A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3)

by Ruth Warburton

  I had the paper. And I still didn’t know.

  ‘Bloody witches!’ I burst out furiously. ‘Why can’t anyone ever say what they mean? It’s all smoke and mirrors and allusions. I’m sick of it!’

  I clenched my fist, screwing the paper into a matted lump, and then stood, breathing hard, my fists pressed to my forehead. I felt like throwing the paper out of the window – the paper that had cost so much in lives and blood and suffering.

  There was silence in the room. I could hear my own harsh breathing and a flutter as the paper fell to the floor.

  Em bent and picked it up.

  ‘Look, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go to the Internet café downstairs and email this to Simon. He might be able to help. I’m extremely unhappy about being one of only three people who’ve seen this. I think the quicker we get this text back to England, the safer we’ll all be. OK, Anna?’

  I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just nodded.

  ‘Want me to go too?’ Abe asked.

  I squeezed my eyes tighter shut. I couldn’t speak. The lump in my throat choked me. If I’d tried, I don’t know what would have come out – a great eviscerating howl of frustration and pain.

  Instead, I just shrugged.

  ‘Fine. Well I’ll stay then,’ Abe said in a suit yourself voice.

  ‘See you in ten,’ Em said. And then, with a laugh that tried just a little too hard to be relaxed, ‘If I’m not back in fifteen, send out the search parties.’

  After she’d gone I slumped on to the bed with my face in the pillow and tried to get a grip. Stop being so bloody pathetic, I snarled inside my head.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ Abe said, his voice low. I felt the bed springs shudder as he sat beside me.

  I shook my head into the pillow and he said urgently, ‘That line – the Mistress of Death – I know what you’re thinking, but it could be something completely different. You’re not evil, Anna, you’re not.’

  I didn’t speak. My teeth were clenched against the despair. But when I felt Abe’s hand touch the nape of my neck, I couldn’t help it. A huge racking sob burst out.

  He lay down beside me on the double bed and I rolled over and flung my arms around him, howling into the crook of his shoulder while he stroked his hands down my spine, one after the other, in a slow, comforting rhythm.

  When I’d cried myself hoarse we lay with our foreheads touching. I felt his breath come and go on my face. His arms were around me. We were so close – as close as it was possible to get without being inside each other’s skin.

  His eyes were closed, but he must have felt my gaze, because he opened them and looked at me. His black eyes were steady, but full of a hunger I couldn’t bear to see.

  He touched my lip with his finger.

  ‘Can I?’

  It would be so easy. I wouldn’t have to be careful with him. I wouldn’t have to hold back.

  He leaned forwards, slowly, giving me plenty of time to move or say something to stop him. But I didn’t. I held my breath. And his lips touched mine, so gently I was almost unsure if I’d felt it at all.

  Then he was kissing me. Hard. No uncertainty now. No holding back. His hands gripped at my shirt, at my waist, his breath coming hot and fast. His dark, heavy brows were drawn into a frown, but I couldn’t tell from his face if it was of pain or pleasure. Perhaps some emotion too complex to skewer with a name.

  His lips were at my jaw and my throat and his harsh three-day beard scraped the soft, almost unbearably tender skin beneath my ear. Then he held himself up on one arm and, still kissing me, he yanked off his shirt with his free hand, buttons ripping and clattering on the floor. I lay back, shivering with need, hearing my breath coming loud and harsh in the quiet of the room. Neither of us spoke. The room was silent, apart from the sound of our ragged breathing and my racing heart.

  It was wrong. He wasn’t Seth. And I wanted Seth – I wanted his arms around me, his lips on my skin, his weight on me. But he wasn’t here. And Abe was.

  Seth, cried a voice in my heart.

  He’s gone, answered my head brutally. You don’t owe him anything. Why are you insisting on being faithful to him?

  He wasn’t being faithful to me, that was for sure. I thought of the woman in the sarong and something hot and dark kindled inside me.

  Abe’s lips at my throat. My fingers, shaking, as they helped him with the buttons of my shirt.

  It didn’t take you long did it? From my bed to his.

  I shook my head – shutting out the words, shutting out the memory. I owed him nothing. He’d left me. He wasn’t here. Abe was here. Abe.

