by Kim M Watt
“Hello, Pete,” she said cautiously.
“Alice, you need to get back here quick,” he said. “I’ve called the fire service, and we’re doing what we can with the hoses, but hurry!”
Alice shoved the phone back in her bag without hanging up and broke into a run, ignoring Miriam’s alarmed shout. Her house.
She wasn’t really dressed for running, and it wasn’t something she’d done much of for rather a long time, but she was still jogging when she came around the corner into her lane and saw the smoke. Miriam was struggling along behind her, doing her best to keep up, and Alice didn’t wait. She ran down the lane to her poor, smoking house.
Every neighbour on the street, as far as she could tell, had their garden hoses out. There was only woodland to the right of her property, but her neighbours to the left had hoses running across the garden and coming out the windows, and more were set up in the gardens across the street. There was a chain of buckets going from Pete’s house to her front door, and someone had found her own hose in the back garden and was using that, too. There was a terrible lot of excited shouting going on, and everything seemed desperately disorganised, but – and she dropped out of a jog to a hurried walk – there were no flames. Her front door was smoking, and the lower part of the ivy that climbed to the upstairs windows was a charred ruin, but there was no fire. Not anymore. Either her neighbours had been much more efficient than they appeared, or the bauble had failed to catch. And while she still rather thought that Jasmine’s bauble had been an accident, she was quite certain that this hadn’t been. No more than Miriam’s note. Which meant it might not be the W.I. as a whole who were the targets, but just the two of them. The thought made her feel marginally better.
“Alice!” Pete shouted, tottering up to her. He wasn’t wearing the bathrobe at least, she noted with some relief. “I think we’ve got it under control!” His trousers were drenched, and he dropped his bucket in the street and threw his arms around her. “We saved your house!”
Alice stood there rather uncomfortably and let him hug her, even though his fleece was quite as wet as his trousers, and his head was at a rather inconvenient height on her chest. She figured she could allow him that much, because it seemed that he was right. They had saved her house. Her home.
Alice and Miriam stood by the gate, looking at her front door. They had tried to call off the fire brigade, but the engine had been almost there already, so the firemen had insisted on coming. They had poked around and examined the door and asked a few questions, then declared her lucky. She rather agreed. It had been too cold and damp for the flames to catch, so other than the damaged ivy all she had was some bubbled paint on the window frames and a scorched front door with the paint peeling off it.
The fire captain, a stocky woman with dark hair, had said it looked like vandalism and that Alice should call the police. Alice had assured them she would do just that, and had made them all tea before packing them off again. Now the street was empty once more, the hoses rolled away and neighbours gone home. She’d even managed to get rid of Pete, although it hadn’t been easy. He’d kept insisting that she needed companionship and affection after such a shock, and she was rather regretting letting him hug her. Apparently he was not the sort of man to miss the chance to capitalise on disaster.
“Are you sure you won’t come back to mine?” Miriam asked, clutching her dented baking tray to her chest. Alice wondered what she was going to do with it.
“No,” she said. “I’d rather stay here. And the hall needs mopping. Quite a bit of water got in.”
“Do you want me to help you?”
“No, Miriam. You go home. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not sure I will be,” Miriam said, and Alice sighed. She didn’t want company right now. In fact, at this very moment, she couldn’t stand it.
“Nonsense, Miriam. You’ll be absolutely fine. They’ve delivered their little messages, and that’s all they wanted to do. We’ll lie low for the rest of the day, let them think they’ve scared us.”
“They have scared me.”
Alice smiled, and it wasn’t the friendly sort of smile she used as the chair of the Women’s Institute. It was much older, and much harder, and Miriam didn’t smile back. “There’s nothing wrong with a little scare, Miriam. It reminds us we’re still breathing. Off you go home now. I’ll call you later.” And she marched back inside, pausing to pull the mat out and lay it on the steps to dry. She locked the door behind her without checking if Miriam had gone or not, and walked from window to window, making sure that they were firmly shut. Only when she was certain that the house was secure did she retreat into the room that had once been a dining room. It was lined with bookshelves that reached all the way to the ceiling, with a fireplace on one wall and a set of rolling stairs waiting in the corner. There were deep chairs and soft cushions and mellow lights, and it was small and warm and quiet and safe. There, in the dim light, she sank into the grip of the chaise longue and finally let her smile fall away, leaving her face feeling vulnerable and unfamiliar. She lifted her hands and examined them, watching faint tremors dancing along her fingers. “Oh, dear,” she said quietly, hearing the way the empty house swallowed the sound. “Oh, this is a right do.”
She stayed there until the tremors had subsided, breathing the rich dusty scent of stacked books and listening to the silence. Her silence. She couldn’t imagine losing this. The very thought of it made her stomach twist with horror and fury. She had worked very hard for this place, both in her career and in the way she’d shaped her life. She had created a haven, a place that was hers and that no one else could touch.
“I’m not having it,” she announced to the empty room, and got up to light a fire in the wood-burner. “It just won’t do at all.”
