so wretched. "You do nice things with it, Kevin, you always have."
