Witch Fire

by Laura Powell

  Suddenly, the room was plunged into darkness. A power cut? Groping, she stumbled towards the bed and found a switch. She thought it might connect to a night light above the headboard. Although she didn’t really expect it to work, the bulb glowed into dim life; just enough for her to check her watch. It was ten thirty. So lights out really did mean lights out!

  Starlight glimmered through the window. Glory closed the shutters with a bang. Who would have thought she’d miss the sickly orange haze of a London night? In bed, the foreign darkness closed around her. She touched the Devil’s Kiss beneath her collarbone, thinking of Lucas, somewhere in the depths of the building in a room just like this. Her mind reached out for him. Fae to fae, witch to witch. But this was a castle of witches. Neither of them was special here.

  Chapter 9

  Lucas was woken by a harmonious rippling of strings. Alpine music was being piped into his room as a wake-up call. At least it wasn’t yodelling.

  As Lazovic had promised, he’d slept deeply, but he didn’t feel refreshed by it, just slow and sluggish. He was brushing his teeth when he heard the door to his room open. It must be the maid. But when he came out of the bathroom he found a boy of about his own age, lounging in his chair and noisily chomping on a piece of toast. Lucas’s toast, presumably. A rummaged-through breakfast tray was on the floor.

  ‘Hola,’ his visitor said through a mouthful of jam. He was dark and pudgy, with a spiky quiff. But the main thing Lucas noticed were his jeans, which were very tight and a startling shade of green.

  ‘Hi . . . I’m Lucas.’

  ‘And I am Raffi.’ He belched. ‘You are inglés, no?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Is cool.’ Raphael Almagro stroked above his lip, where a few straggling hairs were failing to form a moustache. He was studying Lucas with open curiosity. ‘And your family? They are government? Business? Celebrity?’

  ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about –’

  Raffi laughed. ‘Please. All that hush-hush is just for show. There are not many of the secrets at Wildings – you will see.’ He ambled over to the open window and lit a cigarette, before offering the pack to Lucas.

  ‘No thanks. Look, I don’t mean to be . . . but, well. Isn’t that against the rules too?’

  ‘Amigo, you need to relax. Seriously. OK, they hit you with all these rules and crap when you arrive. Boom! Keeps you scared and the parents happy, yes? But they don’t want to piss you off too bad. Else you might do some deviancy and get yourself expelled. Then they lose their big fat school fees.’

  Raffi wandered around the room, looking at the photos Lucas had put up, and the books on the shelves. ‘Some rules you can be bending. Some you can’t. Is all compromise. This is how we do things in my country of Cordoba.’

  ‘Yeah. I’d heard Cordoba was quite . . . tolerant.’

  ‘Cordobans just want to have good times. Live and let live. No Inquisition, even. We threw it out. Ha!’ Raffi took a drag on his cigarette and his face darkened. ‘But now is not so good. There is this crazy bastardo running for president. He is making a lot of hot gas, lot of commotion, about witch-villains. He says these wicked witch-villains are destroying our happy society . . . on and on. So, my papá, he decides until this stupid man is gone is safer for me to be out of the way.’ He sighed. ‘Soon I hope to return. Cordoba is like a heaven, believe me. Great beaches, great bars, great babes. And when we are talking of babes . . . there is a girl who came with you, yes? A new girl for here?’

  ‘She was on the same flight as me. I don’t know her.’

  ‘She is hot?’

  Lucas thought of Glory’s bright hair, whipped up by the wind over London’s rooftops, how her eyes were black in some lights, softening to brown in others. The snap and crackle of her. He shrugged. ‘Flashy,’ he said. ‘Bit cheap-looking.’

  Raffi grinned. ‘Cheap! Ha. I like very much. That is the good thing with our trouble, you know? More girls than guys. At least, that is what I thought. I thought when I came here there would be many, many ladies. But, amigo, I have to say the lady situation here is not so cool. There is an American, OK, who is doing the cheerleading. She has the most –’

  A bell rang. No alpine chimes this time. It was shrill and summoning. Five minutes till school assembly.

