by Neha Yazmin
“I really thought we’d find her, Amber.” Her sniffs roll into soft sobs.
My eyes start stinging with tears.
“I really hoped we would,” I say. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t find her in time. I feel horrible.”
“Don’t,” she urges, clearly trying to calm herself down. “Y-y-you found her. You f-f-found her, Amber. Who knows when any-any-anyone would’ve looked d-down there?
“The police said that the insurance people probably wouldn’t have gotten around to investigating the fire this week.
“She would’ve been there, in that stupid cellar, all by herself, f-for all th-that t-time. If it wasn’t for you. So th-thank you, Amber. Thank you for finding her. For finding my sister.”
“I can’t accept your gratitude, Simone,” I say, tears streaming down my cheeks. “But can I come over and see you tomorrow? With Jax? Would that be okay with you and your parents?”
“Y-yes, of course.” She seems to mean it, too. “My parents want to thank you, too.”
“Okay, we’ll see you tomorrow, Simone. And I’m so sorry for your loss.”
*
I take a cab home from the police station. Call me paranoid, but I feel like Carver will have someone tailing me these next few days – he did say, “I’ll be watching you”, after all – so I can’t magic myself home.
I can’t tell you how embarrassing it is to tell the cab driver that I’ll be right out with the fare I owe him, because I wasn’t carrying my purse with me when I was driven to the police station.
All this I had to do barefoot.
I didn’t conjure me up some shoes because it would’ve looked suspicious to the police.
Whether the cabbie thought I was some hardcore criminal that he shouldn’t question, or if he was just a very trusting human being, I’m not sure, but he was still in his cab when I returned with cash to pay the fare.
I was in such a rush to pay him that I didn’t slip on any shoes, either.
Sure, I could’ve magicked my purse to me and not gone through the humiliation of running home for my purse – barefoot – and then running out again – barefoot – but like I said, if anyone is following me on Carver’s orders, they’ll know I didn’t have any money on me when I left the police station and would’ve wondered how I seemed to posses my purse now.
Regardless, it’s definitely a case of paranoia to wonder if the police have had my place bugged and installed with hidden cameras while I was at the station, so I’ll just halt that thought right there.
Chucking my jacket on the couch in the living room, I head straight for the bathroom to run a bath – after speaking to Simone, my hunger has all but disappeared. I shiver a little as I go.
Again, it’s chillier in here than it ought to be.
It’s not that late at night – it’s barely 9pm and the temperature outside hasn’t dropped enough to cool my flat down this much – so how come it’s so nippy in here? As far as I can see, the windows are all shut.
I’ll ponder on that mystery later. Now, I need a nice long soak. My muscles are aching from all the sitting and sleeping bent over a table.
Plus, I need to re-charge.
The cops will conduct their search for the killer, and I’ll search in my own way, too.
I sit on the edge of the bathtub, watching the water fill it up, not wanting to think too deeply about what Callum’s disappearance signifies.
Now that I think about it, I think he’s alive.
Well, he wasn’t in the fire.
If he’d died, Carver wouldn’t have kept it a secret, and he probably wouldn’t have let me come home today, linking me to a double homicide.
So, Callum’s alive but nowhere to be found. Why?
Stop it! You don’t want to think about this right now, remember?
I don’t want to think about why he’s disappeared and what it could mean.
What it could mean that I sort of trust him, just like he asked me to in my dream.
“Stop thinking about, Callum!” I rebuke myself.
The next second, I strip out of my clothes and step inside the bathtub, even though it’s yet to fill to the right level for my liking.
Maybe the feel of the hot water on my skin will distract me for a while.
As it is, it more than distracts me for a while.
It helps me fall asleep.
*
The greenery blurs past us in a way that suggests we’re driving pretty fast in this shiny black convertible, top down.
“Whoa,” I chuckle. “Where’s the fire?”
It’s a beautiful night, clear skies with sparkly stars sprinkled all over. We’re no longer in London – you never see the stars in London.
But the wind is rather cold – or is that because we’re speeding so much?
“Well,” murmurs Callum from the driving seat. “I’m hoping the fire isn’t – or won’t be – in this car.”
“Haha.”
He’s talking about the last time he touched my skin with his bare hands, and ignited me as a result.
“Don’t worry,” he assures me, eyes on the road ahead. “I won’t be touching you again. Not until I figure out why you react to my touch like that.”
“Thanks,” I mumble, feeling a little embarrassed. And disappointed.
Though he set me on fire, his actual touch had felt really good.
Too good.
The kind of good that makes me want him to touch me again, even if he ends up charring me to embers.
Too melodramatic!
Callum chuckles again.
“I assure you, Amber,” he tells me, sounding determined. “I will find a way to touch you again. I’m dying to…”
He flashes me a seductive grin before looking straight ahead again.
My heart stutters, my cheeks heat up.
