A Witch in Love

by Ruth Warburton

  I found my throat was dry and my heart was beating painfully. I don’t know what I would have said – but at that moment Sienna came in. She looked from me, to Abe’s gaunt, grey face, and shook her head.

  ‘Anna, you need to go home and rest. You look dreadful. And Abe, you need to sleep. No buts!’ she added crossly, as if this was an argument they’d had before. ‘I don’t want to hear it. I’m taking away your laptop and if I get any more gyp I’m going to put powdered Valium in your coffee.’

  I shuddered. It was a little too close to the bone for comfort. Abe saw it and put out his hand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s over. Go on. Go home and rest.’

  But I couldn’t go home, not yet. I had to see Seth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I found him right where he always was these days. Down at the quay, working on the Angel.

  He was stripped to the waist and the sight made me shiver, in spite of the thin spring sunshine. I was wearing two layers and still had goosebumps. But Seth was bent over, sanding something furiously so that the dust flew, and as I watched he straightened and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his balled-up T-shirt, and then rubbed his eyes as if he was very tired.

  ‘Seth,’ I said. He didn’t hear me at first, and then he turned around and something in his face changed.

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘Seth, I—’ I moved towards him but he took a step back.

  ‘Just a sec, I’m all sweaty and covered in varnish and crap. Just let me …’ He picked up a bucket and leant over the side to pour the contents over his head and shoulders, rubbing off the dust and dirt with his T-shirt. It made me feel cold just to watch, but Seth shook himself like a dog and then disappeared inside the boat’s cabin.

  Taking a deep breath, I jumped the gap between the boat and the quay and ducked my head to follow him. He was standing in the middle of the small cabin pulling a fresh T-shirt over his head, and my heart thumped painfully at the sight of him struggling to get it on. He looked peculiarly vulnerable and endearing with his face concealed; just his long, lean belly sticking out the bottom of the T-shirt and a shock of dark hair sticking out the neck hole. Then, with a wrench, he dragged it over his head and his face appeared again and he was my Seth. Tired and damp, but my Seth.

  ‘Seth—’ I started, but he held up a hand.

  ‘Wait, listen, before we talk about anything else I just wanted to say – it wasn’t Grandad. Who turned you in to the Malleus, I mean. I’m sure of it. I asked him outright and he hadn’t a clue what I was on about. He’s an old bastard but I don’t think he’d lie.’ I opened my mouth to try to speak, but Seth ploughed on. ‘He’d be more likely to boast about it. And in fact he was the one who told me where to find the leaders – and if he had anything to hide there’s no way he would have done that. He’d have wanted me as far as possible from them if he knew what was going on—’

  ‘Hang on, hang on.’ I’d been trying to interrupt his flow of explanations and finally he stopped. ‘It’s OK. I know it wasn’t Bran.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes. It wasn’t him turned me in.’

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized what a mistake I’d made. At the same moment Seth realized too and pounced.

  ‘So you know who it was? Who?’

  Oh God. I stared at him for a moment, trying to work out what to do.

  ‘Who?’ He took a step forwards, fists clenched. I knew he’d never hurt me, but his still fury frightened me.

  ‘WHO?’ he shouted, and I flinched. He banged the counter with one fist. ‘For God’s sake, Anna, I’ve got as much of a right to know as you have. I nearly died there too, you know. Or doesn’t that mean anything?’

  ‘Of course it means something!’ I cried, stung into retort. ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Then who? They were getting revenge on me as much as on you. And if you won’t tell me, presumably it’s someone we know, is that right? Come on – who? Matt? Chris Meeks? Angelica?’ He began reeling off names at random – friends, colleagues from the pub, fishermen down the docks. I shut my eyes as the realization struck home. If I didn’t tell him, he’d always wonder which of his friends had betrayed him.

  ‘It was Caroline,’ I said at last. For a minute I thought Seth hadn’t heard. Then I realized he was simply too angry to speak, or even respond. For a moment he just stood there and I could see a vein throbbing in his throat.

  ‘I’ll kill her,’ he said very quietly. Then ‘I’ll kill her!’ in a furious bellow. He swallowed and flung his head back, his chest heaving in wordless rage. ‘Shit! Shit! The calculating, cold-hearted, evil bitch, I’ll kill her … I’ll – I’ll …’ Then he just swore.

  ‘Seth,’ I said, but he was too angry to listen, or even hear me. ‘Seth, Seth, listen to me. Seth, she was sorry. She said she was sorry. She took it back. She asked them to drop the charges. Seth, are you listening to me?’

  ‘I don’t care!’ he shouted. Then he put his head in his hands and began to weep. ‘I don’t care. I don’t care what she did afterwards. There are some things you can’t take back.’

  I didn’t understand it. He was distraught out of all proportion. Yes, what Caroline had done was pretty bad but then from her point of view what I’d done to her was pretty bad too. And it had worked out OK – we were all here and alive. I moved across the cabin and tried to take him in my arms.

  ‘No!’ He pushed me away with a violence that made me stagger.

  For a moment I stood, gasping with shock, and then, not understanding, I took a step forward with my arms outstretched, trying again.

