by Alys West
Her eyelids flickered open. The eyes were still too dark. She shuddered, the movement going through her body like an electric shock before she arched again. A hand flew out, slapping him on the chest.
Fuck! Why wasn’t it working? The barrier should keep all other magic out. He sent a thread of awen out to probe its integrity. It was sound. Which could only mean that the spell was inside.
Shit! Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
Dropping to the floor, he peered under the bed. Too dark. Raising his palm, he created a light ball, then another, sent them to float under the bed. Some dust balls and a small round thing. Sliding underneath, he reached for it. Pink mouse with a half-chewed tail. It squeaked when he squeezed it. Cat toy. Something flat caught the light towards the foot of the bed and, flat on his stomach, he crawled towards it.
Soon as his hand touched it he knew what it was. The mirror. Turning it over he saw the crack that ran across it. He dropped his head to the floor. Fuck, fuck, fuck! How had that happened? Had it been on the bed when he arrived? Fallen off as they had sex? He’d thought he was keeping her safe by coming over but if this was his fault, if it would never have happened if he hadn’t been here, he didn’t know how he’d live with himself.
No time for that now. He checked each of the wooden slats that supported the mattress, searching for something, anything that could hold the spell. The bed creaked and shook above him. Ducking, he hastily backed out.
Waiting until the convulsion had passed, he gently took Jenna in his arms. Her eyes flickered open. For a split second he thought she saw him, knew who he was. Then she shook her head and her eyelids closed again. Murmuring her name, whispering reassurances that he didn’t believe, he lifted her across the bed.
Tossing the pillow and the duvet aside revealed only a crumpled pale blue sheet. Yanking that up exposed the cheap, thin mattress but nothing else. And still Jenna shook. Hands in tight fists, her chest lifted again, held for a second before flopping back against the bed.
What was he missing? When he got his hands on whoever was doing this he was going to kill them. Grabbing the pillow, he tore the flowery case from it. Something tumbled out, fell to the floor.
It was a charm sachet. Snatching it up, he turned it over and over in his hand. Fucking, cowardly bastard leaving this under her pillow. Did they have any idea what it would do to her? How she’d suffer as the spell took hold? His fingers clenched becoming a tight fist. He slammed it against the floor.
Didn’t help. Forcing his mind to focus he released his hand and studied the sachet. It was made from yellow cotton with a pentagram embroidered on the centre in black on one side and an open eye in blue on the other, the shade almost exactly the same colour as Jenna’s eyes. That sent a chill through him. He turned, brushed his hand against her cheek, stroked her tangled hair away from her face.
Pressing the sachet between his fingers, he felt two long thin objects bound together which could be twigs, or worse, bones surrounded by lots of small squishy ones which were probably herbs. Raising it to his nose, he sniffed. Could be bay but he wasn’t sure. There was something else in there as well. Something he couldn’t identify.
The black embroidery and open eye had one intention. This spell was designed to curse. The urge to destroy it was intense. But was that the right thing? Would it free Jenna or make something else happen? Something worse? He couldn’t take that risk.
He glanced at the window. Pale grey light crept around the edges of the curtains. Early, not much past dawn. Jenna’s head thrashed from side to side. Gently, he tucked the bare pillow next to the bed frame. He couldn’t wait until a more civilised hour to ring Grace. Jenna couldn’t go on like this. She’d get hurt as her body flailed or exhaust herself completely. As she shook again, he released the barrier enough for him to step through it and then sealed it again.
Turning, he hesitated. Would taking the charm sachet away be enough to break the spell? For a long moment, she lay motionless and he began to hope. Then her back arched again as another convulsion took her over. His eyes closed for a second before he turned away to pull on jeans and t-shirt. In the hall he found his jacket, abandoned on the floor where they’d kissed last night, and took out his phone. It was 4:52. Hoping Grace was a light sleeper, he pressed the screen to dial her number.
