Storm Witch

by Alys West

  He drank again but the warmth of the alcohol didn’t shift the chill around his heart. He’d been holding it together all day but that control was tenuous now. “We have to get her back. I can’t…” He shook his head. The rest of that sentence would admit things he wasn’t ready to say out loud.

  “We will.” Finn’s hand landed briefly on his shoulder.

  “Grace says coercion spells are a bugger to lift.”

  “Shit, that’s not good.” Finn ran his fingers through his hair, making it stick out at all angles. “What does she suggest?”

  “She wants to see Nina’s grimoire. Nina made some adjustments to the spell when she did it. I’ve written down for Grace what I remember but I can’t be sure I’ve got it right.”

  “Where’s the grimoire now?” Zoe had taken her shoes off and was sitting, with her legs curled beneath her, on the end of the bed.

  “Jenna’s got it.”

  “And there’s no hope of her handing it over?” Finn swung the chair round and gestured for Winston to take it before joining Zoe on the bed.

  “Unlikely. She’s certainly not going to give it to me.”

  “So what do we do?” Zoe said.

  “Grace wants to go and see her tomorrow morning. She thinks you should go with her.”

  “Me?” Zoe said. “Why me?”

  “Because Jenna doesn’t know you and is unlikely to be threatened by you. And because if Grace distracts Jenna, you may be able to grab the grimoire.”

  “Seriously? This is the plan?” Finn’s eyebrows rose as his arm went round Zoe.

  “Jenna’s not dangerous. She’s got no magic to speak of. Zoe’ll be fine.”

  “She’s under a coercion spell. You’ve no idea what she’s going to do.”

  “And you two are doing it again. Stop talking about me as if I’m not here.” Zoe folded her arms and glared at each of them in turn. “I thought we’d got past this in Glastonbury. I make my own decisions, you know.”

  Finn gazed at her for a long moment before dropping a kiss on her forehead. “Alright. Are you up for it?”

  “I don’t know yet. Tell me exactly what I’ve got to do and then I’ll decide.”

  ***

  Zoe switched on the bedside light. Blinking, she reached for her sketchpad and pencil. After pushing back the duvet, she swung her legs out of bed and slid to the floor. She rested the pad against her bent knees and began to draw.

  “Zo?”

  “I’m fine. I just need to get this down.” Her hand moved across the paper, scoring lines, blurring curves, shading shadows, keeping the pencil moving while the dream remained vivid in her mind. Once the picture had taken shape, she scribbled words around the edges of the page.

  Then she pushed her hair back and looked at what she’d drawn. It was a woman’s face with wide blue eyes, high cheekbones and a generous mouth. Two nights ago, she’d drawn it before.

  “We need Winston.” She turned and put her hand on Finn’s shoulder. “Can you wake him?”

  “What?” Finn rolled over and blinked at her.

  “Go get Winston. He needs to see this.”

  “What time is it?”

  Druids and their lack of watches! Zoe picked hers up from the bedside cabinet. “Twenty-five past four.”

  “Jesus!” As Finn sat up, his t-shirt rode up, exposing inches of muscled back. “I didn’t get to bed until after one.”

  Exhaustion had driven her to bed at half-past ten. Finn and Winston had left her to it, taking the bottle of Highland Park into Winston’s room. She’d heard Finn come to bed but had been too sleepy to notice the time, although she’d known he was drunk from his elaborate attempts to avoid waking her.

  “I’ll ring him.” Finn fumbled in his jeans pocket until he found his mobile. “I don’t want to wake the entire house by pounding on his door.”

  Zoe pulled her hoodie from the pile of clothes on the chair and slipped it on. She was a lot more relaxed with Winston these days but he didn’t need to see her in a tiny, clinging vest top and sleep shorts. Finn said a few words into the phone and then turned to her saying, “He’s not happy but he’s coming.”

  “Good.”

  “Want to show me?”

  “When he gets here.” Zoe slid Moonlight Magic into the top drawer of the bedside cabinet. “This is about him. I’m only the conduit.”