  ‘No!’ Seth said, and his voice was a sob. ‘Anna, no, you’ll only make this harder.’

  ‘What? What do you mean? Make what harder?’

  He turned away as if he couldn’t bear to look at me and put his hands over his face. Then he pushed back his hair, wiping at the tears with his sleeve, and when he spoke his voice was weirdly calm.

  ‘Listen, Anna, I love you. But I meant what I said.’

  ‘What you said?’ For a minute I didn’t have a clue what he was on about. Then, suddenly there was a pain, an actual physical pain in my gut. I remembered the fish-hook and put my hands over my midriff. ‘What you said? When?’

  ‘When …’ Seth stopped and took a shuddering breath. ‘When I said goodbye.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop them, Anna? You could’ve done. You know you could – if you’d practised, if you’d let yourself.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, yes you could. But you’re so screwed up over what happened with us that it’s poisoning everything. It’s poisoning your magic. It’s poisoning both of us. You’re trying to be something you’re not – you’re turning yourself into a half-person. And for what? Because at the end of the day, you still don’t really believe I love you. You’ll never believe you deserve this, deserve to be loved. You’ll never believe me until I walk away. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m going away, completely. I’m leaving Winter.’

  ‘No.’ I held my stomach, knowing that if I let go my guts would spill out on to the polished boards of the Angel. ‘No.’ My voice was so weak that I could barely hear it myself. I wasn’t even sure if Seth knew I was speaking. He wasn’t even looking at me.

  Suddenly I had the crazy idea that if I could just get him to look at me, get him to meet my eyes, it would all be OK.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Seth, please, please look at me. Please tell me to my face that you’re going to do this.’

  Then he looked at me. His eyes were full of tears, but clear and calm at the same time.

  ‘Goodbye, Anna.’

  I gasped. I think I put my hands over my mouth, to try to stifle a cry. I don’t know if I said anything – I don’t think I did. I know there were tears streaming down my face but I don’t remember making a sound.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Anna.’ Emmaline sat down beside me in the
library with a weary sigh. ‘Anna, you need to stop this.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I know you’re there. And I understand why you’re doing this. But it doesn’t work on me, and you can’t do it for ever.’

  Ms Wright walked past and looked at us curiously.

  ‘Are you OK, Emmaline?’

  ‘Yes, fine, thank you, Ms Wright. Just talking to myself.’

  ‘Mmm, so I noticed.’ Ms Wright gave a slightly mystified shake of her head, as if to say Kids today, and then walked on, leaving Emmaline and me alone.

  ‘See?’ Emmaline said, when Ms Wright’s footsteps faded. ‘You’ve got to stop this – if nothing else I’m going to get banged up in the local bin for hearing voices.’

  I smiled reluctantly, and let myself flicker back into view. Emmaline grinned.

  ‘That’s better.’ She gave me a half-hug, half-shoulder-pat. ‘Look, I don’t blame you. I’m sick of people wanting to talk about Seth leaving,’ she ignored my flinch at his name, ‘so I can’t imagine how pissed off you must be. But you can’t stay invisible for ever – and it’ll get better. I promise.’

  As if to contradict her, a lower-sixth girl sidled up.

  ‘Hey, you’re Seth Water’s girlfriend, aren’t you?’

  I bit my lip and didn’t answer. I couldn’t lie. But I couldn’t quite bear to say the truth yet – not to strangers.

  ‘I think it’s so cool what he’s doing.’ She made cow-eyes at me. ‘Don’t you, like, massively miss him though?’

  ‘It’s not cool,’ Emmaline snapped, mimicking the girl’s reverential tone with cruel accuracy. ‘He’s dropped out. It’s bloody stupid. He’s messed up his A levels and screwed his chances at uni.’

  ‘But he’s sailing to Morocco,’ the girl said breathily, as though it was Zanzibar or Tasmania. ‘By himself.’

  ‘Yeah well, whoopi-do,’ Em said sourly. ‘Most normal people get a plane. Pity Waters was too dense to work that one out.’

  ‘Em,’ I said wearily, ‘be fair. He didn’t just drop out – Charles Armitage is paying him to take the boat down to his summer house. There are people who have actual careers in boat transport, you know. It’s not a holiday.’

  No. It’s a coward’s way out, Emmaline said silently inside my head. I still hadn’t got used to her mental broadcasts, but it was all part of her ongoing campaign to get me witched-up to the max.

  ‘We’re not going to discuss this,’ I said shortly and, ignoring the lower-sixth girl, I stood up and shuffled my books together.

  I saved the tears for night-time mostly. It’s hard to keep up an invisibility spell when you’re crying, and I didn’t feel like suddenly flickering into view with red eyes and snotty nose in the middle of the school playing field.

  But at night there was always the risk of Dad hearing, no matter how hard I muffled my sobs with the pillow.

  The knock came around eleven, and at first I just groaned and pushed my face into the duvet, but I didn’t want Dad to worry. I sat up and wiped my eyes, trying to look like I’d been doing my homework, as I’d claimed.

  ‘Come in,’ I said, wishing my voice wasn’t so cracked and hoarse with crying. Dad put his head around the door.

