Vervain and a Victim

by Ruby Loren

  “Shadows came and whisked me away, and he didn’t catch the ride. We met in Witchwood Forest after everything had happened. I had to look after myself in the trials and then when… when things went a little sideways afterwards, I was helped by someone else.” I bit my lip, knowing that I’d now have to do some more explaining.

  “Ha! My work here is done,” Hemlock called down, before I heard the sound of him slinking away to no doubt make someone else’s day start off on the wrong foot.

  “Hazel…” Minerva’s voice warned me that she wanted the truth.

  And I didn’t know if I trusted either of them enough to tell it.

  My silence spoke louder than my words ever could.

  “I’m sorry if you think we’ve been keeping things from you. It’s always been the rules that you can’t tell a young witch about the witch trials and what it all means until after it’s happened. All you can do is prepare a witch or magician as well as you can and let them go into their trial and find their own way.”

  “What about a witch who can’t make a single spell work for her, beyond illusions cast by the mind?” I crossed my arms.

  “We knew you’d be fine! You had your familiar… oh,” Linda said, pulling a face when she realised what she was saying.

  “Great. You put my life in the hands of a sarcastic cat.”

  “Is he really that sarcastic? I always imagined him that way, but with a really posh accent. Is he posh?” Aunt Linda asked.

  “No. Just sarcastic.”

  “I’m still listening!” Hemlock called from somewhere unseen.

  I tried not to tear my hair out right there and then.

  Instead, I took a deep and soothing breath. And wondered if there was some kind of weapon I could conjure that I could throw at Hemlock. A magical boot, perhaps?

  “What happened?” Minerva pressed, looking anxiously at my face.

  “I don’t want there to be any more secrets. This town is full of them. I just want to have some people that I can trust. I want to be able to trust my family.” I looked seriously at them.

  “Okay. No more secrets. From now on, we will tell you anything and everything you want to know. Nothing is off limits,” Aunt Minerva assured me.

  “We’ll make it a witch’s promise!” Linda piped up.

  Minerva looked sharply at her sister.

  “Done,” I said, not knowing what it meant, but understanding from my other aunt’s concern that it was something binding - something with consequences.

  I watched as Aunt Linda and Aunt Minerva gestured in the air with their forefingers, like signing an unseen contract. A flicker of silver light ran up their arms, before disappearing into their skin.

  “It’s done,” Aunt Linda said.

  “Do you know who my father is?” I asked.

  “Straight to the good stuff! She takes after her favourite aunt,” Aunt Linda said to her sister.

  “We don’t know,” my other aunt answered.

  “It’s true. We don’t,” Linda echoed.

  I watched them both and waited. Nothing happened. Whatever Aunt Minerva had been alarmed by when Linda had offered to make the promise, it hadn’t been that question.

  “What happened last night?” Minerva asked.

  I bit my lip and hesitated for a second more. Then I told them everything… right up until I’d dropped Hemlock off back at home.

  When I finished, I looked up at each of my aunts in turn, looking for the same concern that I’d seen in Jesse’s eyes.

  It was there all right.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I asked them.

  “Noth…” Minerva started to say, before Linda nudged her and widened her eyes. They’d made a promise to tell the truth.

  “I know I speak for us both when I say we aren’t sure. There are many different types of witches. You know that already. Some witches have an affinity for plants. Some for curses and hexes. Some prefer high magic with equations and summoning circles.”

  “I’m not any of those things,” I said, stating the obvious.

  Aunt Minerva smiled. “No, you aren’t. What I’m trying to say is, you can be different, and there can be nothing wrong with you at all.”

  “She opened an inter-dimensional tear,” Linda hissed out of the corner of her mouth, before pulling a ‘what can you do?’ face at me.

  I didn’t know why, but I found I was smiling. “Only I could mess up my witch trial in such style.”

  My aunts looked at me despairingly, but with love.

