Urban Witch (Urban Witch Series - Book 1)

by R. L. Giddings

  “Could I possibly have a drink of water?” I said to no one in particular. The air was thick with motes of dust.

  Millie sat down. She didn’t appear to be hurt but she did look stunned. She had bits of feather matted in her hair.

  Behind her, the corridor was slick with dead birds.

  I was handed some water in a polystyrene cup. I drank it straight down but it did nothing to slake my thirst.

  “Look who we’ve got here,” Millie said, her face still desperately pale.

  It took me a while to work out who she was talking about. Then I saw Helena Lawson, Kinsella’s second in command, talking to someone from security. She looked unruffled by the scene ranged about her. It was as if this sort of thing happened on a daily basis.

  Chapter 3

  Helena was the senior witch in the office which was a pretty impressive achievement considering that she was still in her early thirties. Tall and lean, she had a natural outdoors beauty. She didn’t tend to wear much make-up but, then she didn’t look as if she needed to. As it was, her blonde hair had been fashioned into a fairly severe bob. Her main concession to fashion being the collection of high-waisted suits she wore to work. She looked great in them. Helena’s presence both alarmed and intrigued me in equal measure. I’d felt the same way about the sixth form prefects at school. They had always looked impossibly attractive and assured to me when I’d been in the Lower School while I was always worrying about my hair looking greasy and whether I’d ever get a boyfriend.

  “She’s working out who to blame for all this,” Millie was saying.

  Three people had been taken away by the ambulance service. I saw one of them as the paramedics hurried him out, his face slick with blood. The other two had not been so fortunate. There’d been a great deal of activity around them initially but that had quickly turned to a sense of measured professionalism. Their faces had been covered and the stretchers moved off to the service elevator at the rear of the building.

  Everyone else appeared to have escaped with only minor injuries the worst of which was Marcus. He had several gashes on his forearms; one of which looked like it might need stitching.

  Two other women were being treated for concussion. They’d run head first into one another and succeeded in knocking themselves out. They were waiting for an ambulance to take them to hospital.

  They’d wanted to send me with them but I’d managed to talk them out of it.

  The whole place was a mess though most of the damage was confined to the corridor itself. Everywhere was plastered in a combination of blood and feathers and that was without the hundreds of bird corpses which littered the floor. All the windows along that wall were going to need replacing. It was going to be a massive job. I seriously wondered whether they’d manage to get it all sorted by start of business Monday morning.

  I went to say something to Millie but she was still watching Helena.

  It was no secret that the pair of them didn’t get on. Millie had worked under Helena when she’d first arrived at The Bear Garden. There’d been a lot of socialising in the department back in the day and both women had been eager to make new friends. Then, at the end of Millie’s six month post, a group of them had gone skiing together in Italy. I didn’t know all the details but they didn’t spend that much time together: Helena took her skiing seriously whilst Millie was more interested in the après ski. Anyway, both women had taken an interest in the same ski-instructor and there had been a major falling out. By the time they got back home neither one of them was talking to the other.

  I made the mistake of asking Millie about it once and she’d all but bitten my head off. Needless to say, whenever there were any dealings with one another the sense of tension between them was difficult to ignore.

  Helena enjoyed an important position within the office. She acted as the link between us and the outside world in that she was in charge of our ever changing portfolio of field agents. They came from all over and none of them seemed to stay for very long. They were always moving on to exotic postings over-seas. When the Bear Garden had first opened in the 50s it had been the first of its kind anywhere in the world, although the idea soon caught on. It had been tasked with investigating unexplained phenomena – what the insurance companies like to call Acts of God. Happenings outside the parameters of normal experience.

  Millie pointed at my book. “You’d better take that back to the library. They’re going to be far too busy to bother with that now.”

  My heart sank. I’d gone through all this for nothing!

  “Is there no chance I could just give it to Helena?” I motioned towards her. She was one of the few people who hadn’t gotten soaked by the sprinklers. “See if she can get it to Kinsella?”

  Millie crinkled her brow. “You could do that but I wouldn’t advise it. Helena would take all the credit for locating it. Your name wouldn’t even be mentioned. If I were you, I’d forget about the whole thing.”

  As we spoke Helena finished up with the security guard and went back into the main office. There was a group of them in there having some kind of crisis meeting.

  There was a sudden commotion from down the other end of the corridor. It took me a while to work out what was going on as all the other office workers had already left looking bedraggled and careworn. Then I realised what I was seeing.

  They’d obviously taken Stahl and her party off into a side room to keep them safe during the onslaught and now they were saying their belated goodbyes. I told myself that I should have felt excited, exhilarated at finally seeing one of my personal heroines up close; but I felt none of those things. Everything seemed muted, over-shadowed by the events of the morning.

  As they started to filter out her security team lead the way eager to get her out of the building as quickly as possible. One of them came over and stood in front of us as though we - the halt and the lame - were ever going to pose any kind of security threat. I looked up at Millie who just rolled her eyes.

