Bump (A Witchlight Novel)

by Jaime Munn

  As I studied her thoughtfully, Grace’s expression darkened.

  “Then why aren’t you dead yet?”

  I looked to Asbelia. The two of them had a past. I suddenly realised that there’d been a theme to the party right from the very start when Asbelia had first come to me, imitating a phantom. I’d been cast in a ghost story from the very first bump in the night. I hadn’t had the sense to read the writing on the wall.

  Sofia sensed that I’d connected a few of the dots. She pressed into me to whisper, “What is it? What’s happening?”

  “It’s a haunting,” I replied. “A possession,” I clarified.

  I recalled the photographs of the little girl’s room with the adult sized clothing in the closet and put two and two together. That was why Grace St John had wanted Emma Gold. She’d been planning for her new body. I wondered if Grace, unlike her mother, had been unable to conceive the next host for whatever evil dwelled beneath her skin.

  “Ena,” Asbelia said firmly, “Enough.”

  She waved her hand in an arcane gesture and Grace started to glow. Then a golden bright phantom was drawn from the woman’s flesh.

  “Your after ever awaits,” Asbelia’s voice was gentle and thick with emotion. She made another gesture with her hand and offered a brilliant orb of magic to the phantom before us. Then in the other hand she raised a jewelled bottle as though presenting the ghost with a choice.

  Ena was beautiful. Her hair in life must have been spun gold, like locks of pure honey light. Her eyes were a bright and depthless cornflower blue. She looked an awful lot like Asbelia. I wondered then if Ena was the woman of the veiled world’s daughter. It seemed to fit. I wondered what it was like for Asbelia to cast her daughter into the ever after.

  I almost felt sympathy for her, but then I thought of the lives that Ena had destroyed before her mother had finally taken the steps she had needed to. Asbelia had waited far too long.

  Ena considered the bottle and then the orb of magic. The latter was a spark, I realised, or the veiled world equivalent. The former was undoubtedly a prison. I wondered which Ena would choose. She didn’t keep me waiting long. She scowled at me. There was a vindictive shine to her eyes.

  “It’s not over,” she told me with a sharp and hard smile that made her beauty as empty and cold as the deep, deep dark. Then she reached for the orb and was gone into the ever after.

  Asbelia and her companions turned to leave.

  I shouted out, “Wait.”

  She looked back at me and I saw her grief.

  “You can’t leave us in the ever night,” I said.

  I hoped that my words were true. For a moment it looked like Asbelia wouldn’t hear them, then she gathered herself and poured light into the spell room. It flooded the place like liquid sunlight. It was warm and washed away any concerns and fears I had. In that golden brilliance, Asbelia and her women vanished. The demons wailed and retreated from us. The darkness and the light tore into one another like combatants. I didn’t know who would win, but turning I saw that the long passage we had travelled too was spilled with light and dark.

  “Everybody out,” I yelled.

  I didn’t need to urge the wolves again. They ran into the boiling passage of light and dark. I saw a flash of teeth as Boytjie snapped at a demon that lingered in thick shadows. Sofia was pulling me towards the door when F.C. gave a loud and plaintive call. I turned to him and found Grace St John, petrified with fear. Her cruel features were softened. It wasn’t just the fear that had washed away all traces of her dark demeanour.

  I reached for her, resisting Sofia’s werewolf strength as she pulled me in the opposite direction.

  “It’s okay, Grace,” I said keeping my voice calm, though every instinct within me screamed that soon the light would be overwhelmed by the darkness. Light did not belong in the ever night. “Take my hand,” I told the girl, “I’ll keep you safe.”

  She hesitated. I wondered if she was beyond ever trusting anyone, but then she took my caramel coloured hand in her pale fingers. Her grip quickly tightened like she was holding onto her only life line. I let Sofia drag us both out into the passage tomb that lead up to the house above us. Cleo and Bella were the last to leave the spell room. The golden light seemed to rush out of it after them as though ceding the battle it could not win and giving the last of its strength to the passage through the deep, deep dark.

