by Robin Moray
It was like being doused in cold water. Kevin felt sick at once, cold and wretched, because Peter believed this, and, and, wait, no, maybe—"What, all of them?"
"Every one I have ever seen," Peter told him, still holding Kevin's hand with both of his, and Kevin wanted to pull away because … no. "As evil as the evilest of men." He took a deep breath, fingers knotted with Kevin's like manacles. "Miranda offered me the chance to help her stop Ian from doing to anyone else what he had done to many men and women besides me. So, I took it. And when it was done, when she asked if I wanted to join her, I said yes because … there was nothing else left to do."
Kevin said nothing, though he ached. How could he have been so stupid? And he could feel it, his magic still twisting, shuddering into alignment, and every moment it felt harder and harder to consider pulling away because … he still wanted Peter, painfully.
"I'm telling you this because that is what we saw up at the Point last night," Peter went on, though Kevin could barely hear him over the mess of thoughts in his head. "A witch. That's what attacked us. And I need to find her before she hurts anyone else." And he made a face. "But you don't believe me, do you? Please, Kevin, say something so I know if you think I'm a madman."
"I believe you," Kevin said weakly. "I just … maybe it's not all witches. Maybe some of them—" but he broke off, afraid of saying too much, afraid of Peter, afraid of himself because frightened witches did reckless things and it never ended well.
"Maybe." Peter didn't sound as though he believed that, but he said it at least. "Not this one, though. I've been tracking her for weeks. She drains her victims of their life-essence, drains them to death and consumes them. It is a variation on what nearly happened to me, and I cannot let her continue."
"How are you going to stop her?" Kevin asked, because that's what he was doing here, that was his role, it was just a game, he had to … he'd made such a mess of it already, he had to play it out.
"There are ways to stop magic," Peter said, and he blushed then, looking down at where he was still holding Kevin's hand. "I must sound crazy to you. But …"
"I believe you." At least it wouldn't sound like a lie. "I do."
"I thought you might, but I couldn't be sure." He chewed his lip, those same handsome honey eyes coming up to melt at him unfairly. "I … have felt drawn to you. Since we met. I felt there must be some reason."
It wasn't a question, but Kevin couldn't help it. "Me too," he whispered. That too was true. "I wanted … I don't know."
Peter closed his eyes, inhaling and letting it go like a sigh before opening them again. "I don't want to put you in danger," he said, "but I need your help. Witches are attracted to magic nodes, places where magic runs strong, places even ordinary people think of as supernatural. That's where she'll go. I want to catch her before she can hurt anyone else, so I need you to show me where they are. Directions, or a map, or … anything, Kevin. Before someone else dies."
Kevin swallowed, ruined by all this. "I'll go with you. Let me help."
"It's dangerous," Peter said, but it wasn't a no.
"I know. I'll go. I'll … fill my pockets with nails or something."
Peter smiled, just a little, very faintly. "I'm afraid that wouldn't be much use." Kevin knew that. Even if nails were still made of iron these days, it only worked on fairies and things like that. "But if you truly want to come with me, I swear I'll do everything I can to keep you safe."
Kevin nodded, tried to smile. "I trust you." And he wished he didn't mean that too.
* * *
Kevin took Peter to Cairn Hill first, not wanting to beat about the bush any more than necessary. Peter chatted in the car, and Kevin tried to keep up, but he couldn't help thinking over the things Peter had said. This Ian … clearly he'd seduced Peter, clearly he'd been a warlock, preying on normal people and fucking discarding them like human trash. It was sickening. The thought of Peter, knotting up a rope …
He stiffened in his seat, horrified by how casually he'd dismissed suicide on the way to the Point. Oh God. That was awful. He'd have to apologise somehow, just—
Peter glanced at him, eyebrows raised. "All right?"
"Just … jumpy," Kevin said weakly.
