by Helen Harper
‘“I might have to sit down,”’ Winter said. ‘“I’ve walked at least twenty steps already today and it’s been a bit too much.”’
I stuck out my tongue and he grinned. ‘Actually,’ he said in a low voice as if he were afraid someone would overhear, ‘I did want badges. I put in a suggestion to get them for everyone when I first joined Arcane Branch.’
I winced. ‘In the shape of witch’s hats?’
‘Not quite that bad. They needed to look official, not ridiculous.’
‘Of course,’ I smiled. ‘I once put in a suggestion that we pay a teenager to hang around our building and help with deliveries. You know, escort takeaways up to our door, that kind of thing.’
Winter’s eyes danced with amusement.
Clare peered at us. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said finally.
I dragged my attention away from Winter and glanced at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That was…’ she hesitated as if searching for the right word ‘…mean. You were mean to him and he was mean to you.’
I tapped the corner of my mouth. We’d needed a moment of levity amid all this serial-killer stuff but I understood what she meant. ‘It wasn’t mean,’ I said finally. ‘It was honest. We know each other very well. I suppose what we’re really saying is that we know the worst about each other and it doesn’t matter. We accept each other for who we are, regardless of our faults.’
Winter reached across and squeezed my hand while Clare stared at me. ‘I think I hate you both.’
I beamed back at her cheerfully. ‘I would hate us both too.’ I lifted my head up. ‘Now let’s crack on. Which window is going to be the easiest?’ I pointed at one on the second floor. ‘That looks large enough to wiggle through.’
‘It’s sealed shut,’ Clare said. ‘The only one which opens is that one.’ She floated upwards until she was hovering in front of the highest – and smallest – window in the house.
Winter followed my eyes. ‘The window on the right?’ he enquired.
‘Apparently it’s the only one that will open.’ I flicked him a look from under my eyelashes. ‘We should definitely wait for the bomb squad.’
‘Clare?’ Winter said, looking in the wrong direction. ‘Can you check whether there are any more booby traps?’
She nodded eagerly and disappeared back through the walls of her house.
‘She said she can’t,’ I told him. ‘On account of the fact that her ghostly presence might upset the spiritual atoms and set them off, blowing us all to smithereens.’
Clare’s head appeared from the chimney top. ‘There’s nothing else here!’ she called. ‘It’s only the front door that’s been tampered with.’
Winter, reading my expression, smiled. ‘Great.’ He gestured in front of him. ‘Ladies first.’
I stared at him. ‘What do you expect me to do? Scale the wall? I’m not Spiderman.’ I shifted my body slightly so he couldn’t see what I was doing, then I put my hands behind my back and drew out a rune. Ever so slowly, Winter began to rise up. The best part was that, because it happened at such a snail’s pace, he didn’t even notice until he was at least a foot in the air.
‘Ivy!’
I smirked and continued raising him. I had the most amazing view of his arse from here.
Clare’s mouth was hanging open in astonishment. ‘He can fly?’
‘Nope.’
‘But…’
‘I’m making Winter levitate,’ I explained. ‘But it takes a lot of energy and I can’t hold him for long.’ We both watched as he reached the window and began to tug at it, trying to open it up. ‘Do you have any wards in place?’ I asked. If there were any, they should have been blown when Blackbeard entered but it didn’t hurt to ask.
‘Oh yes,’ Clare said proudly. ‘I have several.’
Winter finally managed to open the window and stuck his head inside. A beat later he was violently thrown backwards, somersaulting through the air and down to the ground. In the nick of time I managed to cast a rune to cushion his fall but he still groaned very loudly.
I ran over. ‘Are you okay?’
He squinted up at me, pain clouding his gaze. ‘We should have waited for the bomb squad.’
Alarmed now, I crouched down, searching for visible wounds. ‘That was a bomb? Another grenade?’
‘No.’ He raised his head then thought better of it and dropped it down again with a thud. ‘A ward. Your mate Clare might have been non-Order but she knew her guard magic.’
A huge smile cracked Clare’s face, spreading from ear to ear. Almost as quickly as it appeared, it vanished. ‘It wasn’t really me,’ she said, her head hanging. ‘It was part of the protective spells the coven put in place when we thought we were being followed. We worked together to set them up on all our homes.’
