The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

t was a little after five o’clock when Mika said goodbye to Primrose and wobbled back to the Broomstick on legs of jelly. It was cold, dark, andI wet, an utterly wretched December evening, and not even the insistently merry sound of festive music from inside the hotel could cheer her up. Like the fairies of old, who were repelled by cold iron, she felt like she’d spent too much time in the crowded, brightly lit, fast-paced world normal people inhabited and she longed for a crackling fireplace, the click of knitting needles, and the lullaby of ocean waves.

She longed for Nowhere House.

Mika fumbled with her keys, feeling leaden, shivery, and dizzy with exhaustion (and perhaps also from an excess of sugar. That fifth scone might have been overkill.). Once she’d gotten the car unlocked, an almost impossibly difficult task, she almost fell into the driver’s seat. The heating came on immediately, but it didn’t do much for her shivering. She leaned her heavy head back against the seat and groaned silently. There was absolutely no way she could pull off a speed spell right now, but just the thought of over two hours of driving made her want to crawl into the back

seat and just go to sleep there.

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.

She was just trying to figure out if she even had the energy to get to the back seat or if she was just going to have to stay right here for the rest of her days, when the door on the driver’s side was yanked unceremoniously open and a tall someone glowered down at her.

“Hey!” Mika protested. “It’s cold!”

“Then move over.” Impossibly, that was Jamie’s voice, stern and unsympathetic. “I’ll shut the door once I get in.”

She moved like she was fighting quicksand, her muscles protesting as she clambered over the handbrake and fell into the other seat. As promised, he slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door. She blinked dizzily at him.

Half his face was in shadow, the other lit only by the ambient light spilling out of the hotel, and she was quite certain there were two of him.

Mika wondered if she was hallucinating. “How are you even here?

Didn’t you and Ken go off on an errand earlier today?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, this. This was the errand.”

He pointed. Blinking at the misty windshield, Mika just about made out the shape of Jamie’s black sedan in the space opposite hers. Ken was behind the wheel. He gave her a smile and a wave.

Her brain was mush, so it took her a minute to crack this riddle. “You’re saying you and Ken left Nowhere House two hours before I did just so you’d get here in time to find me?”

“We had a hunch you wouldn’t be in a fit state to get yourself home.

Looks like we were right.” Jamie arched an eyebrow. “If only someone had warned you before you embarked on this unnecessary escapade.”

“Be honest. You came here just for the pleasure of being able to say you told me so.”

His mouth twitched, but the furrow between his eyebrows didn’t budge.

“Would you rather Ken drove you home?”

“No,” she said before she could think better of such disastrous honesty.

“Well, good, because he just drove off.”

Mika laughed, but her teeth were chattering so hard that the sound came out all wrong. She felt damp and clammy, from cold sweat rather than the drizzle outside, and she was about to make the herculean effort of reaching out a hand to turn the heating up even higher when she saw Jamie shrug off his coat. He manhandled her into it, to which she didn’t object in the slightest. His coat was butter-soft and radiated the heat from his own body.

She drew her knees up to her chest, turned sideways in the seat to lean back against the door, and snuggled deeper into the coat. The shivering quieted down at last.

“Pine needles and the ocean,” she said sleepily. “It smells like you.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“By me?”

“No, it must have been one of the other witches who make a habit out of sniffing my neck.”

“Once does not a habit make,” Mika objected, but couldn’t quite suppress a tiny smile. That worried line between his straight, dark brows was still there. Quite beyond pedestrian concerns like propriety, she raised one hand and smoothed her thumb over the furrow, trying to make it go away. “You’ll get wrinkles if you frown like that.”

His eyes were almost silver. He reached for her hand and drew it away from his forehead, but didn’t let it go. Instead, he turned it over to trace a scar on her palm. Her skin tingled. “What’s this from?”

“Thorns.” She moved her hand out of his and back to his face. He stopped her, his hand tightening around her wrist as she drew her fingers over the line of his jaw. “It’s as hard as it looks,” she marvelled.

Jamie cast his eyes heavenward and muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like It’s not the only thing.

Melting bonelessly into the warmth of his coat, her heart thumping unevenly, she smiled fuzzily, beyond all hope. “Come here.”

“Absolutely not.”

“But I want you to kiss me.”

“I got that, which is why I’m not moving so much as one inch closer.”

Mika felt this was distinctly unfair, but then it occurred to her that maybe she’d misinterpreted his expression and she was actually being politely rejected. “Do you maybe not want to kiss me? Because that’s okay.”

He moved his jaw gently out of her reach. “It’s not about what I want.”

