by Helen Slavin
It was a small and necessary detour to Cordwainer Street, and a tabby cat caught by the scruff — a snap of its jaws to silence it, and she could drink in power. The allotments pleased Nuala. They were at the edge of town, the opposite side to Havoc, and there was no stray strand of trees watching over. The trees that branched and loomed here were garden specimens.
Nuala deemed the florist’s twilight trip to the allotments a morsel of good fortune. Despite that, she was cautious, prowling the perimeter, relying on eyes and ears to pick up anything out of the ordinary, anything that might hint at the presence of Thinne. She was frugal with the small reserve of power she had. At the far corner beneath the shadow of — of all the trees in the wood — a hawthorn, she pinned and cracked the unfortunate cat. I pin you. Nuala held the refrain of it, winding the charm as tight as possible, ready to make her attack on Aurora.
The bone magic charm churned and frothed, unpleasant but necessary. It had never been like this. Before the attempt at the shop, bone magic had been nourishing as broth, to be drunk deep, savoured as it enriched and empowered. Since then, she could feel the edge of it, like a tide draining from a shore. She must act.
The light in the small shed was golden. Nuala made her way up the outside of the weed-edged path. She reached for a bank of stinging nettles, letting her hands and arms wash through them, the stings drawn in, making her fierce.
She was a few feet from the shed, her arm reaching for the door. I pin you. The spell was ready on her lips, but so rapt was her attention that she missed the moment when the first of the streetlights beyond her was extinguished and darkness pooled along the edge of the boundary. The second blanked out, nothing more than a blink at the edge of her vision. Only when the third lamp shut down the light on the path behind her did the power she had been tending, banked up for her attack on Aurora, burn into alarm. The hairs on her neck prickled; the Red Wrangle shackled her tighter. A scent of yew and old gravestones, of dust and crumbled stone, drifted across the neat beds and compost heaps, close as breath.
Nuala hesitated. In that second, there was a sound; one not instantly Thinne, but Nuala felt flight anyway, her body unwilling to remain and find out. Her feet turned before the fur bomb hit her. A heavy, clawed sledgehammer of cat, keen to knock the breath from her body as she sprawled face down on the path. A rasping tongue snarled at her blood, licking it from her. The yowl deafening next to her ear as claws ripped, and teeth, pin-like and lethal, pierced her skin.
She struggled and scrapped. He was not alone. The cats tangled into her like burrs. At once, Nuala saw the danger, something darker creeping beneath the claws and teeth. The cats felt it. The ringleader, black velvet and one-eyed, roared the retreat. Nuala scratched to her feet. There was no exit the way she had come: that way lay Thinne. She spun around, headed off along the thin line of gravel where the leaf-mould bins were ranked.
No. No. Not this way. The Gamekeeper was coming up through town. She could feel the push; the Red Wrangle tightened. Which way?
Nuala, desperate as a coursed hare, heaved herself over the small wooden-pallet fence and through the thorny hedging. She landed with a crump on the dirt track beyond and, turning in the direction of away, she ran.
Her breath burnt her chest as she flew by way of Spenser Place and the lower edge of Rook’s Hill. There was nowhere to go, and yet he did not pursue her. Had the Gamekeepers caught up with him? She could only hope.
She made her way down the overgrown path at the top of Red Hat Lane to her cottage. There was no sign of Thinne. She was swift to move indoors and bolt the door behind. Turn the key. Not that that would hold him.
She rummaged in her pocket for the cat bones, licked them, and placed one in the keyhole. If he came, the spell might hold him long enough for her to make a run for it.
She was not strong enough. She had been careless and greedy. Her hands were still shaking as she ran them under the tap in the sink. She picked cat fur from beneath her nails; blood was crusted on her forearms. Her own blood — curse that cat. Look at her face, scored like the fat on a chine of pork. Ow. Ouch.
