Crow Heart (The Witch Ways Book 4)

by Helen Slavin

  Oh. Here was Winn. Can I cadge a lift in the Defender? Although that woman drove like the very devil himself.

  For the Witch Ways, the kitchen at Hartfield held too many memories of their recent clash with Havoc escapee, Mrs Fyfe. Tonight, that tension served to clarify their thoughts on the Kitty Boyle incident.

  “Well, Kitty was clear-headed by the time we got her back to the farm. That story she came up with about her twisting her ankle in a rabbit hole at the hillfort…” Emz breathed a deep, admiring sigh.

  Anna nodded.

  “She didn’t want Etta to know the truth,” Charlie said. “But Etta knows Havoc so…”

  “Etta will have guessed at something,” Emz said. “Just because of the fact that we brought her home. Etta will know.”

  Anna lifted her head to nod once more. “If she asks us, what do we tell her?” she asked.

  Charlie raised her eyebrows. “That’s up to you, Anna. I mean, what did you see in Kitty’s Flickerbook? What happened?” she asked.

  Anna paused to gather the scraps she had picked up. “I could see it hanging in the air. A glossy crackle. Darkness made into a blade.” She could not stop herself from shuddering. “I didn’t see her. But I felt where she’d attacked Kitty. I was going to say it was a trail but it was more… a residue.”

  “From the white-haired woman?” Charlie asked.

  “You didn’t see her, you just sensed her at Ragger’s Edge?” Emz added.

  Anna sifted through the worst pieces. “Yes. She’d got out of there.” Anna took a breath. “She attacked Kitty. Twice.” The black crackling energy suffused her mind like bitter smoke as she picked over Kitty Boyle’s Flickerbook. “First at the hillfort to take her down. Then at the farmhouse… It was vicious. She broke her hip.” Anna saw the white-haired woman’s mouth move, but she could not hear the words because of the white noise of pain. “That’s definite.” She shut down the image of the white-haired woman’s bodyweight shifting with deadly purpose.

  “She broke it?” Emz was shocked.

  “Yes.” Anna was suddenly inspired. “Yes. Ah. Like Mrs Fyfe. That’s it. The same way Mrs Fyfe tried to break Winn. Exactly like.” Anna struggled with an image of the black crackle meeting the white light ribboning out of Kitty Boyle’s hip. She had a sense that something else was buried deep within it that was trying to speak to her, but the crackle and the white ribbon distorted the message.

  “I don’t understand. Why would she do it?” Emz confessed.

  Charlie toyed with the zip on her fleece; the sound ripped up and down the air. “Same reason as Mrs Fyfe? Getting energy from it?” She picked it apart. “Wonder if this is our Trespasser from the bridleway?” She looked at Anna.

  “Whoever she was, she did a runner once she knew I was onto her.” Anna considered.

  “She might be shy. Or frightened,” Emz said. “Maybe she needs help.”

  Charlie and Anna shook their heads in unison.

  “If she wanted help, she would ask,” Charlie decreed. “She wouldn’t just take a crack at someone.”

  “But if she’s frightened? Remember Ailith and her errand. She rolled up terrified and carrying a severed head.”

  “She still came straight to Cob Cottage, head and all. She didn’t kidnap anyone or break their hip. This white-haired woman is off.” Charlie brooked no further argument. “No playing Devil’s Advocate.”

  “Charlie’s right. People know we are here to help,” Anna agreed.

  “Yep.” Charlie sounded snippy. “And they also know we’re here to police them. Interesting this happens the same time as I pick up a trail of a Trespasser. Got to be this woman who set off the Beacon.” There was a silence, the clock on the wall clicking the tempo of their thoughts.

  “Do you think we need to ask Kitty some more questions about what happened?” Emz asked. “The way she thought up the cover story shows she wants to hide it. Might be a problem.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Even though she covered up whatever happened, it doesn’t mean that Kitty remembers anything. She might just be embarrassed that she can’t remember at all.”

  Emz nodded. “Fair point.”

