She reached across the table for her phone, its glitzy pink case no longer cheerful but mocking, and scrolled through her contacts until she found Salma. “I’m going outside,” Joy told Gabi, her voice surprisingly scratchy.
“Do you want me to—”
“Alone.” Joy knew hurt had crossed Gabi’s face even without seeing it, knew she was lashing out the same way she’d done six years ago, right after she’d found her mum dead, but she couldn’t stop it or bring herself to apologise. She shut the door carefully behind her and even though she’d been shivering inside, huddled by the heater, she couldn’t feel the cold outside, only the wind that hit her face from the sea.
It took a long time for Salma to answer. “Joy?”
Joy burst into tears, slid to her knees in the sand. Salma spoke to her in the soft, soothing tone she’d spoken to Eilidh last month, and Joy couldn’t have explained its exact magic but it calmed her until she could stumble through speaking. It seemed like nothing, saying it out loud—Gabi’s been investigating my mum’s death—but Salma didn’t dismiss her grief or tell her it was nothing.
“You need to talk to her, Joy,” Salma said gently. “Go back inside and let Gabi tell you everything.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You were brave enough to get through losing your mum, and you’re brave enough to get through this too. Don’t shut Gabi out, Joy. Don’t push her away like last time. You could ruin your relationship with her for good.”
Joy wiped her face with her sleeve, succeeding only in sticking sand to her teary cheeks. “I don’t want to push her away.”
“Go back inside. Listen to her. And Joy?”
“Yeah?” she croaked.
“She must be terrified to lose you, like last time. Try to be gentle.”
Joy felt a sinking in her stomach, the first real emotion she’d had since the black hole had swallowed her. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Do you want me to stay on the phone while you talk? I can do that. I haven’t taken a sick day yet—I can get the afternoon off.”
“Oh.” Joy had interrupted her at her new job. “I’m sorry, Salma, I—”
“Don’t be sorry. This is more important than work. And you know you can always call me. Don’t you?”
Joy nodded, unstuck her throat and said, “Yeah.”
“Go back inside. You’re brave; you can do this.”
Joy disagreed, her heart starting to beat wildly. “Salma—” Come home. Please come home. “Thank you.”
“You don’t ever have to thank me. I have to go. Be brave. I love you.”
“Love you too, Salma.”
Joy hung up, feeling crushed, feeling daunted. She tried to brush the sand off her hands, her face. She was stalling, she was scared. With jerky movements, Joy got to her feet, walked the excruciating few steps to the reserve entrance, and stumbled inside.
“Tell me,” she said before she could stop herself. She met Gabi’s eyes across the room, saw fear blazing there. “Tell me all of it.”
Smoky Quartz
The Stone of Power
A rich cognac colour, Smoky Quartz is a stone of potent, dark power. It is known to guide souls to the afterlife and connect with souls of the dead and is also a powerful stone for activating your survival instincts.
Pride
The next morning Gabi spat a filthy word, ignoring the loud trill of her phone and huddling closer to the warm weight of Joy. Her body was heavy with sleep but her mood shot sky high as Joy turned in her arms, her warm fingers brushing Gabi’s jaw. Joy had come back to the Law House with her yesterday and they’d talked through the evening into night. Even though Gabi had kept a huge secret, they were going to be okay.
“You can’t ignore it forever,” Joy breathed, laughing softly.
“You’re underestimating me,” Gabi replied without opening her eyes. She sighed involuntarily when Joy’s lips trailed kisses down her face.
Joy leaned away for a second, letting cold air push against the collar of Gabi’s shirt, and Gabi swore again when Joy said, “Hello, Neil! It’s Joy. Gabi’s here but she’s not a morning person. Can I help instead?” There was a pause as Neil spoke. “Oh. Is that good or bad?”
“Give it here,” Gabi groaned at Joy, and then groaned into the phone, “What did you find?”
“Every mark is slightly different.”
Gabi was waking up very slowly, but surely. “Explain.”