  My heartbeat roared in my ears.

  I tangled my fingers in Abe’s hair.

  ‘Abe.’

  He didn’t raise his head, but his lips moved against my skin.

  ‘Anna …’

  ‘Abe.’ It was a gasp. He tightened his grip. ‘Abe – Abe, stop.’

  For a minute I wasn’t sure if he would.

  Then he flung himself on to his back, his breath coming fast and ragged and furious.

  I lay, my heart pounding. Then I hauled myself on to my elbow.

  ‘Abe …’

  ‘Choose,’ he said. His voice was hoarse, the word like an accusation.

  ‘Abe …’ I tried, but he cut me off.

  ‘Choose!’ he shouted. ‘I’m sick of playing second fiddle to a ghost from the past. He’s gone – he left you …’

  I flinched as if I’d been slapped, but he ploughed viciously on, his words tearing at us both.

  ‘You can’t spend your life looking back! I’m here, Anna. I want you. I …’ he stopped, his teeth ground together so that the tendons in his neck stood out. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Abe …’ I wanted so much to say, I love you too. And I did. That was the worst thing. And I knew what this must be doing to him, what those words had cost him. But …

  I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry. I pulled my knees up to my chest and buried my face in my hands.

  The silence pulled out, so long that at last I scraped my cheeks on my sleeve and looked up.

  Abe was staring down at my leg, where my jeans had ridden up my shin. When he looked up his face was blank with some emotion that might have been shock, or even fear.

  ‘Abe,’ I said huskily, ‘Abe, you’re scaring me.’

  ‘Your scar.’

  ‘My scar?’ I echoed, confused.

  ‘Your scar – from when you fell in the snow last winter. It’s … gone.’

  I pulled back my jeans and looked at my leg. He was right. It was gone. It seemed monumentally unimportant.

  ‘Scars fade.’

  ‘It’s not faded, Anna. It’s gone. In – what? Six months? That’s not possible. I saw that scar. Marks like that don’t just disappear. That cut was healed as far as it was ever going to be. No power on earth could’ve made that scar disappear – not natural, not magical.’

  ‘W-what are you saying?’ I said uneasily.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He put his hand to his head. He looked suddenly sick with fear and I wrapped my arms around my body, shivering. ‘I wish Emmaline hadn’t taken that poem. I need to read it …’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘It’s not possible,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a line in magic – a line you can’t cross. You can’t heal the unhealable.

  You can’t …’

  ‘What are you saying, Abe?’

  But I knew. I knew before Emmaline burst into the room, her eyes wide, her breath panting.

  ‘Simon messaged back,’ she managed. ‘He says …’ Then she looked from my face, to Abe’s, and then back again. ‘You’ve worked it out.’

  ‘No,’ I said reflexively. I needed to hear her say it. Needed to hear her repeat Simon’s cool, forensic analysis of the lines. I stood up, facing her.

  ‘Why?’ Em said.

  ‘Say it, Em!’ I cried.

  ‘He says there’s two possibilities,’ Em said slowly, her eyes flickering fro
m me, to Abe, then back again. ‘But they both lead to the same thing. There’s a reason you didn’t die in that car crash with Seth. There’s a reason why you’ve walked away from so many accidents that should have been fatal. You …’

  She stopped.

  ‘I – I can’t be killed?’ I choked out.

  ‘You can be killed,’ Emmaline corrected. ‘But as long as you have a spark of witchcraft left in your body, you can will yourself back to life. And Simon thinks …’

  She paused, as if suddenly doubting whether to go on.

  ‘What?’ Abe said sharply. His voice was hard and curt. ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘Simon thinks there’s a strong possibility it’s not just Anna. He thinks … she can do the same for others.’

  ‘He thinks she can raise the dead?’ Abe said. His naked chest rose and fell, and Em suddenly seemed to clock my rumpled clothes and Abe’s missing shirt.

  ‘What the hell’s been going on here?’ she asked thoughtlessly, and then flinched as she realized. ‘No. Don’t tell me.’

  ‘Does this matter?’ Abe shouted. ‘Does any of this matter any more? Anna is the holy grail, for crying out loud – a witch who can raise the dead. Do you realize what this means?’

