A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3) Page 10

  ‘Anna!’ I heard Abe’s sudden, urgent hiss and I realized to my horror that I’d flickered into view.

  ‘No!’ He grabbed my arm as I gabbled the spell again. ‘Don’t make it worse – oh you’ve done it. You idiot, there was a policeman watching.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t—’

  ‘Never mind, just stay invisible now and let’s get out of here. We need to find Em.’

  ‘And Marcus,’ I whispered.

  ‘Screw Marcus,’ Abe said harshly. He pulled me roughly towards a gap in the warehouses – and then we both stumbled into something hard and invisible – something that gave a yelp of shock and pain.

  ‘Argh!’ Abe bellowed and he came abruptly into view, as if a switch had been flicked. One hand was outstretched, feeling for the invisible obstacle. The other was pressed to his nose, which was running scarlet with blood. ‘For crying out loud, not my nose again!’

  ‘Your nose!’ Emmaline was suddenly standing in front of us, clutching at her forehead with both hands. ‘What about my head?’

  ‘Is your head broken? I don’t bloody think so.’

  ‘Oh Abe!’ She dropped her hands from her head and flung them around him, hugging him so hard that he gasped. ‘I was so worried. Where were you? Where’s Anna?’

  ‘I’m here!’ I stepped towards her and then realized from her wild gaze that I was still invisible. ‘Here!’ I shrugged off the spell impatiently. ‘It’s me!’

  ‘Anna!’ Em flung her arms around me. ‘Thank God. What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know – we ended up somewhere near Canary Wharf, miles away. What happened to you?’

  ‘We washed up near Westminster. We did the only thing we could think of and followed the river down – then we saw this.’

  ‘We?’ Abe asked sharply.

  ‘Me and Marcus,’ Em said. A few feet away there was a sudden ripple in the air, like a heat haze, and Marcus shimmered into view. He was dry. Immaculately dry. So was Em, I realized.

  I looked down at my own soaked clothes, drying into stiff, mud-crusted creases.

  ‘Marcus shielded us,’ Emmaline said sheepishly, interpreting my gaze. ‘So we didn’t actually get wet.’

  ‘But no matter,’ Marcus said. ‘We can fix that.’ He pointed a finger at my feet and murmured something under his breath, drawing a line up the centre of my body from my feet to the top of my head. When I looked down, my clothes were dry and clean. No illusion – actually clean.

  ‘Wow!’ I gasped. ‘Why didn’t we think of that, Abe?’

  ‘Seems like most people would be more worried about finding their friends than drying their clothes,’ Abe said sourly. ‘Forgive me if I had something else on my mind.’

  ‘You think I didn’t?’ Marcus crackled with sudden anger. ‘Are you forgetting we saw my father’s body shortly before his office was blasted to smithereens?’

  ‘If you’re bothered, you’ve got a funny way of showing it,’ Abe spat back.

  ‘My father is dead. Murdered. How dare you presume to know anything about my feelings on the matter!’

  There was a sudden spitting sizzle in the air between the two men and a feeling of silent tension, as if some great unseen struggle was taking place. Abe’s fists clenched and I saw a vein was standing out on Marcus’ forehead. The air seemed to ripple with fury and then, just as suddenly, they both turned away.

  I looked from one to the other, trying to work out what had just gone on. Abe’s face was twisted with disgust but there was a tiny, cruel smile at the edge of his mouth. Marcus looked as if nothing had happened, but his breath was coming fast; I could see his chest heaving beneath his snowy shirt.

  ‘If you two have quite finished swinging your dicks around,’ Emmaline said furiously, ‘maybe we could try to work out what the hell just happened.’

  What had just happened? Suddenly the horror of it all washed over me. Two elderly men, butchered like pigs. And the only thing that linked them was a knowledge of my past, my true identity, and the fact that I’d used them – or tried to – to find out the truth. Then something else occurred to me.

  ‘Elizabeth. What if she was in there?’

  ‘I don’t think she was,’ Marcus said. ‘But either way, she’ll have returned now. They’ll have summoned her back.’

