by Heide Goody
“Which bit of Lincolnshire?”
“What?”
“I’m actually over the east side of the country right now. A work thing. No rest for the wicked and all that. Just driven past Grantham. I could swing by and—”
“I couldn’t ask that.”
“I insist. Now, where are you?”
She told him. He said he’d put it in the satnav. As she hung up, she told herself she was being a complete sponger but then why did she feel so relieved?
She took her bag and walked out onto the driveway to wait. The long summer evening was beginning its slow descent from blue day, through yellow afternoon into red-lit evening. After some time, a car pulled into the driveway. It was too small and old to possibly be Kevin’s. Perhaps it was Caroline and Shazam returning. At least she could say a goodbye to them without them ever having to know what she really was.
The car slowed beside her. Madison Fray, Effie’s nephew, his hat once again aflame with illusory phoenix fire, looked out the open window. The car exuded a powerful herbal smell. Jenny was surprised he could drive while so high.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
“It often is,” he replied. “Running late as usual.”
“Not seen you around here for a while.”
“Oh, I’ve been on my travels,” he said in mysterious tones. “Here, there and everywhere with my little questionnaires.” He slapped a pile of papers in the passenger seat next to him.
“More witches.”
“More courses. Aunt Effie’s meeting with Mrs du Plessis this evening. Going to propose a – and I quote – ‘A rolling programme of courses for the modern and progressive witch’ and I know she wants to see who might be attending.”
“Can’t be a worse shower of dur-brains than this current lot,” suggested Jizzimus.
“That’s … that’s great,” said Jenny. “Could you possibly give Effie my thanks when you see her. She’s been nothing but kindness these last few weeks.”
“You’re not leaving, are you?” he said.
“I’m just…” She tapped the edge of the door. “Just say thanks, yeah?”
She waved him off and ambled up to the where the driveway met the road just as a black Bentley came into view. It pulled into the drive beside her.
“Small world,” said Kevin.
“Course it’d seem small to ’im,” said Jizzimus, jumping in beside Jenny. “He’s got a beer belly as big as a planet.”
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” said Jenny.
“I’m just happy you chose to call me,” he said.
Kevin continued down the driveway.
“There’s a place you can turn round down the side of the house,” she said.
“Actually,” he said, “I’m popping in to see the owner. It’s just a work thing.”
“Oh,” she said, and then, “Small world, indeed.”
“You know Natasha?”
“I’ve met her.”
“She’s mentioned you.” He parked the Bentley.
“I’m not sure I like the idea of people talking about me,” she said.
“All good I assure you,” he said. “She says you have potential. I assumed you were working here.”
She got out with him.
“Or maybe you ought to be.” He gestured to the large front door of the house.
“I’d kind of made my decision to leave this place,” she said, going inside anyway.
Jenny had only seen the entrance hall and reception briefly on her hurried way out the other morning. Now, she had opportunity to take in the obligatory sweeping staircase, the de rigeur crystal chandelier, the clichéd oak panelling and the stereotypical chequered floor tiling. The designers of Eastville Hall had clearly shopped at Stately Homes R Us and created something that was superficially impressive yet comfortingly familiar to anyone with National Trust membership.
“All we need is a butler,” said Jenny.
“I’m sure he’s around somewhere,” said Natasha du Plessis, gliding up beside Jenny. She was wearing a simple black cocktail dress and wore it with a style that Jenny knew she would never possess.
Jenny had to physically stop herself from curtseying. “Mrs du Plessis.”
“It’s Natasha, Jenny, please. Mr Carter-King, a delight to see you.”
Natasha held out her hand and Kevin actually kissed it, as though he was a medieval knight.
“He can call me Mrs du Plessis.”
Kevin laughed as if this was perfect jolly fun.
“He tells me that you were thinking of leaving us,” she said to Jenny.
Jenny grimaced. “This course… it just wasn’t working out.”
