Bricking It

by A. A. Albright

  ‘You’ve got that wrong,’ I growled. ‘We built the Wyrd Court close to this monstrosity to remind ourselves not to make the same mistake twice. To remind ourselves not to treat wizards – not to treat anyone – like they were below us.’

  He gave me a tight little smile. ‘Agree to differ, my dear. Either way, you’re screwed.’

  He was right. The whole time I was standing there, I’d tried some surreptitious spells of my own. I could feel the strength of his power, making my spells bounce back like they were nothing. Since there were no other amazing plans leaping to mind, I rushed towards my mother. If I could get her to come around and we could join our power together, maybe we stood a chance of getting out of here.

  I was almost next to her when an almighty force dragged me up through the air. I landed with a thud against a headstone. Will began to run to me, but he was whisked through the air as well, before he could manage two steps. He fell back against the far wall and, judging by how slack he seemed, I hoped he was only knocked out and not dead. As for me, I was feeling fairly out of it myself. I sat up, groggily, looking at the stone that my head had bashed against.

  Here lies Quentin Bloome, sacrificed in the Year of the Drover. His gift will not be forgotten.

  I glanced at Will’s dad. ‘I don’t get it. Judging by these headstones, Seamus gave each of the witches a proper burial. He had to kill them to channel their power. But … Franklin Lovage and at least three others have turned up again. As creepy skeletons, sure – but most definitely not buried. You’re doing something different than Seamus. But what?’

  Will’s father smiled and strolled through the graveyard, taking a seat on the throne at the centre. It was enormous, and just like Mr Albright had said in class, there were a lot of symbols on it. I narrowed my eyes, peering closer. Most of those symbols were as old and worn as the ones on the gravestones. But one of them, the symbol that was just above Will’s dad’s head, looked like it had been recently carved. Very recently.

  ‘You changed the spell,’ I said with a gasp.

  ‘Yes, Wanda.’ He clapped his hands again. ‘I changed the spell. You see, wizards have their place in the world. But they tend to be so crude. I had no intention of killing anyone. Just … taking a bit of their power and then giving them a memory spell so they’d recall nothing that happened here before I set them free.’

  I glanced around at the witches. He was taking more than a bit of power. He was draining them dry. By the time he supposedly set them free there would be nothing left of them, just like Franklin and the others.

  ‘It didn’t all go quite to plan, I admit,’ he said, noting the expression on my face. ‘I had a bit of trouble distinguishing between magical power and life force, so the spell tends to eat away at their bodies once it’s finished taking the magic. But such is the way with new advances. If we don’t experiment, how can we learn? I started off with a few homeless chaps. No one who’d be missed. But it turns out, channelling power from homeless wastes of space tends to result in a few unwanted add-ons. I developed a thirst for the cheapest, foulest alcohol you could imagine. And I very nearly took to wearing a tinfoil hat! I had fully resolved to give up the whole plan and just go back to sitting on the throne the same boring way the other Berry leaders have done before me. But that’s when Harry caught me at it.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Pity about Harry. Talented architect.’ He leant forward, suddenly smiling. ‘But that was when I realised. I got some good skills from poor old Harry. Not just extra power. I got his specific skills, too. It was amazing. Never been great at the old broom riding. But Harry was, and now I am too. So once I’d taken all I could from Harry and sent what was left of him on his way, I decided it was time to be a bit more choosy about who I took to the graveyard. And by then, I’d gotten so much extra power that I didn’t need those anymore.’ He pointed at my mother, lifted her into the air and made her whole body shake. The shackles around her wrists made a horrible rattling sound. Now that I could see them more clearly, I realised just how rusty they were. ‘Or at least I didn’t need them until she arrived. She put up quite a struggle, your poor mother.’

  ‘They’re Seamus’s!’ I cried as he relaxed the spell holding my mother in the air. She crashed to the ground, falling next to Kevin Caulfield again. ‘The real, actual ones he used to capture so many witches.’