  ‘Which entrance would she use?’ I asked. ‘She was going to Charing Cross.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He rubbed his temple. ‘It’d be a toss-up between the Fleet entrance and the Effra entrance from there. She uses the Effra more. I think that’s where she’d try first. I’ll come with you – I need to get back there, find out what’s happened.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I looked at him, his white, worn face, the blue shadows beneath his eyes. I wanted to hug him, to promise him it would be OK. But I didn’t know him well enough – and anyway, that was a promise I had no right to make. His father had died. Nothing would ever be OK for him again.

  Instead I turned to Emmaline and Abe. ‘You two don’t have to come. I don’t know what we’ll find. I don’t want—’

  Abe shook his head, his jaw set.

  ‘If you’re going back, I’m going too.’

  I looked at Emmaline and she raised one eyebrow.

  ‘What? And stump back to Winter on my tod? Not likely. Looks like it’s a cab for four.’

  We stood on the parapet of Vauxhall Bridge, peering into the dark, swirling waters.

  ‘No blood,’ Abe said. ‘Looks all right.’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Marcus said. ‘Well – who wants to go first? Shall I?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll go first.’

  ‘Anna –’ Abe put out a hand ‘– wait!’

  But I knew if I waited I’d lose my nerve. I jumped. Abe’s voice disappeared as I fell, and then the waters closed over my head and I was tumbling towards oblivion.

  I landed with a crash and a sudden sense of foreboding. I was in the familiar concrete vestibule, like the lift shaft of an underground car park – but the reinforced steel door stood open and the smell that came out was not the rich scent of heavy magic, but a stink of river mud, blood and filth. Before I could do anything there was a series of crashes and Emmaline and Abe tumbled on to the concrete floor beside me. Last of all, Marcus touched gently down. As he saw the open door his face paled, but he squared his shoulders and together we led the way into reception.

  No one was there but from further down the corridor I could hear shouts and the stench of river mud grew stronger as we began to walk in the direction of the noise. The witchlights in the sconces along the walls were burning so low they cast only a flickering grey light as we passed and the red damask walls were stained and blotched with river mud. There was a sound from above our heads and I looked up to see a crack zig-zagging across the ceiling above us, splintering through the cornicing like icing on a cake. Black water began to drip through, spattering us as we ducked beneath.

  We turned a corner, heading towards the main debating chamber, and the corridor forked.

  ‘Which way?’ I asked Marcus.

  He opened his mouth to reply – but the answer never came.

  ‘Watch out!’ Em’s cry cut across whatever he might have said. ‘The wall!’

  I turned sharply. The wall to our left was bulging, splitting like an overripe fruit. As I watched in horror, a giant rent appeared in the paper.

  Marcus shouted an incantation and his forefinger drew a lightning-fast symbol in the air. The characters glowed bright for a second before exploding in a firework flash. The wall shuddered, and seemed to heave itself back into place for a moment, but then with a crash like a waterfall, it exploded, silt and mud and water gushing through the split.

  We ran for our lives along the narrow corridor, Marcus hurling charms over his shoulder, the waters snarling and roaring behind us, like some vast beast that had slipped its chain and rampaged out of control.

  My breath was tearing in my chest and I stumbled as the water sna
pped and spat at our heels.

  ‘In here!’ Emmaline yelled.

  She flung open a door and we scrambled inside, slamming it shut just as the torrent crashed against the wood. The door groaned and Emmaline slapped a hasty charm across it and then looked at me, her face ashen.

  ‘What in the name of all that’s crazy is going on out there?’

  ‘The place is falling apart.’ Marcus had his back to the door and I could see the strain in his muscles as he forced all his magic into trying to keep the water at bay. ‘The rivers are breaking loose.’ There was sweat on his forehead and he closed his eyes, concentrating on keeping back the waters.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Emmaline snapped at me and Abe. ‘Help him!’

  I shook myself and put my hand against the door, feeling Abe’s magic flowing into the wood along with mine.

  After a few moments the din subsided and we all looked at each other.

