Witch Fire

by Laura Powell

  With a sigh, Glory looked down at the pebble in her hand, and then over the cluttered roofs. ‘She’s out there, somewhere,’ she said softly. ‘Waiting for me to find her. If I run fast enough, leap high enough . . .’ She turned to Lucas. ‘You’ll help me, won’t you?’

  Chapter 2

  After parting from Glory, Lucas went for a walk as fast-paced as it was aimless. He had nowhere he wanted to go. Once, his free time had been filled with activity clubs and house parties, sports matches and socials. As his life had become more complicated, it had also become emptier.

  It wasn’t only Lucas’s life that had been turned upside down. His father had resigned from the Office of the Inquisitorial Court on the grounds that he was taking the fall for the collapse of a high-profile witch-trial. The real reason was that anyone with a witch-relative was barred from working in the Inquisition. In the normal course of things, the resignation of the Chief Prosecutor would have been big news. But in the wake of the witch-terrorism conspiracy, the newspapers had other headlines to splash.

  Lucas knew his father did not blame him for the end of his inquisitorial career, but he still felt responsible. It was one of the reasons he was glad when WICA’s schedule kept him away from home.

  In addition to the guard at the gate, and other standard security measures, all the outside doors of the Stearne residence had iron bells encased over the threshold. They were wired to a central alarm system, ready to give warning if a witch hexing a bane approached. Witches were allergic to iron, and the iron in the bells was able to pick up on the fae used in harmful witchwork.

  Although Lucas knew, rationally, he wasn’t going to set off any alarms, he wasn’t able to forget he was living in a house designed to withstand witches. Even the family portraits – all those witch-hunting heroes, pillars of society, defenders of the realm – were a reminder of how his place in the world had changed.

  He found his stepsister Philomena in the kitchen, painting her nails. She wrinkled her nose at him.

  ‘Ew. You need a shower. What on earth have you been doing?’

  ‘I’d tell you,’ he said, getting a carton of juice from the fridge and glugging it down, ‘but then I’d have to kill you.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’ She tossed her hair. Philomena worked hard at many things (getting invited to the right parties, being seen with the right people, wearing the right clothes), but a really excellent head-toss was her greatest skill. With that one gesture, she could express flirtation, amusement, boredom or contempt. This was definitely contempt. ‘I bet all you’re doing at Spook Central is making coffee and filing, anyway.’

  The truth was, Philomena felt hard done by. For all her artful head-tossing, her determination and charm, the whole getting-invited-to-the-right-parties-by-the-right-people business had always been easier for Lucas. The scandal of his fae was meant to redress the balance. Yet somehow her insufferable younger stepbrother had turned what should have been the ultimate disgrace to his own advantage. He didn’t go to school. He didn’t have a curfew. He got to be deliberately mysterious about everything he did. This was only more proof, thought Philomena Carrington, that life was monstrously unfair.

  ‘The party last night was un-be-lievable, by the way,’ she announced. ‘Such a shame you couldn’t be there.’

  Lucas concentrated on buttering a mound of toast.

  ‘Bea Allen asked after you. Quite a lot of people did. They’re all dying to know what’s going on. Nobody believes in this mysterious virus you’re supposed to have had. Some people think it’s a nervous breakdown. Others reckon it’s drugs.’

  ‘I’m guessing you did nothing to put them straight.’

  She looked virtuous. ‘I said that you’re working through some personal issues, and it wouldn’t be kind of me to say anything more.’

  Lucas had been a witch for about four months. His initial absence from school had been explained away by a serious illness. He was supposed to still be recuperating, but Philomena had a point. It was time for a more sustainable cover story. Since his membership of WICA was secret, there was, in theory, no reason he couldn’t resume his former friendships and occupations at some point. Yet he had no real desire to try. Too much had changed.

  ‘The funny thing is,’ Philomena continued, ‘people would be less shocked if you turned into a druggie or nutjob than if you came out as a hag.’