“Some tails of the symbol are longer, or curved, and there are dots alongside them—two in one case, four and seven in others. They’re very similar to an old language—earlobe, eyelashes, toenail, those sorts of words.”
“Right.” Gabi rubbed sleep from her eyes. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know yet. I just thought it was noteworthy.”
“Yes,” Gabi agreed, opening her mouth in outrage as Joy slid out of bed and let even more cold flood in. “Noteworthy. Thanks for telling me—I’ll have a look at the symbols again and call you later if I have any questions.”
Earlobe, eyelashes, toenail. What the hell did that mean?
Neil didn’t call with any more answers about the symbol, so Gabi went through all the files about the deaths again, checked over her map, her timeline. She’d thought knowing all this would give her enough information to fill in the gaps, assuming someone had been killed every five months, but there were too many possibilities, too many small villages in the right areas to narrow them down. It might come to that if Neil found nothing, and nothing turned up in Joy’s books on shapes in witchcraft—Gabi might have to meticulously check the police database for every village, every obituary, call every funeral directors and hope they remembered months and years ago. The longest of long shots.
First, she would rely on witchcraft. And legwork. And she would not think about what Mrs. Nazari had told Joy.
While Gus, Maisie, Joy, and Eilidh—who’d joined them when she got out of school—went through Joy’s books, and threw theories around as to what spells could track down the killer, Gabi grabbed her coat, her bag, and went out into the cold. The last person to see Charity Mackenzie alive, other than Joy, had been her friend and co-worker Terrance Jones, a man Gabi knew for being a handyman but who apparently had a part-time job at the post office too. Without telling him any details, just that it would be helpful—and relying on the town’s sudden urge to be helpful—Gabi asked him about the last day he saw Joy’s mum. It was six and a half years ago so she hadn’t expected his memory to be perfect, but what he told her was useless. Mrs. Mackenzie had been acting normal, happy about finishing work and getting a takeaway on the way home, chatting about her daughter who was getting her GCSE results soon. Nothing to indicate she thought she’d be killed, or even followed.
Gabi rubbed her face as she trudged down the steep road back home. Terrance Jones was the only person who’d seen Joy’s mum that day other than Joy herself, but maybe one of her friends suspected something, or noticed something was off. Gabi thrummed with being back in the thick of investigating, theories buzzing through her head, different ideas for collecting information. She needed to ask Joy who her mum’s friends were.
Joy gave her a strange look when she asked. “Well, she only really had one, and that’s Neil. She was always around his house for some reason or other.”
“Were they…” Gabi hesitated to ask. “Sleeping together?”
Joy laughed, her eyes crinkling. “God, no. They were best friends. It’d be like me and Gus sleeping together.”
“No, thank you,” Gus called down the hall.
Gabi’s lips quirked. “Alright.”
“What is it?”
She’d hesitated too long, or let her thoughts show on her face. “Nothing.”
“Gabi.” Joy stepped closer, touched Gabi’s arm.
“It’s just that Neil Ivers is everywhere with this case. He knows about symbols like the one branded on all the victims, he was friends with your mum—one of the victims
. I’d be an idiot if he wasn’t my prime suspect.” She swore. “And I let him know I was investigating him. Great work, Pride.”
“It’s not Neil Ivers,” Joy said quietly, a storm of emotions on her face. “It’s not. I’ve known him for years—he helps me with gardening, he once gave me a pound when I was short for my shopping, he’s a good man. I’ve known him all my life. Do you think I wouldn’t warn Victoriya if I thought he was dangerous?”
Gabi frowned, but she couldn’t dismiss it so quickly.
Yet after an hour at Neil Ivers’s house, asking him every question she had about Charity Mackenzie and having him answer honestly, she had no proof of her suspicion. Interviewing Joy—gently, carefully, in the questioning room—got her the same result. She needed something to back her up, evidence he was away from Agedale when the Glasgow murder occurred.
