‘By mistake? How can you get kissed by mistake? Did he fall onto your face?’
She smiled. ‘It was dark. He thought I was someone else. Story of my life, I suppose.’ She looked around the hill top. ‘I hope those men on bikes won’t come back.’
‘It’s broad daylight and there’s two feet of snow. I don’t even think you can ride a motorbike in snow, can you? And we’ll see them coming for miles, the air is so clear.’
It was, clear and ringing with cold. The distant moors stood like white shoulders shrugging into the bright blue sky and a circle of rooks blew above the hill like a smoke ring. ‘Are we bonkers do you think?’ Isobel asked in a quiet voice. ‘Doing magic and wishing for things we’ll never have?’
I gave her a quick, awkward hug. ‘At least we’re doing something. Oh look, Megan is slowing down. She’s going to be really fit by the time she finds that dog’s owner.’
Meg and Rufus bounced to a collective halt at our usual spot. She looked sweaty and breathless, her top had come untucked and she’d had to start carrying her hat. Her gloves were scattered with snow where she’d kept tripping over and the snowline was somewhere up near her thighs. ‘Sit,’ she insisted. Rufus grinned again and started digging. ‘I think he’s part lurcher.’
‘More like part wobbler.’ I patted the grey head and then had to wipe my hand on my jeans.
‘He’s a bit sticky. I don’t know why. But he’s very good natured.’
‘I can see that.’
Vivienne joined us and got her breath back. ‘Here. Candles. Push them into the snow, then light one each.’ We managed, eventually, to get the candles to light. They kept toppling over in the snow and extinguishing themselves with sad little hisses but we persevered until a small ring of fluttering flame punctuated the hilltop. ‘Now this.’
‘What is it?’ I stared at the bag of dark liquid in Vivienne’s hand. ‘It looks like blood.’
‘It … well, yes, I suppose it is, technically.’ Vivienne actually looked a little ashamed.
‘Technically?’
‘It’s from the butcher.’
The bag swayed from her fingers. It seemed unnaturally swollen, as though the blood inside was treacle-thick. ‘From his shop, or him personally?’
Vivienne ignored me and poked a hole in the corner of the bag, using the result like an icing pen to draw dark crimson circles around each of the candles. When the snow was ringed with gore she stood back and nodded satisfaction, like Delia Smith finishing off a Gothic Christmas cake. ‘Now.’ Out came the notepads and pens again.
‘We don’t have to make another potion, do we?’ Megan anxiously tried to juggle her notepad and Rufus’s lead. ‘My system has only just got back to normal.’
Rufus ate her pen.
‘No. We write our wishes down and then use the smoke from the candles to send them skyward.’
‘Like writing to Father Christmas!’
‘Yes, Megan. Exactly like that.’
I wrote my wish but decided that sending it skyward might draw fate’s attention to me even more. So I balled it in my hand and gave it to Rufus, while everyone else was burning theirs, and as their smoke plumed upwards, my wish went the opposite way, dribble-assisted.
‘Your candle burned white,’ Vivienne observed. ‘It’s a sign that your wish is near completion.’
It was actually nearer digestion, but I couldn’t say that. I nodded and tried to look wise, and like someone who was in possession of a nearly-completed wish. And then I wished that I’d wished my wish was completed, but it was too late because Megan had taken my pen.
‘And now let’s join hands, close our eyes and make a silent appeal to the earth to grant us what we wish.’ Vivienne groped for my hand. I held hers loosely, sure that her palm was still slightly tacky with blood, with Megan’s left hand in mine. She was still holding Rufus’s lead, so her hand kept getting tugged away. Isobel gripped Megan and Vivienne’s spare hands and we all closed our eyes. Far away I heard seagulls calling and the sound of snow falling from overloaded branches in the wood beyond. Underfoot it creaked and whistled and fell into my boots with occasional inrushes which dampened my socks.
‘Feel yourselves,’ Vivienne whispered, and I tried, unsuccessfully, not to giggle. She opened one eye and glared at me. ‘Feel yourselves rooting into the earth, as part of the planet. Experience the cold, the snow, the wind. Hear the voices of the beasts, for they are part of the natural order.’
