A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3)

by Ruth Warburton

  ‘Shut up,’ Em said sternly. ‘Thanks for not dropping me in it with your dad, but there’s no point in keeping it a secret any longer. I’ll tell my mum tonight. Anna didn’t tell you because she didn’t want me to get into trouble with my mum,’ she said to Dad. ‘We knew neither of you would be pleased. But you can rest easy because Abe’s not going to be jumping anyone’s bones. Anna and I will be sharing a room.’

  ‘Emmaline, stop this,’ I said desperately. I couldn’t let her throw everything away, but how could I argue my point with Dad standing open-mouthed across the kitchen table? Dammit, Em had known I wouldn’t let her do this – and she’d deliberately made it impossible for me to fight my side. ‘Please, Em …’

  ‘Anna.’ Em put her hand on my arm and I felt her magic prickle across my skin, trying to tell me that it would all be OK, wrapping her love and support and steadfastness around me like an invisible hug. ‘I appreciate you trying to protect me, really I do, but it’s better that your dad knows the score. He’s not going to let you go alone with Abe, is he?’ Her dark eyes beseeched me to keep quiet. ‘So telling him this – it’s the only way.’

  Telling him? I spoke inside her head. You’re just telling him, right – to shut him up? Please tell me this is just a line to get me out of trouble and you’re not actually coming. Em, you’re not coming. That’s my final word.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she said firmly and aloud. ‘I’m going to defer my place at LSE and do resits in the autumn. It’s all settled.’

  Dad looked from me, to Emmaline, and his face set into a kind of mulish determination. Then he stood and got down a frying pan. As he set it on the Aga, his whole back radiated obstinacy and denial. We are not done here, his posture said silently.

  Well, I was his daughter. I could do silent obstinacy too.

  After supper I walked Emmaline as far as the coast road and then started back. My watch said almost midnight and I had an automatic twinge of guilt as I remembered it was a school night. Then I laughed out loud feeling, for the first time in days, a lightening of my heart. It didn’t matter any more.

  The house was in darkness when I got back and for a moment, I thought I’d dodged the bullet and Dad had gone up to bed. But when I set my foot to the stairs, the kitchen door creaked open and Dad appeared, silhouetted against the light.

  ‘Dad—’ I began. He shook his head.

  ‘No. Let me talk. I am not happy about this. And I’m going to be speaking to Maya about it tomorrow because frankly I can’t believe she’s going to let Emmaline get away with this. I’ve been thinking about what you said – that I can’t stop you, that you’re legally an adult. And it’s true, I admit it. But you have to tell me why, Anna – why would you do this?’

  I stopped, with my hand on the carved, blackened newel post, groping desperately for some explanation that would come close to the truth, but protect him at the same time. I couldn’t think of anything.

  ‘Is it Seth?’ he asked at last. ‘Because I know the break-up hit you pretty hard – but sweetie, running away isn’t the answer. And throwing all your prospects away over some bloke who was too stupid to appreciate you …’ He stopped and then started again. ‘Listen, I know the move to Winter – I know it wasn’t what you wanted. And I’m sorry if I seemed to take you for granted, you’ve always been so steady, so good at coping with stuff – I should have listened to you more, taken your problems more seriously. I just never thought …’

  I wanted to say something; tell him it wasn’t Seth, it wasn’t Winter, and most of all, it wasn’t him. I wanted to say that I’d have given anything to stay, to be the daughter he wanted. But the hurt and bewilderment in his face tore at my heart and I couldn’t reply. I thought of how he’d feel if I didn’t come back and our last words had been angry. And for a moment my whole body yearned to cast a charm, one that would leave him happy memories instead of bitter ones.

  But they’d be false. No better than happiness bought with drugs or alcohol. Not even my mother had done that – and she’d stopped at little else. She could have given him a happy ending, a story to tell to me, a memory of her that wasn’t of heartbreak and betrayal. But she hadn’t, and perhaps, after all, the heartbreak of real memories was better than a happy fog of false ones.

  So what could I say? I couldn’t promise him I’d come back and sit my exams. I couldn’t even promise him that he’d see me again.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘you have to let me go. Please. You have to let me go to Russia.’

