Crow Heart (The Witch Ways Book 4)

by Helen Slavin

  The bell sounded again. Charlie’s feet were already taking her along the swiftest path past Wild Elm to Hare’s Ell, and she reminded herself that this was the darkest, oldest part of Havoc. Here were the places that Grandma Hettie hurried by, never stopping in this glade for a picnic or that clearing for a rest. Certain places in Havoc told you what they were about. The fear Charlie felt was being subsumed by the idea that the bell belonged, and that, far from misleading, the lights were showing her the way. As she leapt and landed, dodged and hiked, she tried to decipher their message.

  In the heart of a range of hawthorns, one of the lights was missing. Charlie knew it. Something about the way that the lights were arranged meshed in her head. It was, she realised, a kind of map. Who had left it there? And more importantly, who had disrupted it? The blank where she instinctively knew a light should be seemed very blank. She moved to stand where it ought to be, and, as she did so, she understood. The track, this light fest, was to do with her patrols. As she looked back the way she had come, she saw it. Each route she’d walked so doggedly in the last few months and at each junction and turning, a light, winking. They were signalling, to stay out of this lane perhaps, or better yet, they were Beacons, warning.

  Where the signal was absent, Charlie looked for tracks. Recalling their recent encounter with Havoc resident Borrower, Charlie knelt down, scuffed about in the leaf litter looking carefully for tracks that might have been concealed. As she scanned the ground, the bell tolled again. She looked up and saw, in the nearish distance, where a light moved, making steady progress through Havoc. This light did not wink and drew her a light trail of the path being taken. She saw where it began and, once upon it, her Strength reached out and showed her the intended route. Instead of hunting, she would wait. Her steps were light, breath quick. She knew just the hiding place.

  Thinne recognised that the light ball was a Beacon almost too late. He was striding through Havoc, confident of his journey and pleased with his trinket. He was almost on the Gamekeeper before he sensed it, like the last-held breath of a mouse before it realises the scent it is inhaling is cat.

  He sidestepped, stumbled over roots in a way that suggested the trees were onto him. His hand, instead of reaching to stop his fall, fumbled into his pocket and lobbed the Beacon back through the trees. He did not stop to see it land in a patch of brambles. The old oak cuffed him on the browbone as he dropped to the ground. The fox’s earth, disguised by the tree’s roots, offered a cramped hiding place. His coat tore, his hair snagged, and the place stank of vixen, but Thinne folded himself inside it, chin on knees, hands clenched into roots above, and his breath shallow, waiting, waiting.

  He saw boots pass by. A shadowed female figure above walked towards the decoyed Beacon, fished it from the tangle of brambles, and took her time to scout the area. When, at last, she had moved out of sight, he did not delay. Worming his way out, he ran, with only one direction in mind.

  Out of Havoc.

  11

  Don’t Do This

  Nuala Whitemain woke with a start and sat up so abruptly that the damp and mildewy bedlinen she had been swathed in tore at the topmost seam. She cast it aside, pushed her feet into her boots, and stepped to the window. She peered out, the leaded lights scoring the view beyond into uneven squares. The garden was quiet; nothing stirred. She moved to the other side to check that angle, letting her power reach out to test the boundary. The effort made her catch her breath a little; she must reach down for the dregs of the cats’ bone magic. She could feel it trickling out of her like sand.

  She was uncertain what had woken her, but it did not feel good. It felt like a distinct warning, and she was always careful to pay attention to such sensations. She had felt nothing like it since the Knightstone Bridge on that terrible Halloween. Could it be that Thinne was already casing the boundaries of Havoc, poking his long fingers into the edges to see where there might be a hole he could crawl through?

  She had been watching for this since the night of Hettie Way’s death. He would be disappointed in his errand. She would be ready for him. She had been unable to reach the young woman at the market, but she had pondered the matter for some time. Her thoughts had prickled and altered in the last day. Nuala had lighted upon a way, a narrow and twisted route, that, tonight, she knew she must take.

  As she made her way down the winding, half-rotted staircase, Hettie Way’s face stared up at her from memory, disapproving, lips pinched with her warning. Don’t do this. Curse the woman.

