Bricking It

by A. A. Albright

  ‘Now, most of you are here because you’re having trouble with your day to day classes. If you are to graduate into your next school year, then you must pass this class.’ She beamed at Candace. ‘And some of you are here because you just love to learn. One of you, though ...’ She gave me the foulest of looks. ‘... is here because they want to be a Wayfair when they grow up. Can anyone tell me what a Wayfair is?’

  Tommy stuck his hand up. ‘Permission to answer, Mizz Plimpton?’

  ‘Go ahead, Tommy. Even you can’t get this one wrong, I suppose.’

  ‘They’re descendants of the original Wayfarer,’ he said nervously. ‘They track down wayward witches and bring them to justice.’

  The teacher snorted. ‘Well … they certainly try their best. Now, Wanda here is a member of the Wayfair coven, meaning that she too would just love to interfere with the rights of witches and throw them in Witchfield prison for the most minor of infractions. But unlike her fellow coven members, Wanda was a bit behind when it came to receiving her power. So now, the whole of this school is supposed to give her a free pass, like Mr Albright has no doubt done. We are supposed to assure the rest of the witch community that Wanda isn’t a big thicko. That she is perfectly capable and worthy of being a real Wayfair, with the power to throw witches in Witchfield willy nilly. Well, I’m not having it!’ She stamped her heel on the floor, making the whole room shake.

  The pupils jumped, while I did my best to hide my shock.

  ‘You are not getting an easy ride with me, Miss Wayfair,’ she went on. ‘You might only have to study four subjects in order to become a real Wayfair, and you might have just as easy a time with those other teachers as you did with Mr Albright. That’s their business. But here, with me, you will be given no such favours. This class will continue from now and up until Halloween. In that time you will learn everything that you would have learned by secondary school graduation. If not, you do not pass this class, and you do not get to be a Wayfair. But that’s hardly a bad thing. As far as I’m concerned, the world could do without any more witches working for that conniving coven.’

  I stuck my hand up. ‘Permission to ask a question Mizz Plimpton?’

  ‘Permission reluctantly granted.’

  ‘I thought I was supposed to do this class for the next two weeks, then two weeks of Potions followed by two weeks of Magical History, bringing me right up until Halloween. But if this class is running up until the end, when will I have time for the other lessons?’

  She curled her lip. ‘By the time Halloween comes, you will have had to attend this school for less than two months, Miss Wayfair. Two. Other witches have to study a lot more thoroughly than that in order to graduate Riddler’s Cove School of Magic. Am I to assume you expect even more leeway than you have already been given?’

  Ooh, she was a twisty witch. ‘You know that’s not what I meant. Is there a new schedule? Do the Potions and Magical History teachers suddenly have to fit those classes in around yours?’

  She smirked. ‘Why yes. Yes, they do. It’s all been arranged with my sister. Sorry, did I say my sister? How unprofessional of me. I meant to say that it has all been arranged with the Minister for Magical Law. Who just happens to be my sister. You shall receive your new schedule in the post this evening. Now.’ She turned to look at the rest of the pupils. ‘I think Miss Wayfair has wasted enough of our class time today with her attention-seeking. Let’s get on with the lesson, shall we? Can anyone demonstrate how to do the Solas spell?’

  Candace stuck her hand in the air. ‘Mizz, Mizz! I can, I can!’

  ≈

  I’d been through some trials in recent months. I mean, I’d almost been murdered in an Inferno spell at the hands of Alice Berry. And I’d had to give a smelly rat at least half a dozen baths per day until he joined his witch in the afterlife. But honestly, near death and severe nasal-assault was nothing compared to Simple Spells and Incantations. I mean, it wasn’t as if I could do anything to prepare. Oh, sure, I’d read how to do the spells. I’d read all about wand use for beginners. But with the Minister having forbidden me from using magic until Halloween … well, it meant that practising was a tad on the impossible side.

  ‘Have you never used a wand before, Miss Wayfair?’

