Lillith smiled again and rested her head against Tristan’s arm. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Tristan said, more seriously now. “Well, let’s plan a date, now. I’ll book us a table somewhere tomorrow night.”
Lillith breathed in deeply. Tomorrow. She had things to confront tomorrow. Would there always be something? “How about we pretend we’ve just had a date, and we skip to the end of it, now?” she suggested.
Tristan grinned. “That’s the best part of a date,” he said. Then he stopped walking and turned toward Lillith, bowing. “That was such a lovely date, and thank you for walking me home,” he mocked.
Lillith laughed. “Shut up,” she said, and carried on walking.
Tristan ran to catch up with her. “Hey,” he said. “We’re a pair of teenagers on a first date.” Tristan raised his eyebrows suggestively. “We shouldn’t be able to keep our hands off each other.”
Lillith stopped and gazed into Tristan’s eyes. Her stomach fluttered. Tristan leaned in towards her, and her heart beat faster. She smelled his scent through the salty air, and felt his hot breath on her face. She stretched her neck upwards and closed her eyes as their lips touched.
They fell into a rhythm immediately. They weren’t really on their first date, and this wasn’t the first time they’d kissed. Lillith’s breathing became faster. So did Tristan’s. Lillith curled her arms around his neck. His hand stroked her back and his breath was hot. His kisses became firmer, and more demanding. This is where Lillith usually pulled away and stopped it, but not tonight. Her kisses were just as persistant.
Tristan pulled her closer to him. She felt like it wasn’t close enough, and pressed herself against his body. She was out of breath, hot and panting. So was he. She didn’t want it to stop. She knew where this was heading, and she wanted it.
Lillith pulled away, and stared into Tristan’s eyes while she caught her breath. Tristan’s breathing was fast, and she felt it on her face. He started to pull away, and she pulled him back, gazing passionately into his eyes. Those deep black pools. “Should we carry this on, back at your caravan?” she said.
Tristan stared at her.
Lillith waited for the penny to drop. She watched as his face went from confusion to realisation with a wide grin. “You sure?” he asked.
Lillith grinned. “Absolutely, one hundred percent certain,” she said.
Tristan grabbed her hand, and pulled her quickly along the promenade.
Lillith had to run to keep up. She giggled.
Chapter 6: Boxing Day
Lillith woke up, feeling air on the back of her neck. She opened one eye and saw light shining through the window of Tristan’s caravan. Was it morning already? The air she felt was Tristan’s breath as he slept. He was lying behind her, arm draped over her middle. She smiled, remembering last night, then pulled the cover up to her chin. It was cold, and they were both naked.
Lillith closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the peace, but her body started to shiver. Soon, all she could think about was the cold. Her lips felt blue, her body was covered in goose bumps, her teeth were actually chattering, and she could see her breath. Tristan’s arm, although warm, was now holding her down like a chain, and she felt like she couldn’t move. She was cold and trapped.
Lillith grabbed Tristan’s hand and flung it backwards, then jumped out of bed and felt the small radiator under the window. It was icy, and she couldn’t see a way to turn it on from here. She looked around for her clothes. She found a jumper and put it on. It wasn’t hers, and hung down to her knees, but it would do. She found a pair of pyjama pants. They weren’t hers either, but they were furry and looked so warm. She put those on, too. Luckily they had a drawstring, which Lillith tightened around her waist. She looked at Tristan, who hadn’t woken up, even after having his arm thrown. He was beautiful: dark hair, smooth, clear complexion and a strong chin. His ears and nose were a little on the large side, but they suited his face.
Lillith sat on the bed and gazed at the floor. She was starting to warm up a little, but not much. Her thoughts wandered to what she’d found out about herself. She was going to face up to it today, but she still didn’t feel ready. She looked at her hands. What were they capable of? What had they done already, that she couldn’t remember? Tears welled in her eyes. She still didn’t feel like an evil witch, but what did it feel like to be an evil witch? What did it mean to be evil, anyway?
Lillith felt a hand touch her back. It jolted her back to where she was. She turned to see Tristan looking at her sleepily.
