by Van Badham
‘All glass can be broken,’ I said.
Nikki shook her head. ‘Not in a holiday rental. You could pulverise that with a hammer and it’ll just crack, not break. Trust me – we’re locked in.’
‘What are they doing to Brody in the stables?’
‘Whatever they do. Preparing him. There’s going to be some kind of ritual. Jeules is in on it too. I didn’t even know Jeules knew Marlina. I should have guessed. There are heaps of them. About thirty. A real party.’
‘Why are they preparing Brody for a ritual?’ The hairs on the back of my neck were electric with fear. On instinct, my hand kept reaching for my pendant; every time my fingers touched skin and not stone, my fear grew.
‘Where’d they find you?’ asked Nikki.
I paced around the room, trying the brass knob of the door, proving to myself it was locked. ‘A cave.’
Nikki’s eyes glittered mischievously. ‘They said what you were doing was disgusting – was it good? With Brody? He looked totally hot at the party. How far did it get?’
I chose my words. ‘We just went for a walk and some guys from school attacked him, jumped him in the dark. We didn’t know what to do so we ran for the cave. Do you know who it was? Guys from school?’
Nikki shook her head again. ‘I’d gone by then. Shame. Ryan and I were having a great time. Wouldn’t expect the party of the year to be thrown by Gretchen Eighfield. Belinda was savage about it.’
‘Gone?’
‘They came and got me in the car. I had an appointment,’ she said darkly.
‘Niks,’ I said, sitting on the edge of the bed, next to her chair, ‘you have to tell me what’s going on.’
Nikki shuffled in her seat. ‘There’s a lot of things about Brody you don’t know.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like, he’s bad. Like, he’s done bad things. He’s not from Yarrindi. Elton says he can smell death on Brody’s hands, death from far away … What Hazel’s mum reckons, about him doing time, the quiet room, that photo in the book—’
‘The photo in the book can’t possibly be him.’
‘Maybe the facts in the book are wrong, but it’s Brody, Soph. It’s obviously Brody. You know there’s always been something weird about him, the way he beats people up and stuff.’
‘Other people start things with him – you know Garth, you know what those guys are like – he can’t help it if he defends himself better than they can attack! Something’s happened to him to make him like that—’
‘Listen to me,’ Nikki, grasped my wrist and stared me in the eye, ‘there’s darkness on Brody, and they say it’s magic. They think he’s a witch. And what they do—’
‘They kill witches.’ Saying the words was like shoving frozen ice into my own throat. ‘So they’re going to kill him.’
‘They’re going to do something to him,’ Nikki said. ‘They’ve got it all prepared. There’s going to be a procession and they’ve built this … thing. They’re going to put him into it, and—’
‘Brody isn’t a witch,’ I said, leaning closer to her. ‘You and I – and Michelle and Kylie – what we did at the Tell-All—’
‘Don’t talk about it,’ Nikki said, lips barely moving as she spoke.
‘He wouldn’t be capable of that. Brody doesn’t know magic just because he knows how to thump people,’ I said in a tiny, angry voice.
‘They know about the fires and the birds,’ Nikki said loudly. ‘They know that Brody caused it.’
‘He didn’t!’
‘Soph, you were there,’ she said, leaning further forward, her eyes glinting. ‘You of all people should know that Brody brings his badness with him.’ She sat back in the chair. ‘They says he’s made some kind of deal with the Devil so he can have power to turn himself into things.’
‘There’s no such thing as the Devil,’ I said, but having seen Marlina’s face and her fierce eyes, I knew what the Devil might look like.
‘He can turn himself into an animal, he can make fires out of air – remember that stuff that was happening in class? Ashley’s nosebleed and the windows? The other day when he was punching Garth and all the lights blew in the corridor? That was him – it’s always him. Badness follows him around. That room they let him have at school has dark energy on the handle – Jeules found it. Brody had Jeules’s missing ring, they saw him in the corridor when the ring came back. And Marlina said there were paw prints in the grass outside Gretchen’s party where Brody had been, and there’d been blood. They tracked him by the smell of a bear. A bear, Soph.’