  The team attempted to usher the dignitaries towards the elevators but it soon became clear that it wasn’t going to be easy navigating a way through. One of the men attempted to clear a path through the carpet of broken bodies by sweeping them aside with his foot but he quickly gave up. The birds covered the floor: up to four deep in places.

  I got a brief glimpse of Stahl standing at the back of the group being briefed by one of her advisors. Clearly they were in a hurry to get going after all the delays but then two maintenance men appeared from the direction of the elevators. They carried blue snow shovels and quickly set about clearing a pathway.

  Whilst they waited, a photographer with the party pointed in our direction and spoke earnestly to one of the other women. She had a boyish bob and tortoise-shell glasses and wore a skirt that was just a little too tight.

  Immediately, she came over to us and started arranging people into a half-circle. Then she waved Stahl over. They were going to squeeze in a photo-opportunity whilst they waited for a path to be cleared.

  Relinquishing her bag, Stahl blinked once, straightened her jacket, and then came over to us. All the time, the photographer was snapping pictures. Stahl started shaking hands with the woman on my right.

  It was impressive to watch her move confidently through the gears. The photos would no doubt appear in a Newsletter somewhere: Stahl looking all glamorous and regal while we just looked damp and despondent.

  She didn’t stay long. No more than a few minutes, moving amongst us in strict rotational order: first-aider, patient, first-aider, patient. Her questions carefully couched to solicit the basics before she moved onto the next person, supplementing her words with a handshake here and consoling touch-on-the-arm there.

  Two members of her security team stayed close to her throughout. Taking care never to look directly at anyone whilst all the time assessing the situation for hidden dangers.

  She seemed incredibly glamorous up close, much more attractive than in her photos: luminously pale skin contrasting p
erfectly with dark brown, shoulder length hair. As she spoke to a few people beside me I managed to get a good look at her. Up close, her features seemed more sharply defined: more angular and yet more striking. All that, married to the fullness of her lips. No wonder the feminists loved her.

  She shook a few more hands, treating each recipient to a searing moment of eye contact before moving on. I desperately wanted to speak to her but I just sat there, basking in the glow.

  She leaned over me in order to shake the hand of one of the first-aiders. Her jacket was so close to my face that I could smell her perfume. Up close I thought she looked fit but she also looked tired.

  Then she was backing away, raising one hand. “You must excuse me, now. We’ve got a private members bill this afternoon and I’m already late.”

  She took a few confident steps down the newly cleared path unperturbed by the dead birds heaped on either side. Our eyes locked, it was like staring down the barrel of a gun, but, for a moment, I thought that there was some recognition there.

  But it was her smile which I most remember. Broad and confident it may have been but what was most memorable was the way in which it resolutely failed to touch her eyes.

  Then her entourage closed around her and she was gone.

  “A remarkable woman, Doctor Stahl.”

  I looked up to see Helena Lawson standing over me. I had no idea how long she’d been there.

  “Hello. Bronte is it?” she offered me her hand. “I’m Helena Lawson. Is that the book?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I looked around for Millie but she was nowhere to be seen.

  “The Book of Lost Souls,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d still be interested. What with all that’s been going on.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it must have been very stressful for you. If you want to go and get changed out of those wet things, I’ll make sure someone takes a look at this.”

  As she bent to take hold of the box I reflexively slapped my hand down on top of it. We were now face-to-face.

  “The e-mail said that I was to hand it directly to Mr Kinsella himself.”

  “If only everything in life were that simple,” there was a sharpness to her voice now and she must have recognised it because, when she spoke again, her tone had softened.

  “Mr Kinsella is a little busy at the moment. Your record states that you’re fluent in Russian?”

  “Yes,” I’d specialised in Eastern European witchcraft whilst studying at Newton.

  “Then I’ll need you to stay and translate. If that’s alright?”

  “Okay,” I said flatly. If I wasn’t going to work directly with Kinsella I would at least be involved in the process.

  I took the book in both hands and stood up. “If you could give me an idea of what you’re looking for I might be of even more use.”

  She made a point of taking the box. “We’ll see.”

  Chapter 4

  Helena arranged for a small, side office to be made available so that we could examine the book in peace. She was happy to comply with my request to have the air conditioning turned down to a cool 17 degrees C but when I also suggested that we wait half an hour so that the book could be properly acclimatised she said, “Let’s just get on with it shall we?”

  Kinsella was nowhere to be seen. I assumed that he’d been caught up in the aftermath of the attack. Helena assured me that he’d join us as soon as possible. She was eager to proceed and, despite my misgivings, I saw no way of delaying things any further.

  I felt awkward about the time it had taken me to get changed. Millie had two changes of clothes in her locker: a little black cocktail dress or a baggy jumper and a pair of jeans. Both of them were a little too big for me but I went with the jumper and jeans. The jeans came with a belt which I cinched tight around my waist.