“What’re you wearing?” he asked. His words slurry.
“I’m freezing. Is there no heating in this caravan?”
Tristan grinned. “I’ve got used to it.” He shuffled forward, and reached an arm out towards the radiator. “Not on,” he said.
“I know. How do we switch it on?”
Tristan breathed out, stretched and yawned. “I’ll do it,” he said. He threw back the covers, revealing his slender body.
Lillith’s stomach fluttered, and she started to feel a little bit warmer. She bit her lip.
Tristan got out of bed, pulled on some different pyjamas and walked out of the room. He came back seconds later. “Done,” he said. “But it’ll take a while to heat up. Come into the lounge; I’ll put the fire on, and make us a brew.”
Lillith smiled, widely. Now that sounded like a plan. She shuffled through to the lounge area in the oversized jumper and long, baggy pyjama pants.
Tristan had just turned on the gas fire. He looked up as she entered. “What do you look like?” he said.
Lillith looked down at herself and laughed. “What do you mean?” she said coyly. “Don’t I look sexy?”
Tristan grinned. He stood up and walked close to her, gazing into her eyes with his. “You could wear a sack and still look sexy,” he said.
Lillith’s heartbeat quickened. Tristan slid his hand around her back and pulled her into a kiss. It was hot and firm already. Lillith kissed back willingly. Tristan’s hand slid under the jumper she was wearing. She guessed the brew could wait.
It was midday before Lillith was ready to leave Tristan’s caravan. She walked alone with her thoughts. Tristan had wanted to accompany her, but she’d chosen to go by herself. She had to speak to her mam and Brody, and needed to prepare herself for that. Her phone rumbled in her pocket. She took it out, and read a text from Tristan.
‘Missing you already,’ it read. Lillith smiled. She typed a quick reply of ‘Me, too,’ then crossed the road and walked towards her house.
“It’s me,” Lillith called as she entered.
“We’re in here,” Uma called from the living room.
Lillith took off her coat and hat and placed them on the bannister.
“Good night?” Uma asked, as Lillith entered the living room and fell onto the sofa next to Brody.
Lillith felt her cheeks heat up. She nodded and looked down. Her mam and Brody must know what she and Tristan had got up to last night, but it wasn’t something she wanted to go into detail about.
Brody turned to Lillith. His face was serious. “Your mam’s told me the truth,” he said.
Chapter 7: The Truth
Lillith turned to Brody. His face was serious, but he looked calm. “About the regression?” she asked, just to make sure they were talking about the same thing.
Brody nodded.
“Well, you’re taking it better than I did,” she said.
“It’s not the worst thing I’ve heard.”
Lillith stared at Brody. He was like a shell of his former self. He’d been through so much in the last few months. She sighed. “I’m still trying to make sense of it.”
“Are you ready to talk about it?” Uma asked.
“I want to know everything,” Lillith said. “The whole, ugly truth.”
“There’s not much left to tell,” Uma said, politely.
“I want to know what it was like from your point of view,” Lillith said. She lo
oked at her mam determinedly. “Not just on the night of the regression spell, but before that as well. What it was like at that time. How you felt about me,” Lillith looked at Brody. “Us,” she corrected herself. “How you came to join the coven, even.”
Uma dipped her head. “Okay,” she said.
“And be honest. Don’t sugar coat it,” Lillith said, finally.
Uma looked nervous. Her mam probably had a few stories that wouldn’t paint her former self, Lilly, in a good light. Lillith wasn’t sure she was ready to hear them, but she didn’t think she would ever be ready, and she needed to know.
Lillith closed her eyes and swallowed, then opened them and fixed them on her mam. “The truth,” she repeated. “No matter how harsh.”
Uma looked between Lillith and Brody, and breathed out. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll tell you everything.” Uma paused. Her eyes rose to the ceiling, presumably searching for memories there. “I joined the coven a couple of years before the regression spell,” she began, bringing her gaze back to Lillith and Brody. “I was doing my degree, and had started a job placement at the hospital. One of the nurses there sensed that I was a Witch, like her, and asked me to come along to a meeting. My family had never been part of a coven, so I didn’t know what to expect. It was all new, and a bit exciting to be asked.” A smile crept onto Uma’s lips at the recollection. “New job, new social life,” she explained.