  I could never tell him why. I could never inflict this darkness on him. I’d seen what the knowledge had done to Seth – the danger I’d put him in from the Ealdwitan, from the Malleus, and the bleak pain I’d inflicted on him with the understanding of my power and all it could do. Seth knew the gulf that lay between us. And I couldn’t bear for Dad to look at me and see anything other than his daughter.

  But as I looked at him, pleading with my eyes for him to understand, something in his gaze flickered. Some memory of my mother, perhaps. An understanding, even if he chose not to recognize it, name it.

  He took a deep breath, opened his mouth to speak – and then he seemed to deflate, as though some fire in him had gone out.

  ‘OK.’ His face was sad and he put his hand to my cheek. ‘If it means that much to you … I can’t pretend I’m happy about it – but there’s not much I can do. I’m not going to put you on house arrest, I know when I’m beaten. So … OK.’

  He blinked and a tear ran down his cheek, on to his collar.

  ‘Do you understand?’ I asked. I wasn’t sure what I wanted the answer to be.

  ‘No,’ he said sadly.

  I hugged him very hard, completely unable to believe that I was about to let him go, let all of this good, comfortable life go. He hugged me back, his face in my hair, his breath ragged.

  ‘Good night, sweetie,’ he said at last.

  ‘Good night, Dad,’ I choked.

  He kissed me on the forehead, very softly, both his hands either side of my face. It was a kiss goodnight. But it felt like goodbye.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  We told Dad and Maya not to come to the airport. Emmaline and I said goodbye to them at the station, waving and waving as the train pulled away from the platform until they disappeared into the grey summer drizzle.

  Neither of us spoke for the first half hour of the train journey. We just sat and looked out of the window. I wasn’t sure what Em was thinking; my own mind was a mess of churning excitement, terror, guilt, and last minute practicalities – had I got my passport? If something happened to Emmaline, would Maya ever forgive me? When could I break the news about—

  ‘Cheer up, love.’ The ticket inspector’s voice broke abruptly into my thoughts. ‘It might never happen.’

  Dick, I thought. But I only smiled thinly and held out my ticket.

  ‘It’s not too late,’ I said to Em, after he’d gone. ‘You can turn around at the airport. Catch the next train back.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Em said briefly.

  And then she put her nose in her guidebook.

  At the airport we checked in and then went to wait under the main departures board, where we’d all arranged to meet up.

  ‘He’s late,’ Em said, looking at her watch for the fifth time and then up at the departures board. Go to Gate said the St Petersburg flight.

  ‘Em,’ I said nervously, ‘there’s something I haven’t had a chance to mention.’

  I still hadn’t told her. Or Abe.

  My excuse was that in the tearing rush of the last few days there’d been no time – and that Marcus hadn’t actually completely confirmed anyway. But …

  ‘Oh here he is,’ Em said, relief in her voice.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ Abe swung his rucksack to the marbled floor with a resounding thump. It must have weighed as much as me. ‘It won’t take me two minutes to check this in and then we can go through security.’

  ‘N-not quite,’ I said, in a small voice.

&nbs
p; ‘Why not?’ Em said. Then, ‘Oh Jeez, you didn’t forget your passport, did you? I asked you!’

  ‘It’s not my passport,’ I said. ‘No … It’s just that … We need to wait. For Marcus.’

  ‘Marcus?’ Emmaline said, at the same time as Abe said a very, very rude word.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘B-because … he’s coming.’

  ‘What?’ Emmaline said.

  ‘Please.’ Abe’s face was suddenly dark. ‘Please tell me this is a joke.’

  ‘N-no.’ Then as I saw their incredulous faces, bemused in Emmaline’s case, unashamedly furious in Abe’s, I began to stammer out explanations. ‘Look – what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just tell him to sod off.’

  ‘Yes you could!’ Abe exploded. ‘It’s nothing to do with him!’

  ‘Abe, his father was killed by the spy. How is that not to do with him?’

  ‘You know nothing about him!’