  Grace was slow. I cursed F.C. and his poison bite. She stumbled through the passage, eyes wild and looking so wane and exhausted that I thought she would give up and collapse on the floor. Cleo circled her waist. At first it looked like Grace would struggle.

  “It’s okay,” I assured her. “This is Cleo and her bark is worse than her bite.”

  “Speak for yourself witch,” Cleo growled.

  Grace started. Not at the wolf in her voice but at what she had called me. I thought, of course she would fear witches. Her hand pulled free, but she accepted Cleo’s protection. I swallowed down my panic.

  We reached the end of the passage. The golden light gathered round us as Sofia opened the door that the wolves could not. Boytjie had seemed about to fling his full weight against it, then reconsidered. A good choice I thought considering how well made and thick the door was.

  We passed out of ever night and into the electric light of Grace’s home. Behind us the golden light boiled against the darkness and some kind of stalemate was reached. Just beyond the threshold the passageway was golden before it fell off in the darkness. I didn’t think it would change. Not unless a warlock blackened the threshold again, or a witch patiently won back the darkness for the light. I hadn’t thought it was possible until now.

  I closed the door behind Cleo, Bella, and Grace. Then sealed it with a tight and binding spell. It would be better if no one stumbled through it and into ever night. I wouldn’t wish that on even my worst enemy, even if Ena had chosen to hide herself away in the dark.

  “Grace, are you okay?” I asked looking at the frightened girl in a woman’s body. She buried her face in Cleo’s shoulder, hiding from me. I wasn’t the wicked witch, but try telling that to a little girl.

  It was Cleo who got Grace St John talking. While the werewolf figured out what the new Grace St John wanted to eat for supper, I wondered if Ena had chosen the incubus Schalko because in a way they had been so alike, both of them pretending to be someone they were not. Sofia ushered the wolves out.

  I realised that their clothing lay still scattered in the passage tomb, somewhere in ever night. I hoped that the demons couldn’t use them somehow to link back to the werewolves.

  While she lead them back to the van like a midnight dog walker, Cleo took Grace to her room to pack some clothes and pick up some toys. Bella, F.C. and I wandered the rooms. I kept an eye out for any magical trinkets that Ena might have left laying around.

  There were none that I could see and F.C. seemed uninterested in the succession of rooms we passed through. He had dialled back down to calico cat. I felt a bone deep lethargy from him, like he’d rather be looking for a comfy spot to take a nice long cat nap. I didn’t get the feeling he’d be really picky about it either.

  We locked up the St John home and left it behind us like some horrible nightmare, but I knew deep down that it wouldn’t be the last time I’d see the place.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  It was Cleo who resolved how we would handle the fall out of the night as we sat in her apartment after she’d put Grace to bed. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did, when she mentioned that one of the pack was a doctor in a local hospital. Not a government hospital either, but one of those fancy private ones where the rich and richer gathered for their luxury treatments and five star operations. It fit that Grace St John would have ended up there anyway.

  “Hank can fill in the details,” she said, referring to their doctor wolf. “Maybe a severe stroke bringing about memory loss that wiped out the last…” Cleo shrugged, “twenty years of her life. I’m sure he can medic
al-spin it.”

  I wondered if Grace would go along with it and said as much.

  “She has to,” Cleo replied.

  I felt her eyes on me. I sighed and nodded. It wasn’t enough that Grace St John had been possessed by the woman she’d thought of as her mother and been robbed of her childhood. I was going to have to meddle with her mind and cloud what little memories she had left if she was to have anything like a normal life.

  “Will she be a witch?” Cleo asked.

  “She already is.” I hesitated. “I can bind her power but it wouldn’t hold if she discovers what she is.”

  A binding spell wasn’t quite the right description, I thought. It was more like a concealing spell. It would only work because Grace St John wasn’t the woman she used to be, which was a very good thing.

  No one could bind a witch’s power though there were ways in which that power might be diverted and among them were some very unpleasant paths.