“Was your mam still alive then?” Lillith asked, maybe too abruptly. She wasn’t interested in hearing of Uma’s excitement to join the coven that wanted to kill her.
Uma nodded solemnly. “She was in a home by then. Dementia had hold of her.”
Lillith looked down. Uma rarely talked about her mam, so Lillith knew very little about her. She was present in their house, because photos of her hung on the walls, and ornaments from her travels were prominent in every room of the house; each one had a story to tell. Like the medicine Buddha from Nepal where she’d met Uma’s dad.
Uma continued. “If I’d learned medicine earlier, I might have been able to slow that down.” Uma’s gaze fell to the floor as she remembered. Then she looked up and shook her head. “But that’s not what you want to hear about,” she said.
Lillith softened, and smiled. “You can talk about her if you want.”
Uma shook her head again, and blinked away the moisture in her eyes. “So I went to a meeting with the nurse I’d met,” she said, returning to the original conversation. “It was at the same place it is now. I remember being in awe of the place, and maybe a little scared.”
Lillith laughed. “I felt the same.”
“Me, too,” said Brody.
Uma smiled. “It’s an impressive building. Even more impressive, was Arthur,” Uma said with conviction. “I met him for the first time that night, and he was…” Uma paused, looking around the room, searching for the words. She sat forward, a twinkle in her eye. “Captivating,” she said with passion. “He gave a speech that night, and when he spoke, I physically tingled. It was like I’d been asleep, and he woke me up. He lit a fire in me, and I felt an appetite, or a craving that I can’t describe.”
Lillith screwed her face up. “You fancied him?” she asked, with distaste.
Uma laughed. “No. The desire wasn’t for him, but for what he was about. I don’t know…magic, or power. I’m probably not describing it properly. Put it this way: I wanted to follow him. I wanted to be part of his coven. I wanted to buy what he was selling.”
“Which was killing us?” Brody muttered.
Uma looked down. “In short, yes,” she said, with shame. “I’d never even heard of these two powerful witches before, but suddenly the most important thing in my life was hunting them down. His fight was my fight. His priorities were mine.”
Lillith scowled. “Is that Arthur’s super-power?” she asked. “Getting people to follow him?”
Uma chuckled. “Maybe that’s part of it. Anyway, I signed up that night,” she said. “It took a few weeks to become a fully-fledged member, but I never missed a meeting, and I did everything that was asked of me.”
“Hunting us?” Brody asked.
Lillith looked at Brody. He was being strangely quiet, and dark. Maybe this was harder for him? Maybe it was too soon after his imprisonment? She wondered if they should stop.
“Not at first,” Uma said, in answer to Brody’s question. “I was a healer, so I wasn’t required to ‘hunt’, as you put it. I had to stay and help the wounded.”
Lillith froze. “So witches were being hurt?” she asked. “By us?”
“By Lilly and Donovan, not you,” Uma answered beseechingly, then sighed. “I’m sorry, I know it’s hard to hear, but they weren’t nice witches.”
Lillith sat tall. “I want the truth,” she said.
“So do I,” Brody agreed.
Lillith turned to Brody. She wasn’t sure he could he take the truth.
Uma carried on. “I wasn’t allowed on any of the missions for a while. They wanted to keep me safe so I could heal them, but I wanted to be part of it, and I kept insisting they take me.”
“Missions?” Lillith asked.
Uma looked up. “It’s what they called them. Most missions were just information gathering. Like finding new spells, or recruiting new members. Other missions were more combative.”
Lillith looked down. “Attacking us?” she guessed.
Uma shook her head. “Them, not you. We were trying to stop them.”
Brody looked up, angrily. “They, them. They were us,” he growled.
Uma shook her head. “They’re not you as you are now, and they couldn’t be beaten. It didn’t matter what we did. They always won, and someone always got hurt.” Uma paused, remembering. “A couple of witches even died,” she said, sighing.
