Witch Fire

by Laura Powell

  ‘Edie was, of course, a person of interest to the Inquisition pretty much from the moment of her birth. But it was the time she spent as a child with Endor that made her such a potentially valuable asset. Accordingly, the Inquisition chose to keep her under surveillance rather than bringing her in for testing and registration. The strategy paid off. Sixteen years after she and her mother left Endor, Edie Starling was approached by one of their agents in London, and invited to join their cause. Initially, she refused.’

  Lucas held his breath. So they were coming to the point at last.

  ‘By then, the UK had endured three years of Endor terror: witch-hexed assassinations, sabotage, epidemics and banes. In Edie Starling, the Inquisition saw a unique opportunity to infiltrate the organisation. Her history and connections made her a natural convert to Endor’s cause. And so “Operation Swan” was born.’

  ‘You’re saying Edie agreed to leave home and go undercover among a bunch of terrorists?’ Lucas frowned. ‘Just like that?’

  Ashton didn’t lower his eyes or alter his voice. Yet this time there was something effortful about his calm. ‘Edie was . . . persuaded . . . it was in her family’s best interest. The Inquisition had proof of her contact with a terrorist operative and this, in addition to her coven ties, would have been enough to put her away for a good number of years. Her associates at Cooper Street would also be vulnerable. By agreeing to work as a double agent, she was ensuring their continued safety, as well as that of the country at large.’

  ‘I get it. She was blackmailed.’ Lucas meant to sound impassive too, but the bitterness rose in his throat. ‘And what was your role in this, Dad?’

  ‘The Chief Prosecutor tasked me with preparing the legal case against Edie. I did not find out that it had been used to pressure her until later. When I did, I voiced my objections. Edie was an intelligent and capable young woman. But her background was murky, to say the least, and her character wayward. Whatever the ethics, it was a risky gamble.’

  ‘It was for Edie, yeah.’ His face was hot.

  ‘Lucas.’ His father’s eyes looked tired, almost grey. ‘I regret I did not object more strongly, and that events turned out as they did. But we were at war. It was a desperate, dangerous time. We all make our decisions without the power of hindsight.’

  In those days, Ashton had been an ambitious young inquisitorial lawyer. He was also a widower. Two years prior to Edie Starling being brought into the Witchcrime Directorate, his wife’s mind had been invaded by an Endor witch, and her body bound to a poppet crafted with fae. Camilla Stearne had been forced to drive her own car off the road, to smash it into a twist of metal and flame. Lucas thought, as his father meant him to, of all the other families whose lives were left in ruins by Endor’s campaign.

  He swallowed. ‘It was your war too,’ he said to Jack Rawdon. ‘When did you find out about this?’

  Rawdon gave a small, apologetic shrug. ‘Only after Glory applied to WICA. During Operation Swan, I was part of an anti-Endor task force that involved all branches of the security services, but communication was not always as . . . open . . . as it could have been. Especially where WICA was involved.’

  He glanced quickly at Ashton and Commander Hughes. ‘I suspect the fact that Edie was not a professional agent, and had no establishment or institutional ties, made her, in the Inquisition’s eyes, easier to manage.’

  You mean easier to isolate and manipulate, thought Lucas. Almost as if he had read his mind, Rawdon said, ‘But you should know, Lucas, that in spite of the element of coercion involved, Edie showed a natural aptitude for undercover work. I’ve seen her files. In her contact with her handler she seemed, if anything, to relish the challenge.’

  ‘A challenge that probably got her killed.’ Edie had left a note to her abandoned family: I love you, but it’s better if I go. Forgive me. Lucas remembered Glory’s face when she told him, and his heart lurched.

  ‘Well. That’s the question,’ said the Commander. She had spent most of the conversation tilting back on her chair, idly tap-tapping a pen against her teeth. Now she snapped upright. ‘Operation Swan was initially a short-term assignment. Edie was asked to gather intelligence on a top-level Endor leader who was trying to enter the country. After this was achieved, she told her handler that she’d heard whispers relating to a potential attack on British interests overseas, and requested permission to follow the lead. She volunteered, in fact. It was only then that she left home.