  “I should not have had that last whisky.” Finn yawned hugely. “My head feels like there’s a woodpecker in there drilling bits out of my brain.”

  “There’s painkillers in my bag if you want them.”

  “Maybe later. With luck I’ll sleep it off.” He yawned again. “We are getting more sleep tonight, aren’t we?”

  There was a tap on the door. “That depends on Winston,” Zoe said as she crossed the room to open it.

  “This had better be good.” Winston was wearing shorts and a faded Guns & Roses t-shirt, his hair mussed, his eyelids heavy. He looked like he’d hardly slept at all.

  “It is.” Zoe backed up, gesturing for him to sit down. Sinking on to the floor in front of the chair, she pressed the sketchpad into his hands. As he looked at the sketch, the bleary wariness fled from his face.

  “It’s Jenna.” His gaze met hers. “What is this? Why’s she in your dream?”

  “I don’t know why I dreamed about her.” Speaking as calmly as possible, she told him about the dreams she’d had yesterday. As he listened, his gaze returned again and again to the drawing in his hands, his knuckles whitening around the sketchpad. She finished by saying, “It’s not like any dream I’ve had before. Finn thinks she’s been trying to reach out to us but only I can hear her.”

  “Finn thinks? You talked about this?”

  “Yesterday on the ferry, the Orkney ferry, after I had the second dream but we weren’t sure it was her. Like I said, I could only hear a voice.”

  “And the words? What do the words mean?”

  “They’re what I remember of what she said.” Standing, she crossed the room to grab her bag. She pulled out the small notebook she’d written in earlier and gave it to him. “And this is what I got from the earlier dreams.”

  Winston’s frown deepened. “Why didn’t you tell me this when you got here?”

  “Because we weren’t sure it was Jenna.” Finn spoke from behind her. “There was no point getting your hopes up if it turned out to be nothing.”

  “You still should have told me.” Winston’s glare travelled between the two of them. “I deserved to know. You know how worried I am. This could be—”

  “Oh, come on!” Finn’s jaw tensed. “Will you listen to yourself? Until Zoe drew this we’d no proof it was Jenna. You’d had a crap day. I wasn’t going to add to that with a hunch.”

  “Fuck that!” Winston’s accent broadened. “It was more than a bloody hunch.”

  “Okay, time out, boys.” Zoe raised her hands. “How about I put the kettle on and make us all a cup of tea while you both simmer down?”

  Winston shot her a look that scalded but Finn said, “We’ll need another mug. I’ll go get the one from arsehole’s room.”

  Winston stood. “No, I’ll do it. I don’t want you tripping over another hunch on your way.”

  Zoe’s hands landed on her hips. “Time out, remember? Stop it. Both of you.”

  An uneasy silence settled over the room. As she waited for the kettle to boil, Zoe opened the curtains. The sky was a light pearly grey, the colour drained out of the world. Winston returned with his mug, handing it to her without a word. The kettle boiled and she concentrated on the familiar actions of making tea. Had it been a mistake to wake Winston? Would he have reacted this badly if they’d waited until morning? She handed Finn his mug, received a brief, reassuring touch in acknowledgement.

  As she gave his tea to Winston, he pointed to the scribbled text at the bottom of the picture. “Did she really say that?”

  Craning her neck, she tried to decipher what she’d written. ‘I’m sorry.’


  She nodded, “Yes, she said that. She said sorry again and again. Look I’ve written it here and here.”

  “But why’s she sorry?” Winston pushed his hair back. “She’s done nothing wrong. It was me. If I hadn’t gone round the protection spell would have held and she’d have been safe.”

  “Might have held,” Finn said. “You know what Grace said.”

  “Grace wasn’t there. That spell was good. I felt it.”

  “You what?” Finn said. “How?”

  “Oh fuck!” Winston rubbed his hand over his face. “You might as well know. I helped her with the spell. She couldn’t even raise the energy to light a candle. How was she going to complete a bloody protection spell?”

  “You shared awen with her?” Finn jerked forward, spilling tea on the duvet. “You know that’s against Druid Law. If The Order were still here you could have your staff broken for that.”