  Daudie Schalko could have become a witch instead of an incubus when his spark had been shocked out of its frozen stasis. Though I doubted it would have set him on a better course through his ugly life.

  “It might be worse than what Ena did to her,” I added feeling guilty about what we were planning to do to the innocent victim of a powerful spirit. She would be vulnerable, smelling of power and not even knowing that she had it. The things that she would be exposed to would be as bad for her as Ena. And I would be the one to blame.

  “How could it be worse than that?” Cleo asked, troubled.

  I couldn’t explain it quickly to her so I didn’t try and after a while Cleo looked away.

  “You’ll have to for now.”

  I agreed then stood up thinking there was no time like the present. I didn’t want that spell hanging over me like a swinging pendulum inching closer to my exposed flesh.

  Cleo got the point immediately; either that or my spell was wearing off and she was premonitioning my next thirty seconds again.

  She led me through to a second bedroom opposite the entrance to her own. Grace was sleeping in the bed, cuddling up to a fluffy monstrosity of a teddy bear. I hadn’t seen it among the toys we’d brought back with us from the St John house and I raised an eyebrow at Cleo.

  She stared coolly back at me, so I shrugged and let it be.

  I moved closer to the bed until I could lean over the sleeping woman-child and gathered energy. It felt like squeezing the toothpaste tube for the very last scraps of paste. I felt suddenly exhausted as though fear and adrenalin had only been able to tide me over this long and no further.

  I had never crafted a benevolent confusion spell before. It felt wrong as I moulded it into shape. I wished F.C. hadn’t decided to curl up on Sofia’s couch and leave me alone. Wasn’t he worried Cleo might eat me? I wanted his gestalt support of my confidence and that calm reassurance whammy that he could pack on me. I worried that the spell would do more harm than good even as I finished it and let it sink into the sleeping figure.

  At least, I thought, it would hide all the bad memories. I’d designed it that way. She’d remember only the happy times. For both our sakes I hoped there were enough of them to make up for the shambles of a life she’d be waking to. I crafted a second spell to mask her witchy powers. I felt like I was betraying myself doing it. It was harder than the first spell, but I forced myself through it. When it was done I felt too exhausted to move.

  “It had to be done, Hayes,” Cleo said. “She’d never heal left as she was.”

  I nodded and sighed.

  “She should wake in the hospital,” I said.

  “Already in motion,” Cleo told me. “Boytjie is on his way up.”

  “I should spell her into sleep,” I said. My voice sounded so very tired. I didn’t think I had the energy for another spell, even if I dipped into Asbelia’s reserves.

  “No need, I gave her a sedative with her milk and cookies.” Cleo came to stand at my side and looked down at the little girl in a woman’s body. “Do you think her brother will take her in?”

  I didn’t know. I doubted that the Grace St John he’d known would have plucked on his heart strings, but what would he see in the Grace St John he’d find at the hospital if he was persuaded to visit her?

  I hoped that he’d see a second chance to have a real relationship with his sister. She’d need family to grow up right. I almost laughed aloud at that. I hadn’t had family and I’d turned out just fine, but I’d always thought it would have been an easier path if I hadn’t done it all alone.

  “You did good, Hayes,” Cleo said reassuringly and I was pathetically grateful for it.

  “You too,” I told Cleo, giving her a tired but happy smile.

  “I’m glad I didn’t kill her,” the werewolf admitted, looking down at Grace. Then she then ushered me out of the room, which also seemed to bring our little heart to heart discussion to an end. S

  ofia was waiting for me and I was keen to go to her so I led the way to Cleo’s front door. I wanted to put this whole series of events all behind me but I didn’t think it would be as easy as casting a little spell over Grace St John.

  I had the feeling that I’d just earned myself a second god daughter. It certainly wasn’t something I considered a promotion. If I knew the spell to turn back time, and had the enormous power it would take to achieve it, I’d make damned Asbelia haunted my store until doomsday before accepting her as a client again.

  Then I thought of innocent little Emma Gold and poor little Grace St John and couldn’t wish on them a dark future for all that they had indirectly brought upon me.