  The wave had retreated, leaving the corridor ankle-deep in Thames mud. There were strange things coiling in the ooze. I tried not to look at them as we picked our way carefully through. Instead I kept my eyes on the walls and ceilings.

  We’d only gone a few yards when I heard a familiar voice filtering from an open door.

  ‘Miss Vane, lock down the Fleet entrance – we must keep all traffic to one entrance for the moment. Partridge, get the word out to the other Chairs, tell them to alert their camps. And will somebody please find Ratzinger and get the Effra entrance secured and manned!’

  ‘Grandmother!’ I ran, slipping in the filth, slimy creatures thrashing underfoot as I sprinted along the corridor to the open door. ‘It’s me!’

  I burst into her office and she looked up from the desk she was standing at. She was immaculate as ever, not a hair out of place. But the room was a wreck. The silk sofas and brocade hangings were spattered with mud. Dirty water swilled in the grate where a fire should have burned. Her desk was cracked down the middle, a great charred slash as if a burning beam had fallen on it. But it was still standing – just – and it was spread with grimoires and antique spell books from the Ealdwitan library, each with quills and markers sticking out of pages, as though she had been desperately seeking a remedy for the chaos unfolding all around.

  For a moment her face was blank – then she stumbled out from behind the desk, her arms outstretched.

  ‘Anna – darling …’

  I scrambled across the silt-strewn floor and into her arms.

  ‘Thank God – when I heard …’ Her fingers clutched me, painfully hard.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘I have no idea. That’s the terrifying thing.’

  ‘Corax is dead, did you know?’

  ‘I know he’s dead, but not how. No one seems to know if it was an accident or something worse.’

  ‘It was murder.’ Marcus’ voice was level, but the words cut like a knife. ‘He was stabbed.’

  ‘Stabbed?’ Elizabeth’s face was a mask of shock. She turned from me to Marcus, and then back again. ‘You saw this?’

  ‘We saw his body,’ Marcus spoke like an automaton. ‘He’d been stabbed in his office, with a sword.’

  ‘His office? Then it must – it must have been someone known to him.’ My grandmother’s face was grey. ‘One of us.’

  ‘They’d breached the wards,’ Marcus said. ‘The door was unlocked.’

  ‘My God,’ my grandmother whispered. She stumbled to a chair and sank on to it, hardly seeming to notice that the velvet upholstery was soaked through with mud. ‘I thought … Oh my God, Thaddeus – how I wronged you.’ She put her face in her hands, the stones in her rings winking in the dim light. But when she raised her head, the steel was back; her expression was hard. ‘We will find his killer and punish them grievously. Marcus, will you gather who you can of your father’s camp? Bring them here.’

  ‘What can I do?’ I asked. Everything felt suddenly unreal.

  Elizabeth shook her head, her eyes bright.

  ‘Thank you, my darling, but the best thing you can do is to go home. There is no time to teach you what you’d need to know to be of use here – that goes for your friends too. And I would worry. You’re safer in Winter. I will call you tonight.’

  ‘Do you promise?’ I asked as she kissed me on each cheek.

  ‘Yes, I promise. Now, go. It’s late. Your father will be worrying.’

  Dad. It was like a cold slap. Of course – he’d have been expecting me home hours ago. What could I say? How could I explain?

  ‘Marcus,’ my grandmother was saying, ‘will you show Anna and her friends out?’

  ‘Of course,’ Marcus said.

  We walked in silence along a maze of corridors, until we reached the door between two palms. They were dead now, crushed to splinters.

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?’ I asked. ‘I don’t want to leave you like this.’

  ‘Look, just go. Your father …’ He put a hand to his temple as if crushing down something he couldn’t bear to think about. ‘Honestly, go home.’

  ‘You’ll be all right?’ My heart wrung at the sight of his face. He was so self-contained, so reserved, it was hard to remember that he had lost his father today, on top of all this terror and destruction.

  ‘Of course. Truly, go. I need to do something – to work …’ Some shadow of a very strong emotion shivered over Marcus’ face and I had the feeling that he was close to breaking down. ‘I need to work.’

