Witch in Training

by Elle Adams

“And can it be taught?” I asked.

  “You’re not looking to go into wand-making, are you?”

  “Nope,” I said. “He only wants wizards, for a start.”

  She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s actually hired Dritch & Co to help find him an assistant. He insists only grade five wizards are good enough for him, and I’m having a bit of difficulty finding a suitable candidate. Considering all the wizards either hate him or have some other issue, it’s proving tricky.”

  “Oh, that is a situation,” she said. “He doesn’t like witches? That’d explain why he was so angry when old Ava tried to start her own wand-making business.”

  Huh? “She did?”

  Old Ava was a seer, who’d retired from the coven after losing her marbles, her hair, and possibly her wand, too. At least, she always carried a prop around, as far as I’d heard. I’d spoken to her once, but since Alissa worked at the hospital, maybe she’d know more about her.

  “From what I heard, it didn’t go well, but he was still pretty angry,” Helen went on. “He’s the sort who’d get jealous of his own reflection.”

  I considered this. “But—surely he can’t always have been the only wand-maker in town. Someone must have taught him, right?”

  “If they did, it was before I was born. As long as I’ve been here, it’s always just been him. He does give good discounts to the academy, but that’s probably because we’re his main source of business. Hmm. I wonder who he’ll end up hiring.”

  Far too late, it hit me that I’d confided in the town’s biggest gossip. Except possible Blythe.

  “Wait—don’t tell him,” I said quickly. “I’m supposed to be doing this job for him this week, but it’s confidential. Unfortunately, I also have to apply to him for a wand of my own.”

  “After you pass your exam, right?”

  “Next Friday.” I had that long to learn several years of magical theory and figure out who’d cursed Mr Falconer. No pressure, Blair.

  “Wow, you are busy. If you change your mind about joining us, you know who to contact.”

  “Sure. Thank you.” There was more I wanted to know, but if I stayed here, I’d end up being mired in extra classes. Or, heaven forbid, dragged into performing on the stage.

  I got back home to find a package on the doorstep, addressed to me. A very squishy package, sort of like…

  Bubble wrap.

  I looked suspiciously around but saw no one. Then I picked up the package and took it into the flat.

  “Hey,” said Alissa, who sat on the sofa, stroking Roald. “What’s that?”

  “Delivery,” I said, and ripped the packaging off. “Oh, wow.”

  Her eyes gleamed. “You have an admirer. Let me guess who it is?”

  “Don’t pretend to be dense. This is just because I mentioned that Sky destroyed my last set of bubble wrap.”

  “Nathan bought you bubble wrap,” said Alissa. “That’s the most Blair-specific romantic thing I’ve ever seen. I should tell him that, if you won’t.”

  I wagged a finger threateningly at her. “Watch it. Don’t forget, he doesn’t know I’m a fairy yet.”

  “Still?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not ready to tell everyone, but the last thing I want is to find out he doesn’t like them, or that he’ll think it’s a big deal. I know he used to deal with them as a hunter, and not in a pleasant way.”

  She pulled a face. “I think you’re overthinking it.”

  Maybe I was. I’d started to relax and settle into my new life, but as far as Nathan was concerned… maybe it was nerves about Mr Falconer getting to me.

  I shrugged. “Right now, my evil plan is to make him like me as me, then drop the fairy bombshell on him when the time’s right.”

  “He already likes you,” she pointed out. “These kind of secrets… it doesn’t end well when you knowingly hide something important from someone you’re dating.”

  That’s what worried me. I’d had a dozen opportunities to tell him before now, and she was right—we were dating. I mean, he’d bought me bubble wrap. That meant he classed me as a friend at least, whether he held me as a potential romantic prospect or not.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Anyway, have you seen Ava lately?”

  “Ava? As in, Ava at the hospital?”

  “Yep. Apparently, she tried to start her own wand business and argued with Mr Falconer about it.”

