by Nhys Glover
I groaned at the bad joke. “Everybody can just stop trying to embarrass me. I know you all think it’s funny, but it’s not.”
I was proven wrong when gales of laughter split the air from three different sources.
Huffing, I admitted defeat. “Is nothing private around here?”
“Hey, at least we never snogged in one of the rooms with the bugs,” Jake pointed out with mock innocence.
That had me racking my brain for the times we’d kissed. In my bedroom, in the shed, in the hall, and in the atrium. Nope... no compromising moments recorded in any of the bugged rooms. Of course, Mason had seen us on the floor of the upstairs hall.
Thoughts of Mason had me gritting my teeth. How long before I could forget about the bastard? Thoughts of how he’d conned me were like a nagging toothache.
“I think you need to make your recording after the meal, while I go check the damage to the tool shed. I guess there’ll be no more training sessions out there now,” Jake said, putting the first omelette—the Spanish variety, from the look of it—in front of me.
“Oh, you mean I don’t get to practice falling down anymore?” I said with mock sadness.
“I can throw you down on my mattress, if you really miss it.”
I imagined taking a dive onto the king mattress Jake used. It would be less painful than the dirt floor in the shed, but I bet it still hurt.
“I’ll pass on being thrown. But I’ll happily collapse onto it anytime you like,” I said suggestively.
He pointed the spatula at me. “None of that cheek, Miss Wimple, or I’ll put you over my knee.”
“Ohh yes, Alfie, let him put you over his knee. You’ll love it. Promise!” Daphne piped up, clapping silently.
“No sex advice from my long-dead aunt, if you please. That’s worse than having Mummy hand me a booklet on reproduction when I was thirteen. Ehww!”
“When did you learn about sex, Jake?” Daphne asked, unwilling to remove her nose from my private business.
“Gee, I don’t know. Probably when I caught Mam’s johns humping her, I s’pose. It’s like I always knew about it. We treated it like anything else. Nothing special.”
My heart plunged to my feet.
“And when did you pop your cherry?” Daphne persisted.
Jake was looking at me, but I studiously avoided looking back. The omelette had all my attention.
“Can’t remember. I was stoned so much back then. Sex, grog and weed, they all blended in together. I was thirteen, I guess.”
I felt my jaw drop, but I resolutely stuffed egg into my mouth instead of closing it.
“I was about that age too,” Squib put in, warming to the subject. “She was my Mam’s best friend, and boy did she know what she was about.”
Daphne sighed. “That was child abuse, you realise that, right?”
Squib laughed. “I’d been into self-abuse for long enough, so why not? More fun that way.”
“Change the subject. Have you two been practicing moving stuff?” Jake put in, still looking at me, worriedly now.
“I’d put the moves on Daph if she’d let me,” Squib continued with the sexual banter, unaware the game was over. Long over as far as I was concerned.
“I think we might need to go and do some practise now. Sorry Alfie, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Daphne apologised, only making me feel worse.
Once the two ghosts had gone, Jake brought his omelette to the table. Instead of eating it, though, he sat watching me push my pieces around the plate.
“What upset you in all that?” he asked me.
I looked up, blinking back tears. “Nothing. I knew you were experienced and liked it kinky. I just never... I just never thought about the details before. That sex might not mean anything to you.” I held up my hand when he started to interrupt. “It’s all right, you don’t have to try to make me feel better about my vanilla leanings. You seem to be on a Build Alfie’s Confidence kick, but I’d rather you were honest.”
Jake pushed his plate away before grabbing one of my arms and pulling me onto his lap. I fought down the thought that I’d squash him. Hadn’t Squib once said that?
He lifted my chin so I was forced to meet his gaze. “Sex doesn’t mean anything to me. You’re right. But making love does. And I’ve only ever done that once. Which made me as much a virgin a few hours ago as you were.”
He waited to see what reaction he’d get. I couldn’t process what he was saying. How could he only have made love once if he’d been having sex since he was thirteen? Did that mean he wasn’t having coitus, just foreplay, all these years?