Unfortunately, just then our domestic part of the natural order let out an enormous, deep bark which made us all jump. I opened my eyes to see Rufus standing outside our circle of joined hands, straining his lead to its furthest extent and staring over the crest of the hill. His hackles were up.
‘What …’ I had time to say, before the Land Rover came out of nowhere at us and everything got a bit Scooby-Doo. Rufus ran towards it, barking hysterically, and a dog the size of Rufus barking hysterically is not something you want to get in front of. Megan yelled and tried to grab his lead, but he slipped it through her fingers and took off, heading almost under the wheels.
I looked up at the Land Rover and saw something jutting from a window. Something black and slightly shiny.
‘They’ve got a gun!’ I yelled, dashing forward to grab at Megan, but missing as she ran after Rufus. ‘They’ve got a fucking gun!’
Isobel and Vivienne looked frozen. They just stood as the Land Rover drove in a wide circle around us with Rufus in, well, dogged pursuit, still barking. The windows were dense with water vapour, but I was sure I could make out three figures inside, a driver, a passenger and … oh God, this sounded so ridiculous, an armed man. They were vague, smeary shapes, and all seemed to be wearing dark clothing.
‘Get out of here,’ I pulled at Vivienne until she looked at me. ‘Get down the hill. You too, Isobel.’
The Land Rover performed a sharp turn, slid several yards and then came back at us. Rufus slithered, trying to turn as well, but skidded out of the circuit, paws raking at the snow for purchase as the driver gunned the engine and drove between Isobel and me, cutting us like a herd of cattle being prepared for a roping.
A window wound low. ‘Satan’s whores!’ a male voice shouted. ‘We don’t want your kind here. Go take your demon lovers and your black bitch and get out of Barndale!’
Black bitch? I opened my mouth to ask what the hell they were talking about, and then realised they must mean Megan.
I found I’d ducked, which was ridiculous, since guns can just as easily aim downwards. ‘It’s a free country,’ I screamed back. ‘We’re not doing any harm.’
The Land Rover came to a halt. Now I could see inside through the wound-down window, three men wearing full-face balaclavas and baseball hats, like hoodies on a skiing holiday. The one in the passenger seat was holding a shotgun loosely out of the window, finger resting threateningly on the trigger. ‘We said we don’t want your kind here. It’s not open to debate.’
Okay, they wore disguise, but there was no disguising the voices: it was Big Ginge and the Moustache Master. The other man, the one with the gun, didn’t speak. ‘So, what, you kill people you don’t want in your woods? You must have bodies stacked up to the rafters.’
We’d not been shot yet, that was my thought. They were trying to frighten us. All right, they were doing a good job there.
‘Don’t.’ Megan had managed to grab Rufus by the collar and was using all her bodyweight to drag him along. ‘Don’t antagonise them Holly. Let’s go.’
‘Yeah, you listen to your playmate,’ sneered one of the balaclavas. ‘Even the wog has more sense than you.’
I’d faced down all sorts of people in the past. People who’d made wisecracks about Nicholas’s behaviour, about my procession of men, there wasn’t an insult I hadn’t heard. ‘They’re bullies. How dare they try to drive us out, we’re not doing anything wrong.’
I looked over at Vivienne and Isobel. Vivienne was shocked a blueish pale and her make-up stood out on h
er skin. Isobel looked frozen in mid-flight, half turned to head down the hill but obviously not wanting to leave us alone.
Then the Land Rover door opened. The guy with the gun jumped lightly down onto the snow, gun still held forward, fingers still wound near the trigger. Rufus growled but didn’t bark; I think that was because Megan had him in a headlock.
‘Do you want us to show you what happens to girls who don’t do as they’re told?’ His voice was soft, but it wasn’t only the fact he was wearing a mask that made him threatening, it was his whole body. The way he stood as though he had absolute control of the situation. ‘Naughty girls get punished,’ and he swung the gun up casually to hip level, pointing at Rufus. ‘And the Devil’s whores get what whores deserve.’
Now was so not the time to give him a lecture on the rights of women. I leaped away from him and ran, heading down the hill and hoping the others were following. Rufus took his cue from me and broke into a gallop, Megan overtook me half way down the hill on a bow-wave of snow. Isobel and Vivienne slipped and slithered behind me, I could hear their silent panic in the way they refused to let the snow impede their progress and leaped through drifts that had been detoured on the way up.
