CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
era walked into the living room and did her usual doubleS take at the sight of Clemmie on the sofa, watching TV, stretched out and taking up as much room as humanly possible.Humanly being the key word there. It had been four days since Sera had broken Clemmie’s curse, but the sight of her still took everyone by surprise.
Upon regaining her human body, Clemmie had moved into Matilda’s old room and had refused to come out until she was bathed, was appropriately clothed, and had stopped walking on all fours out of habit. This had involved Sera having to borrow clothes from the Medieval Fair until Professor Walter, roped into coming to the rescue by Luke, could sneak them the paperwork Clemmie needed to reactivate her old bank account. Once that had been sorted out, Clemmie had sallied forth from her room with the air of a corseted conquering hero.
Now, the corseted conquering hero in question twisted around on the sofa to watch Sera check that Theo had finished his homework.
“He’s awitch,” Clemmie pointed out, as if none of them had known this already. “What does he need to know grammar for?”
Theo laughed. Sera didn’t. “If I wanted your advice, I’d ask for it.”
“Well, if you insist on sending him to that woefully conventional school,” Clemmie went on, “I ought to at least give him a proper magical education as well. Posy too.”
Now Sera laughed. “Clemmie, I would entrust them to literally anyone but you.”
“There’s no need to act like I’m a career criminal. My unlawful activities have been limited to a single curse and one act of thievery.”
“Didn’t you also set fire to Albert Grey’s study when you broke into his house?” Theo asked with a grin.
“A single curse, one act of thievery, and an entirely justified incident involving arson,” Clemmie amended. “It doesn’t sound so bad when you put it like that, does it?”
Having established that he had indeed finished his homework, Sera packed Theo off to Alex’s house before Clemmie could put any ideas in his head.
Luke came in, phone in hand, jaw set. “It’s for you.”
Sera took the phone from him, puzzled, and found a pair of unlikely faces looking back at her from the screen.
“Professor Walter,” she said, blinking, “…and Francesca.” It had only been a few days since she’d talked to Francesca, to let her know the restoration spell had worked, so she hadn’t been expecting to speak to her again this soon.
“It’s time,” Verity said without so much as a hello.
“Father’s in Nairobi at the Congress of International Witches,” Francesca explained. Her face was a little paler than usual, but her mouth was set. “He’ll be away for another three days. Professor Walter and I think this is the best opportunity we have to…” Her voice faltered.
“To oust Albert from the Cabinet and eliminate his influence over the other Ministers,” Verity finished.
Across the room, Clemmie sat bolt upright.
“It won’t stop him beingAlbert, of course,” Verity went on in her gruff voice, chewing on the end of a pipe. “On the other hand, nothing will. This, at least, will give the Chancellor and the Cabinet a chance to oversee the Guild without his interference. As you know, as long as he’s in the Cabinet, with more than half the Ministers too afraid to disagree with himand a veto to boot, he will always get his way.”
“Aha,” Clemmie said in a smug undertone. “And so it begins. They need you.”
“We need you,” Francesca said quietly at almost exactly the same time. “He can’t be voted out of the Cabinet so long as that binding magical contract he made them sign is in place. You’re the only one with the power to break it.”
“If you’re agreeable, we’d like you to come up tomorrow, meet with the Cabinet, and break the contract,” Verity added.
Francesca tugged on the perfectly ironed cuffs of her blazer, obviously struggling with plotting against her father behind his back, but her eyes were earnest when she looked up. “Whatever you decide, Sera, you should know you’re no longer in exile.”
Sera hadn’t said a word so far, but now she said, “And Luke?”
“Luke’s exile has been rescinded as well,” Verity said at once. “I already discussed that with the Chancellor.”
Clemmie cleared her throat pointedly.
“What about Clemmie?” Sera asked.
Francesca opened her mouth to say something, but Verity got there first. “To be perfectly frank, Sera, the answer’s yes to whatever it is you want. Just get here. Do you want to
bring Clementine with you? Fine. Do you want to bring the pope? That’s fine too.We’re the ones who needyou.”