  ‘I know he speaks Russian – which can’t be bad. And I know he wants to hunt this spy down even more than I do.’

  ‘And what if the spy is your mother?’ Abe spelled it out brutally, so that I flinched and looked away. ‘What then?’

  ‘He knew my mother,’ I said in a low voice. ‘He loved my mother. He has as many rights over her as I do. Abe, like it or not, Marcus has a right to be here.’

  ‘So he emotionally blackmailed you into coming? Nice.’

  ‘He didn’t blackmail – he asked as a favour. Anyway, you can hardly talk about blackmail.’

  Abe’s face went closed and hard and, for a minute, I thought he was going to say something very ugly indeed. But then he looked over my shoulder. And his expression changed from fury to disgust.

  ‘Anna!’ Marcus called. He walked quickly through the crowd to where we were standing and bent and kissed me on each cheek. Then, before she could object, he did the same to a slightly startled Emmaline. For the first time since I’d known him, he wasn’t wearing a suit. Instead he was wearing a Barbour jacket and combats. ‘Hello Abe,’ he added. Was it my imagination or was there a touch of amusement in his voice at the sight of Abe’s face?

  ‘Well,’ he said, after a short, fruitless wait for a reply, ‘no point in hanging around I guess. Shall we get going?’

  ‘Yes,’ Abe said, through gritted teeth. ‘You’re right. There’s no point in hanging around.’

  I sighed. This was going to be a long flight.

  The plane landed at some painfully early hour and we staggered out of the terminus and stood like sheep, yawning while Marcus paid off the porters and haggled in Russian with the taxi driver.

  In the taxi itself we sat in silence. Marcus was silent because he was asleep, his head lolling against the passenger window. Em was silent because she was reading a book on Russian folklore, making notes in the margin with a pencil. Abe was silent because – well I didn’t know why Abe was silent. Only that he was. He sat between Emmaline and me, his arms crossed, his face dark and uncompromising. When my attempts at conversation fizzled away, Emmaline gave me a look; it was a look that said ‘Don’t bother.’

  I was silent because St Petersburg was so beautiful.

  I don’t know what I’d expected from Russia. Concrete blocks. Snow. Communist architecture.

  Not this.

  Not white stone, wrought-iron balconies, long vistas stretching like the Champs Elysées. Not golden domes, shining in the morning sun. Not this wide expanse of sky and water flashing past, dazzlingly bright even at this early hour.

  The streets were all but deserted.

  ‘It’s so quiet,’ I said to Emmaline, half under my breath.

  ‘Is White Nights.’ The driver caught my remark and spoke over his shoulder in heavily accented English. ‘The people, we are dance, eat, drink until dawn. The sun, she does not setting. All night it is – what is the word?’ He said something in Russian that sounded like ‘sonyaky’ and furrowed his brow. Then it cleared. ‘Twilight. All night it is twilight. So we call the White Nights, when is never fully dark. We drink in the night and we sleep in the day. Today is Saturday. So. We sleep.’

  We rounded a corner and I gasped. A cathedral towered in front of us, spiralled onion domes pointing to the sky, each one jewelled and gilded and bright blue as the morning sky. Then the driver swerved again down a side street and it was gone.

  ‘What was that place?’

  ‘The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood.’ Emmaline didn’t raise her head. ‘Built on the site of the assassination of Alexander the Second.’

  ‘Nice,’ I murmured.

  ‘St Petersburg is town build on blood,’ said our driver. ‘It is build on bones, on bodies. It is beautiful – yes. But is beauty build upon death.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘It was built on the bones of serfs – that’s what you mean, isn’t it?’ Emmaline asked. The driver nodded.

  ‘Many thousands peasants died to raise St Petersburg from the mud. Ten, twenty thousands. Thirty thousands. History cannot to count. They are lost. Their bones lie beneath these streets, in the canals.’ He waved a hand towards the shining skein of water running alongside the road and I couldn’t suppress a shudder. Then we swung right, down another side street and across another bridge. The car slowed abruptly and the driver leaned out of the window, peering at the door numbers. At last we pulled to a halt and he consulted the piece of paper Marcus had handed him when we got in the cab.

