The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

n the past, Mika had woken with half a bottle of gin lying on its side beside her, she had woken with menstrual cramps that had come fromI Dante’s worst circle of hell, and she had woken with a dog’s tongue halfway up her nose, but she had to admit that she had never, ever woken feeling like she had been hit by a bus.

Not, of course, that she knew what it was to be hit by a bus. But she couldn’t believe it could possibly be any worse than this. Every part of her hurt. Her legs hurt. Her arms hurt. Her head hurt. Her nostrils hurt, for fuck’s sake. Both of them.

She cracked her eyes open and instantly regretted all her life choices.

“What is this evil?” she croaked. “Why have I been engulfed in the fires of a thousand infernos?”

“I believe some call it the sun,” a dry voice informed her.

“Take it away. I want nothing to do with it.”

“There’s irony for you,” said the voice, sounding distinctly amused now.

The nerve. Mika was dying, and he had the audacity to be amused?

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you’ll probably survive.”

Oh. Had she said that out loud?

“You did, yeah.”

“Jamie. The sun. Remove it from the sky at once.”

“Anything for you, love,” came the wry reply. “Especially when you ask so sweetly. But I’m afraid the removal of the sun is beyond even my powers. Pulling the curtains shut will have to do.”

It did not do, because there was still far too much light streaming in, but she was a reasonable person and she understood that she had to perhaps make the best of it. Then, before she could resign herself to a lifetime of

martyred agony, something warm pressed against her side and a calloused hand settled over her tightly closed eyes, cutting almost all the light out.

“Just until you adjust,” Jamie’s voice said from close by.

“Oh my god. Don’t stop.”

“I will stop if you keep making sex noises.”

“The only reason you think these are sex noises is because you haven’t yet had sex with me,” Mika felt compelled to inform him.

Yet?

Fucking yet?

There was a pause, during which she had the misfortune of not only realising that he, too, had heard the unmistakable yet but also of remembering what had happened to make her feel like she’d been hit by a bus in the first place, and then Jamie cleared his throat and said, “You

okay?”

“I think I can open my eyes now.”

She was rather sorry to lose the warmth of his hand, but she needed to get her head round what was going on. Carefully cracking one eye open and then the other, she blinked slowly. She was in her room in the attic. It had to be the middle of the day, if the sun was any indication. She was still wearing the pink jeans and white jumper she’d had on when she’d last been conscious. Her rocking chair had been pulled up close beside her bed, its cushions wrinkled like someone had been sprawled in the chair for hours.

And Jamie was sitting on the edge of the bed beside her.

He stood now. He looked exhausted, the shadows under his eyes darker than usual, and his brown stubble rougher and bristlier than it had been the last time she’d seen him. “I’ll go tell the others you’re awake.”

“Wait.”

He paused for an instant, then dropped into the chair. “How are you feeling?”

“Meh,” Mika said. “How long have I been out?”

“Twenty-six hours.”

“Jesus. I must have been in hibernation.” She felt for her throat, for the green leaf that Primrose had once mentioned was a sure sign of a witch’s

hibernation, and there it was. She plucked it free from her skin and put it down on the bed beside her.

“Ian told us that was what it was called,” said Jamie. “I was going to call an ambulance, but he saw this”—he picked up the green leaf—“and he said the same thing happened to his mother once. He was very sure.”

“He was right,” Mika said. “How come you’re here?”

He rubbed his jaw, not quite looking her in the eye. “We’ve been taking shifts.”

“You’ve been here the whole time, haven’t you?”

“I was a little reluctant to leave, yes,” he admitted, a faint smile lifting one side of his mouth. “So was Terracotta. She only just left, and only because Lucie made her go downstairs for lunch.”

“Neither of you had to do that.”

He cleared his throat. “I wanted to thank you. For what you did. For taking all the blowback to protect her.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s a child. I have as many faults as the next person—”

“As I’m the next person, I’d say you probably have fewer,” Jamie remarked.

Mika laughed, which did her sore ribs no good. “Well, whatever my faults, letting a small child get hurt when I’m perfectly capable of

preventing it is not one of them.”

“I know. And I appreciate it.”

