The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 3

CHAPTER THREE

esus fucking Christ,” said Mika.

“No need to worry,” said Ian cheerfully. “This happens at least twice aJ day. No one ever gets hurt. Not even the ladder.”

“That’s because it’s witchfire,” said Mika, who had been swearing because she couldn’t believe there really were three small witches hiding in bloody Norfolk, of all places, not because she was afraid for any of those three small witches’ lives. “Witchfire only works on cauldrons. It’s completely harmless to everything else, though it does burn indefinitely if it isn’t properly extinguished. Didn’t Lillian tell you this?”

Ken sighed. “I’m afraid Lillian told us very little.”

As they watched, the child climbed down the ladder, unaffected by the green flames, her messy braid bouncing in time with each rung. She got to the bottom, picked up a tattered stuffed rabbit that had been lying at the foot of the tall oak tree, and then promptly climbed back up the burning ladder again.

“We have to smother the fire with blankets to put it out,” Ian went on, practically quivering with excitement. “It’s terribly tedious. I don’t suppose you know of a better way?”

As there was very little point in trying to hide her secret now, Mika raised one hand and flicked her fingers like she was trying to snatch a leaf out of the air. The witchfire, recognising the summons of a stronger and bossier entity than itself, came meekly, detaching itself from the rope ladder and vanishing into Mika’s closed hand like a puff of smoke.

“Good God,” Lucie murmured.

“Hah!” said Ian, triumphantly. “You see why we need you?”

“How did you know?” Mika asked. “Nothing in my videos should have given me away.”

Ian lifted his bony shoulders in a shrug. “You had a certain sparkle about you. Like the girls do.”

“For what it’s worth,” Jamie interrupted, as if he could see the dismay in Mika’s face, “no one else here noticed a thing.”

Still. Maybe it was time to make a graceful exit from the internet.

Mika looked back out at the tree house, where the children were still deeply absorbed in their activities, uninterested in the fact that the witchfire had gone out without any blankets involved. Primrose would have conniptions if she ever found out. She would come here with only the best of intentions and a lifelong commitment to the Rules (or, as she put it, the Greater Good), mow down every objection anyone might offer, and find

these children safe, comfortable homes.

Far, far away from one another.

“Too much magic in one place attracts attention,” she would say. “Even wards can only hide so much. And attracting attention, as witches have discovered time and time again over the centuries, is dangerous. Alone is how we survive.”

But Primrose didn’t know about the children, and Lillian obviously had matters in hand, so it was a moot point.

“Tea?” Lucie asked Mika, holding out a cup, her face wreathed in a smile. “Come sit down.”

“So,” Ian said, bouncing eagerly on his own chair. “Will you stay?”

Mika held her cup between her hands, letting the heat seep into her fingers. “I still don’t understand. Why do you need me to teach the children how to use magic? Hasn’t Lillian been teaching them?”

“Lillian has never been home long enough to teach them,” Ian said with a snort. Lucie made a protesting sound. “No, Lucie, it has to be said. The fact is, Lillian has always been obsessed with whatever discovery she’s chasing. Her passion for her work is wonderful, but it has come at the children’s expense. They see her so infrequently that they don’t even know her. Moreover, she has a terrible habit of only telling us what she thinks is

necessary, so we don’t often have the answers the girls need. Believe me when I say you are needed, Mika.”

“Lillian put warding spells around the house and grounds,” Lucie added, sounding torn, like she agreed with Ian but felt disloyal saying so. “Ian paints a one-sided picture of her, but it’s important you know that she didn’t just abandon us to our own devices. She put protections in place. No one can come to Nowhere House unless they’ve been invited, and even then the wards make it difficult to find the house. All our post goes in the big mailbox by the front gates. Spells and accidents stay hidden. The girls are

safe here.”

“Safe, but limited,” said Ian.

“The children need to learn how to control the wild, enormous power they possess, Mika,” Ken said quietly. “They need someone in their life who understands what they’re experiencing.”

Mika chose her words with care. “I obviously don’t know Lillian, but it’s possible that part of the reason she’s never here is because she knows it’s

risky.”

“Risky? How?”

“Witches don’t— Witches aren’t supposed to—” Mika hesitated, somewhat unnerved by the unprecedented experience of not having to lie, and tried again. “Witches don’t spend time with other witches.”

“Why not?”

“Magic is attracted to the people who can use it. It can also be mischievous. When there’s so much of it in one place, it takes a very, very strong will to keep it in line. Accidents are much more likely.”

“Surely that’s even more of a reason why we need you,” Lucie said, her eyes widening in alarm. “Isn’t yours the strong will that can keep the girls’ magic in line? You saw what just happened when Altamira touched the ladder. The girls often have accidents like that.”

“She’s not saying their magic is out of control because they have no one to keep them in line,” Jamie said sharply, his hard, angry eyes on Mika.

“She’s saying their magic is out of control because they’re together.”

The others turned anxious eyes to Mika. She didn’t flinch. “He’s right,” she said. “Every witch struggles to control magic as a child, but very few of us lose control as dramatically as Altamira just did. The reason the girls lose control like that so often is because they’re together.”