  Raffi stubbed out his cigarette in a guilty rush that rather undermined his airy talk about rule-bending. ‘I must run for it now. If a guardian is collecting you – well. We are not supposed to go visiting in this time.’

  ‘How did you even know I was here?’ Lucas asked as Raffi opened the door. He was remembering the maze of halls and stairways that separated his room from the rest of the building.

  ‘I know many things in this place.’ Raffi tapped his finger solemnly on the side of his nose. ‘You stick with me, OK, and I will give you all the ropes to show.’

  Lucas didn’t know what to make of this. Raphael Almagro was high on the list of Endor suspects, and it seemed odd that he had confided so much about himself so quickly. It could be a tactic to get Lucas to reveal his own secrets in turn. Or maybe Raffi was simply bored and nosy. In a place like this, any new arrival must be a big deal.

  Shortly after Raffi left, the guardian who had taken Lucas to his room the night before arrived to show him the way to the assembly. His name was Ivan and, like all of the guardians, he had a military bearing and brusque manner. Still, he was polite enough. He asked Lucas if he’d slept well and didn’t mention the cigarette stink.

  Assemblies took place in the castle’s former ballroom. It was a high bare room hung with mirrors, its walls lined with faded primrose silk, its floor a vast expanse of polished wood. The group of chairs arranged in front of the dais at one end was the only furniture.

  Raffi had moved his seat next to Jenna White’s in an attempt to engage her in conversation. She was twirling the end of her treacle-brown ponytail with a vacant expression. Next to her was the Bollywood star’s sister. Anjuli was painfully thin and hunched, her features hidden by a curtain of lank black hair. The little Chinese girl, Mei-fen, was sitting quietly, hands folded neatly on her lap, overshadowed in every way by her neighbour, Yuri. The Russian’s tank top revealed a menacing bulge of muscles.

  As the double doors swung shut behind Lucas, Raffi abruptly stopped chattering and everyone else turned and stared. Lucas gave an awkward nod of greeting and slid into one of the two remaining seats. Silence fell, but not for long. Glory came in with a crash, banging the doors behind her, high heels clattering across the floor.

  She flounced into the chair next to him and he started to smile. Her hostile glare stopped him in his tracks. And the next moment, Principal Lazovic came in, followed by the matron and the other senior staff. They lined up behind the dais. Two guardians took their position by the doors.

  The principal greeted everyone with his customary good humour, and announced that he was delighted to welcome two new members into ‘our little community’. Introductions over, post was distributed, followed by a run-down of the day’s schedule. The assembly finished with a short reading from Plato’s Republic, on the education of philosopher-kings.

  The education of witches followed. But while their classmates went to their lessons, Lucas and Glory were shown into another reception room to take tests in English, maths and verbal reasoning. At the end of it was a ‘wellness questionnaire’. It was taken for granted that all Wildings’ inmates suffered from the stress of their condition, and so therapy sessions had always been part of the school curriculum. After all, nobody wants a witch in the middle of a mental breakdown.

  How does your condition make you feel?

  Please rank in order of relevance, with 1 being the most relevant, and 8 the least.

  a) Afraid

  b) Angry

  c) Embarrassed

  d) Disgusted

  e) Depressed

  f) Excited

  g) Dangerous

  h) Powerful

  How do you think your fri
ends would react to your condition?

  Please rank in order of likelihood, with 1 being the most likely, and 5 the least.

  a) Afraid

  b) Embarrassed

  c) Disgusted

  d) Pitying

  e) Supportive

  If your enemies found out about your condition, would they be more likely to:

  a) Fear your capabilities

  or

  b) Rejoice at your disability?

  And so on. Assessments complete, Glory was taken off for her meeting with the therapist, while Lucas went on a campus tour.

  ‘Whatever your interests,’ Lucas was told, ‘we do our best to accommodate them.’ But none of the facilities looked as if they saw much use. His route took in the science lab, art studio, library, music suite, cinema, gym, swimming pool and tennis courts . . . All this for a mere seven students, when the building could have accommodated seventy.