  She blinked. “Er, Blair, Ava has been on the ward for permanent residents at the hospital for over a year. The ward for people who’ve suffered permanent magical damage.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know. I saw her in the waiting room that one time, so I assumed she came from outside.”

  “She has a habit of wandering off. She gets confused sometimes. A lot of the time. I wouldn’t count on getting straight answers from her. People come in for fortune-telling consults frequently. It annoys the nurses, but she doesn’t seem to mind.”

  Fortune-telling. What she’d said to me hadn’t been that, exactly… but she’d all but told me she knew my mother.

  “Also,” she added, “she hasn’t had access to a real wand since her accident. But I can take you there if you’re sure she has something to say.”

  “What exactly happened to her?” I asked.

  “She had some kind of backfiring spell incident last year, but she’s been showing signs of senility for at least a decade. I doubt this wand-making scheme was anything other than a fantasy of hers.”

  “It’s worth checking out,” I said. “It sounds like Mr Falconer was annoyed at her about setting up a rival business. He’s touchy about anyone learning the job.”

  Which was why his hiring an assistant struck me as kind of weird, but on the other hand, he wouldn’t live forever. Wizards and witches weren’t immortal. As far as I knew, only vampires were. So he must know he’d have to pass his legendary skills onto someone if he had no children, in order for the wand-maker’s shop to remain open.

  Alissa nodded when I mentioned this aloud. “Yep. Without him, the witches would have to order wands from outside the town.”

  “But there are places outside the town, right? He must have learnt the business from someone, too.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Good point. Hmm. I can ask Madame Grey…”

  “But she might go and confront him directly, which will only get me into more trouble. Best to speak to Ava first. Then I’ll buy you a drink for going into work on a weekend.”

  She winced. “Please no more cocktails.”

  6

  The other nurses all greeted Alissa warmly, despite their obvious hangovers. This time the waiting room wasn’t full of good-looking werewolves, but a bunch of people who’d turned blue.

  “Someone’s spell went wrong?” I asked Alissa.

  “Malfunctioning potion at a house party, I’d guess,” she said. “Luckily, it’s not my problem today. Let’s hope Ava hasn’t wandered off again.”

  “How… I mean, she seemed lucid and pretty coherent when I spoke to her, but is she likely to be able to tell me anything useful?”

  “Oh, she’s coherent. It’s just most of what she says is objectively complete nonsense. She genuinely believes in it, though. And, unfortunately, so do most of the people who come here to speak to a seer.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’ll find her,” she added, walking ahead of me into the ward. I set my expectations firmly at zero, and followed.

  Counter to my expectations, the ward for permanent magical injuries did not consist of people in bed or even locked up and muttering to themselves. A man with antlers growing out of his head walked past, while others played chess or sat chatting in corners. I spotted Ava sitting beside a bookcase, her purple wig in disarray and her plastic wand sticking out at an odd angle behind her ear, same as before. She wore a dress patterned with unicorns chasing their tails. It was oddly mesmerising to look at.

  While Alissa conversed with a nurse, Ava caught my gaze.
“I wondered if I’d be seeing you again, Briar.”

  “Er, it’s Blair,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I came to talk to you.”

  She grabbed my arm and yanked me into an empty seat. I’d been heading that way anyway, but her grip was like steel. Ow.

  “I can’t pretend I didn’t see this day was coming,” she said.

  “Er, do you know why I’m here?” I asked, pulling my arm out of her reach.

  “To ask me about your family, of course.” Her eyes were bright, eager, and entirely too penetrating.

  “You knew my mother,” I said, unable to help myself. “You knew she was a witch—before I did.”

  “Of course I did,” she said. “Tanith was her mother’s protégé, before she ran off. Broke her mother’s heart, she did. The poor thing died not long after.”

  My grandmother. She was talking about my grandmother. “Who… is there anyone still alive? From my family?”

  “Here? No. Her father died years ago.”

  My grandparents were dead? My head spun with a rush of questions, and it took everything I could to drag my thoughts back to the topic at hand. “Er, that’s a nice wand.” I pointed to the wand tucked behind her ear. “Where’d you get it?”