She let the water play across her torn skin. Teeth marks oozed blood at the fleshy base of her thumb where the cat had bitten deep. She distracted herself from the encroaching shadow of thoughts pooling at the edge of her mind; better teeth marks than Thinne’s tithe.
Only at the last moment had she felt his approach, the cat and the Red Wrangle combining to distract and leave her half-blind to the magic — the power she had mistaken for that within the girl, a wild surge that she thought reached for her. Just for her, power to repair, to nourish. Only at the last second, with Thinne a few footsteps away, did she sense what was truly reaching for her and flee like a mouse, a quivering, whiskered mouse.
She was furious — with herself, with her situation, with the threat of Thinne breathing hot on her neck. She could not bear the idea of his triumph. She wanted, more than ever, not to be his beholden apprentice but the one who outwitted him. She wanted all the vagabonds and wanderers, all the trespassers, poachers, and cutpurses that trudged their way from High Far to Day’s Ride, to know it.
While she was out, one of the wretched Gamekeepers had returned, this time to break her boundary. All that remained was a ragged, useless tangle. She felt drained. If they had not meddled with Kitty Warren, she would have soared. She would already have finished Thinne, and the boundary spell she now struggled to repair would be a trap for the Gamekeepers.
A thought glittered in her mind. She had been foolish and greedy, but she had been so close. She could feel what was held within the girl, the power of it sinewy and taut. Then, as she recalled the edges of the girl’s power, she was reminded of something. The other day. In the marketplace? Her mind scrabbled, desperate, and focused at last, lighted on a plan.
25
Salt and Iron
Matt Woodhill was anxious — not because he was running late for his site visit in Castle Hill, but because he was going to have to be gone for more than an hour.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
In the last few months, Matt Woodhill was not ashamed to admit he had grown afraid of the dark. These days, it felt wisest to be that way. He fretted for his wife, Roz, who had suffered a kind of breakdown last October between Apple Day and Halloween and was only just emerging from the aftermath.
“You should come. It’s up at the Downs, by the camera obscura. There’s a bar… What if I drop you there and then meet up with you after I finish?” He was desperate not to leave her alone, felt protective. “We could make it into a date night?” His smile was relieved as he found the solution. Except that Roz was still shaking her head.
“No. I will be fine.” She meant it, and he could see that. She had been more calm and collected in the last few days. There had been that tiny blip on market day, but she’d got over that.
“I mean, date night sounds lovely…” She kissed him. “But I’d rather go to the Castle Inn for that. Or Woodfired for a pizza. Something simple. Local.” She hugged him close. Matt squeezed hard, his hands resting on her waist. She was coming back to him; he felt that. She was definitely more like her old self.
“Roz…”
“If I come with you on one more site visit,” she joked, “you’ll have to put me on the payroll as your assistant.”
“You like site visits, the chance to nosey round some of the old historic properties,” he teased. Roz smiled.
“No. It’s time. I will be fine.”
She had not been alone in the house since Halloween.
“Seriously, Matt, you don’t have to babysit.” Another kiss.
Matt folded himself around her in a warm farewell.
“Okay. If you’re sure. I won’t be that long. Back by nine at the latest.”
He grabbed his keys and his workbook and headed out.
It was half-past eight and Roz Woodhill was stretching up and over into crescent pose. By this point in her yoga routine, she was usually light-spir
ited and focused. Tonight, possibly because she was alone, she felt out of kilter. It showed as she lost her balance. She was aware of her breaths and noted that they were no longer measured and yogic but short and sharp, and her heart was pounding. All the hairs on the back of her neck prickled uncomfortably. It felt, if she didn’t know better, as if someone was pulling her hair. To ground herself, she moved, with care and grace, into warrior one, her arms lifted, chest lifted, core engaged. Why was she thinking of readying for battle?
The answer was the letterbox rattling.
The letterbox had rattled like that in October, just before everything had gone odd and wrong. Roz walked into the kitchen. She had visualised this, and now that it was happening, her heart pounded like her very own shamanic drum as she pushed back the table and took down the tub of pouring salt from the cupboard.
