by Clare Kauter
“Yeah, Ed,” I said. “Glass houses and stones.”
Chapter 18
Lesson one was mostly spent watching Henry and Ed decide what they wanted to teach me about and in what order rather than me actually learning anything. We couldn’t stay long since Henry and I had to get to the meeting of the coven, so we left fairly soon. Henry and I slipped back through the crack to the forest where it was late afternoon.
“So,” I said, “did the crack live up to your expectations?”
“I’m still concerned about it,” said Henry. I rolled my eyes at him and he quickly added, “Not because it leads to Ed’s house, although I’m still not sure about you spending time with Ed.”
“I don’t know why you’re so concerned. After all, you two are working for the same person.”
He ignored me. “The fact that reality is cracking around you is deeply concerning. We need to teach you to control your powers as quickly as possible. We don’t want your energy to leak out and cause more cracks.”
“You make it sound like it’s my fault. I’m not doing it on purpose.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m not blaming you. I just think it’s a good idea if we spend as much time as possible honing your skills. Especially as you pick up more of the companions.”
I chewed my lip. “What you said before about my temper… Is it that obvious? You know, that –”
“That ever since you got that arrowhead your inner psycho has been making daily appearances?” he said. “Yeah, it’s pretty obvious.”
I clenched my jaw but didn’t argue. He was right and I knew it. That didn’t mean I didn’t object to the term inner psycho.
“So should we head back to the library after the meeting?”
He shook his head. “It’s full moon tonight,” he said. “Death said he hadn’t picked up the souls of those missing magicals, so they must still be alive.”
I blinked. “OK, I accept that both of those things are facts, but I don’t know exactly how they link together.”
“If it’s members of the same cult that was operating near Loch Ness, then tonight will be the night they kill the magicals they’ve captured as part of the ritual.”
I nodded. “Of course, the full moon. Well, at least that means we know my powers will be tip-top tonight seeing as they’ll be performing ceremonies to call on me.”
Henry nodded slowly, but he still looked unsure.
“What is it, Henners?”
He sighed. “I’m not sure how we should go about this,” he said. “It seems stupid of us to go in alone, but last time we did something like this Daisy and Hecate nearly ended up dead.”
“We could summon Ed.”
Henry grimaced. “I think I’ve had enough Ed for one day.” He paused. “And for one lifetime.”
“Fair,” I replied. “Then what do you suggest we do?”
“Maybe we should just head into the forest and scope it out. Then we can call for backup if we need it.”
“Our backup is going to be a fair distance away,” I said.
He shrugged. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Not really,” I said. “You’ve got Death’s phone number, though, right? You could call him if we need help.” I was trying to be reasonable, but my voice came out sounding a little snarky.
“Why are you so bitter about that?”
“I’m not bitter!” I snapped. Bitterly.
“You have your own personal line to Satan,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but she’s in meetings for the rest of the day. I’m not going to be able to contact her tonight.”
He nodded. “Well, knowing you, someone will end up dead fairly quickly and the Reaper will be there to help us clean up in no time.”
My jaw dropped. “I haven’t killed anyone for months!” I said.
“Yes, but now that you have that arrowhead I’m not so sure you’re going to be able to control yourself,” he said. “You nearly killed that witch today for being mildly annoying.”
“She was mean to you.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I appreciate you fighting for my honour, but maybe next time you should just take ten deep breaths.”
“I’ll consider it.”
We stuck to the path as we walked through the forest, bumping into roughly a thousand magicals along the way. The pink aura was having a great night tonight – people to annoy everywhere! Henry and I managed to sneak by without him even seeing us.
We exited the forest and headed for the church. As we came through the door, I turned to my left out of force of habit to grab a quick snack or five from the cakes and sandwiches table, but stopped in horror.
It was empty.
EMPTY.
No cakes, no sandwiches, no tea. (Also no instant coffee but I doubted anyone really cared about that.) What the hell was going on? My first thought was that this was an intervention hosted by the coven in an attempt to get me to cut down on cake consumption, but when I looked at Henry, his monkey face looked just as distraught as my own.
Where. The hell. Were. The snacks.
My breathing grew fast and shallow and stars appeared in front of my eyes. Snacks. Where. Where snacks. (Yes, I was having a panic attack. If you think that’s silly then you obviously don’t know how much I love to eat.)
“Rainbow isn’t here yet,” said a voice behind me. “We’ve tried calling her, but she’s not answering. It was her night to cater.”
At the sound of the voice, I turned and found Daisy and Hecate standing there.
“You’re back!” said Henry.
“Snacks,” I said.
Henry frowned in concern and put his arm around my shoulder. “It’s going to be OK,” he said. “We’ll get snacks later. I’ll make you something. There’s no need to cry.”
“I’m not crying!” I said with a sniffle.
“Of course you’re not,” he said. “You’re being very brave.”
“We hear congratulations are in order!” croaked Hecate.
“I’m not pregnant,” I said.
Everyone’s eyebrows flew to the ceiling.
“I was talking about capturing those grabbers,” said Hecate. “But if there’s something else you’d like to tell us…”
“No,” I replied. “Like I said, I’m not pregnant.”