  Anna drew herself up, trying to look composed. “The advantage of my Strength is I don’t necessarily have to ask her any questions. I can get inside information from her Flickerbook without upsetting her.” Anna sounded confident, but her expression seemed to disagree. She looked pale and rattled, and it was contagious.

  Charlie, feeling afraid, swerved the conversation sideways. “Do you think there’s a link between the glimmer you felt with Winn and the crackly black stuff on the Hill?”

  “Why would there be?” Anna felt defensive.

  “You noticed the glimmer around the time of the crackle. Same twenty-four-hour period. Who knows? I just thought its worth a punt.” Charlie looked to Emz for backup, and Emz nodded.

  “Maybe it’s your version of a Beacon. Your Strength was picking up the frequency or something…” she wondered.

  They had a point, and Anna settled to compare the two sensations. She held both within her Strength. The glimmer was all light, a hint here of shadow, like a person passing across a window. It felt, once again, familiar, welcome even. She held that thought for a moment before she turned to the black crackle.

  Peering at the shining surface of it, she saw it was pitted with further darkness that was drawing her in. Something more. Something worse. The sensation was vertiginous, and with her head spinning, she dropped the crackle.

  “Okay?” Charlie reached for her.

  Anna shook her head. “There’s a really powerful sense of something or someone being hidden in the crackle.” She took a deep, calming breath. “The glimmer with Winn is totally different. It’s like the light coming through the kitchen window at Cob Cottage. That gold autumnal light in October,” she said.

  Charlie’s mind was racing but not, she felt, in a constructive way, until Emz spoke up.

  “Remember when Mrs Fyfe attacked Winn, and afterwards we all had a mental image of Winn wearing Grandma’s raincoat?” she said.

  Charlie and Anna gasped at the recollection.

  “Of course.” Anna’s face brightened.

  “Winn is wound into Cob.” Charlie joined in. “Leap Woods is frayed into Havoc’s edges. Hartfield and Havoc have a long-intertwined history. Grandma always taught us that.”

  “There’s a bond,” Anna said. They were all focusing on the positive. “That ties in with what I saw in the cards earlier. They showed me Winn at Cob Cottage with Grandma Hettie. Grandma was holding…” Anna found she could not manage to say the last word, that the idea of her mother was too painful to look at for long.

  “Holding what?” Charlie asked.

  “A baby.” It was the best Anna could manage. “Baby Mum,” she said at last.

  Charlie shrugged into her hoodie. Emz looked down at her hands resting on the table.

  “Not surprising. Winn knew them both forever. So that’s the glimmer.” Charlie rallied a little. “Glimmer is good.”

  Emz spoke up. “We can’t ignore the black crackle. Someone, something… hiding.” She looked to her sisters. “This whole thing with Logan’s gran is really off.”

  Charlie gave a determined sigh. “Yes. But we’re on it. It’s a red flag, and whoever they are, white-haired or whatever, we’re going to make them regret flying it.”

  16

  A Swagger Coat

  Thinne was rattled. Every bone of his body sang out in blind panic. He had few safe places to run to these days and found himself in a dingy back room at The Splintered Lute, an inn on the road an hour from Day’s Ride. He knew no one but feared spies and tattle tails. Every hour ticked its minutes of anxiety, anticipating the Gamekeepers hot foot from Havoc. Or worse.

  None came.

  He was gnawed at by the twin dogs of fear and fury. Havoc owed him the crow-hearted girl. Hettie Way herself had called Crow on her, and yet his mind hovered over the bridge at Knightstone, a
nd he let shards of lightning illuminate them.

  Nuala Whitemain had offered up two sacrifices; all he had to do was summon a storm to take them. Thinne saw the rain glitter on the car, a family car for a family man. A father with his son. The scheme was mad with danger, but no one had traded anything of such calibre with Thinne for a hundred years. He had harnessed lightning for her, and recalling that, the lightning struck his memory, set it skidding, like the car. He relived the crunching topple of it, the screaming of metal on metal as the vehicle snagged on the suspension wires.