The magic I’d left on the door handle of the book room, the single popped lock that I didn’t clean up. Me stopping to talk to him outside the staffroom. Me, the bear, the stupid bear. ‘Nikki, it’s not Brody,’ I whispered. ‘It’s—’
‘It is Brody,’ said Nikki, gripping my wrist so tightly it hurt. ‘There was a weird storm tonight – this black ice fell over the whole town, like burnt snow. Tonight they’re going to do this thing to make him stop.’
‘Why are you here?’ I asked her, leaning back so she’d let go of my wrist. She didn’t.
‘Marlina went through my room when she got to the house. She found things from Ryan – letters he’d written me when he was interstate. Really personal things. She threatened to tell Mum and Dad and made me do all this stuff … She found the garbage bags too. Joel Morland had tipped her off at the gate, struck some kind of deal about Fran. Told him we were up to something dodgy, and she went looking for clues and found the rotten food. She wanted to know how it had happened – if I didn’t tell her, she’d show Ryan’s letters to Mum and Dad and I’d be finished, Soph. They’d send me to a convent boarding school and I’d never see Ryan again. I can’t lose him. I can’t.’
‘They have to let Brody go,’ I said. ‘He’s innocent – he’s not part of any of this and I’ll tell them that. Everything they want to know, I can tell it to them. They have to let him go.’ My hand was in a fist.
‘They know things,’ Nikki said.
‘They think they know things!’ I cried. ‘What are they going to do to us? If they think Brody’s the antichrist, why bring you and me all the way out here? Just to watch them—’ I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t let myself imagine what they were going to do.
‘They’re using you in the ritual,’ said Nikki. ‘I have to give you a pillowcase for it.’
‘And that’s why you’re here?’
‘No,’ said Nikki, finally letting go of my wrist.
There was a loud knock on the door.
‘She’s awake!’ Nikki shouted at the door. She handed me a pillowcase. ‘Keep hold of this,’ she said to me. ‘Coming!’ she shouted.
I watched Nikki reach into an invisible slit in her robe and retrieve a set of brass keys.
‘You said it was locked!’ I cried.
‘Yes,’ she said, standing up. ‘I was the one who locked it.’
It wasn’t a dressing-gown she was wearing. It was a black robe. Like a mad monk’s.
There was another knock at the door. ‘Coming!’ Nikki called again. I was paralysed with shock. Nikki walked over and started to unlock the door. As the sleeve of her robe slid back to her elbow, I saw what she’d been hiding under the long-sleeved T-shirts she’d been wearing to school.
Her arms were covered in scabs, some of which were broken and bleeding. The scabs weren’t scratches, or wounds from an accident.
They were symbols.
A sun sign. A burning cross. Things I didn’t recognise. An Eye of Providence.
75
My throat was throbbing. I was so heavy with betrayal my arms couldn’t move, I couldn’t lift myself from the bed. At least Nikki had sold us out for Ryan – Joel Morland had betrayed me for a bracelet.
There were two men in black robes on the other side of the doorway. One was older, one was younger. The older one, I realised, was not that old – maybe thirties or early forties, but his hair was clipped close to his scalp and was silv
er. The other guy looked barely more than a teenager. I recognised him from the few seconds in the cave. You’ll be dead before dawn, witch, the boy had said.
He had said it to Brody. Brody, who was in the stables, being prepared for a ritual.
‘Has she got it?’ asked the older one.
‘In her hand,’ said Nikki, looking over her shoulder at me.
‘Good,’ said the older one in a British accent – I guessed he was Marlina’s boyfriend, Elton. ‘Your sister’s already at the tree. Go and join her.’
Nikki nodded, gave me a parting glance the intention of which I could not read, and quickly left the room.
‘Wow, the only thing lower than a goatsucker is the goatsucker’s whore,’ sneered the boy. Something flashed in his hand – the blade of a knife.
‘We burned that rag you were wearing,’ Elton said, coming into the room. Something was in his hand but it didn’t have magic on it. ‘We thought it might … cheapen the experience you’re about to have,’ he said with a sickening smile. He stepped forward again.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I spat.