“Right,” Daisy replied. “Well, that’s…” She shook her head and tried again. “You caught the grabbers! So we’ve solved the mystery of what’s happened to all those magicals. We have people questioning them now, so I’m sure they’ll talk soon enough and we’ll be able to find everyone and make some more arrests.”
“More arrests?” Henry asked. “The buyers, you mean?”
Daisy nodded. “We’re very impressed,” she said. “It takes a lot to take down a grabber.”
“An awful lot,” said Hecate, cocking an eyebrow at us.
“Death helped us a lot. Anyway,” said Henry, catching Hecate’s look and deciding to change the subject in case she started asking questions about how exactly we’d managed to win that fight, “how did your trip go?”
That did the job. While they were gushing about their commendations or something, my mind wandered to Rainbow, the barista. Where was she? Why hadn’t she shown up? And most importantly, where were the snacks? Maybe she’d been freaked out by that book thing earlier. You know, when I kind of accidentally threatened to murder her. (Don’t look at me like that. I obviously didn’t do it on purpose.)
Eventually Daisy and Hecate left us to go and talk to some of the other witches. When they were gone, I asked Henry whether he thought that was why Rainbow hadn’t shown up.
“Could be.” He chewed his lip, looking worried.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You and I both know those grabbers weren’t responsible for the disappearances. Not all of them, at least,” he said. “What if Rainbow is another abductee?”
I thought for a moment. “It’s possible, I guess,” I said. “I h
ope for her sake she has been abducted. That’s the only acceptable reason for her to leave us snackless like this.”
Henry gave me a look of disbelief.
“What?”
“I like snacks as much as the next person, but you’re being callous. It’s the full moon, remember?” Henry said. “If the cult has her, she’s going to be sacrificed tonight.”
“No great loss.”
“Nessa!”
“You’re right. The world would be much darker without her coffee in it.” I sighed. “Are we not going to tell the others about this theory?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think that would be wise,” he said. “We need to go back to the forest as soon as the meeting’s done. Maybe Ravi’s death is connected to the cult.”
“And you don’t want to take backup?”
“After what that forest did to me, I can’t imagine any of the people here are going to be much help,” he said.
I nodded slowly. I wasn’t sure I liked this plan, but nothing else was coming to mind. “Are you OK with going back there?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I’ll take some potions before we set out. Plus I’m fairly sure being around you should help me.”
I frowned. “Why? It didn’t work last time.”
“I have a theory,” he said.
“Enlighten me.”
“The more time I spend around you, the faster your magic seems to work on me. It took the clouding spells a long time to crack the first time. Then when we were in the forest in Scotland it only took a couple of days,” he said. “Now that we’ve been spending more time together, I think when we re-enter the Gott Woods your energy will protect me.”
“That seems like kind of a flimsy plan, Henry,” I said. “You can hardly rely on that. We don’t even know if my energy will protect you against whatever’s in that forest at all, much less whether it’ll start working this quickly.”
“We don’t have a choice,” said Henry. “We have to go back into the forest anyway. This will be a good time to test my theory. If I’m wrong, so be it. I’m going anyway.”
We stopped talking then because we saw Daisy approaching us with a folder in hand. She handed it to me and I flipped it open. Ravi’s autopsy results. I skimmed the pages, but there was nothing interesting there other than that Ravi was alive when he was torn apart. I grimaced. It was probably for the best that we hadn’t found the murder scene earlier in case that memory had come flooding back to him. (Sometimes traumatic deaths can lead the ghost’s spirit to show the same damage as the body, and if he suddenly remembered what happened to him he might have fallen apart. Literally.)
My mind raced as I read the file. No tooth marks, so it seemed unlikely that he was attacked by orks as I’d originally theorised. Interesting. I wondered if he’d been killed by the death cult. It seemed unlikely – he wasn’t a magical – but the connection to the forest seemed to nod in that direction. But if it was the death cult, why didn’t they eat him? Perhaps because he wasn’t magical. His flesh wouldn’t be great for rituals. Maybe they killed him purely to leave at my place as a message.
“We just heard more about what you did today. Hecate’s very impressed with you,” said Daisy, snapping me out of my thoughts. I looked up from the file and gave her a questioning look. What did she mean? Was she warning me that Hecate was suspicious about what had happened with the grabbers? I was pretty sure Daisy knew exactly who I was, although we’d never been alone for long enough to properly discuss it. Maybe I should ask the Reaper if she was in his employ as well.
“What we did?” I asked.
“Questioning Maple from the other coven,” she said. “The head witch.”
“Uh…”
“Assaulting her and threatening to kill her.”
My heart thumped in my chest. Oh Satan. Was I about to get in trouble? Were they going to fire me?
“I didn’t threaten to kill her, exactly,” I said.
“Don’t tell Hecate that,” said Daisy. “I’ve never seen her so happy.”
I glanced across the room and saw Hecate standing near the cauldron. She was staring at me, eyes wide and filled with something between glee and pure unbridled insanity. She raised her hand and waved excitedly at me. I gave her a small wave back.