This was a little overwhelming. “I think I’ll manage without the pope” was all Sera felt able to say.
She looked at Luke over the top of the phone. His face was entirely expressionless, a far cry from the man she’d woken next to this morning, his blond hair falling boyishly over his forehead, his face open in sleep, his (not tin) heart beating against her.
“Hang on a second,” she said to the screen. She muted the call, put the phone down, and took a step closer to Luke.
“You don’t like this.”
He didn’t deny it. “Not much, no.”
“You were the one who said Albert needed an equal to keep him in check. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Luke sighed. “He won’t be happy. If you do this, it’ll put a target on your back. That’s the part I’m not keen on.”
She put a hand to his face, running her thumb over the line of his jaw. “I have my magic back. He doesn’t frighten me anymore.”
He turned his face into her hand and kissed her palm.
“Then I guess we’re going to the Guild.”
“And bywe, he means me too,” Clemmie said at once.
Sera picked up the phone, unmuted the call, and said, “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. In a way, it was everything she’d wanted all those years ago, the fantasy she’d clung to when she’d first lost her power: the Guild acknowledging her worth, revoking her exile, more or less begging her to come back. A child’s fantasy, undoubtedly, but she wasn’t above feeling a certain satisfaction at hearing the wordswe’re the ones who need you.
It was true, too, that Albert wasn’t the threat to her that he’d been just a few weeks ago. So why did she feel uneasy?
Just a little. In the back of her mind. Like she’d forgotten something.
The next day, she, Luke, and Clemmie drove up to Northumberland, crossing the snowy, craggy breadth of the north of England. They skirted the Bennet ancestral home, bypassed the Bertram-Mogg country house, came within a stone’s throw of Grey Manor, and finally wound their way up the long, twisting drive of the Guild’s estate.
For the first time in fifteen years, Sera stood in the old courtyard beside the statues of Meg of Meldon, Michael Scot, and Mother Shipton, and looked up at the grand, imposing spires and towers of the British Guild of Sorcery. It was a pompous, unwelcoming, and slightly ridiculous world, but it was also the only world young witches had, and it had so much potential. It could be so much better.
“Morning, Meg,” said Clemmie, patting the base of the statue. If she was having the same sort of emotional upheaval that Sera was, she was doing a very good job of hiding it.
“In Reykjavík, the Wise Women have a bust of the witch goddess Freyja in their gardens,” Sera commented.
“In Canada, they have a statue of a bear,” said Clemmie.
Sera was dubious. “You’re making that up!”
“I am not! You’ve obviously never come across the legend of the Witch-Bear of the Rockies.” Clemmie tossed her black waves of hair (which were now enchanted to hide any grey) and jerked her head at the doors. “Shall we?”
Luke didn’t say anything. He just waited patiently for
Sera to decide she was ready.
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
The castle’s huge, lavish entrance hall was thankfully empty when they entered. It was the middle of a weekday, and they were expected, which meant the Cabinet Ministers would be awaiting them upstairs while the young witches would be in their classes and any other adults on the premises would be instructing them, working, or visiting the library.
Portraits of illustrious witches from generations past stared disapprovingly at Sera from the walls as she climbed a long, sweeping flight of stairs, and she marvelled at how alike they all looked: white, aristocratic, and bored.
“This one’s a Bennet,” she said to Clemmie.
Clemmie snorted, looking up at the portrait of a sour woman with a powdered wig. “Dear old Agnes. An ill- tempered bag of bones, if her diaries are anything to go by.
She was my great-great-great-great-grandmother. I think.
I’ve probably got the number of greats wrong.”
Footsteps clattered down a hallway just off the landing above, then stopped abruptly. A man looked down at them incredulously. “Clementine? Is that you?”