  “We’ll figure this out,” Minerva assured me.

  I nodded, grateful that they were here for me.

  “Not wanting to change the subject or anything, but… you kind of skipped over the part where a shape-shifter helped you out?” Linda looked surprisingly focused.

  “January. She’s a unicorn shifter and has some powerful magic.” I’d heard the tales, but judging by my aunts’ reactions they knew more than I did.

  “Be careful with her. The rumour is, she’s an enchanter,” Aunt Linda said, making her eyes go all wide.

  “That is impossible. It’s probably something she’s put about to scare people off,” my other aunt countered. “But it wouldn’t be a good idea to visit Witchwood Forest again. There’s always been an unspoken agreement between Wormwood and Witchwood. They stay out of our forest, and we stay out of theirs. Witch trials permitting, of course. Everyone knows you can’t control where they take place… just that it’s local, and theoretically unlikely to be disturbed by others. Are you sure you really opened up something? Did you, or January, consider it might just have been part of the test?” Minerva sounded hopeful when she said it.

  I shook my head. Now that I was out of the situation, I found I could look back at what had happened in the forest and tell the difference. The arrows and the monster - they had felt like they’d been birthed by magic. Real enough to kill me, I had no doubt about that, but magical all the same.

  It had been different when the void had opened.

  There’d been a dread that nothing in the trial had been able to match. There’d been a feeling that it wasn’t just your life that was in danger, it was your very soul.

  “It might have just been a side effect of your magic settling down. Can you do anything other than making magical weapons? Have you tried other things like… a sports car?” Linda asked.

  I frowned and tried to ask my magic. The feeling inside was a resounding no. Whatever it was that I had, it was definitely linked to magical weaponry and portal opening… perhaps. “Sorry, no cars,” I said.

  “That is so typical,” Linda said, shaking her head.

  “It was lucky January was there. Something tried to come through the tear, and her magic was enough to push it away long enough that I could figure out how to get it shut again.”

  “Do you think you could open up another one?” Linda asked, looking insanely curious.

  “I’m not sure…” I started to say, but Minerva cut me off with a sharp shake of her head.

  “It would not be prudent to try again. Not until we can investigate this further.” She looked across at Linda. “We need to do some research. Perhaps we should ask the family…”

  “They might want to get involved,” Linda warned, shooting a worried look in my direction.

  “Remember your promise, Aunties,” I reminded them, knowing I was being talked about but not to.

  “We won’t do anything without discussing it with you first. That’s a promise,” Minerva told me with a thin smile.

  I sighed and sat down behind one of the tables I kept in the tearoom corner of the shop. “Why couldn’t I have been normal?”

  “Don’t be silly. No one wants to be normal,” Linda assured me, sitting in the chair opposite. “Look at that shifter you met in the forest last night. She’s not normal.”

  I frowned. “Do you think her life is easy?”

  “Doubtful,” Linda confessed. “But… she’s really cool. Everyone wants to be cool, rig
ht?”

  “Linda, stop making things worse,” her sister told her.

  “How does shape-shifting work?” I asked when the conversation seemed to run dry. “Last night, it felt like energy was being taken from the air around me to facilitate the change.”

  “That is an accurate description,” Aunt Minerva said, giving me an approving nod. “The difference between magic users and shape-shifters is that, whilst they draw energy from their surroundings and from themselves for the change, our magic is rather more complex. Some of it is innate, like the shifters’. But there are many theories regarding the source of the energy that can be created by a witch or a magician. All of them are interesting.”

  “She means that no one really knows how magic works,” Linda helpfully pointed out.

  “It’s simpler with things like shifters. For example, tragic though it may be, if one of them was killed in a road accident in their animal form, there would be no energy to turn them back.”

  I thought about the implications. “That’s terrible.”

  “It does mean that a high proportion of shifters who go missing are never found,” Linda told me. “Their disappearance rate is even higher than ours. We just lose people to the trials and magical mishaps.”