He should apologise. But also … Ian had been a witch. Peter had been seduced and betrayed by a witch, and Kevin might not be much of a witch but he still was one. And Peter thought all witches were evil, and if he found out …
The thought of it made Kevin feel sick and miserable, because everything else about Peter made him just want to climb into Peter's lap and kiss him until they were both too damn dizzy to see. God, just the thought of Peter's hands on his hips, on his skin, Peter's mouth on his throat, and, no. No, no, he couldn't think about that, not now. That wasn't going to happen. Fuck, why was he so stupid?
"Stop here," he said, and Peter parked the car.
By day, Cairn Hill was considerably less spooky than by night. It helped that the heavy static of magical fallout had mostly faded. There was enough of it, though, still clinging to the Cairn itself, that when they reached the top and Peter did that thing with his aura he immediately frowned.
"Something happened here." He laid a hand on the Cairn, fingers finding the place where Bella anchored her wards, and it was so uncanny it made Kevin shiver inside his sweater. "Something recent. Someone's been casting."
He turned slowly, the tendrils of his aura spreading out into thin tongues, like an anemone, reaching for something. They led him in a circuit of the Cairn, Kevin following at a reluctant distance, until he reached the spot where they'd found the body, so few days ago. He knelt down, hand ghosting over the grass, and Kevin held his breath, not sure what he was hoping for.
"Someone died here." He looked appalled and ill, straightening quickly and dusting his hands on his trousers as though they were covered in muck. "Someone was killed here. Kevin," and he reached out, catching Kevin's hand before Kevin could think about stopping him, and the warm hot pulse of connection brought on a hyper-awareness that was terrifyingly familiar. "This witch. Her name is Cordelia. I told you, she drains people. But not just anyone. She chooses other witches for her victims, cannibalising them for their magic. This means," Peter said, eyes dark with seriousness, "that there was a witch here in Haversham. And the fact that Cordelia is still here means there are others. And that means a coven. Three witches, bound in blood, who cast together and sacrifice together, and together are more powerful than any one alone."
Kevin shook his head, not wanting to hear it because it wasn't like that. "How do you know?"
"Because I know." He reeled Kevin in, though he didn't seem to realise he was doing it, but Kevin … God, it was awful. "Kevin, I need you to think. It will be a circle of three people, whose lives revolve around one another. Three friends, or a family of three, or a couple with a friend that spends so much time with them, in pairs or all together, that no-one even remarks on it anymore. They will have few others close to them. They will live apart from the community, at a distance, perhaps reclusive. They will be a little different, a little strange, eccentric maybe. You may never have realized until now that there is anything unusual about them at all, but I need you to think. And one of them, right now, is missing. At least one. She may have taken two, which is worse, because that leaves one witch alone in her own territory, and a frightened witch is the most dangerous."
The irony of it made Kevin feel lightheaded, or maybe that was the giddy feeling that came with Peter tapping his magic, sipping at it like a thirsty man too polite to gulp. But still, here he was, a frightened witch being told how dangerous people like him were by the man who was the whole reason he was frightened right now. Fuck, if Peter found out …
Peter wasn't going to find out, because Kevin wasn't going to do anything stupid, like, oh, flare-off in some hideously embarrassing way. He was going to stay calm, and he wasn't going to think about who would be first on the list if Peter asked anyone else in town for candidates that fit his descr
iption of a coven.
Kevin pulled his hand away, letting the connection falter and fade out so Peter wouldn't hear the lie. "I can't think of anyone. There's no witches in Haversham."
"Someone placed a standing stone up at the Point. I don't know what it's for, but someone put that there on purpose. And there should have been ghosts at the quarry, there always are after a tragedy like that. But someone banished them. And this, here, this cairn, someone has used it to cast some kind of spell. I don't know what it is, but I can feel it. Here." He took Kevin's hand again, and placed it palm-first on the white stone at the centre of Bella's wards. "Just … close your eyes. Can you feel that?"
He let go, and stepped away, and Kevin felt wretched. Of course he could feel it, he'd know Bella's casting anywhere. Fruity citrus and honey, sweet and familiar and home. But what did Peter think he was going to feel, here? "What should it feel like?"
