Waking the Witch, page 22
“Must you always be such a bitch?”
He moved closer, but stopped just shy of the break in the floor. The boards beneath him creaked, but he noticed nothing amiss.
“I’m telling the truth,” she said. “Margrave killed Cressida and used her to create another trinket like the one you used to kill your father. You’re weak and ignorant, and he’ll take you easily. At least then Edmund and Timothy won’t have to suffer the burden of a pathetic father.”
He grabbed her by the throat and squeezed hard, cutting off the flow of blood to her head. Unable to draw breath, she couldn’t speak a word. The lipstick slipped out of her hands as she clawed at his arms and face to get him to release her.
Without the lipstick, her second sight fled her, but the wode sump heated up, telling her he was pushing Influence at her in his rage. She kicked with every ounce of strength she had. The sharp point of her winklepicker boots connected with his inner thigh and he grunted, but his grip didn’t falter. Black spots appeared before her eyes and the roar of rushing blood filled her ears.
Although his reach was longer than hers, he held her close, his jaw clenched in rage as he watched her suffocating. She dug her thumbs into his eyes, and her black-varnished nails drew blood.
He released her and staggered back. She fell to her knees and flailed around to retrieve her lipstick. With the small cylinder firmly nestled in her palm, she could feel the tides of Influence swirl around her once more. She placed a hand on the floor and spoke the breaking spell, managing no more than a hoarse whisper.
“Kattak.”
It was enough.
The keyhole within her opened and she pushed every last ounce of Influence from the wode sump through it, despite the pain it caused her. The floor beneath George cracked. Wood shattered like glass beneath him and he dropped.
This time, she didn’t hesitate, didn’t even bother to see if he was still alive as she skirted around the edge of the collapse and down the stairs. The front door was still sealed, but she took an antique chair and threw it through a window to clamber out into the street and escape.
34
Gosha’s hand shook no matter how hard she gripped the steering wheel. Every new pair of headlights that reflected in the rearview mirror made her jump. She drove until the narrowing focus of her fear abated enough that she could take her foot off the accelerator and loosen her clutch on the wheel. She pulled into a side street and the nearest parking space, coiled up over the steering wheel, and wept.
The tears came as a release, pent-up tension shaking out of her in wracking sobs until she was out of breath. She slumped down in the bucket seat of her tiny Mini, her body aching, and wished her mother had thought to give her a word that could offer relief.
Despite the danger she had been in, it was glorious to make the earth shake and the building crumble. But she caused so much damage, tearing through the club like a blitzkrieg. If George hadn’t pulled everyone into the bar, who knows how many she might have injured? She had to be more careful. Her mother said the five spells of the rhyme were everything a witch needed, making her wonder what challenges the average witch faced in a day. Nothing like the assault of a crazed maniac like George.
She always knew he was a regressive chauvinist at heart, and a petulant brat, but she always chalked that up to his upbringing. Despite his moods, he always seemed intent on bettering himself. It was the one thing that still endeared him to her. Either his attempts at becoming a better man were all a lie, or, when faced with the possibility of power, he had reverted to type. Whichever was true, it didn’t matter. The man she fell in love with was gone, replaced by one more handsome stranger who meant her and her family harm.
The boys would be safe with her mother in the short term, but after she picked up Miranda, she’d have to figure something else out. Perhaps they could run away, but where would they go? Where would they be safe beyond the reaches of George and Emerson Margrave? That’s if both men survived. The odds were on Margrave. If she and the boys left the country, say they fled to Ireland, would she be out of their reach? No Polish witch hunters had followed her family to England.
She understood now how her parents must have felt as they waited for her to regain consciousness after her mother had dealt with the witch hunter. Once they were safe in England, Gosha’s constant terror receded into dreams and nightmares, making it easier to hate her parents for pulling her away from her home than to process her true feelings. What a brat she’d been.
She dug the street atlas out from under the back seat and opened it up to the map of Cheyne Heath to work the finding spell for Miranda. She had used salt in her mother’s kitchen, but she had nothing powdery with her in the car.
Or did she? Her handbag was on the passenger seat. In her makeup kit, she found her compact and a makeup brush. She dipped the brush onto the surface of the makeup and caught up the powder in its bristles. Picturing Miranda, she spoke the finding word—
“Sutturah.”
—and blew the powder from the brush over the map.
The keyhole of the finding spell opened within her. As Influence flowed through it and across the brush, it spread the powder out into a pale cloud that drifted over Miranda’s street to rain down into a dusty mound over her house, only a five-minute drive from where Gosha was parked.
Miranda lived in a tiny and adorable mews house on a cobblestone street back on the rising turn of prosperity after long neglect. Several of the dilapidated buildings along the mews had received their first coat of paint in decades. It wouldn’t be long before a foolish purchase made a decade ago would become a genius act of foresight on Miranda’s part. That desperate bid for stability would be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Miranda had owned the building for ten years, but she’d only moved in eighteen months ago when, with the help of Gosha, George, and a ruthless solicitor, she regained control of her life from her parents after a lengthy and acrimonious court battle. Gosha and George helped her clear out the debris of earlier occupants, most of them squatters, and fix the place up enough to make it habitable.