  She laughed to herself as she tugged on her coat. She had an important errand; she must salvage some little scrap of herself that she had left lying about a long time ago.

  The Red Wrangle prickled disapprobation as she rummaged in the old chest beneath the stairs. Yes. Here it was, hand-knitted, a button missing, and munched by moths, but still, it would suit her purpose. Once upon a time she would only have had to sit at the table with thread and a needle and bring the woman to her. No matter. She would fetch the morsel herself. If nothing else, she needed to get out of the cottage for a few hours.

  Her steps were light, filled with eagerness for the spell ahead. Her constant duelling with the Red Wrangle made her resourceful. She was clever. Apprenticed to Thinne, she had taken every torment and punishment and stolen it for herself, right under the fool’s nose. Nuala grinned. Each time Hettie Way had tried to destroy her, she had risen out of it, stronger.

  As she walked out onto Red Hat Lane she laughed out loud to herself. She was not a battle to be fought. She was a war.

  12

  Fire and Flood

  The three holiday lets at Two Hills Farm were five-star and usually booked at least six months in advance. This, Etta Boyle understood, was due almost entirely to her mother-in-law’s dynamic energy. Etta had put out the mad idea of diversifying, and Kitty had pounced on it with delight. They had made a great team. Kitty, now in her late seventies, had project managed the renovation and sorted out the website; she had an eye for detail. Etta was the one who baked the scones for the welcome basket and cured the bacon for the bed-and-breakfast guests.

  Etta and Kitty had just spent the morning prepping the cottages ready for the next booking. Etta was putting the final touches of eggs and milk into the welcome basket, and Kitty had arranged flowers. Etta felt closer to Kitty than to her own mother, a sourpuss of a woman who lived on the far side of Castlebury.

  “Right, I think we’re done,” Etta said, as she and Kitty looked at their handiwork. The cottage looked immaculate and welcoming.

  “Yep. Looking good.” Kitty took out her tablet. “We’ve got the Wildmoors in Hogweed. They emailed that they’re going to be late; round six, she said. The Harptrees are in Owl Barn. Oh, I didn’t put it in, you took the call. What time did they say they’d roll up?”

  “Four?” Etta’s memory pinged.

  Kitty swiped at her tablet’s screen with a nod. “Yes. Here it is. I knew I must have made a note.”

  “I can do the four o’clock meet and greet. Do you need me to do the six o’clock one too?” Etta asked. They both enjoyed the meet and greet. It gave them opportunities to be nosey about the families and couples who came to stay. It was always fun to have a coffee the next day and wonder about their stories.

  “No. I can manage it. I’ll be back here for six. You’ve got book club, haven’t you? At the library?” Kitty looked at her daughter-in-law.

  Etta cursed. “Oh flip. I haven’t finished it.”

  Kitty laughed. “Same here. I’m off there to the Knit and Natter now, not done a stitch since Tuesday.”

  And with a quick peck and a hug, the two women parted, Etta waving her mother-in-law off down the driveway before heading inside to try to find her book-club read.

  After the knit club, Kitty took the sandwich she’d put together that morning and drove up to the hillfort at Yarl Hill for a well-earned ramble. She loved it up there, carrying as it did memories of her courtship with Niven.

  Courting. She g
rinned to herself as she sat on the far mound and crumpled the foil from her sandwich into her pocket. Despite the muddied boots and achy legs, she felt invigorated, and when the wind caught at her hair, she liked to imagine that it was Niven, reaching out to her from wherever he had gone. Somewhere sunlit, she hoped, and for want of a better word — heavenly.

  The edges of her grief began to peel at her, so she checked her thoughts with a glance at her watch. She’d made good time on the way up and still had plenty of time before she had to be back at the cottages to welcome their six o’clock guests. She and Etta could meet tomorrow to catch up and compare notes on their new guests. That was always fun.

  She’d be a little slower on the descent; her left knee complained a bit these days on the down slopes. She stood up, brushed the crumbs off, and, blowing a kiss to the dearly departed Niven, she set off back to the car.