  ‘It means I’ve got a massive target on my back,’ I said, suddenly cold. ‘That’s what my mother knew, isn’t it?’

  I began pulling on a jumper. I had no idea what I was going to do – I just knew that whatever was coming, I didn’t want to face it cold. There was a clap of thunder outside and the rain spattered again. It sounded like there was hail in the gusts that blew against the window.

  Abe too was shrugging into his shirt.

  ‘We have to go back,’ I blurted. A picture of my grandmother – thin, spectral, dying – rose up in front of my face. Maybe it wasn’t too late – for a witch who could heal the unhealable?

  ‘Yes, we have to go back,’ Abe said grimly. ‘If this is right …’

  ‘Oh God, that witch,’ Emmaline said, her face suddenly white. ‘She wasn’t after the riddle, Anna. She was after you.’

  ‘I’ll call the airline,’ Abe said. ‘Em, you start packing. Anna—’

  ‘I’ll get Marcus,’ I said.

  ‘Anna,’ Abe growled, and I knew he was going to start again, start on the stupidity of involving this unknown man in our plans.

  ‘Abe,’ I cried, ‘just shut up. Please. He saved my life. Do you get that? And Emmaline’s. He took a stab-wound to the chest to protect us. I am not leaving him bleeding in some seedy Russian hotel while we skip town. I’m just not.’

  ‘Fine!’ Abe held up his hands. His face was angry, but he knew when he was on a losing streak. ‘Whatever. Tell him what you like. But if he’s not ready to leave town by this evening, I don’t want to know about it. Here,’ he chucked a key fob across the room at me like a missile. ‘Take this. Go.’

  I went.

  The cut on the back of my head was already healing as I knocked gently on the door. When I put my hand up to touch it, my hair was still damp, and the skin beneath was tender but unbroken. I shivered and knocked again.

  No answer.

  ‘Marcus!’ I whispered through the crack.

  Still no answer.

  The door was locked, but Abe’s key turned in the keyhole and I opened it quietly.

  Marcus was lying on his back on the bed, the dim light from the rainy St Petersburg afternoon filtering across the room. His eyes were closed and his face, even in sleep, was twisted with pain. One side of his shirt had fallen open and what I saw beneath made me gasp: a huge puncture wound that split the skin below his ribs on the right, ugly with clotted blood and swelling.

  I came closer and closer, watching the painful rise and fall of Marcus’ chest, the gummy stretch and gape of the clotted wound beneath the cloth.

  I felt sick – but perhaps … perhaps …

  I put out my hand towards him and felt the magic gather and build and tingle in my fingers like fizzy water in my veins. I had never felt it so strongly – not since the first time I’d come to Winter, with seventeen years of pent-up magic trapped inside me, roaring to get out.

  I sat beside him on the bed very carefully, trying not to disturb his sleep and hurt him any more than he was already. Then I laid one hand on the hot, squelching wound on his side, pouring all my magic into healing the gash. It looked dreadful. It looked unhealable.

  But the hideous, maybe mortal, wound began to close. Underneath the blood I could see the skin was knitting together beneath my fingers and with my free hand I gently drew back the other side of his shirt, trying to expose the wound fully, work out what I was dealing with.

  Beneath the other side of his shirt was something odd. A dressing, a magical one like the ones I’d seen Maya prepare. It was a white cloth, bound around a handful of twigs and herbs, and scrawled with a charm on top. Had he been hurt before?

  The gash had half soaked the bandage, blurring the charms and turning the herbs to a bloody sludge, so I peeled it away.

  In the very centre of his chest was a huge black hole. Around it was shiny melted skin, fused into a hard pink welt that covered half his chest. It looked – it looked like a burn. But the kind of burn that only a chemical weapon could inflict. The kind of burn that you couldn’t – shouldn’t – survive.

  I froze, my hand still suspended over the half-healed gash.

  ‘What the … ?’ I whispered. ‘Marcus?’

  He opened his eyes and blinked blearily a few times. Then suddenly he seemed to focus and he was clutching, clawing at the sheets, desperate to cover himself. His movements were animal, full of a bestial desperation – and then, just as abruptly, he gave up. He slumped back on the pillow, his breath coming fast, his lip curled in an involuntary snarl.