  I nodded. “In conclusion, it’s a rough life for everyone supernatural.” My mind drifted to Kieran and Jesse when I said it. One was a vampire, the other was a mystery. Both were a problem.

  “Welcome to the real world, kiddo,” Aunt Linda told me, patting me on my good shoulder before standing up and beginning the daily shop chores.

  I stayed sitting for a moment before I smiled and shook my head at the banner hanging in the middle of the shop. After our conversation, I could see there were worse things to worry about in life than accidentally being mistaken for a recovering addict.

  Things like the mayor’s secret deals with both Jesse and the new vampire in town.

  13

  Unfinished Business

  I had a whole day to stew over what I’d seen the previous night through the skylight on the mayor’s office. The same thoughts kept going round and round in my head. Jesse had come to town because the mayor owed him some kind of favour, and Jesse was cashing it in by benefiting from the mayor’s protection, whilst he waltzed around playing detective. The vampire, Kieran, was now working for the mayor and also had some kind of deal going on that involved Jesse, but I didn’t know what that deal was. If it was as simple as getting rid of Jesse, he would have had plenty of opportunity to get the job done last night, right? Unless there was something about Jesse that I didn’t know which made him a formidable opponent for the vampire. I wasn’t going to dismiss that possibility yet.

  Finally, there was the mayor himself. Gareth Starbright seemed to be at the centre of a lot of suspicious activity. He was also keeping a gun in his drawer in the office. You didn’t have to be a genius to know that the mayor was worried about something. The question was, what, or who, was it that he was so afraid of?

  Speaking of deals, there was still the unsolved mystery of the cauldron and the coin that had been present at the scene of Bridgette Spellsworth’s murder. I hadn’t heard anything new about the case. I knew no suspects had been arrested. It would appear that the police were drawing as much of a blank as I was… or they were keeping what they did know under their hats, until it was time to strike. Perhaps Detective Admiral had learned his lesson that, when it came to Wormwood, secrets had a way of slipping out, if you waited long enough.

  My aunts had been quiet for the whole day, but I knew what they were up to. The way they kept swapping around in and out of the shop whilst the other stayed back in the house was hardly a foolproof ruse. They were doing research. I knew that they’d made a promise to not hide the truth from me anymore and I also knew that they were trying to find out about my magic, so that they could help me… and that they didn’t want to worry me, but I was an adult. And they still weren’t treating me like one.

  When I shut the shop up at the end of the day I didn’t even stick around for dinner. I’d already decided I would grab something from The Bread Cauldron Bakery. Seeing Tristan always made my mad life seem a little less mad. After that, I would embrace my strange reality by going vampire hunting.

  I threw on a black outfit perfect for slinking through the shadows - told Hemlock to shut up when he laughed at it - and grabbed a pocketful of vervain and three anti-vampire charms on my way out. In the back of my mind, I was already skeptical about their efficacy. Kieran had walked right by them on his way into the shop the previous evening, but perhaps you just needed to use them right - like, literally throw them in the vampire’s face. I hoped I wouldn’t have to test them. I knew I was taking action, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I didn’t go hunting for the vampire, he would find me anyway.

  The night air was cold when I left The Bread Cauldron Bakery. I’d messaged Tristan and he’d kept the bakery doors open for me and we’d shared a dinner of pastries together. Or rather, I’d eaten the pastries, and he’d had a salad. I was definitely starting to see how Tristan managed to stay in shape, in spite of his tempting job. The man had the willpower of a saint.

  The warm and fuzzy feelings of spending time with a friend evaporated when I was faced with the dark and empty night and the prospect of what was to come. Tonight, I was hunting a vampire. Tonight I was hunting for answers.

