* * * * *
So now am clear to do what I need to do.
Though don’t know what that is, exactly.
But am not going to waste time.
Chapter Eight
The Month of June
3 June
All hell has broken loose.
Kah-ray-zee.
I need a vacation. That’s what I need. A getaway. Even a long weekend.
Something.
Anything.
Good thing is, have learned to write in journal without actually writing – use magic.
Wish I thought of that earlier.
* * * * *
So – anyway – what should I tell first?
* * * * *
Worcestershire:
Decided to go do a little investigating.
Some (Ash) would say I was a little cocky after the W.C. Trial went so well.
But I was tired of sitting on my hands.
Am I The Chosen One or what?
I had names, addresses and maps, not to mention a new Mini Cooper.
I wish I could say that the weather was gorgeous and I could break out my sunnies and put the top down.
Instead, it was cold, misty and miserable and the only thing I dared do was wear flip-flops (in fact, I was going to wear flip-flops even if they killed me, which they very nearly did).
Had the Mini outside The Dozen, my wand in the back waistband of my jeans and my toenails varnished in Ultra-Frost.
Was perfectly willing to go on my own. But, as I was putting my takeaway latte in the cup holder, in my mirror I noticed Lucy straggling down the seafront pavement looking for her morning caffeine fix.
I was just going to poke around in Worcestershire, maybe (just maybe) swing by Althea Appleton’s house. No harm bringing Lucy, right?
So I asked her to come.
As we got Lucy’s double espresso installed in her cup holder, Su surprised us by crashing out of the side door of the beat up VW van parked next to us.
“What’re you two up to?” she asked.
Figured, if we could find a toothbrush along the way, having the extra firepower of Su couldn’t hurt.
Su left her boy toy snoring in the VW, grabbed a chai and then, as we were about ready to roll, Josie came stalking out of The Dozen.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
Then, before any of us could answer, off she was on a tangent about how she was always left out, left behind, everyone thought she was weak, meek little Josephine and couldn’t take care of herself.
I was still feeling guilty for the whole scene with Mom’s door blast so Su and I quickly conjured a kickass protection spell bubble (thank goddess for that, it came in handy later) for Josie and Lucy and off we went on our merry way.
To this day I will defend my decision to take Lucy and Josie along. I mean, sure, we were all in danger, but if it weren’t for them, Su and I’d be, well… it doesn’t bear thinking about.
* * * * *
So, off we went playing tunes on my new pink-iSkinned iPod (to go with my new Mini Cooper) blasting away some Guns ‘n’ Roses (“Take meeee home, yeah, yeah,” Axl Rose may be crazy as a jaybird but he’s the rockin’ shit and I’m sorry, but you take off that stupid hat and push back Slash’s hair, that man’s hot.)
* * * * *
Anyway.
* * * * *
People don’t have a lot of good things to say about Birmingham.
I have a one word retort: Selfridges.
And not the scary, shoulder-to-shoulder shopping nightmare that is the Selfridges on Oxford Street, no – a somewhat sedate, shopping extravaganza.
(Okay, so we were supposed to be investigating in Worcestershire, that isn’t far from Birmingham, a girl has to get in the mood. And anyway, Josie needed some new MAC lipglass. And Lucy was going to splash out on that Billy Bag she’d been dithering about for ages. And once I saw that rock and roll, long, thin, fringed scarf – well, it went with the Guns ‘n’ Roses!)
* * * * *
We cruised by Agatha Darling’s house.
Not much to say, really. An old manor, tucked in a hillside outside of Worcester. Just stately and such, none of the personality of The Gables.
Had the look about it that said, “No one home”.
We popped by the houses of a few of the Edward’s Coven.
Knocked on a few doors.
No one around.
Everyone gone.
Probably all out somewhere rigging wands to shoot out acid or something.
Finally, since it all seemed such a dud, decided just to swing round to Althea Appleton’s house. Just scope it out… get the lay of the land.
That was it.
I swear (ish).
* * * * *
By the way, I do know what an oracle is. I’ve seen The Matrix, as I think I may have already mentioned.
It’s just that oracles, in the witch world, are few and far between.
There are loads of seers, prophets, clairvoyants, etcetera.
But oracles are witches that not only see what is happening elsewhere in the present and can tell the future, but also are prophetesses who are the mouthpieces for the gods and goddesses.
Well, those folks are thin on the ground, let me tell you.
I’m not real certain I wanted to know what the goddesses had to say to me but I figured after lightning from Agatha Darling, Witch Trials at Ladye Bay and being the Object of Whatever in the Battle of Ash and Aidan, I could handle it.
* * * * *
Althea Appleton lived in a little, country cottage secluded in a lovely, peaceful glade. It had its own babbling brook and a riot of beautiful white wisteria climbing all over it. It looked older than time, made of stone that bulged here and there but somehow still held the building together. It even had a thatched roof.
It was the kind of place Sleeping Beauty would dance about gracefully while birds, squirrels and rabbits followed her and stared at her with rapt adoration.
Or it was the kind of place that a crazy old lady would cook a couple of kids in pies.
And it was deserted. No car, no dog, no cat, no movement – no nothing.
