The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

dward Foxhaven was an ordinary man. From his ordinary height to his ordinary grey hair to the ordinary crows’ feet clustered around hisE ordinary blue eyes, there was nothing at all about Edward that would catch the eye of a passer-by. His suit, tie, and shoes, all expensive and neat and in sensible dark colours, were always worn with a precision that he extended to every other part of his life. He paid as much attention to the position of his cuffs as he did to the small print on a contract.

His one extraordinary quality (the adjective was his, nobody else’s) was his meticulous attention to detail. Where some solicitors (and he was not naming names, but one did not need to look further than two of the more undeserving partners of the firm) might simply glance over a brief or pass on some of the more tedious legwork to a subordinate, Edward took pride in the fact that nothing escaped his eye. Some people might complain that his patience and diligence was an excuse to charge his clients more money, but they were mistaken. His clients wanted him to be thorough. They wanted to pay him a great deal of money. (Apart from, of course, those few impoverished clients he was obliged to work with to fill a firm quota.

Irksome, but Edward would dispense with that quota when he was made partner. Which he would, as soon as someone bothered to take notice of the excellence of his work.) Take Lillian Nowhere, for example. Lillian was a charming, wealthy client who trusted him to look after her affairs and paid him handsomely to do so. Edward had no intention of failing to live up to that trust, especially considering poor Lillian had decided to open her home to a number of highly questionable persons.

When pressed, he had found he couldn’t articulate exactly what it was about these people that he questioned. He knew, of course, but there were just so many things one wasn’t allowed to say these days. It was extremely inconvenient.

But while he might not be able to say certain things, he could certainly act on a very real concern. A wealthy, elderly English woman had fallen mysteriously out of touch and he had no doubt who was to blame. He was, therefore, determined to root out whatever sketchy goings-on were going on at Nowhere House.

It was in this frame of mind that Edward knocked on the front door of the house on the morning of the twenty-sixth and started to question its inhabitants, only to encounter a stumbling, unsteady skeleton wearing a navy pantsuit and a flowery hat.

Everything from there proceeded to go well and truly to shit.

By the time Mika and Jamie pulled into the barn, just thirty minutes later, they were too late.

Mika got out of the Broomstick seconds before Jamie got out of his own car, her sense of glorious, perfect homecoming short-lived. The unfamiliar, expensive car in the driveway was the first sign that something was wrong.

“Edward’s here already?” she said to Jamie in an undertone, alarmed.

“Wasn’t he only supposed to be here this afternoon?”

Jamie’s face was grim. “He probably came early to start us off on the back foot. Trust him.”

As they approached the house, Mika spotted the girls perched side by side on the fence, entirely preoccupied with staring at the small garden shed where Ken stored his tools. At the sound of their footsteps, they turned.

Altamira leapt off the fence at once, shrieking “Mika!” and rushing over to her. Rosetta hung back a bit, looking distressed.

And Terracotta said, “Good, you’re here. There’s been a bit of a situation, but we’ve fixed it by locking Edward in the garden shed.”

Mika and Jamie stood frozen for a moment, then looked at each other, then looked back at the girls.

“You did what?” Jamie said at last, very, very calmly. “And where the hell are Ian, Ken, and Lucie?”

“Inside,” said Terracotta. “Panicking. Because of the aforementioned situation. They don’t seem impressed with the notion of locking Edward in the shed as a long-term solution.”

It was at this precise moment that Mika noticed something out of place.

Just outside the front door of the house, lying in a jumbled heap, was what looked like a navy pantsuit, a hat with satin roses on it, and bones.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Mika said. “You unburied Lillian, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes,” said Terracotta. “Now before you get cross, we know it wasn’t our most brilliant idea ever, but neither of you were here and we didn’t know what else to do.”

“Anything, Terracotta!” Jamie exploded. “You could have done literally anything other than unburying the corpse we’ve been trying to hide!”

Mika squinted at the pile. “Why is she wearing clothes?”

