Witchcraft

by Katie M John

  Fox looked at him, amazed by the clarity of his thinking. It wasn’t she thought Will to be stupid, far from it, but she had never really had him down as… wise.

  “But what if…” Fox was unable to finish because she was suddenly held between solid arms and pressed against Will’s warm chest. He held her unashamedly, for far longer than she felt comfortable with, and yet she didn’t try and break free. She closed her eyes and rested her head against him. She heard his strong, beating heart and tried to calm her own from racing towards destruction. She knew she was blushing and she hoped she could calm it down before they parted.

  “It isn’t your fault,” he whispered. His breath was warm against her skin. “Whatever is happening to you, you need to know you’re not alone, Foxy.”

  Fox took the words in, breathed deeply and then patted him on the chest as a sign to let her go. “Thank you. I have a feeling I’m really going to need a friend.” She could feel tears prickling at her eyes and she really didn’t want to cry in front of him; she’d already shown far too much vulnerability. They’d both been so wrapped up in their exchange that they hadn’t heard Jeremiah come up beside them. “Hey, fancy finding my two favourite people in one place!” he said cheerily, with a smug, knowing smile on his lips, which told them he’d witnessed their moment.

  “Hi, Jay,” Will said without any trace of embarrassment, “alright?”

  He flashed a smile, “Yep, just dandy, and you?”

  Fox looked hard at Jeremiah’s face, trying to read him. Jeremiah hadn’t been on the bus that morning, meaning he probably hadn’t heard the gossip about Martha’s body. Will glanced at Fox and shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

  “They found Martha Paisley this morning,” Fox said, irritated Jeremiah should be walking around so untouched by the events. She knew her irritation was unfair but she felt like venting on someone, and the jerk deserved it more than anyone else, even if she didn’t quite know why.

  At first, the statement didn’t register with him. Why should it? He had been in the village for less than a month. Then he understood. “Oh, the girl who went missing. Oh, that’s great news!”

  Fox stepped back from him and was just about to lay into him when she realised he had mistaken her words. “When I say, ‘they found her,’ I meant they found her body,” she corrected.

  “Oh!” he said blushing. He ran his hands through his hair with embarrassment. “Shucks, I’m…” He fidgeted with the strap of his satchel, “I’m sorry. Was she a close friend?”

  Fox sighed and pulled the weight of her bag onto her shoulder before setting off towards the door. “Forget it! It’s got nothing to do with you, anyway.”

  When Fox left the two of them standing awkwardly at her sudden shift in attitude, Jeremiah turned to Will and exclaimed with a raised eyebrow, “That’s one quirky chick!”

  *

  As soon as Fox entered the common room, she could tell news about Martha had got out. She headed over to Swan, who was sat with Fred in the farthest corner. When she saw her sister coming, she smiled weakly, causing Fred to turn. On seeing Fox, he muttered something to Swan and stood to leave. He nodded a shy greeting to Fox as he walked by.

  “Something I said?” Fox asked as she slumped into the chair opposite.

  “You know Fred.” She shrugged. “I guess he’s worried I told you about him and Thalia.”

  “You did.”

  She twitched her nose in response. “I shouldn’t have. It was personal business between the two of us.”

  Fox snorted and it had a slight edge of cruelty to it. “I think he gave up on it being between the two of you when he screwed Thalia.”

  Swan winced at Fox’s indelicate use of language and Fox guessed she had misfired her sisterly solidarity bullet.

  “Yeah, well…” Swan said, drawing a close to the topic. “So have you heard they’ve found Jack?”

  “No. He’s not…?”

  “No. There isn’t much news but it’s said he’s in intensive care at The Royal.”

  “Do they think he was…” Fox’s question trailed off. There had been no sign of Jack in her visions. She was sure he had not been there.

  Swan shrugged. “Someone said they found him in some crack den and he’d taken a drug overdose.”

  Fox shook her head. “No, I’m not buying that. This is Bible Jack we’re talking about. Hell would freeze over before he took drugs.”