The only problem was, after an hour on Facebook, she found evidence to the contrary. Paulina had thrown a party for the whole town to celebrate Agedale’s anniversary of founding, and he was in five different photos taken that night, at a time too late to give him chance to get to Scotland, kill someone, and get back again. And alibis for two of the other deaths—parent teacher night, and a Christmas party his ex-wife had thrown years ago.
“Dammit,” she hissed, shutting her laptop forcefully. It didn’t mean he wasn’t involved—there could be more than one killer, he might have sat those murders out—but her gut told her if she kept digging, she’d find more proof of his innocence. “What the hell, instincts?” she demanded. She’d been so sure. But if she was wrong about this, what else was she wrong about?
Joy
Joy stood by the back door of Gabi’s house, frowning out the kitchen window at the large grey and black lump sat on the paving stones. Joy raised her eyebrow at the cat; if the cat could have raised an eyebrow back, it would have. After a long staring contest, Joy gave in and opened the door, stepping out into the chilly back garden and bending down to stroke her ears.
“You’re stalking me,” she told the cat.
Yow, the cat replied.
“Thank you for agreeing,” Joy said with a smirk.
Yow, the cat meowed, sounding aggravated.
Joy laughed and scratched behind her left ear, a spot that got the cat to tilt her head suddenly into Joy’s hand and begin to utter a good-natured growl that made Joy feel very accomplished. “What am I missing?” she asked the cat. “You’re following me for some reason, aren’t you? Do you need my help?”
The cat ignored her, pushing her head further into Joy’s hand.
Joy sighed. “If you’re like my friend Maisie, there’s nothing I can do to turn you back. Sorry. We tried everything with Mais but it won’t work.”
The cat’s tone changed from annoyed to something less frustrated. Joy had lost her ability to interpret cat language, it seemed, after years being apart from a feline.
“You shouldn’t stroke cats,” came a quiet voice behind Joy. Soft and amused. Gabi. “It could be a stray, you might get stuck with it.”
“Her,” Joy corrected, standing up. “Also, I already think I’m already stuck with her. She’s been following me.”
Gabi’s eyebrows shot up. “Following you? Joy, did you give it food?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
Joy was cut off by the cat getting up and plopping herself in front of Gabi so she could gaze balefully up at her and in her most disrespectful tone, say, Yow.
“I think she just insulted you.” Joy stage-whispered.
Gabi was trying not to laugh. She gave the cat a serious look, said, “I’m sorry for offending you, Maam.”
The cat stuck her nose in the air and trotted off without offering forgiveness.
“You have a cat?” Gabi asked as Joy moved back inside, shivering as her body temperature adjusted. Gabi wrapped her in a tight hug before she’d even finished shuddering.
“Sort of,” Joy replied. “I think she wants something from me, but I’m not sure what.”
“Mmm. Looks like it.”
Joy tipped her head up so she could kiss Gabi and felt her whole body melt as Gabi’s lips met hers. It was a slow, luxurious kiss and Joy’s heart beat faster. Her hand settled on Gabi’s chest, where she felt her heart pounding as hard as Joy’s, and her other hand tangled itself in Gabi’s hair, quickly reducing her neat fall of black hair—loose and down for once—into messy strands.
“I wish we weren’t in a house with half your coven,” Gabi murmured when they broke apart.
Joy smiled. “So do I.”
Gabi groaned, her hands sliding to Joy’s waist. “Sleep in my bed again?”
“Yes,” Joy answered quickly. It would be an effort to tear herself away from this and go home, but at some point she had to. It was her mum’s house, her house, and she wouldn’t leave her home behind. Besides, what would be the point in paying rent if she never lived there? But tonight she met Gabi’s dark eyes and said, “I like waking up next to you.”
Gabi did that adorable thing where she bit her lip to contain her smile, her cheeks coloured rosy and her eyes glittering with love. Joy kissed her again because she couldn’t help herself.