“Stephen! Darling!” Clemmie’s voice became a catlike purr, which disturbed Sera greatly. “We used to bang, as you young people like to say,” she whispered in Sera’s ear, before sidling off in the astonished man’s direction and raising her voice again. “Well? This is your cue to declarewhy, Clementine, you haven’t aged a day…”
“Well,” said Luke, a tremor of laughter in his voice, “at least that’s got rid ofher for the moment.”
Upstairs, Francesca and Verity were waiting for them outside the Cabinet meeting room. They’d been pacing the corridor, like they hadn’t dared to believe Sera would actually turn up. Verity had an unlit pipe sticking out of the corner of her mouth and, even more inexplicably, was
wearing riding boots. Francesca was in her best pantsuit, her hair arranged in an elegant, efficient knot, every inch a Chancellor demanding to be taken seriously.
“There’s a hole in your jumper,” Francesca said, slightly despairing. “Right there, under your arm.”
“It’s my comfiest jumper, thank you very much,” Sera said, plucking at the soft, rust-red fabric. When she’d looked into her chest of drawers this morning, trying to decide what to wear, she’d refused, utterlyrefused, to dress up for the Guild.
Sera had been to the Cabinet meeting room a handful of times before, in her role as Albert’s apprentice (or, rather, as the provider of tea), and had found the room to be more or less exactly as she’d expected it: big stone fireplace, shaggy rugs, expensive wood table, wingback armchairs, a lot of tweed, a drinks cabinet stocked with rare vintages, and the persistent smell of cigars.
It hadn’t changed. Francesca strode into the room first and took one of the two empty chairs left, the one at the head of the table, leaving the other one for Sera. You could have heard a pin drop as Sera sat down. She scanned the faces of the Ministers around the table, ten men and one woman, all white, all English, most over the age of fifty, their expressions ranging from a bashful smile (Howard) to uncertainty (Martin, the man who’d been forced to dance at the masquerade) to downright hostility (Bradford Bertram- Mogg. Of course).
Luke and Verity came in too, fortunately, refusing to leave her to the wolves. They stood by the door, where she could see them.
“Right,” Francesca said in her cut-glass voice. “We know why we’re here, so let’s not waste everybody’s time. This is Sera. You will all remember her, of course, though I think a
couple of you were elected to your positions since her exile.
She’s here to break an enchanted contract that the Cabinet, the ruling members of the Guild, signed almost thirty years ago, awarding Albert Grey, the twelfth Minister and currently absent, several privileges.” She took a deep breath, steadying herself, and added, “Once the contract’s broken, we will vote on the matter of expelling Albert Grey from his position on the Cabinet.”
Stirring in his chair, Bradford Bertram-Mogg, who honestly lookedless animated than Sera’s zombie chicken, said, “I really must object—”
“You have objected, Minister Bertram-Mogg,” Francesca interrupted. “Repeatedly. Tediously. You’ll get an opportunity to object again when it’s time to vote.”
“Ahem.” Howard, sitting two chairs to Sera’s left, coughed politely and extended a scroll. “The contract.”
Sera took the scroll, its paper creased but robust, and unfolded it. She read down the page. It was all there, penned neatly in Albert’s handwriting, everything about his permanent position on the Cabinet, his right of first refusal over nominations for the position of Chancellor, his right to expel anyother Minister without reason, his veto, and more.
At the bottom of the paper were the date, Albert’s signature, the eleven other signatures of the Cabinet Ministers who’d been serving at the same time (over half of whom were still here in this room today), and, most importantly, Albert’s enchanted seal.
“Has anyone tried to break the seal before?” Sera asked curiously, running a finger experimentally over the crimson wax imprinted with the Grey crest.
“Professor Walter and I have both tried,” Francesca replied, leaving unsaid that Verity had undoubtedly also used the opportunity to get as many other willing witches as
possible to try breaking the seal too. “We’ve found that my father’s magic is too powerful for any of us to take apart.”
Sera looked at the contract for a long time, her thoughts turning over and over.
“Is something the matter?” someone asked.
She looked up. “If I do this, I’d like you to do something in return.”
