Hard.
His boot made contact with Shambles, sending him soaring across the room.
“No!” Ondine screamed.
Shambles’s body wobbled and twisted through the air until he hit the wall with a sickening crack, then slid lifelessly to the floor.
Ondine scrambled to his side, but something tripped her and she hit the ground again, smacking her chin on the tiles. Pain shot through her. She shut her eyes hard to ride it out. Tears sprouted anyway. Jupiter’s moons, it hurt!
“Vincent! This madness must be stopped!” Anathea said, cowering behind Old Col.
Ondine tried to get up again, but she slipped on something wet and smelly. Biscuit piddle. She nearly threw up in her effort to move away.
Hamish, I must get to Hamish, she thought. But when she turned to where he’d fallen, he wasn’t there. Had he crawled off. Had someone taken him away?
“He’s possessed,” Old Col said of Vincent, to nobody in particular.
“Help me!” Vincent called out, even as the magical assault continued.
Col yelled out, “Who’s pulling the strings?”
Vincent made garbled sounds.
“Where’s Hamish?” Panic constricted Ondine’s chest. “What have you done with him?”
“The boy’s mad,” Anathea said. With a burst of panic, she ran for the door and pulled it open. “Security! Security!”
Meanwhile, Old Col and Vincent were still holding each other steady with equal measures of magic and bluster. Sound waves reverberated around the room turning everything hazy and blue. Noises crashed inside Ondine’s head, giving her the biggest thumper of a migraine she’d ever experienced.
Mrs. Howser stood there with a satisfied look on her face.
Col’s voice came out strong and sure. “Give up!”
“Help me!” Vincent yelled.
Anathea slipped out the door to safety.
“Where is Hamish?” Ondine pressed her hands to the sides of her head and staggered around the room.
“What?” Vincent lost his concentration for a split second.
Old Col seized her chance. “Stop!” The boom of a jet engine breaking the sound barrier pounded through the room. Light fittings exploded. The large dome above them shattered, showering everyone with broken glass and sending magic into the snowy sky like fireworks.
The thumping inside Ondine’s head fell away. A piercing ringing took its place. Maybe, just maybe, if this had been an ordinary day without the spying and plotting and scheming, she might have the strength to make sense of it. Instead she felt twenty-seven kinds of wrong. Confusion held her in its grip. Vincent lay slumped on the floor. It looked like Old Col was saying something. Her lips were moving but nothing came out.
Gradually the piercing noise faded away, replaced by the buzzing of wasps. Through the buzzing, Anathea came back into the room, flanked by security.
“He’s gone crazy. He’s possessed,” the Duchess said.
Old Col agreed. “He was fighting something, but he wasn’t strong enough to hold it back.”
Ondine leaned against the wall, waiting until the room stopped spinning. Turning, she saw Melody curled in foetal position.
Looking completely at ease, Mrs Howser turned to the security people and said, “Something is very wrong with that boy.”
Anathea gulped as she looked at the slumped form of Lord Vincent. “He’s always given me the creeps, that child. I truly fear for Brugel when he inherits.”
Mrs. Howser stepped forward to help the Duchess. “There’s plenty of time to declare him insane before then. Now, careful where you walk, there’s broken glass everywhere.”
Col’s top lip curled in contempt as she looked at the security people. “Your Duchess could have used you a few minutes ago.”
“Apologies, My Lord Duchess.” The security guard dropped to one knee. His eyes sprang open as a glass shard punctured his skin.
For the next few minutes, Ondine regained her balance and ignored the confused talk and apologies. She only had one thing on her mind. “Auntie Col, did you see where Hamish went?”
His dishevelled face appeared around the doorway, along with a naked shoulder and bony knee. “Ondi, would ye mind grabbin’ ma clothes, I’m fair freezing.”
Relief surged through her. “Uh-huh.” Ondine nodded and grabbed the bundle of clothes she’d dropped at some point. Unfortunately, she’d dropped them too close to the lake of Biscuit piddle so they had that unforgiving acrid smell. It would have to do until they got home and could wash this horrible day down the drain.