  Hag was a dirty word for witches. Lucas reached for another piece of toast. ‘Don’t be vulgar, Philly, dear,’ he said, using his stepmother’s voice.

  Another head-toss. ‘Well, I’m sure I can come up with some amusing alternatives. Maybe I should start a rumour that you’ve had a lobotomy. Or a sex-change. I’ll say you’ve asked us to start calling you Lucy.’

  ‘Try that, and I’ll hex you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I? There’s a bane to give a person breath like rotting meat. It’s irreversible too. A lifetime of putrid breath: think about it.’

  Philomena’s reaction was extreme. ‘No . . . please . . . don’t hurt me . . .’ She shrank away from him fearfully. Too late, Lucas realised they had an audience. His father was standing in the doorway behind him.

  ‘My study,’ Ashton said. ‘Now.’ As soon as his back was turned, Philomena smirked in triumph.

  ‘She knew I was joking,’ Lucas protested, once his father and he were alone. The study too was fae-proofed. The iron shutters over the windows and the iron panel on the door were in place to block witches trying to look in with a scrying bowl.

  ‘It’s no laughing matter.’ Ashton Stearne’s steely blue stare, legendary in court, was now turned on his son. ‘Threatening people with witchwork is a criminal offence, and one the Inquisition takes very seriously. What if Philomena makes an official complaint?’

  ‘But she’s – we’re – family.’

  ‘The history of witch-trials is full of family denouncements.’ His father sighed, then softened. ‘Not that Philly would ever do such a thing. I have impressed upon her how important, and sensitive, your position is. And I know that she can be a little . . . provoking . . . at times. But please, Lucas. You’re a professional now. A government agent. It’s not only in your working life that you have to act older than your age.’

  ‘Right. Sorry.’

  ‘Anyway, that’s not really what I got you in here to talk about. Take a seat, won’t you – don’t look so worried! I only want to hear how you’re getting on. I know, of course, that WICA are pleased with you.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Lucas was surprised. His father had been very reluctant to give his consent for Lucas to join the agency, and they rarely talked about his witchwork activities.

  ‘Your witch warden makes regular reports.’

  Lucas frowned. He hadn’t realised Officer Branning was reporting his activities to his father as well as the Inquisition.

  ‘I was glad to hear that you’re keeping up with your academic studies too,’ Ashton continued. ‘So you’re clearly settling well into your new life. However . . . I did wonder . . . We’ve never talked – not in detail, that is – about what happened with Gideon and that man Striker.’

  Gideon Hale was a young inquisitor, and Striker a renegade witch-hunter, who had been involved in the witch-terrorism conspiracy. After Lucas fell into their hands, he had been subject to some of the Inquisition’s more brutal techniques. He had got quite good at not thinking about his time in the basement cell.

  ‘There’s not much to say. I had a lucky escape, all things considered.’

  ‘So has Gideon. His lawyer did well to get him that plea bargain.’

  ‘Yes. I heard.’

  ‘And how do you feel about it?’

  ‘Pissed off. But I’ll get over it.’

  ‘Hm. You’ve been rather quiet lately. And you look tired.’

  ‘I’ve been . . . out for a run. Maybe I overdid it.’

  ‘Are you sleeping properly?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

&
nbsp; Generally, this was true. He’d had the occasional flying dream, but no nightmares about his interrogation. The flashbacks came in the daytime, when he was least expecting them. He would be doing something ordinary, thinking entirely ordinary thoughts, and suddenly be caught by a drenching breathlessness, like a cold fist squeezing his lungs. And before he could blink the image away, there was Gideon, smiling. A hand on a lever. The leather straps. The iron and ice.

  But these moments were over almost as soon as they’d begun. They were manageable.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lucas said, ‘lots of people get ducked, all the time.’

  Ashton Stearne would have ducked witches, or at least witnessed it. All inquisitors did at some point in their career. Perhaps he had taken photographs, or made notes, as the captive was strapped into the ducking-chair, and plunged backwards into the iron tank of cold water, again and again and again. It was the only way to drag the fae-stain out of a suspect witch.

