Witch Fire (2 page)

‘Reverse the witchwork,’ Agent Austin replied.

He thought for a moment, then spat on the back of his left hand. He rubbed it in an anticlockwise motion around the pebble which, sure enough, dropped free.

‘Simple, right?’ said Austin. ‘But it’s still a very powerful bond you created there. By putting your fae into that stone, and summoning it with your Seventh Sense, it became a part of you: your body and soul and fae.’

‘So how does this work for sky-leaping?’ Glory asked impatiently.

‘Summon the pebble again,’ Agent Austin said to Lucas, ‘and I’ll show you.’

He did as he was told, and he and Glory followed the instructor out of the office and into the hangar. The space where planes had once been stored was now a kind of oversized adventure playground, filled with ramps, blocks, walls and runways, all of differing materials and heights. Like all WICA facilities, it was monitored by CCTV and wired for sound. The eyes and ears of the Inquisition were never far away.

‘
Throw the lodestone over there.’ Agent Austin pointed to one of the few flat spaces.

‘I can’t. Not without reversing the witchwork.’ The pebble was once more stuck to Lucas’s palm as if it had grown there.

‘
That’s because you’re only using your physical strength. Do it with the fae. Push the stone out of you; expel it.’

Lucas closed his eyes. He gathered his Seventh Sense, feeling it seethe inside his head, spark through his blood and his bone. His fingers gripped the stone and he raised his arm.
Go
, he said silently in his head.
Out
. As he swung his arm up and over, the fae rushed outwards and pushed, rather than threw, the pebble away. It shot forwards with unnatural force.

Lucas let himself relax. But the moment he did so, he was yanked forward too, inexorably pulled towards where the pebble had fallen. It was not a dignified motion. He stumbled and jerked, right arm out-thrust, and before he quite knew what had happened, was kneeling on the concrete floor, palm pressed on the lodestone. Glory sniggered.

‘OK, here’s how it works,’ Agent Austin said. ‘You loaded the stone with fae to summon it, and it stuck fast because the lesser amount of fae in the pebble was attracted to the greater fae in you. The balance of fae was then reversed when you used it to throw the stone away. And so you were immediately drawn to the lodestone with the same force as it was originally drawn to you.’

‘Cool,’ said Glory.

Lucas said nothing. He was feeling a little wobbly.

Agent Austin took another pebble out of her pocket, and summoned it to her. Striding forward, she lobbed the lodestone to the top of one of the free-standing brick walls, about two metres high. A few seconds later, she had sprung up after it. The movement was exaggerated yet graceful, a near-vertical jump. In the blink of an eye, she was crouched on the top of the wall, the pebble fastened to her hand.

‘Can I have a go?’ Glory asked eagerly.

‘
That’s what we’re here for.’ The lodestone clattered to the ground, and Agent Austin swooped down behind it. ‘Let’s take it slowly, though. You can start off on that low ramp over there.’

They spent the rest of the day practising. As Lucas had discovered, the force of fae that drew them to the lodestones wasn’t of much value on flat ground. Its real advantage was in scaling heights and crossing space. Though a sky-leaper could only go as far and high as he or she could throw their lodestone, the force and direction of that throw could be enhanced by visualisation, using the mind’s eye to guide the stone to a suitable landing spot. Once there, it would stay fixed to whatever surface it had fallen on, until the thrower reconnected with it.

There was a lot to coordinate. Lucas particularly struggled with the transition from gravity-restricted running, climbing and throwing to the outlandish jumps and swoops impelled by the lodestone. His stomach lurched unpleasantly the moment he felt the fae’s pull, even though the surge of weightlessness was over almost as soon as it had begun. As a result, while Glory flung herself into space with reckless ease, Lucas’s leaps were always more cautious, his landings more clumsy.

Yet as Lucas watched the sun rise over London, he understood Glory’s reluctance to return to gravity. Up here, it was possible to imagine a world free of surveillance. Up here, there was always an escape route.