  ‘Indeed. And I think your mother has proved she’s no longer a threat.’ The shackles flew from her wrists and clasped around mine. ‘But I think I might still need to keep my eye on you. As you can see, I’m proving a tad more successful at this whole deal than Seamus was. But then, he was a mere wizard, channelling witches’ power. I am a witch.’

  ‘Don’t you mean a warlock?’

  He snarled. ‘I’d shut it with the clever remarks if I were you. Whether I call myself a witch or warlock is of little consequence. The point is that I already had innate power to begin with, unlike Seamus. So when I channelled even more … well, I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say I’ve become invincible.’

  I snorted. ‘Jeez. You Berrys certainly don’t suffer from a lack of confidence do you?’

  He was about to retort, but I talked over him. ‘Listen, I know you want to get it all out, but honestly? You’re taking your time to get to the point. I already get the picture, Kilian. You’re now so powerful that you can just zap any witch you want off the street and bring them here, even without these shackles. You get to bake cakes because you’re stealing Mr Caulfield’s talents. You’ve finally got an animal to pretend to be your familiar for more than five minutes because Franklin Lovage was an animal trainer. That’s great. I mean, really – congratulations, Mr Berry. But answer me this. With all of your newly stolen talent, why the hell can’t you manage to get rid of a body properly? One of them turned up in a kid’s sandpit for Gretel’s sake. I mean, what did you do? Just randomly send them off into the ether and hope for the best? Even I can send things to the right place and I’ve only had my power a couple of months.’

  His face turned puce. His jaw began to wobble. He pulled the cat from around his neck and threw it on the ground. The animal went skittering off to the side of the graveyard, and started to play with something it found there. Something long, scaly and emaciated. My stomach lurched. It was Franklin’s familiar, Polly Python. Or rather, it used to be Franklin’s familiar, back when it was alive.

  ‘You really do have a big mouth, don’t you, Wanda Wayfair? Just you try and handle this much power. Hey? See how well you control it. I’ve already said, I didn’t want to kill them. I tried to send them back before it was too late.’

  ‘Yeah. Well clearly you didn’t try hard enough, because it was too late. You’re just a great big greedy psycho who can’t tell when he’s had enough, aren’t you?’

  I was barely at the end of the sentence when I felt my body whipped into the air once again. This time, he set me down gently. Unfortunately, he set me down in an open sarcophagus.

  It was about five feet away from the throne. I sat up and looked at him. He was swirling a staff about. ‘This is Seamus’s staff,’ he said. ‘Just like the throne, it’s an OAP – an object of awesome power. Preserved by generation after generation of Berrys. With this staff, I shall be able to take the power from you, and draw it into me. It’s really very simple.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘And once I share some of your power with Will, he’ll understand. In fact, I doubt he’ll miss you at all.’

  He lifted the staff up. It fused with the new symbol on the throne above his head, then began to grow and arc, until it was attached on the other end to the back of the sarcophagus.

  I tried to get out of the sarcophagus, but I was being held firmly in place. It seemed to be an Insitu spell, just like his sister had used to hold us all while she attempted to burn us to death. But this one felt stronger. With Alice’s spell, there had been at least a bouncing sensation when you hit against the boundaries. Now, it felt just like when I’d been thrown against the headstone.

  The
worst thing of all was that, just a few feet away, I could see my mother stirring. I could see her try with all her might to come to me, to voice an incantation, to do something to help me. But Kilian had already taken too much from her. He’d taken too much from all of them. Besides me and Will, there were another thirty witches down here, and not one of us was strong enough to fight the psycho warlock who was holding us captive.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, desperately thinking. This was where gung-ho got me. In a cold stone sarcophagus in a wizard’s graveyard, bound in stupid rusty shackles that meant I could do nothing to fight back, about to have my power drained until I wasted away to … well, to a skeleton.

  Where would I turn up, I wondered? In someone’s wardrobe? Knowing my luck, I’d wind up in someone’s bed while they were doing the nasty. Because one thing was for sure – Kilian Berry might have a lot of power, but he did not have a clue how to control it. He was like an evil warlock in a witchy sweet shop.

  I pushed and pushed against the boundary. I incanted my little heart out, refusing to believe that a pair of rusty manacles could stop me. No matter how hard I tried, I could feel the horrible, sucking sensation. I could see my power, beginning to escape, spiralling up the wooden arc and heading for Kilian. And it hurt so much!

  I kept the image of the original Wanda in my mind. She had used lightning to get these shackles off the wrists of Carline Von Brandt in the story. And … my mind began to race as I struggled to think. Yes – she had broken these shackles in doing so. I peered down at them. There were weak parts in the metal, parts where you could see repairs had been made. I concentrated on them. Sure, he had me contained, but in a leaky container. He couldn’t subdue me completely. I dug deep, finding that I still had access to something. There was a part, deep down, where the numbness had not invaded. I pulled at it, bringing it into me, using that deepest well of power to pull back what Kilian was trying to take.

  A glance at his face told me I was managing it. He looked worried. In the air, the wooden arc that passed from the sarcophagus to the throne was still fizzing with energy, but now it seemed to be fizzing back in my direction.

  But he still had the power of too many witches. He still had the throne too, draining the remaining power of those witches buried beneath the ground. He might not be as invincible as he believed, but he was ruddy strong. I could see his lips form an incantation, though I could not hear the words. As he finished, my power began to run towards him once more.

  I gritted my teeth, focusing and pulling deeper at the power I still had. In the arc above us, the energy began to concentrate in one enormous ball of beautiful blue and white light, moving neither forwards nor backwards.

  I thought of all of the games of tug of war I’d played at school. I was a stubborn witch then, and I was a stubborn witch now. But even then, no matter how long I held out, I always wound up losing when I was up against a bigger kid.

  ‘You can’t keep this up, Wanda!’ he cried, red-faced. ‘Whatever you’re doing, however you’re doing it, you can’t keep it up.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Well let’s just see about that, shall we?’

  Bravado aside, it was becoming all too clear that he was right. I had so little control over my own power now that I was manacled, so little left to fight him with. Just like when I was a kid, stubbornness could only get me so far. There was a horrible, agonising lurch in my body as something began to pull loose, something far deeper than I even knew was there. Up above, the ball of blue-white light began to move – slowly, but it was definitely moving – in Kilian’s direction.

  Finally, unable to bear it anymore, I howled out in agony.

  ‘Stop it Dad!’ Will cried.

  I turned to look at him. He must have just come round. He was staggering to his feet, rubbing his head and lumbering towards his father, shouting out freezing incantations.

  ‘I’m sorry, Will.’ Mr Berry shook his head. ‘But you’ll thank me afterwards. You and her were never going to work. This way, I might even let you keep a piece of her inside.’

  Will stopped running towards his father, and ran instead towards the sarcophagus. ‘Fine, then. If you want power so much, take mine. Take all of it. Just don’t hurt her.’ He tried to jump in, but he couldn’t. He hit the boundary of the Insitu spell and fell backwards.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Will? You can’t stop me. No one can.’

  Kilian mumbled some words once again, a look of dreadful focus in his eyes. This time, I hadn’t got an ounce of energy left to fight. I hadn’t even got the energy left to cry. I looked up, watching more and more of my power move along the arc and travel in to Kilian.

  ‘See?’ He laughed. ‘If Wanda can’t stop me, what chance do you think you ever had?’

  I squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to look at him, refusing to let him see how much this loss was affecting me. It was only power, I kept telling myself. I’d been without it for nearly twenty-one years. I could live without it again. Y’know, assuming he didn’t drain me until I became a wasted husk of a skeleton like the others. When I heard the odd, shattering sound, it barely registered. But what I heard next most certainly did.

  ‘You wondered who could stop you?’ Christine’s voice reverberated through the sub-sub basement. ‘How about the entire Wayfair coven?’