  Etta Boyle had skim read the book club choice, Threadbare Wings of Savage Angels, and not been impressed. The discussion had set off with a general consensus of dislike of the book and its aid to insomnia. The idea of the main character being a grade-A twat had somehow spiralled into Una and Cherie arguing about rotas at the playgroup in the Moot Hall. This was the issue sometimes with book club. If Elena was in charge of it, they could have sat an A-level exam in whichever text it was. Whenever Iain was in the chair, the whole of book club swerved into sidestreets of petty argument.

  “So… anyway, ladies… if we could get back to our discussion…” His voice was thin, like someone trying to whisper to soldiers rather than order them about. Etta looked at him, his pinched face, his hunched shoulders. He was not a happy bunny. She stood up, her own voice strong and decisive.

  “Who wants tea or coffee?” she asked, glancing at the clock. It was half-past seven, a bit early for their “tea interlude”, as Elena called it, but hey, desperate times. The rest of the book club were glad of the reprieve, and there was a sudden bustle where a tin of home-baked cookies was produced from Nita’s bag, and it appeared that Carl had a rucksack filled with rum truffles.

  In the kitchen at the back of the library building, Etta listened to the kettle boiling and dished out instant coffee into cups. She was thinking that the coffee machine at Hogweed was in need of replacement but that the old one was still serviceable and would do great in the library kitchen. Elena and the other staff members would love it.

  As she made a mental note to sort that out this week, her phone buzzed in her pocket. The Wildmoors’ number. What did they want? They’d only been in the cottage an hour and a half. As she answered, she hoped it was something simple about pillows or duvets and nothing too fire or floody.

  Ten minutes later, the Wildmoors were very understanding as she let them into the property. They had been delayed themselves, so they had only arrived at about quarter to seven. It was unlike Kitty not to hang around; guests were often held up. The Wildmoors had no answer from a text they had sent.

  Why hadn’t Kitty texted her? Hogweed looked welcoming, and Etta felt her heart stutter as she thought of her. She babbled about the welcome basket. She forgot to show them the flue on the woodburner. Where were the extra towels? She struggled with emotion. What had happened? Where was Kitty?

  Etta apologised again for the lack of welcome. The Wildmoors were solicitous, more than happy to find their own way around, concerned that Etta find her missing mother-in-law.

  There was no answer from Kitty’s phone, and so, at about eight o’clock that evening, PC John Williamson had his first missing persons case. When Kitty Boyle’s empty car was found parked out at the bottom of Yarl Hill, he began to wonder if he was cut out for the police.

  13

  The Wedding Unfayre

  Winn and the Way sisters had worked hard for the Wedding Fayre. They had perhaps worked too hard, so that now, in their corner of the Guild Hall in Castlebury, they felt tired and amateurish. People wandered by them without a glance, as if their stand was a distant island, off the wedding map.

  “Don’t panic.” Charlie tried to be positive, and eyed the thin stream of prospective brides and their entourages of relatives. “It’s only early,” she said and leaned against the table. The neatly arranged stack of brochures began a landslide to the floor. Charlie snatched at them as Emz caught the crystal vase filled with greenery clipped from the walled garden. Winn folded one up to bolster the dodgy fourth leg of their table.

  “We’re classy, not flashy,” Anna encouraged.

  Charlie gave a cheery laugh. “Now why didn’t we put that on the leaflet?” she said as she looked at the nearby stands. She was used to this sort of slick, selling environment and saw that Hartfield’s presence there was as if a butterfly had come to rest on a steam engine. “Yes, classy. And that’s your appeal,” Charlie reassured them. “Don’t forget that.” She picked up a handful of brochures. “I’m going to mill about,” she said. “I’ll get some of these bad boys out and about.”

  She had not gone too far when Anna and Emz watched her smiling and pressing a brochure into the hands of a woman and her daughter.

  Emz shrugged. “She knows what she’s doing. Selling is selling, weddings or beer,” she said.