  He had run that night, aware that Nuala’s scheme had put him out of Havoc forever. The memory flickered on, tormenting him. Hettie Way stamping on the bridge, her words shouting into the storm he had called up. I beg a boon of thee. He had been running before her foot stamped for the third time. She had called The Nans to thwart him, and he had not wished to linger. Lightning cracked across the sky of his head.

  His only valuable was Nuala Whitemain, and he must claim her if he was to pay off his wager. He was uncertain, and it rattled him. After all, was he not the driver of the hardest bargains? The done for and the desperate looked to him for salvation. Hettie Way was dead, and who were these granddaughters anyway? Nought but green girls in an old wood. They were no match for him.

  He caught sight of his reflection in the bullseye glass of the window and saw he was a ghost of himself, dragging ragged darkness in his footsteps and marked out these days by the wager’s bounty on his head.

  Nuala was owed to him. The Gamekeepers could be made to see that, surely. They ought not to offer protection to the crow-hearted harpy. Did they even know anything of the truth of the night on the bridge? The secret of that, of the botched sacrifice of father and son, the calling up of The Nans, had died with Hettie. Hadn’t it? Could he pit the Gamekeepers against Nuala? He rolled these thoughts around like dice.

  Twilight saw him step once more from thin shadows at the edge of Crow Houses and look down upon the town of Woodcastle. They might have Beacons out, but they had been careless enough to let Mrs Fyfe walk into town, so there must be a way. His eye scanned the rooftops beyond Havoc, the roofline of the Castle like knocked-out teeth. He was approaching this in the wrong way. It was more than the wrong path; it was the wrong thought. They were not Hettie, just the broken-up bits of her. Ah yes, that is the way his thoughts ought to tend.

  His thoughts, however, persisted in reminding him of the rumours hissing round the highways and byways about the fate of Mrs Fyfe. No one came to him with gossip anymore; no one came to him with anything except begging or desperation. They steered clear, even more so now he was wanted. What had these girls done to Mrs Fyfe?

  He had taken time from his own troubles to find out her fate. He could find no scent of her at Twist and made a detour to Cross Guns. The Seer there owed him a favour, and, in the end, he was sorry to claim it. Mrs Fyfe was dead; the Seer pointed to some cloudy bit of crystal ball that signified it. Thinne argued: wasn’t that just a bit of smudge on the surface, needed a bit of a wipe with a handkerchief perhaps, to clarify? The Seer had put her hand on his head and shown him. He tasted it, bitter with apples, for a week.

  There were other rumours, too. A rumour this winter of one of the Night Horses being seen out towards Day’s Ride. Thinne had chased up the lead on that one too. Whoever could stable one of those was a rich man, a powerful player on every high road and trackway. The lead had come to naught, except for further rumours that the horse was in fact the Great Grey come from Far North, and that there was some question about the parentage of these new Ways. Their father might not be, as he had thought, some apple farmer from Knightstone; the rumours ran fast with wolves and bloody hearts. These thoughts snagged at Thinne as he strode on his way. The nearer he got to Havoc, the more urgent the thoughts were. These girls were an unknown quantity. Was the debt worth the risk? Yes. Because he had nothing else but this, the debt owed him by the crow-hearted girl.

  Town. He was aware that the Fyfe woman had not breached Havoc’s borders. She had, somehow, skirted past into the town itself and, after all, wasn’t that his required destination? Wasn’t that, after all, where the crow-hearted girl had hidden herself? She was as much an outcast as he; the town was the only place she could hide.

  He walked at an easy stride; he was in no hurry. As he turned south of Rook’s Rise, the wind shifted and, at last, the merest breath of a trail caught in his nostrils. Old, old magic. The burnt edge of Fyfe’s track. The waft of it curdled his stomach as it recalled the sights the Seer had put into his head. He turned.

  Over this way.

  The bridleway picked a route on the border of Havoc and Leap. Here, just one wrong step to the right lay the tangled weave of the Gamekeeper’s tread. Just here. To the left, branches clattered overhead, the ones from Leap reaching for Havoc — or was it the other way around? He took three purposeful steps onto the bridleway and felt the alteration. Something was awakened in Leap; the trees, the land, the shadows cast themselves longer. He was uncertain what to make of it. Good or ill? It would depend upon the Traveller. The bridleway sighed an impatient breeze, urging him onwards.