What was happening in George’s life then? Had he already become involved with Margrave? Was he already planning his father’s murder?
Her verve stalled as she stood before Miranda’s front door, her hand poised to ring the bell. She would have to burst the bubble of happiness Miranda had rebuilt for herself. What effect would that have on her? But Gosha had to do it. No amount of denial would protect Miranda from the miserable fate that lay in store for her if she remained under Emerson Margrave’s thrall.
Miranda’s face lit up with a mixture of surprise and delight at the sight of Gosha on her doorstep.
“What are you doing here?” She ushered Gosha into the house. “George said you were bedridden with the flu.”
“He lied. He’s been lying to me for years, to all of us. Miranda, he killed his father. He’s a monster.” Her voice grew shrill no matter how much she tried to calm herself.
Miranda hugged her tight. The delicate floral notes of her perfume wafted into Gosha’s nostrils, helping Gosha steady herself.
“You’re not making sense, darling. Come and sit. What do you mean he killed his father?”
Gosha realized she was crying.
“After Mick Trash died, someone came to the house in the middle of the night for George and he vanished. He said he had business to do up north. But he came back yesterday changed. I’ve never seen him like this. He said he murdered his father.”
She hesitated. It was so easy to revert to her guarded, protected way of speaking even in the face of such outrageous happenings. But how could she make Miranda understand the danger she was in without telling her the unvarnished truth?
“What is it?” said Miranda. “Tell me.”
Once the water boils, the tea must be made, thought Gosha, remembering one of her mother’s many peculiar expressions.
With a deep breath, she began to make sense of the story as best she could. She told Miranda about Mick and Cressida, about the power over Influence that George returned with from Liverpool, about Margrave and what he said when he didn’t know she was listening. She rambled and did her best to regain control of the thread of her story, but once she started, she couldn’t hold back.
Throughout her account, Miranda sat and listen in silence, her face a mask that Gosha couldn’t read. When she finished, she held her breath until Miranda spoke.
“How dare you,” said Miranda, her voice a quiet squeak. “How dare you come to me with such an outrageous story? To me, of all people!”
As she spoke, her temper soured, indignation growing in her rough and cracked voice, the lines of tension around her eyes furrowing into deep and angry grooves.
“I thought you loved me. Now I don’t know what to think.”
“I do love you. That’s why I’m telling you this.”
“You had me for a moment.” Miranda rose to pace about the tiny living room. “I started to believe you, but it’s preposterous. Emerson is a good man. He would never do any of these horrible things you’re accusing him of, even if I could believe all this talk of powers and murder. I’ve been with him for a year. I know him. Are you jealous? Is that it? Are you jealous now that I’ve found something pure and spiritual, something that uplifts me and makes me feel whole again, now that your marriage is falling apart? I’m very sorry, Gosha, but you can’t keep me broken and terrified. If that’s what it takes to be your friend, I want none of it.”
She swept her hands before her as if to brush Gosha away.
“Everything I said to you is true.” Gosha stood and held Miranda’s hands tight, though she squirmed to get free. “Everything. Exactly as I said it. I know it sounds mad, but these things do exist. These men have powers you can’t imagine. I’ve seen things in the past few days that would boggle the mind, but they’re all true.”
“You believe this?” Miranda’s face went pale. “Oh my god, Gosha, there’s something wrong with you. Listen to yourself. I’m calling George.”
An old-fashioned Bakelite phone stood next to Gosha on the side table. She reached out and touched it, saying the binding word before Miranda could get to it, fusing the receiver to the base. When Miranda tried to pick it up, the whole telephone came with it.
Miranda looked at it, confused, unable to register what happened. She tried to pry them apart, but they wouldn’t separate.
“What did you do?” she said.
“I have power, too. Not as great as Margrave and George. I learned it from my mother.”
“This is a trick.”
Gosha considered the other spell words her mother gave her. The finding and breaking spells worked, but she doubted they’d be very effective at convincing Miranda, and she wasn’t about to curse her. The only other thing her mother had tried to show her was levitating the flowerpot, but Gosha messed that up royally.
“Look.”
She pointed to a vase of flowers on the coffee table as she put her hand in her pocket and curled her fingers around the lipstick.
In her second sight, Influence swelled through the house. Gosha wondered if it was because of Miranda, because of her music and the number of people she had touched during her career. The flow was strong enough that she didn’t have to work hard to catch it and channel it, to wrap it around the vase and take its weight. The fight with George had given her a taste of the control she had failed to muster to lift her mother’s flowerpot. She concentrated, holding back, allowing the Influence to do the work the way she allowed the engine of her Mini to move the car, only nudging it this way and that with the steering wheel and pedals.
To her delight, the vase lifted off the table. It wobbled at first, but she soon got the hang of the effort of will needed to make it rise a foot or two into the air.
Miranda watched transfixed, eyes wide at the impossible sight of her floating vase.
“What’s happening,” she croaked. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m trying to help you. Margrave will kill you and use your life force to kill George.”