‘If you don’t want me to touch you, then don’t resist.’ Elton reached towards my hands with a piece of rope. Letting go of the pillowcase, I shoved my hands behind my back and I sat on them.
The sour-faced boy was in the room now. They both stood over me.
‘Give me your hands, please,’ said Elton.
‘Don’t think I won’t hurt you if you disobey,’ said the younger man, holding up his knife. ‘I’ve cut for less.’
My instinct was to wield a fireball at the boy and erase him in its flames. I knew, though, that there were twenty-eight other Finders lurking around the farmhouse – and that, somewhere, they had Brody.
I held out my hands. Elton tied hemp rope around them. It was tight and it burned my skin.
‘Give her the pillowcase, please, Paul,’ said Elton to the younger guy. As Paul shoved the pillowcase into my bound hands, Elton retrieved something else from the folds of his robe, and placed it on my head.
It wasn’t magic, either – in the reflection of the dressing-table mirrors, I saw it was a wooden crown, painted gold.
‘Stand up,’ said Elton. When I didn’t, Paul grabbed the rope around my wrists and yanked me to my feet. Elton pointed towards the mirrors. ‘You should admire yourself now,’ he said. ‘There won’t be a photographer, but it doesn’t mean you can’t keep some memories.’
‘What’s this for?’ I asked, shaking the pillowcase.
‘Presents,’ said Paul.
‘I don’t want anything from you,’ I said, glaring at his fat lips, his adolescent cheeks.
‘Of course you do,’ said Elton, taking a grip of the rope around my wrists and marching me towards the door. ‘Everyone gets presents on their wedding day.’ He smiled in a mockery of kindness. ‘Even whores.’
76
I was numb as Elton dragged me out of the room. Paul stood behind me and I could feel the presence of his knife close to my back. ‘We don’t need you,’ Paul said in my ear as we walked towards the corridor. ‘You’re just for decoration. If I have to kill you, you’ll be replaced like that.’
As we left the room, Elton collected something that had been standing against the doorframe. It was a wooden parasol, without a decoration. I recognised the smell of the parasol’s wood immediately as he opened it and held it over my head. ‘You make a lovely bride,’ he said.
‘Who am I marrying?’ I said, my stomach turning with disgust.
‘Our guest, of course,’ said Elton. ‘Your friend, the Great Bear. He will be banished back to the Underworld with a purified soul, and only through holy marriage will you find redemption from God for your disgusting sin in the cave.’ He shuddered, deliberately.
Elton stopped in the hallway and knocked on a bedroom door. The door swung open on a man in a black robe. He had a bleeding scar above his eye, and curly blond hair.
Jeules.
He held out a small gift-wrapped parcel. ‘Congratulations,’ he said to me with his habitual sneer, dropping the parcel inside my pillowcase.
‘What happened to your face?’ I asked, seeing a rivulet of blood curl out from the fresh scab on his eyebrow and wind its way down his cheek.
‘You can ask your bridegroom,’ he said.
For the first time since I’d been snatched from the cave, I actually smiled.
Jeules stood in his doorway and watched us pass, then I heard him shut his door and join the procession behind us.
We went to the next door and repeated the process. From door to door, we would stop, a Finder in a robe would drop a wrapped present into the pillowcase and then join the growing procession. When we’d done this four or five times, I heard the people in the line making crying noises, as though in mourning.
‘Why are we doing this?’ I barked at Elton as we walked.
‘We’re respecting tradition,’ he said.
‘A tradition of dressing up girls to kill them?’
‘My parasol protects you from harm, bride,’ he said. I almost coughed. ‘The presents you will show to the bear to comfort him as he starts on his passage from this world to Damnation.’ We passed another door. ‘Our friends are weeping so the bear knows how much we appreciate the sacrifice to come.’
‘And what’s that sacrifice? Me?’ I said. ‘Is that what I’m kitted out like this for? You’re going to strap me on an altar and Paulie can stick his knife in?’