Not that there was much else she could do today. Just as she had told Miriam, they needed to keep a low profile until they figured out what to do next. All their tracking efforts had failed. The silver Audi’s number plates had been obscured. Pete said there might have been a car like that around earlier, but he was clearly angling for another hug, so she didn’t quite trust him. Besides, he wouldn’t have got the plates either, so even if he was telling the truth it didn’t help them. And no one had seen anything unusual on the street before her door was fire-bombed. Or fire-baubled, most likely by the big-headed, weird-handed occupants of the Audi. Which left the dragons as their only hope for a lead.
She breathed life into the fire and rocked back on her heels, frowning. Where were the dragons? It was strange that they’d gone a whole day without checking in, especially in a time of crisis such as this. Maybe they were waiting at Miriam’s. She picked her phone up from the side table, then stopped. In that case, Miriam would phone her. She needed to slow down. Rushing out into danger was just what the enemy wanted. What they always wanted. Think before you act, Alice, she reminded herself. Be calm. Be quiet. Be watchful. It had seen her through many complicated times in the past, and it wouldn’t fail her now.
She selected a slim book on the lesser-known creatures of English mythology, and settled herself into the chaise longue, pulling a light blanket over her legs. So far she hadn’t found anything at all about the Watch in any of her books, but there was time. There was always time.
It was fully dark outside, the curtains pulled against the early night. The reading lamp cast a pool of soft light over the pages of Alice’s book, and the fire was mumbling to itself contentedly. She had a tea on the side table and was reading about spriggans, small ugly creatures that can turn into giants at will and bring on storms as a distraction while they steal babies. They sounded most unpleasant, but seemed to be limited to Cornwall, which was a relief. She was wondering if there were any similar creatures roaming the Dales when there was a knock at the front door and she looked up, frowning. For a moment she wondered if it could be the dragons, then realised that they would have just slipped out of the woodland into the garden and come to the back door. Their continued absence was
worrying her, although she doubted that any sort of Audi driver would really be any match for dragons.
The knock came again, and she put her book down, picking up the fire poker on her way to the door. Just in case.
She opened the damaged door warily, standing well back, then relaxed and pulled it all the way open. “Miriam? What’s happened? Are you alright?”
Miriam raised a large pot, swathed in tea towels. Her ancient green VW Beetle huddled next to the fence. “I made too much, and I can’t stand to be alone anyway. Every little noise is making me jump out of my skin. Can I come in?”
Alice frowned, not entirely sure she was ready for company yet. Then she looked at Miriam’s pale, anxious face, and thought of the entire night stretching ahead, worrying about dragons and spriggans and exploding baubles, and she stepped back from the door. “Well. If it’ll make you feel better.”
Miriam eyed the poker nervously as she kicked off her boots, and Alice smiled.
“Just a precaution. I’m sure we’re perfectly safe.” But she locked the door firmly and took the poker with her as she led the way into the warmth of the kitchen, the curtains drawn tight against the night.
The pot was brimming with curry, seeping out from under the lid and staining the tea towels, and Miriam popped it on the stove while Alice found some rice and set it to soak. She also found a bottle of red wine in the pantry, and held it up for inspection.
“What do you think?”
Miriam shrugged. “The label’s nice.”
Alice shook her head. “You heathen.” But she opened it and poured them both a generous glass, setting them on the kitchen table and leaving the bottle on the counter. “I’d say we should keep our wits about us, but I don’t imagine there’ll be any more trouble tonight. They’ll be waiting to see if we back off.”
“Are we going to back off?”
Alice pushed both hands back through her hair. “Quite honestly, I don’t know. I’m not sure what else we can do. The dragons haven’t been able to find any scents. Maybe they could get something from your note, but, well – they’re not here. The tracker was discarded, quite deliberately I’m thinking now, and we have nothing else to go on. Nothing at all.”
“Return address on the baubles?” Miriam offered, poking the curry with a spoon as if afraid it might jump out at her. It glooped reassuringly.
“No. The one on eBay is just that Huddersfield P.O. box. And if there was any postmark on the box that the bauble came in, it was impossible to see it, what with all the tape and so on.”
Miriam tasted the curry and frowned, then added some salt from the grinder by the stove. “Almost all the bauble orders are cancelled now. Someone videoed one knocking over their Christmas tree and setting fire to the sofa. It’s all over Facebook.”
Alice nodded. “That was bound to happen. I suppose it’s for the best. We can’t even send anything out at the moment, since our mysterious counterfeiters keep intercepting them, and we certainly don’t want them sending any out.”
“But what about when we can start again? Poor Mortimer put so much effort in! What if this completely destroys his business?”
“I don’t know, Miriam. One thing at a time. First, we need to find the missing drivers and make sure no one finds out about the dragons. That’s what we need to concentrate on. After all that’s sorted out, then we can worry about rebuilding the bauble business.”