  She looked at me with glassy eyes, her stare a little too intense to hold eye contact with for too long. Perhaps it came with being a seer. She couldn’t read minds, but seeing was an odd type of magic that concerned prophecies and other more wishy-washy types of magic. Supposedly, Madame Grey had no patience for it.

  “I made it,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “Really?” I leaned forwards, not having to fake my interest despite the bombshell she’d dropped on me. “That’s brilliant. I didn’t know you could learn to make your own wand.”

  She cackled. I’d never heard a witch actually do that since I’d arrived in Fairy Falls.

  “Most people can’t,” she said, her voice still lowered to a whisper. “But I know how.”

  I let my eyes widen, exaggerating my genuine curiosity. “Tell me more. How did you learn? I’ve never met anyone who knows how to make wands, so I’m interested. I heard… I heard wandwood is the first ingredient.”

  “I gathered the wandwood myself,” she croaked.

  “Where is it from?”

  “From the forest, of course. It takes a special skill to find the right trees, but I did it.” She laughed again. “I found them, and I made this.” She tapped the wand in her hair, and my heart sank. Despite her lucid words, the wand was definitely plastic.

  “So this forest… is it near the town?” I asked. Instinct warned me to tread carefully around Mr Falconer’s name.

  She nodded eagerly. “Of course it is. We get many of our ingredients from there. There are wild magical creatures… plants and herbs that grow nowhere else… it’s a protected area of the countryside.”

  “And you taught yourself to give it the… er, Magic Touch?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody. I mean, I just heard that expression. I’m getting a wand of my own this week,” I added.

  “Don’t!” she said loudly. “Don’t buy a wand. They’ll do to you what they did to me. They’re plotting against us!”

  Sparks shot from her hand, bouncing off the walls. I jumped. So did some of the other residents. Whoa. How did she do that?

  As noise erupted around us, I had to raise my voice to be heard. “Why?”

  “Because there are no wand-makers left.”

  I frowned. “Yes, there is.” I’d danced around the subject enough. “Doesn’t everyone buy from Mr Falconer? Didn’t you get your first wand from him?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Of course—she and Mr Falconer were both in their seventies, at least. So there must have been someone else who’d been the town’s main wand-maker back then.

  “Er, so who used to be wand-maker?”

  “Mavis Lynch,” she said decisively. “Talk to her.”

  “Okay. I will. I don’t suppose you remember—”

  “That’s enough!” snapped the nurse who’d been talking to Alissa. “I let you in for one discussion, but you’ve clearly distressed her.”

  And that was our cue to leave, before they roped Alissa into working on her day off.

  “Sorry about that,” I said, as we walked out of the hospital. “How did she use magic without a wand?”

  “She was very powerful before they took her wand. Anyway, did you learn anything useful?”

  Where to start? “She does seem to believe she made a wand. She told me to talk to the former wand-maker, Mavis Lynch.”

  Alissa shook her head. “She’s been dead for two decades.”

  “Oh, no.” So much for that. “At least she did say Mr Falconer gets the wandwood from the forest.”

  “That’s not really a secret,” she said. “All witches who don’t buy or grow their own ingredients get them from the forest. It’s accessible to everyone, but I doubt you’ll find any clues about Mr Falconer’s little issue there. It doesn’t sound like the wand ingredients are the problem.”

  “I know,” I said quietly. “But—she said there are no wand-makers left. She also said I shouldn’t get a wand and that someone’s plotting against us.”

  “Like I said. Sometimes lucid, but usually makes no sense.”

  “What happened to her?” I asked. “An accident?”

  She nodded. “Her own wand backfired… you know, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was connected to her ill-advised attempt to set up her own business. Not that I’ve ever been able to get answers from the woman herself. Or her family. She has a granddaughter who visits weekly, and that’s it.”

  We picked up sandwiches from the local cafe on the way back, and arrived at the house to find Sky sitting on the doorstep.