  “Well, you’d have thought that about the whole girlfriend thing, too, but you never know what’s really going on beneath.”

  Someone caught Swan’s attention and fixed it. Fox could tell by the fall in Swan’s face exactly who had walked in but she couldn’t quite believe it. Her stomach gave a flip and she steeled herself to turn around. She knew when she did, she would come face to face with Thalia Ravenheart.

  “Ladies,” Thalia greeted.

  Fox urged her response to come out sounding as natural as possible but her head was having a serious issue believing the audacity of Thalia turning up to college the day her victim’s body had been discovered.

  “Thalia,” Swan replied.

  Thalia continued to stand, looking at each of them in turn, her eyes lingering long enough on Fox for her to feel her heart starting to burn in the same way a leaf smoulders when sunlight channels through a magnifying glass. The silence was heavy between them and Fox felt that at any moment the laws of physics would cave in, sending them free-falling into a chaotic darkness. Just when Fox felt she might start screaming, Swan asked, “Was there something we can do for you, Thalia?”

  Fox watched as Thalia was confused by Swan’s question. She raised an eyebrow and glanced towards the window, as if expecting to find a witness.

  “No. I was just wondering if Fox had the coursework sheet for History. I seem to have misplaced mine. Things have been a little… busy.”

  Fox’s heart hammered as she rummaged around in her bag, searching for the spare copy she had picked up for Jeremiah. She held it out, urging her hand to be steady. Thalia reached forward to collect it and their skin connected. Fox winced with the onslaught of a vision. Her internal screamed, Not now! Her body went rigid and the last thing she heard was Swan shouting out, “Oh, shit. The window!”

  When Fox came around from her vision, she was sitting completely alone; the rest of the students were all piled at the other end of the common room standing around in a circle looking at something on the floor. A freezing, cold blast of air travelled in through the smashed window. Fox staggered to join her sister, who was positioned with Thalia right at the heart of the commotion. She followed the track of their gaze to see a large black raven lying dead and bloodied on the carpet, surrounded by shards of glass.

  “What the hell?” Thalia asked.

  Swan looked up to see Fox staring at the mess of blood and feathers on the floor. When Fox met her sister’s eyes, Fox heard Swan’s voice clear in her head, even though her lips were still. “It was me. Look what I can do.”

  Noise was coming from her right and she turned to see Thalia having a girlie fit, her hand held dramatically to her chest and her lips quivering with hyperventilation,

  “Oh, shit, it’s an omen. It’s an omen!”

  Fox grabbed her by the shoulders and looked hard at her.

  “It’s just a bird, Thalia, get a grip. Ravens are proud and stupid. They fly into glass all the time and they… die!” The heavy emphasis on the last word caused Thalia to look up at Fox from under her heavily mascaraed eyelashes. Fox hammered the point home, lowering her voice into a husky whisper, “…they die. It’s the natural way of things!”

  Thalia gave a strange little squeak before breaking free of Fox’s grip and scampering from the common room. A few minutes later, the caretaker arrived to clean up the mess and the students dispersed, chattering about the weirdness of such a thing happening on the same day Martha had been found murdered.

  Swan came up beside Fox and took her firmly by the elbow, steering her back to the quiet spot
in the corner.

  “Care to tell me what all the Mafia-like theatricals were about?” Swan asked.

  Fox shook her head, trying to wriggle out of her sister’s chastisement. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do, Fox Meadowsweet. Do you think your pathetic threat went unnoticed?”

  “Yeah, well I’m not the one who murdered a raven just to score a point.”

  Swan shifted uncomfortably and continued on with her rant, ignoring Fox’s point, “She’s probably on her phone right now with her twisted, murderous sisters telling them exactly what has just happened, and do you know what their response will be…?” she paused as if she was inviting a response, but Fox knew better than to interject her sister’s outpouring. “First they’ll piss themselves with laughter, and when that stops, they’ll just be… pissed, and the Goddess help you, Fox Meadowsweet – and come to that, let her help me, too because I am the one who caused that bloody piece of theatre in order to stop Thalia seeing you have a complete freak out!”