  Zoe turned to stare at him. What was going on? He’d not reacted like this when Winston admitted breaking into Rachel’s house. She’d been the one who was shocked by that. She thought back, tried to remember Finn ever mentioning Druid Law. Came up with a blank.

  “But The Order aren’t here, are they?” Winston leaned in, his mug clutched between his hands. “That’s the problem. There’s only us and we have to use whatever we’ve got or we’ll end up dead like whatshername, the Australian, at Anam Cara.”

  “Helena,” Zoe said quietly. “She was called Helena.”

  “And I wasn’t going to have that happen to Jenna. So I broke the rules. Get over it.”

  “Why would you risk it a second time? You went through hell when your staff was bound.”

  “I do remember.” Winston’s hand rose to the leather thong at his throat. “But there’s no one to enforce the law anymore. We’re on our own and we’ve got to use everything we’ve got because it’s clear as hell the other guys are.”

  “But sharing awen?” Finn said. “Fuck it, mate. That’s dangerous.”

  “Only because I wanted to her so much by the end of it I thought my balls were going to melt. If there’s a reason we’re not supposed to share awen, it’s that. Trust me, you do not want to go there. If I hadn’t left… Well, you get the picture.”

  “But you went back? Later on?” Zoe said. She’d worry about what Druid Law said or didn’t say later. Because they were both so hung up on that they were missing the huge thing that was staring them in the face.

  “To make sure she was alright. I didn’t expect—” He glanced away, staring out of the window. “You don’t know her. She’d been knocking me back for months. I never thought…”

  “But you stayed and the mirror you’d used in the spell got broken and that’s why you blame yourself?”

  Winston’s gaze returned to meet hers. “Yes.”

  “But Jenna thinks it’s her fault too.”

  “That’s just Jenna. Over-developed sense of responsibility.”

  “But what if there’s something else? Something she wants you to know? Behind the spell, she’s fighting. Don’t you see that? It might have control of her mind but there’s a part of her that’s still Jenna. That’s trying to get through to you.”

  “You really think she’s fighting it?” Winston’s eyes met hers and, for the first time, she saw pain in them.

  “Definitely. I’ve dreamed about her three times since the spell took her. Each time I’ve been to sleep she’s been there.”

  “And that’s got to help when Grace tries to break the spell,” Finn said.

  “Maybe. We’ll need to ask her in the morning.” His gaze returned to the sketch he held. “The other words make sense, I think. Except this one. ‘Open door’. What open door?”

  “Doors in the mind.” Zoe made opening and closing motions with her hands.

  “Walking through an open door to talk to Zo?”

  “Doesn’t feel right.” Winston stifled a yawn. “The others are all emotions. ‘Trapped, scared, lost, sorry, angry.’ This feels more specific.”

  “Well, you’re the one who knows her,” Zoe said.

  “In all senses of the word,” Finn said.

  “Grow up!” Winston tensed, glanced away. When he spoke again, his voice was deeper. “Jenna says that to me when I’m being an arse.”

  “Use it a lot, does she?” Finn said.

  Winston shot him a look. “I’m going back to bed.”

  ***

  He pulled the duvet over him, picked the drawing up from the bedside cabinet and looked at it again in the dim light filtering through the curtains. If Zoe had thought it odd that he’d taken the sketch with him, she —unlike Finn—was tactful enough not to comment.

  Was Jenna really trying to contact him? Could her subconscious be reaching out to Zoe? It was no more of a stretch for the logical side of his brain than Zoe’s ability to see the future. So why did he find it difficult to believe?

  He put the drawing down, turned over and closed his eyes. He needed to sleep. One night of broken sleep he could handle. Two and he’d be hell for himself and everyone else to live with.

  Could she really be aware behind the coercion spell? He couldn’t imagine how terrifying it must be. Did the spell only hold her conscious mind which was why her subconscious could reach out to Zoe? For the first time ever, he wished he knew something about psychology. Because he needed an explanation.