Natasha nodded deeply in complete understanding. “But I did tell you there are other ways to become the best witch one can possibly be. Could I show you something?” Jenny felt Natasha’s guiding hand pressed against the small of her back. “Mr Carter-King, go play a little while. Jenny and I will join you shortly.”
“Yeah, jog on, fat boy,” said Jizzimus.
With the lightest pressure of Natasha’s hand, Jenny allowed herself to be whisked away down a corridor lined with stuffed animal heads.
Caroline, whose thoughts had been mindlessly wandering dream hills and vales for some time – although frequently returning to why are my trousers wet? – came to a fuzzy focus as hands hooked under her armpits and hauled her up.
“Come on, Caz,” Bowman was saying, far away. “Put a bit of effort in.”
He got her arm over his shoulder and hoisted her upright. There was gravel beneath her feet although her feet didn’t feel like doing anything about it.
“You,” said Bowman and Caroline somehow knew he wasn’t talking to her. “Get inside. That door there. No silly business or I will mess you up.”
“Okay,” said Shazam.
Shazam’s here, thought Caroline. That’s nice. I like Shazam.
There was a loud meow and patter of paws on gravel.
“Leave it!” snapped Bowman. “In. In there.”
The gravel underfoot gave way to stone.
“Down those stairs.”
Caroline felt a hand helping her from the other side. It was Shazam. Good old Cobwebs.
Why are my trousers wet? she wondered.
“No, it’s jammed,” said Dee.
“Then you’re doing it wrong,” insisted Norma.
“Here,” said Zoffner, returning from his ice-cream van with a very large adjustable spanner. “A few twists with this and everything will be fab and groovy.”
Norma turned around to bring the awkward catch of her corset into the light from the hut. Zoffner fiddled with spanner and catch.
“Have you free in no time, my love,” he said and performed a series of grunts and gasps that had no visible result. “No, it’s jammed,” he concluded.
“You said you’d have me free in no time,” said Norma.
“Time is an illusion, foxy lady.”
“I’m going to punch you in ten seconds. Shall we see if that’s an illusion?”
Kay approached silently out of the shadows, grabbed the spanner still attached to the corset, and with a single violent wrench snapped off the catch. The corset fell apart in two halves on the lawn.
“Well done, Miss Wun,” gasped Norma. “That device was beginning to chafe something awful.”
Angrily, Kay weighed the adjustable spanner in her hand.
“Still upset, poppet?” said Dee.
Kay, her lips a grim line, nodded.
“As you should be,” said Norma, attempting to rearrange her gusset as much as a woman could in polite company. “Miss Knott deserves nothing but our contempt.”
“I’m not angry with Jenny!” snapped Kay.
“Aren’t you?” asked Norma, unruffled.
“No! I’m angry with—” She hurled the spanner down with such force that it bounced off the lawn and cartwheeled into the gloom. “I’m just angry, okay?” She put her head in her hands and growled i
n fury. “Jenny was nice to me,” she said. “Nice. She and Dee brought me here to protect me. This doesn’t make sense. The world should make more sense. It’s not fair!”
“Life isn’t fair,” said Norma bluntly.
“It’s rarely made sense to me, poppet,” added Dee.
“If I may,” said Zoffner, hands outspread like a performer taking the stage. “Life is confusing and infuriating. Why did my ex-wife change the locks on the front door? What meaning was to be divined from finding my clothes scattered all over the front garden? Mysteries. Only later would I find out that these were instructions from the cosmos.”
“Most people use a divorce lawyer,” muttered Norma. Zoffner ignored her.
“Those strange events set me on the most fab and groovy path that I now ride, dear girl. This crazy universe appears to be nothing but chaos but, when you open your heart and inner eye to its workings, you see that improbable chance and sublime serendipity want all of us to join the dance.”
Something was approaching them rapidly across the lawn. Even in the dark, it was quite clearly Mr Beetlebane. He was making an ululating yowl like a demented ambulance siren.