She lost her grip on the vase for a moment, making it dip. When she held it again, she did so with more force than intended. It shattered, spraying glass and foxgloves over the coffee table.
Miranda jumped.
“I would never lie to you about something this important. Please believe me. You’re in danger. I only want to help you. Remember when I tracked you down in the Lake District at your parent’s cottage? Remember when I refused to go until they let me see you?”
Miranda’s eyes flickered between Gosha and the bruised and sodden foxgloves, her arms crossed over her chest, her hands pawing at the fabric of her blouse.
“Oh god. He wants us all at the retreat tomorrow. We’re all ready to take the next step.”
“He’ll kill all of you like he did Mick.”
Miranda clasped Gosha’s hands.
“What should I—”
Three firm, sharp knocks rapped against the front door. A pause, and then they rapped again.
“Don’t answer it,” said Gosha.
“Miranda, dear,” came an older man’s voice from beyond the front door. “It’s me, Emerson. Are you there? May I come in?”
“We have to get out,” said Gosha.
“How? There’s no other way. The garden’s walled off on all sides.”
“What about the roof?”
Gosha peered up the stairs.
“Yes, yes.” Miranda’s expression brightened at the possibility of escape. “We can climb over the railings to the deck next door.”
“Miranda,” said Margrave. “Please let me in.”
Miranda looked around her, paralyzed, her mouth agape, her hands thrust into her pockets.
“There’s no time to take anything.” Gosha grabbed Miranda’s arm and dragged her toward the stairs. “We have to go now.”
“Miranda, please open the door,” said Margrave.
Miranda let Gosha tow her along, but halfway up the stairs she stopped.
“Wait, wait. There’s something I have to do.”
She pulled away from Gosha and ran back down the stairs to the front door.
“What are you doing,” hissed Gosha as Miranda opened the door to reveal Margrave standing there flanked by three dangerous-looking men.
“Please come in, Emerson,” said Miranda.
A beaming smile spread across her face, all worry gone from her demeanor, as if two seconds ago they hadn’t been about to run for their lives.
“Why, thank you, my dear.” He brushed past her, his three thugs close on his heels. “How kind of you to welcome me into your home.”
35
The expensive camel cashmere coat draped across Margrave’s shoulders and the buried pink threads in the weave of his suit gave the old man the camp look of a theater luvvy signing autographs at the stage door. To see Miranda hover and gush over him, you wouldn’t think him a vampire, and she about to be his prey.
“And Mrs. Armitage.” His face lit up at the sight of her as if she were an old friend. “Here you are. I understand you’ve been playing with forces best left to your betters. It quite surprised me to hear it. George never told me you consorted with witches. Those two snooping biddies were witches, were they not? There was a taint of the homespun about the layering of Influence they used to spy on me. Not as sophisticated as a genuine oath-bearer.”
She considered bolting up to the roof, but she couldn’t leave Miranda. She never considered Margrave might have his claws so deep into her she would jump at his bidding, even against her will. From what she’d seen, his whole gimmick was getting consent from his victims to do what he wanted with them.
“And what were you up to here?” Margrave walked a loop around the small living room. “Were you trying to get away? That was foolish. Ms. Lovelock is a woman of strong desires I have gone to great lengths to cultivate and mold. She would never leave me. Would you, dear?”
“Never, Emerson. You know how committed I am to you and your work.”
Miranda’s face radiated love at him.
“Of course you are. And as a reward for your commitment, you deserve a moment of spiritual fulfillment.”
He made his way back to her and placed his palm on her forehead. Gosha slipped her hand in the pocket of her jeans to touch the lipstick, and her second sight awoke. The Influence around Margrave enveloped him in a generous and fluid egg-like aura that expanded to include Miranda. She gasped, and her eyes lost focus as her skin began to glow.
“What have you done to her?” Gosha snarled through clenched teeth.
Miranda thought she’d come so far, but she hadn’t beaten her addictions, just transferred them to Margrave’s perverse use of Influence.
“Nothing except allow her to realize her desires.” He caressed Miranda’s cheek with the back of his index finger as if stroking the feathers of a bird. “The poor thing feels so worthless and alone. I’ve merely allowed her to find connection, to be part of something greater. I don’t ask her to do anything she doesn’t already desire. Now.” He turned on Gosha. “Where is my torc? I assume you have it.”
He wiggled his fingertips at her. Gentle waves of Influence rippled across her skin and zeroed in on the torc in her back pocket.
“I thought so. How have you become so involved in my affairs?”
“You involved me when you killed two people I care about.”
He frowned.
“Two people? Cressida I’m aware of, but who’s the other?”
“Mick Trash.”
“Trash?” He laughed. “Was that his nom de guerre? That’s delightful. Such a creative boy. Well, that is unfortunate.”
He held out his hand.
“Give it to me.”
The egg of power around him expanded to envelop her, but the wode sump held. It heated up against her chest, but only by a small amount. Unlike George, Margrave had enough restraint not to pummel her with Influence when, at first, he didn’t get what he wanted.