Miriam put a lid on the pot and sat down with a sigh. Alice pushed a glass of wine across the table to her, and Miriam stared at it as if reading her fortune in its dark surface. The curry was at a slow simmer, releasing spicy coconut scents into the kitchen, and it should have felt homey, comforting. Instead it felt like a candle against a darkness they had no hope of holding back. Everything was so out of reach. With all their leads gone, they were left relying on the dragons or the police to find the culprits, while they just waited here feeling useless and exposed.
They toasted each other silently, and Alice took a sip of wine with an appreciative nod. It was quite a good bottle, really. Movement at the door to the hall caught her eye, and she frowned. “Then there’s that damn cat.”
“What cat?”
“That one.” She nodded at the scarred tomcat, standing in the doorway examining them. “How did you even get in? You were outside this morning, and I haven’t seen you since.”
The cat tipped them a wink, his tail sweeping low arcs across the floor.
Miriam stared at the cat. “Honestly, Alice, how can you let him stay? After all that talk about the Watch and so on?”
“I don’t seem to have much choice in the matter. He just lets himself in.” Although she probably shouldn’t encourage him with tinned tuna.
The cat’s gaze moved from one woman to the other, considering.
“I don’t like the way he’s looking at me,” Miriam said. “Do you think he was listening to us?”
“Doubtless. Thompson’s a nosy old cat.”
“You’ve named him?”
Alice frowned, and took another sip of wine. “It just seemed to suit him. Gert called him Tom.”
“But what if he did hear? What if he knows about – about our friends, and gets them in trouble?”
“You’ve already mentioned the Watch, Miriam. I imagine he knows we’re onto him.”
The cat glanced sideways and shook his head slightly, giving Alice the impression that he’d be rolling his eyes if he could. He crossed the kitchen to sit back on his hindquarters and put a paw on her knee.
“Hello. This is new, Thompson.”
He dropped back to all fours and walked to the kitchen door, then stopped, looking over his shoulder at them expectantly. When they didn’t move he huffed, and marched back to the table, glaring up at them.
“Alice,” Miriam said nervously.
“What do you think he’s going to do? Shed on us?”
The cat gave Alice a disapproving look and leaped onto the table.
“No! Bad cat! Down you go.” Alice grabbed for him and he slipped away from her, body lithe under her hands. He swiped her wine glass with one soft paw, knocking it over and sending red wine swilling across the table as the glass rolled away, then lunged for Miriam’s. She pushed back from the table with a yelp and knocked her own glass over, and Thompson narrowed his eyes with a distinctly satisfied air. Alice grabbed for him again and he leaped from the table, leaving her holding nothing more than a handful of shed fur.
“You horrid little animal,” she told him, rescuing some unfinished Christmas cards as Miriam rushed to grab a cloth from the sink. “What on earth are you playing at?”
Wine was pooling across the wooden table and dripping onto the floor, and Alice shooed him away before he could cause any more trouble then grabbed the kitchen roll from under the sink. Thompson shook a little wine off one white-socked paw and retreated to the door to sit down, watching the women with interest.
“Honestly, this place is going to stink for days,” Alice complained, bundling the sodden kitchen roll into the bin and going back to spray the table down with cleaner.
“Well, whether or not he’s a Watch cat, he’s a nuisance,” Miriam said, rinsing out the cloth and passing it back to her.
“He is,” Alice agreed, and they both turned to look disapprovingly at the cat.
He wasn’t on the floor.
He was sitting on the kitchen counter, one paw resting against the bottle of wine. He’d already pushed it close enough to the edge that the base was hanging very slightly off. He purred.
“Thompson,” Alice said warningly.
Thompson looked at the door, at the women, then back at the door, his eyes wide and bright and terribly expectant.
“Are we being ordered out of the house by a cat?” Miriam asked, soapy water dripping unnoticed from her hands.
“It appears so,” Alice said. “As if dragons weren’t enough to deal with.”
Thompson waited impatiently while they pulled on their coats and boots, then led
the way out the front door with his tail high, not looking back to see if they were following.
“We could just shut the door and lock him out,” Miriam whispered.
He stopped short in the middle of the path and looked back, his eyes narrowed. Miriam flinched.
“I don’t think doors are much of an issue for him, somehow.” Alice stepped out into the night, pushing Miriam gently ahead of her, and locked the door behind them. “He seems to come and go as he pleases. Anyway, we may as well see what he wants. We’re not doing anything else.”
“We were going to be eating curry and watching terrible Christmas specials.”
“Well. This is a little more exciting, then, isn’t it?”
Thompson stopped by Alice’s car and put his paws on the door, and she fished the keys out of her handbag, then reached over him to open it. He jumped in and sat in the passenger seat.
“And where am I supposed to sit?” Miriam complained.
“He’s only small. Stop complaining and get in.”
Miriam did, apologising to the cat as she squeezed in next to him. He gave her an amused look, but didn’t move to climb onto her lap. Instead, he waited until Alice had started the car then stood with his hind legs on the console between the front seats and rested his front paws on the dashboard, wrinkling his nose at the air rushing out of the vents. Alice turned the fan down and looked at him.