‘Ring the police,’ I gasped as we broke through Vivienne’s door and huddled together in the living room, one eye on the window in case the Land Rover had followed us down.
‘What on earth …?’ Eve came in from the kitchen, comfortably aproned and motherly, carrying the teapot like the antithesis of what had just happened.
‘For starters, three men in a Land Rover waved a gun at us. Threatened us with … well, he wasn’t offering an evening at the cinema and boxes of Maltesers, was he? And one of them called Megan … well, a name.’
Vivienne leaned forward to catch her breath. She didn’t even raise a murmur at Rufus climbing onto the sofa. ‘And what do we say when the police arrive? We were taking a stroll up on the hill? We left the candles there. It wouldn’t take a detective genius to work out we’d been performing magic.’
‘Yeah? It’s not forbidden in the Court of Human Rights, you know. So, we lit a few candles, big deal. We didn’t sacrifice babies and shag a goat, did we?’
Eve limped over and pushed a hot mug of tea into my hand. ‘I understand what Vivienne is trying to say, Holly.’
‘Well I wish I did! In what universe do men get away with threatening women?’
‘Holly.’ Eve patted my hand. ‘If we ring the police and tell them that three men in a Land Rover had a shotgun and called you names … well, I hate to say it, but this is the countryside. And people go out shooting all the time. All we can say is that three unidentified men made threats. And if you are absolutely sure that it wasn’t poachers warning you off …’
‘If they were poachers, then …’ I suddenly thought about the men lurking in the woods near the Old Lodge, and the brace of pheasants, dripping blood. ‘I suppose they could have been. But they knew about the spells.’
‘They’d been watching, I’d guess. Judging the right moment to have a go at you. Out here poaching is a way of life for some people.’
‘Yeah, right up with hare coursing and incest.’
‘But you see what I’m saying? It could open a whole can of worms if you report it. Poachers guard their patch. They were warning you off so you couldn’t see anything which might get them identified.’
‘But …’ I looked around. Everyone was nodding. ‘But, Meg. You heard what they were calling you.’
Megan rubbed absently at Rufus’s scruff. ‘What, “black bitch”? God, Holl, I get worse than that behind the counter in British Home Stores. You should have heard what this woman said once, when we didn’t have the pelmets that she’d ordered. Bloody hell, I thought she was going to sell my ass into slavery or something.’
‘But you aren’t even …’
She sighed. ‘Dad’s Nigerian, Holl. Get over it.’
Vivienne came over, smoothing her hair into place. ‘And the police might get a bit curious about those candles, they could ask some awkward questions about exactly what we were doing up on the hill. Do you really want everyone to know that you practise witchcraft? Everyone you work with? Your family?’
I sat down beside Rufus. ‘It’s all a bit of fun. People will understand that, won’t they? That we just got together for some chanting and mucking around with a few spells?’
She looked at me, slightly sadly. ‘But there was blood. We used blood to concentrate the spell … I can’t believe I was so ridiculous …’
‘But it was only animal though, wasn’t it?’ Please God, Vivienne, say yes …
‘Of course. But can’t you see the angle that the newspapers will take, that we were fornicating with The Master, drinking blood and dancing naked under the full moon.’
I glanced dubiously out of the window. ‘In this?’
‘All right, maybe not the dancing naked thing. But you see what I mean? Would you find it easy to get work if that’s what people thought you did in your spare time? Because I don’t want to jeopardise my wish by having that kind of reputation.’
‘Nor me,’ Megan piped up. The tea and warmth had made her skin flush. ‘They scared us, that was all.’
‘No, that wasn’t all. They threatened us. With a shotgun. That goes a little bit beyond the Hammer House of Horror scary, it goes into the outright terrifying category.’ I looked around the room. All the women were looking somewhere else. Isobel and Megan were making an unnecessary amount of fuss of Rufus, Vivienne was stirring her tea with undue attention and Eve was poking the fire. ‘So you all think we should forget it?’
‘Not forget it. Ignore it. Be more careful in future, perhaps. More circumspect, certainly. Maybe find somewhere else to perform the rituals.’
