Crow Heart (The Witch Ways Book 4)

by Helen Slavin

“So Aurora got caught in the crossfire between the Trespasser and the cats? Collateral damage.” Anna liked the logic pinning down the general madness.

  “Again.” Emz threw the thought in.

  “Again?” Anna’s brow furrowed.

  “She lives at Mimosa; there was that break-in. Now she’s at the allotments when the cats and the Trespasser kick off.”

  “Kitty doesn’t have an allotment, does she?” Emz asked. Anna shook her head.

  “Lucky it was Aurora, really,” Charlie said. “With her cast-iron personality.”

  But Anna’s mind was clicking. “Hang on a minute though… that’s twice. Like with Kitty,” she said.

  “So? Kitty’s first encounter was fifty years ago,” Emz reasoned.

  “It’s not twice anything. Aurora wasn’t hurt in either incident.” Charlie was sensible. “What’s she got to do with Havoc, anyway? She’s a florist. D’you think one of the Trespassers needed an emergency wreath?” The attempted joke of it was superseded by her memory of his scent, of gravestones and yew, of the crumpled figure of Kitty Boyle when they had found her.

  “Although…” Emz said, but got no further as the door behind them opened and the Way sisters were disturbed to see their topic of conversation standing on the threshold.

  Aurora Foundling tossed her hair. “Winn around at all?” she asked in her usual haughty manner.

  In the car park beyond, Seren Lake could be seen locking her car.

  “She’s over at Prickles at the minute,” Emz informed her.

  Aurora swished back through the door, waving magisterially to Seren as she shouted, “I told you not to lock up, Seren. We need to shoot round to Prickles.”

  The door shut, closing on the barrage of orders she was clearly issuing to Seren with the authority of an invading general. The Way sisters watched until the little car was hidden by the trees on the main driveway.

  “She seems unharmed.” Charlie smirked.

  Charlie was good at cleaning down after the pop-up’s rush hour. The neat kitchen in the back of The Orangery gleamed.

  “You know you are still wearing your Drawbridge clothes?” Anna asked as she tilled up and Charlie put away the crockery. Charlie glanced down at her t-shirt with its logo.

  “Can’t say I noticed.” She sniffed at the shirt. “Should dredge up something that’s clean.” She grinned. There was a clattering from The Orangery itself, the doors opening, and footsteps and voices.

  “We’re closed,” Charlie yelled with no ceremony and stepped out of the kitchen to act as tea-room bouncer. But it was Emz hurrying across the pop-up as Seren stood at the door with the alertness of a bank heist lookout.

  “What’s up?” Charlie asked, as Anna came from the kitchen to investigate.

  Emz hurried them both to the door. “No time to explain. We’ve got to hurry. Winn’s on her own with Aurora.”

  As they scurried across the car park, Seren already had the engine running.

  The Long Gallery at Hartfield Hall looked, on arm’s-length inspection, the epitome of country-house elegance. The floor-length bow windows looked out across the lawns and dripped golden spring sunlight onto Indian carpets that had been nibbled at the edges by only the rarest of moths. The furniture was tasteful and shabby chic by neglect rather than interior design. The centrepiece was a towering crystal chandelier, which was burning all its candlelight over the vast acreage of polished oak table. The rumours were that Oliver Cromwell had eaten toast at this table, but for now Aurora Foundling had commandeered it for what appeared to be a Bridal Battleplan.

  “So. We are all familiar with Dunham Park?” Aurora was handing out a very tasteful brochure with a photograph of a large country house.

  “Yes. It’s out at Petty France, just off the dual carriageway out of Castlebury,” Winn remarked. “Used to be the Fitzherbert Malham place, until their great grandson lost it in a bet to my great-great-grandfather’s friend, Josiah Rightman, and of course his great grandson, Caspar, is Cadenza’s…” Winn noted the look on Aurora’s face and curtailed the history of the house.

  “In the last five years, it has been the destination country house venue for every wedding within a twenty-mile radius. The place is an event hotspot.” Aurora flipped open the brochure; the others followed suit. Dunham Park looked impressive, basking in neoclassical architecture and Georgian proportions. The images of gossamer wedding gowns and champagne flutes, hothouse bouquets and amuse-bouche bits at the bridal breakfast filled every tasteful page.

