Crow Heart (The Witch Ways Book 4)

by Helen Slavin

  Charlie flapped open the pages. The maps were things of beauty, drawn by skilled cartographers with an eye to art as much as geography. She glanced up as Emz entered.

  “Hey,” she said, her face set and blank. “How was your evening?”

  Emz let her Strength peek behind the mask of it. Charlie’s real face was flushed and frightened. “We have another Trespasser,” Emz said.

  “Thin bloke? Scruffy tailcoat?” Charlie was matter of fact. “Yeah. I saw him too. Over at the allotments.”

  “You too?” Emz looked at Anna, but she was already shaking her head.

  “What are you doing in here?” Emz asked.

  “Checking out the really old geography of Havoc and the town.” Charlie could not look at her sister, was focusing on the map before her. “If we find the bones of the place, it might help,” Charlie said with no conviction.

  “It might help?” Emz was grateful for the gilding in the library, the way it reflected the overhead light in a softly burnished glow.

  “Yes. We might see… I don’t know… hot spots instead of blind spots.” Charlie faffed with a page, unwilling to look at Emz.

  “You mean it might help us clutch at the straws of sanity,” Emz said. Anna and Charlie looked up, affronted. “Thin and brittle… but hey, I’m game.” She turned to a hefty leather tome on the nearest shelf.

  Charlie and Anna exchanged a look.

  “It felt like a plan,” Charlie confessed.

  “We’re hiding in here,” Anna said. “That’s the truth.” She flipped over a few pages and then, sighting something interesting, she flipped back. “Hey. Wait.” There was agitation in her voice. “Look at this…”

  The other Ways, keen to distract almost all their thoughts, turned. Anna swivelled the book so they could all see. The illustrations inside showed an old line-drawing of an ancient manor house and its extensive grounds.

  “Isn’t this…” Anna began.

  “Hartfield. Before it was remodelled.” Charlie looked at the date, the drawing of the Tudor house, the garden and parterres, all with no sense of perspective.

  Emz turned the next page. There was a fold-out, creased with age, showing the deer park.

  “The deer park.” She said the words over. They spoke to something inside her, a greeting. “Oh. Look where the boundary goes.” Her finger traced the line. It ended at the top part of Red Hat Lane, and the old cottage was marked in.

  Charlie put her finger on it. “Peppercorn Cottage.” The pronouncement was followed by a short silence.

  “I’m going out on a limb here. Even though I’m not sure what we’re learning here. I just feel…”

  “Like Havoc opened up,” Charlie said. “Nowhere is out of bounds for us as Gamekeepers. Havoc touches everywhere in town. Havoc was here first; everything else has set itself down on the surface of it. Chop the trees down and build, doesn’t matter, the land beneath is still part of Havoc. The cottage on Red Hat Lane is not obvious, but now we know it’s part of our domain.”

  “Is that where the white-haired woman has hidden something? Or lost something?” Anna traced a finger over the sketch of the cottage, the lines and boundaries it sat within in the dim and distant past. “It’s a wreck.”

  Charlie shrugged. “The thin man was on his way there and then made a diversion,” she said. “The allotments seemed more attractive. Let’s see what they used to be…” She began to open charts, starting with a more modern one that showed the allotments as they currently were. “I can work back from this maybe…”

  As she rootled about amongst the tomes for another book, Emz traced a finger over the spread of trees that stood like an army at the boundary of the Castle.

  “Look here… this far back, Church Lane was right up against this far section of the Castle wall. Look… it was out beyond Barbican Steeps, a whole other bit of wall…”

  “Which they used as the boundary for the church.” Anna traced her finger across the line.

  Charlie glanced over. “Built to keep Havoc out,” she said, matter of fact.

  “You can see that?” Anna asked, the sisters aware of Charlie’s affinity for all things map and path.

  Charlie shook her head. “A wild guess.” She felt wired looking at the contour lines and legends. All the maps appeared familiar, but none would settle in her line of sight. Her Strength orientated and disorientated her as it showed her the errors made on the paper. This road runs further east. She felt seasick and shut her particular tome to try to relieve it.

  “It’s like a head being shaved,” Emz said as Anna reached for a nearby magnifying glass.

