“Throw it,” Tom challenged me.
I forced my hands together and pushed them above my head. With all the strength I could muster, I imagined hurling the bale of straw across the field. It followed my command and crashed into trees, shattering into a mess.
I looked at my hands throbbing with energy. Tom gently cradled them in his.
“Cat, you have learnt more than any normal person can bear in a lifetime. You are strong. You are magnificent. I know you can do it. We will go to the party and convince them you are Violet. We will find that book of shadows, decode the necklace and free Violet. We will do everything in our power to find out who is behind the plan stop it.”
I was determined. Violet and Tom were right; I was not the stray Cat anymore. I had what I desperately desired these past two years: an identity. I had spent the years desperate to disappear, rejecting life. But now that I was faced with death, I was going to fight with every bit of strength and magic I could harness to escape it. I had no idea who or what I was facing, but there is no way on this earth I was giving in to it. I may be an adult size newborn, I thought, but I am not going down without a fight.
I was surging with energy, and I possessed an alien feeling of confidence. I was no longer afraid. I left Tom and headed back to Hunter’s Moon.
I pounded up the stairs and closed my bedroom door. Nervously, I looked at my hands. I imagined the storm. It grew in my palms. I encapsulated it. I could raise it, shape it as I wanted. I closed my hands, and it disappeared. I repeated the action and threw it like a ball towards the open window. It rattled the curtains and powered through the trees, dispersing and expanding before it disappeared. I could do it. I could make a hurricane with my hands. “I am a witch!” I laughed.
“OK, let’s raise a storm,” I said to the dress hanging boldly on the wardrobe door. I played some music. I dressed, brushed my hair until it shone and curled it loosely. I painted my lips red, coated my lashes liberally with mascara and slipped my feet into the gravity-defying shoes. I wobbled for a moment, determined not to let a pair of high heels beat me. High heels were the smallest of battles I was about to endure. One I didn’t need to fight actually, so I kicked them off and sunk my feet into my DM boots. I messed up my hair and threw my shoulders back and began my war march out of the front door and down the lane.
I wondered how I was going to convince a coven of extraordinary witches I was Violet. I needed to infiltrate their network and spy on their plans. What could they be doing that was so bad? They all seemed like friendly people.
CHAPTER 16
I reached the barn. The tumbledown stone building was transformed. Fire rippled from braziers and torches marking the walkway to the party. There were black-and-white-striped tents, pulsating with electronic beats. Amid strobe lighting and dry ice were writhing dancers and burlesque performers, who contorted their tattooed bodies around aerial ribbons and trapeze. A man on stilts strode through the crowds and a gold-painted woman was swallowing fire and breathing it into the night sky as she mingled between eccentrically dressed revellers.
I entered a corridor of canvas, swathed in red, orange and pink silk fabrics, which connected the circus tent with the barn. There were vintage fans blasting metres of ribbons into a frenzied slither, which gusted my hair into a flaming dance of its own. I stood alone, framed by the vibrant colours of the tent. I swallowed my fear, hoping my anxiety remained locked beneath my makeup and dress.
The music and laughter greeted me before the glowing candlelight. The rich smells of mulled cider and Mabon brew seeped through the ancient oak beams. There were garlands of dried sliced apple decorating the eaves and rivers of brightly coloured silks and fairy lights wrapped around them. Hundreds of lanterns twinkled like stars in the towering roof.
Groups of people were huddled joking and laughing as they sat on straw bales. Lovers kissed in dark corners on floor cushions. Throngs of dancers jumped around to a band, which played a raucous and eclectic mix of punky folk with fiddles, guitars and a double bass. A percussionist stamped out a beat on a drum pedal attached to a vintage suitcase.
Local cider and ale was glugged down and chased with dodgy homebrewed spirits. Tables heaped with food were decorated with garlands and Kilner jars spilling with Michaelmas daisies, wheat, blackberry, elderberries and rosehips. Piles of apples tumbled from baskets. There were branches of trees decorating the eaves of the ancient barn with golden, red and brown leaves with words scrawled on them in gold ink.