“Arthur’s wife?” Lillith guessed.
Uma shook her head. “Not while I was a member. I don’t know how she died. I just know her death was what made Arthur set up the coven.”
Lillith breathed in. The death of Arthur’s wife was the catalyst to all of this. What had made Lilly kill her?
Uma moved on. “I kept insisting that I be part of the missions,” she said. “I convinced them that maybe witches wouldn’t die if I was there, because I could get to them sooner. Really, I just wanted to be part of the action.” Uma looked at Lillith apologetically.
Lillith understood. It wasn’t like she was her daughter then.
“Eventually, Arthur gave in,” Uma said, weakly. “My first mission was not what I’d expected.” Tears welled in Uma’s eyes as she recalled the mission. “It was supposed to be the final mission. We were to enter their house at night, and stop them once and for all.” Uma paused and looked at Lillith and Brody. “It sounds bad when I say that out loud, but at the time, it seemed like the only option. They were harming us and killing us. It seemed the only way out.”
Lillith breathed in, and blinked back tears. “So this was the night of the regression spell?”
Uma shook her head. “No. This was a year earlier, and a different house. This is when Lilly and Donovan were living in Richmond Hall.” She stopped, waiting for a reaction.
The realisation crept up on Lillith, slowly. That was where Arthur had lured them to, back in October. It was where he’d tried to kill her. Where she’d found out Brody had betrayed her. It was also where the photo of Lilly and Donovan was taken, when they were children. That’s where they’d lived?
Uma seemed to know what Lillith was thinking. “Yes, Richmond Hall was your home back then. It was protected by multiple charms, but Arthur had figured out how to get past them all. It’s what many of the missions had been about.”
“You obviously failed, then?” Brody said.
Uma looked down, nodding. “It was a disaster. It wasn’t just Lilly and Donovan inside the house. They lived with their mam.”
Lillith’s mouth fell open.
“The three of them were so powerful. Our coven were no match. I’d never
seen anything like it. Our magic couldn’t touch them, no matter what we did. It just seemed to disappear before reaching them. And their magic…” Uma looked up and stared at Lillith with wide eyes, breathing heavily. “Witches were pushed against walls and had their bones crushed on impact. I tried to get to them, to heal them, but I couldn’t.” Tears started to roll down Uma’s cheeks. “They were just this…” Uma shook her hands at Lillith. “Terrifying force. I understood why Arthur had got the coven together, then. They were too powerful, and they used their powers in the worst way. I was lifted into the air by an invisible force and thrown out of the house. I count myself lucky to have survived. Five witches didn’t.
“We ran. Arthur tried to make us go back, saying we’d never get this opportunity again, but we ran.”
Lillith was still thinking about the presence of their mam. No one had ever mentioned her before. That was her biological Mam. Where was she now? “What happened to our mam?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Uma said. “The three of them disappeared for a year. Arthur looked for them. He sent people on missions around the world, even, but they’d disappeared without a trace. I don’t know when, or why they came back, but they did. And they let us know by killing a witch in a small town near Richmond Hall, called Rookhope. Killed him with a bolt of lightning in broad daylight. That sent a clear message.”
Lillith’s brow furrowed. A tear trickled down her cheek. “I was pure evil,” she said.
Uma shook her head. “Lilly was. Not you.”
She was Lilly.
Uma carried on. “We held an emergency meeting. We had to try again, but we couldn’t have a repeat of the night in Richmond Hall. That was when we came up with the plan to regress their powers first. The rest, you know about.”
Lillith frowned. “Was our mam there? The night you cast the regression spell?”
Uma shook her head. “Just Lilly and Donovan.”
Lillith looked down at the carpet. That was it. That was the ugly truth. She looked at her hands. They were capable of crushing a person’s bones without ever touching that person. They were capable of lifting someone into the air and throwing them without any physical contact. They were capable of summoning a bolt of lightning to strike someone down. Not only were they capable of it, they’d actually done it. They’d killed. She had killed, mercilessly. She felt numb.
Ashes: Witches of Whitley Bay Book 2 Page 5