  “What?” Charlie joined them in peering at the smaller pages. Then she opened another book at a detailed map of the town in 1615.

  “If you shave your head, the difference is just the surface. The skull is the same beneath.” Emz tapped at Charlie’s map. “There were more houses built here, but underneath…”

  “It is still Havoc,” Charlie agreed.

  “We shouldn’t be surprised, you know. It’s not unheard of to have two Trespassers.” Anna tried to sound positive about the night’s encounters.

  “So we now know we have two Trespassers.” Emz’s tone was hyped. “The white-haired woman and the tall, thin man.”

  “Who did not come to Mimosa. It was all quiet there. What does that mean?”

  The Witch Ways were silent in thought.

  “He’s wise to the whitethorn bramble?” Emz suggested.

  Charlie was cheered by the thought. “I like that idea,” she said.

  “He doesn’t know where whatever she’s after is hidden? Maybe?” Anna suggested.

  Charlie looked inspired. “What if it isn’t a thing that’s hidden. What if the object is the white-haired woman?” she said.

  “He’s looking for her. She’s afraid of him?” Emz threw the idea out, and Charlie caught it.

  “He’s no good guy, I can tell you that. His trail… his scent… all hint at… well, darkness. Maybe that’s why she’s here. She’s run to Havoc to get away from him, and now he’s tracked her here.”

  She regretted the sharing of information the moment she saw Anna’s face pale.

  Anna rallied. “All adding to our knowledge.” Her tone was too bright.

  Charlie had a further, darker thought. “Might explain the attack on Kitty Boyle. She needed a weapon.” Charlie could hear at once that this made things worse.

  “Well, he knows we’re onto him. And we put a stop to the white-haired woman taking the bone magic from Kitty.” Emz threw in the last and most comforting fact.

  “Two Trespassers squaring up for a fight… doesn’t sound like a great prospect.” Charlie sighed. “But that’s what we’re left with.”

  Anna drew in a deep and thoughtful breath. “You saw his face, Emz, and you said he had that oldness of Borrower, the oldest magic?” Anna was very serious.

  Emz nodded and did not really wish to add more. She was trying not to think of the terrible tunnel eyes, but her mind persisted in blinking back at them. There was no hiding this reaction from Anna.

  “He scared you.” Anna was not asking a question, she was stating yet another of their evening’s facts. She turned her gaze to Charlie. “You put yourself in danger.” Anna’s tone was sharp, her face pinched with anger. Charlie could not respond, her gaze falling to the kitchen table.

  “We have to remember that we are the Gamekeepers.” Emz tried convey the responsibility of what that entailed.

  Anna gave a harsh grunt. “Tell me you didn’t feel the danger,” she challenged.

  Charlie felt the energy of it and braved an answer. “No denying it. That said, at no point did he pursue me. He was on the backfoot from the start. He was lying in wait at…” She got no further.

  “Lying in wait? Can you hear yourself?” Anna folded her arms. “Tell me that you weren’t scared,” she demanded.

  “He ran, Anna. He turned tail at Red Hat Lane. No confrontation. No attack.” Charlie hedged. I
t failed.

  “Tell me you weren’t scared.”

  Charlie’s tongue would not behave. She could not lie about her feelings, and Anna saw it.

  “We are the Gamekeepers, Anna,” Emz said. Anna gave her a scorching glance.

  “Tell me.” Her voice was punching the air.

  Charlie’s tongue was struggling; her mouth felt dry and her nostrils were tainted with the scent of the thin man, gravestones and yew, and she wanted to run away from the ragged shadows of his trail.

  “Thought not.” Anna’s voice took on a tremor. “Who is he? Hmm? What’s he capable…” She halted, her voice cracking. The sisters could see she was shaking.

  “We have to be pro-act—” Emz wanted to be the voice of calm and reason, but Anna burst like a dam.

  “I can’t lose anyone else.” Anna’s tears were a torrent washing her face, her mouth open but no sound coming out, no more words, just grief. The sisters moved to hug her, arms folded around her like a protective cage. Her body wracked and juddered between them.

