The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

he Tate in Liverpool was in a converted dock right on the River Mersey. It was a long brick structure with wide arches and redT columns, with a stream of visitors trickling in and out of the doors, and Mika felt not the smallest desire to join them.

They had found a tiny carpark a few minutes’ walk away, and instead of staying in the car, Mika had accompanied Jamie to the entrance of the gallery. His shoulders were tense, his posture rigid, and she wished they’d never come.

“Will you be okay?” Mika asked at exactly the same time Jamie said, “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“Yes,” they both answered, also at the same time.

Mika laughed. Jamie even cracked a smile.

“I won’t be far,” she said.

She watched him enter the gallery, and once he was out of sight, she gathered up the friendly gold dust around her and let it guide her to a spot where it was quieter. There she found a low waterfront wall to perch on in the bright, cold sunshine, and fished her phone out of the pocket of her knitted yellow coat so that she could reply to the stream of texts Ian had sent her in the last hour or so.

The first seven texts were anxious queries about whether Jamie seemed himself, while the eighth seemed to be an ode to his grief that there had been no flamingo pink wool in stock at The Lost Sheep.

If you see a reputable wool shop while you’re up there, dearest, the text ended by saying, please get me all the flamingo pink. All of it.

Mika was just about to reply to this request when she noticed a familiar prickly sensation start in her thumbs and spread slowly up her arms until

they were covered in gooseflesh.

There was a witch close by.

She hopped off the wall, took a step away— —and walked right into a perky, blue-haired Korean cannonball, who was holding the hand of a shorter, perkier, black-haired Korean cannonball.

“M-Mika?” Out of breath, the cannonballs came to an abrupt halt, stopping their relentless forward momentum with such speed that they nearly fell over. The blue-haired one gave Mika a single panicked look before hugging her. “What a surprise to see you here!”

“Hilda?”

“Of course, silly!” Hilda had grown up in Liverpool, so her chirpy Scouse voice would have been unmistakable even if the hair hadn’t given her away. “Who else?”

Mika was stunned. The sight of another witch in the wild, outside of the familiar, specific setting of a Very Secret Society gathering, was so alien that she just blinked a few times. Were they even allowed to speak to each other? Hilda, too, seemed at a loss.

“Hiya,” said the other cannonball, coming to their rescue. “I’m Kira, Hilda’s fiancée. Are you the same Mika from the book club?”

“I—” Mika looked helplessly at Hilda, so startled to hear that Hilda actually talked about her at home that she didn’t know what to say.

“Yes,” said Hilda quickly, and pointedly. “This is Mika. From my book club. My virtual book club. She lives in, er—”

“Norfolk,” Mika filled in, at exactly the same moment Hilda said,

“Brighton.”

Hilda paused. “You moved again?”

“Just last month. What are you doing here?”

“We live here,” Hilda said, eyebrows vanishing into blue hair. “What are you doing here?”

“A friend of mine is visiting the Tate. I’m just waiting for him.”

“We were just about to go in there to meet someone about our wedding plans,” said Kira. “Hilda, why don’t you stay out here and catch up for a few minutes while I go in?”

In a blur of dizzying speed, Kira was gone.

Mika blinked. She and Hilda looked at each other.

“Um,” Hilda started.

“So,” Mika started.

And, at exactly the same time: “Primrose can never know!”

There was a beat, and then they both burst into the slightly giddy giggles of two schoolgirls who know they’re up to no good.

“Fuck me sideways,” Hilda said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.

“We’re grown women quaking in our boots at the idea of an ancient crone.”

“An ancient, powerful crone.”

“There’s that.”

“It’s nice to see you, Hilda,” Mika said, looping her arm around Hilda’s.

She jerked her chin in the direction of the gallery. “A book club? She still doesn’t know?”

Hilda’s face fell. “I’m afraid to tell her the truth.”

“Because of how she might take it?”

“That, and I’m afraid of what Primrose will say if she finds out I told her, and of Kira not loving me anymore.” Hilda toyed absently with a blue curl. “I love her. I hate hiding this from her. And I really, truly believe I can trust her. But every time I think about saying the words, I hear Primrose’s voice. They’ve turned on us for centuries, poppet”—Hilda’s imitation of Primrose was eerily accurate—“They’ll do it again if we give them a chance.”

“Alone is how we survive,” Mika said under her breath.

“I hear that one, too.”

Mika hated to see the uncertainty and distress on Hilda’s face. “From what I just saw,” she said, “Kira looks at you like you climbed up into the sky and put the moon there yourself, so I think there’s a very good chance she’s going to love and accept you for exactly who you are. That’s the fucking Holy Grail. Tell her the truth. What you two have is worth Primrose’s wrath.”

Her brown eyes dewy with emotion, Hilda smiled a wobbly smile. “That was a really good pep talk.”

“I thought so, too, if I do say so myself.” Mika gave her a little nudge.

“You should go. Talk to her. Plan your wedding. And tell me all about it at the next meeting.”

Blowing her a kiss, Hilda darted off. Mika wondered if she would tell Kira the truth. It was easy to talk about taking such a big, terrifying step, but actually doing it was something else entirely.

She hadn’t been alone more than ten minutes or so when she looked up to see Jamie coming her way. How long had he been gone? Less than an hour? She straightened up, immediately searching his face for signs of distress. Instead, he smiled at her, a slow, crooked smile that did obnoxious things to her heart.