  ‘There was nothing conventional, let alone justified, about what those thugs did to you.’ Was he imagining it, or did his father’s voice have a defensive note? ‘Using a bridle too – those contraptions have been outlawed since the last century. You were in danger of losing your life. There’s no shame in admitting that’s a difficult thing to deal with.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed. Of anything.’

  Their eyes met. Ashton cleared his throat. ‘You know, Lucas, after your mother died, I worked very hard to keep my emotions at bay. I wasn’t ready to admit I was angry, as well as grieving.’

  Lucas’s mother, Camilla Stearne, had been assassinated during the Endor witch-terrorist campaign in the late 1990s. Ashton had often talked to Lucas about his mother’s life, but never about her death. The sudden introduction of the subject was disconcerting.

  ‘In the end,’ Ashton continued, ‘I decided to take some time out and get help, professional help, to work through my feelings. Now, I’m not saying that you need –’

  ‘Good,’ Lucas interrupted. ‘Because there’s nothing wrong with me. My work at WICA’s proof of that. Like you said, I’m doing well. I’m feeling well too. Everything’s fine.’

  ‘All right,’ his father said. He rubbed his forehead, and tried to smile. ‘All right, it’s your call. As long as you can restrain yourself from turning your stepsister into a toad, then I suppose there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Fair enough. And actually . . . since we’re here . . . there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. It’s to do with Glory.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. A rather remarkable girl, by all accounts.’

  ‘Has Jonah been reporting on her too?’

  Ashton didn’t answer directly. ‘Talented though she is, Glory hasn’t had your advantages: a stable home, a good education, moral guidance. Then there’s her coven background. It’s only to be expected her presence at WICA has ruffled a few feathers.’

  ‘Gideon Hale had a good education and moral upbringing and the rest of it,’ Lucas retorted. He paused. ‘And Glory isn’t just connected to the covens. Her mother worked for the Inquisition, didn’t she?’

  His father became very still, his voice very quiet. ‘What do you know about that?’

  So Lucas told him about using witchwork to hack into the classified section of the National Witchkind Database.

  ‘I was trying to find out about Angeline Starling, you see. Then I saw that her file was linked to Edie’s. There wasn’t much information; only that she was recruited by the Witchcrime Directorate for something called Operation Swan. And that you were one of the inquisitors who supervised her case.’

  Ashton did not say anything for a long while. His face was closed-off, concentrating. ‘How much have you told Glory?’

  ‘Not all of it. That is, she knows her mother could still be alive. And I told her that Edie’d been registered as a witch. But she’s determined to find out more. I want to know more too.’

  Lucas spoke more defiantly then he meant to, but his father didn’t seem to notice. He started to speak, then lapsed into silence again. This hesitance was uncharacteristic, yet had been part of their interactions ever since the arrival of Lucas’s fae.

  ‘The other inquisitors involved in her case are retired, or else dead,’ Ashton said at last, as if to himself. ‘I will need authorisation. Your timing is unfortunate. But perhaps . . . inevitable. I’d better make some calls.’

  And then he said something that sent a chill through Lucas’s heart.

  ‘I had my misgivings from the first. These things can’t stay buried for ever.’

  Chapter 3

  Glory did not return home with any more enthusiasm than Lucas had. After leaving the coven, the government had provided her and her father Patrick with a small council flat. Glory knew it was impossible for them to continue living at Cooper Street. But Grange House still felt like foreign territory.

  Cooper Street was on the edge of the notorious Rockwood Estate, a concrete jungle of festering maisonettes and needle-strewn alleys, overshadowed by a lone tower block. The Grange was also located in the East End borough of Hallam, but at the opposite end. It was quiet and well-tended, respectable. Yet Glory was homesick for the old neighbourhood. Witchkind had always flourished on the margins of society, and Glory had walked tall through Rockwood’s dark corners and grimy courts. She had been sure of herself then: a Starling Girl and coven witch, ready to claim her birthright.