  Charlie, without thinking, felt her Strength gather in the tears, picking them up as they dropped from Anna.

  Emz saw Anna’s real face and remembered how her sister used to smile, how the light played in her eyes, and Emz felt her Strength shift, to reach out and touch that face, to keep it safe.

  Anna let out a deep moan and cried, tears, black deep and blue cold enough to fill Pike Lake. For Calum. For Ethan. For Grandma Hettie. For their mother.

  When sleep came it found Anna on the old and baggy sofa, Charlie slumped on the pulled-up chaise, and Emz folded into the arms of a leather tub chair. The Witch Ways, still in the library, still with the lights on.

  23

  A Big Pan of Hot Milk

  By rights, Aurora Foundling shouldn’t have been at the allotments. The gate was always closed at seven in the evening, except in summer. She had climbed over the five-bar gate, and as she walked across to her plot, she felt glad of the lack of people.

  She was potting up some Verbena bonariensis cuttings, and the scent of earth and the new shed was putting her to rights. It was quite a task, as she was mulling over the row she had had this afternoon with Milton Cresswell, the glazier. He had shown up at Mimosa in double quick time to help with the window. She wasn’t sure how, but it had all gone a bit sky west after that. It wasn’t entirely her fault. Was it? It was the old problem of people being unable to take any kind of instruction. Why couldn’t they do what they were told? Why did they always have to argue and be such a pain in the neck?

  Because they know their job, and your skill is being an arse.

  Her thoughts were also not doing as they were told. The voice, an old voice that she had heard since childhood, her conscience in fact, was not reassuring. Scolding was the word that best described how her conscience was sounding. Was it too difficult for Milton not to step all over the display area like that? It had taken her an hour to clear up the glass, and she hadn’t asked him for anything complicated. It wasn’t as if she’d requested he reglaze it with ancient stained glass, so why had he been so…

  You know why. You have a skill, Aurora. It is BEING AN ARSE.

  She could not help herself. She knew it. In the middle of fights or even quite mild disagreements, she felt a rush, a wild high, as her voice and her blood pressure rose. In these moments, she felt righteous and powerful. What did they know? Milton or that pink-faced woman at The Orangery tea room?

  They knew how to be soft and kind and, not even any emotions as complex as that, they knew how to be polite. It was very basic.

  She achieved. She knew that. She had a passion for her own work. She relished a morning in Mimosa with all the flowers delivered and the freedom to tie the bouquets and create the centrepieces or the wreaths. The times she was truly happy were in the garden at Mimosa or up here at the allotment sowing and growing, pinching out and potting on. Flowers. Foliage. She nested amongst them mentally. It was evident that she had a thriving and successful career as a florist. It was also evident that she was not a thriving or successful person.

  She looked up from the potting table and out across the allotments. Her plot was vivid and alive even during these dim days of early spring. Her little acreage was crisp and crackling with seed heads and dried-out fronds. Holly and ivy splashed evergreen here and there. Now she looked, she had gone a bit extra with the pumpkins last autumn — at least five were sitting on the windowsill of the shed, not to mention the fifty she’d sold at Halloween in Mimosa. Everyone came there for the best pumpkins. You could not have it all; she should consider that, perhaps. She must take stock of what was good and enjoy that.

  She could be proud, in a good way. She had success. She was just a horrible person. Ha. Well, there you go, her and the rest of the residents of Woodcastle. As she laughed to herself, the hurricane lamp by which she was working went out. The hairs on the back of her neck stiffened like quills and, on automatic pilot, she reached for the small camping stove that she was not really allowed to have in her shed.

  The hurricane lamp was battery run, and the battery was new last week. Her thoughts skittered around that fact as she lit the small two-ring stove and pulled a big cast-iron pan from the cupboard beneath. It was a hangover from her childhood that, at certain stressful moments, she had an overwhelming urge to make hot chocolate. It had always been her mother’s go-to defence mechanism. Aurora was pouring all of the three long-life milk cartons into the pan, when the sound struck her. Above. Feet pattering and an almost human growl. Aurora’s hair spiked. She could feel it stretch outwards, sharp with static. It was painful and unnerving, as if her hair had a life of its own.