Chapter Sixteen
Back at the family pub, Chef approached Ondine, Hamish and Old Col with a cheerful smile. He caught one whiff of the dog-wee smell, scrunched his face up and ushered them towards the back room. “Get cleaned up, I’ll get you some to-faux-fu soup.” [243]
After they’d showered and changed and properly cleaned themselves up, Ondine and Hamish met up with Ma and Old Col in their private room behind the kitchen. The soup arrived and they slurped it down while they debriefed after an insane day.
But why did Ma need to be in here? “Aren’t you busy?” Ondine asked.
“Have you ever known Tuesday nights to be busy?” Ma shot back.
“Good point.”
Ma pressed on, keen to find out everything. “Will you tell me what’s wrong? Was it the run-in you had with Lord Vincent?”
At which point Hamish began rubbing her back in a sign of support and love.
“Auntie Col told me,” Ma said. “She filled me in on everything that happened.”
“That would be everything except what we heard by the pool, eh lass?”
“You went swimming?” Great Aunt Col shivered at the thought.
“That’s the bit we haven’t had time to tell you about. We came back inside to find you but by that point Mrs. Howser was with you and we couldn’t say anything.”
Old Col huffed. “That woman! No wonder she stuck so close. She knew the more she stuck by me, the less you could say.”
That may have been the case at CovenCon, but now they were home, they had plenty of time to relay everything, so that’s exactly what they did. Everything they overheard and saw from their morning of spying on Mrs. Howser, including the black oozy shadowy thing.
A shiver spread through the room.
“No wonder you two didn’t say much during our meeting with Anathea.” Col said, shaking her head. “I knew Birgit was up to something. I thought an audience with the Duchess would expose that. Which, of course, it did. It’s all falling in to place now. She met with Vincent and transferred some kind of controlling spell onto him. To do that she would’ve had to be close enough to touch him. Did you see whether she touched him? Shook his hand? Patted his head? You see, the higher up the body, the more powerful the spell.”
Hamish piped up. “Weil, we didnae see anything, but we heard him say ‘don’t touch me,’ so we did.”
“He sounded really annoyed about it,” Ondine added.
“Oh dear.” Old Col sucked in her cheek in thought. “If she patted him on the head, it explains his lack of control.”
“Maybe that’s why he sounded so annoyed. Maybe he thought she was being patronising or something, when instead she was getting close enough to cast a spell,” Ondine said.
Ma drummed her fingers on the table. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. He’s caused you no end of grief. I would have thought you’d be glad to see him suffer.”
“No Ma, not even Vincent deserved that. He was completely possessed. He was crying out for help. I felt . . . sorry for him.”
Ma crinkled her brow. “Sorry?”
“Yeah. A bit.”
“Must have been really bad,” Ma said.
“I wonder, hmm,” Old Col said. “When he said we should die, I thought it was rather extreme. But perhaps he was directing that to Howser and not Anathea?”
“That’s kind of painting a nicer picture,”
Ondine said. “I don’t want to think nicely about Vincent. He doesn’t deserve my sympathies.”
“True lass,” Hamish said.
“But what I don’t get,” Ondine said, completely not getting it. “One moment Howser is trying to sweet-talk Vincent into joining her, the next she’s sending him insane. What’s all that about?”
“Motivation, dear child,” Old Col said. “It’s her way of showing Vincent ‘you’re either with me or against me.’ There is no middle ground with Birgit.”
It was Hamish’s turn to crease his brow. “So she throws a witchy tantrum if she disnae get her own way?”
“That’s about the sum of it. Today she’s shown Vincent what a powerful enemy she can be. He can continue to defy her and pay the consequences, or join her and reap the rewards. It’s a surprisingly persuasive argument,” Col said. “And another thing, she’s lying about not getting paid. She was paid, and handsomely. How do you think she got the money to start that psychic school of hers?”
That made Ondine blink with surprise. “You knew about her helping the previous Duke have a son?”
“I was there,” Old Col said in a huff.
“Eww!” Ondine said.