In the hallway, the letterbox rattled harder.
Roz reached down the iron pan trivet that she herself had forged on a blacksmithing workshop she had won three years ago at the Witches Fayre in Castlebury. She wound her fingers into the simple triskele design and cast her salt circle. The letterbox rattled harder so that Roz Woodhill felt it in every last bone. She shut her eyes against the sickening sensation. That felt too vulnerable. She opened her eyes.
The woman was standing at the edge of the salt circle. Her hair. White as the salt. Roz could not move, and yet she was not afraid. This did not feel the same as before. That night in October, she had not been standing in a salt circle clutching a handful of iron that was, she could feel, heating. The salt filled the air with a sharpness. The woman stared, reached out a hand, her fingers making an aggressive, pinching motion. Roz felt the desire to cringe away, but she could not act upon it. Her body fizzed as if she was channelling electricity. The salt shivered on the floor but held its circle. Roz held tighter to the iron trivet, pain sheeting through her fingers as the power thrummed through her. Her fingers spasmed into a claw. She could not have let go of the trivet if she had tried.
The white-haired woman’s arm jerked and juddered as her face registered pain and frustration. She stepped back, clutching her wrist, and the thrumming power died down. Roz saw where the white-haired woman’s wrist was tied about with a red braid. She thought it flickered like embers. The woman’s face drained of colour, and for a fleeting moment she looked old, lined, and ancient, her mouth open in agony. She stumbled backwards, ran for the door. The letterbox rattled as she slammed it behind her.
The current running through Roz ceased, but she did not let go of the trivet. She sat in the salt circle and gathered her scattered thoughts.
When Matt Woodhill returned, he was greeted by the sight of his wife at the cooker, still in her yoga gear, stirring up butter and chocolate.
“You alright? It was okay?” He looked hopeful. Roz smiled — it was wide and strong, one of her old smiles. He had missed them these last months.
“I thought we needed some brownies.” She offered him the chocolatey spoon. “It was good. I feel good,” she said.
To celebrate, they had a midnight brownie feast.
26
All the News
Ashley Trueman was irate. Bins, the weather, fellow humanity and its many failings, or a neighbour’s dog were just a selection of the things that might set her off. This morning, she was haranguing Winn as Emz came straight from her Gamekeeping patrol to her shift at Prickles.
“You could round the fleabag buggers up in your van.” If Emz did not already feel on edge, the sound of Ashley’s domineering voice soon made it so. “It would literally be an afternoon’s work for you and that girl.” She glanced up as Emz entered and emphasised her point with a vigorous nod in Emz’s direction. “Lord only knows why you haven’t done it already.”
Winn did not attempt to interject. They had both dealt with Ashley before — squirrels as vermin, bats as a rabies hazard, badgers bad, moles and voles worse. They watched her record-breaking intake of breath, at least enough oxygen to power her vocal cords through the next diatribe.
“It’s an outrage. Disgraceful that it should come to this when you could easily sort it out for, well, I was going to say all of us, and I do mean that. It’d be for the good of the town.”
Winn’s cheek flinched a little, and her lips pinched. Ashley didn’t notice.
“Pop them in the van, that is all you would have to do, Winn. Pop ’em in the back and take them out to Knightstone, or better yet out to Thornhill, where our esteemed Councillor Wisheart lives. Cat free, I might add.” There was a further drawing of breath. “He does nothing about it. It’s up to us to take the matter in hand. It’s up to you, Winn. You might like to kid on that you’re just plain old everyday Winn Hartley-Hartfield, but we all know your proper title. You are Lady Whyte-Hartfield after all. What are you giving me that look for? You know I am right.”
To the knowledgeable, Winn’s expression was that of a terrier sighting a particularly noisome rat. Emz feared for Ashley’s safety. If she said one more word, she might end up being thrown in Cooper’s Pond. Emz was poised to intervene when Ashley checked her fancy watch and realised she had other people to hassle.