Completely still.
So, no harm going up and knocking on the door, right?
Which is what I did.
Su stayed behind with Lucy and Josie, keeping an eye (and wand) out.
I had my wand out too.
And just like in practically every horror film ever made, the moment I knocked on the door, it creaked open, slowly and weirdly.
I looked back at the car.
“Get back here,” Josie hissed (the voice of reason, that, in the throes of the temporary lunacy that precedes certain death, no one ever listens to).
“What if the old lady’s hurt, passed out, had a stroke?” Lucy asked (ah yes, the somewhat plausible but still completely mad explanation as to why the innocents walk, of their own free will, into the jaws of hell).
Su, being Su, shrugged.
Shit, fuck and everything in between.
* * * * *
According to our research, Althea Appleton was two hundred and three years old. She had a “fit” in 1877 and another in 1895, both of which, under modern medicine, could be classed as strokes. She was diagnosed with diabetes in 1941. Under healer’s orders, after a heart valve replacement (that caused the cardiac surgeons to ask some uncomfortable questions and sent the Edwards Coven scurrying for some serious document-forging-magic) she retired last year.
Out of the witch business.
Out of the oracle business.
Could be, she was in there, dead or dying.
* * * * *
Shit, fuck and everything in between.
* * * * *
I took charge.
“You two, get in the car, lock the doors, start the engine and wait for us to come out,” I bossed Lucy and Josie. “Su, you come with me.”
Su didn’t even hesitate (always up for an adventure, my Su).
> “What are you, nuts? Get back here,” Josie hissed again.
“Don’t be such a Mom,” Su teased as she walked casually to the cottage.
“Don’t be stupid!” Josie napped, coming toward us.
“Listen!” I walked back to the car. “Lucy could be right. The woman is two hundred and three years old!”
“Wait,” Lucy said, looking around the glade, “I’m changing my mind.”
Great.
“So, call the police,” Josie suggested logically.
“I can’t!” (Me, not logically)
“Why not?” (Josie)
“Because she’s a two hundred and three year old witch! Just… calm down, get in the car. We’ll be out before you know it.” (Me)
“I don’t like this.” (Josie)
“Oh, pipe down, Mom Unit. She’s The Chosen One, for goddess’s sake. Give her a little credit.” (Su, as ever, the diplomat.)
We went in, careful, quiet, stealthy.
It was a cottage from a movie. I swear to the goddess, if a hobbit bobbed out of the kitchen smoking a thin pipe, it wouldn’t have surprised me.
“This place is cool beans, man, I want to live in a place like this when I grow up.”
I could see Su dinging around in a crumbling, flower-covered cottage, smoking pot and making brownies with her male harem.
We checked the downstairs and it was deserted.
There was a rickety, wooden staircase against the front inside of the house that led to the upstairs and Su and I stood at the base of it, staring up.
“You go first.” (Su)
“Why do I have to go first? You go first.” (Me)
“You’re The Chosen One.” (Su)
“Yes, so if something’s up there, you can act as my human shield.” (Me)
“Nice.” (Su)
“Kidding.” (Me)
“No you weren’t.” (Su)
“Yes I was.” (Me)
“No –” (Su)
“Sh!” (Me)
We both stared up the stairs.
“Okay, I’ll go first. Wand ready?” (Me, looking to my sister)
Su nodded.
Up I went, stair by creaky-ass stair.
I don’t know why I went so slowly, the stairs were so damn loud if there was anyone up there they could hear me coming, no sweat.
What we saw at the top was what we’d feared.
Old lady down.
“Shit.” (Su)
She was sprawled on the floor, all two hundred pounds of her, just one foot on the bed.
I felt for a pulse but then realized I didn’t know how to feel for a pulse.
Su pushed me out of the way and felt for one then she leaned down and put her ear to the old lady’s mouth.
“Pulse is strong and she’s breathing okay,” she declared.
Su lifted up one of her eyelids.
“Euw,” I said.
Then the old lady burped.
Not a pleasant sound.
And an even worse smell.
“She’s drunk,” Su said, getting out of her crouch position.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
Ack!
Gunshots – right through the window.
Ack!
Su and I dove for cover.
“Crap, crap, crap,” said Su.
“Josie and Lucy are out there!” I said.
“Crap, crap, crap,” repeated Su.
“Who’s shooting at us?” I asked.
“I don’t know! How should I know?” Su shouted.
Okay, calm down, Matty, calm down.
What would Ash do?
Not a good question as Ash wouldn’t be there in the first place.
“Su…” I hesitated, still thinking.
“Uh… yeah, I’m here. Where’m I gonna go?”
“You, me, protection spell.” I was making those jerky hand motions the Navy Seals do in the movies, like I was guiding a plane in for landing. Soon I was going to be using words like “click” and “vector”. “We grab the old woman and we hightail it to the car.”
Su stared at me like I’d grown another head.
Then she stated, “Okay, sorry to tell you this, Miss Prodigy, but magic deflecting bullets, not… gonna… happen.”
“Yes, but how about an invisibility glamour?” I asked.