Joab and Tom were engrossed in conversation across the barn. They turned and glanced in my direction. They stopped talking, and their jaws simultaneously dropped as their eyes met mine.
Suddenly, two girls I recognised as Juniper and Harriet hurtled into me.
“You look amazing,” Juniper whispered.
She grabbed my hands and threw me into the mass of bodies on the dance floor. A moment of panic swept through me before I bounced from one sweaty body to the other in time to the music.
We raised our hands in the air euphorically as we span round in giddy excitement, song after song. Girls were stomping on tables. Boys stripped to the waist grabbed girls, lifted them and spun them, making them shriek. Legs clad in black-and-white-striped tights kicked wildly. I ducked as a Doc Martin boot whistled past my face. A couple of guys—one wearing a bowler hat, with pheasant feathers and daisies shoved in the brim, the other in a waistcoat, skinny jeans and a striped T-shirt—jumped on the stage, did some crazed moves and then jumped into the crowd.
I danced until my feet burned. The frantic pace of the music slowed, and the crowd dispersed, leaving couples wrapped in each other’s swaying to the guitar.
The drums echoed my heartbeat, and a girl’s husky voice sang tales of love. I turned to see Tom. He emptied the dregs of his drink and swept me into his arms for a dance. I giggled at the unexpected move but fell comfortably into his embrace.
“May I be so bold as to ask you to dance,” he said, smiling warmly.
We danced like we had danced together a million times before.
“Shall we go for a walk? It’s hot in here, and we need to make a plan.”
He took my hand, and we headed out of the back door of the barn and strolled up the hill. We reached the top, and the music carried on the light autumnal breeze. The music slowed, and he slowly spun me and pulled me close to him. Despite my impending doom, I felt warm and safe as I inhaled his earthy smell of woods, smoke and brambles.
“It’s weird,” I said to him, turning my gaze to his eyes. “I do feel like I know you well. Like we are meant to be?” I flushed red.
“We are,” he said confidently.
His eyes smiled before the corners of his mouth curled into a broad grin. He moved towards me as if he meant to kiss me. I accidentally stepped back. He looked a little hurt but quickly composed himself.
“I was thinking…Joab obviously likes you. You have to get some answers from him, without him suspecting too much. Has he given you any clues about the book or what they plan to do?”
I racked my brain. “If there is any clue, it will be on his phone. Annie and Joab message each other lots. If Joab cared about me, then perhaps he might tell me where it is, but if he is caught up in something big, he may not trust me enough to tell me yet. I heard him on the phone. He doesn’t believe I am Violet. If he doesn’t believe, how am I going to convince a whole coven?” My train of the thoughts was suddenly interrupted. “Spain,” I said, gasping.
“What?” Tom looked confused.
“That’s where Annie has been. She has been there for weeks looking for a book for the library. That must be it—Granville’s book of shadows. I need to find Joab’s phone. They have been texting each other constantly, and every time a message comes in, Joab goes for a walk, so it must have something to do with it?” I said optimistically, searching Tom’s face for support. “But Annie is in Spain.” I gasped when I remembered the text that said, Found it. “She was in Spain looking for the book. She found it. I s
aw a text, so is coming home. Could she be here already? I need to get Joab’s phone. If she’s already back, there’s a chance the book is too. You need to get back to the house and search for that book. I will get the phone. I will convince them all I am Violet; they can do the initiation stuff, then I will meet you back at the house. We’ll decipher the code, do the spell and get Violet out. We can then figure out how to stop them doing the Cone of Power thing, then everything will be fine.”
Tom smiled. “Yeah, you make it sound easy, but your life is at stake here. I should be with you.”
“We need that book. We need to think about how you can slip out without being noticed.”
“That bit is easy. I will pick a fight.”
We headed back to the party, which had turned into a sweaty, pumping, tangled mass of flesh jumping to the music. We squeezed past the dancers to the drinks table and poured ourselves some more cider. Tom grabbed an apple from the basket.