***
Zoe jerked awake. Her head bounced off Finn’s shoulders as she struggled to open her eyes. The rumble of the ferry’s engine sounded in the depth of the ship. She blinked as the half-empty lounge came into focus. The sun had risen while she slept. Around her, passengers were sleeping, some curled up across the seats, others with their heads tipped back. The young mother across the aisle, her toddler son curled up on her knee, nodded at her before returning to reading a thriller with a lurid cover.
“You alright, sweetheart?”
“I had a dream.” As Finn bent to grab her bag, she put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Not the usual kind of dream. This was more amorphous. It felt like someone was looking for me but they were behind some kind of invisible wall. Like they were shouting but I couldn’t hear them.”
“You think it’s significant?”
“I don’t know. It might be only a dream but Grace said I shouldn’t dismiss anything while I’m learning to control them.”
“Do you want to write it down?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Yawning, Zoe bent and picked up her bag. Pulling out her notepad, she flipped it open and rummaged around until she found a pen. Then she hesitated. Words were never her strong point. She could say so much more with pictures but she couldn’t draw something she hadn’t seen. She scribbled down a few words. “Lost, terrified, fighting, way home.” And then nothing more came.
She put the notepad on the empty seat next to her and glanced at her watch. Forty minutes until they docked. She yawned again. Her eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep but her mind was too awake. Her book had slipped from her knee as she slept. She picked it up and flipped back looking for the page where she’d left it.
Finn nudged her. “How you are getting on with it?”
He wasn’t altogether happy about her reading Amber’s book and she’d had to promise not to let Winston see it once they arrived in Kirkwall. Zoe smoothed her hand over the black cover with the words Moonlight Magic in raised gothic script above a picture of a mournful- looking girl in a scarlet dress standing by a misty pool. “It feels a bit weird. I’m kind of wishing I’d not started.”
“That bad?”
“She’s copied everything about him. His hair, his motorbike, his love of Glenfiddich and rock music. Blade’s even—”
“Blade! The character’s called Blade?”
“Didn’t you know?”
“No, I bloody didn’t.” Finn looked up at the ceiling. “God, it’s going to kill me not teasing him about that!”
“He’s even got the same tattoo as Winston.” Zoe pushed her hair back from her face. “For someone you trusted to do that has got to be really tough.”
“Does that mean you’re going to go a bit easier on him?”
“I still think he should man up and date Jenna.” Zoe looked down at the book’s cover. “But I guess I understand now why he hasn’t.”
***
Winston stood at the end of Jenna’s bed and, with a tap of his staff, released the barrier. Grace had told him it was the only option but it felt wrong. Without the barrier, the curse would complete. Only when Jenna stopped fighting it would the convulsions stop.
Perching on the edge of the bed, he held her hand. Her feet pummelled the mattress as her body arched again. He didn’t know if she could hear him but he muttered reassurance. Words that he’d never have said if she’d been awake, words that promised and pledged and spoke the secret he’d kept from himself as well as from everyone else. The convulsions became less extreme, the gaps between them longer. Eventually her breathing steadied. When her eyelids fluttered, he released her hand in case he woke her. With a sigh, she turned ont
o her side, hand beneath the pillow, knees bent up.
He’d watched her sleep like this sometime in the early hours when they’d finally stopped touching and talking and laughing. It’d hurt somewhere around his heart as he studied her face, the lashes closed, her cheek squashed against her pillow, her dark hair messy from sex. Because he’d known the cost of this night. Knew that his heart was lost, gifted to the woman who slept beside him and with that came a fear he knew how to name but not how to handle.
And then he’d slept and woken to find the curse taking her over and the fear became something far more terrible tied up with horrible aching guilt because it wouldn’t have happened if he’d not come round. The protection spell would have held. She’d have been safe.
Grace said he couldn’t know that. With Jenna’s lack of practice, the protection spell could easily have failed anyway. It didn’t help. He still blamed himself.