‘Come on,’ he said brusquely, because he knew this was an illusion. ‘It’s time we got back. There’s a fire escape over there we can use.’ He began to unzip the blue jacket, and got ready to become an ordinary citizen again.

Glory was still gazing at the horizon. The drab dawn was giving way to a beautiful summer’s morning.
‘
There ain’t nothing I want to go back to. Just a whole lot of procedures and protocols and nag, nag, nag.’

‘I find it frustrating too –’

‘It ain’t the same for you,’ Glory cut in impatiently.
‘
That gang at WICA don’t like me, nor trust me neither. I’m just some stupid coven tart to them.’

Lucas didn’t know what to say to this. WICA’s officers were trained to stay in the background. They moved smoothly through the hushed corridors; their witchwork was quiet and precise, and devoid of flourish. Whereas Glory was all swagger and brashness, with her big sulky mouth and flashing dark eyes, her clashing gold hoops and impractical heels . . . A gangster’s moll, he’d heard one of the senior agents say to a colleague.

He touched the thin grey streak in his hair that witchwork had put in and nothing would take out. It was something he only did when he was ill at ease, or distracted. ‘They’re not used to working with people like us,’ he said. ‘I mean, we’re a lot younger, for a start. And we weren’t recruited through the conventional route.’

‘We ain’t got nothing to prove. If it weren’t for us, Jack Rawdon would be toasted to cinders in the Burning Court, and there wouldn’t even
be
no WICA. So I’m telling you now, I ain’t going to sit back and take their crap for nothing.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean I’m only sticking with this caper ’cause it’s my best chance of tracking down my mum. I can’t trust the covens with it. And WICA have the resources. If I stick with them, maybe I can even do things legit.’

Glory’s mother Edie had disappeared when Glory was three. It was suspected she’d been murdered by her cousin, Charlie Morgan. He and his brothers had transformed the Wednesday Coven into the biggest and most brutal of Britain’s criminal organisations. Because Edie was a powerful rival and witch, Glory believed Charlie had felt sufficiently threatened by her to have her killed.

But then Lucas had broken into the Inquisition’s secret files, and read that Edie Starling had been seen alive five years go. What’s more, she had been on the Inquisition’s payroll. Until she’d been reported as ‘missing in action’, she had been working on something called Operation Swan. One of the officers in charge of her case was Ashton Stearne, Lucas’s father.

Lucas had told Glory that her mother might still be alive, and that she was on the National Witchkind Database. But that was all he had told her. He had not revealed Ashton’s involvement, telling himself that he needed to get the facts straight and was waiting for the right time to ask his father. Yet today wasn’t the first time she had raised the issue, and she was nothing if not determined.

With a sigh, Glory looked down at the pebble in her hand, and then over the cluttered roofs. ‘She’s out there, somewhere,’ she said softly. ‘Waiting for me to find her. If I run fast enough, leap high enough . . .’ She turned to Lucas. ‘You’ll help me, won’t you?’

Chapter 2

After parting from Glory, Lucas went for a walk as fast-paced as it was aimless. He had nowhere he wanted to go. Once, his free time had been filled with activity clubs and house parties, sports matches and socials. As his life had become more complicated, it had also become emptier.

It wasn’t only Lucas’s life that had been turned upside down. His father had resigned from the Office of the Inquisitorial Court on the grounds that he was taking the fall for the collapse of a high-profile witch-trial. The real reason was that anyone with a witch-relative was barred from working in the Inquisition. In the normal course of things, the resignation of the Chief Prosecutor would have been big news. But in the wake of the witch-terrorism conspiracy, the newspapers had other headlines to splash.

Lucas knew his father did not blame him for the end of his inquisitorial career, but he still felt responsible. It was one of the reasons he was glad when WICA’s schedule kept him away from home.

In addition to the guard at the gate, and other standard security measures, all the outside doors of the Stearne residence had iron bells encased over the threshold. They were wired to a central alarm system, ready to give warning if a witch hexing a bane approached. Witches were allergic to iron, and the iron in the bells was able to pick up on the fae used in harmful witchwork.