“Apple?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “I suppose. What is with all the apples?”
“Sign of the craft,” he said, cutting through one. “Look. The five-pointed star. Also, apples are a symbol of the fertility of the land.”
“I thought this party was a small gathering.” I laughed as a crowd of punk-fairy moshers jumped into me.
Tom smiled. “I guess that was Joab trying to get you to come. It’s more of a festival. Pretty much every witch under thirty-five gathers here to celebrate Mabon. It is the ‘cool place to be’ if you read the gossip. You could say this is Glastonbury for witches. Everyone that lives in the village is connected in some way to the original New Forest Coven, so those that aren’t the party types tend to go away for the weekend. The Mabon rituals are a guise for everyone getting together and having a party. We believe you only have one life, and if you waste it by not living it to the maximum, that’s blasphemous.”
Tom seemed back to his earthy self and continued his lecture. “Mabon is about celebrating the bounty of nature, but it is also a time for freeing prisoners, metaphorically usually, but we have to figure out how to release Violet in around seven hours.” Tom reached and plucked a couple of the leaves from the branches attached to the beams. “Look.” He pointed to the gold writing on a leaf. “People write on them things they need to release from their conscious to begin the year afresh. This one says ‘to repay the £20 debt I owe my sister.’ Just before dawn, the ritual will take place to release the ‘prisoners.’” He plucked a leaf from the basket. “You write your wish on the leaf and then at dawn, we burn it, sending the ashes of the wish to the goddess, and she will decide whether to grant it.”
I grabbed the leaf and the elegant gold pen and scrawled my wish—Release Violet. Then I clipped it on the branch.
I glanced around the room for Joab. I wondered where he was. I had not seen him or spoken to him since I entered the barn.
“I have to find Joab. C’mon.”
I powered through the party and slammed squarely into Joab. His face looked thunderous as he stared icily at Tom.
“You two looked cosy. Where have you been?”
Tom shrugged innocently. “A walk. It’s hot in here.” Tom’s hand gently touched my upper back and moved slowly down towards my bum. I gasped in surprise. He leant towards me and pushed a little hair away from my mouth.
I glanced between Joab and Tom aware of the tension. Joab was seething, but I saw an opportunity. “Joab, it was nothing. I couldn’t find you. Tom was just keeping me company. Will you dance with me now?”
Joab relaxed a little and glanced triumphantly at Tom. Tom stepped towards Joab, gave him a shove and then squared up to him. Now that I had Violet’s power, the enchantment she put on me to protect me no longer worked. She couldn’t electrocute me when I touched Joab.
Joab moved closer to Tom. “You know what? This time Tom, I won. Now piss off and keep your hands off my girl.”
I winced, resisting the urge to shout that I was no one’s girl. Tom raised a fist to punch him when some bouncers appeared and pulled him off Joab. Tom shouted something at Joab as he was escorted out of the party. Tom glanced at me with a slight smile and left to find the book. Joab gently took my hand, and we moved to the dance floor.
“I am sorry. Tom and I don’t get on.”
I turned around, plastering my face with fake admiration for Joab who appeared to stand taller for a moment. “I can see that.”
Joab pulled me close to him. “I am sorry. That was stupid. I was jealous. You look so beautiful. When I saw you as you entered the barn, you looked breathtaking.”
I allowed Joab to pull me closer to him. I felt his heartbeat quicken. My fingers searched suggestively but purposefully as I looked for his phone. I found his back pocket. It wasn’t there. “Joab, can we go outside? Something has happened to me.”
He ushered me out with his hand resting on the small of my back. It seemed a little like a gesture of ownership. Having rediscovered myself, I felt a bit uncomfortable with it. Now was not a good time to rock the boat, so I went along with it. I strolled to the edge of a copse of trees away from the music and the crowd of people. His hand grazed mine then he took my fingers and lightly kissed them before gently pushing me against a tree. His eyes darkened, and he moved closer to me.