  He rolled over and switched on the bedside light. For a long moment, he lay blinking up at the ceiling. He had to find something to back up the theory. Only then could he risk believing it. He climbed out of bed and switched on his laptop.

  Psychology 101 was what he needed. Something that explained how the subconscious mind could operate independently of the conscious one. Once he’d found that, he’d sleep.

  Chapter 40

  “And you’re sure there’s no other way?” Zoe said. “You can’t do your druid trick with the locks again?”

  They were sitting in Finn’s four-by-four in the car park outside Jenna’s flat. Rain blurred the windscreen and trickled down the windows.

  “It only works on wood,” Winston said with exaggerated patience, his leather jacket creaking as he half-turned on the back seat to look at her. “Jenna’s door’s uPVC.”

  “You’re absolutely sure? Because it’d be a lot easier—”

  “Trust me. If you knew how many times she’s slammed that door in my face.”

  He was grouchier than ever this morning. Not that she blamed him. If Finn were under a spell and wouldn’t talk to her, she’d be mad as hell too. Only she hoped she wouldn’t take it out on her friends.

  “Stop worrying, Zoe. What’s the worst that can happen?” Grace turned in the front seat as she spoke. “If Jenna won’t talk to us then we’ll have to manage without Nina’s grimoire. Now we know Jenna’s trying to contact you, I’m less worried about having the book.”

  “But you still want to try?” Finn asked.

  “I think it’s worth a shot. I’ll feel more confident if I know the adjustments Nina made to the breaking spell.”

  Zoe swivelled to look at Winston. “Tell me again where the grimoires are?”

  “Yesterday morning they were stacked by the side of the armchair but, if she’s packing to leave, she’s probably moved them. For all I know, she’s given them to Andrew Stewart since then.”

  “And what would he do with them?” Grace said. “Really, Winston I know you’re worried but use that brain of yours.”

  Zoe looked out of the window to hide her smile. Grace was brilliant. She’d been shocked, when she met her an hour ago, by the hold the arthritis had over her body but almost immediately she’d seen past it to the vibrant, determined lady inside.

  Winston mumbled something unintelligible. Finn shot him a glance and then said, “I thought you were off to work. We can take it from here.”

  “You honestly think I can handle a public open day with all of this going on? For fuck’s sake!”

  “Best thing for you,” Grace s
aid. “Take your mind off it. I’m quite interested in seeing the dig myself. Perhaps Finn could drive us over later?”

  “No trouble at all. Pleasure, in fact.” Zoe sensed the mischief behind Finn’s smile. He wasn’t giving Winston an inch. And possibly that was the right approach. It certainly seemed easier than tiptoeing around him as she was doing.

  “That’s the last thing I need, the three of you turning up and gawping.”

  “Gawp?” Zoe folded her arms and kept her tone light. “We don’t gawp.”

  “Oh, don’t you start!” Winston opened the car door. “Fine, I’m going to work. Ring me if you get the book.”

  “We will,” Grace said. “And drive safely. Or is it ride? I’m never sure with motorbikes.”

  The door slammed behind him. “Do you really think he’ll be alright?” Zoe said as she watched Winston walked across the tarmac to his bike, take out helmet and gloves and put them on.

  “He’ll be fine.” Finn’s gaze connected with hers through the rear-view mirror. “Let him bite the head off someone else for a change.”

  “He’s not used to caring, that’s the problem,” Grace said. “His feelings for Jenna have ambushed him and he doesn’t know how to handle them.”

  “Oh my God, you’re so right!” Zoe slid across the back seats so she could peer through the gap between Finn and Grace. “That’s exactly what it is.”

  “I’ve never seen him like this before.” Finn’s fingers beat a rhythm on the steering wheel, something he only did when worried. “Jenna must be quite something.”

  “Which I’m about to find out.” Zoe picked up the empty rucksack and tapped her jacket pocket to make sure she’d got her mobile. “Do you think she’ll even let us in?”

  “She’ll let me in.” Grace opened the car door and chill air rushed inside. “And you’re with me. She’s not seen me for a long time. I can seem quite helpless when I want to.”