  ‘Well no. Of course not. I haven’t had the magic until recently, have I? Look, if you’d just let me try the Solas spell without the wand, I think I could–’

  Her foot came down, once again, onto the wooden floorboards. Next to me, Tommy dropped his wand. Racist against wizards or not, I was beginning to feel sorry for that little sod.

  ‘You will do the spell the way I say you will do the spell. Solas is a simple incantation, Wanda. Any nitwit could do it. But for all its simplicity, it is also of the utmost importance. I mean, if you cannot create a little light when you need it most, how can you ever expect to work as a Wayfair?’

  I just about managed to stop myself suggesting a flashlight. ‘Okay, I’ll try it again.’ I wiped my brow. ‘Although I do think I might fare a little better if you stepped back. I could be wrong, but I think you might have eaten a few raw onions before class.’

  She scowled and stayed exactly where she was – three whole inches away. ‘I did have raw onion before class, Wanda. And I’ll probably do the same before every single class I have with you. Maybe next time I’ll even add some raw garlic to the mix.’

  I ignored her breath and pointed the wand at the air before me. Solas was the Irish word for light, and the traditional name in Riddler’s Cove for a spell that could create a ball of bright light to guide the way. There was a basic incantation I would have to learn in order to pass that part of the class, but the idea was that eventually I’d be able to use my own incantations to control the brightness of the light, how long it lasted and so on.

  ‘Light oh light will you not shine

  To brighten up this point of mine.’

  The point in question was supposed to be the exact area where my wand was pointed. But while I did my best to direct my power through to the tip of the wand, my fingers were tingling like crazy. Every cell of my body wanted to perform the spell without the wand. I did my best, pushing the power out of my body, trying to channel it as best I could. The tip of the wand grew slightly brighter, but the light waned in less than a second.

  Across the room, Candace was smirking at me while her own wand produced ball after ball of light. ‘Just try and follow what I’m doing, Wanda,’ she said. ‘It’s really very easy.’

  I grimaced at her and tried again. ‘Light oh light …’ I began with determination. Perhaps a little too much Less than half way through the incantation, a strong beam of light burst from the tip of the wand, blazing the whole room up with blinding white light.

  We all covered our eyes and ducked as I furiously counter-incanted. ‘Light oh light you will reduce

  Lest this whole poor class turn puce.’

  The light disappeared. Now that I could see again, I almost wished I couldn’t. Mizz Plimpton’s face really was puce. Her lip was wobbling with barely-contained anger. ‘Did I tell you that you could counter-incant, Miss Wayfair?’

  ‘No, but I just thought–’

  ‘You are not here to think. You are here to learn. You are–’ She stopped and glared at my pocket. ‘You appear to be ringing.’

  ‘Oh, crap. That’s my phone.’

  ‘I gathered that, Miss Wayfair. Now turn it off and get back to work.’

  I pulled it from my pocket, meaning to turn it off, but I saw Christine’s number flash up on the screen. ‘It’s one of my coven,’ I said. ‘I think I ought to answer it.’

  Mizz Plimpton’s right eye began to twitch. ‘You are seriously contemplating answering your phone? In the middle of my class? Because that is an action I would strongly advise against, Miss Wayfair.’

  ‘She knows I’m in class, so it must be an emergency.’

  Her left eye had joined in with the twitching. Her lip was curling, and a rumble was beginning s
omewhere at the back of her throat.

  I turned away from her before her heel could hit the floor, running to the hall and answering. ‘Christine?’

  ‘Oh, Wanda. I’m so sorry for interrupting your class. And you have Mizz Plimpton teaching you today, don’t you?’

  I ground my teeth together. ‘I thought the Minister was a nightmare, but at least she pretends to be nice while she’s stabbing you in the back. What’s going on? Please don’t tell me it’s something bad.’

  There was a beat of silence. ‘It’s your mother, Wanda. She’s … she’s disappeared.’

  14. Play it Again, Christine

  Christine had explained to me before that envisioning was an imperfect art. Sometimes she saw the future. Other times she was able to look into her scrying bowl and home in on a moment that had already occurred. Obviously it was better to see things before they’d happened and – hopefully – prevent crimes from happening at all. But looking back could be helpful for the coven too, whenever it was possible, because they used this method to view crime scenes for vital clues.