  As she put her key in the door to 24b she heard voices in the kitchen. Her dad had company. Someone from Cooper Street perhaps? Her stomach tightened. She missed them, in spite of herself: the quarrelsome, jostling boys, the hard-bitten men, and the fierce old lady who’d brought her up.

  But their visitor was one of their new neighbours; a woman who lived on the floor below. She and Patrick were sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of tea. And a plate of the posh biscuits.

  ‘Hello, love,’ said her dad. ‘You remember Peggy, don’t you?’

  Glory squinted at the woman suspiciously. Small, freckly and plain-faced, but cheerful with it. The busybody type, no doubt. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘What a nice colour you’ve got,’ Peggy said brightly. ‘Been out for a run?’

  ‘Sorta.’

  ‘I’m trying to get your dad involved in the Residents’ Association,’ Peggy explained. ‘He used to be an accountant, I hear. We could do with someone who’s good with numbers.’

  ‘Or at cooking the books,’ Glory muttered, rummaging in a cupboard for tea. It was how Patrick had paid his way, back in the coven. ‘Good luck with that,’ she said in her normal voice.

  Patrick had never got over his wife’s disappearance. When Glory was small, he had been a kind and steady presence, but as she grew older he had retreated further into his own world. He seemed content to stay in the background, as easy to tune out as the flashes and bleeps from his endless computer games. Glory, meanwhile, had been taken under the wing of her great-aunt. Before coming to the Grange, she and her father had gone for days at a time without exchanging more than a few words.

  Glory looked at her dad’s thinning hair and faded features with a familiar mix of exasperation and love. Maybe a project of some kind would be good for him. But she was reluctant to encourage this Peggy person – nosy neighbours meant trouble. It wasn’t just their coven past the two of them had to conceal. Her work at WICA was even more of a secret. Patrick was one of the most private people she knew. Still, could he be trusted not to let something slip?

  She announced she was going for a shower, hoping their visitor would take the hint and leave. She had homework to finish, after all.

  The biggest shock on joining WICA was the news that she was expected to keep up her formal education. Yet Lucas took their study scheme in his stride, apparently effortlessly, and anything he could do, then so could she. For although Glory was as powerful a witch as Lucas, and every bit as smart and strong, she was beginning to realise that getting the same respect as him wasn’t just about her fae. It was about sticking to th
e rules and ticking off checklists. It was also, apparently, about Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar.

  But only five minutes after returning from the bathroom to her study files, her mobile beeped. It was a text from her Cousin Troy. ‘Coffee?’

  Glory smiled guiltily. She shouldn’t be communicating with Troy, let alone meeting with him. If WICA found out, she’d be in real trouble.

  Troy was not a witch, but an economics student. He had no criminal record. He had helped Glory and Lucas to bring down Silas Paterson, the corrupt inquisitor who’d led the witch-terrorist conspiracy. But Troy was the grandson of Lily Starling, son of Charlie Morgan, and heir to the Wednesday Coven. That made him an enemy of the state.

  Although the Inquisition led the fight against organised witchcrime, it had support from the police and other security services. WICA knew about Glory’s background when they recruited her, but she had made it clear from the start that she wouldn’t turn snitch. Even so, when Glory left the coven, she had not expected Troy to forgive the betrayal.

  Yet, not for the first time, she had underestimated him. Somehow, they reached a compromise. Troy trusted she wouldn’t use her knowledge of coven business and the Morgan family against them; Glory trusted he would keep the secret of her new life. In fact, he even helped maintain it – by spreading a rumour he was bankrolling her and Patrick after they’d been thrown out of Cooper Street.

  She and Troy didn’t meet very often. He was even busier than she was. Only twenty-one, he’d had to take a break from his postgraduate degree to oversee the running of the business while his father Charlie recovered from an attempt on his life. Although neither of them explicitly discussed their work, both understood what the other had given up as well as gained in assuming their new roles. Perhaps this was why they’d made the effort to stay friends.