  “They offer everything. I mean everything. They have an in-house designer, Estella Wilde Couture, if you need a dress. They cater. They do the flowers, the favours, the cake, the wines and spirits. Some poor minion ties up the endless ribbons for the favours. Last year, they were alleged to have had a bride ride in on an elephant, and if you don’t believe it, there are pics online.” Aurora took a breath. “Until midnight last night.”

  The Way sisters kept their silence about the significance of this liminal hour.

  “So. Midnight. Boom. Gone under. No one knew. No warning or hint. They catered a wedding only last Saturday.” She looked up at them all. “And they had a wedding booked for this Saturday.” She let the words sink in, her eyes moving around the gathered company. “Yes. A bride and groom, expecting their day of a lifetime, left high and dry. No venue. No dress for the bride or her retinue. No caterer. No horse-drawn barouche. Not a sugared almond.” Aurora’s eyes glittered with delight.

  “Well, I for one feel very sorry for them. I assume they won’t be getting a refund? Although they probably have insurance…” Winn looked put out on the couple’s behalf.

  Aurora laughed and tossed her hair. “Are you sorry enough to step into this disaster? Are you sorry enough to save their wedding day?” There was no trace of doubt in her voice. Her confidence was not instantly matched by her audience.

  “But, surely, they haven’t any money, so how…?”

  Aurora cut her off.

  “We step in now. Insurance later. In the meantime, I can get us coverage, top local news publicity as the wedding planners who save the day. ‘Save the Day’ should be our company name.” She was glowing, her hair like a woodland bonfire in the crisp spring sunlight coming through the windows. “Who is with me? Who will save the day?” She slapped the table.

  “A wedding. This Saturday?” Anna wanted confirmation of the proposed impossible deadline. “Today is Tuesday, and it’s already half-past three.”

  Aurora gleamed.

  By five o’clock, Seren, Winn, and Aurora were on their way to meet with the couple and pitch them the Hartfield Save the Day Wedding.

  Anna looked up. “Does anyone else feel as if they were just caught up in a tornado?” she asked.

  Charlie laughed and leaned back in her chair. She looked up at the chandelier. “It’s certainly a challenge. If they give us the go ahead, that is. They might say no.”

  Emz gave a snorting laugh. “Say no? To Aurora?”

  No one laughed.

  “You make a good point,” Charlie conceded and continued to look up into the sparkle and glitter of the chandelier.

  “Doesn’t Ivan Herald own a wine merchants?” Anna asked after a moment of thought.

  Now Charlie laughed.

  “I’m serious. It’s a useful connection.” Anna was determined. “We need all the help we can get for Saturday.”

  As Charlie tried to argue against this valid point, Emz was niggled at by the image earlier in the meeting of Aurora with the sunlight on her red hair. She was troubled by the shadows and light of it, which struck her as odd, and it was a feeling she had had before with Aurora. That day at The Orangery with the chair fight, how Aurora’s hair had seemed — there was no other word for it — alive. The sensation Emz had had, as if someone was with Aurora, hiding. Was it just Aurora’s forceful personality, the way she used that wild and beautiful mane? It was dramatic. Operatic, even. Was Emz jealous, perhaps? She thought of her own mouse-brown mop. She�
��d always wanted red hair, squirrel red, a deep burnished umber. Fox red. Which was Aurora’s? There was a red thread somewhere, wasn’t there? She couldn’t pick at the fraying edge of her thought.

  “…even listening?” Anna and Charlie were looking at her. Wherever the thought was leading was lost as Emz resumed practicalities.

  Later, as Anna cleared away their tea things into the old kitchen in the main house at Hartfield, she happened to glance into one of the cups, at the dregs left there. She almost dropped it as the words printed out at her.

  Selfish Beauty, Thoughtless Pride,

  Ruthless Guile, A Cruel Heart.

  The cup was Spode, a jade-green chinoiserie pattern. Who had been drinking from this cup? She looked in all the other cups and saw leaves that were haphazard and carrying no message. Her hand was shaking as she took out her phone and snapped a picture.