  He rejoined the others for lunch in the dining room, where a single table was set up in the middle of a cavernous wood-panelled hall. The food was good, accessorised with silver cutlery and served by maids. But the meal was a subdued one.

  Mrs Heggie, the matron, presided at the head of the table and chivvied her neighbours into making stilted small talk. Lucas managed to make eye contact with Glory once, when she passed the salt. He would have been glad to finish the meal, except for the fact that his psychological assessment came afterwards.

  Dr Flavia Caron had been working at Wildings for two years. She was a forty-something French-Canadian with a neat brown bob and a long, rather melancholy face. Her clothes were plain and her only adornment was a large tarnished ring on her left hand. Lucas expected her tower room to be similarly austere. However, there were modern-art posters on the wall, and a bunch of wild flowers brightened the mantelpiece.

  Lucas sat down on the chair set out for him. There was a small table next to the chair, with a plastic tray of sand on it.

  ‘Have you ever had any kind of therapy before?’ Dr Caron asked him, after the introductions were over. Behind her unfashionable spectacles, her eyes were large and mild.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know what to expect?’

  ‘ “The talking cure” – isn’t that what you call it?’ Lucas’s tone was dismissive. He was careful to sit upright, not relax into his chair.

  ‘Pyschoanalysis is a cooperative process. It should be a journey of discovery between therapist and client. I don’t look on you as a patient with disabilities to treat.’

  He almost laughed. ‘But I do have a disability. A disability I’m not allowed to talk about – that’s the whole reason I’ve been sent to this place. So you can understand,’ he said with exaggerated politeness, ‘why I don’t quite see the point of our meetings.’

  ‘These sessions are about tackling blocks to your personal development, whatever their origin or cause. Your condition is only one part of who you are.’ Dr Caron looked at him enquiringly. ‘Or do you, in fact, believe it defines you?’

  ‘It defines my life choices. Or lack of them.’

  ‘You have the choice here to talk about whatever you want.’

  ‘What if I chose to say nothing?’

  She smiled a little. ‘Then we can sit in silence for the next hour.’

  Lucas mustn’t be too obstructive, however. Glory was the designated troublemaker. He was supposed to be the dutiful one. Just be yourselves, Rawdon had told them. No cover could be more convincing.

  ‘All right. What’s the sand for?’

  ‘Well, talk therapy isn’t for everyone. Sandplay is an alternative therapeutic technique. I invite my clients to use the sand however they wish. Some people like to dig, others to build. Some create landscapes, others abstract patterns. Either way, the world that a person makes in the tray can represent aspects of their feelings and experiences. It’s a tool for self-expression that doesn’t require speech.’

  Lucas touched the sand experimentally. It was granular like sugar, but cool and slightly damp. ‘You don’t have to do anything with it if you don’t want to,’ Dr Caron told him. ‘It’s relaxing just to fiddle about with.’

  He noticed she had a disability of sorts too. The top joint of her right index finger was missing. She saw him looking. ‘I was in a car accident last year,’ she said. ‘It took several months in hospital before I recovered.’

  ‘Oh. Um . . . I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Healing the mind is no easier than healing the body. Both processes take time, and patience.’

  He sighed. ‘OK. Fine. Where do you want me to start? Should I dredge up a childhood trauma or something?’

  ‘Do you consider your childhood traumatic?’

  ‘Not at all. It was a very happy one.’ He wondered about the file she’d been given, and what it said about his mother. Idly, he began to trail his fingers through the sand.

  ‘You must miss your family.’

  ‘Obviously. But I have to accept I’m here for my own good.’

  ‘Is that what your father told you? He’s an inquisitor, I gather.’

  ‘He used to be. Now he works in government.’

  ‘You don’t have a problem with the work he does or has done?’

  ‘Why would I? It’s important. Admirable.’

  ‘So you are proud of him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is he proud of you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucas told Dr Caron. ‘Yes, he is.’ But he couldn’t quite meet her eye.