He’s dying to touch me again, just like I’m craving his touch…
To distract myself, I ask him, “Where are we going?”
“Away,” he answers.
“Away from the police?” I guess, though I hope I’m wrong.
He shakes his head no.
“The police are the least of my worries,” he says through clenched teeth.
“So who’re we running from?”
“Trust me, Amber, you don’t want to know.”
“I do want to know,” I insist with a pout. “Tell me,” I beg.
“Amber…” he warns.
“Please?”
He keeps driving.
“Callum, who’s after you?” I ask him in a soft but pleading voice. “Is it the person that killed Imogen?”
His jaws lock at that.
I’ve hit a nerve.
Or the nail on the head.
The people that killed Imogen are after him, too!
“Is the killer after you, too?” I probe.
“Please, Amber,” he says in an urgent voice. “The less you know about this, the safer you’ll be.”
“I don’t want to be safe,” I blurt out unthinkingly.
I realise that I mean it, too.
“I don’t want to be safe if you’re not,” I tell him earnestly. “Please tell me what you know.”
“I can’t,” he whispers. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Callum–”
“Please, Amber. Just keep out of this okay? For your sake. And mine. Because I wouldn’t be able to handle it if anything happened to you, too…”
“Why?”
Why do you care so much about me?
What I say is actually, “What would happen to me?”
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, Amber.” His voice is tight, speaking through barely moving lips.
“Then tell me,” I plead.
“NO!” he roars.
The sound drowns out the sound of the engine.
I cower back.
Callum closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
He pulls over on the side of the road, the engine still runni
ng.
We’ll be on the move again soon.
He turns in his seat towards me and I mirror the action.
Slowly, he lifts his hand as though to touch my face but then drops it with a sigh.
“This isn’t what you think, okay, Amber,” he says in a soft voice, almost a whisper. “This is bigger than all of us. Bigger than Imogen. Bigger than me. Bigger than you. Stay out of it.”
Chapter 19
THE WATER IS COLD WHEN I EMERGE FROM MY DREAM. I’m so lucky I didn’t drown in the bathwater – I was sleeping deeply enough to dream.
I hurry out of the tub and dry myself off with my huge white towel before wrapping it around my torso. Using a slightly smaller towel, I soak up as much excess water from my hair – still golden; if I’d expected the water to wash away the blonde, I was wrong – and twist it around my head in a bun.
Cleaning the bathtub once all the water has drained away, I wipe the steam from the mirror on the wall cabinet to take a look at myself.
I look haggard.
My cheeks seem to have sunken in, making my cheekbones a little pronounced and the baby-face look to my features seem to have hardened.
My blue eyes have lost their usual spark, ringed by dark shadows.
All this change in less than 48 hours!
I pad to my bedroom, switch the light on and shut the curtains. I hadn’t closed the drapes last night but now that I’m about to change into my pyjamas, it feels appropriate that I do so.
Thankfully, the flat isn’t as chilly as before.
Or maybe that’s just because I always feel warm, sometimes hot, after a bath or a shower, the heat of the water still clinging to me like a cosy blanket?
Not likely. The bathwater had gone completely cold, remember?
I shrug. Contemplating the odd fluctuations in the temperature of this flat will have to wait for another day; for all I know, this is actually typical of this place – at the end of the day, I only moved in a few months ago.
Right now, I just want to dress in my pyjamas and sink into my bed.
I don’t think I’ll get any sleep – I don’t feel like it, at all – but I don’t have the energy, or the state of mind, to do anything else.
I pull away my towels and drape them over the back of my wooden desk-chair before grabbing my pyjamas: an old T-shirt and cotton trousers–
I swear I heard a hissing sound…
It cut off abruptly, almost as soon as it began, but I definitely heard it.
I spin around on the spot, naked, my tattered sleeping clothes gripped tightly in my hands.
I can see that of course I’m all alone in the room, but…
Stop it!
I’m just on edge is all.
Hurriedly, I slip into my T-shirt and pants and go to sit on the edge of my bed, eyes still vigilant, ears still straining to detect any unusual noises.
Calm down, I tell myself. No one’s after you. No one’s after Callum, either.
That dream was just my unconscious mind trying to explain Callum’s disappearance and his odd behaviour. Paint him in a good light.
“I really should stop thinking about Callum,” I murmur to myself. I often give myself such pep talks when no one’s around to hear.
But this time, I think I said it just so I could say his name out loud.
Stupid, stupid!
I shake my head to rebuke my dramatic thoughts.
That’s when I see it.
The A-Z.
Just as I’d left it before transporting to Henderson’s last night, the map of London’s trendy Soho facing up.
Only now, there seems to be something scrawled on it.
My heart stops beating for a few seconds.
My breathing accelerates as I slowly retrieve the book to inspect the newly added inscription.
Written in a black felt-tip pen, a Sharpie perhaps, the words send a shudder through my frame.