Kay turned and caught him as he flew out of the darkness. He ran up her chest, circled her neck and shoulders three times and then shoved his face in hers and gave a single, short but insistently loud meow!
Kay resisted for a moment and then met his gaze. “She’s what?”
Meow!
“What? Here?”
Meow!
Dee cast a quick spell so she could get up to speed on the goings on in the life of a cat. She listened to Mr Beetlebane’s distressed explanation and translated for any non-cat-speakers present.
“They went to the park. Caroline drove very fast. They met the man with the burned face. He knows that Dee and Jenny are here. And he brought them here because—”
“Because?” said Norma.
“He is here,” said Kay. “His chief, his pride leader. His boss.”
Dee nodded in agreement with the interpretation.
“Whoever Bowman is working for, they’re here. They’ve been here all this time.”
“That’s one hell of a coincidence,” said Dee.
“Serendipity,” Zoffner corrected her.
Natasha followed Jenny into the drawing room. Here too, trophy animal heads looked down on them, as well as on the chaises longue and plush carpets. Jizzimus scaled the fireplace to harass a stuffed weasel on the mantelpiece. Natasha closed the door behind her. It was a thick age-darkened door with a jewel-cut lump of quartz for a door handle; it closed with the finality of a cell door.
“Your dress looks nice,” said Jenny.
Natasha smiled and gave a girlish swirl. On such a noble-looking woman, the action appeared balletically beautiful. “We are having a celebration dinner tonight. Celebrating Effie Fray’s success in attracting so many witches to Eastville Hall.”
“And Kevin? How do you know him?”
“The spa business has such specific needs. He’s been a godsend.” Natasha ran her fingers along the top of an armchair. “But Effie’s little course for witches has failed to … meet your expectations?”
“It’s not the course,” said Jen. “It’s me.”
“I agree,” said Natasha.
“I’m sorry?”
“It is you. You are not like the other women out there, are you?”
Jenny felt an abrupt coldness form in the pit of her stomach; a suspicion. “Um. We’re all different aren’t we?”
“But you don’t fit in. They’ve rejected you, haven’t they?”
No words came to Jenny. She decided she was better off saying nothing anyway.
“For a group so used to persecution across the ages, you would think witches might be less hasty to judge others. A couple of them, I notice, are obsessed with so-called wicked witches.”
“Um. Yes?” said Jenny.
“She’s got your number,” said Jizzimus.
“Actually, they thought that one of your guests might be a wicked witch.” Jenny forced a laugh to demonstrate how ridiculous she thought the idea was.
“One of my guests? No,” said Natasha. She cupped her hands and a ball of green witchfire burst into life. “Not one.”
Norma rummaged around in the drawers and shelves in her hut, stuffing mystical packages, implements and amulets into her pockets and into the waistline of her skirt. Dee watched her from the doorway.
“So, when the, um— When Lesley Ann Faulkner went over Beachy Head, did they recover a body?”
Norma turned and stared at her. “No they didn’t, but that’s not unusual. I was grassed up by a local chaplain who walks up there to try and discourage suicides.”
“So it is possible that the Lesley-Ann Faulkner in Eastville is your Lesley-Ann Faulkner?”
Norma snatched up a tiny jam jar and strode out of the door. Dee barely avoided being trampled. Outside, Kay stood, holding Mr Beetlebane closely. Zoffner sat cross-legged on the floor, blowing bubbles from a bottle.
“This is no time for bubble blowing, Mr Zoffner,” said Norma imperiously.
“There is always time for bubbles.”
“Terrible deeds are afoot!”
“Are the bubbles making them any more terrible?”
“I take it we’re going into Eastville Hall,” said Dee.
“We?” said Norma who clearly hadn’t even considered the possibility of teamwork.
“You and me,” said Dee. “Mr Zoffner can stay here and look after Kay.”
“I don’t need looking after,” said Kay.
“But maybe I do,” said Zoffner. “I’ve got bubble mixture in my eye.”
“Excuses,” said Kay.