“Not in that way! Honestly!” Old Col huffed.
Ondine stifled an inappropriate giggle. When she unscrambled her thoughts, she turned to Old Col again. “Why would Mrs. Howser lie to Vincent? About the money and all that?”
“Keep up, child.” Old Col rolled her eyes. “Because she’s greedy, that’s why. Mind you, she wouldn’t have considered it a lie. Knowing her as I do, she merely thinks she wasn’t compensated enough.”
All eyes turned on Col, waiting for the rest of it.
“Oh all right. You wouldn’t think it, but we used to be close friends. We both worked for the late Duke. Or the later one, I guess. Pavla’s father. Anyway, Birgit came into plenty of money but she never told me where it came from. I was too polite to ask at the time. Don’t look at me like that; I can be polite when the mood takes me. Anyway, I thought maybe she had a wealthy lo – . . . uh . . . patron or something. I kept thinking she’d tell me who’d stumped up the money, but she never did.
“Things really fell apart after the Debutante Ball, and the rest, as they say, is lies and conjecture. [244] A few days later, when I’d calmed down, obviously, I searched for Hamish to reverse the ferret spell I’d put on you dear, but I couldn’t find you. Or Birgit for that matter. I didn’t know she had you, you see. And years later, when our paths would cross at CovenCon or at Halloween, she never let on. That must be why I’ve never been able to reverse the ferret spell for good, because she put another layer on top. Only the witch that placed the last spell can remove it.”
Silence cloaked them for a while, until Old Col spoke again. “By the way. There’s something you’re all overlooking about today. I’m not bragging or anything, but it was my magic that held Vincent back. Birgit spent the whole meeting bringing me down, but when it came to it, I was the one that sorted things out.”
“Thank you, Auntie Col,” Ondine said. “You really came through.” Which was as close as Ondine would admit to nearly being swayed by Mrs. Howser. Because Mrs. Howser had very nearly made Ondine wonder if her great aunt had started to lose her grip . . . on magic and other things.
She had to acknowledge a certain amount of jealousy over how far Melody had come in six months’ tuition with Mrs. Howser. Compared to how little Ondine felt her great aunt had been able to teach her. On the plus side, Ondine could make other people’s wishes come true; that was pretty amazing!
If only she knew how to control it. Then she’d really have magic.
Sadness swamped Ondine, because she had to acknowledge the magic had come about because of Hamish being under Mrs. Howser’s extra spell, not the original spell from Auntie Col.
Which had Ondine’s conscience juggling all kinds of disloyalty.
On top of those worries, Duchess Anathea now knew Hamish could be a Shambles-ferret-spy. To a paranoid Duchess, her beloved Hamish made the perfect package.
“Ondine, pay attention!” Ma snapped her fingers in front of her face.
“Oh yes, sorry.” They were all looking at her.
“Ye must be tired, lass.” Hamish rubbed her back again.
“Yeah.”
“We’re talking about where we go from here. Auntie Col and I were saying you and Hamish will need to work even harder to make Anathea popular.”
“Uh-huh.” Ondine nodded. “Um. No. Hang on. Why would we do that? The more we work for her, the more she’ll want Hamish working with her all the time as a ferret. How does that help anyone?”
By ‘anyone’ she meant ‘me’.
“Yes, but if you don’t, she’ll be unlikely to grant Hamish his papers.” Old Col said. “Quid pro quo, and all that.” [245]
Ondine thought out loud. “If we stop helping Anathea, we’re going to lose Hamish, aren’t we?”
“If you need to repeat things to help the world make sense, by all means carry on,” Old Col said.
Frustration bloomed in her heart. “Yeah, but, don’t you see? If we do keep helping her, I could still lose Hamish because he’ll be ferreting around for Anathea. She said as much herself.”
“You mean ‘we’ could lose Hamish,” Ma corrected.
“Isn’t that what I said?” Ondine mentally swatted away a whiny little ‘why me?’ buzzing about her head. No way. She would not give in to a fit of the sulks.
Hamish rubbed her back again. “I’m nawt going anywhere, I promise.”