OK. I guess they weren’t going to fire me, then.
Chapter 19
Once our nightly coven duties were performed – plus a few extra things, thanks to the full moon – Henry and I slipped out of the church and hurried into the Black Forest, making a beeline for Gott Woods. It was slow going since the forest was heaving with foot traffic and everywhere we stepped was another campsite or cauldron or ward or magical doing weird performance art in front of a group of enraptured normals.
“This isn’t working,” said Henry. “At this rate everyone will be dead and eaten before we get there.”
“We should have borrowed Hecate’s carpet,” I said.
“She’s using it to fly around and keep an eye on the forest tonight,” Henry said. “I already asked.”
“Really?” I was amazed. Henry was willing to fly voluntarily? “What did you tell her you needed it for when you asked?”
“To fly around and keep an eye on the forest tonight,” he said. “And she said she had it covered.”
Right.
“I have an idea to get there faster,” said Henry. “And neither of us is going to like it.”
I grimaced. “Oh Satan,” I said. “What is it?”
Five minutes later Henry and I were screaming in harmony at the top of our lungs as we soared through the air, my cloak billowing behind us while Henry the Winged Stallion flapped furiously to keep us airborne. If I’d thought being on a horse’s back on the ground was scary, there were no words for the pure terror coursing through my veins right now.
“Henry,” I screamed, “you need to teach me how to make portals THE VERY SECOND we touch down!”
“If I knew how to do that I would have taught you already!” he yelled back. “This is the worst experience of my life!”
“Of YOUR life?”
“You were the one who insisted I learn to fly! This is entirely down to you!”
He had me there.
Fortunately air travel is super efficient, so while it felt like we were in the air for six hours, it was really only a matter of minutes. (According to my phone, at least, although I’m still not sure it wasn’t lying to me about that. Maybe we crossed a time zone while we were in the air, I don’t know.)
Henry landed a tad clumsily, I’m not going to lie – he tripped and scuffed his way down the landing strip before finally coming to a stop at the edge of the forest. I dismounted (don’t) and he shifted back into his human form. After a few seconds (OK, minutes) bent at the waist and dry heaving, I managed to get my panic-induced nausea under control and straightened up.
We stood facing the forest. I could feel the dark energy moving out in waves. The full moon had obviously bolstered whatever spell was already over the woods. I glanced at Henry who looked much less panicked than I’d expected. Mostly he just seemed resigned. After all the things we’d been through in the past couple of months, though, I guess that kind of made sense.
“Shall we?” he asked.
“I guess,” I replied, and we began down the path.
Now that we were here I was kind of regretting the quick transportation. My heart was pounding and now that I thought more about it, coming here without backup seemed really dumb.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t summon Ed?” I whispered as we wound our way deeper into the trees. “Or maybe call Death in now as a precaution?”
“You can’t tell me you’re scared,” said Henry. “You’re you. There’s nothing here scarier than that.”
I frowned, unsure whether to take that as a compliment or not. I decided to let it go and concentrate on scanning the trees around us for any weird energy. Now that we’d captured the grabbers, there were a few more magicals trekking through the
woods, performing rituals and collecting supplies. They were dark magicals performing dark deeds, but as far as I could tell they weren’t the people we were after.
Strangely, there seemed to be fewer and fewer magicals the further we went into the bushland. What did that mean? Sure, it was a further walk, but deeper in the forest there would be better supplies. The outskirts were always slim pickings. Was everyone around here too lazy to make the journey further into the forest, or was it something else?
Eventually we reached the same fork in the road we’d encountered when we came here with Ravi, except this time we weren’t interrupted. Henry and I went down the left path, as Ravi had indicated earlier. A short distance down the road, there was a sign. It was faded, but I could make out a little of what it said: Camp for Kids.
I shuddered. Seriously? What kind of psycho would send their kids to a camp in this forest? Judging by the dilapidated sign and overgrown path, I wasn’t the only one who’d thought that. It didn’t look like too many people had made their way down this road recently. Henry and I made eye contact and then continued down the path.
As we walked, I heard a noise in the distance. I paused and turned to Henry and he nodded. He’d heard it too. I squinted, staring down the path. I couldn’t see much, even with the ball of light I’d been using to illuminate our way.
“Put it out,” Henry whispered. “In case someone spots it.”
I nodded and extinguished the orb. Henry took me by the arm and led me down the path, seeing as even in human form he apparently had better night vision than I did. In the distance, I could see some flickering orange light filtering through the trees. Firelight. Henry pulled me off the path and we tiptoed through the forest, crouching down so we stayed out of sight. We also put a cloaking spell over ourselves so that whoever was there was less likely to sense us approaching. Of course, cloaking spells weren’t foolproof, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances.
We crept through the trees in the direction of the firelight, eventually coming to a stop behind a large fallen log. Kneeling behind it, we peeked over the top and looked across onto the campsite. The camp consisted of six cabins and a hall, as well as picnic tables dotted around the place on the grass. The most interesting part, however, was the giant bonfire in the centre of the campsite.