  Sometimes shit happens and you have to live with it, especially when the outcome is better than the alternative. I guess I should make my new motto sometimes shit happens for a good reason.

  “You owe us,” Cleo said in parting as she opened the door for me. “Keep yourself in one piece until you can repay the debt.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  I somehow made my own way to Sofia’s apartment. I was feeling quietly proud of my achievement when I opened her apartment door and stepped through. It took me a moment before I realised that it wasn’t an apartment that I stepped into, but rather found myself suddenly in Asbelia’s forest just in time for tea.

  The beautiful goddess of this place was already pouring me a cup and inviting me to a vacant chair. The sweet clean smell of her forest and the veiled world’s fresh air restored a little of my energy. I forced myself into alertness, not wanting to fall victim to more of Asbelia’s trickery.

  “Oh relax, I’m not here to ask more of you,” she smiled at me.

  As I sat down she set a quartz tea cup in front of me filled with a golden brew that wafted cinnamon and vanilla scented steam up at me. Even breathing it in seemed a restorative, like I’d just had the best night’s sleep. I wondered if it was a cousin of the magical tisane she’d served me before.

  “It’s more a mulled wine than a tisane,” Asbelia said. “It will give you a brief respite from the weariness of your exertions tonight and then sing you down into a potent and healing sleep.”

  I hesitated then before taking a sip.

  “It will not harm you or leave any lasting effect,” Asbelia assured me. “And you are safe in the den of wolves where you can sleep untroubled.”

  Safe, I thought, but not from beings such as you.

  Asbelia simply arched a brow. I knew better than to think that beings of the veiled world had any interest in mortals from the young world. Though, if this were altogether true, why was I meeting Asbelia again? Hadn’t I done what she’d needed already?

  I took a sip of the golden drink and though it didn’t taste like any mulled wine I had drunk, it warmed me quickly till I felt my skin flush as though I was experiencing a full body blush. I couldn’t decide if I preferred the magical tisane or this mulled tea. They were both out of this world delicious.

  “Not out of this world,” Asbelia corrected me with a lazy smile. She took a sip from her own cup, savouring
the beverage as much as I had. “I don’t make it nearly enough,” she said like it was a confession between two friends.

  “Why am I here?” I asked, since she’d avoiding touching on that aspect of my thoughts.

  She considered the question while I took another sip of the tea feeling strength pouring back into my body like a marathon runner getting their second wind.

  “It was never about Grace St John,” Asbelia replied slowly.

  Her violet eyes locked on me and were piercing like the gaze of a goddess that saw right through me down to the secret places of my soul. Places that were hidden even from me. I could glimpse secrets in the woman of the veiled world’s eyes, like striations of purple and mauve and even highlights of indigo. Or perhaps it was just a passing fancy as I gazed deep into their unearthly depths.

  Asbelia smiled, a wide and generous formation of her lips as she added, “Maybe it was a little about Ena.”

  The woman and the forest faded away suddenly, leaving me feeling like I was emerging from a waking dream. Sofia’s apartment swam up around me. I stood just over the threshold of her front door still holding the quartz tea cup in my hand. My mind reeled with the possibility that Asbelia’s interests in the events she had stirred up had only had a passing connection to the being I thought might have been her daughter.

  If it hadn’t been about Emma Gold, Grace St John, or Ena…had it been about me? I stood there shocked until Sofia found me.

  Her hair was dishevelled. She wore only a powder blue t-shirt that was much too big for her and looked like it wanted to slide right off her body. It probably would without much coercion. She looked like she’d fallen asleep waiting for me but been roused from it by my arrival. Her eyes took a while to focus on me and she rubbed the sleep from them, then fixed on the quartz cup.

  “Nilla? What is that? It smells divine.”

  I wondered briefly what Asbelia would think of her beverage being described as communion wine. She had told me that it wouldn’t harm me or bring any lasting effect, so I let Sofia taste it and the sleep was knocked right out of her.