  Anna was unsure. The sound in the hall was high-pitched and set her nerves to their tensest setting. She shared a look with Winn, unrecognisable in her Windsmoor jacket and tweed skirt. Her hair had been brushed, an almost unheard-of event, and was swept back.

  “I like your hair like that, Winn,” Anna said. She was reminded of the Paper Prophets, of the young Winn holding a baby Vanessa. The glimmer came to her mind, and, with surprise, she realised it held the same golden light as daylight filtering through the kitchen window at Cob Cottage. Anna felt tears prickle and busied herself with the leaflets.

  Winn grinned, her eyes twinkling with the novelty of the event. “I even remembered to wash my face.”

  Their mood did not last. Winn’s face grew redder and hotter as the morning ticked on and the tweed itched at her legs. Anna suggested she take off the jacket, made from yet more tweed, and wondered what she herself could remove, as she was feeling distinctly hot and bothered. She was wearing a simple dress that she had bought at Seren’s shop especially for the occasion. As she looked down at its elegant lines, she felt guilty. It was beautiful, and she had needed it, but in truth, she bought it to avoid having to pop back to retrieve something suitable from her wardrobe at Cob Cottage.

  She turned to Winn. “Why don’t you take a break? Go and get a tea or something?” Anna suggested.

  Winn shook her head. “No, no, no, that’s quite alright. Can’t leave you to hold the fort single-handed.”

  Anna shook her head and took the brochures from Winn’s hot hand. “Don’t fret. We can tag team it.”

  Winn still looked uncertain.

  Anna was inspired. “You need to suss out the competition. Go.” She gave Winn a small push. “Research and recce.”

  Winn needed no further persuasion.

  The rest of the fayre was a maze, and Winn was swiftly lost. This invariably happened to her in the confines of a town or building. She could find her way around Leap Woods in heavy fog at midnight but locating the route back to McKinley Hall from the Elizabethan Suite was uncharted territory.

  Here be brides. The dresses on display in this part of the fayre were difficult to tell apart from the wedding cakes. Who could eat that much cake? Layer upon tower of it. Even Winn, cake aficionado that she was, might find it a push after trying a few samples and finding that most looked better than they tasted.

  A double doorway led into the main Guild Hall, which looked as if it was constructed from wedding cake. The ceiling was an array of glittering chandeliers dangling from elaborate white, gold, and cream plasterwork. Winn thought of the many miles of cornicing at Hartfield, which housed a variety of blue, black, and green moulds. The wainscoting there was the ancestral home of generations of mice, and she found her thoughts rushed towards broken guttering, lead flashing, and peeling papers. T
his was the peril of indoors; it walled in your thoughts.

  She distracted herself by picking up a glossy, high-definition brochure from the nearest display. Dunham Park was a country house at the Old Town side of Castlebury. It had once been owned by one of her father’s friends, Sir Caspar Rightman, but was now a “premier wedding venue”. Someone appeared to have leaned rather heavily on the zero button when fixing the prices, though she couldn’t be sure, as she had left her reading glasses back at the Hartfield stand. The Dunham Park staff were goddesses — there was no other word to match their elegance and poise. They were sent to make your wedding day perfect. There were four-poster bedrooms for guests and a lake with an island and a temple to Apollo on it for that “special setting”.

  An owl, Winn saw, scorned the entire proceedings. It was being held by a man in a suit, and she might not have forgiven him for his sad cruelty, save for the slight beads of sweat on his brow and the ancient patina of his sueded gauntlet. It was this item that gave him away.

  “What’s this about? Why is there an owl here?” Winn asked. The owl turned to assess her as a suitable ally, and the owl man looked caught out.

  “Ring bearer,” he explained and pointed to an action photo of the owl in free flight with a length of red ribbon tied to its leg. The owl shrugged its wings and stared at Winn.

  As she found her way back to Anna and Emz, her thoughts were an owl on the wing. She had felt hot and flustered on leaving their stand, but now she felt inspired. She had never been married, but she had been to several high-end weddings over the years and been unimpressed. It occurred to her that the first true wedding celebration she had attended was the handfasting at Crow Houses for Calum and Anna.