  Back in the Long Gallery, Charlie was clearing away the bridal battleplan and pondering the barefaced cheek she would have to find in order to ask Ivan Herald about wine in light of her recent and unorthodox resignation. Post-It notes in the office. She wondered if anyone had even spotted them yet. Perhaps she had been hasty and there might be time to salvage something — her pride possibly. As she thought about it, her glance drifted up to the chandelier and the rainbows it twirled into the air. There were cobwebs woven in and around it like an elaborate Gothic spider tapestry. Someone would have to get up there with the stepladder and dust that. Probably.

  She considered asking Winn where she kept her tallest stepladder, but a glance out of the window showed her that twilight was falling. She could see the trees of Leap Woods carpeting the ridge and those of Havoc in the near distance beyond it. It was time to head out for the night’s patrol.

  27

  Wort and Mash

  Aurora Foundling set up a group chat to project manage The Wedding. It was Wednesday and only ten o’clock, and already Charlie had been forwarded three lists, all couched in language that suggested they were less To Do lists and more To Do or Die.

  Havoc Wood had been quiet last night, a fact which ought to have cheered Charlie but instead made her uneasy. Was this the calm before a storm? Were their Trespassers, in fact, working out wilier ways to Woodcastle? Was this how Grandma Hettie had lived? On the edge, worried over the Wood?

  One of Charlie’s to-dos was a visit to Drawbridge to arrange the beer. She half dreaded rolling up there, but, as she had suspected, no one had noticed her resignation, ascertained by the fact that the Post-Its were still stuck to the wall. There was no one in the office and, to her consternation, not a great deal going on in the brewhouse.

  Charlie could not help herself. The lack of bubbling and fermenting liquors ground at her and so, within less than an hour of her arrival, there were mash tuns boiling and the rich and earthy scents of brewing steamed through the building. She took Carl aside to give him a to-do list of his own for the rest of the week, one item of which was delivering beer for The Wedding to Hartfield on Thursday. Charlie had a change of heart and crossed that off the list.

  “Actually, Carl, forget that. I’ll be in tomorrow morning.” She made a note on her hand of her new to-dos. “I’ll sort it myself.” She had a strong feeling that no one else could be entrusted with the task. She had a flashback to the Hillman wedding, an event hijacked by Mrs Fyfe, and so Charlie opted to leave nothing to chance.

  And there it was, the word “chance”, and Michael’s face popped unbidden into her head, sliced at by a single red-hearted card, and she was snappy with Carl before taking her leave.

  As she drove back to Cob Cottage, her thoughts rattled. Uppermost was the Havoc business, but it was woven with her Drawbridge woes. She loved her job. She loved the brewery building and the tuns and barrels. Returning today hinted at just how hard it was going to be to sever herself from the place. Would it fall apart without her? It looked that way, if this morning’s lack of enterprise was evidence. She couldn’t let that happen. Except, of course, it was not hers to save. Her mind dealt the Ace of Hearts once more, and she was so troubled she missed the turn off for Cob Cottage.

  She patrolled to focus her thoughts. The Save the Day Wedding was well under way, and she was aware of the need to keep watch. There was nothing untoward and, as she strode on her paths, she punched her intentions into her Beacons and boundaries. It was as physical as hammering in fence posts, and she felt energised. She was pernickety, taking extra care to be aware of scents or pinpricks.

  At Crow Houses, her boots chugged against the exposed chalk downland. The bridleway held only a trace of Judith and a few horses on a hack from the stables at Caracole. Charlie’s recollection that Judith had been attacked by Borrower made her vigilant. If being touched by Havoc and its inhabitants was a danger, then she had no intention of letting Judith be a victim twice. It cost her nothing to track them, unseen, for a short distance to make certain that they were not being followed or used as a shield or cloak by any Trespasser.

  Not a glimmer or glamour or a twinkle. It did not make Charlie let any part of her guard down. She had shaken the Trespasser; this quiet afternoon might be their only chance to regroup. She liked the way she was thinking, and she thought about the cheese left in the fridge at Cob and whether that heel of bread left over from the bakery might still be toastable. A feast.