“I think you’re avoiding the question.”

“And I think you’re delirious, and not even close to thinking straight,”

Jamie said, his voice low and not quite steady. “So no, I’m not going to kiss

you.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to do that to you, either. Not like this.”

Not like this.

He seemed to realise what he’d said the same moment she did. Her heart thudded and her mouth opened, lips forming a soundless oh. He stared at her mouth, made a soft sound in his throat, and looked away. His hands clenched the steering wheel.

“Time to go,” he rasped, starting the car. “You should probably eat something before we drive back.”

“Oh, I have already. I had a whole plate of scones.”

There was a bit of amusement in his voice now. “Something other than a whole plate of scones.”

“There was a pot of jam and clotted cream, too.”

“You’re not making this sound any better.”

“Heathen,” she said, yawning.

Her eyes drifted closed to the sound of a seatbelt clicking into place, and when they opened, it looked like some time had passed because they were pulling out of a drive-through and Jamie had deposited a cheeseburger, fries, and, hilariously, one of those child-sized bottles of juice on her lap.

“Is the fruit juice supposed to balance out all the salt and sugar?” she asked, popping a fry in her mouth and closing her eyes blissfully at the taste. “Because I feel like I should tell you that it’s a Band-Aid over a bullet hole. It’s going to take two lettuces, three carrots, and a whole pumpkin to offset the heart attack that plate of scones and this dinner is on its way to causing.”

“And yet,” he said, stealing one of her fries, “you appear to be eating that dinner with little to no concern for said heart attack.”

“You only live once.” Glancing out of the window at the spires of a cathedral, she tried to picture Jamie in his twenties. “Do you miss living here?”

He looked surprised. “Cambridge? No, not really. I spent most of my years as a student pretty much blackout drunk, which, considering I’m Irish, is saying quite a lot. And teaching didn’t suit me.” His eyes cut to her, a smile flickering across them. “Turns out I was too grumpy, if you can believe that.”

“You? Grumpy? Impossible!” Mika leaned her heavy head on her elbow, finished the last of her cheeseburger, and studied his profile. “Was it hard?

Coming back to Nowhere House and becoming a de facto parent to an infant witch at the age of, what? Twenty-six?”

“The witch part did come as something of a surprise because Lillian didn’t bother to warn us before turning up with a baby in tow, but Rosetta, you’ll be unsurprised to hear, was a placid, easy baby. Altamira, on the other hand”—here he shuddered, which made her laugh—“well, let’s just say that when she hit the terrible twos, I was ready to put her in a boat and set her adrift on the sea. Ian had the boat practically ready to go.”

“I assume, as Altamira is still safely ensconced in Nowhere House, that the more level heads of Lucie and Ken prevailed.”

“It takes a village.” Jamie turned right, cutting across traffic. Mika, who was very possessive of the Broomstick, found she rather liked watching him behind the wheel of her car. “How did it go with Primrose?”

“It was the most peculiar thing. I lied about where I’ve been and I don’t think she suspects anything, so that’s all fine, but she also told me a whole lot of other stuff.” Mika gave him a brief description of Primrose’s various revelations. “It was so weird. I must have asked her the same kinds of questions dozens of times as a child, only to be told each time that my curiosity was obnoxious and unbecoming.”

“Have you asked her those questions since then?”

“No,” Mika said, thinking back. “I gave up years ago and usually stick to small talk when we meet, but this time, I don’t know. I asked. Maybe it was because I’ve spent so much time with the kids, so it feels like there’s more at stake now that it’s not just me. I want to be able to give them more of our history. More than I had growing up, anyway. But I really didn’t expect her to tell me as much as she did.”

“Maybe she did it because you’re an adult now,” Jamie said. “There’s a lot we’ll say to other adults that we won’t tell a child.”

“You think she finally sees me as an equal? Well, almost equal,” she amended, her mouth twisting ruefully. “She was as imperious and inflexible

as ever when I went so far as to suggest tweaking the Rules. Like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun and have been brutally cast back down.”

The sound of Jamie’s laugh vibrated across the car. “You’ve been spending too much time with Ian.” He cut her a shrewd glance. “You look like you’re having a hard time keeping your eyes open. Don’t stay awake on my account.”

“I could attempt a speed spell to get us back faster,” Mika offered.

Jamie’s only answer was a glare.

Burrowing happily back into his coat, Mika breathed in, leaned her head on the window, and closed her eyes.

“I like you when you’re stern,” she said drowsily, and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I like you when you’re stern.

Jamie cut an incredulous look at Mika’s sleeping face. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that?