  Chapter 10

  The session with the shrink was every bit as bogus as Glory expected. Dr Caron droned on about new pathways and positive thinking – the sort of junk you’d find in a third-rate horoscope. Invited to play with the sand, Glory amused herself with writing rude words and sculpting even ruder body parts.

  ‘I know I ain’t disabled,’ she told the therapist. ‘Or wrong in the head. And nothing you can say will make me think different.’

  ‘I can understand why the terminology used at Wildings would make you uncomfortable,’ Dr Caron said tranquilly. ‘The other students I see often choose to give their disability a name, as if it were an actual person. This allows them to address the issue, while keeping within the rules.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Well, if you were to call your condition “Anna”, for example, then we could talk about the effect “she” has on your life. What your family and friends think of “her” and so on.’

  Glory considered this. ‘All right. But I ain’t going for a lame name like Anna. How about Esmerelda Thunderpants?’

  Dr Caron pursed her lips.

  Good. If the nosy cow was recruiting for Endor, then so much the better.

  After being shown the academy sights, Glory was told she had an hour’s free time before supper. Her guardian left her at the door to the student common room – not that there was anything common about it. Dark wooden arches converged in the centre of the ceiling, and giant leather armchairs were set out on acres of rugs. The only person there was Mei-fen, playing solitaire. Dwarfed by her oversize surroundings, she looked tinier than ever. She glanced at Glory with indifference before returning to her game. Maybe Glory should have stuck around, casually interrogated the kid, but she wanted to find Lucas.

  Glory set off in what she thought was the direction of Dr Caron’s lair, hoping she’d meet Lucas on his way back. However, the plush hallways and stairwells were confusingly alike. Most of the doors she tried were locked. She knew the outer ones were alarmed. If you wanted to go outside – to walk in the gardens or use the sports facilities – you had to get one of the guardians to escort you. Similarly, if you wanted to use the art studio or library or whatever, a member of staff had to open it up for you first.

  ‘Hey, are you lost?’

  It was the American, Jenna. Even in the dimly lit corridor she seemed to glow. Shiny teeth, shiny eyes, shiny hair.

  ‘Sorta. I was having a nose about. Trying to get me bearings.’

  ‘It
’s crazy, right? I keep expecting to bump into Frankenstein’s Monster on the stairs.’ Jenna looked down at the cardboard box she was carrying. ‘Look . . . my mom’s sent me a care package. You wanna hang out, help me eat some candy?’

  In the normal course of things, there was no way a girl like Jenna White would come within spitting distance of a girl like Glory Wilde. Not in the ordinary world. But here they were, outcasts alike. Glory sized Jenna up, wondering about the strength of her fae, and what, if anything, she’d done with it. Where the Devil had left his mark.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  Jenna’s room had the same basic furnishings as Glory’s, but there the similarity ended. There was a Stars and Stripes flag on the wall, a fluffy pink carpet on the floor and a butterfly mobile dangling from the ceiling. Posters of American athletes and celebrities jostled with snapshots of Jenna and her friends at football games, parties and on the beach. It appeared Jenna was one of those girls who photograph better than they look in the flesh. Not that she wasn’t pretty, with her big blue eyes, perky nose and swinging hair. But the photographic version was even brighter than life.

  ‘You been in Brat Camp for a while, then?’ Glory asked.

  ‘Brat –? Oh, I get it. Too funny! I’ve only been here a few weeks, actually.’ Jenna opened her package and began to rummage through its contents. ‘Here,’ she said, tossing Glory a bag of chocolate drops. ‘I figure there isn’t much else to do in this place but get fat.’

  Glory obediently ate some chalky-tasting chocolate. What were they going to do next? Brush each other’s hair and paint their nails? At school, Glory had been at the centre of an admiring crowd, but there was nobody she was particularly close to. The Starling name, her coven home and connections with the Morgans meant that other kids were a little wary of her. She realised she wasn’t quite sure how to get the whole girly bonding thing started.

  Jenna sat on the bed, hugging a heart-shaped cushion to her chest. ‘So,’ she said. ‘You’re from England, huh?’