Witch (23 page)

‘But this is for justice!' I wailed.

‘Vania, no. And don't take this into your own hands – it will only backfire.'

I slammed my mug down and stood up. The angry feeling was starting to churn deep in my stomach like a big black snake uncoiling.

‘What's the point of being able to do spells if you're never allowed to use them?'

‘Vania, please calm down!' Brenda said in a firm voice.

‘No, I won't calm down! If no one is going to help me, I'm going to do this myself!'

I stormed out of the cafe, back into the night. The snake was now writhing wildly inside me, and I knew what I had to do.

There was a lighter tinge to the sky tonight: a huge full moon floated in the sky. It was yellow like spoiled butter and looked ominous.

‘Perfect. Time to do some serious magic,' I muttered under my breath.

Fourteen

I climbed through my bedroom window. Once inside I could hear my father on the phone. He was talking to another policeman about finding me. He'd probably called my friends, too. I needed to officially come home to stop them looking for me; then I could get what I needed and sneak out again. I slid back out through the window, and moments later I was knocking on the front door.

My mother opened it. ‘Vania, I was so worried! Your father was about to go in to work!'

‘I'm sorry, Mum, I know I overreacted. I went over to Bryce's place.'

‘We called his parents. They said you weren't there.'

‘I asked him not to tell them.'

My father appeared and promptly clipped me over the ear with his palm. I put my hand to my throbbing head.

‘You're grounded, missy.'

The snake in my stomach twisted in fury, and I wanted to strike out and hit him right back, but I knew I had to play it smarter than that. ‘I'm sorry for running off, Dad.'

‘Get to your room.'

I slunk past both of them.

In my room, I got into bed and turned out the light. A few minutes later my mother appeared, silhouetted in the doorway.

‘Vania, we need to talk, but it's too late now. Try to have a good sleep. Things will be clearer in the morning, I promise.'

‘Okay, Mum,' I said in as normal a tone as I could manage.

About ten minutes later they switched off the light in their bedroom.

I slipped out of my bed and took off my red jumper. Scrunched in the corner of the room was a black one; it badly needed a wash, but I didn't care. I slipped it over my head. Now all I needed to complete my stealth uniform was a beanie to cover my glowing blonde hair. I scraped open the top drawer of my dresser, coughing to cover the grinding sound it made. I grabbed a black beanie with a silver skull and wings stitched on the side, turned it inside out and put it on, tucking my hair up under it.

I switched on my torch and carefully pried open the loose floorboard under the rug. From the space I pulled out a slim book with a black cover:
A Witch's Cures and Curses
. I knew what I was looking for, a binding spell – one that could stop a murderer and force him to confess his deeds. I found what I needed on page 33 and was relieved to see that I had all the key ingredients to hand.

Next I removed the black velvet drawstring bag from beneath the floorboard, which I'd been using to store a bunch of magical accoutrements I'd been accumulating. I set aside the rose quartz for love and the dried daisy petals for friendship, and instead assembled the more ominous items required by the spell: the ancient witch's herb, hemlock; salt, extracted from the Dead Sea; and a bullet – mainly because it was made of lead, one of the densest substances on the chemical scale – which meant it had powerful binding properties.

Within minutes I was silently sliding out of my bedroom window again.

The moon was now blazing like the sun in the sky, its light casting a shadow under me. I ran through the spell checklist in my head. I needed to hypnotise Mr Barrow by waving the hemlock in an anticlockwise direction over his head. I had no idea how I was going to get close enough to him to achieve this, but I would cross that bridge when I came to it. And then when he was in the trance I had to sprinkle the salt around him in a circle with no gaps, to bind him from moving and getting away. And then I had to hold the bullet in my right hand and state the incantation quickly to capture his thoughts and force his confession:

Thou art beholden to my will
And answerable to my decree
Bound in limb but not in tongue
Thou shall render
Thy confession.

In twenty minutes I was in front of the house on Queen's Cross Road. I started up the driveway, but stopped halfway as the stupidity of what I was about to do hit me. This was insanity!

Then the angry snake twisted in my gut and up my spine, forcing my head back. I looked up to the full moon. Its blazing light felt like it was burning a hole in my forehead when, from the glare, three familiar shapes appeared. The voices of the witches swirled in my ears.

‘Calmly, quietly, little one
The spell you cast has begun
To the right and to the left
Your destiny you must accept
And now with no procrastination
Second shall be your destination.'

And then they were gone. I took a deep breath and continued edging up the driveway. Even I wasn't stupid enough to go waltzing in the front door, so I made my way
down the side of the house. I saw two doors.

‘Second shall be your destination.'
The witches were telling me to open the second door.

There was a small window set high up the wall. I stretched up as far as I could on my tiptoes to peek in and saw that the door led into a small laundry, and through that was a room in which I could see a TV screen flickering.

I tried the handle. It creaked a little, and my breath caught in my throat like a fish hook. But it continued to turn, and with a light push I was able to open the door.

I hesitated, but the snake in my belly hissed, ‘
Proceed!
'

I crept to the edge of the hall. I could see the back of Mr Barrow's head. He was watching the television. My mind raced. If I could sneak up behind him and wave the hemlock over his head this could work.

I took a couple of steps along the hall towards the lounge room and then I heard it.

Snoring.

Mr Barrow was asleep! A rush of adrenalin went through me.

I opened up the neck of my spell bag, withdrew the sticks of hemlock, and snuck up behind his chair.