“We didn’t unbury her just for fun,” said Terracotta, offended. Neither Rosetta nor Altamira had said a word so far, both looking a lot more sheepish and a lot less matter-of-fact than their sister. “Edward was horrible. He looked pleased when he got here and there was no sign of Lillian. Pleased. He started asking Ian, Ken, and Lucie all kinds of questions and said he knew they’d done something to her. So Rosetta, Altamira, and I went to Lillian’s room and got some of her clothes. Then we went into the garden and got all her bones out of the ground. Then we assembled the skeleton, dressed it, and animated it.”

“You animated—”

“We worked together, Mika!” Altamira told her proudly. “We cast the spell together! Just like you taught us!”

There was absolutely nothing Mika could say to that except: “You did very well, sweetheart.”

She meant it, too. She was incredibly proud of them.

She was also slightly horrified.

“I think we got the skeleton wrong,” Rosetta admitted. “We put some of the bones in the wrong places. It didn’t look right.”

“It was a dead woman’s skeletal remains wearing her clothes, Rosetta! It was never going to look right!” Jamie pinched the bridge of his nose, his jaw clenched so tightly, Mika was afraid he’d crack his teeth. “What exactly did you think you were going to achieve by parading an animated corpse in front of Edward?”

Terracotta gave him a look like the answer should be obvious. “We thought we might be able to convince him that it was really Lillian.”

Mika could see from the expression on Rosetta’s face that at no point had she thought any such thing was possible, but she was too loyal to say so.

“Terracotta,” Mika said firmly, her heart giving a thump of dread. “Does Edward know those bones are real? Does he know Lillian is dead?”

For the first time, Terracotta’s bravado cracked. She nodded. “Yes. He knows.”

“That’s why we locked him in the shed!” Altamira chimed in. “He went bonkers when he saw the skeleton, so Lucie tried to calm him down by explaining the truth. He wouldn’t listen. He called us freaks, so we made the skeleton chase him into the shed, took his phone, and locked him in.”

“He called you what?” Jamie demanded, furious. “You know, I was going to object to you locking him in a garden shed in the middle of winter, but I’m not sure he doesn’t deserve it.”

“Deserve it or not, we’re not so unkind,” Altamira said reproachfully.

“We left the big blanket from the tree house with him, the one Mika enchanted with a heating spell.”

But Mika was unable to spare a thought for cold sheds and enchanted blankets. She kept repeating Terracotta’s words over and over inside her

head.

Yes. He knows.

Mika looked at Jamie, whose clenched jaw and ashen face were the only outward signs of the horror and despair he had to be feeling. He’d been so

afraid of this, of the moment when the truth would come out and Lillian’s will would have to be honoured.

Everything they’d all been afraid of had happened.

They were going to lose the children.

“The three of you need to stay right here,” Jamie said. “Don’t go in the shed. Don’t leave this exact patch of grass. Don’t do anything. We’ll be back in a minute.”

Mika followed him into the house. As soon as the front door shut behind them, the sound of distressed whispers drifted out from the kitchen. Jamie leaned back against the door, like he couldn’t stand on his own two feet anymore, and Mika saw that his hands were unsteady.

“I don’t suppose”—his voice cracked—“I don’t suppose your confuddling potion can fix this?”

“No,” Mika said softly, regretfully. “It was supposed to help us convince him that Lillian’s safe and well in South America. It can’t undo everything that’s just happened.” The look on his face was almost too much for her to bear. She reached tentatively for him, and his hands settled on her waist, a whole shudder going through his body. “I’m so sorry.”

There was a clatter of footsteps as the others, obviously hearing them, rushed in from the kitchen.

“Mika!” Ian’s smile was wobbly and voice was choked. “You came back. Oh, my dear, dear girl.”

Lucie burst into tears. “We should never have lied to you! We’re so, so sorry!”

“Lucie, no! It’s forgotten, honestly. We have bigger things to worry about now!”

Ken and Ian both put their arms around her. “It’s so good to see you,”

Ken whispered. Ian’s shoulders shook.

“We should go back outside,” Jamie said, his voice hollow. “The kids are waiting.”

So they joined the girls and Circe in the garden, the shed casting a long shadow over them. The sun was pale and white, the light cold, and Mika rubbed her arms to keep the cold and heartbreak at bay.

“We need to decide the best way to deal with this,” Ken said quietly.

“We can’t leave Edward in the shed forever.”

“I recommend we murder him,” said Ian.

“I second that,” said Terracotta.