“How about, we leave the bitty behind, get our asses to the Mini and get the fuck out of here?” Su shot back.
“They might be after her.”
“Why?”
“She’s an oracle. She can tell the future, the gods talk to her, why else? Do we want the bad guys to have her? I don’t think so!”
* * * * *
Okay, so, Su + me x Scary Situation = Disaster.
* * * * *
“This is what we do,” I declared, “get Althea down the stairs. I’ll go to the window and throw some magic out there to freak them out while you conjure an invisibility glamour and we can hope and pray that Josie and Lucy are okay.” And not dead, lying in pools of their own blood, victims of my stupidity.
“I still don’t see why we can’t leave the old bitty behind,” Su bitched.
“We need to take her.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Let’s just call it intuition.”
Su grumbled, I grabbed Althea under her armpits and, giving in, Su grabbed her feet.
* * * * *
Ever go down a flight of stairs carrying something heavy and wearing flip-flops?
You know the soft “flip… flop” sound that flip-flops make when you’re casually walking down the street?
Well, when you walk down the stairs carrying something heavy, they make more of a “FLIP!… FLOP!” sound – slapping against the soles of your feet, loud enough to wake the dead.
And let the bad guys know exactly where you are.
So this is how it went:
FLIP! FLOP! FLIP! FLOP!
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
(Dust and broken mortar flying hither and yon as bullets slam into the stone outside of house by stairwell.)
FLIP! FLOP! FLIP! FLOP!
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
(More dust, more debris – you get the picture.)
“Crap, crap, crap!” Su shouted when we’d finally made it to the bottom of the stairs. She dumped Althea unceremoniously on the floor.
“Careful!” I shouted.
“She’s lived for two hundred and three years! This is not gonna hurt her!” Su shouted back.
“Just get the invisibility spell ready!”
Su tore through the cottage, grabbing magickal supplies, tossing herbs this way, seeds that way, wrapping feathers with pentagrams and swinging them around, rubbing oil on her temples, my temples, Althea’s temples.
Then she started muttering to herself, mutters turned to rhymes, rhymes turned to chanting.
I did my own bit, threw some magical blobs. There were some explosions, some loud noises, rustling, crackles. The baddies went to investigate.
Then we grabbed Althea and off we went.
* * * * *
Flip-flops – as you may or may not know – have no traction.
They have a smooth sole.
Not exactly the proper footwear to utilize when traversing a wet lawn, carrying a two hundred and three year old, two hundred pound, drunken oracle, under an invisibility glamour that depends on your partner’s magical concentration.
Slip – Slide…
Crash!
And Su, Althea and I went down, ten feet from the Mini.
“We’re dead,” Su said as the glamour disappeared.
And indeed, it seemed we were as the baddies turned and aimed.
Then, vroom, vroom! the Mini started up in a thunder of revving engine and surged forward, zooming toward the men.
The men stared at the Mini in shock (which, to their eyes, was uninhabited due to the protection spell Su and I had put on Josie and Lucy). They scattered and ran for their lives as the Mini chased them around the glade.
> It then turned, came swooshing, fish-tailing and vrooming back and skidded to a halt close to us.
Get in!” shouted Lucy, throwing open the door.
We managed to shove Althea into the back (she must have been seriously liquored up to go through all that without waking) and I took the wheel from Josie a split second before the guns starting blazing again.
Four women in a Mini was okay (barely).
Five of them, too much.
Way too much.
Miraculously, the bullets missed my Mini which escaped the scene without a scratch.
* * * * *
Needless to say, our arrival home was not heralded with streamers streaming and champagne corks popping.
In fact, this is what happened:
I caught sight of the Lush Jag in my rearview mirror somewhere in Gloucestershire.
Althea had awoken and was kinda pissed off that she’d been kidnapped.
(Understatement.)
And more pissed off that she was squished in the back between Josie and Su.
The Lush Jag kept its distance the entire way home.
A controlled distance.
But I got the impression it was a barely controlled distance.
When we stopped the car in The Gables, my posse and I sat transfixed watching as Ash slowly unfolded himself from the driver’s seat of the Jag.
And then, after we got out of the Mini, they deserted me, without a word and without remorse, guiding the teetering Althea into The Gables.
Ash stood, hip resting against the Jag, arms crossed on his chest.
I stood my ground, feeling (somewhat) safe with the Mini between us.
After I realized I was going to lose the staring contest, I gave a bit of a wave and said a (damn it all) feeble, “Hey.”
“What the fuck did you think you were doing?”
Er, okay, so it was good to know that Ash was mad and I had not misjudged the situation.
“Well, I –”
“If you ever even think of doing something so fantastically idiotic again, when you get back, I’ll find you, drag you somewhere very remote and chain you somewhere very uncomfortable. Do you understand me?”
So… damn… bossy!
And, I’ll add, threatening.
Me… no… likey!
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child!” I stamped my foot, yes, like a child but can you imagine the adrenalin going through my body? Someone shot at me! I couldn’t be responsible for my own stupidity at that point. And therefore, being really stupid, I charged around the Mini toward Ash. “I’m fine, they’re fine, everything is fine!”
Mathilda, SuperWitch Page 18