The snoring continued.

I waved the herb over his head. He spluttered and made a choking noise, and for one terrifying moment I thought he would wake up. But then the snoring started up again.

I crawled on my hands and knees around his chair, sprinkling the salt. I was shaking so hard I thought the sound of my chattering teeth would wake him. But then it was done.

Now all I had to do was stand up, create a protective sphere of light around myself, focus my magic and state the incantation. He would wake up, find himself unable to move and then confess. Nothing to it.

I stood in front of him and raised my arms, tracing them in a big circle like a windmill as I saw blue light start to form around me in a bubble. I closed my eyes and focused on the light. I remained very still, sensing the light growing brighter around me.

Until I heard his voice.

‘You've forgotten something,' he said.

My eyes flew open. The light I was seeing behind my closed lids was not my protective shield – it was a table lamp that he had switched on. This was definitely not part of the plan.

And he was holding a gun and pointing it straight at me.

I started to say the incantation as quickly as I could. ‘
Thou art beholden to my will, and answerable to my
decree . . .

' ‘Be silent!' he said, waving the gun at me.

I finished the incantation in my head, using every ounce of magical will I had. I stared at him defiantly, though my mouth had gone so dry I felt like I was choking.

‘Vania Thorn, how wonderful to see you here,' he said. ‘Nice try with your clumsy spell-casting attempt, but you did forget something.'

What did he know about my spell-casting?

‘The bullet? Aren't you meant to be holding that so that I am bound to your will?' he said smugly.

Too late I remembered the lump of lead in my spell bag. I
had
forgotten it. But how did he know?

‘The hemlock, the salt . . . looks like you're trying to cast a binding confession spell.'

He flicked the gun and I felt as if something else had control of my feet. I took two steps backwards. The back of my knees hit a chair and I fell into it.

‘I've been waiting fifteen years for this.' He smiled menacingly.

I tried to speak, but it was as if my lips were sewn shut.

‘Now you know what it's like to be on the receiving end of a spell. Not much fun, is it?' he said.

I couldn't move. It felt like my whole body had been encased in cement and sunk into a deep lake.

Mr Barrow walked up to me and peered into my eyes.

‘Yes, you have your mother's eyes,' he said. ‘Do yours change colour like hers?'

What was he talking about? How did he know my mother? I'd never seen her eyes change colour!

Mr Barrow backed away to sit on a chair on the opposite side of the room. He rested the gun in his lap.

‘Well, here is your confession, Vania Thorn. I killed the woman of Queen's Cross. She was a witch. A real witch, not like the people who pretend to be witches nowadays. I am a member of an ancient order of righteous crusaders, the Anti-Witches League.'

I couldn't move my body, but the neurons in my brain were firing a million miles a minute trying to digest what he was saying.

‘I was born and bred to kill her,' he continued. ‘She was the last pure-blood witch in the world. She carried the seed of magic from which future generations would be born, and my league could not allow this aberration to continue. It has been necessary over the centuries, however, for members of the league to ourselves learn something of magic to thwart our quarry, hence the rather effective binding spell I have cast on you just now.'

I tried to move again, but I still felt as if I were sunk in a pool of lead.

‘I watched her for many weeks, waiting for the right time,' Mr Barrow continued. ‘True witches don't die easily – they must be killed while they are committing an act of magic and on a full moon. My task was difficult.'

He put his hand to his forehead, sighing as if he felt sorry for himself. I wanted to kick him, and would have if I could have moved at all. His binding spell was working on me, but my incomplete binding confession spell was also clearly working on him as he continued to pour out information.

‘But I was patient, and I was finally able to drug her with a little untraceable chemical concoction I cooked up.' He laughed as if he had just said the funniest thing in the world.

I stared at him, filled with horror, as he continued gloating.

‘It was easy to destroy the evidence of my presence. I started the fire, and I was standing on the street with the neighbours when the firemen showed up.' He picked up the gun in his lap, stroking the barrel slowly.

‘I was enjoying the show until I saw them bring the baby out.' He pointed the gun at me again.

‘Yes, there was a child. Her seed had spread. I don't know how this had escaped me.' His tone was becoming angrier, and the hand that wasn't holding the gun started thumping repeatedly against his leg.

Growing panic rose inside me, and I could tell my fear was starting to shake the foundations of his binding spell. My right foot moved an inch across the floor.

‘Once the baby was taken away there was nothing I could do but wait until the witch-child turned sixteen and came into her full powers and then catch her in an act of magic. I was prepared to do this, of course, but then there was one very annoying hitch.' His teeth bared in a grimace as he spat out the words. ‘She was moved!'

I shook my head a tiny bit as the binding spell slowly loosened further.

‘This was most annoying, as a witch can only be killed on the soil upon which she was born. And so I was forced to set into motion a rather clever plan, if I do say so myself.'

I wanted to throw up. Something about what he was saying was resonating inside me like a memory stirred up from long ago.

‘I got a job at the local high school, and then not long after that I killed the head of the Summerland Police Department. And home the witch-child came!'

He stood up and took a step forward, the gun now pointed directly at my chest. ‘I want to thank you for making this easy for me. I had to spy on your mother for months to catch her in an act of magic on a full moon. But tonight you have delivered yourself to me on a silver platter.'

My body started to shake.

‘Vania Thorn, you are the daughter of the last witch, and tonight is your last full moon!'