I sucked on my lip. ‘And yet Blackbeard wasn’t troubled by them in the slightest.’ The magic plot thickened.
She frowned. ‘You’re right. He’s definitely doing something to avoid being affected by magic.’
Of any sort. I sighed. If even latent spells like wards didn’t stop him, what would? The fact that he’d managed to gain entry and set up his own entirely non-magical yet death-inducing ward was incredibly worrisome.
I helped Winter up to his feet. ‘My turn,’ I said grimly.
‘You don’t want to wait?’
My mouth flattened. ‘No. They’ll be hours and I’ve had enough of this place. I want to go home. The faster we do this, the faster that can happen. No serial killer is going to get the better of us.’
I must have sounded determined because Clare looked impressed. ‘You go girl.’
‘The wards…’
‘You can disarm them with the password. Coventastic.’
Coventastic? Good grief. It was probably wise not to say anything aloud. If Winter realised he could have avoided being thrown out of Clare’s window at great speed by simply uttering a word, he wouldn’t be best pleased. I avoided his eyes. ‘Beam me up, Scotty,’ I muttered.
Winter used the same rune I had, sending me up smoothly through the air towards the window. All the same, I could feel gravity working against me. The laws of science never enjoy coming up against the laws of magic – it’s like oil and water. At least Clare’s house was only three-storeys high. It could have been much worse.
When I got to the now-open window, I realised with dismay that it was smaller than I’d thought. Squeezing inside was going to be tough. I grabbed hold of the windowsill, whispered, ‘Coventastic,’ and started to wiggle through.
To begin with it was fairly straightforward but I was only pushing my arms and head through. My shoulders scraped painfully against the frame and, when I had to push my chest through, it didn’t seem that I was going to make it. No amount of holding my breath was going to make my breasts any smaller. Still, I managed to squash in just enough to squeak them past. Now the only worry was my hips. I shuffled forward with the top half of my body hanging into Clare’s house and my bottom half hanging out. It bloody hurt. Matters didn’t improve when there was a sudden loud shout from outside.
‘Oy! What are you doing? I’m calling the polis!’
‘It’s Pete from down the road,’ Clare said, sounding surprised. ‘Aw, bless. He was never interested in joining the neighbourhood watch before and now he’s looking out for me. That’s really sweet. At least someone cares.’ She paused. ‘Even if he is a scary bastard with facial tattoos and a vicious Chihuahua called Bruiser.’
I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the fact that having a Chihuahua meant he was a scary bastard, or whether it was the Chihuahua’s name that created that effect. Either way, this wasn’t the time to ask, not with my arse hanging out of her window. It wasn’t like I could back out now; the only way was forward, whatever Pete from down the road was doing.
I continued my slow wiggle, growing more and more uncomfortable by the second. Clare kept up a running commentary on the events outside. ‘Oooh. Winter has ap
proached Pete and he’s looking tough. But I think Pete is tougher. Winter’s not acting scared, he’s doing that glowery thing that I’ve seen him do to you. Pete is growling back at him. So is Bruiser.’ She clapped her hands. ‘This is exciting.’
If she weren’t already dead, I’d probably wring her neck. ‘Tell Winter,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘to get Pete to back off. We don’t have time for this.’
‘But Winter can’t hear me.’
Damn it; I kept forgetting that part. ‘Rafe!’ I shouted. ‘Get Pete to leave! We’ve got Clare’s permission to be here!’
‘That was good,’ she said.
I wiggled a bit further forward. If I could just shimmy my hips through, I’d manage this. ‘So it worked?’ I asked her.
Clare laughed. ‘Oh no! They can’t hear you. Probably because your bottom is in the way and it’s blocking out all the sound. But if they could hear you, I’m sure it would make a big difference.’
I cursed to myself. Grabbing hold of the curtains I started to pull, hoping I could yank myself through before I ripped them off the rail. I pushed and I pulled. Come on, Ivy.
‘Oh!’ Clare said. ‘Pete says that my brother told him I’d gone off for an extended holiday. He asked him to keep an eye on the house for me and to call him if there were any problems.’