A troubling possibility struck her. “Did anyone’s power spiral out of control while I was asleep? Is everyone okay?”

He shook his head at once. “Everyone’s fine, I promise. Nothing’s happened at all.”

Mika cocked her head, searching for the music of the magic around her.

As she listened to it, she let out another small laugh. “The magic’s feeling very guilty, so it’s behaving itself. For now.”

“Much like Terracotta, then,” Jamie said, cracking a smile. “Can I get you anything?”

“I think I just need to rest,” Mika said. Then she reconsidered. “Actually, could you ask Lucie to come help me into the bath?”

“Yeah, of course.”

But before he could take so much as a step in the direction of the door, there was a loud bark and Circe ran in joyfully, wasting no time whatsoever before licking Mika’s face from top to bottom. Before Mika could protest this assault, the rest of the household had flooded into the attic, too.

“You’re awake!” Altamira cried. “I told you she was, Rosetta, I told you!”

“Someone’s been listening at doors again,” Ken said ruefully. His warm, kind eyes smiled down at Mika. “Oh, my dear. You gave us quite a scare.

We’re so happy to see you awake.”

Ian was trying to envelope Mika in the most vigorous of hugs, and Jamie was trying to stop him, when Lucie pushed past both of them and bent at once to press the back of her hand against Mika’s forehead like a mother checking a child’s temperature. “I don’t like it,” she said, tutting. “You’re too warm. You need a good, hearty lunch and a nice cup of tea.”

“Can I have a bath first?” Mika asked meekly.

“Absolutely not,” said Lucie. “So you can keel over the moment you try to stand up? Tea and lunch first, then we can talk about a bath.”

“What an excellent idea,” said Jamie, gripping Ian firmly by the elbow.

“Why don’t we go get that sorted?”

“I hardly think we need all go.”

“We do,” said Jamie, in a tone that left no room for negotiation.

“Because Terracotta would like a minute alone with Mika.”

Ian escaped Jamie long enough to plant a smacker of a kiss on Mika’s forehead, Altamira followed suit with equal vigour, and then they were all gone and Mika found herself left with a dog wedged up against her side and a small, pink-cheeked girl perched in the chair beside the bed.

Mika had to turn her head away to blink away sudden tears at the unexpected onslaught of their affection, but Terracotta was too preoccupied with twisting the bottom of her T-shirt in her hands to notice. When she

finally spoke, it was to say, in a smaller voice than Mika had ever heard from her: “Why did you protect me?”

“Because I like you,” Mika said, with a smile.

“Why?” Terracotta sounded baffled. “I’ve been an absolute villain to you.”

“You were protecting your family.” Mika held out a hand. Tentatively, Terracotta put her smaller one on top of it and threaded her fingers through Mika’s. “I wish you’d listen to me when I ask you not to put yourself in danger, and I wish you’d believe that I have no intention of causing your family any harm, but I don’t blame you for trying to keep them safe. You never have to be sorry for that.”

“But I am sorry that you got hurt because of me.”

“Really?” Mika teased. “Even after all those times you tried to figure out the best way to murder me?”

Terracotta looked slightly appalled. “I didn’t mean it!”

“Oh, I see,” said Mika, straight-faced. “What a relief.”

“Are you really okay?”

“I will be. And I accept your apology.”

Terracotta’s smile was radiant, and relieved. She gave Mika’s hand a tiny squeeze. Then: “Will you tell Altamira that I never stole her puzzle?”

“No,” Mika said, sputtering a laugh and wincing at the pain that followed it. “You need to sort that out yourselves.”

“What’s hurting?”

“What isn’t?” Mika replied.

“That sounds a bit rubbish,” said Terracotta, “but I reckon I know exactly what you need.” And, with a yell that sent an entire troop of drummers line-dancing through Mika’s skull: “TRIPLE HUG TIME!”

Rosetta and Altamira, who had obviously not gone far, burst back into the room at once. The next thing Mika knew, she and Circe were pinned to the bed with one child squashed in beside them, another wrapped around Mika’s middle, and the third lying on her other side with her arms looped around Mika’s left.

“Are we hurting you?” Rosetta asked anxiously.