“Must go. Bear in mind what I’ve said.” She wagged a finger. “It’s up to us, Winn. Set the standards. You are the lady of the manor when all is said and done. You have to do something about them.”
It was some while after Ashley left before Emz dared to speak. She had time to pop into the infirmary and release a squirrel and sort the float in the Prickles shop and then brew up some tea and open a packet of pacifying biscuits.
“Is there no end to that woman’s moaning?” Winn snapped a biscuit between her fingers, venting the last of her wrath.
“What was she on about this time?” Emz asked, recalling last week’s tirade against the nursery school pond-dipping excursion. Winn rolled her eyes. “Who did she want you to pop in the back of the van?”
“Don’t ask. It’s too idiotic for words.”
“We could have a sweepstake. Is it more stupid than her complaining about the rain dripping off the trees in the car park?” Emz poured their tea and reached for a biscuit.
“She says some of the Cordwainer cats went on a bit of a bender last night.” Winn chomped at some biscuit and brushed a flustered hand over her hair.
Emz did not laugh. On the surface it might have seemed funny, but beneath that Emz heard a warning whisper in her head.
“A bender? What do cats do when they go on a bender?”
Winn brushed crumbs from her jumper. “Well, apparently, they attacked someone… over at the allotments. I mean, seriously? Attacked? Licked perhaps. Infested with fleas, more like.”
“Someone? Who?” Emz’s thoughts began to run on ahead of themselves. Someone tall and thin and out of Havoc?
In response, Winn rolled her eyes. “Aurora Foundling of all people.”
Emz heard the whisper in her head choke.
At The Orangery pop-up, Anna Way was relieved she had already baked cakes and quiches. News like this, and the anxiety it fostered, would surely have tainted everything she’d touched this morning. She was trembling as she looked at her sisters. They were sitting at a far table, and Anna had noticed a spider web woven across the bottom window pane, as if that was a portent.
“It seems obvious, when you think about it.” Charlie was trying to make sense of the attack at the allotments. “He must have been on the trail of the white-haired woman.”
This fact seemed to churn up further questions.
“So we think she was at the allotments? What was she doing there?” Emz asked.
“Running from the thin man?” Charlie felt challenged. “This is all my fault. I was on his track, and I lost him.” She did not like to think of the narrow escape in the lane, the scent he trailed.
“No one’s fault.” Anna was firm. “But Emz has a point. What if she had already been at the allotments? Why was she there in the first place? Planting spuds? Repainting a shed?”
&nbs
p; “Are we circling back to our buried treasure/lost possession theory?” Charlie asked.
“Maybe. We think he was tracking her; she was up there. Makes sense,” Anna said.
“And the Cordwainer cats were on his case, too,” Emz said.
Charlie looked shocked. “What have the cats got to do with it?”
“That story about them attacking Aurora. I think that’s just gossip, I think the reality is that they went for one of our Trespassers.”
Charlie and Anna stared at her. Emz shrugged.
“They’re just cats,” Charlie insisted.
Anna shifted in her seat. “No, I’m with Emz. There is something about them,” Anna confessed.
Charlie waded in. “So the cats attacked one of them as, like, I don’t know, the cat SAS backup to Havoc?”
Anna and Emz exchanged a glance.
“What do you think?” Anna asked Emz, who did not have to think.
“The allotments are on their side of town.”
Charlie was open mouthed.
“Their side of town?” As Charlie reeled, Emz recalled a previous instance of this feeling about the cats.
“Yes. And I’ve seen it before. I was called out with Winn…” Emz had a terrible flashback to that night, more than a year ago. “The cats were like a tidal surge. It was on the night…” She halted, unable to say the terrible words aloud. She vividly recalled the tragic Halloween. While she and Winn were in the back lane at Cordwainer Street, the lightning that lit the sky was striking at Calum and Ethan on the Knightstone Bridge. “A neighbour called us out.”
There was a moment of thoughts tumbling like a lock.