I grunted loudly. I’d never experienced labour pains but they couldn’t be a million miles away from this. Push! Breathe! Push! I threw everything I had into one final effort and my hips finally squeezed past the frame. I popped through, landing on the floor of Clare’s upstairs hallway with a loud sigh of relief and what felt like some extensive scrapes and bruises.
As I tried to disentangle my limbs from each other, Clare pursed her lips. ‘Of course, I don’t actually have a brother so either Pete is lying or Blackbeard spoke to him.’
I staggered upwards and back to the window, peering out. Winter and Tattooed Pete were still facing each other as if squaring off. It looked to me as if things were calming down slightly. That was good – at least until Pete said something and Winter smashed his fist into his nose.
‘Rafe!’ I yelled. What the hell was he doing? It wasn’t like him to grow suddenly violent. He should be doing everything in his power to calm the situation down, not escalate it. There was no way I was clambering out of the window to try and sort things out, though. It had taken far too long to get inside and I didn’t think I could do it again.
‘We’re friends of Clare’s,’ I shouted.
Pete’s fists were tightly bunched. He ignored me and took a swing at Winter, smacking a hefty punch into his jaw.
I yelped, ‘Leave him alone!’
Winter and Pete began to circle each other. Good grief, this was about to turn into a full-blown cock fight. I certainly felt like I was watching two cocks, anyway.
‘You idiots!’ I bellowed. We were hunting a serial killer. There wasn’t time for tests of strength or testosterone-fuelled one-upmanship. ‘Clare told us about you, Pete. You have a Chihuahua called Bruiser.’
‘It has the hots for the cat at number ten,’ Clare said helpfully. ‘Keeps trying to hump it.’
‘Bruiser’s in love with one of the cats from this same street!’ I shouted.
Pete paused for a moment. Unfortunately, it didn’t last as he bounced round and took another shot at Winter from the side. This time Winter managed to duck in time and I prayed that he was keeping at least some of his cool. If he resorted to using magic against this guy, all was lost.
‘This is so stupid,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Winter’s been possessed.’
‘Nah,’ Clare said. ‘He’s just defending your honour. Pete said he’d never seen a burglar with such a fat arse.’ She tilted her head. ‘To be fair, it was all he could see of you at the time. He doesn’t usually say much at all.’
I should probably have been offended but I actually felt kind of warm and fuzzy that Winter was so worked up on my behalf. But that didn’t mean I could allow this to continue.
Until we knew the lay of the land, I didn’t want to alert Pete to the fact that Winter and I were witches. I could search for a bucket to throw water over them but in the time it took to find one, both Winter and Pete could end up knocked out. Instead I did about the only other thing I could think of. Pulling down my waistband, I turned round and mooned the pair of them. ‘You want a fat arse?’ I screeched. ‘Here you go!’
‘Nice,’ Clare said with an approving nod. ‘They’ve both stopped and they’re just staring at you.’
I sniffed, returned my clothing to its appropriate position and turned round.
Winter threw me a glare. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’
‘Getting you to stop acting like idiots,’ I yelled back. ‘This guy is a friend of Clare’s. He’s only looking out for her. Just because he’s a misogynistic bastard doesn’t mean you need to hurt him.’
Surprisingly, Tattooed Pete looked rather abashed. He put his hands in his pockets and looked away. ‘I’m sorry. But Clare is a nice lady,’ he said. ‘A really nice lady. She always has a kind word for me. And I promised her brother I’d keep an eye on her place. I didn’t mean to be rude but you’re breaking in.’
Oh, Pete. Poor guy. ‘We’re not breaking in.’ It was unfortunate that I still had to shout to make myself heard; it didn’t exactly ease the situation that I was bellowing out of the window like a fishwife. ‘And he wasn’t her brother. Clare doesn’t have a brother.’
Pete stiffened, his spine rigid. He obviously didn’t know whether to trust us or not but either way he was still alarmed. ‘Then who was he? Is Clare alright? Where is she then?’
I glanced at Clare. Her head drooped. ‘Tell him,’ she said, turning away. ‘Tell him the truth.’ I nodded at Winter. He understood and spoke awkwardly to Pete. His voice was low, so I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying, but the moment that Pete realised that Clare was dead was obvious. His body language said it all.