Then she noticed that he had a stack of books under one arm, and that they were old, worn volumes covered in battered leather. She gasped. “No

way! Are those—”

“Dad’s journals.”

“You got them back!”

He nodded, his eyes twinkling with an electric, giddy sort of high. He’d walked into an arena unsure if he’d be devoured by lions, only to come out unscathed. Even better: he’d come back with something precious, something that had been taken from him a long, long time ago.

“You didn’t want to stay a bit longer?” Mika asked as they started walking back to the car.

“I think all my mother and I needed was just to see each other one more time,” Jamie said, his energy damping as he thought about it. “Too much has happened for anything to go back to the way it was before Dad died, for either of us, but I think we were the loose threads in each other’s lives. The moment I saw her, it hit me that all I’d really wanted was to make sure she was okay. I’d left her in pieces, and I wanted to know that she was now whole. Or close to it. And she is. I think she wanted the same.”

Mika gave him an affectionate nudge. “I’m glad you got what you needed.”

“Were you okay? What did you do while I was inside?”

“I met a witch,” Mika announced.

Jamie gave her a surprised look. “A new one?”

“No, a witch from the Society. Hilda. I might have mentioned her before.” Mika gave him the highlights of her conversation with Hilda, and finished with, “I hope she tells Kira. She seems so unhappy, keeping something so big and important a secret from her.”

A shadow crossed Jamie’s face, damping some of that light in his eyes again, but he only said, “Holy Grail?”

Mika shrugged, sheepish. “Well, it is. To be loved and accepted exactly as we are? Isn’t that the thing we’re all searching for?”

“Maybe,” Jamie said, almost to himself, “but we don’t always know it when we’ve found it.”

They’d reached the carpark where they’d left Jamie’s car. It was almost deserted, the winter dusk creeping in early.

“You haven’t mentioned your brothers,” Mika observed. “Weren’t they there?”

“They were.” Jamie’s eyes drifted thoughtfully out to the water. “I thought they’d take up all this space, that I’d go in there and all I’d be able to see was them. But it wasn’t like that. I almost didn’t notice them at all.”

Mika smiled. “Cobwebs?”

He smiled back. “Definitely cobwebs.”

“A trip worth taking, then.”

Jamie nodded. “I think it helped that I started putting myself back together a long time ago. Ian, Ken, and Lucie get a lot of the credit for that.

But I’m glad I came. Maybe some kinds of trauma can’t be revisited—and some need to be.”

He unlocked the car as he spoke and Mika was about to get in her side when he caught her by the elbow, stopping her.

“If you hadn’t come with me, I’d have spent the whole drive up here wading neck-deep into the most glass-half-empty thoughts known to humankind,” Jamie said wryly, and she laughed at how dramatic yet extremely accurate that description was. “So thank you.”

“I’m glad I could help.”

He held her gaze for a moment, then went around to the other side of the car and got in.

Mika blew out a breath and followed suit.

She cast her first speed spell once they got out of the city, watching as the ever-present gold dust around her frolicked in pleasure. Magic did so love to be used.

“You do that a lot,” Jamie commented, watching her idly twirl gold dust around her fingers. To him, it probably looked like she was moving her fingers around for no reason.

“I’ve done it since before I can remember,” she said. “Magic is a witch’s familiar. It likes attention. I’ve told you before about how it can be mischievous if it doesn’t get the attention it wants, but most of the time, it’s a loyal friend that tries to help. Like when Ian first reached out to me, I don’t think I would have paid him any attention if it hadn’t been for the way my power gave me a little nudge. His request was very peculiar.”

“It was certainly that,” Jamie said drily.

“I could have ignored the nudge, of course. Because it was just a nudge.

It’s not like we don’t make our own choices. But I didn’t ignore it, and here I am.”

There was a tiny crease between his eyebrows. “Don’t you wonder why your power gave you that nudge? It seems like a weird thing to do, doesn’t it? According to the Rules, you’re supposed to stay away from other witches, and yet it wanted you to come to us. What if it’s trying to tell you the Rules aren’t working? What if it’s saying the same thing to other witches? Maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence that you bumped into Hilda back there. I know there are real risks to witches gathering together, but if you ask me, it seems like magic, the force that binds you all together, doesn’t want you to be alone.”

This hit Mika right in the heart. Over the years, when there had been nobody and nothing else, she and magic had always had each other. But

what if they both wanted—needed—more?

What if that wasn’t possible?

“I can’t transform the world, Jamie. The world’s too big and too messy and too stubborn.”

“Who said anything about transforming the world?” He shrugged. “What about just making it a little better? And then a little better? And then a little more, until, one day, maybe long after we’re gone, it has transformed? You deserve more than what you’re allowing yourself to have.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, a flimsy bit of protection from the

weight of her feelings. “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of the heartbreak when I fail,” she said simply. “Of rejection. Of wanting too much. Of discovering again and again that I’m unlovable. All those nannies came and went, and not one of them loved me. And, thanks to Primrose, not one of them remembers me, either. People are usually like the sea, a constant, unerasable part of something bigger, but I’m more like a single wave that washes over the shore, ebbs away, and doesn’t leave a trace behind.”

He swallowed, his knuckles almost white on the wheel.

Mika looked away. “I’m afraid I’ll never leave a mark on anybody.”

It was quiet for so long that Mika wished she could take the too-reckless, too-honest words back, but then she heard him, rough and uneven and so quiet she almost missed it: “It’s a little late for that, I’m afraid.”

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