“I would have laughed if someone in my old life had ever talked about making love. It sounds just like one of your Romances. Unrealistic. Soppy. But there’s a difference. Today I found out there’s a difference between having sex and making love.
“Sex is a pretty mechanical activity, like eating and drinking, enjoyable enough but nothing special. You might say, wow that was a good meal, but as soon as it’s finished you forget about it. Making love isn’t mechanical. It’s more intimate than anything I‘ve ever done before.” He kissed my cheek tenderly.
“I wanted you to see me and love me, Alfie. That was what was so brilliant about what we did. The look in your beautiful pale-blue eyes. It took my breath away. Because you loved me with your body and your heart, and somehow I ended up doing the same. Enjoyable, like a good meal, aye. Forgettable... never!”
I swallowed several times, trying to wet my dry-as-dust mouth. Yet my eyes had no trouble with moisture, of course. They were overflowing with it.
Jake made short work of those tears, kissing them away. “I’ve known you for about a week now. And it’s been the kind of week that changes a person. A bit like finding you’ve killed somebody. But better. Lots better,” he added hastily.
“I want you to know that. Even when I go back to Leeds, I want you to know I’ll be going back different. My mates’ll say it’s not for the better, and it’ll probably get me killed. But I’ve given up fighting it. I don’t regret the change in me. It makes me a better man. Being with you, doing all we’ve done this week... even the feckin’ ferret... has made me better. More. Do you understand?”
I nodded, tears starting up yet again. I didn’t like the idea of him going back to Leeds, back to that life where sex was as meaningless as a meal. Where he worked off his rage beating up men in a cage while others screamed for blood. I didn’t want that for him. Even if he couldn’t stay with me, I didn’t want that life for him anymore.
“Thank you for telling me all that. Explaining it to me. I’m changed too. Not that you can tell, what with me being a watering can every five minutes. But I am different.”
He grinned cheekily. “Not a virgin, for one thing.”
I blushed. “Yes, there’s that. But I meant I’m not as spineless as I was. I feel more confident about... well, about everything. I would have been a pile of shivering jelly a week ago if someone had kidnapped me. Instead, I negotiated for my release in a way that made me proud of myself. I signed over my house, but I did it from a position of power. Or that’s how it felt to me.”
He kissed my lips. “I think you did better than any woman I know. You’ve never been short of courage. Confidence, gawd aye, you lack that. But courage, spine as you call it? Nay, never.”
I smiled, feeling a little more confidence coursing through my veins. Jake saw me as brave. He’d told me that before, but it never got old. I liked it. I liked it a lot.
Chapter Seventeen
My evening flew by fast as I worked with Daphne to perfect the pronunciation of the spells we’d need, before recording them onto Jake’s phone. When it was done, I keyed in all the numbers Jason had given us, which included his and Mrs Mitchell’s and forwarded the file to each of them. After I’d sent it, it suddenly dawned on me that maybe some of the mobile numbers I’d been given weren’t ‘smart’ enough to open the recorded file.
How had Jason missed that fact? Or w
as I the only one in our town without a bells-and-whistles phone?
I rang Mrs Mitchell’s landline to check. She picked up immediately, for all it was going on 9:30 at night.
“Mrs Mitchell, it’s Alfie Wimple,” I said as soon as I heard her cautious hello.
“Oh, Miss Wimple, my dear lass. How are you doin’? What a terrible thing to ‘ave ‘appen. I’m so proud of my two, you ‘ave no idea. Such bairns they are, an’ all.”
I gave a soft laugh. “They were amazing, I agree with you. But I’m still not happy they did such a reckless thing. What if they’d been hurt? I’d never have forgiven myself.”
“Nar you mind aboot that, those young’uns are wise in the head. Comes of livin’ in the city with a drug-addicted mam, more’s the pity. Self-reliant, you’d call it.”
“Yes, they are that. I owe them my life.”
“Would they’ve killed you then?” she asked anxiously.
“Maybe. I avoided being tortured by immediately signing the papers for the sale of the house. Watkins was sure that was all it would take for him to gain possession of the land, as far as natural law was concerned.”