As everyone was quite certain they were at least semiserious, Lucie and Ken had to state in the plainest terms that Edward’s murder was not on the table.

Ian huffed. “Then I’ll go in there and speak to him.”

“Absolutely not,” said Ken and Jamie at the same time.

“I’ll go,” said Mika.

“No,” said Jamie at once. “Edward’s never met you. He has no idea you exist, or that you’re involved in any of this. If he sees you, he’ll find a way to pin something on you, too. What you should do is get in the Broomstick and get the hell away until all this blows over.”

“Until which part blows over?” Mika asked sarcastically. “The part where the girls get shipped off to someone named Peony? Or the part where you’re all standing up in court accused of murder, witchcraft, and who knows what else? Seriously, why would I go?”

“You should,” said Ian, and the others nodded.

Mika glared at them. “You’ve decided now is the time to protect me?

Really? Why?”

“Because you’ve been protecting us since you got here,” said Terracotta.

“Because we want you to be safe,” said Altamira.

“Because we love you,” said Rosetta.

Jamie shrugged at her as if to say, Yes, that.

She was not going to cry. She was not.

Putting an arm around Rosetta’s little shoulders, she said, “I’m not going anywhere. Except into that shed.”

“Mika, that might not be wise,” said Ken, his brow creased with concern. “He’s strong, angry, and likely to lash out in his panic.”

“He’s not a mythical monster or an angry mob with pitchforks,” said Mika. “He’s just a man. And considering he just saw a skeleton prancing

around in a dead woman’s clothes, the very least I can do is spin him a tale that’ll stop him from trying to institutionalise the girls.”

“Fine,” said Jamie curtly. “I’m coming with you, though.”

Altamira hugged Mika round the waist. “Be careful. I’m a bit scared of Edward. He was so nice and polite when he first came in the house, and then he got really big and angry and mean.”

“I promise you, there is no universe in which that man is going to bring any harm to you,” Mika said fiercely.

She turned on her heel and crossed the garden to the shed, Jamie just a step behind her. She undid the lock on the door, opened it, and stepped inside.

Mika could see at once why Altamira had found Edward Foxhaven intimidating. He was a tallish, broadish white man in his late forties or so, and he probably would have looked perfectly respectable if it wasn’t for the way he swivelled to face them when they walked in, red-faced and sneering. Then there was the fact that the shed was nigh on destroyed, tools flung at the walls, the wood chipped.

Edward’s mouth twisted at the sight of Jamie. “There you are. I wondered where you’d got to. Busy hiding a different corpse?” He tossed Mika a brief, dismissive look. “Who’s that? The new maid?”

Jamie made a sudden movement, his eyes blazing, but Mika slipped quickly between him and Edward. Around them, clouds of gold dust swirled angrily.

She tried to be understanding. Edward had to be afraid, after all. He’d been accosted by a skeleton, then locked in a shed.

“You probably have a lot of questions,” she said gently. “Why don’t you come back into the house and we can talk about it properly? Maybe if you understood what’s really going on here—”

“I understand perfectly,” Edward interrupted her, scoffing. “I’ve been kidnapped and imprisoned by three mostly feral children. My phone has been taken from me to prevent me from calling for help or reporting any of the crimes I’ve been witness to. And someone has killed an innocent

woman, no doubt for her money. I warned her. I told her none of you could be trusted. What a pity she didn’t listen.”

“No one killed her,” Jamie snapped. “It’s ridiculously irresponsible to throw around accusations like that.”

“Well, it’ll be up to the police to determine that one way or another.”

“Edward, if you’d just listen—”

“I think not.” His eyes sparked spitefully. “You, on the other hand, are going to listen because I feel I need to be very, very clear about what’s going to happen next. You will release me from this shed. You will return my phone to me. I will call the police. And by the end of the day, ideally, you will all be paying through the nose to get someone like me to defend you from the accusations I am going to rain down on your wicked, unnatural heads.”

There was a ringing silence after this speech. Mika could feel Jamie’s rage humming through his body behind her. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. For a moment, she was rooted in place by the cruelty of the words, the spite in his voice. She was afraid, as she’d always been afraid, of somehow making it worse.