  ‘For three months, Edie Starling worked undercover in mainland Europe, from where she supplied the Inquisition with information that was used to prevent several attacks on British businesses and residences. Then she disappeared. It was feared she’d either been discovered and killed by Endor, or turned by them. But Endor was already moving its attention away from the UK. The immediate crisis had passed. One AWOL witch-agent didn’t seem worth the trouble.

  ‘However, five years ago, a source reported a sighting of Edie in southern Spain. It might not be the same woman, of course. But if there’s a possibility she is still alive, there’s a possibility she’s now working for Endor. That makes her a potential threat – especially if she ever decides to contact her daughter.’

  Lucas felt a new unease. ‘It’s been twelve years since she left. If she’d wanted to get in touch, wouldn’t she have done so before?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Commander, ‘but Gloriana’s almost grown-up now, and a powerful witch in her own right. If Edie discovers this, she might try to take advantage.’

  ‘Seems to me she was the one who got taken advantage of. Bullied and blackmailed, then tossed aside – “not worth the trouble” of finding.’ With effort, Lucas moderated his tone. ‘That’s how Glory would see it, anyway.’

  The Commander smiled grimly. ‘And that’s why she can’t be told. Not yet. She’s immature and wilful, with much to learn and even more to prove.’

  ‘In the meantime,’ said Rawdon, ‘now that Glory is here and part of our team, we’re in a good position to keep an eye on her. If Edie is alive, and if she decides to contact her daughter, then we’ll know about it.’

  ‘So Glory’s being used as bait.’

  And who were ‘we’, anyhow, Lucas wondered. WICA? The Inquisition? Did that mean him too?

  Rawdon put up his hands reassuringly. ‘Glory was recruited to this division for the same reasons you were. She’s an outstandingly gifted witch who has already displayed great courage and resourcefulness in her work against the Paterson conspiracy.

  ‘Yes, she has a few rough edges. She needs guidance and support. But I believe in her. What’s more, I need her. Soon, I’ll be calling on the two of you to put your talents to work outside the confines of this agency.’

  Jack Rawdon gave the warm, frank smile that had made him the poster-boy for Socially Acceptable Witchkind. Lucas felt a spark of excitement in spite of himself. Did his boss have a mission for them at last?

  ‘Of course, Glory needs to be told the truth one day,’ Rawdon continued. ‘But the likelihood of her mother being alive remains small, and the chance of her trying to get in contact is even smaller. I think we can afford to give Glory some more time to adjust to her new life. For now, the knowledge would be too heavy a burden.’

  ‘You yourself have no right to that knowledge,’ said Commander Hughes. ‘Only the responsibility to safeguard it.’

  ‘It’s for Glory’s own good,’ said his father.

  Once more, all three of them were leaning towards him, eyes fixed on his, expressions stern yet encouraging. Once more, he had little option but to agree.

  In the aftermath of the meeting, Lucas tried to get a handle on Edie Starling and the kind of woman she’d been, but the various accounts he’d heard were too elusive and contradictory. He groped for indisputable facts, for clear judgements, and found none. Perhaps his father was right. It had been a war, and different rules applied.

  Glory wouldn’t see it like that, though. If she found out the story of Operation Swan, sh
e’d leave at once and never look back. She would be lost . . . for ever.

  He wasn’t sure he believed that Edie had really volunteered to work as a double agent abroad. He wondered too if Rawdon and Hughes knew more about her whereabouts and activities than they were letting on. If so, was Glory in danger of being used in the same way as her mother had been? Either way, Lucas knew he was now part of the cover-up, however little choice he’d had in the matter.

  But these concerns were already fading in the light of a new, more pressing question.

  What kind of task did Jack Rawdon have in store for them?

  Chapter 5

  Glory was dreaming of the Burning Court.

  Its white-tiled walls sloped up to the mouth of the huge chimney that formed its ceiling. An audience of inquisitors waited behind a viewing pane.

  She herself was waiting at the balefire’s stake. Bundles of wood were stacked around her legs; an electric fuse led from under them to the observation room.

  Glory stood in stillness and silence. She had no choice. She’d been given a drug to immobilise her body and numb the pain. While her heart hammered fit to burst, her reflection in the glass was perfectly serene.