Halfway down the table, red-cheeked Lionel Bennet (Clemmie’s uncle, Sera realised) let out a contemptuous bark of laughter. “I told you.” He looked triumphantly around the room. “I told you that we’d be no better off with her than with Albert Grey. At leasthe’s the devil we know.”
“Oh, fuck you, Bennet,” Luke said in his most arctic voice.
The Ministers looked scandalised. Lionel Bennet swivelled around to glower at Luke and opened his mouth to reply, but Sera got there first. She was actually rather glad Lionel Bennet hadn’t been able to help himself. It was a relief to stop having to play nice.
“You’ll noticeI’m not asking you to sign any enchanted contracts, you unmitigated jackass,” she said, ignoring the gasps that followed (and was that a snicker? Howard, probably). “What I’m asking this Cabinet for is a promise.
For you to do the right fucking thing. Because you exiled me for fifteen years, and now that I’m useful again, you want me back, so you know what? No. No, you don’t get favours from me for nothing. Now do you want me to break this seal or not?”
Lionel Bennet stood up. “I won’t stand for this—”
“Sit down, Minister Bennet,” Francesca said firmly. “I’d like to hear what Sera’s asking of us.”
Sera didn’t need to be asked twice. “I want things to be different. I want the Guild to change.” She scowled around the table, lingering on Lionel Bennet, on Bradford Bertram-
Mogg. “I know many of you arevery comfortable with the way things are right now, but you’re kidding yourselves if you think Albert became what he is all by himself. You let him.
You helped him. The Guild’s obsession with theright families and theright bloodlines and theright sort of people is so outdated that you should be embarrassed. It needs to change. Youknow it needs to change.You know.” She stared hard at Francesca, at Howard, at Martin, all of whom could barely meet her eyes. “You sit up here pretending to decide what’s best for everybody, but you’re really just deciding what’s best for you and your families. You’ve let everybody else down,all those young witches who deserve better, and you know it.”
Bradford Bertram-Mogg, predictably, found this unacceptable. “Well! Well, I never! You have some nerve, young lady!”
“Andyou need to repatriate all the looted artefacts you have in your private library,” Sera shot back. She spun around to Lionel Bennet. “You need to put Clemmie back in your fucking family tree, because you don’t just get toerase people when they do stupid things. Andyou…”
She’d turned to the man on her right, but he was only in his twenties and looked frankly terrified of her.
“Well, I don’t know who you are,” she admitted, “and you obviously haven’t been here long, so it doesn’t seem fair to shout at you.” A little calmer, she addressed the rest of the table: “Look, the point is, this thing you’ve got going here, where the same ten families seem to make their way into the Cabinet every single time? It needs to stop. It shouldn’t matter who our families are. It shouldn’t matter what our names are, or what our skin colours are, or who our grandmothers were. By making those things so important for so long, you’ve letgenerations of witches down. You let me
down. You let Luke down. You let Posy down. She’s fucking nine.” Howard dropped his eyes. “You need to do better.
Promise methat and I’ll break this contract.”
“I never wanted to break the contract in the first place—”
“Minister Bertram-Mogg, if you don’t shut up, I will gag you,” Francesca snapped.
“Chancellor, you cannot expect me to tolerate this interloper coming in and trying to tell me what I ought to do withmy artefacts!”
“Interloper,” Sera repeated quietly, and had the satisfaction of seeing almost every face around the table redden guiltily. “I think that’s done a pretty good job of making my point for me, don’t you?”
She sat back, contract on the table, waiting. There was a
long, awkward silence.
“She’s right,” Howard mumbled.
“She is,” Francesca said. She looked Sera in the eye. “I’ll make you that promise. I can’t promise that thereal changes, the big ones, will happen today or tomorrow or even next year, but I swear, Sera, the Guildwill be better.”
There were quiet noises of agreement from around the table. It wasn’t like she’d left them much choice, and she couldn’t hold any of them to their word without turning into another Albert, but it was something. It was a start.
She picked up the contract.