Although Lucas knew, rationally, he wasn’t going to set off any alarms, he wasn’t able to forget he was living in a house designed to withstand witches. Even the family portraits – all those witch-hunting heroes, pillars of society, defenders of the realm – were a reminder of how his place in the world had changed.

He found his stepsister Philomena in the kitchen, painting her nails. She wrinkled her nose at him.

‘Ew. You need a shower. What on earth have you been doing?’

‘I’d tell you,’ he said, getting a carton of juice from the fridge and glugging it down, ‘but then I’d have to kill you.’

‘Ha bloody ha.’ She tossed her hair. Philomena worked hard at many things (getting invited to the right parties, being seen with the right people, wearing the right clothes), but a really excellent head-toss was her greatest skill. With that one gesture, she could express flirtation, amusement, boredom or contempt. This was definitely contempt. ‘I bet all you’re doing at Spook Central is making coffee and filing, anyway.’

The truth was, Philomena felt hard done by. For all her artful head-tossing, her determination and charm, the whole getting-invited-to-the-right-parties-by-the-right-people business had always been easier for Lucas. The scandal of his fae was meant to redress the balance. Yet somehow her insufferable younger stepbrother had turned what should have been the ultimate disgrace to his own advantage. He didn’t go to school. He didn’t have a curfew. He got to be deliberately mysterious about everything he did. This was only more proof, thought Philomena Carrington, that life was monstrously unfair.

‘
The party last night was un-be-lievable, by the way,’ she announced. ‘
Such
a shame you couldn’t be there.’

Lucas concentrated on buttering a mound of toast.

‘Bea Allen asked after you. Quite a lot of people did. They’re all
dying
to know what’s going on. Nobody believes in this mysterious virus you’re supposed to have had. Some people think it’s a nervous breakdown. Others reckon it’s drugs.’

‘I’m guessing you did nothing to put them straight.’

She looked virtuous. ‘I said that you’re working through some personal issues, and it wouldn’t be kind of me to say anything more.’

Lucas had been a witch for about four months. His initial absence from school had been explained away by a serious illness. He was supposed to still be recuperating, but Philomena had a point. It was time for a more sustainable cover story. Since his membership of WICA was secret, there was, in theory, no reason he couldn’t resume his former friendships and occupations at some point. Yet he had no real desire to try. Too much had changed.

‘
The funny thing is,’ Philomena continued, ‘people would be less shocked if you turned into a druggie or nutjob than if you came out as a hag.’

Hag was a dirty word for witches. Lucas reached for another piece of toast. ‘Don’t be vulgar, Philly, dear,’ he said, using his stepmother’s voice.

Another head-toss. ‘Well, I’m sure I can come up with some amusing alternatives. Maybe I should start a rumour that you’ve had a lobotomy. Or a sex-change. I’ll say you’ve asked us to start calling you Lucy.’

‘
Try that, and I’ll hex you.’

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Wouldn’t I? There’s a bane to give a person breath like rotting meat. It’s irreversible too. A lifetime of putrid breath: think about it.’

Philomena’s reaction was extreme. ‘No . . . please . . . don’t hurt me . . .’ She shrank away from him fearfully. Too late, Lucas realised they had an audience. His father was standing in the doorway behind him.

‘My study,’ Ashton said. ‘Now.’ As soon as his back was turned, Philomena smirked in triumph.

‘She knew I was joking,’ Lucas protested, once his father and he were alone. The study too was fae-proofed. The iron shutters over the windows and the iron panel on the door were in place to block witches trying to look in with a scrying bowl.

‘It’s no laughing matter.’ Ashton Stearne’s steely blue stare, legendary in court, was now turned on his son.
‘
Threatening people with witchwork is a criminal offence, and one the Inquisition takes very seriously. What if Philomena makes an official complaint?’