The next day, Joy had been sat in the library for hours and she had little to show for it. Every book of myths, legends, and famous fae had told her the same things Kordell had about the queen Ignatia. She was powerful and renowned for her amber magic—magic that transformed the colour of her skin to a honeyed gold, magic that burned into a person and removed ‘evil power’.
Joy wanted to know more—how Ignatia used her power, what it did to her each time, how she lived with it if it really did burn the magic out of people. How she didn’t feel all torn up inside as Joy did every time she closed her eyes and saw Perchta screaming, weeping.
But what Joy wanted to know most was if Ignatia had her amber power because she was fae and a witch, the child of both, like Joy. She spent another hour reading the sections about fae magic in any book she could get hold of but there was very little published knowledge about the fae outside their own libraries. They were secretive and private and Joy really couldn’t picture any fae openly talking about their nature for a non-fae to put into a book. Well, maybe she could picture her mum helping someone write their book—Joy’s mum would help anyone. Had that got her killed? Had she invited someone inside to help them while Joy had been at the beach?
Her chest seized with pain as it did every single time. Why couldn’t Joy have just gone home earlier? Why did she have to stay out all night? And would it have made any difference at all? That was the worst question. The not knowing hurt the worst. Would it have changed anything if Joy had gone home at ten P.M. instead of three A.M.? Or would she have walked into a silent house all the same, moving carefully upstairs, apprehension beating against her ribs, to find her mum in bed, utterly still?
Joy gave up on the books after another half hour, knowing only that fae magic was connected to the water—which she already knew from her mum and from the pull in Joy’s blood even now to the ocean, that mass of water and magic and promises. She bundled herself up in her coat and hat—was it ever going to get warmer this year? It felt like it had been winter for forever—and trudged through the sleek coating of snow up the high street.
She kept replaying that day in town hall, running through everything she’d done. At first she thought, with no tools left, no sachets or potions or incantations to help her, she’d drawn on her raw witchcraft—that base power inside every witch that interpreted their will effortlessly but impulsively, that could as easily harm as it did protect—but now she wasn’t sure. She’d known, without anything to help her cast a spell, she would call up something deep inside, some well of power she usually overlooked, but had it been raw witchcraft that turned Joy’s hands blue, that pushed the power out of Perchta? Or had it been whatever power Ignatia had, some mingling of witchcraft and fae magic?
Joy could only think of one place she might find answers, and there was no way she
was climbing the hill to the gated fae community. She hated their fancy mansions, their fake manners and speech, their stuck-up glances and their expensive yachts. She hated how they treated her mum just for falling in love, and she’d never forgive them for that, even if she did sort of belong to them. Not that they’d even let her through the gate.
But she needed to know—had she used raw witchcraft on Perchta, or some mangled mess of fae magic?
As far as Joy knew, her witch nature was dominant. Though she was drawn to the ocean and felt a soothing presence in any water, she’d never done anything like the fae could with their magic. The old stories were of storms and rough seas and great weapons made out of the water; narwhals and sharks and impossible creatures constructed of foam and waves and currents. The most Joy had ever done with water was purify it, and that was using a witch’s spell.
It couldn’t have been that. But Joy had never heard of raw witchcraft reacting as it had then, blue hands and stolen power.
When Joy got back to Gabi’s house—via her own to dig out the rest of her books on circles and shapes in witchcraft and to pick up clothes and essentials—Peregrine was waiting for her in the sitting room upstairs.
“Find anything?”
“No,” Joy sighed, setting the books on the coffee table and shrugging out of her coat. The heating was on hot up here, thank God. “Just what I already knew and what Kordell said. Where’s Gabi?”
Peregrine leaned forward on the sofa, his arms braced on his knees. “Out interviewing someone. Gus has gone with her.”
“Maisie?”
Peregrine nodded to the window where Maisie sat watching the street outside.
“Hey, Mais,” Joy said, going to stand beside her, running a hand down her back once—what had come to pass as a hug between them over the years. “You alright?”
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