  But today, there were no clues. No matter how many times I watched the action in Christine’s bowl, I was no closer to understanding what the hell was going on.

  ‘Play it again.’

  The others exchanged pitying glances. There were about a hundred of us, gathered around the table in the bandstand in An Pháirc Eile for an emergency meeting. Everyone had seen the Frozen Stare before I arrived, and since then they’d seen it three times more.

  Despite how pointless they probably all thought the exercise, Christine focused on the bowl once again. ‘Reform,’ she said. Droplets of water rose into the air, crystals forming quickly into a snowflake-shaped ice-cube.

  Christine palmed the cube, dropped it into the water, and the vision played once more.

  My mother was pacing in Minister Plimpton’s office, her cheeks red with fury. ‘I see you’ve changed your mind yet again on just how many hoops you expect my Wanda to jump through.’

  Justine smirked. ‘It’s a minister’s prerogative.’

  ‘And now you have her studying under your sister, no less. A witch who up until very recently was retiring. I wonder, what could have made her want to return to teaching so badly?’

  ‘Do you have a point, Bea?’ Justine sat back in her chair. ‘Because I would have thought you had more important things to do with your time. Like catching whoever has been playing these horrific pranks with the skeletons, for example.’

  ‘Oh, we’re still going with pranks, are we?’ My mother leant on the desk and grinned at the Minister. And when I say grinned, I mean the sort of grin a shark gives you before it swallows you whole. ‘You and I both know that’s a lot of horse manure. Listen, Wanda has been given two months in which to learn what takes everyone else twelve years. As if that’s not bad enough, you’ve now thrown your sister into the mix. So I’m asking you – no, I’m telling you – that this whole thing has got to change.’

  The Minister was busy scrolling through her mobile phone. She laughed briefly at something she read on her screen, then gave my mother a disinterested glance and said, ‘Oh, you’re still here. Wonderful.’

  ‘You might not have noticed, seeing as your social circle involves a bunch of witches as privileged as yourself sitting around quaffing brandy and talking about the latest in glamours. But here’s the thing, Justine–’

  ‘Oh, call me Minister, please. I insist.’

  ‘As I was saying – Justine – here’s the thing. Out there amongst the real witches, the ones who work hard for a living, Wanda is proving to be quite the hot topic. You and your cronies might be a bit annoyed that she managed to have two of the richest supernaturals in Ireland convicted of murder. But everyone else? They’re cheering in the streets. They’re calling out her name when they clink their glasses together.’

  ‘I think you mean their beer cans.’

  My mother chose to ignore that one. ‘And they’re very, very annoyed that she’s been barred from any further investigations. In fact, they have the sneaking suspicion that you’ve barred her as a delay tactic, because you and the rest of your moneybag friends are a little bit nervous about who might get arrested next.’

  My mother swirled her finger, and a pile of paper as thick as a brick landed in front of the Minister. ‘In fact, they’ve gotten a petition going. If you read it there, you’ll see that they have a very simple request of you.’

  The Minister looked down. ‘“Make Wanda a proper Wayfair, with full jurisdiction to investigate anything she wants to. Now.”’ She pushed the pile of paper away. ‘Really, Beatrice? I thought you could do better than this.’

  My mother swirled her fingers and the Minister’s desk filled with more and more piles. ‘Oh, didn’t I say? That was just a small sampler. Here are the rest of the signatures.’

  Justine’s eyelids did an awful lot of fluttering, but she regained her composure quickly and said, ‘You know full well that I don’t cow down to the demands of the great unwashed.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ My mother shot her a cold smile. ‘I know very well that neither you nor a single senior minister on the Wyrd Court could give a damn about the people you’re paid to represent. So I’ll make it easy for you. Give Wanda more allotted magic use until Halloween. She wants to take these tests. She’s over the moon to finally be learning all of the things your stupid rules wouldn’t let her learn while she was unempowered. But even a witch as determined as Wanda can’t possibly pass a Simple Spells and Incantations exam if she’s not allowed to practise.’