Elton just smiled. I imagined an altar, and me tied to it. If I could see Brody from the slab, I’d force my Will to emit a cloud of fire and burn our tormentors. I was angry enough, I thought, to make that happen – but I had to keep my magical impulses in check, until then.
We turned a corner into a hallway that ended in a door. There were twelve of them now – ten behind me and Paul and Elton at the front. The entire procession was keening, tearing at their hair with sarcastic smiles. The sound of their fake tears burned into my soul. They were leading me to my death – and they were laughing at me.
Elton opened the doorway and dragged me outside over a cement doorstep. It was cold, and the chill ripped at the skin of my bare arms. A garden light that hung from the wall of the building was a surreal reminder of the world from which these people were leading me – the sensible world of garden centres and home improvement, of family barbecues and patio decoration. The world that so many people from Gretchen’s party would wake up in tomorrow and which, I now believed, I might never see again.
We walked down a brick path, through a garden flooded in darkness. The wailing of the procession rang in my ears and I tried to restrain the bear within from revealing where their real enemy was hiding.
I saw, in the black distance, a group of robed figures moving amongst flaming sticks planted in the ground within the trees. I couldn’t see Brody, and I couldn’t manage a headcount from where I was, either. It was too risky to hurl magic at them if a single one was out of sight – while they thought Brody was the witch, and not me, I didn’t want to waste any advantage of surprise. Any magic would be dangerous until I could make sure Brody was out of harm and all the others were within proximity of it.
We walked towards the gathering, through the end of the garden and towards a small pine forest that nestled beyond a lip of hill. We trudged up the slope towards the trees. Every step on the cold earth was excruciating on my naked feet. The lights from the torches flickered.
The wailing behind me grew as the procession neared the trees. As we came closer, a shimmer of bleach-blonde hair revealed Nikki was amongst the group, but with all the hoods and the dark robes, I couldn’t work out which one was Marlina. Narrowing my eyes, I counted another twelve, maybe thirteen, black-robed Finders moving around in and out of the dark trees. That meant at least six were out of sight. Were they in the group, or back at the house? The light was too low to see what was going on around the fire poles – some seemed to be scrabbling on the ground, but what they were doing I couldn’t te
ll. We came closer still – the robed figures ahead of us were lifting the fire poles out of the ground, moving them into the darkness of the trees. I could smell something in the air, something like hot clay, or baked potatoes, or both.
Where was Brody?
Almost all the Finders had disappeared into the trees by the time we were a few metres away from the forest. I could see some of the orange flames on the poles; they lit a dark face here, a sleeve, a flash of hand there. I abandoned attempts to count them, until I could get a clearer view.
I could cause fires. Or start an ice storm. Or summon an electric whirlwind to sting them into retreat – my knowledge of spells to cause harm was, I discovered, acute. When I caught sight of Brody, then it could begin; in the confusion caused by the spells, we’d escape through the dark trees. My Will, fired by anger, would be enough to save us – and anyone who gave chase would encounter the bear. Already I could feel a snarl forming in my mouth.
The last of the gathering was in the woods now. The smell in the air was definitely of vegetables roasting – potatoes, onion and garlic. Our procession shuffled towards the edge of the forest.
That’s when I saw what the Finders had been doing on the ground.
An edge of white. A circle of crystals drawn around the fringe of the forest, its perimeter stretching into the dark shadows, and I was being marched into them. I gasped. My anger was instantly swallowed by horror.
They’d made a circle of salt.
77
For a witch, a salt circle had one way in and no way out.
I stopped moving. ‘No!’ I cried, trying to step away from the salt circle. I threw the bag of presents on the ground. ‘No! I won’t go in there!’ I staggered on my feet, trying to rip the rope from my wrists.
There was laughter that sounded like the chuckling of crows. ‘Don’t you want to marry your boyfriend?’ howled some woman in the procession behind me.
‘You know what they’re like,’ said a man’s voice. ‘True sluts run from the sacrament of marriage. All of the body, not of the spirit.’ I felt arms at my back, pushing me forwards.