Closing the bedroom door gently behind him, he walked through to the living area. There was no way he was going back to sleep so he might as well make himself a coffee. He studied the shiny cappuccino machine on the counter for three seconds before deciding it might wake her. Also, he didn’t have a clue how to turn it on. Rifling through her predictably pristine cupboards he found a jar of quality instant and put the kettle on.
Walking over to the window, he perched on the ledge. It was a dreich morning, rain drizzling over the town, clouds obscuring Wideford Hill. He rested his head on the glass and blew out a painful long breath.
In an hour and ten minutes he had to wake her. She’d asked him last night, when she’d been on the edge of sleep, if he’d be there when she woke up. He’d been hurt, more hurt than he’d wanted to let on, that she’d thought he’d leave. “You said,” she’d murmured, “some didn’t last the whole night.” He’d blinked until the words connected to a memory of their late-night conversation at The Noust. “I’m wishing I’d not told you that,” he’d said. Leaning in, he’d kissed her reddened lips. “But I promise you this, Jenna Henderson, I will be here in the morning.”
And he would. He wouldn’t break that because she’d been cursed in the middle of the night. Or because, until she woke, he’d no idea what the curse would do. He’d described the markings on the charm sachet to Grace, hoping they’d help her to identify the purpose of it, but she’d only confirmed, as he’d already suspected, that it was intended to harm.
His mobile beeped and he tugged it out of the back pocket of his jeans. The message was from Grace. “I could do this at a distance but it doesn’t feel right. I want to be there for Jenna. I should have come sooner. Nina told me to wait until Jenna reached out to me but she can’t have foreseen this. Will be on 17:50 flight from Edinburgh arriving Kirkwall at 19:05. Once you’ve got the things I told you about I can try to lift the spell. Stay strong. Grace x”
He blinked, read the message again. What had made her change her mind? When they’d spoken earlier, she’d told him to post the items to her. He’d got them stashed away in his jacket pockets ready to take to the post office as soon as it opened. Quickly he typed out a reply, promising to be at the airport to meet her and sent it.
That was thirteen hours away. Thirteen hours during which Jenna would be under the curse; thirteen hours when he’d no idea what she’d say or do, thirteen hours when he didn’t know if she’d be the Jenna he loved or someone completely different. He dropped his forehead against the cold glass again. How had it come to this? They’d not even had a whole night together.
Picking up his mobile again, he typed ‘Sarah Parry spellworker’ into Google. The top result was a Twitter account. He clicked on it. The profile picture was a pentagram. Scrolling through the tweets he started to read.
***
Zoe stared out of the car window, watching white painted houses with black trim around the doors and windows flash past. Unmistakeably Scotland. As distinctive as thistles or bagpipes.
The ferry had docked at six and they were on the A77 to Glasgow. It was an eight-hour drive to Scabster where they’d get the ferry to Orkney which meant they were praying for clear roads and there was no time to stop for breakfast.
She took another sip of coffee. They’d caught the 4am ferry from Larne. She’d had a couple of hours’ sleep before they left and about an hour before the dream woke her on the crossing. It wasn’t nearly enough. She felt lightheaded and a little nauseous. She knocked back more coffee. In an hour or so, when they were past Glasgow, she’d insist on driving for a while. She still wasn’t entirely confident behind the wheel of Finn’s four-wheel drive but even she could manage on a motorway and the A9 up through the Highlands. Finn could take over again when they got past Inverness and, from what she could see on the map, the roads got much smaller and windier.
Finn picked up his mobile and handed it to her without taking his gaze from the road. “Do you think Winston’s up yet?”
“I doubt it. It’s not even seven yet.”
“So? We’re up. Why shouldn’t he be?”
“By that logic, we should have rung him when we left home at one this morning,” she said but she pulled up Winston’s number and pressed the screen. It rang and rang. “I think he’s still—” She broke off as he answered.
“Finn?”
“It’s Zoe. But we’re both here. I’ll put you on speaker.”