Do you maybe not want to kiss me? He’d almost laughed when she’d said it, a dark and mirthless laugh. If she only fucking knew.

When Mika next woke, it was because Jamie had stopped the car. She ached all over, but the shivery, dizzy ickiness was gone. Rubbing her eyes, she saw that the Broomstick was outside a mostly dark Nowhere House. Only the upstairs hallway and kitchen lights were still on.

“Home,” Jamie said quietly.

Home. It sounded right, which was frankly terrifying because it wasn’t her home. Sooner or later, she’d have to leave. It was wildly foolish to get attached, to care, because she had never belonged anywhere and had never been enough for anybody, and it was only a matter of time before the people of Nowhere House figured that out.

A glance at the clock told her it was past ten. “Wow,” she said, her voice a little croaky from the impact the word home had had on her. “We must have been on the road for, what? Five hours?”

“There was an accident just outside Cambridge, and it took ages to clear it. Are you okay? Can you walk?”

“I think so. I don’t feel as wobbly.” She watched him, brows knitted.

“Are you okay? You must be exhausted.”

“I’m fine.”

“As if you’d say so even if you weren’t,” Mika scoffed. He smiled. She opened her door, letting the cold, sharp sea air in, and clambered out. She teetered for an instant but she didn’t keel over, so that was an improvement.

“Do you think Ian’s up? Is that why the kitchen light’s still on?”

“He said he’d wait up for us,” Jamie said, handing her the car keys and

starting up the path to the front door.

“Jamie.”

He hesitated, but turned back.

“You came to get me,” Mika said. “No one’s ever done that. Thank you.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded without replying and unlocked the front door. They got rid of their shoes and went straight to the kitchen, Mika still huddled in a coat she had no intention of getting out of anytime soon, where Ian was busy removing trays of oatmeal-raisin cookies from the oven.

“Stress-baking,” he explained, beaming at them. “Cookie?”

“I could definitely do with more sugar today,” Mika said gravely.

Jamie’s mouth quirked. They each accepted a cookie from Ian. “Is the kettle on?”

“Popped it on the moment I heard the car outside,” said Ian proudly. “A nice, hot cup of tea before bed is just what you need, my dear. Jamie? Tea?”

He nodded, dropping into a chair at the table.

“You could probably do with some warming up, too,” Ian remarked, his eyes bright with unholy mischief. “What with you losing your coat and all that.”

“Were you cold the whole way?” Mika asked Jamie, feeling guilty and horrified.

Jamie cut Ian a glare before answering her. “Don’t be ridiculous. You had the heating up all the way. I was fine.”

Ian hummed merrily to himself as he busied himself with the tea. He had way more energy than any man in his eighties had any right to have this late in the day. In minutes, he had three cups brewed and brought them over to the table, along with a plate of the cookies. “So?” he prompted. “Should we expect the Bogeywoman at our door any day now?”

Mika choked on her cookie, immensely tickled by the idea of Primrose as a bogeywoman. “Nope. She did figure out I was to blame for the surge in power, but I gave her a pretty good excuse for my presence in these parts.”

“Really? What did you tell her?”

“A class reunion at UEA.”

“Of course! You were a student there, weren’t you? What a clever excuse!”

Jamie gave her a wry look. “Are class reunions often the cause of massive surges in magic?”

Mika could have dodged that or simply lied, but she didn’t. “No, but reunions with horrible ex-boyfriends can be.”

His eyes narrowed, his expression darkening. Ian, on the other hand, perked up. “Well, now you have to tell us all about this fiend!”

“No, you don’t,” said Jamie.

“Hush, you.”

Mika laughed. “It’s really not that exciting. It’s just that Primrose knows about him, so he was a convenient scapegoat.” She clutched her teacup between her hands, unburying a memory she had tried very hard not to think of for the best part of a decade. “We met while I was at UEA, and we were together for about four months.”

“Was he your first dalliance?” Ian asked.

“He was not,” Mika said, grinning at the ridiculously archaic turn of phrase. “I’d gotten around a bit by the time I met him. But he was my first and last actual boyfriend.”

Ian’s face gentled. “Were you in love?”

“I don’t think so,” Mika mused. “Looking back now, I don’t think it was anything so powerful as love, but I did care a lot more about him than I had about anyone else I’d been with before. And I was twenty, with stars in my eyes and a song in my heart, so I decided to tell him the truth. About me.”

Ian gasped.