  ‘Marcus,’ I repeated, stupidly, ‘what – what happened?’

  He only stared at me, a creature at bay.

  And then – I knew.

  A picture filled my head: a huge black crow in vicious attack, its claws gashing at my eyes, and Seth, standing with a flare gun in his hand. He raised the gun, pointed it at the crow.

  And fired.

  A blue, blazing fire in the centre of the bird’s chest.

  The stench of burning feathers and scorched flesh.

  And the crow wheeling desperately into the sky, spiralling away into the storm.

  I’d always known that bird wasn’t just a bird. It was a witch. One of the Ealdwitan. But I’d never stopped to wonder who at the Ealdwitan. I’d never asked myself whether that witch had survived, if he still bore the scar of Seth’s attack.

  Stupid.

  Stupid, stupid Anna.

  I felt very cold.

  Marcus saw all this flicker across my face and his expression twisted into something halfway between amusement … and hate.

  ‘Well …’ he drawled. ‘Now. This is rather inconvenient.’

  ‘Marcus – please, tell me this is a mistake.’

  ‘This is a mistake,’ he said. But there was no conviction in his voice. Only an amused, ironic resignation that he’d been caught, just when he’d almost snagged the prize.

  None of it made sense.

  ‘Why?’ I whispered.

  ‘You don’t know?’ he laughed.

  I shook my head angrily. ‘That’s not what I meant. I know what I am – I’ve found the riddle: “The Mistress of Death”. But why did you hunt me, betray me, only to save me?’

  ‘Because you were not the prize,’ Marcus said softly. ‘You were nothing but a chip. A bargaining piece. A means to an end.’

  ‘What was the prize?’ I asked, a crack in my voice. But even as he smiled, with a shrug that said, Don’t you know? I realized.

  The Ealdwitan.

  He was the spy.

  He was the one betraying secrets. In return for – what? Power? Being installed as the Head of the Chairs, what his father had fought for and failed to achieve?

  ‘I was stupid in Winter,’ he said softly. ‘But you
made me angry – with your arrogance and your ignorance of the pearl you held in the palm of your hand. When I found that you knew nothing of what you were, I realized that was your greatest strength – and your greatest weakness. I could use that against you. As long as you had no knowledge of what you were, I could bend you to my will. As long as you trusted me.’

  ‘That was why you helped me,’ I said. My voice cracked. ‘It wasn’t for my mother. It was to get my trust.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your father – d-did he know?’

  ‘He had an idea – but he hadn’t known Isabella like I did. I was the only person she kept in touch with, after she left. When she abandoned me, I traced her footsteps obsessively. It was easy to look up her dissertation, to realize what she’d stumbled upon. To realize what I could have, if I played my cards right. But I couldn’t find you – her spells were too effective. Even with everything I knew, I couldn’t track you down. And then one day, I had a call, from Winter. Vivian Brereton had no inkling of what he’d found, none at all. But a new witch? A new witch of the right age, with an apparently outwith father? I came to check you out, as I’d checked out every false lead for years and years. And it was you.’

  ‘And the rest – did Thaddeus know about your plan to betray the Ealdwitan to the Others?’

  ‘Him?’ Marcus waved a dismissive hand. ‘Of course not. He had no vision. He wasn’t part of my plan. I’d always known he’d have to go, when the hour came. But you forced my hand with your demand for an interview. I couldn’t afford for you to go and see him. It would have come out – what really happened in Winter. You see, he would have recognized your description of the crow you wounded. He would have put two and two together, and in the end he would have followed the trail through and realized who was at the bottom of all the conspiracies and betrayals: his own son. He was already suspicious, I think. But your grandmother was right. He couldn’t bear to think the worst of one of his own camp. He was partisan. That was his weakness.’

  Oh my God. Thaddeus. I put my face in my hands, thinking of his final moments, his son coming into his room, something in his hand. And then …

  I felt sick.

  ‘You bastard,’ I choked out. There were tears running down my face. ‘You traitor. You killed him – you killed your own father.’