Urban Witch (Urban Witch Series - Book 1)

by R. L. Giddings

  “That’s right,” she held her hands up as though framing the moment. “But you can call us Millie and Bronte.”

  Liv looked at us slavishly, each in turn, making a conscious act of remembering.

  “That’s right,” Millie’s tone was calm and re-assuring. “You like us both. In fact we’ve arranged to go out for a drink before we leave for Israel.”

  Liv the nurse seemed to melt away replaced by Liv the person.

  “Israel. Now I remember.”

  “In the meantime we’re here to monitor the progress of Helena Lawson. It’s very important that we do that. You’ll do anything in your power to support us. Isn’t that right?”

  Liv looked a little confused. Then she said, “Yes, of course. I’ll help you any way I can.”

  “That’s good. Now, you can go about your normal duties.”

  “Fine,” she stood there for a few moments smilingly benignly. Then she came to her senses.

  “I’ll leave you two to it,” she said, pointing to the corridor to the right of the main door. “You’ll find your patient in room 2.”

  We watched her move off, clearly thrilled by the encounter.

  “Israeli doctors?” I said.

  “Tricks of the trade,” Millie was very pleased with herself. “Just a short term Glamour spell to cover us while we’re here.”

  “Seems pretty effective.”

  “I know: wasn’t it good?” she stroked the nape of her neck. “I’ve tweaked it for my own personal use but she was really susceptible to it.”

  “So, a spell, not an enchantment?”

  “Right, I’d need more time with an enchantment and I don’t agree with most of them.”

  That’s what I like about Millie: she’s very ethical.

  “And she decides where she knows us from.”

  “Yes, I know. Wasn’t it brilliant? It plays on your fear of forgetting someone’s name.”

  “But she let you supply the names?”

  “Of course. She’s embarrassed because she thinks she should know who we are. She’s then willing to accept almost any substitute. Next thing, she’s convinced herself that we’re old friends.”

  “Sounds dangerously close to an attraction spell to me.” These are generally frowned upon by mainstream witches.

  “No, I’m playing with her sense of confusion. Every time she sees us and makes a conscious effort to remember our names she gets a little burst of endorphins. A few days after we’ve gone she’ll have completely forgotten about us.”

  “Would it work on men?”

  Millie fluttered her eyelashes. “If you have to use spells to charm them you’re doing something wrong.”

  I led the way down the corridor and we immediately ran into a nurse coming out of Room 5, the room closest to the main door. She was about to say something when Liv re-appeared.

  “They’re fine,” she said.

  “If you say so, Sister.”

  She gave us a dismissive look and moved on.

  An elderly woman in a nightdress followed her out of the room pushing a surgical drip. Each door had its own inset window panel and I imagined that the doors could be easily locked.

  The same couldn’t be said about the sub-wards. They had glass partitions which could be pulled across if necessary but they wouldn’t keep out a determined intruder let alone a practitioner. All the wards looked to have their full complement of patients, most of them well past retirement age.

  I was beginning to think we might have the wrong place until I caught sight of Terence just stepping out of the bathroom. He was wearing a dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and grey jeans that were tight enough for me to clearly see where he kept his phone.

  He looked delighted to see me and I quickly introduced him to Millie.

  He escorted us to Room 3 and opened the door.

  Marcus perched on the end of a bed reading a magazine. Hamburger wrappers, tomato ketchup sachets and discarded coffee cups were piled on a side-table. I popped the door open as quietly as I could.

  He looked up from his magazine. “What are you doing here?”

  “Leave it out, Marcus!” Millie said. “She just wants to see how Helena is.”

  As we moved into the room, Terence stood up to vacate his chair. He went and stood beside one of the monitor’s by the bed head.

  “How’s she doing?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “We’re not doctors.”

  Millie snatched the magazine out of his hand. “Stop being such a massive dick and tell us what you know.”

  Suitably chided, he sat up straight and ran his fingers through his hair. He was wearing an Arran jumper and looked a little unkempt.

  “Seems she’d lost quite a bit of blood by the time the ambulance got to her. That was what the doctors were most concerned about.”

  “They gave her a blood transfusion,” Terence volunteered.

  “Oh yeah,” Marcus said. “That’s right. So she’s not going to die on us anytime soon.”

  Millie hit him with the magazine, “When I want medical advice from you, I’ll ask for it.”

  The air was thick with the tension between the pair of them. Terence gave me a strained smile.

  “How does she look?” I said.

  “It’s difficult to tell,” he said. “I just went to check on her but there’s so much … equipment.”

  “There’s nowhere for us to sit in there,” Marcus sounded defensive.

  I let myself out and went next door. But when I checked through the little window I saw that there was a nurse in there with her. Not that I recognised the figure on the bed as Helena. She looked much older. Her head had been bandaged and she had lines and drips trailing everywhere. There were two monitors, one on either side of the bed.

  The door of Number 3 opened. It was Marcus.

  “Couldn’t you have rung me?” I said. “You knew I was worried.”

  He rubbed my arm consolingly, which was the best thing he could have done under the circumstances.

  “I didn’t know what we’d been called to until after we arrived. As soon as I realised who it was I wanted to call you but I couldn’t.”