Then the gold dust curled around Mika’s ankles like a friendly cat, the dreadful moment passed, and she laughed.

She was done being afraid. She was done letting people like this make her feel small and strange and wrong. She was standing on the cold, damp earth of her own home, and Edward Foxhaven was no match for her.

Mika twitched just a single finger. Slowly, panic wiped the malice from Edward’s face. Mika watched, her head tilted with interest, as vines grew out of the dirt below their feet, wrapping around his ankles, coiling around his arms, binding him.

“Absolutely none of those things you just mentioned are going to happen,” Mika said, stepping so close to Edward that she could see the size of his terrified, blown pupils. “You’re not the only one with power, and in this particular battle, I’ll take my chances against you. I’ll let the vines swallow you up before I let you hurt any of these people. Do you understand me?”

He nodded, sweat beading on his pale forehead, his muscles jerking against the vines. “What are you?”

Mika smiled. “The monster under your bed.”

Outside, the door shut and locked once more, Mika released the spell.

Inside, the vines would be dropping away, coiling back into the ground.

“You okay?” Jamie asked her quietly. He threaded the fingers of one hand through hers.

Mika was more shaken than she wanted to admit. It wasn’t Edward, specifically, but rather the notion that she had no idea how many others like him were out there in the world. She had no doubt that most of the people who had met Edward thought him a perfectly nice man. Lillian had. He had never let her see the ugly, cruel parts of him.

Danger rarely wore a monstrous face and a wielded a pitchfork. No, danger came most often in the form of people like Edward, the nice people whose niceness only went so deep, who saved their niceness for people exactly like them, who believed they were more deserving of power and respect than anyone who was a little bit different. And she would never know how many other nice, ordinary people out there were as ugly as Edward underneath.

And yet, even as this thought flashed through her mind, another followed it: Edward was outnumbered. There were people right here with her who were not necessarily nice, but they were all without exception kind, which was far more important. They had raised three unusual children with more love than Mika had seen in her entire lifetime. They loved them wholly, without exception. Because of everything they were, not in spite of some things. It didn’t matter to them one bit that Mika and the girls were different. Was it not possible, then, that out there all the Edwards of the world were also outnumbered by all the Jamies, Ians, Kens, and Lucies?

“I am okay, actually,” she said out loud. “At least, as okay as any of us can be right now.”

They went back to the other side of the front garden, to where the others were waiting out of earshot of the shed.

“Did you kill him?” Terracotta asked eagerly.

“Did you turn him into a toad?” Altamira wanted to know.

“No, and no,” said Jamie. “But he is absolutely petrified of Mika now, so maybe that’ll convince him not to say anything about any of this for a little while.”

Even if that were to happen, Edward’s knowledge would always hover above them like the blade of a guillotine, and they’d never know when it would fall.

“So we’re just supposed to let him out?” Ian demanded. “Send him on his way and let the chips fall where they may?”

“Well, we can’t actually kill him, Ian, and we can’t keep him locked up in there forever, either. And as far as I know, we don’t know how to turn back time and make him forget everything he’s seen today.” Jamie’s voice was low, his rage rigidly contained. “So yes, it does seem like the only thing we can do is let him out and send him on his way.”

“Or we could give ourselves an hour or two to come up with a way out of this. This is our family, James. We have to fight for it.”

Mika stopped listening, stuck once more on the hamster wheel of her thoughts, only this time it was just a few of the words Jamie had said, turning over and over and over.

Turn back time and make him forget everything.

There was a way out of this, but it was one that was akin to summoning a gorgon to defeat a gargoyle. The gorgon would certainly defeat the gargoyle, but when the battle was over, who would defeat the gorgon?

“One battle at a time, Mika,” she said under her breath.

“What was that?” Ken asked her.

“There’s only one way to fix this,” she said. “You won’t like it, but it’s all we’ve got.”

She explained and they listened. They didn’t like it, and neither did she, but not one person hesitated, either. Better this, better anything, than setting Edward loose with all their secrets in his pockets.

So Mika took her phone out of the pocket of her jeans and pressed the green CALL button beside one particular name. And when a voice on the other end answered, she said, “I need your help.”

It was like a little girl had once said. Sometimes you had to do whatever was necessary to protect the people you loved.

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