  ‘Are you OK, sweetie? I thought I heard …’ He trailed off, seeing my swollen eyes. I shrugged wearily. There was no use pretending, not really. ‘Oh, lovie.’ Dad came and sat on the side of my bed with a creak of springs and put his arm around me. ‘I know. I know you miss him.’

  ‘Oh, Dad.’ I put my face in his warm shoulder and he held me close. ‘I love him so, so much. It hurts.’

  ‘I know.’ Dad rested his chin on the top of my head and I felt his stubble graze through my hair and heard the slow comforting rhythm of his breath. And he did know. Of course he did. It had been even worse for him.

  ‘How did you manage?’ I raised my face at last and looked up at him. ‘When Mum left, how did you cope, Dad? How did you not go mad, not knowing where she was and how she was doing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dad shrugged sadly. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it was because I always knew she loved me, loved us both. I never doubted that. I came to believe that sometimes people leave, not because they don’t love you, but because they love you too much. They believe that you’ll be better off without them – however impossible that seems to the people left behind. Maybe it was because I always thought, deep down, that she might come back. And I held on to that hope, silly though it seems now. Or maybe …’ He stopped.

  ‘Yes?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe it was because I had something to do. Something important.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I had you to raise. And I concentrated on that. On being your dad.’

  He sighed and kissed the top of my head and then stood, his knees creaking audibly.

  ‘Oh dear. Time this old man went to bed, I think. Good night, sweetie. It does get better, I promise.’

  Long after he left that night, his words hung in my mind. I had something to do. Something important.

  I opened my bedside drawer and took out the faded snapshot of my mum. This time I didn’t use my witchcraft, didn’t search for any hidden meaning at all. I just lay and looked at her smiling face, her blue-grey eyes, warm with love and life. Perhaps … perhaps I had something important to do as well.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was dark, but I could tell someone was there as soon as I opened the barn door.

  ‘Hello?’ My voice echoed in the rafters. ‘Hello?’

  I waited for a moment, listening. Nothing. But I wasn’t alone. I didn’t need witchcraft to tell me that; someone was there; a living, breathing someone, and the knowledge made the hair on the back of my neck prickle.

  A long shriek broke the silence and I jumped, but it was only the barn door slowly swinging to behind me, the damp wood groaning as it went. Then it clunked shut and darkness engulfed the vast space.

  I wasn’t afraid. If I was blind, so was he. I stood, waiting.

  The blow hit me like a blindside, slamming into me so hard I staggered and saw stars. I stumbled against a wooden beam and clutched at it, holding myself upright as I tried to gather my wits for a counterspell.

  ‘Sl-’ I tried. But the blast of lightning came too quick, sending me sprawling to my knees in the straw.

  In that brief, blinding instant, I saw him – standing on a rafter in the centre of the room. It was a vantage point, but a dangerous one. For a minute I lay face down on the filthy barn floor, trusting that he’d be pulling himself together, readying himself for another go.

  Then I leapt up.

  ‘Ábréoðe!’ I yelled.

  There was a deafening crack from the beam he was standing on – then a bone-cracking crunch and a cry of pain as a body hit the floor.

  I stood, panting, waiting to see if he got up. He didn’t, and for a moment I felt triumph. Then a suffocating web of threads began to drop from the darkness, sticking to my hands, my eyes, my mouth. The more I struggled the closer they clung, like a giant spider’s web, binding me in their grip. In a panic I struck out, useless curses right and left, countercharms that did nothing but singe my skin and rip my clothes. I heard laughter, mocking laughter, shiver through the dark, and fury rose up in me.

  ‘Unwríð!’ I screamed. The bindings sizzled into shreds and I concentrated all my rage into a spear of anger and flung it through the darkness in the direction of the laughter. It hit – I heard his cry of pain.

  Now it was his turn on the defensive. I pushed home my advantage, hitting him again and again, punching him with every ounce of magic I could muster.

  But I was tiring and he wasn’t. I could feel his energy and the strength of his magic as he pushed back my blows. Then he began to force his way across the floor of the barn towards me. Now I was concentrating not on hurting him, but on keeping him back. And I couldn’t. He forced me back, back, until my spine was against the rough wooden wall of the barn. He was so close I could feel the crackle o
f his magic, the heat of his skin, smell his sweat.

  ‘No!’ I panted. ‘No!’

  But it was too late – I was trapped into a corner, and he was inches away, crushing me. I felt him lean in, closer and closer in the hot blackness. It was all over. He’d won.

  ‘OK,’ I said, my voice shaking with exhaustion. ‘OK, I—’

  His hand closed on my shoulder, the other gripped my hair, and he kissed me.

  For a minute I couldn’t think – I just stood, shattered, all my defences down, and let him. All I could think about was the soft heat of his mouth, the hard strength of his body, the harshness of his unshaven skin against mine. For a long, long minute I did nothing, just stood and trembled as he kissed me.

  It was only when I felt his hand slip beneath my shirt that clarity broke through. A vicious blast of magic shook the barn. His body was flung backwards, crashing against the opposite wall with a terrible cracking sound.

  And then there was silence.

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen