The Secret Witch

by Harvey, Alyxandra;

  “Sisters,” he replied. “Mine, that is.”

  The cabin was polished oak from ceiling to floor and every piece of furniture in between. Iron nails gleamed, as much to secure the tables and chairs to the floor in a storm as for the metal’s magical qualities. The iron wheel was painted on the ceiling, surrounded by stars. Rum bottles filled with salt sat in every corner. The sideboard was covered with platters of cheese, dark bread, currant tarts, meat pies, and fresh strawberries next to decanters of wine. Silver urns filled with tea and coffee, with spouts shaped into open-mouthed gargoyles, hulked on either end.

  On the main table was a large painted map of London. Cormac had a similar one hidden inside his coat pocket. He’d have to memorize the Order’s additions to keep his up to date. He wasn’t as inflexible as they were, and perfectly willing to accept the help of girls, Madcaps, and witches without a penny or a pedigree.

  There were a dozen Keepers scattered around Lord Mabon, the current head of the Order. Directly beneath him in power was Daphne’s father, the First Legate. “Doesn’t his daughter fancy you?” Ian asked nodding to him.

  “All the girls fancy Cormac,” Oliver Blake interrupted amiably. “Damn your eyes.”

  Cormac just shrugged. He knew better than to say that he found Daphne boring. In fact, he was finding every girl he met who wasn’t Emma, boring. He’d never live it down if word got out. Never mind his friends, his sisters would be merciless. “Any news?” he asked.

  Ian shook his head. “They still can’t figure out what the Sisters are keeping the stolen magic for. It’s making them downright vulgar.”

  “Ho, Cormac.” Virgil smiled snidely. “Taking up with a Lovegrove now. She seems just your type. Like her mother, she’s too crazy to care that you haven’t got an ounce of magic.”

  Cormac wasn’t even aware of moving. Anger propelled him and suddenly Oliver was holding him back and Virgil was wiping blood off his nose. His own cravat was loose and he was breathing roughly, fists clenched. Virgil took a swing in retaliation but Cormac moved aside, still vibrating with adrenaline. The simple evasion infuriated Virgil more than the punch had.

  “She’s got bad blood, just like you,” he spat.

  This time it took both Ian and Oliver to hold Cormac back. The other Keepers turned to them, disapprovingly. Magic slammed the door shut and flung Virgil and Cormac apart.

  “I thought you were men, not little boys,” one of the older Keepers snapped. “You should have outgrown this childish behavior by now.”

  “And we have more serious problems,” Daphne’s father added sternly. Cormac and Virgil bowed to him in mute apology.

  “Cross me again and I’ll call you out, whatever the rules say about it,” Cormac promised Virgil silkily, smiling a mad kind of smile. Keepers were forbidden from dueling each other on the ship and while out on any official business of the Order. Virgil stomped off to the other side of the cabin. The ship rolled soothingly beneath their feet. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to punch him again,” Cormac said. At least Virgil would assume Cormac had reacted to the accusation of having bad blood, instead of the slight on Emma’s name, which was the real reason his temper had snapped.

  “I’d bet on it,” Ian agreed.

  “We’ve had good progress in reclaiming and reanimating the gargoyles,” Lord Mabon was saying. “The gates are trickier. We’ve closed five of them so far. They appear at random and only stay open until the next sunrise or sunset.” A scribe took notes at his left elbow, the scratch of his quill somnolent and steady. “We are, however, no closer to determining why the Sisters are back and to what purpose they are killing.”

  “For the pleasure of it?” someone suggested. “Do they need another reason?”

  “For this many murders, and of young witches in particular, there is most definitely another reason,” the First Legate said. “They are stooping to stealing the life force of rats and birds and people already dying. They clearly want to recorporealize and quickly.” He sounded frustrated. Cormac realized how afraid he must be for his own daughter. “We’ve been through the Greymalkin family tree exhaustively and we can find no record of a son born to the line since the Revolution in France. They cut off that one’s head and then the Sisters were banished to the Underworld. Whoever this new descendant is, he’s fiendishly clever. But none of our soothsayers can locate him.”

  “We’ve bound the tombs and the witch bottles of the old Greymalkin witches we already know about,” Lord Mabon explained. “But we can’t know how many were buried secretly. As you know, they say the cellar of the Greymalkin House is built with the bones of their dead.” He pushed his wine glass away in disgust.

  “And though we’re doing the best we can, it’s not good enough. Not nearly good enough.”

  Chapter 44

  The next evening Emma went back home when her father was out at his club. It gave her the opportunity to rifle through his desk and sort through boxes. She told Jenkins she needed to pack extra items for school. He complimented her on her curtsy, having no idea she was learning to fry ghouls with lightning and duck boiled beets.

  She searched everywhere, trying to find hidden journals or mentions of any scandal involving a man named Ewan. All to no avail. She found boring speeches her father was writing for Parliament, household accounts, and a list of sheep-shearers to be hired for the country estate, but nothing remotely magical, and nothing about an antlered man.

  On her way back to the academy, she ran through everything she knew, which admittedly wasn’t much. She hadn’t been able to decipher her mother’s rhymes, and though the Witch’s Debrett’s listed every witch’s familiar along with their title, there were simply too many bears and serpents, and no lions at all. She felt as though there was something important hovering just out of reach. Something important that she already knew but didn’t know she knew. It nagged at her like a splinter.

  Gold is good, silvers better. The lion stalks the maiden fair, when the bear leaves his lair. But where the hunter goes, only the serpent knows.

  It sounded like a country song one might hear at a fair. She’d read enough books in the school library to understand that gold represented the sun and silver the moon, but it didn’t explain her mother’s rhyme. Oak trees were dedicated to Thor the thunder god and Brigid the Irish goddess of poetry; they were also sacred to the druids. Emma was fairly certain her mother wasn’t a druid. Did druids even exist anymore? She tried to recall if any of the doors in the Berkshire house were made of oak.

  Ten minutes later, as the carriage drew near a clogged road full of other carriages waiting for guests at a ball, Emma was no nearer to figuring anything out. And she had a headache for her troubles.

  Although, come to think of it, the tree in her dream was an oak. And she’d already noticed that it looked like the one painted on her mother’s bedroom wall. To which her mother had added a red bird just like her bound familiar.

  Surely that meant something.

  But if her mother had hidden her bottle in one of the thousands of oak trees in Windsor Forest alone, never mind Britain, it was hopeless.

  The carriage tilted dangerously, wheels creaking. Emma had to brace herself on the wall as the lantern swung, black smoke staining the curtains. She could hear the coachman shouting to the horses and then the wind was too loud to hear anything else. It rocked the carriage back and forth, whirling inside and pulling at her. The tassels on the cushions whipped her legs.

  When the coachman stopped, she stumbled outside. The wind went with her and the sudden gust knocked him right off his seat. He sprawled on the sidewalk, his greatcoat flapping like wings. He was hidden in the shadows, other drivers had no reason to look back this way. The wind clung to Emma alone. It was still a calm spring evening around the house with the music and candlelight and girls in pretty dresses.

  The coachman was breathing normally, though he was unconscious. Try as she might, she could not reach him. The wind was determined to shove her down the a
lley, to where a rickety ladder waited.

  “Moira?” she called up, squinting through the whirling dust. “Is that you?” She didn’t know anyone else who might be on the roof of a Mayfair town house.

  Moira immediately looked over the edge. Her face was so pale she looked like the moon on the horizon of the ledge. “Emma?”

  “Yes, are you hurt? Ow.” The wind had tripped her and she cracked her elbow and the inside of her ankle on the ladder.

  “It’s not safe!” she said frantically. “Get back!”

  The night air clearly had other plans. A wooden crate used to deliver bottles skidded across the ground, slamming into the wall beside Emma. It splintered into pieces.

  When she put her foot on the lowest rung, the storm calmed down.

  The inside of her mouth felt gritty with dirt and her hair was tangled around her antlers. Muttering, she climbed the ladder, casting another concerned glance at the coachman. He hadn’t moved but he didn’t look hurt, even from this vantage point. Moira however, looked dreadful. She waved her hands desperately. “Stay down there!”

  Emma only climbed faster, finally pulling herself over the side. Moira crouched by the body of a girl with reddish-blond hair. A small mouse-familiar raced in circles, flaring red. “Strawberry,” she said dully.

  Emma exhaled slowly. “What happened? Let me fetch a doctor.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Moira said as Strawberry’s eyes rolled back in her head. “She didn’t want to be alone,” she added, tears running down her cheeks and into her mouth. “I couldn’t save her.”

  “Who did this?” Emma asked. “All the way up here?”

  “I only saw her running away but it was definitely a girl,” she replied, stroking Strawberry’s forehead. Blood dripped onto the shingles. “Shh, shh. You’re all right, ’Berry.”

  “A girl?” Emma murmured as she took her cloak off and bunched it under Strawberry’s head.

  Strawberry’s breaths trembled pitifully. “Not your fine cloak, miss. I’m all over with blood.”

  “I’m going to find who did this to you,” Moira promised fiercely. “Do you hear me, Strawberry?”

  “Never mind,” she replied. “I’ll be a spirit soon and maybe I’ll finally be able to protect you, instead of you always protecting me.”

  “I couldn’t protect you from this,” Moira said, still stroking her bloodstained hair. “I’m so sorry.” Bruises rose on Strawberry’s neck. Her wrist was bent backward and there were burns on her collarbone. They looked old. Moira frowned. “What are these burns from? I haven’t seen them since you left your mother’s house.” She glanced at Emma. “That was five years ago.”

  Strawberry coughed, crying out in pain. She was so thin her bones looked like glass under her pale skin. “I don’t—”

  She broke off, falling into unconsciousness. Moira sobbed, dropping her forehead down to touch Strawberry’s. Her long black hair shielded them from Emma.

  Emma sat back on her heels, feeling confused and sad. Why had the wind pushed her here? What was the point? There was no evidence, no murderer to be found. Only another dead witch. It wasn’t fair.

  Lightning broke the sky in half. Rain poured over them in a pelting, angry deluge before Emma got ahold of herself. The rain stopped but they were already drenched. A warm mist lifted off the shingles. She squinted through the veil it made, wondering what she was looking at. Then it hit her, but too late.

  The Sisters.

  They coalesced in a circle around them, wreathed in deadly flowers and blood. They ignored Emma and Moira at first, reaching for Strawberry. The shingles iced, crackling like crumpled paper. The last of the rain misting the air turned to snow. Emma’s fingers tingled with cold, her hair freezing into icicles. Below them, ice coated the street, wrapped frost-flowers around the iron lamps, and blackened the flowers growing in decorative urns.

  The Sisters opened their mouths, an unnatural darkness held between their jaws. Their heads fell back like overblown flowers on the pale stems of their necks. They opened their mouths, sucking in the last of Strawberry’s magic and ebbing life force. Her mouse tried to dart away but was caught by a vine of belladonna. It tightened around its neck, strangling. Fresh corresponding bruises formed on Strawberry’s throat. She jerked violently then lay limp, chest barely rising. Ice crawled over her, hardening the mended rips on her dress, her shawl, and finally, shattering her cameo of a gargoyle hanging below her bruises. She went from pale to gray. Her hair glistened with frost.

  “Leave her be!” Moira snarled, scattering blue and white powder from a pouch on her belt. A white horse formed out of the misty puff of the powder. The mare was wild, with one blue eye, but she wasn’t enough, not while the Sisters were feeding.

  “Bah, Keeper magic,” Rosmerta spat.

  Her glow intensified, pulsing brightly until Emma’s eyes began to water. Rosmerta flicked her hand, her head still flung back, mouth open. A whip of dark amethyst-colored fire snapped around the mare’s hooves, binding her. She screamed and there was something unnervingly human about the sound. The Sisters were already more powerful than they’d been just days ago.

  Moira shivered, trying to reach a weapon, any weapon. Emma’s teeth chattered so hard she bit the side of her tongue and tasted blood.

  The Sisters paused.

  Emma and Moira crawled closer to each other. Ice jabbed up like daggers between them, tearing through their sleeves, and peeling back the shingles. The Sisters floated together, approaching Emma as one.

  “Yes.” Magdalena smiled a disturbing smile.

  Fear made Emma’s throat spasm around a scream. She scattered salt and iron shavings. Strawberry’s blood stuck to her, freezing to tiny crystals. Mrs. Sparrow would have reminded her that staying calm was her best defense.

  Mrs. Sparrow likely hadn’t been pinned to a rooftop by the spirits of three homicidal warlocks.

  Emma could think of several better defenses but they all involved very sharp things, none of which she currently had in her possession. She barely had the strength to sit up. In fact, even as she tried to summon some sort of weather, she slumped over. They were draining her, not enough to kill her, at least not yet; but enough to shackle her in place.

  Lark tried to stroke her hair. “Will you help me find my beloved?”

  Moira inched away, all ice-burned cheeks and grim fury. Emma saw her flash a pointed glance at the gargoyle. Emma fumbled for her dagger with numb hands and flung it desperately. It sliced through Rosmerta, but since it wasn’t made of iron, it left no damage whatsoever. But at least she had their attention. Their combined cold glares pinned her down. Moths and wasps buzzed around her.

  Ice choked her lungs. Moira kept creeping toward the gargoyle, tiny perfect bat and bird bones bound in a ribbon clutched in her hand. She dropped the bundle between the gargoyle’s stone feet. Shivering from head to toe, she tried to uncork the flask from her waistcoat pocket. Emma wheezed, her frozen antlers clacking on the roof when she rolled over. Her familiar glowed, pushing light through them. It had never fully materialized before. It made her feel even stranger inside.

  A portal cracked open. The fissure of violet light wavered, stretching and shooting off sparks.

  “I said not her!” Ewan stepped through the gate, swinging a spectral ax.

  The Sisters turned, hissing. The white horse took advantage of their lapse in concentration to break free, placing herself between the Sisters and the girls. It was too late for Strawberry.

  Behind them, Moira finally managed to get the flask open. She poured a stream of gold whiskey out onto the bones, stopping to take a generous mouthful for herself.

  “She is ours to claim,” Magdalena said, cold and calm in her hunger. “They all are.”

  Ewan shimmered into the shape of a white stag, hooves flashing silver. The roof cracked where he landed. The gate elongated and the ghostly outlines of the Sisters’ dresses fluttered wildly. The portal pulled at them, sucking them in like a sinkhole. Ro
smerta shrieked.

  The white stag was a man again, fierce and foreboding.

  “Stay here and be called back to the Underworld,” he declared, purple sparks falling off his ax, as though he was sharpening it on a whetstone. “The Wild Hunt rides and they would love to harvest the Sisters three.”

  The gargoyle growled then, talons slicing through the cornices of the roof as it detached itself. Its leathery stone-colored wings flapped powerfully, sending another draft over the Sisters. They were sent closer to the portal, hissing. Magic seared the air.

  Strawberry’s body moved, pulled by invisible hands. Moira clutched at her desperately. Ewan dug in his heels, scrabbling for purchase.

  The gargoyle snapped its jaws together, swallowing a swarm of spectral moths. Beetles and fire ants marched up Magdalena’s hem for safety.

  The white horse reared, bucking madly.

  The Sisters flared once, blue as the heart of a flame, and then were gone.

  The backdraft of energy from their sudden departure flung Strawberry like a rag doll. She was wrapped around the chimney, dangling dangerously.

  “Wait!” Emma cried out as Ewan allowed himself to be pulled toward the portal. “Are you really my father?”

  “You have my eyes.” He glanced at her, almost smiling, as he was pulled through the gate. “And my antlers.”

  The gargoyle gave a rusty roar and crouched back on the ledge, scattering bits of broken stone onto the pavement below. The coachman stirred at the sound, waking from his stupor. He sat up, groaning and looking around, bemused.

  Emma knew the exact moment the coachman looked up the side of the building to see her bending over the edge, her hands wet with blood, next to a dead girl.

  “You!” he shouted, staring at Strawberry’s body, curled around the chimney. “It was you!”

  “No!” Emma darted toward the ladder. “Wait!”

  The coachman had already leaped back onto the carriage bench, the reins in his hands. “Call the Order!” he bellowed to no one at all, urging the horses into a gallop.