  I ran up to him. “Sky! Did you bring back the mice?”

  “Miaow.”

  “I’ve no idea what that means.” I also didn’t see any mice. “What did you do with Mr Falconer’s assistants?”

  “Miaow.”

  “That’s helpful.” I looked at Alissa. “Great.” I was too frazzled to go and relax, and my curiosity refused to be satiated. “Does Ava’s granddaughter live here in Fairy Falls?”

  “She does,” Alissa said. “Annabel Reece. I don’t think she inherited as much of the Seeing gift as her grandmother did. Ava was living with her when the accident happened, so she might not want to talk about it.”

  “Oh.” I threw the sandwich wrapper in the bin and went to fetch some food for the cats. “Look, doesn’t the timing seem weird? A year ago, she tried to set up her own wand-making business. Instead, she ended up putting a permanent spell on herself. What if it wasn’t an accident?”

  Alissa’s face clouded. “That’s very illegal, if it’s true. But when you mentioned the wand-making business, I did wonder about the timing. I think it’s worth talking to her granddaughter. Go easy on her.”

  “I will.” If anything, I had a hundred new questions now. “Where does she live?”

  “Goldfinch Lane. Near the forest.”

  The same forest where wandwood grew? Anywhere was worth a try at this point.

  And maybe Ava’s granddaughter knew about my parents, too.

  Ava’s granddaughter lived in a pretty cottage that bordered on the thick forest wrapping around the upper side of the lake. The trees grew close together, giving the place a slightly forbidding atmosphere. So this was the forest where the witches gathered their potion ingredients, where the wand-maker worked his magic to extract wandwood from trees… and where Ava had had her accident, not five minutes from her granddaughter’s house.

  A quick search had told me that Ava’s parents were dead, that she’d been raised by her grandmother and was her only surviving relative, and that she possessed none of the Seeing ability herself. I hesitated, then knocked on the door.

  A fair-haired young woman with a heart-shaped face answered. There was barely any resemblanc
e between her and Ava, aside from their eyes—both were a startling shade of grey-blue, pale as an autumn sky.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Blair Wilkes, and I—”

  “You’re the new one my grandmother keeps talking about.”

  I blinked. “You mean, she talks about me?” So much for having to gently introduce the subject.

  “Yes. Whenever I go to see her in the hospital, she always says your name.”

  Oh… kay. “Er, we only spoke once. She thought I was a seer, but I think she was confused, because I’m not. I think… she knew my mother. Tanith Wildflower.” Once again, the barest hint of information on my parents threatened to divert my attention from my mission. But Ava knew some things. And while the spell had messed with her mind, her memory seemed to be intact.

  Her brows shot up. “I’ve heard that name, but she talks about a lot of people she used to know. What’s she done now? Are you new at the hospital?”

  “Ah, no. My friend Alissa works there. But anyway. That’s not why I’m here. I heard… she said she tried to start her own wand-making business once. I’m in a situation with Mr Falconer—”

  “Don’t talk to me about that man,” she snapped.

  Might have been a bit more tactful there, Blair. “My apologies. I’m looking into the history of wand-making and he’s not being particularly cooperative. Ava told me she and him had some kind of history.”

  She heaved out a breath, her eyes sharp and cold. “You might say that. It’s because of something he said that she got it into her head to go wandering in the forest and hit her head.”

  “Wait, really? I thought it was a spell.”

  She shot me a glare. “She was carrying her wand at the time and tried to use it to break her fall. Instead, it backfired. But he might as well have done it.”

  Her words rang as true to me. She genuinely believed it. But how to bring the topic around to the possibility that the curse was connected?

  “Did anyone see what happened?” I asked her. “Including you?”

  “I’d know the marks of my mother’s own wand,” she spat.

  “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” I said. But another possibility struck me—what if the town found out their only wand-maker was possibly responsible for casting a permanent spell on one of the town’s retired members? That might get ugly.