  He shrugged, “Protocol.”

  Our phones don’t belong to us. They’re the property of The Ministry of Thaumaturgy, to give it its proper name. They can, and do, review our phone records at any time.

  “Couldn’t you have used a pay phone?”

  He let out a long sigh. “I could have but then I’d have had to leave her.”

  “Okay,” I said, but I didn’t feel okay. He was happy enough sitting next door reading magazines; but I didn’t say that. “Were you told anything else? Are they going to have to operate again?”

  “She’s in some sort of coma. They want to keep an eye on her vital signs. They’re worried that her organs might have been damaged. That’s all they’d tell us. The doctor was in and out inside a minute.”

  “Shouldn’t she be in intensive care if it’s that serious?”

  “Probably. But we can’t protect her in there. Nurses only.”

  This was going from bad to worse.

  “Kinsella’s coming down later,” Marcus said. “Looks like we’re going to be here all night.”

  We both turned as the door opened. Millie was there with her phone pressed to her ear.

  “I’m passing you over now, sir.”

  As she did so she mouthed: Kinsella.

  “Good evening, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “You can start by telling me what you two got up to last night,” his accent was even thicker on the phone.

  I moved further along the corridor in an effort to get some privacy.

  I told him everything. It took about five minutes. When I’d finished there was silence at the other end of the line. Eventually, he said, “And what did you make of this Silas character? Do you think we can trust him?”

  “I’m not sure. Helena seemed to put a lot of store in him.”

  “But yo
u weren’t so sure. Good.”

  “He obviously didn’t care what I thought about him. He was almost too honest.”

  “I’ve dealt with their type before. You’d do well to keep them at arms-length. Understand? Now you say that you witnessed his transformation.”

  “That’s right.”

  Millie made a face at me, clearly annoyed that I was taking so long.

  “Then let me ask you a very direct question,” Kinsella was saying. “You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to. After the transformation, did anything occur of, say, a sexual nature.”

  I said simply, “No, sir.”

  “Good. Which means he doesn’t yet have a hold over you. What about Helena?”

  “We stayed together throughout. We even shared a cab home.”

  “No chance that she met up with this Silas fellow afterwards.”

  I was aware of Millie listening in.

  “I couldn’t possibly say, sir.”

  “No, I understand. But I’m not wrong in thinking that he made a big impression on you. What I’m trying to say is: would you be able to recognise him again.”

  “Oh, most definitely.”

  “If, say, he turned up tonight? Right. Change of plan. I want you to stay at the hospital with Helena. Marcus will do his best to look after you. But if you get so much a whiff of Silas or any of his compatriots skulking around you’re to shut down everything and ring me directly. You can get the number from Millie. Now, pass me back to her.”

  I was still trying to take it all in as Millie snatched the phone from me.

  What was this thing with werewolves? Were they like some kind of sexual vampire? Once you’d had sex with one they effectively owned you. And was he trying to insinuate that that might have happened with Helena? I’d have dismissed it as nonsense if I hadn’t had similar suspicions myself the previous night. And, if I was being completely honest, I couldn’t say that I wasn’t sorely tempted by the package on offer.

  Just thinking about him standing next to that tree made me smile. Which probably came across to the others as me looking smug.

  A hand gripped my arm pulling me off balance.

  “What did you say to him?” It was Millie and she seemed angry. “Kinsella! What did you say to him?”

  “I told him about what happened last night.”

  Millie’s face was only inches from mine, her nostrils flared. “Did you tell him how you saved the day? About what a brilliant operator you are all of a sudden? Helena’s lying in there while you’re out here trying to turn this whole thing into some kind of career opportunity.”

  I pulled my arm free. I didn’t like what she was implying. “I told him the truth. The unvarnished truth, Millie. I had no choice. Why, what’s happened?”

  The muscles in Millie’s jaw clenched as she struggled to control herself. She took a pen and an envelope out of her bag and started scribbling. “He’s taken me off the case, as you well know. I’m to go down to Trafalgar Square, see if there was any magical residue left behind after the attack. In other words, a massive waste of my time. Here!”

  She pushed the envelope into my hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Kinsella’s private number. Looks like you’ve earned it.”

  *

  Millie didn’t wait around. After she’d passed her phone to Marcus she quickly gathered her things. She waited only until he had finished using her phone and then snatched it back off him. She left without saying a word to anyone.

  I followed Marcus back into Number 3 and watched him picking up bits of litter which he then stuffed into a “Medical Sharps” bin.

  “Come on, Terence,” Marcus was rattled. “We need to be up and about for when his lordship gets here. Have we got a list of all the other patients?”

  “In the ward?” I was trying to be helpful.

  Marcus shook his head, “In the building. He’s putting a couple of police units downstairs and we’re in charge up here. Terence, he wants ward spells on the stair wells and the ground floor entrance.”

  All the time I was checking over the ward’s security arrangements I couldn’t help thinking about Millie. We hadn’t properly moved in yet and we’d already had our first big row. I hated arguments. I hoped that this wasn’t a sign of things to come.