  As I walked the streets, heading towards the mayor’s office, my mind returned to the drained body of Bridgette Spellsworth and the lack of progress made towards catching her killer. Since Detective Admiral had popped around for his weird research session, I hadn’t even seen any sign of the police in Wormwood. Had they forgotten about our little town and the murder, the way everyone else in South East England liked to? Could they even be trusted? After witnessing the mayor talking deals and knowing that Jesse had something on him, I wasn’t ruling out anything. All I knew was that this town seemed to be built on a web of secrets and lies, and I wasn’t sure who was the spider, and who were the flies.

  “I like the outfit. Did you dress up specially for me?”

  I turned around as the big vampire slid out of the shadows I’d literally just walked straight past. I was sure he’d done it deliberately to prove how good he was at hiding and how bad I was at stalking, but I’d never truly believed I could sneak up on a vampire. In fact, I was counting on him underestimating me.

  “I was hoping to find you,” I told him. “It’s like you said last night… we didn’t get to finish our talk.”

  “No, we didn’t.” He stepped forwards, so that we were only a metre apart, with him looking down into my eyes. His mouth curved up into a pointed smile. “Tell me everything you know about Jesse Heathen.”

  I felt it again. That same pull that had made me want to speak the last time he’d asked that question. This time, I didn’t even stumble. “I think I should take the first question. What kind of deal do you have with the mayor?”

  Once more, surprise lanced across his expression, but this time it came with a side serving of knowledge. Whatever he’d tried to do that hadn’t worked… he hadn’t been sure about it before. But now he was.

  I raised my eyebrows at him, waiting for an answer.

  He laughed quietly. “Full of surprises, like I said. You want to know what the deal is? You should ask your friend Jesse that. He’s the one who’s locked the mayor in on something he doesn’t want to be a part of any longer. I’m just the clean-up crew.”

  “You’re an assassin?”

  “I thought it was my turn to ask a question?” His black eyes zeroed in on mine.

  “Who said we’re taking turns?” Judging by the way that Kieran was standing so close to me without the slightest sign of any discomfort, I was going to go out on a limb and say that both of my vampire protection methods were not functioning properly. It was a good thing I’d never sold them with any kind of a guarantee.

  Kieran looked amused again and shook his head, backing
off enough to make this whole situation less intense. “I’m not your enemy. I’m just here to do a job for the mayor and then I’m gone. This town is crazy. I heard that the police are still having to guard the graveyard because some local nuts want to dig up a Romanian plumber. That is wrong in so many ways.”

  I pursed my lips, annoyed to share even a single opinion with this unwelcome newcomer. “Did you have anything to do with the murder of Bridgette Spellsworth?” I had to ask.

  The vampire folded his arms, never breaking eye contact with me. “The way I heard it, all of that took place in the day time.”

  “Someone bit her neck,” I pointed out.

  “Again… the way I heard it, it was more of a mauling than a bite.”

  I kept my mouth shut, but I knew it was true. While I had little to no experience of vampires, even I’d thought that the marks on Bridgette’s neck had looked more like a wild animal bite. Or a crazed human, I thought, not willing to put anything past anyone in this town.

  The vampire smirked like he was following my thought process. “I don’t know who it was that drained her, but it had nothing to do with any vampire. In case it’s escaped your attention, our kind isn’t exactly welcome around here. The local vampires stick in Witchwood with the shifters. They have an accord.” He looked at me with disgust for a moment.

  “What makes witches your kind’s enemy?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s see… you can use your magic against us. Take those charms in your pocket, for example.”

  “I didn’t think you noticed,” I said, pulling them out and giving them an experimental wave in his direction.

  He batted them away and they fell to the ground. “It might scare off a new vampire, but I’ve been around for a while.”

  “Good for you,” I told him, not caring a bit.

  He took another step forwards, closing the distance again. “Aren’t you afraid of me?”

  “I’m not going to say what you want me to say. If you’re threatening me, threaten me. If not, maybe we can cut the rubbish and talk plainly. You’d think honesty was some kind of disease that everyone wants to avoid getting around here!”