  She knew what was about to happen. She’d had the dream so many times that her subconscious mind could anticipate each step. That didn’t mean she could stop it, though. That didn’t mean she could escape the moment when her reflection changed, so that she was staring at another woman, a wide-eyed blonde, in the mirrored glass. Her mother.

  And that moment was followed by the instant of true horror: when she realised the drug didn’t work, that her nerves and senses hadn’t been numbed, and she was about to burn alive . . .

  As always, Glory tried to fight, to thrash, to scream. As always, she couldn’t move. Not so much as a twitch of an eyelid, as the first spark leaped from the wood, and the fire swept upwards with a spit and cackle.

  Through the rising smoke, she could see the audience in the observation room. This was the part of the dream that changed: the faces of the people who watched her burn. Tonight it was Lucas, standing next to Troy. Auntie Angel, arm in arm with Peggy.

  As always, she tried to beg them to help. As always, they watched, patient, smiling, unconcerned, as the flames twisted towards her. At any moment, the fire was going to lick at her feet and writhe upwards through her flesh, flaying her to the bone.

  Her tongue was frozen. So was the breath in her lungs. All the same, a scream, swollen, unstoppable, was bursting through her body –

  Glory woke up. Her hair was damp with sweat, and she was breathing as hard as if she’d run a race. When she turned on the light, she nearly cried out for real. In the course of the nightmare, she must have been clawing at her arms, for the cuts and scratches left by yesterday’s fae-healing session had opened again, and speckled the sheets with blood.

  Cursing, she clambered out of bed. Wasn’t she ever going to grow out of this thing? She was a legally registered witch. The Inquisition wasn’t going to come for her in the night; boots on the stairs, fists on the door. Yet the old nightmare showed no signs of fading.

  She glanced at the photograph of her mother she kept beside the bed. They didn’t look much alike. Edie was a natural blonde, with small, delicate features, and a guarded smile. The kind that always leaves, never looks back, that’s how Auntie Angel had described her. The only time her mother was truly vivid for Glory was in her dreams.

  As Glory was leaving for work – late, as usual – she passed Peggy on the stairs. Patrick had attended his first Residents’ Association meeting on Sunday evening, and had spent the following morning at a local computer club, teaching the oldies how to use the internet. Now he and Peggy were going to meet the construction crew who were refurbishing the children’s play area. Maybe this was why he’d been so cheerful at breakfast. The fact her dad was up at all was a novelty. In Cooper Street, he had rarely surfaced before twelve. Glory noticed that Peggy was wearing a new lipstick, and frowned.

  Normally, she quite enjoyed her docklands commute. This morning, the Thames glittered in the sun, and the sleek ranks of apartment blocks and offices glittered too. But Glory walked head down, too preoccupied to notice.

  WICA was not a part of the shiny new developments. It was located in a Victorian warehouse on the edge of a run-down industrial estate. Unlike the other security service HQs, its location was kept anonymous. The sign over the main entrance was for Avalon Atlantic Plc: International Shipping. Since Glory and Lucas were too young to be plausibly employed by a shipping company, they entered the building through the so-called ‘back door’, an underground passageway that was accessed via a computer repair shop around the corner. This was as fake as the reception for Avalon Atlantic, and was also staffed by a WICA guard.

  Glory sketched a greeting to the guard and made her way to the back of the shop, where there were stairs down to the subway. Lucas arrived just as she was typing in the access code. He didn’t look as if he’d slept any better than she had. There were shadows under his eyes, and when he saw her, he seemed to hang back a little. But Glory made a point of waiting for him. As they walked along the narrow concrete passageway, she found herself confiding to him about Peggy.

  ‘She’s nice enough,’ she said. ‘It’s just that she’s a bit nosy for my liking. Bossy too, I bet. Those do-gooder types always are.’

  ‘I thought you wanted your dad to meet new people. To get out more.’

  ‘Yeah, but I reckon old Peg’s after more than tea and sympathy. And Dad’s so clueless he’ll be the last to catch on.’