“And I’m a coward.” He looked at Norma. “A lover not a fighter.”
“Good,” said Dee as though that settled it. “What’s our plan, Norma?”
“We can’t rely on the police to help us. We know Miss Black and Miss Jaye are being held prisoner in there. We also suspect there’s a wicked witch in there, too. Our plan is we go in and have a look. We find our friends and we bring them out.”
It all sounded rather decisive, rousing even, then Norma spoiled it by stamping her foot, turning in a circle while wiggling her behind and making a high-pitched buzzing sound. Norma held up the jam jar and Dee just managed to see the bee which had flown into it. Norma screwed the lid on.
“What’s that?” said Dee.
“Plan B,” said Norma. She addressed Zoffner. “If our mission fails and we are unable to return, I will release Barnaby here and he will come warn you. You are both to get in that ludicrous vehicle and drive far away from here.”
“Hang on a moment, my lovely,” said Zoffner and dashed inside the hut.
“Unable to return?” said Dee nervously.
“We may have to fight a wicked witch, Miss Finch. They are not easily killed.”
“But maybe this woman isn’t a wicked witch anyway.”
“Maybe. I’ll be able to check with my file.”
“Oh I didn’t realise you had one,” said Dee. “Can I read it?”
Norma pulled out a sharpened iron file and held it up.
“Oh. That kind,” said Dee.
Zoffner reappeared with a bulging paper bag, which he pressed into Norma’s hands.
“This had better not be some soppy love token,” she told him firmly. She opened the bag and looked inside. “Oh. That’s actually quite clever.”
Jenny’s brain bounced and spasmed from one thought to another.
Her initial thought was Oh, God! It’s a wicked witch! Quickly followed by But I’m a wicked witch too! and But maybe she’s a genuinely wicked wicked witch.
She got a grip on herself. But how many genuinely wicked wicked witches have you met? “You have wicked witch guests?” she said aloud.
“We tend to think of ourselves as just witches,” said Natasha.
“Of course,” said Jenny.
“You have been li
ving with a label hanging over you your entire life. You’re not a demon. You’re not a monster. You’re not a second-class citizen. You are a witch like them but one with certain skills, certain needs and—” She glanced around. “Your imp is in here with you?”
Jenny nodded.
“Is he abusing the weasel on the mantelpiece?”
“Yes.”
“Ain’t doin’ nuffin’,” said Jizzimus, leaping away from the stuffed animal.
“Imps are so predictable,” said Natasha.
“Is your imp here?” asked Jenny.
“Malunguibus is too much of a handful. He’s penned up with the other imps in the stable. But most of the time, I let him roam free.”
“Ah, that’s why it’s out of bounds. The unstable stable.”
“Partly.”
“There are other imps?”
Natasha nodded. “There are currently nineteen of our sisters staying at Eastville Hall, each with an imp. Consider this isolated rural house as a retreat, a haven for our kind.”
“And I thought it was just a spa.”
Natasha smiled and Jenny couldn’t help but smile back. The warmth of that smile, the certainty that oozed from every pore; maybe this was what people felt like when they met the queen.
“Be assured, they are all paying guests,” said Natasha. “They travel from across the globe to this place.”
“Surely, there are other covens – er, meeting places.”
“Yes, but we do offer something special here.” Natasha opened a sideboard cabinet and took out a crystal sherry glass. “What’s the one thing that our kind cannot control?”
“We can’t touch iron,” said Jenny, realising why the room’s door handle and every door handle in this old house was made of non-metallic material.
“That one we can work round,” said Natasha. “Gloves are surprisingly convenient. It was a shame when ladies evening gloves fell out of fashion.”
“Evenin’ gloves?” said Jizzimus. “How old is this bint?”
“No, I refer to our one uncontrollable drive.” Natasha placed the sherry glass on a round table and then produced a medical sample tube from her purse. A dark red liquid sat within.
Jenny felt her chest tighten. “Is that—?”