  Pulling on a fresh pair of white, cotton gloves I removed the bag and placed the book on the felt mat that I’d brought for just this purpose. This was standard procedure with such an antiquated text but I also wanted Helena to appreciate how much trouble I’d gone to in organising this viewing.

  There’s always something exciting about handling magical texts - to think of the people who have consulted the pages over the years - and this one was no different. Three hundred years old and bound in leather it had the smell of rotting leaves about it. The spine was in particularly poor shape, attached as it was by only a handful of threads. If the restorers didn’t get to work on it soon it would be beyond saving.

  “Anything particular that you’re interested in?” I asked slipping a spatula from its case, ready to make a start. Some of the pages I deal with are little more than fragments and they tend to disintegrate if you take them by the corner. “The e-mail was pretty vague.”

  “I’m only interested in the early sections,” Helena said somewhat defensively. “I’d like to see what it says, if anything, about the Iron of Fortitude.”

  She said it with such seriousness that I almost laughed. It’s clear that the Russian Orthodox Church loves its icons but this sounded too good to be true. The Iron of Fortitude is one of the Seven Testaments of Witchcraft. First mentioned during the sacking of Constantinople in the thirteenth century, it disappeared sometime during the fifteenth. Any number of people had sought to track it down ever since and the pursuit of it had led, either directly or indirectly, to the disappearance of several of our most influential witches over the years.

  This is probably why The Iron is something of a joke amongst modern witches. After many centuries, the claims of its existence have proved as nebulous and contradictory as the search for the Holy Grail.

  I felt disappointed. The fact that Helena was seriously pursuing such spurious nonsense slightly diminished her standing in my eyes and meant that I was probably getting myself involved in some wild goose chase.

  Nonetheless, I still had to remain professional. I took my time to carefully separate the opening pages. It was only when I tried to turn to the back of the book in search of either an appendix or bibliography that Helena came to life.

  “What are you doing?” she enquired.

  “Checking for some kind of index.”

  “I’m only interested in the early sections,” she said frostily. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “I think so.” Chastened, I turned back to the beginning.

  There is a certain intimacy about handling a book as old as this one. It feels like you’re reaching back into history. And it’s a privilege that very few are ever afforded.

  Scanning the heavy Cyrillic script I quickly worked my way through the chapters. It was written in Russian rather than Old Russian which would make it 17th Century at the earliest. That meant that it had been written after the reforms of Peter the Great. I’d have preferred it if it had been written in Latin, the language of Western Christianity; a lot of my work is in Latin. But, you can’t have everything. I was just relieved that it wasn’t written in Old Russian. It’s not impossible to translate it’s just that I’d need a pile of reference books and another month just to get through the first couple of chapters. And with Kinsella breathing down her neck, it seemed unlikely that Helena would give me more than a few hours.

  “Any luck?” she asked curtly.

  “This might take a while,” I said without looking up. Once I start work on a text I don’t like to be distracted. I knew that the book covered the period and events that Helena was interested in but there was no guaranteeing that it would make any direct reference to The Iron by name. Even if it did, it was going to take some time tracking it down. “There’s no obvious cross referencing here so I’m going to have to read around a bit, if that’s alright?”

  “Is there anything you need in the meantime?”

  I desperately wanted a cigarette but it looked like I was going to have to wait.

  “No, I’ll be fine.”

  Helena stood over me for a little longer and then relented and pulled up a chair. I was rather hoping that she’d get
bored and go to lunch but I wasn’t going to be that lucky. She’s the sort of person who, once she has the bit between her teeth, won’t take “No” for an answer. On reflection, I was amazed that she and Millie hadn’t fallen out sooner.

  *

  After about half an hour of solid reading I looked up from the book. “Why the sudden interest in the Iron?”

  “I’m surprised that you have to ask that, considering your background,” Kinsella’s rich, Gaelic tones made me jump. I spun around to see that he had come in at some point without me noticing. I really must have been concentrating. In his immaculately tailored suit he wouldn’t have looked out of place at a bar in The City.

  “Has there been fresh evidence about its whereabouts?” I asked.

  “We have to check these things out,” was his response.

  Helena came forward, resting both hands on the back of my chair. “We’d appreciate a breakdown on what you have so far.”

  “Okay,” I balanced the spatula across my knuckles. “From what I can make out it’s a record of different pilgrimages and suchlike that the monks at this particular monastery under-took during the 16th century. It’s a bit of a mixed bag in some ways. Obviously the work of various hands …”

  “How do you know that?” Helena asked.

  “Apart from the different writing styles this section covers events over a period of, roughly, a hundred and fifty years so different monks would have had to have been involved. If you want my opinion I’d say that these various accounts had been collected together over several years and then re-worked by a group of artisans skilled in calligraphy. There’s enough inaccuracies and peculiarities to suggest that this has been copied from a number of original documents.”

  “So it hasn’t been edited as such?”

  “Probably not. The calligraphers’ job is to make everything look beautiful. Chances are they never went much beyond the monastery themselves. They probably never even met the people who wrote the originals.”