‘No,’ Vivienne looked up at that. ‘It must be Dodman’s Hill. That traditionally has the most earth-energies; it’s on a ley line, and we need all the power we can muster to get the spell to work.’
‘Oh come on! What’s more important, some so-called magic or the possibility of getting our heads blasted off by a rapist wannabe?’
Their silence spoke for them, but then Vivienne piped up. ‘Don’t forget, Holly, just because the fulfilment of your wish has left you disappointed, the rest of us are still waiting. No one here wants to do anything to prevent the working of the spell.’
I shook my head. ‘You’re all bloody insane,’ I said, and walked out.
Chapter Fifteen
I drove round the outside of Barndale Woods to get to the Old Lodge. The track down which Kai had driven me through the middle of the woods looked as if even a Jeep would struggle to get down it now. Pockets of snow lay, broken by bare stretches where the trees grew so close together that even snowflakes couldn’t get between them. It gave the ground a skewbald look. I parked on the road and trekked the quarter mile in.
Cerys came to the front door, breathless and led me through to the kitchen, where Nicholas and Kai were sitting eating toast together, looking remarkably domesticated. ‘And here we have the males of the species,’ she announced in a bad David Attenborough imitation, ‘conducting their bonding session with food prepared by the female.’
‘You offered.’ Kai spread Marmite on another slice.
‘I offered Nicholas toast, not you.’
I pulled out a stool and sat next to my brother. ‘You had Ma and Dad quite panicked yesterday.’
A quick flick of his head. ‘You aren’t angry with me, are you Holly?’ He’d snatched the toast up and was cradling it against him as though unsure if I would allow him to take another bite. ‘I don’t want you to be angry …’
I forced my voice to syrupy consistency, although Kai was frowning at me. ‘No, not angry, of course not. I was worried, that was all. Why did you stop taking your meds?’
‘I just wanted to see. Wanted to check that they were working and to see what life felt like without them.’ He looked remarkably normal this morning, slightly more fey than usual in clothes obvi
ously borrowed from Kai, judging by the number of times the legs of his jeans were rolled up. He began eating the toast again, little snatched bites, like an animal that’s just been released from captivity and isn’t quite sure how long the freedom will last.
‘Not voices again, telling you to stop?’
‘No. More like … you remember when the OCD cut in big time? That kind of compulsion, like I couldn’t not not take them.’ He smiled, his grey eyes tired and slightly drugged. ‘I’m sorry I freaked you, Holl. I was pretty freaked myself. I got this itching under my skin to be back here, that’s why I got on the train.’
A hot urge to smack him rushed down my arms. ‘I knew I should have put a note in with your packing to get Mum to double check you were taking them!’
He spread his hands wide in an expression of bafflement. ‘Sorry, Holl.’
Cerys rolled her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Holly.’ With difficulty she hoisted herself onto the stool at Nick’s other side. ‘How old is he?’
‘Nick? Thirty-two. Eighteen months older than me.’
‘And you did his packing? Were you some kind of doormat in a previous life?’
‘He didn’t ask me to.’
Kai pushed a mug of tea at me and pulled a face. ‘I think Cerys is trying to say …’
‘Shut up Kai. I can talk for myself. I think you baby Nicholas, Holly. Surely there’s nothing stopping him packing his own suitcase? I mean, being mentally a bit kah-kah doesn’t prevent you from checking you have clean underwear, does it?’ She turned to Nicholas, then frowned. ‘Does it?’
Nicholas hadn’t even broken eating-stride, even though her voice was bordering on the tetchy. If I’d spoken like that, he’d have been halfway to locking himself into his bedroom before I’d got as far as ‘suitcase’.
‘Well, no. But I like to keep an eye on him. Make sure he’s taking his meds, that kind of thing.’
‘Why?’ Cerys stared around Nicholas at me.
‘Why?’ I repeated stupidly.
‘Yeah. Why? Demonstrably he doesn’t always take them, but that’s up to him, isn’t it? Surely, by checking up on him all the time and mummying him, he’s never having to rely on himself for anything.’ She looked at Nicholas. ‘Do you often not take your drugs?’
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