“Well, I can’t say I agree with ‘im. But then, there’s nought surprisin’ in that, is there? He’s too caught up in makin’ this work as he wants it to work to consider any other possibilities.”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s how it feels to me. He’s just twisting everything to suit himself, whether it’s real or fabricated.”
“Aye, he is an’ all. An’ ‘e’ll coom to a bad end, ‘e will, because o’ it.”
I finally got to the point of the call. “I’m ringing to find out if you received the file I sent to your mobile.”
“I don’t ‘ave a mobile, luvey. That’s Danielle’s number you’ve got. She spent her first earnin’s on one o’ them fancy phones. Can’t see the sense in it, meself. No reception out ‘ere.”
I agreed completely but had to wonder if that made me an old lady. I agreed with a woman old enough to be my grandmother rather than a girl only a few years younger than me.
“Give us a mo’ an’ I’ll see if she got it,” Mrs Mitchell said. The clunk on the other end told me she’d put the receiver down.
I waited a full minute before Danielle’s young voice came on the line. “Oh, Miss Wimple, it’s fab. Really fab!”
Did girls her age actually say fab anymore? I would have expected her to say filthy or mag or something. I think I’d heard mag was a word now.
“You got the recording then?” I clarified, in case I misunderstood what was fab. Maybe she meant riding on the back of Jake’s motorcycle.
“Aye, I’ve already started learning them. So’s Bryce.”
“But you aren’t part of the coven. You’re too young. I thought it was your Gran who was joining us.”
“She would’n all, but her sciatica’s actin’ up. She can’t go wanderin’ the moors in ‘er condition. She’s letting us go in ‘er stead. We can do it, Alfie. Sorry, Miss Wimple!”
“Call me Alfie, for heaven’s sake. I’ve said that before. And I know you can do it, but it’ll be dangerous.”
“For all of us. We know that. But if Dah died trying to do the right thing by the Old Ways, we want to do it too. But Alfie...” she paused as if unsure whether she should say what came to mind next.
“Go on, what is it?” I encouraged.
“Me an’ Bryce ‘ave been talkin’ since we woke up. If the Watkinses killed Dah, do you think they might’ve killed Mah too? He’d’ve told ‘em she knew, that ‘e’d taught ‘er. And when it came time for the wards to be renewed they wouldn’t‘ve wanted nobody left who could do it.”
My blood ran cold. I’d briefly considered this possibility when I was at my most paranoid. Now Bryce and Danielle were going down that rabbit hole with me.
“It was an overdose, wasn’t it?” I asked gently. “Didn’t the police investigate and rule it as an overdose?”
I heard a rude sound on the other end. I guessed I knew her thoughts on the police’s investigation. “If some’un ‘as track marks and lives where we did then they just call it OD. But see, Mam was careful. She only used ‘er regular dealer who ‘ad a good rep. No cuttin’ ‘is product with bad shit. Oops, sorry.”
I made a noise to show I wasn’t offended by her language. How could I be, when she was talking about such... such terrible things? What was a girl her age doing knowing about cutting drugs? What little I knew about it only came from TV.
“So, aye, she wouldn’t ‘ave gone to nobody else. And she’d never ‘ave intentionally ODed. She was fecked up, but not enough to leave us alone. She only used when we were at school so we didn’t see ‘er. When we were ‘ome she was a good mam.” Her last statement was said with staunch loyalty and pride.
Jake had been proud of his mother as well. She might have sold herself, but she’d kept the worst from happening to her son. Although letting him see her with strange men was not good mothering in my books. But what would I know about it?
“You don’t think she just got a bad batch?” I asked cautiously.
“If there’d been other ODs in the area we’d ‘ave put it down to that. But there weren’t. So we were always suspicious. Now we’re convinced.”
I didn’t want to agree with her, not because I didn’t believe her, but because of the enormity of the crime. To kill a mother just in case she passed on her knowledge of the spells? That was... diabolical.
But so was threatening Mr Andrews so he stole from me, then killing him when he wanted to confess. Not to mention kicking my dog to death. As skewed as it probably was, I saw the latter crime as the worst. It took a certain kind of evil to kick and kick at an animal like that. Rage and cruelty and evil.