“I’m not sure we have any other options,” Old Col said.
Ondine thought of plenty more options, all of which involved running away with Hamish and leaving Anathea and the rest of Brugel to sort itself out. But in the end, she knew there was only one path she could take.
“We have to help Anathea to save Hamish,” Ondine said, determined to not sniffle despite her vision blurring. “We’re going to uphold our end of the bargain, come what may.”
That familiar twinkle shone in Hamish’s beautiful green eyes. “Aye, weil keep snuggling and making magic, fer the good of Brugel.”
Well, there was that.
Chapter Seventeen
Considering the mayhem and trauma of the previous day, Ondine didn’t particularly feel like going back to CovenCon the next morning.
Old Col told her in no uncertain terms they had to. “Life is full of things we don’t particularly feel like doing, but we do them and we get on with it.”
Thanks for the support and understanding.
When they arrived at the convention, security had been beefed up since the day before. There were extra people standing by the doors and checking nametags.
No sign of Mrs. Howser. What was the old witch up to now?
After the early plenary session and motivating speeches, it was time to split off into the various workshops on offer. [246]
Ondine and Hamish’s job for the day was to stay close to Anathea, so that they could keep canoodling, so that Anathea could keep wishing she were more popular than fried cheese balls.
Their magic had to be working because so many people were looking at Anathea with admiration. Every session the Duchess visited became congested as so many wanted to be exactly where she was.
“Perhaps our work here is done,” Ondine said as they grabbed a spare seat in the back row of Harvesting Magical Ingredients. Duchess Anathea was in attendance, so it was packed. Oh, what a shame, Ondine thought with a smile; there was only one seat left so she had to sit on Hamish’s lap.
“Doin’ it fer Brugel,” Hamish whispered as he wrapped his arms around her.
The workshop itself provided nothing of interest for Ondine, not that she could hear much from way up the back. The guest witch invited the Duchess to take a quickly-vacated seat right up the front.
That earned Anathea a round of applause, merely for taking a seat.
Relief cascaded through Ondine. She whispered to Hamish, “I think it’s working?”
It would have been disrespectful to the presenter to sneak out mid-workshop. Not that they could get out with the crowd pressed in so closely around them. So they sat quietly together playing ‘handies’. This involved tickling each other’s palms until the other person couldn’t stand it any longer and had to pull away. All the while they had to be utterly silent. If you made a noise, you lost a point. If you pulled your hand away with the first tickle, you lost three points. If you squirmed, minus four points. And so on.
After five minutes, Ondine was losing far too many points and having a fantastic time. A woman in the next row turned around and shushed them. The woman beside the other woman murmured something about being catty.
Ondine had to bite the inside of her cheek to stay quiet, because Hamish kept moving his hands towards hers – but not touching. Merely the threat of a tickle had her silently shaking in fits of giggles.
Gasp! The woman in front of them grew a tail that grew out the back of her. Then the woman next to her grew a tail too. It was tan with orange stripes and altogether quite becoming. Down the row, every single person grew a tail. Thick furry ones, spotted ones, thin ones and even a ratty looking one with a kink in it.
Ondine looked to Hamish and whispered, “Did we do that?”
“I don –”
He never finished the word, let alone the sentence. Pandemonium broke out. People screamed and wailed as they suddenly noticed their new appendages.
“Ouch, you stepped on my tail!”
“Watch it!”
“Mind your own tail, this one’s mine!”
“It’s horrible!”
“Get it off!”
In the mêlée, Ondine grabbed Hamish’s hand and scarpered, caught between laughing her head off and crying in panic.
In the hall, Hamish gave her a calming hug. “I’ve seen some weird things since coming tae Brugel, but ye goat to admit, tails on folks isnae something ye see every day.”
Their tummies rumbled in unison as the conference staff set the buffet for morning tea. Any minute now people would swarm the tables, tails and all. Ondine grabbed a plate to beat the rush. Behind them, the noise from the workshop became too loud to ignore. Worried convention staff and volunteers pulled the doors open to see what was amiss.
The Ondine Collection Page 47