  ‘Would it be so bad if Patrick met someone?’ Lucas said cautiously. ‘I mean, I wasn’t too thrilled when Dad first got together with Marisa. But after I got used to the idea, I realised that it was probably a good thing.’

  ‘I ain’t stupid. Or selfish neither,’ Glory retorted. ‘ ’Course I don’t want Dad to be lonely – ’specially as I’m not going to stick around home for ever. But now I know my mum might be alive, that makes stuff complicated, don’t it? Dad’s still married, remember.’

  Lucas was silent for a while. ‘The thing is . . . even if your mum . . . Well, if she wanted to get in touch, wouldn’t she have done so by now?’

  This was something Glory often wondered about, but didn’t like to acknowledge. Her face tightened. ‘That’s the point: I don’t know. I don’t know nothing. If she were just another unhappy housewife who ran off then OK, fair enough. Maybe it’d be time to cut our losses. But there’s more to it than that. I’m sure of it. Else she wouldn’t be in them Inquisition files.’

  Lucas looked uncomfortable. ‘Anything’s possible,’ he said. ‘But spend too much time wondering “what if?”, and life has a way of moving on without you. Maybe your father’s tired of putting his on hold.’

  Glory knew that what Lucas said was perfectly reasonable, but she still resented him for it. It was probably just as well they were going their separate ways for the first lesson of the day. They each had to learn two modern languages and in this, as in so many things, Lucas’s schooling put him ahead.

  But Glory and her Spanish tutor had only just settled down to the latest vocab list when Jack Rawdon’s PA knocked on the door. Glory was requested to attend a meeting in the Dee Room.

  Uh-oh. Had they found out about her coffee with Troy? Or maybe this was about her strop with the fae-healer . . . She set off to the meeting with her best Rockwood Estate strut: head high, hips swinging, don’t-mess-with-me scowl.

  To her surprise, Lucas was there too. Maybe she wasn’t in trouble after all. Jack Rawdon was leaning casually against the table, his shirt sleeves rolled up, unkempt hair falling over his eyes. There was another man sitting next to him. He was stringy and balding, in an ill-fitting suit. On the conferencing screen on the wall there was a woman in the scarlet and grey ceremonial uniform of a High Inquisitor.

  ‘Glory,’ Rawdon said. ‘Good to see you. Let me introduce you to Commander Dorcas Hughes of the Witchcrime Directorate.
’

  Glory and the woman said stiff hellos.

  ‘. . . and Guy Carmichael,’ Rawdon continued, ‘a colleague from Six.’

  Glory went to shake the MI6 officer’s hand. It was surprisingly firm for such a limp-looking man. As she sat down, Rawdon indicated the red light on the communications panel. ‘This is a closed meeting. Your wardens will be appraised of what follows, but on a strictly need-to-know basis.’

  Glory’s stomach began to flutter pleasantly. She and Lucas exchanged looks, trying not to appear too obviously excited as Rawdon tossed them a couple of shiny brochures.

  ‘Welcome to Wildings Academy,’ Lucas read aloud. ‘Distinction, Discretion, Diligence.’

  ‘It’s a school,’ said Glory, in the way other people might say ‘it’s a dead cat.’

  ‘A very special, very private school,’ said the man from Six.

  Glory opened the first page. She was looking at a photograph of a narrow valley, shadowed by mountains and furred by trees. A cluster of grey towers and turrets rose up from the forest. It was a castle out of a fae-tale.

  ‘Wildings Academy,’ the introduction read, ‘provides structure and security for young people whose needs are not met by conventional education systems, and a refuge where troubled teenagers can find shelter from the pressures of modern life.’

  ‘So it’s a sin bin,’ she said.

  Rawdon looked amused. ‘In a manner of speaking. But though you wouldn’t know it from the brochure, its intake is exclusively witchkind.’

  ‘Sounds like the place my stepmother wanted to send me to,’ said Lucas.

  Glory flicked through the pages. Wildings was apparently located in eastern Switzerland, somewhere near the Italian border, but there was no address or map, just a contact email. There wasn’t any sign of the students either, in the glossy pictures of classrooms, science labs and sports facilities. The only people to feature in the brochure were a group of uniformed guards. ‘Does the Inquisition run it, then?’ she asked.