“No. Don’t.”
He sounded terrible. Zoe met Finn’s brief glance and shook her head. “What’s wrong?” she said.
“It’s Jenna. The spell… it happened like you drew it. It was like she was having a fit. I tried to stop it but it didn’t work.”
“You were there?” It wasn’t the most important point in what he’d told her but she couldn’t help it.
“Yes, I was there.” He sighed. “Don’t make a thing of it.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said quickly. “How is she now?”
“She’s asleep. Grace said I had to lift the barrier I put around her.” As he explained what had happened she could see it as if she’d been there, his words adding to the picture she’d drawn. The terror and the panic were unspoken but she heard them in the words that stumbled over each other and the long, painful pauses.
“It’s good that Grace is coming,” she said when he finished speaking.
“Yes.” The word sounded devoid of hope.
“We’ll get her through this. All of us will.”
There was silence at the end of the line. She looked up at Finn, trying to transmit to him that she was way out of her depth.
“Put him on speaker,” he said. She pressed the screen, held the mobile closer to Finn. “Mate, hold on in there. The cavalry’s coming.”
“You’re too bloody late.”
“We are not. Get a grip.” Finn’s tone was far terser than usual. “What did you say to me in Glastonbury when Maeve took Zoe?”
“Bugger off! I do not need you quoting me back at me.”
“Then do it.”
There was a long pause and then Winston said, “What time are you arriving?”
“About nine.”
“Then remind me to kick you where it hurts when you get here.”
Finn laughed. “Be good to see you too.”
The line went dead. Zoe shook her head. Men! How was insulting each other and threatening violence helping?
For a moment, she stared out of the window. They were passing through a small village strung out along the road. A man walking two West Highland White Terriers stopped to speak to an older man with a dachshund. A woman watered hanging baskets bursting with geraniums and fuchsias outside the post office. A boy on a bicycle, swerved from the pavement onto the road, pedalled frantically until they passed him and then returned to the pavement. “What did he say to you in Glastonbury?”
“To man up and start thinking like a druid.”
He’d only told her the sketchiest of outlines about those hours after Maeve’s phone call. She knew they’d driven through the night to get to the Nine Maiden
s before she and Maeve arrived but not much else. He’d certainly never mentioned a conversation with Winston before. “Did it help?”
Finn flashed a flint-edged grin. “We found you, didn’t we?”
“Yes.” She took another gulp of coffee. There was more she wanted to ask but this wasn’t the time. It’d have to wait until all of this was over and they were safely home. For now, they had to concentrate on the crisis they were heading into. “Can we help Jenna? I mean, can we stop the spell?”
“Not now it’s taken hold. It has to be lifted. That’s what Grace’ll do when she arrives.”
“And what do we do?”
“Stop Winston killing whoever put it on her.”
***
He couldn’t put it off any longer. Picking up the cup of tea he’d made, he walked through to her bedroom and pushed open the door. He put the tea on her bedside cabinet and looked down. She was asleep, her head resting on one of the stripped pillows, her arm thrown out across the bare mattress.
How the hell was he was going to explain the mess the bed was in? No amount of enthusiastic and energetic sex would strip pillows of their cases or pull the sheet halfway off the bed. But that presupposed she noticed. His Jenna, the Jenna he’d gone to bed with, would be on it straightaway but he’d no clue how the Jenna under the spell would react to anything. Including him being here.
Bending, he stroked her hair from her face and said, “Jenna, it’s time to wake up. I’ve brought you some tea.” The words caught in his throat, came out faintly choked.
She murmured, shrugged his hand off and tugged the duvet closer. He gently shook her shoulder. “Jenna, it’s seven. You’ve got to wake up.”
Her eyes half-opened and then widened in a look of pure terror. She shot up to sitting, clutching the duvet to her. “What are you doing here?”
“I stayed last night, remember? You asked me to.”
She shook her head as if the movement would shake his words away. “You can’t be here.”