  As he closed in on the streets, he understood why the crow-hearted girl burrowed in here. The town vibrated through him, unpleasant as ever. He could feel no trace of her, and he laughed to himself. Surely, not that old trick? He took in a breath and held it, let his eyes wander, ready to focus on what he knew was there but could not see.

  Ah. The thinnest fissure in her magic. There was the gate. The high hedge and its deep shadow deceiving. As his hand reached to the latch, the ivy pulled tight about the rusted hinges. It was a reflex as he reached to pinch a leaf of this ivy between his forefinger and thumb. The leaves shivered, and their waxy green shrivelled to a parched brown at his touch. He regretted it at once. She would be warned, no element of surprise now.

  He turned to walk back the way he had come. Ha. Let it be a calling card to frighten her for now. It was a bluff, of course. He had run her to ground. She was still at the cottage, but he had no plan of action, and he needed one if he was to outwit her. In a matter of days, she would pay. She would pay what she owed him with despair and regret.

  17

  Bitter Brew

  Charlie was a thought away from writing a rude message in Post-It notes and sticking it to the office door. The only thing stopping her was indecision about which of the many obscenities currently barking in her head she should use.

  Her sightings of Michael Chance in the last twenty-four hours had been as fleeting as someone on badger watch. He had not responded to any of the previous Post-It notes regarding important brewery business and was glimpsed dodging out of sight into various corners of the old and higgledy-piggledy site buildings.

  She had cornered him in the car park earlier in the morning. He had been rummaging about with boxes in the boot of his car and not seen her approach.

  “What is going on with Cadenza Rightman and the Georgian Kitchen?” Charlie said.

  Michael shot into the air, the back of his head meeting painfully with the lifted tailgate. He slammed down the boot and fumbled his keys. He walked around the car, the longest route to the driving seat to avoid her.

  “Well?”

  He did not answer. The car door would not let him in, the central locking system clunking disapproval as he jabbed ineffectually at the key fob.

  Charlie took in a breath. “I rang Cadenza this morning to ask if she wanted to add any extras to the delivery. She was asking after the cider we made for Templetons. Remember?”

  Charlie could see there was no hope of an answer. Michael’s face was pale and sweaty looking, his eyes focused on the key fob, the door opening at last. Michael dived inside.

  Charlie opened up the passenger side and leaned in. “She said she was waiting to hear back from Ivan Herald, and she’d talk to me then. What is this all about Michael?” Charlie was confused and furious. “Is she dropping us? Is that it? Is this because you’ve been s
lacking off playing Candy Crush and now Ivan Herald is picking up all our contracts? Hmm? Is that it?” Charlie knew that wasn’t true. After all, he also hadn’t told her about them now supplying The Ark.

  “Or are we going in golden handcuffs with Herald? You know it’s dangerous ground having only one big client, Michael. What’s the deal with Herald and The Ark?”

  Michael concentrated on the dashboard, picking up the chamois leather block he used for the windscreen and wiping the dust off the heating controls. “That’s nothing to do with me,” he spoke, his gaze fixed on the speed dial he was now intent upon dusting. The chamois made a squeaky sound. “I’m not in charge of all of that.”

  “Not in charge? Michael, this is your brewery. What the hell?” Charlie gave up. Her heart was pounding with fury, and she was not certain she wasn’t going to break down in tears.

  Michael turned the ignition. Charlie slammed the door, and, as he drove away, she kicked at the tyre before turning back to the brewery. Behind her, she heard a squealing of brakes and an exchange of car horns as he pulled out onto the road.

  She stepped over the threshold of the office. There was something different, but she could not immediately place it. The Post-It notes stretching back into last week were still arranged on the wall. She glared. She had dealt with almost all of them herself in the end, as Michael persisted in ignoring her and the business. What was wrong with him? No. She was no longer heading down that path.

  The phone rang when she was part way through the slew of Michael’s unanswered emails.