  At Cob Cottage some time later, the kettle whistled furiously, but Charlie was busy attempting to put out the flaming toast. The cheese had ignited, and thick and bitter-black smoke billowed across the kitchen. Charlie coughed and spluttered as she wrestled the grill pan onto the draining board and covered it with a wet tea towel. More smoke billowed, and the kettle stopped whistling. Had it boiled dry?

  “Barbecue or burnt offering?” said a voice, which choked itself into a cough.

  The smoke cleared a little, and Charlie saw the back door standing wide open and Ivan Herald striding across the cottage’s living space to open the porch door. It opened; the smoke made a slinking exit. Ivan Herald did not follow it. He moved back to the kitchen.

  “What the hell?” Charlie leaned across the sink to open the window. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” was his response.

  Charlie’s brain ground its gears for a moment. “I live here.” This sane response seemed to brush off his hand-stitched suit.

  “You do. But you work at the brewery. I expected you to be in the office or the brewhouse.” His voice was as cool and steady as the brook at the foot of Bennet Hill. Charlie felt a knot of emotion that was one strand panic and another of hurt.

  “I resigned.” She would stand her ground. Now that she’d said it out loud, there was no backtracking. That did not make her feel better. She could hear her own voice and its misery. Call Me Ivan raised an eyebrow. “Yes. I noticed the wall of Post-Its.” He took in a deep breath. “Not the usual format but, hey, ten out of ten for creativity.”

  Charlie’s knotted emotions coiled into something resembling a double-clove hitch. She was still standing by the door, and he was not reading the body language.

  “You should leave.”

  Call Me Ivan held up his hands as if in surrender. “I probably should, but I’m not going to until we’ve had a grown-up conversation about a handover at Drawbridge.” He was business-like.

  Charlie considered. “You accept my resignation then?” she asked.

  Call Me Ivan lowered his hands. “Do you retract it?”

  Here was a chance, but she could not take it. Charlie shook her head, and Ivan nodded.

  “Should have had a bet with myself on that one.” His tone was resigned, and he gave a shrug. “If that’s what you want, that’s fine. I think it’s only fair to ask you to work a month’s notice. I need you to help with a handover, probably to one of my guys from Castlebury.” He was calm and fair.

  “It’s your brewery.” Charlie had no other comebacks. Her emotions were strangling her. Hurt. Grief. Anger.

  “I had hoped to re
tain your skills, Charlotte.”

  It shocked her, to hear her name on his lips once more, and she was flipped back to that last night at Pandemonium with Aron. The Ace of Hearts shuffled and dealt itself across her mind, making it difficult to concentrate.

  “I will be honest and say that, as far as I’m concerned, you are the driving force for Drawbridge. You are the Brewster.”

  She was moved by his use of the old term “brewster”. She dared to look up into his face. It was, when you took a moment, a handsome face, creased a little by worry, the bright, hazel eyes direct.

  “Is there a way I could persuade you back?”

  Call Me Ivan’s quizzical face was hard to look away from. If she looked hard enough, perhaps she might be able to unravel these emotions. She wanted to beg for her job back, but she also wished to make a stand. No. That was wrong. She had no idea what she was doing. She was thrashing about.

  Call Me Ivan took further charge of the conversation. “I heard about your mother. I am so very, very sorry.”

  Charlie recalled the flowers he had sent. She wanted to thank him but knew only tears would come out, and so she nodded.

  “I wanted to talk with you and suggest that, in the light of what happened, maybe you might want to hold off on big career decisions? Give yourself some time.”

  Charlie felt the tears starting to escape. She blinked them back. Call Me Ivan was quiet. There was the sound of cloth, and as she opened her eyes, he offered a white handkerchief.

  “Grief…” he paused; she saw him struggle, “…it’s powerful. If you like, if you wanted, I’ve come up with a possible way forward for us.” He gestured to her and then himself. “I want to offer you a consultancy.” His brow furrowed, earnest.

  “Con-what?” Charlie was feeling lightheaded. Perhaps the cheese smoke had got to her and this was all a cheese dream.

  “Consultancy. You work for me… for the brewery, on a freelance contract. You will be Brewster in Chief, on a rolling retainer, but you’re not obliged to be there all the time. You parachute in two, maybe three, days a week?”