  ‘It is here. Hotel.’

  ‘Wha—?’ Marcus raised his head sleepily and rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh, thank you.’ He peeled more notes from the bundle in his wallet and I groaned. I was going to owe Marcus the national debt of a small country at this rate.

  The room was small, dark and depressing with a double bed, two lamps (one not working), a small sink and a threadbare carpet. The walls seemed to be covered with some kind of brown corduroy and, when Emmaline threw her rucksack on the bed, it didn’t bounce. She lay down beside it, took off her glasses and pressed her fingers to her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  She shook her head without replying.

  ‘I don’t know. Everything just feels … wrong. Strained. Forced. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘No.’

  She sighed and tried again. ‘I’ve been trying to, you know, look.’ She had the half-defensive look she always adopted when talking about her ability to see unfolding events. ‘Trying to see what we should be doing what we should be looking out for. But everything feels weird. It’s like … I can’t explain, but it’s like we’re being pulled. Pushed. Against the grain. Is this making any sense?’

  ‘Kind of …’ I sat beside her on the bed. ‘Forced – how? By someone?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s what I can’t work out. I can’t tell whether we’re going against the grain of what someone wants us to do, like we’re on the track of something and they’re trying to push us back, or if it’s the opposite. If it’s us being diverted, pushed into the wrong course and we should be turning back. But whatever it is, the pressure’s making me ill. I’ve had a headache ever since we left London.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know what else to say. Emmaline sighed again.

  ‘It’s fine. I’ll take a paracetamol. What’s happening today, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ I said slowly. ‘All I can think is to follow the trail of the prophecy.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘Caradoc said the last reference he could find was to a copy in the library of Peter the Great. Which still exists – it’s on Vasilievsky Island. And I know my mother tried to go there at least once. So I think we should go to the library. See what we can find out.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan. Do you want to scry before we leave? See what’s happening in London?’

  ‘Um …’

  The answer was no, not really. But I knew I was being stupid, cowardly. It was better to know. I nodded, reluctantly, and Emmaline
undid her rucksack and got out a small silver bowl.

  ‘You prefer water, don’t you?’ she asked.

  I shrugged. ‘I guess. I’ve never really done it any other way. I don’t get runes and stuff.’

  ‘They’re an acquired taste.’ Emmaline filled the bowl with water. ‘Like olives. OK, shoot.’

  ‘Don’t look.’

  ‘Jeez you’re weird,’ Emmaline stood up. ‘But then aren’t we all? All right then. I’ll be down in Abe and Marcus’ room, trying to break up the fight.’

  I waited until the door clunked shut behind her, then I went and slid the chain across, put the bowl on the tiny bedside table and lowered my face to the water.

  Grandmother, I told myself firmly. Grandmother. I thought of Elizabeth in the high white bed, of Miss Vane fussing round. Don’t think of Seth. Think of London. London.

  But the first thing I saw wasn’t Elizabeth. It was Dad. He was sitting at a kitchen table and for a minute I didn’t know where. Then I recognized it – he was in Elaine’s little flat above the Anchor. Elaine was sitting next to him, her arm around Dad’s shoulders, and Dad’s head was down, his face buried in his hands. As I watched, he lifted his face and I saw he’d been crying.

  My own eyes swam with tears. For a long moment I watched them both, fighting against the rising ache in my throat, and then a tear ran down my nose and dropped into the bowl. Then another. The water in the bowl shivered into ripples, the picture broke up, and when the surface smoothed again they were gone.

  Instead – there was my grandmother. She was lying in her bed, just as she had been when I left. Her black hair straggled across the pillow and her eyes were closed. Beneath the thin lids, her eyes moved uneasily, roaming from side to side as if seeking something. Even asleep, she didn’t look at rest. She looked as if she was fighting to control something, fighting to hold back the tide. But she was still alive – just.

  Suddenly I couldn’t do this any more. Watching helplessly from across the ocean was too hard. I closed my eyes, shutting out the thin figure beneath the white sheets. Then I raised my head from the bowl and rubbed the tears fiercely from my eyes and nose.