Sera searched the seal, looking for the seams of the enchantment Albert had cast over it, and found avery strong spell. It was what she’d expected, but that didn’t mean she was happy about it. In the grand scheme of dethroning Albert Grey, this was her first test, and she had no idea if she would pass it. What if, after that whole angry speech, after everything, she discovered her powercouldn’t match his after all?
She pushed at the spell on the seal. It held. She pushed harder. It didn’t budge.
Okay. Fine. Firm yet gentle wasn’t going to do it.
Sera called for the stars, and they answered, kicking up a storm of rage and stardust and magic, and
SNAP
The seal broke clean in two.
So did the table.
There was a long, startled silence.
“It was terribly ugly,” Howard finally offered with a shrug. “Good riddance.”
Tearing her wide eyes from the broken table, Francesca recovered her composure and said, “Er, thank you, Sera.
Shall we move on to the vote?” She put her hands down as if to rest them on the table, realised that wasn’t going to be possible, and quickly said, “I propose we expel Albert Grey from this Cabinet and revoke his privileges. Show of hands from all the ayes?”
Six people raised their hands at once, Howard and Martin among them, and then four others joined them a moment later, including Lionel Bennet. Bradford Bertram-Mogg, predictably, was the only one to refuse. He glared sullenly around the table.
“I think that means the proposal passes,” Francesca said, letting out a slow breath. “I’ll break the news to my father when he returns from Nairobi.” Traditionally, a Cabinet meeting couldn’t end until the Chancellor stood up, so she stood. “Thank you all for your time.”
The room emptied very quickly. Howard trotted happily over to talk to Luke and Verity. Sagging back in her chair, Sera picked a loose thread off her jumper and let her stiff shoulders relax for the first time since she’d walked into the room. Francesca came over.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Thank you too,” Sera replied. She stood, wiggling her stiff shoulders.
Francesca crossed her arms over her chest. “Did you bring Clementine with you?”
“Like she’d have given me a choice. She’s around here somewhere.”
Nervously biting her lip, and looking much more like the younger Francesca that Sera remembered, Francesca said, “Sera, there’s something you ought to know. The night of the winter masquerade, Father didn’t go looking for you in the library by accident. He knew you’d gone there. He knew you’d be trying to steal the essence of sunlight. He knew everything.”
Sera was confused. “How? The library, okay, that’s an educated guess, but how could he have known about the essence of sunlight before he saw me holding it?”
Francesca just looked at her. It was the pity in her face that gave it away.
Sera spun on the ball of her foot and stormed out of the room, past Luke, Verity, and Howard, the blood whooshing in her ears. Down the hallway, around the corner, down the sweeping flight of stairs, until she was on the front steps of the castle and there was Clemmie, alone, waving off her old friend as his car trundled out of the courtyard.
“You’re done already?” Clemmie demanded. “And I missed it? Sera! You could have waited for me!”
Sera didn’t hear a word. “Albert didn’t see you running off into the woods that night, did he? You talked to him. Youtold him.”
There was a part of Sera that had hoped there would be another explanation, that whatever Albert had told Francesca had been a lie, but as she watched Clemmie’s
eyes widen and her face lose all colour, that hope died a brutal death.
“Clemmie,” Sera protested, her voice catching.
“I was still in the house when he came back,” Clemmie said in a rush. “He stopped me leaving. He told me he’d break my curse himself if I told him what you were up to. So I…” A bitter laugh slipped between her teeth. “Obviously, he didn’t do it. Sera, don’t look at me like that! I’m sorry! I know I shouldn’t have done it, and Iknow I shouldn’t have believed him, but you of all people should understand why. I couldn’t take it anymore. Ihad to get out of the snow globe.”
Sera had been right. You couldn’t break a snow globe without shattering the glass, and Clemmie had, and the shattered glasshurt.
“It worked out in the end!” Clemmie insisted. “We got what we wanted!”
“I’m going home, Clemmie,” was all Sera could bring herself to say. “Without you. After all, you got what you wanted. You don’t need me anymore.”