"Like something … beneath. Something under it. It's hard to explain, just," he shook his head. "Tell me you feel something."
"Mostly just hungry," Kevin said, meaning it as a distraction.
But Peter nodded. "Or that. Sometimes. But maybe you really are just hungry. Shall we go? There's crisps in the car, if you like."
They went down; Kevin accepted the packet of chips, tearing into them while Peter insisted Kevin attempt to feel anything magical, anything at all.
Kevin lost patience with it after a while. "Why would you think I could, anyway? How can you, even? If you're not a witch."
Peter looked surprised, but then he nodded as if this was reasonable and not just petulantly childish. "Everyone has some ability to generate magic, to a degree," he said, and it took an effort for Kevin not to roll his eyes because yeah he knew that. "Mostly it is very little. Left alone the magic will just ebb and flow, manifesting itself now and then in small things. They will seem quite random, but at the same time fortuitous, or disastrous. Trouble comes in threes, or the power of prayer, that sort of thing. It can be trained, though. With enough training even an ordinary person can become a witch."
Kevin let out his breath, willing Peter to just not think too much about that. "Yeah? So …"
"So, when I was … when Ian used me as he did, he— It's hard to explain." He made a face, fingering the short scruff on his chin. "He drained me of my insignificant magic, but he … you might say he burned me. He tore the magic out at the root, and now," he looked frustrated by his inability to explain, but Kevin thought he already knew. "I have none, now, and no way of making more."
"You're dry," Kevin said without thinking, and then hastily added, "is that what you mean?"
"Something like that. And being dry, as you say, magic is … I'm somewhat sensitized to it." 'Somewhat' is an understatement, by the look of things, but Kevin let it go.
"That's not normal, though. Is it?"
"No. But still, if it can be taught … I thought perhaps," and was that a blush? Peter gave him an open look, holding up his palms, so sincere. "I wondered if the reason I have been, as I said, drawn to you was so I might—" but he broke off, shaking his head. "It was a foolish thought."
But that didn't make any sense. "What was?"
Peter cleared his throat, looking away. "Witches form covens in threes. But hunters—and that is what I am—hunt in pairs."
Kevin's heart thudded hard against his ribcage, and for a second he thought, Oh! but then his stupid intuition screamed at him, magic inspiration like a bolt of lightning. "Peter?" He already knew, but be had to know. "What happened to Miranda?"
And even before he opened his mouth, Peter's bleak expression answered for him. "Cordelia happened."
Chapter 7
The story was short and somehow sadder than the one about What Ian Did, maybe because Peter told it so simply, his tone even and his expression blank while his aura writhed, flaring and flattening, and Kevin wanted to soothe him so badly it became a physical ache.
The details were: Cordelia murdered her coven, draining their magic. Miranda heard about it from a friend. Peter had been supposed to go with her to meet the friend but was delayed—traffic, how banal—and Miranda went straight after Cordelia from there. She shouldn't have gone alone. Peter should have been there. But he wasn't, and by the time he got there Miranda was just another magic grease-mark on the floor of a warehouse downtown.
"Then you're alone," Kevin said, and okay, Bella wanted to know that, he should have asked that before, but now …"Peter. You shouldn't be alone either, right? Don't you … shouldn't you call someone?"
"Who? It's not as though there's a help line for this." He was trying to joke, Kevin could see that, but it was too flat, too frail.
"Don't you need someone, though? A partner? Whatever you call it."
Peter leaned his palms on the hood of the car, not looking at Kevin, just shaking his head. "It would be best to, but I have none. I doubt I can stop Cordelia on my own."
"And you thought, what? You could teach me how to help you?" Kevin couldn't understand, it made no sense. "You wanted to teach me how to be a witch-hunter?"
"I thought perhaps I was drawn to you for a reason," Peter confessed, and his expression was apologetic. "Please, I'm sorry. If that's not why, then, I won't."