  19. A Little Help From My Coven

  I sank to my knees in the sarcophagus, looking on in exhausted shock as all of the Wayfairs – secret members included – burst into the room. The shattering sound I’d heard a moment ago had been the great oak door. It was now in too many pieces to count. A splinter of it had presumably landed in Kilian’s hair, because he pulled it out, looking livid.

  The Wayfairs fanned around the room, rushing him, hitting him with spell after spell. He was desperately countering them, but there were so many Wayfairs that he couldn’t keep up. I began to believe, for the first time since Kilian started to drain me, that there was actually some hope of getting out of here alive. As the relief took hold, so too did the exhaustion. I found myself fighting to keep my eyes from closing.

  ‘Wait, what?’ I looked up, jolted to alertness at a sudden touch. Someone was pulling me from the sarcophagus. Two men were on either side of me, carrying me gently to the ground. ‘Max?’ I blinked, unable to believe my eyes. It was him, with the gaudy as hell Pendant of Privilege I’d given him around his neck. His hair began to move in the oddest way. Then Dizzy peeped out from beneath Max’s messy locks. The bat was shivering, but smiling. ‘Hi Wanda.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Um … so I told Max what you were up to,’ he said. ‘Hope you’re not mad with me.’

  ‘Mad? You crazy little bat. I’m grateful is what I am. Insanely so. You must have been scared to death, but you still came.’

  ‘Scared?’ The bat gave me a twitchy smile. ‘I was more than scared. I was bricking it.’

  ‘I forgot a bag of tennis balls I was meant to take in for the dogs,’ Max explained. ‘So I had to rush home. Good thing for you – bad thing for the poor pooches.’ He sat me up against a headstone, and then I spotted the second man who had lifted me out.

  Gabriel Godbody smiled down at me. ‘I came to collect you for our drink together just as Max and Dizzy were rushing out of the house,’ he said. ‘They told me what was going on and I got in touch with the coven.’

  Others were gathering around us. Kilian and Will were floating above us, both looking unconscious. By the way their arms were pasted to their side, I guessed that there was something invisible binding them.

  ‘I …’ I gazed up at Will. He was face down, his hair flopping into his eyes, looking completely helpless. ‘Will wasn’t in on it. He was trying to help.’

  Gabriel scrunched up his forehead. ‘Are you sure? Wanda, I know Will Berry. We were on the same flying team at Crooked College. And considering what a rotten cheating scumbag he was back then, you can understand why I think he might just be the same rotten cheating scumbag right now.’

  I shrugged my shoulde
rs. Tears were coming, I could feel them. What was it about being tired to the bone that made me want to curl up into a foetal position and cry? ‘He was helping,’ I said in a small voice. ‘He really was.’

  Max gave me a pitying smile. ‘Okay. If you say so. But that can all be sorted out later, can’t it? Just rest up for now, Wanda. If you want to go to sleep, just go to sleep.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head, fighting my closing lids. ‘I can’t. My mam. Mr Caulfield. Are they okay?’

  ‘They’re being taken to the healer,’ Gabriel assured me. ‘Which is where we’re taking you now, too. Just relax and I’ll look after everything. You’ll have to hold my hand, all right? Oh … poop on a stick.’ He gulped and gazed across the room. ‘Kilian Berry’s broken out of the spell.’

  His grip left mine and he rushed forward. Every Wayfair was encircling something on the ground. I heard Kilian’s voice in the middle of the circle.

  ‘You see? You can’t contain me. I have power you cannot even conceive of.’

  I watched on as Christine staggered back from the circle, clutching at her chest.

  Next I saw Melissa, her dark red hair flying behind her as she rushed towards Will’s dad, narrowing her eyes and pointing. ‘No one hurts my mam!’ she hissed, hitting him with a spell that sent him staggering to the floor. Unfortunately, she didn’t take him down for long. He stood up, rushing towards me, screaming. ‘You! I can feel your power, coursing through my veins. What is it? What are you? Give me more!’