Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1)

by W. V. Fitz-Simon

  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.

  “Oh.” He dropped his theatrical lilt, all playfulness gone from his manner. “Are you a witch yourself, Mrs. Armitage? That explains so much. Get it off her.”

  He gestured to his nearest henchman, a broad-faced lout with a cruel grin, dressed in a pair of khakis and a green cable-knit sweater.

  “Be careful.” Margrave held him back with one hand. “Witches are usually booby-trapped.”

  Are we? Yet another thing I need to get my mother to teach me.

  The thug patted her down, ignoring the lipstick in her hand. He shoved his hand into her pocket to retrieve the bangle and pass it on to Margrave.

  She, Margrave, and his thugs all sensed the wavefront coming a second before impact, each of them ducking and shielding themselves with their arms as the windows shattered inward and the front door blew off its hinges. Outside on the cobblestones stood George, his clothing tattered and filthy, blood smeared across his brow.

  “Emerson, you’re here. My wife tells me you plan to kill me and take my place. Don’t you have enough power of your own?”

  “Do something about the neighbors,” said Margrave out of the corner of his mouth to the nearest of his thugs without taking his eyes off George. “Can’t have them seeing things they won’t be able to explain.”

  One thug, tall and thin in a dark bespoke suit and tie, picked himself up off the floor and disappeared before her eyes into a smear of colors. A wave of Influence carried him out, invisible, through the broken window. All three thugs were encased in egg-like auras similar to their master’s, though theirs were much smaller and weaker than Margrave’s.

  Margrave shrugged and brushed shards of glass off his coat.

  “There’s always more to be had. Yes, it’s quite true. A curious scientist, of all people, introduced me to a theory he developed on how to take two Spheres of Influence and fuse them into one. It seemed an impossible feat, but then you fell into my lap and I saw an opportunity that I simply couldn’t decline. Thank you, my boy, for making the impossible a reality.”

  “Treacherous bastard.”

  George stepped across the threshold into the house, bringing with him a storm of turbulent Influence that battered the small living room with a phantom whirlwind that only pummeled the people. Every inanimate object around them remained untouched.

  Margrave clasped Cressida’s torc in his fist, held it up before him, and muttered under his breath.
/>   “No,” said George. “I know how that thing works.”

  He swiped one hand to the side. Margrave’s arm swung out in response, his fist opening. The bangle flew through the air to land within Gosha’s reach at the foot of the stairs.

  George pushed out toward Margrave with both hands. Influence blasted forward and knocked the old man into the kitchen.

  One of Margrave’s thugs, a skinny man with a long neck and teeth that must never have seen a dentist, lurched toward the amulet. Already crouching in her struggle back to her feet, Gosha launched herself at him, lipstick in one hand, and landed on his back. She reached out, grazing his arm as he snatched up the bangle.

  “Kattak!”

  The keyhole of the breaking spell opened inside her and wrapped her in its bubble of calm. Influence poured through, but had nothing solid to contact, and dissipated in the air. She willed power from the wode sump through the opening as it shrank, increasing the flow to cross the inches between her and the thug. The sleeve of his jacket sliced open from shoulder to wrist as if she cut him with a knife. He shrugged her off, knocking her against the wall.

  “Fucking bitch.” He clutched his arm as blood seeped between his fingers.

  He lashed out at her with his good arm and punched her hard in the face, knocking her back. Her head spun, and a loud ringing filled her ears.

  “Gosha,” said George, seeing her for the first time. “Were you in league with him all along?”

  Her jaw hurt like hell. The metallic taste of blood spread across her tongue.

  The skinny thug scooped up the amulet and lurched toward the fallen Margrave, but the old man didn’t need his help. He levitated off the floor back to his feet.

  “Ah, the vigor of youth,” said Margrave, gazing fondly upon his henchman.

  George lashed out at the thug, knocking him back against the wall with a gesture before he could pass off the torc. Plaster cracked around the thug’s slender frame and he slumped, unconscious, to the floor.

  Margrave lifted a hand and Miranda’s carpet rose up in a cresting wave under George, pushing him and all the furniture toward the fireplace.