“Not even a little bit,” Mika lied, perjuring her soul without hesitation.

“In fact, this is actually rather nice for an experience that doesn’t allow me to breathe.”

“Triple hug,” Terracotta said with satisfaction. “Works every time.”

“Would you like a lullaby?” Altamira offered generously.

And so, when the others returned half an hour later with a tray of tea, chocolate, and Brie and bacon toasties, it was to find four witches and one golden retriever curled up together in one double bed. Fast asleep.

“Should we wake them?” Lucie looked doubtful. “They could certainly all do with the sleep, but Mika has to eat.”

“It can wait,” Jamie said gruffly.

It was another two days before Mika could get out of bed without some part of her body feeling like it was about to shut down, during which time the rest of the household were scrupulous in making sure she was fussed over and entertained, both of which were quite unprecedented experiences in the whole of her life.

When she tried to get up to make her own tea, she was kindly and firmly deposited back in bed. When she mentioned the children’s lessons and Edward Foxhaven’s ever-nearing visit, she was immediately overruled and told in no uncertain terms that she was to do nothing except get better.

When boredom so much as dared to encroach, someone was always miraculously there with a chew toy (Circe), books and video games (the children), a story about the stage (Ian), a complaint about Ian (Lucie), a potted plant in need of nurturing (Ken), or a disastrously honest critique of her wan appearance (guess who).

Which was how, on the day reality rudely interrupted this idyll, Mika found herself whiling away most of the evening after dinner upstairs, back in bed, listening to Rosetta read out loud from Persuasion.

One of the consequences of growing up in a house with no real company, not to mention Primrose’s rather narrow and archaic ideas about what

constituted a well-stocked library, was the fact that Mika had read just about every classic there was. Twice. If it was written by somebody called Austen or Shelley or Brontë, Keats or Dickens or Eliot, Christie or Rossetti or Blake, she had read it. (Indeed, lest anyone accuse Primrose of not being worldly, she had also made sure names like Homer, Rumi, Dumas, Tolstoy, and Seth appeared on her shelves.) A handful of Mika’s tutors had attempted to introduce her to new books, handing over comic books, highly masculine epic fantasies, and even, on one memorable occasion, a romance so steamy that Mika had read it three times in one night. But, for the most part, the literary worlds she’d visited growing up featured ballrooms, governesses, pickpockets, men who went by their last names only, the London fog, and not a whole lot else.

So Mika could quite safely say that she already knew Persuasion very well, but Rosetta was more than a little obsessed with Captain Wentworth at the moment and Mika didn’t have the heart to part her from him.

“Just listen to this,” Rosetta was saying dreamily. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell—”

Terracotta and Altamira, who were disgusted by notions of romance, made distraught sounds at this and begged Rosetta to pick a book about pirates instead.

“No,” Rosetta said firmly. “The two of you are supposed to be practicing your spellwork anyway, not listening to me read.”

Over the past weeks, all three girls had mastered the simple animation spell Mika had set them to work on in their first lesson. Now that they could make a single pebble do whatever they wanted it to, she’d moved them on to a more advanced version of the spell, one that would require more concentration and control. She’d given them each a small wooden doll, the articulated kind that artists often used to create poses for their reference, and she had asked them to cast a spell that would make the dolls stand, sit down, and walk independently.

“You can animate a single, rounded object,” she’d explained when she’d handed them the dolls. “Now it’s time to animate something more complicated. When you animate a doll, the only way to create smooth,

natural movements is by enchanting its hands, arms, legs, waist, and neck separately and simultaneously. If you can master that, you’ll be well on your way to controlling your power.”

Now, the younger girls grumbled as they concentrated on their dolls.

Rosetta, who had already spent an hour practicing with hers, went happily back to Persuasion.

She didn’t get much further before they were interrupted by Jamie, who marched in, sent the girls away on an errand that Mika was quite certain he’d made up on the spot, and shut the door firmly behind them once they were gone.

“Listening ears,” he explained. He picked up the copy of Persuasion Rosetta had left behind, briefly distracted. “It was Pride and Prejudice last week. I hope she gets to Emma soon. That was always my favourite.”