  At last, she stopped to breathe. She shook with rage. Fox had nothing to say. Swan inhaled deeply and held out her hands flat trying to regain her balance. “Care to tell me what happened?” she asked.

  Fox replied contritely, “When she touched me, I saw something.”

  “What?”

  “A child. A blond-haired child.” Fox’s face crumpled and tears threatened, “And she was so tiny, Swan, just a baby.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Fox nodded.

  “Do you know the child?”

  “No.”

  “Could you identify her if we went looking?”

  Fox shook her head, “I don’t think so. I only saw the back of her head.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  “There was nothing else in the vision?”

  “No,” Fox lied.

  The unmistakable voice of Jeremiah Chase cut into their conversation from across the room. “Well, the drama never ends in this place!” He flopped himself down into the chair at Fox’s side and she responded sharply,

  “You really are an insensitive bastard, aren’t you!”

  “He faltered and flashed her a smile. “Sorry, you’ve lost me.”

  “Fox is a little upset at having seen Martha’s body this morning; perhaps a little more mindfulness would be appreciated,” Swan said in her most soothing voice.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. I only meant the bird through the window. I wasn’t thinking about…”

  “Well, perhaps you could do us all a favour and turn down the happiness dial a bit,” Swan continued to advise.

  “Noted and acted on, ma’m,” he said, offering a salute.

  Fox rolled her eyes. Clearly Jeremiah had been too busy at the front of the charm line to be bothered about picking up any grace.

  Swan reached out a hand and placed it on Fox’s arm; a sign she had been forgiven for stirring it up with Thalia. Swan’s flashes of frustration went as quickly as they arrived.

  “I’ve got to run; I’m already late for class. I’ll see you later. We’ll talk more then.”

  Fox turned to watch Swan leave and then realised she had been left alone with Jeremiah. She sighed deeply before sitting down.

  “So, I thought we could go and do a bit of a field trip after school – out to The Rookeries?” he asked.

  “Today?”

  “Sure, unless you’ve got anything else on?”

  Fox tried to find an excuse but her brain wouldn’t think quickly enough. Sensing her reluctance, Jeremiah offered, “Of course, we could leave it until the weekend, but I’d rather go today if you think you’re up for it.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  Jeremiah stiffened at her question as if she had just tapped a nerve.

  “There’s no rush, I just thought, well, the weather is good and I’ve brought the car and the camera equipment, so it would be a good opportunity…”

  Jeremiah’s rambling and poorly delivered response immediately alerted Fox to something not being right. She stared at him and pouted. “Nah, I’m not buying this, there’s something up. Why are you so keen to go back to The Rookeries today? Especially when there’s psychotic killers on the loose, and come to it, what the crap were you doing there the other evening – in the pitch black?”

  “It’s just a really cool place, don’t you think? All that… history. It’s bound to have its ghosts.”

  Fox cocked an eyebrow. “Well, I know you Yanks have a thing about historical buildings, being as you’ve got no history of your own,” she teased.

  Jeremiah laughed scornfully. “Yeah, your racism dressed as sarcasm is so not cute!”

  “And ghosts?” she asked, her face full of challenge. “Don’t tell me you believe in all that?”

  “Why did you say ‘you’ like that?

  “Like what?”

  “Like I was incapable of having an open mind or something?”

  “Do I really have to answer that?”

  Jeremiah leaned forward with his elbows propped on his knees and his hands knitted together. The white cotton of his shirtsleeves were rolled back and held by two small pearl buttons. On his right arm, he wore the cluttered combination of a leather strap watch, which looked like an old airman’s watch, a thick leather cuff, and a tattered red thread with a silver charm tangled into it. The remains of a cotton gig wrap poked out from under the cuff. He wore a simple silver ring on his thumb. She saw that on the inner wrist of his left arm he had a small black tattoo of an Egyptian eye. It looked home done, like the dagger on the other. The rest of him was squeaky clean. Pale violet shadows sat beneath his eyes as if he hadn’t slept properly. He smelled of expensive cologne and despite the apparent, “rustic” look, everything he wore was beautifully made and cut, accentuating his swim-gym physique. Jeremiah shot her a look that hinted at a hardness matched only by his jaw line. Instinct told her Jeremiah was a breaker of hearts. He was a boy used to getting exactly what he wanted and had never had to ask the price.