Kevin took a breath, made himself calm down, because now would be a very bad time to set part of the forest on fire. "Maybe that's not why you … you know." Kevin tucked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans and, shit, he was bad at this. "Maybe it's just … I mean."
Peter looked at him sidelong, and then, horribly, he blushed, shaking his head. "Just chance, perhaps."
Ugh, it was so unfair. Kevin kicked a foot against the turf, feeling childish and petulant. "'kay. What do you wanna do now, then? There's," but he wasn't about to take a witch-hunter to his nanna's old cottage, "the Stone Garden. Out by the Oak."
"The oak?" Peter smiled, small and tentative. "Is there only the one, then?"
"No, but this one's the one."
Peter nodded, and reached for the passenger-side door, opening it for him. "I must confess I don't know what a stone garden is," he said, and his voice was so calm and quiet it made Kevin settle, a little, somehow, made his magic lie down quiet like a contented dog.
"It's a stone garden," Kevin explained unhelpfully when Peter got in the car. "I mean, um. When you want something, you take a stone up there and add it to the garden. If it doesn't work, you take another one, add it to the garden. Sometimes it takes a lot of stones," he added because, well, it did, but Peter smiled as though it was a joke. Which, Kevin supposed it sort of was.
They drove out, and parked on the side of the road, near a stick of granite seemingly out there for no real reason. Kevin paused next to it, one hand already going up to palm the surface before he realized Peter was looking at him.
"It's a lodestone. If you touch it going in, you'll find your way back." He shrugged. "Superstition, but … everyone does it."
Peter said nothing, but he lifted one hand to press his fingers to the stone, eyes flickering up to Kevin's inquisitively.
Kevin nodded. "Let's go."
The trees were not too close together but still it was dim in the forest, everything green and wet and earthy, and buzzing with bugs. There was a path, sort of, narrow and faint, meandering vaguely through the trees, but mostly it was overgrown. People didn't really come out here all that often, after all—that's why there was the lodestone. So they had to slog through the undergrowth, climb over a few fallen trees, hold back branches for one another. Kevin could feel his sneakers getting cold and heavy with dew; luckily Peter was in boots, and luckier he had dark trousers on today, which ought not to stain but still.
It took about half an hour, all slightly up-hill, before they saw their first stone. It was a pile of stones, actually, a small cairn about knee-high, built up against the side of a tree. It looked fairly new, only a few months old as far as Kevin could tell. Kevin caught Peter's arm and pointed it out.
"What's it for?"
Peter hesitated, then nodded, straightening.
They saw more after that, fist-sized things set up in trees, bigger ones about the size and shape of a baby sometimes with scraps of cloth wrapped around them, and several witch-stones strung up through the holes in their middles. It was probably creepy, Kevin reflected, but not to him. It felt a little like desperation here and there, but mostly just of hope, and belief, and yearning. That's how he felt right then, so it matched him, in sync. How could that be creepy?
"How deep into the forest does it go?" Peter asked, quietly curious. He kept flaring, sensing the air around him like a snake flicking its tongue, tendrils brushing up against Kevin as if to check he was still there. It was like being caressed. Kevin … didn't hate it.
"Miles, maybe. Who knows? Some of them are hard to find. Who'd bother mapping that?" He couldn't be sure, anyway, there was no clear edge to the garden, but everyone knew what the nominal 'centre' of it was. "Do you want to see the Oak?" he asked, stepping over a mosaic of grey and white stones laid across the path-that-was-not. "We have to go on this way, if you do."
They kept on, in the dim green light, not really talking much but pointing every time one of them spotted another stone or stone sculpture. It was pleasant, the sort of thing Kevin really wouldn't mind doing on a date, though they should have brought a picnic and, yeah, actually, now he really was hungry. Maybe he could take Peter out to lunch. Or maybe he should avoid Peter completely. Ugh, Kevin didn't have a clue what he was going to do, and it was doomed anyway, because the second Peter worked out he was a witch everything would go to hell.