“Mine too,” Mika said, surprised. “My enthusiasm for the classics is usually tepid, but I’m a sucker for Austen.”

She noticed that Jamie had her phone in his hand. She must have left it downstairs the day of the Disaster, as the children were now referring to it, and she hadn’t given it so much as a moment’s thought since. (Which was unusual, and a sign of just how successfully she had been entertained.) How the battery hadn’t died yet was anyone’s guess. Maybe Lucie, that model of

efficiency, had plugged it in.

“You got a text,” Jamie said warily.

Yes, such was the barren wasteland of her social life that this was the first text her phone had received in three days. (And the one before that had been from her service provider, reminding her to pay her bill.) But Jamie’s mood and the fact that he’d shut the door told her it wasn’t just any old text. As she took the phone from him and the screen lit up, a tiny knot of dread formed in her chest.

Let’s have tea on Thursday. 3pm. You may choose where.

Primrose, of course.

“It’s Wednesday,” Mika said. Which was nothing if not stating the obvious.

“I assume from the expression on your face that Primrose doesn’t often demand you meet her for tea?”

“I wouldn’t use the word often, but she does ask me a couple of times a year. And she always texts like she’s the Queen bestowing a great favour on an unworthy subject.” Mika rolled her eyes, but said firmly, as much to convince herself as it was to convince him, “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Jamie didn’t look convinced. “You don’t think it’s a bit of coincidence that she’s inviting you to tea now? Right after what just happened?”

“It’s possible that the wards couldn’t completely contain such a big surge of power, and it’s possible other witches within a hundred miles or so noticed it,” Mika admitted. “You know how storms hit Wales, but we just get a bit more rain than usual? It’s kind of like that. The power ripples out, fading away the farther it gets. Agatha Jones lives this side of London, which is still pretty far away, but she’s also very old and we get more powerful as we get older, so she could have picked up on the disruption in power and mentioned it to Primrose. Who could have assumed I was the one to blame. But that’s a lot of very woolly maybes, and it’s more likely that this is just an innocent invitation. Either way,” she added, wanting for some reason to take away that worried crease between his eyebrows, “there’s absolutely no way Primrose can possibly know about the kids, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“But I do have to worry about you,” he said, and he sounded so irritated by this that she had to hide a smile. “You’ve barely been out of bed in three days. Are you really going to tea with her tomorrow?”

“It’ll look a lot more suspicious if I don’t,” Mika pointed out. “And it’ll be fine. I’ll pick somewhere far away from this house—”

“Once more, the problem is you, not this house.”

“—and the Broomstick will get me there in no time at all,” she finished merrily. “Primrose won’t ever know where I’ve been these past few weeks.”

“Are you being deliberately obtuse?” Jamie demanded.

“Are you actually worried I’m going to keel over and die if I go to tea?”

Mika demanded right back. “It’s tea. The nation’s favourite activity! I promise I can survive its lethal trials. Look,” she went on, softening her

tone, “I know you’re worried about me because you feel guilty about what Terracotta did and you’re afraid my untimely death will be on your conscience, but I really—”

He stared at her. “Do you actually think that? That I’m concerned because I feel guilty?”

“Well, you don’t particularly like me,” Mika reminded him reasonably.

“As such, guilt seems like the likeliest explanation for your concern. Why?

Am I wrong? Oh!” Face-palming as realisation struck, she laughed. “Of course! You’re afraid that if something happens to me, I won’t be here for Edward’s visit. No, honestly, I’ll be fine. I’ll be here.”

He seemed to be at a loss for words. The incredulous expression on his face had turned into something she couldn’t decipher.

“Are you okay?”

“Hasn’t anyone ever been worried about you just because?” Jamie asked, his voice low and rough. “Because, to be perfectly honest, this conversation suggests no one’s ever cared about you.”

Mika’s smile vanished. “I’ve told you about the way I grew up,” she said tightly. “Do I really have to explain it again?”

“No,” came the gravely quiet reply. “I think I get it.”

“Okay. So I’ll see Primrose tomorrow, then, and I’ll let you know how it

goes when I get back.”

“Okay,” he said, and that was that.

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