Swallowing hard, I decided to look at the bright side in this. “If you’re right, then your mother didn’t mean to leave you any more than your father did.”
I heard her sniff. “That’s what we think. That’s good, in’t it? They loved us.”
“Yes, I’m absolutely sure they loved you. But you don’t have to join us because you feel you have to uphold their honour or something.”
“I know. We want to. And we want ta be there when they go down. An’ they will. Gran says they will an’all.”
“I hope so. I really hope so. All right, then you make up one person of the thirteen. You stick together. No going it alone, understand?”
“Gran made us promise that when we played watch-dog, so we know.” She complained like a typical teenage girl. It was hard to remember she was only sixteen sometimes.
I didn’t have just one youth, old beyond his years, on my team, I had two. And I was short one Knowledge Bearer. Agnes’ predictions were not all that accurate, so it seemed.
“Okay then, we’ll be in touch.”
“We want to be there if the Watkinses try capturin’ the dragon. We want to see ‘em fry!”
That was a little bloodthirsty. But maybe if someone had killed my parents I’d feel the same way. After all, I’d wanted to kill Mason, and all he’d done was betray me.
“I’m not sure any of us will be seeing that.”
“Jason says we will. He’s always ‘ad the Gift, Gran says. Not seeing ghosts like you but knowing things. He tries to ignore it, working for the plods, but now ‘e’s lettin’ it out. So, he says we’ll be there.”
Jason had precognition? That was news to me. He’d said he occasionally saw ghosts, but nothing else. The man was like one of those magic hats that keep having stuff pulled out of them. I had to wonder what would come next, a rabbit?
As I had assured myself of at least one successful receipt of the recordings, I decided to call each number and make sure they got theirs as well. It was important I knew the people I’d be working with, at least by phone if not in person.
But it was getting late, so I’d leave it until the morning.
I found Jake in the kitchen as usual, cooking up a light supper for us both. Our meals today had been turned upside dow
n because of the kidnapping. We’d taken to eating whatever felt right when our stomachs told us it was time. Well, whatever Jake felt was right. Me, I’d eat whatever he cooked. He was an amazing chef.
Tonight, he placed a small serving of Mongolian chicken in front of me. I only knew what it was because he told me. Otherwise I would have called it spicy chicken stew that was sort of Chinesey. That was how much of a gourmet I was.
We sat eating alone, for once, in companionable silence. Even the Despicable Duo was missing. It was nice, just us. And having sorted out so much at our last meal, it felt comfortable.
“I rang Frankie to see how the exhibition is going,” he said as he was about to finish.
“And?” I had to prompt, my excitement and fear in equal measure.
“And another two have sold. He says they’re doin’ better than the artist he’s got on exhibition right now. That guy’s not happy having you outshine him. Pissed as a wet cat, says Frankie. But he has a regular selection of artists on display, even when he’s exhibiting a specific artist, so the geezer can’t complain.”
My mouth had dropped open, with food in it, I’m ashamed to admit. But this was huge. Bigger than huge!
“Two more?” I croaked out when I’d swallowed down my mouthful. “You sure it’s not two in total?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “No, two more. Three in total. He’s already put your earnings into the bank account I gave him.”
“H... How much?” I checked.
“Still just two thousand each, but that’s six thousand in a week. That’s not bad.”
“Not bad?” I exclaimed in amazement. “Not bad! That’s bloody amazing!”
Jake made a point of looking shocked at my swearing. I didn’t care if he teased me. The first sale hadn’t been a fluke. I had sold two more.
But the old doubt placed there by Mason entered my mind to spoil the moment.
“You’d tell me if Johnno was laundering his money using my paintings, wouldn’t you?” I asked carefully.
Jake’s expression turned to stone. “I’ll admit that that was the plan when I put it to Johnno in the first place. But, when a buyer jumped at that first piece, Frankie told us you were a legit artist. Johnno’s gettin’ his cut of each sale, so you’re probably not makin’ as much as you should. But the sales are real. People like your work, Alfie. They really like your work.”