“Not all of it,” Mika added. “I told him I practiced magic, but I didn’t tell him other witches existed. He, um, he asked if it was some weird cultural thing. His words, not mine.” She didn’t dare look up at them, but she heard someone’s breath hiss through his teeth. “I laughed it off because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. Then I showed him a few

spells.”

“And then?” Jamie asked quietly.

The pain was unexpected, like an old, almost forgotten bruise that surprises you when it’s pressed. It wasn’t as bad as it used to be, but it was still there because she understood that it wasn’t about one ex-boyfriend. It was about so much more.

“I still don’t quite understand how it happened,” Mika said, her eyes fixed firmly on the teacup in front of her. An old sense of shame threatened to rear its head, but she knew it was a lying sort of feeling and she knew how to deal with it now. She said the words out loud: “I know now that it wasn’t my fault, but at the time, it felt like it must have been. It was like one day, I was me, and the next, I was casting spells he wanted me to. He was at an ATM getting cash out one time and he got me to enchant the machine so that it malfunctioned and gave him a few hundred quid that wasn’t his.

Another time, I cast a basic warding spell over his phone so that he could take it into exams and look the answers up without anyone noticing. I did things like that for weeks. Because he wanted me to. Because I thought if I did enough, he’d love me.”

“Oh, Mika,” Ian said, upset, putting a hand over hers.

“Anyway, there was a moment, one day, when it just hit me that I didn’t like myself very much anymore, and that mattered more than whether or not he liked me, so we broke up. I reported everything he’d done, admitting I’d

helped him but obviously leaving out any mention of spellcasting, and then I left. I could probably have stayed on at UEA and finished my final year, but I wanted him to forget all about me and about what I’d been able to do.”

There was silence in the kitchen when she finished speaking. Mika bit into another cookie, inordinately interested in the pattern of the wood grain on the table.

Ian tightened his grip on her hand. “I can’t imagine how much it must have hurt to be used like that, but surely, surely, you don’t plan to let one slimy cretin affect the way you live your life?”

“One slimy cretin, and a host of nannies and tutors before him,” Mika reminded him, her smile a little wobbly. “I’d seen ugly reactions before.

That ATM spell? I’d used it before. One of my nannies asked me to.” She stopped, startled. “I’ve never said that out loud before. I try not to even

think about it.”

“It’s okay,” Jamie said quietly.

Mika looked up at him. There was no judgement or censure in his eyes, just an anger that she could tell wasn’t directed at her, and it gave her the nudge she needed to tell them the rest. “When my caretakers found out I was a witch,” she explained, “some of them were afraid, some thought they were hallucinating, and, on one memorable occasion, one tutor was convinced I must have been experimented on by a secret government agency and insisted I go public. But most often, the reaction I got was a whole lot like his. I became something that could be used.”

A muscle jumped in Jamie’s jaw. Ian looked unhappily at him, then turned back to Mika with a firm: “Not everyone is like that, my darling.

There is someone out there who will accept you as you are, who will allow you to just be Mika.”

“Is there?” Mika asked. “Because the way I see it, to be a witch is to be exploited when it’s convenient and turned against when it isn’t. I’d love to just be Mika, but the rest of the world has yet to give me that privilege.”

“Yes, I see that,” Ian admitted. “I understand, I do. There was a time when Ken and I weren’t allowed to just be ourselves, either.”

“I know,” Mika said, squeezing his hand. This time, her smile was brighter and a lot less wobbly. “Believe me, if there’s one thing that might be able to convince me that there’s a better future ahead, it’s you and Ken.”

Jamie pretended to scowl. “Oh, Christ, don’t get him started on his

stories about the pair of them!”

“Scamp,” Ian said fondly.

“Fossil.”

Mika interrupted this loving volley of insults. “How long have you and Ken been married?”

“As long as we’ve been allowed to,” said Ian. “Which is to say, not very long. But we’ve been together over fifty years.” That seemed like an unfathomable amount of time to Mika. With a dreamy sigh, he went on: “You know, love at first sight sounds like a lot of nonsense, but I swear to you, I knew I loved Ken the moment I laid eyes on him. He took a bit more convincing, I’m afraid. I can be a trial.”

“We know,” Jamie said drily.

“My father had died a few years before, but my mother and Ken’s parents knew about us. They were the only ones we told at the time. To everyone else, we were confirmed bachelors. That was what they’d call us back then. Well, to be more precise, that was the nicest thing they’d call us.”

“But you loved each other anyway,” Mika said, suddenly aware that she was not just in awe of them, but also envious. Her heart ached with a terrible, passionate yearning. “And you still do, even after all this time.”

“I could have another hundred years with Ken and still want more,” Ian said simply.

OceanofPDF.com