  He leaned forward until his knitted hands propped his chin. “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked. His blue eyes, the colour of tanzanite, flashed with light.

  Is this a trick? Fox’s internal asked. Is he trying to suss out just how weird you are? Fox looked at him and twiddled her fingers, stalling her answer. He continued, “I mean I know you have these… fits and things, and your family owns that New Age shop in the village, and… well you know how village gossip travels, especially into the ears of a newbie, so I guessed I thought I’d come right out and ask.”

  “But you haven’t, have you? Because I’m still not sure what it is you’re asking me,” Fox replied, playing innocent.

  “You know… is it true what they say?”

  “Well, if I knew what it was they were saying, then I might be able to answer you,” she said snappily. The slight bedazzlement of his handsome good looks began to wear off with his annoying game-playing.

  “I do.”

  “You do, what?” she asked, tired of the conversation already.

  “Believe in ghosts.”

  Fox tried to suppress a smile. “Do you now?”

  “That’s why I was at The Rookeries the other night – in the dark, all alone.”

  “Really?” she asked sarcastically. She laughed. “Okay, wannabe ghost-hunter, lets head out there this afternoon and you can show me your open mind.”

  *

  Jeremiah flashed her a smile. He had hoped Fox might have taken him a little more seriously, to find someone who not only might offer some understanding about his situation, but who might be able to offer some form of explanation. Okay, so he’d hit a bad day and the whole conversation could have gone a lot better, but at least she was now smiling at him, and maybe, when they got to The Rookeries and she began to see some of the weird stuff for herself, she might be more willing to engage in a proper conversation about it, whatever it was.

  After the message had appeared in the mirror, he
had been unable to sleep for hours. It was only when his tired body won the battle over his imagination that sleep had claimed him, but even then it was so he could be tossed on a wild sea of nightmares.

  “It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d had the high beforehand,” he muttered. He was beginning to miss the concrete certainty of New York City, with all its manmade solidity and synthetic fun, easily bargained for with the flash of a black plastic card.

  Not here; here everything felt insubstantial, like the painted flat-boards of some film set or the decaying surface of some pastoral idyll by Constable. The English countryside was beginning to get to him, not to mention the iron-grey weather. At least in New York the weather got up in the morning and made an assertive decision to either snow or be sunny. Here, it took several hours of gloomy contemplation, shed a few tears, and then settled on whatever seemed to be the least effort.

  The creepy house wasn’t helping; it was full of drafts, which felt like whispers at the ear, and caused the heavy oak doors to slam like intermittent gunshots. The smell of damp clung to the swollen wooden panelling, impregnating everything with the faint smell of death, exacerbated by the heady smell of lilies and wood polish, which hung to every molecule of air. He sighed heavily, wondering how long his father’s punishment would go on. Surely he’d made his point. Jeremiah mused on how he could ring home and beg forgiveness with the hope his father, feeling triumphant in his own brilliant parenting skills, might arrange for his son to be put on a weekend flight home.

  Jeremiah slapped his thigh in an attempt to bring about some determination. He had a free period and then it was History, which meant it would be easy for him and Fox to slip away together afterwards. He was about to start an internal monologue, thinking over his unfathomable attraction towards her, but he didn’t even have the strength to work that one out. All he knew was, for the first time in his life, he had met someone completely unimpressed by the Chase name and charm. It was a novelty, and sometimes that was enough to get the heart missing a beat and the temperature to rise a little; something that hadn’t happened since the forbidden fruit of Rachel. When every other girl you knew threw themselves at you with their simpering puppy-dog eyes and the artfully crafted caricature of a silver-screen siren, the whole boy-girl game quickly became stale.