“Joab, I have to tell you something. In the library, after you found me, something happened to me. I know who I am. My memory came back to me…” I took a deep breath. If I was going to pass myself off as Violet, I had to be her, talk like her, act like her. Get a grip. I have her power now, and we look exactly alike. I can do this, I thought to myself.
“Joab…darling, I am back.” I slid my hands from his hard stomach to his chest and slipped his phone out of his inside jacket pocket, then deftly slid my hands down his back. I let the phone drop onto the mossy grass below and pushed it towards my bag, which toppled onto its side with its contents spilling out. I moved my hands around his warm body. I felt him shiver. I leant closer while I gripped his collar and slipped around him and pushed him against the tree, switching our positions. I moved my lips towards his ear. “The dreary girl, Cat, has gone.”
The power I felt over Joab was exhilarating. I wasn’t in awe of him anymore. I was in control. I suddenly found playing the part of Violet easy…fun. His heartbeat increased. I whispered, “Watch.” I stepped back. I allowed my hands to open in front of me and imagined a storm of whirling wind between my palms. I could feel a cold breeze grow into a gust, pushing my hands further apart. The gust became a gale blasting my hair away from my face then hurling itself into the leaves above me in the trees. The air seemed to twist in a whirlwind. Straw bales rolled away. Leaves blasted from branches. Joab’s face looked euphoric. My concentration was broken by the sound of a gentle clap. A striking woman with shining brunette hair and skin as pale as a statue approached with measured steps. Her clever blue eyes sparkled with amusement. I knew the woman. It was Annie, but different. Where had the lovely homely woman gone that made sublime cake? This vision was a scary contrast.
“Cat, I see you have found yourself, or should I say, Violet. Welcome back. You turned up like a frightened clumsy little mouse, and I thought I had made a mistake. I thought the locating spell I cast to find you malfunctioned and spewed up a useless distant, powerless cousin. But seeing you perhaps you are Violet after all.”
She strode towards me and threw her arms around me. I racked my brain. What would Violet say? I smiled my widest grin and responded happily to her embrace. “I hate to disappoint. Hello, Annie, it has been a long time.”
She moved closer. Too close. I could feel the air heat between us and her perfume waft into my lungs. To say I felt uncomfortable by her space invasion was an understatement. The party halted. A group of witches gathered around Annie and circled me, fencing myself and Joab in. I glanced around for an exit. Annie flicked a command with her eyes at Joab. He looked away, refusing to answer. Annie rolled her eyes and fixed her gaze on me.
I felt a str
ange energy course through my body, nausea set in and my head spun. I fought it. I had begun to recognise the feeling of my mind preparing to travel. I had no idea how to control it. I tried in vain to fight it. I could not afford to slip away now. I needed to be in control. The more I fought, the greater the force was pulling my soul out of my skin. Then another vision gripped my consciousness. I staggered back. “I am sorry. It has been a long time since I cast a spell. I feel weak. Let me sit down for a moment.”
The vision came, expelling my consciousness.
CHAPTER 17
1940
Perhaps Thomas is not such as lousy bloke after all, Joe thought. His contacts followed through all right. Then there was a humdinger of an introduction from Violet to no less than royalty!
Joe straightened his tie, slicked down his hair and waited on the hard wooden chair lined up against the gray wall in the corridor at the Air Force recruitment office. Violet had dropped him off on her motorbike on the way to the airbase. He could still feel the tingle of her kiss on his cheek. Joe patiently waited as hopeful pilot after hopeful pilot entered the double doors to undergo the scrutiny of an Air Force doctor.
He had already done the aptitude test and was pleasantly surprised to find it was easy. He rubbed his head. It was pounding. He was on duty a few days ago at the docks when his team discovered an unexploded bomb. They called the GIs in to disarm it. Before they could get there, a stupid kid who lived on Joe’s road thought it would be a laugh to throw stones at it. Joe got there in time and saved him. They got away before it exploded. A piece of shrapnel hit Joe on the head, and his ears hadn’t stopped ringing since.
The Haunting of Violet Gray Page 14