She wasn’t the first
I don’t need longer than a second to figure out who the she this message is referring to.
“Imogen,” I sigh.
The silence that follows my declaration somehow feels like a confirmation of my assertion. Imogen wasn’t the first witch murdered by the same killer. Other witches have died, had their lives stolen early.
How dare they?
My magic begins to rumble, like angry thunderbolts crackling through my veins, my blood rushing to my head fast and hard, thudding in my ears.
As the seconds pass, other realisations slowly drift into my mind:
Someone was here…
In my apartment.
Someone folded back this A-Z to show the page that included the place where Imogen’s body was.
Where she’d died.
They were in here twice…
I’d closed the A-Z the first time I saw it on my bedside cabinet and stowed it away. But it was back out again when I got home from drinks with Callum.
Twice. Someone was in my flat two times!
No wait – they were here a third time to write this message.
Are they here now?
Blood running cold, my heart starts thundering in my ears as my eyes dart around the room, seeking out non-existent hiding places for this… this messenger.
Messenger!
Someone that alerted me to where Imogen was – if I’d figured out what the A-Z was trying to tell me the first time, I could’ve saved Imogen.
Messenger!
Someone that’s telling me that Imogen wasn’t the first murdered girl.
Wasn’t the first witch killed.
Just a messenger.
Not a threat.
Simply someone trying to help me.
Not harm me.
Yes, if they meant to hurt me, they’d have never gotten past my boundary spell that I have protecting this apartment, to keep us safe from those meaning to hurt us.
Don’t kill the messenger, as they say…
“I guess I should say thank you,” I mumble, calming down a little.
And the next second, two new words appear under the first line, in the same neat script:
You’re welcome
What?
Does that mean that the… messenger is here with me now?
In my bedroom?
And he or she – or it – isn’t doing anything to hurt me?
Wow!
The creepy thing is, the words appeared just like that, the short sentence whole and complete. It didn’t appear a letter at a time.
It didn’t look like an invisible hand was writing these two words right before my eyes.
So, am I communicating with a friendly ghost?
A helpful ghost?
One with good manners…
Possibly.
Ghosts exist. People that I worked with at my last job have come across one or two in their time.
However, I’ve never encountered one myself…
My first ghost!
But if they’re here and they’re talking to me of their own accord… I should take advantage of it.
“Is Imogen the last?” I dare to ask in a soft voice, and despite myself, I do feel a little silly doing this.
Talking to something I can’t see or hear or feel.
But I needn’t have worried.
Why? Because I get a reply!
The one-word answer just appears on the page, under the other short sentences, as though it was written there the whole time and I’m now being permitted to see it.
Of course, it wasn’t written in the A-Z all along – whoever is speaking to me wouldn’t have figured out in advance what I’d ask of it, would they?
Right?
I mean, I’m not that predictable, am I?
My elation plummets though, when the meaning of the reply sinks in:
No
No.
I choke out a gasp.
Imogen isn’t the last witch that will be targeted by this killer.
My heart drops.
M
y empty stomach squeezes, sending a wave of nausea through me.
There’ll be more…
More dead girls.
Dead witches.
“How many more?” I ask in an unintentional whisper, afraid of the answer.
I get an instant response:
Five more
Seven in total
Seven more witches bleeding dry…
The magic in my veins coils to spring, to destroy and heal, to wreak havoc in this world, its wrath overwhelming me for a moment and making it hard for me to breathe.
More dead women…
No!
That’s awful.
Barbaric.
Ritualistic…
But for what sort of ritual?
To quote Dream-Callum, this seems to be a lot bigger than anything I can imagine.
Bigger than some dark witch wanting to steal another witch’s powers.
What’s the killer up to?
Why are they doing this?
But I ask the most important question out loud first.
“Who would do such a thing?” I demand, glaring at the book on my lap.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a question that my spirit friend is unwilling to answer, for nothing appears on the page before me for minutes and minutes.
More time passes, the sound of my breathing the only sound in the room, and nothing being written on the A-Z.
“This is where you draw the line?” I retort through clenched teeth. “This is where you stop being your usual helpful self?”
No one seems to hear me, or bother to react if they do.
For all I know, the ghost has left the building.
I’m alone again.
Chapter 20
I’D FALLEN ASLEEP WITH THE A-Z HUGGED TO MY CHEST, WHICH IS SILLY REALLY – HOW WOULD MY GHOST BUDDY HAVE WRITTEN ON IT WHEN IT WAS TUCKED IN BED WITH ME?
That is, if my ghost friend decided they wanted to give me more information, after all.
Turns out, they didn’t.
The first thing I did when I woke up was check for new messages in the A-Z.
Nothing.
So, I checked the whole book, cover to cover.
Still zilch.
Damn!
Sighing, I’d left my bed and started getting ready to see Jax.