  “Who’s there?” She stood at the shed door trying to look menacing with a trowel. Something was very wrong outside, but she could not pinpoint it.

  “I know you’re there.” Aurora spoke with more daring than she felt. Her scalp was painful, her hair pulling outwards as if tugged by a bully. She opened her mouth to yell out a warning, but as she did, a ghastly yowl scythed through the air. The pattering feet gained speed and a black velvet creature leapt through the darkness above and over her head.

  It was Velvet Joe, the one-eyed king of the Cordwainer cats. Moonlight illuminated his jaw stretched wide as a lion, his maw needled with sharp white teeth as he landed a few feet away, his target a creature on the path who staggered beneath the clawing cannonball. His paws scissored and sliced at his indistinct but white-furred opponent as he sang out an eerie, banshee aria. Who was his victim? Was that Malachy, the big Pyrenean mountain dog from The Hawthorns? He had white hair and a bad temper. Aurora felt sudden courage and she rushed forward with the trowel raised like a sabre.

  “Whaaaaa! Gwan! GIT! GET! GWAAAAA.”

  There was a scuffling, the drawing of blood, and Velvet Joe lurched further into the darkness. Aurora’s heart pounded, but her hair calmed. A breath or two and Velvet Joe trotted back from the darkness, his air triumphant. There was no sight of Malachy. Velvet Joe, however, gave a victory yowl and sprayed Mrs Windman’s onion patch.

  With that, Aurora poured away the scorched milk.

  Home at Mimosa, Aurora found herself digging into the cupboard under the dresser for a pan that could have been mistaken for a bath. It felt better just to see it, recalling as it did the vat of hot choc that her mother had made in it on various childhood occasions. As she filled it with milk, she rang her mother.

  “It’s not too late, is it? I’ve just seen the time…” Aurora asked as the clock showed her it was midnight, and her mother audibly yawned on the other end of the line. “Only I’ve got the big pan out and the hot choc, and I thought I would ring.”

  It had been a couple of days since they had spoken, and Aurora filled her in on all her news — the car accident featured and also something of the break-in. Now, Daisy Foundling, Aurora’s mother, was keen to drop by as soon as it was daylight.

  “Why didn’t you ring me sooner?” She sounded anxious and angry, and Aurora felt
that once more she had misread life. After the phone call was over, Aurora did feel better, and her hair was restored to its pre-Raphaelite glory and did not trouble to give her an electric shock when she reached to plait it for bed.

  She took a bath and was just locking up for the night when she spotted Velvet Joe sitting outside on the kitchen windowsill. She opened the door, and he turned his one-eyed gaze upon her, sizing her up. His gaze returned to the garden. He licked his lips and looked, to Aurora, like a guard cat. Woe betide anyone who went up against him. He was, she thought, the chieftain amongst the Cordwainer cats. She stepped back indoors and checked under the sink. The humane trap had caught a mouse. Usually she drove the prisoners out to Yarl Hill and freedom, but tonight felt different. Without a thought, she picked up the small tube and its furry inhabitant and turned to the window. Velvet Joe observed; his pink tongue licked at his lips.

  Aurora stepped back inside, shut and locked the door, and had a random thought before dropping off to sleep. Could the mouse possibly outrun Velvet Joe? It seemed unlikely.

  24

  A Hunted Mouse

  Nuala Whitemain had courted and triumphed over disaster in the past, but never had she felt as threatened as she did now.

  She was a hunted mouse, scratched at and chased down on all sides. Firstly, the thorn-fanged brambles at the florist shop had snared her within an inch of her life. Her fingers had bled from tearing at the bough that held her, her breath choked from her throat. Her body had been lifted upwards, so that she could look down and see which paving stone the bramble would smash her against. Old magic thickened in its sap, ringing out indignation, and the Red Wrangle like a tourniquet made that hand almost useless.

  The bramble had flung her against the wall of the churchyard and then risen up, high as a cliff, the limbs and branches of it rattling their warning so she dare not try them again.

  After that battle, Nuala decided that the girl was still fair game away from the shop. With this end in mind, she had dogged her every footstep. The girl’s nocturnal visit to the allotment had looked like an opportunity, not an ambush.