  The Minister snorted. ‘She’s perfectly entitled to practise.’

  ‘Really?’ My mother lifted a brow. ‘You could practise spells without using magic?’

  ‘She can use magic. She’s allowed to use it when travelling back and forth to school, and of course she can use as much as she likes while under the instruction of her teachers.’

  My mother prodded a finger onto a pile of petition signatures. ‘Either you allot my daughter more magic use in order to practise, or I will have each and every person on this list march on the Wyrd Court tomorrow morning. Oh, and before you say your Peacemakers will be able to handle the crowd, think again. Because you and I both know that the reprobates you have working for you are about as magically inclined as a swarm of gnats. All they’re good for is bullying weredogs and wizards. But let’s see how well they fare when they’re faced with a few thousand angry witches.’

  Justine stood up, glaring at my mother. ‘Fine. I’ll give Wanda one hour of allotted magic each day, but only to be practised under your instruction.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Fine.’ Justine grunted. ‘Two. But I’ll be tracking her. If she goes even a minute over, or if I find out she’s using it without you as a chaperone, she shall incur an instant fail on every test to come. Now just disappear, would you, you horrible witch. Because I am really sick of the sight of your face.’

  No sooner had she said it than, right there in the Minister’s office, my mother vanished.

  ≈

  ‘Have you seen enough,’ asked Christine.

  Reluctantly, I nodded. ‘No matter how many times you play it, I can’t find a crack in the Minister’s veneer.’

  Melissa sighed. ‘I know, right? She looked just the right amount of shocked when your mother vanished without snapping her fingers. She went and called us straight away, and let us examine her office before anyone else did.’

  ‘And there was nothing? No trace of whatever magic could have taken her?’

  Agatha Oster squeezed my arm. ‘We’ve gone through this from every angle, dear. No doubt we’ve missed some things, or your mother would still be with us right now. But we can’t figure out what’s causing any of this. So far we have a total of twenty witches who have disappeared and four skeletons turning up. I almost don’t want to see the connection.’

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘Me neither. But it’s there, I just know it is. Franklin Lov
age was the skeleton who appeared in the changing room. Which means the other skeletons have to be the disappeared witches. Which means if we don’t find my mother soon …’ I sank into my chair. ‘Listen, I was afraid to repeat this, but I’ve found something out. Something that you guys have to know. There are more than twenty witches who have gone missing.’

  There was a gasp around the table. Groaning, I finally revealed what Will had told me at the Warlock Arms.

  ‘Your bat is probably right,’ said Melissa, when I’d finished. ‘Berrys and lies are like apple tart and ice cream. But what a jerk! Telling you he’d report you to the Minister if you told us about their people. I hate that guy.’

  I gave her a weak smile. I just didn’t have the energy for vitriol. ‘Yeah. Well, hate him or not, I had to tell all of you. Because it really doesn’t matter to me now. He can report me to the Minister all he wants. I’ll keep snooping. I’ll keep annoying the heck out of him and whoever else I have to until I have my mother back, safe and sound.’

  Christine and Melissa squeezed me from either side. ‘Sweetheart, we know why you feel that way,’ said Christine. ‘We get it. But even in the short time you’ve been back in the witching world, you must have seen – even when you’re at your lowest, Minister Plimpton won’t fail to push you down even more. It’s risky enough that you’re even at this meeting today. If you use magic now, or try and solve this case along with us, she won’t care that you’re doing it for your mother. She’ll be only too happy if you do use magic – because it’ll give her the excuse she needs to make sure you never get to work on a case again.’

  Again, I just smiled weakly. I knew Christine was right, but it didn’t help matters. The meeting broke up shortly afterwards, with every member of the coven leaving with clear instructions as to their next move. Agatha Oster was going to demand the bones back from the Peacemakers. Ronnie Plimpton, our mole in the Minister’s coven, was researching what potions could possibly scatter a magical signature. Melissa was going back to the Wyrd Court for the afternoon, and going to use her time to spy. Everyone had a task. Everyone but me.