  Sitting down with the pair of them working out how we were going to prioritise Helena’s safety came as a blessed distraction. Marcus was nominally in charge so, when he suggested that we stay in contact using our mobiles I went along with it whilst pointing out that it might be a good idea to let Sister Liv in our plans if we wanted her continued support.

  Marcus agreed. It wasn’t an ideal situation but it was important that we stay in touch if he and Terence were going to be off patrolling the building. He asked if I wouldn’t mind mentioning it to Liv, which was fair enough. Isn’t that what leaders are supposed to do: delegate?

  As the pair of them left the room we agreed on a basic coded knock just in case our phones failed for any reason. He was going to liaise with the police downstairs whilst Terence was going to set the wards on the staircases.

  Terence was clearly the junior member of the partnership and I wasn’t sure how reliable he was going to be in a crisis. He’d said himself that he wasn’t that experienced when it came to practical magic. It was difficult to know whether he was just being modest or not. Plus, I was genuinely worried about how good he’d be at relaying details over the phone if the hounds of hell were baying at his heels. He seemed to have real difficulty grasping what was going on and it was impossible to tell whether this was a language issue or whether it was because of the cultural differences. He appeared more concerned about the impending arrival of Kinsella; though I could sympathise with him on that count. It could be nerve wracking being observed.

  I’d done all my training for an over-watch exercise like this when I’d been at University but then I’d only ever been patrolling the perimeters of buildings. I was worried that I’d get so distracted by what was happening on the ward itself that I might lose sight of what was happening elsewhere. Plus, I still wasn’t exactly sure how much I could rely on Marcus. Certainly, Millie didn’t appear to think much of him.

  With that in mind I went to brief Liv.

  She was just finishing up with an elderly patient in one of the sub-wards, so I stood around until she’d finished and we were alone in the corridor.

  “Hi, Liv,” I said. “Millie’s had to leave so I’ll be taking over tonight. Looks like I’m going to have to camp down here for the foreseeable future, if that’s alright?”

  “You can do what you like as long as you don’t interfere with the running of the ward.”

  “Can I ask you a favour though, regarding the main door?”

  “Is this going to add to my work load?” she looked tired. “Only we’re stretched pretty thin as it is.”

  “Not really. Can you just ask the other nurses not to let anyone in without checking with me first?”

  “What if you’re asleep?”

  I wanted to say that that wouldn’t be the case but I couldn’t be totally sure. I already felt pretty tired myself. “You’ll just have to wake me.”

  Liv pursed her lips, “What about visiting hours tomorrow?”

  “I think that there’s every chance that visiting will be cancelled tomorrow,” I held up a hand to pacify her. “The police will be here very soon. I think it’s only a matter of time before they clear the whole ward.”

  “They can’t...” she said quickly then re-considered. “Well, we’ll have to deal with that if and when it happens. In the meantime, could you keep me informed about any developments?”

  “Will do.”

  “Oh, and the big guy with the blonde hair. What’s his name, again?”

  “Marcus?”

  “That’s the one,” Liv’s smile betrayed her. “Only one of the nurses thought she recognised him.”

  That would be the knock-on effect from Millie’s Glamour
spell. She’d used just the right spell at just the right time.

  At university, most of the first year had been spent being taught when not to use magic. Our first lecture had begun with them showing us the Disney cartoon: The Magician’s Apprentice. That’s the one where Mickey Mouse is the apprentice complete with pointy hat. When he’s given the task of cleaning the kitchen he cheats by using a spell to summon up an army of mops to help him. His problems start when he can’t work out how to get them to stop and the place is nearly flooded. The message from that was clear enough: if you’re using magic for a short cut then you’re probably using it for the wrong reasons. Anyone caught using an attraction spell risked expulsion. There were quite a lot of things which still resonated with me from my time at Newton: “Stay the hand – employ the mind.”

  Once Marcus and Terence had gone I decided to take a proper look at Helena. I opened her door just a crack and peered in. I was shocked by what I saw. She was fitted with a neck brace and a ventilator which covered her nose and mouth. She was unrecognisable, her normally immaculate hair pinned back off her face. She had an IV drip in one arm and a blood transfusion in the other. It was difficult reconciling the woman I was seeing with the hard-nosed operator I’d been working with just a day earlier.

  Here she was, an eminently more competent witch than I could ever hope to be, in a coma having come this close to death. The joke was that I thought that one day I’d be as good as her, that I could patrol the mean streets of London, hunting down the mystical and the magical whilst looking after myself into the bargain. Who was I kidding?

  I stood there for a long time, fixated by the rhythmic hiss-pump of the ventilator, drinking in the cruel beauty of it all. If I’d felt tired and lethargic when I’d arrived the sight of Helena had invigorated me. I had a job to do. I might not be up to it but, in the meantime, I’d give it my best shot.

  I went back to the Room 3 and propped the door open so I had a good view of anyone coming down the corridor. That way, the nurses’ could still go about their business and, if something nasty did manage to get onto the ward I’d see them before they saw me. At least, that was the plan. I took off my sweater and tried to make myself comfortable. I thought about retrieving Marcus’ magazine from the Sharps bin but decided against it. It was going to be a long night.