‘I think he really liked you,’ I said to Clare.
She wouldn’t look up. ‘I never knew,’ she said. ‘I thought he was just a bit rude and bullish. Sometimes he wouldn’t even look at me when I said hello in the street. I’ve been such an idiot.’ She sighed. ‘About so many things.’
There wasn’t very much I could do to comfort her. I couldn’t give her a hug; I couldn’t tell her that things would look much brighter tomorrow, or that this was just a passing phase. She was dead. That was all there was to it.
I pinched off a headache. When in doubt, be brusque and to the point. I had no words for Clare other than the stark truth. ‘I can’t make this better for you, Clare. I can’t make you undead.’ Not without becoming a freaky necromancer who might destroy the entire country in the process. ‘All I can do is try to bring the person who did this to justice. That’s all I’ve got.’ I gestured downstairs. ‘Blackbeard obviously has plans in place. He spoke to Pete and he set up that booby trap. Whatever’s going on here, he’s nowhere near finished.’
For a beat or two Clare didn’t move, then she tilted up her chin. Her jaw was set and her expression firm. ‘Then let’s see what we can find out.’
Good. That was good. ‘You see if he’s touched anything, been through any of your stuff or taken anything. Even it’s small and inconsequential, it might help.’
She nodded. ‘Trophies. Serial killers like trophies.’
I couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘Yeah, so I’ve heard.’ I licked my lips. ‘While you do that, I’ll go and check out the booby trap and try not blow myself up.’
Not exploding was always on my daily to-do list. Let’s hope today wasn’t going to be any different.
Chapter Eleven
In the end, I took various photos of the booby-trapped door with my phone – at a distance, of course – so that I could show it to both Winter and whoever else decided to appear. Clare mooched around, looking for anything out of place. Apart from the door and the precariously balanced grenade, everythin
g else seemed untouched. It felt like I’d gone to considerable effort to get in here but there was actually nothing to be seen or learned. More to the point, it was even harder to wriggle out than it had been to wriggle in.
By the time I was standing with Winter and Pete, who by now had fully abandoned his bid to destroy Winter’s good looks and appeared to have transformed into our latest cheerleader, I’d had enough. I didn’t think there was any skin left around my hips at all.
‘Here,’ I said, sulking. I passed the phone to Winter. Both he and Pete were far too eager to see the grenade. Boys and their toys. Frankly, it seemed to me as if it was more like the kind of daft – and very crude – thing a kid would do to annoy a younger sibling. Except a kid would use a cup of water or flour or something, not an explosive device.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Pete breathed. ‘What on earth was Clare mixed up in that someone tried to blow her up in her own house? Someone was really desperate to kill her off.’
‘The man who put this here knew she was already dead. He killed her. He did this,’ I said, pointing to the photo, ‘to kill whoever came looking for her.’ I glanced at Winter. ‘In other words, us.’
Winter scratched his chin. ‘We could have been the police or Clare’s family or the damned postman. This trap has been here for a while. Blackbeard might be a witch hater but he didn’t know for sure that the first person through that door would be a witch. I think this was less to do with killing anyone and more to do with knowing exactly when the coven’s disappearance was discovered. We already know he wants to stay anonymous and he’s tried to hide what he’d done.’ He gestured towards Pete. ‘He risked blowing his cover to pretend to be Clare’s brother. He was desperate to hide his murders but he was also desperate to know if – when – they’d been found. Setting bombs across a quiet Dorset town would be one way to make sure you hit the national news.’
‘Either everyone knows or no one knows.’ Pete nodded. ‘Makes sense.’
Winter frowned as he thought it through. ‘I think the best way to deal with this is to make sure that he doesn’t get what he wants. We need to get a media embargo to ensure this is kept quiet. No headlines, no whisper in the papers about serial killers or bombs or missing witches. Effective radio silence. He knows we’re onto him but if we don’t play the game the way he wants, maybe we can gain some leverage. And he might come back to find out why no one’s been to any of the coven’s homes to find out where they are.’ He paused and looked at me. ‘What do you think, Ivy?’