  He’d lost his father. He had lost everything.

  We walked through the door and, as I let it close gently behind me, I had the feeling of a traitor, shutting him in, abandoning him to his grief and the blood-soaked waters.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Are you sure you won’t come in, Abe? You look like death. You too, Anna.’ Maya put her hands on the open car window, her face white and worried beneath the street lamp. Inside the car the hazard lights blinked, striking a staccato ruby fire off Abe’s eyebrow ring.

  Abe rubbed his face tiredly, but shook his head.

  ‘We can’t stop. I’ve got to get Anna home.’

  ‘Did you reach my dad?’ I asked anxiously.

  Emmaline had managed to breathe a bit of magic into her mobile and had spoken to Maya on the train, but between the crackles and cut-outs it was hard to know how much Maya had understood. Then the phone had died completely and we’d been left hoping that Maya would pass on a message.

  Maya nodded.

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t really know what to say – I wasn’t sure if you’d come here first or go there, so I didn’t want to contradict whatever you might tell him. He knows you’re alive – but that’s about it. I think he’s a bit …’

  ‘I’ll stand well back,’ Abe said dryly.

  ‘He was pretty angry,’ Maya said apologetically.

  I held that thought in my head as we drove in silence along the coast road and tried to work out what I could say.

  As he pulled into the drive Abe’s headlamps swept the front of Wicker House, coming to rest on Dad, his arms ominously folded, standing outside the front door.

  ‘Anna Winterson,’ he cut in before I’d even got out of the car, let alone started speaking, ‘there had better be a bloody good explanation for this.’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘You weren’t at school, apparently.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I thought better of you, honestly, Anna.’ His face twisted. ‘I mean, cutting school – OK. Honestly, I’m not impressed, but there’s not much I can say. But leaving me until –’ he looked at his watch ‘– until eleven p.m. without a word, when you knew, you knew I’d be frantic—’

  ‘Look,’ Abe broke in, ‘don’t blame Anna. It wasn’t her fault.’

  ‘You!’ Dad spat. ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘You’re being unfair – Anna wasn’t to blame, she—’

  ‘Who was to blame then?’ Dad snarled. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself – she’
s half your age. You should be letting her get on with her schoolwork, not dragging her off to—’

  ‘Dad, stop it,’ I said. ‘Abe didn’t drag me anywhere. If you must know, he came up to London to get me back.’

  ‘London! What in God’s name were you doing in London?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes, it matters! For goodness’ sake, Anna, what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Look,’ Abe said in a low voice, ‘she’s had a long day and she’s been through a lot. Can’t you just let her go to bed and leave this for the morning?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Dad said furiously, ‘but I’m not quite reduced to taking parenting advice from someone who …’ he stopped, biting his tongue.

  ‘Who … ?’ Abe said dangerously. ‘Go on?’

  ‘Stop it, both of you,’ I cried. ‘Dad, stop taking it out on Abe. It was nothing to do with him. And Abe, just go. You’re not helping.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK. I’m going.’

  He turned, but then, as if thinking of something he’d forgotten, he stopped and put a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘What?’

  He bent and kissed my cheek, his lips soft and warm, the gesture unbearably tender.

  Then he turned away to the car, the door slammed, and the engine revved with its throaty, choking roar.

  Dad stood and watched in stiff fury as the car bumped up the track and out of sight, and then he let out a great gust of breath and some enormous tension seemed to roll off his shoulders.

  ‘Anna, I’m your dad,’ he said as we turned to the house. ‘I don’t want to police your life, but didn’t it occur to you that I’d be beside myself with worry? Couldn’t you have called?’

  ‘Of course it occurred to me,’ I said wearily. I put a hand to my aching head, trying to remember when I’d last had food or drink. It must have been – breakfast? ‘I tried to call, Dad. Really I did. But – stuff happened.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’ Dad asked.

  The memory of Caradoc’s broken, bloodied body rose up in front of my eyes like a waking nightmare and I put my hands to my face, pressing back the sobs that were suddenly threatening to break free.