“Then it sounds like we found you just in time,” said Ian, with admirable bullheadedness. “The girls are together, so it seems to me that we can either let things go on as they have been, or we can have a strong adult witch teach them the control they need.”

“But I’d be yet another witch in the same place. I’d attract even more magic to this house, and it would be even more difficult to keep it all in check. Lillian’s wards might not be able to contain that much power. None of us would be any safer with me here.”

“On the contrary, my dear,” said Ian. “What isn’t safe is three young girls who are afraid of what they are and who don’t have any idea how to coexist with their power. It’s all very well to make a ladder burst into green flames here in their own back garden, but can you imagine what would happen if they lost control anywhere else? You are able to go where you like and live more or less how you wish, but those three girls can’t go anywhere lest they accidentally set something on fire or turn a lamppost into a toad!”

“Lampposts can’t be turned into toads,” said Mika.

“Which is something none of us knew,” Ian promptly replied, “because we are not witches.”

“I know it’s not ideal,” Mika said gently, “but almost all of us grow up in isolation, sequestered from the rest of the world until we come to grips with our magic. And we do all come to grips with it, by ourselves, by the time we reach adulthood. Rosetta, Terracotta, and Altamira won’t be any different.”

Lucie’s face was soft with something like pity as she said, “That doesn’t sound like any way to spend the most innocent and joyous years of one’s life.”

“Besides, the girls don’t have that kind of time,” said Ken. “Edward’s our most pressing problem.”

Mika put her cup down and looked at the four faces around the table, bewildered. “Who?”

There was a surprised pause. Then, with an expression on his face that may have been guilt, Ian said, “I, er, may not have mentioned one teeny,

tiny little thing.”

Jamie sighed. “For fuck’s sake, Ian.”

“You didn’t tell her about Edward?” Lucie asked Ian accusingly.

“Mika may not have come if I’d told her about Edward!”

“Ian,” Ken said. Mika had a feeling that that was a common refrain in

this house.

“Who exactly is Edward?” she demanded.

Jamie glowered at his teacup. Lucie and Ken seemed just as unhappy with the turn the conversation had taken, and didn’t appear to know what to say. Mika’s confusion grew. After a moment’s pause, Ian let out a mournful sigh. “Edward Foxhaven is Lillian’s solicitor. He thinks the sun shines out of her arse, but he loathes the rest of us.”

“Why?”

Ian raised an eyebrow. “We’re an unconventional household.”

“Which part troubles him the most?” Mika asked. “You and Ken? Or the foreign children?”

“It’s difficult to say,” said Ian, considering. “Jamie’s in the running, too, on account of his Northern Irish roots.”

“Why hasn’t Lillian replaced him?”

“She doesn’t see it. He frames it all so politely, so nicely. I’m sure you’ve experienced that kind of thing yourself.” She had. “Still, Edward’s bigotry hasn’t mattered until now. He’s only ever been to the house a couple of times, and the children were much littler the last time. But now we’re in a pickle because he’ll be coming here in December. He has to collect some sensitive documents from Lillian’s study.”

Mika grimaced. “And you’re afraid that when he’s here, he’ll see the children set a rope ladder on fire.”

“Or something of that ilk,” said Ian. “If it were a different solicitor, we’d take our chances and hope that if something did go wrong, they would

behave reasonably. But Edward detests us. If he finds out the girls are witches, he’ll be vicious.”

“You can’t collect these documents yourself? And take them to his office?”

“We wouldn’t know what we’re looking for.” Ian made a grumbly noise.

“Like I said, Lillian tells us as little as possible. Edward handles her will, her investments, and her stocks. She says these documents are in her study, and that only she and Edward know what they are, so I’m afraid we have no choice but to take her word for it. What this amounts to is, like it or not, Edward is coming here.”

“Can’t she just come home and sort out these documents herself?” Mika asked, completely flummoxed by Lillian’s cavalier attitude. “Then Edward wouldn’t need to come here at all.”

“That would solve the problem, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, Lillian doesn’t see it that way. She says she can’t possibly leave the excavation at such a delicate time.”

“We can’t take the girls out for the day, either,” Lucie said, correctly guessing Mika’s next question. “It’s been two years since they last left Nowhere House. Two years since their magic became too unpredictable to risk taking them beyond the wards.”

“But all is not lost!” Ian said brightly, abruptly disrupting the sombre mood. “Because you’re here!”

Mika shook her head. “You’re hoping I can teach the girls how to control their magic before Edward’s visit, but that’s a big ask.”

“Big, but essential.”

“When exactly is he coming?”

“The twenty-sixth of December,” said Lucie. “We gave him a number of excuses and insisted we couldn’t make it any sooner, but he refused to put it off any later than that.”

“Trust him not to have anything better to do on a holiday,” Ian grumbled.

The twenty-sixth was five days after the Winter Solstice. “I don’t know if that’s possible,” Mika said bluntly. “That’s, what? Six or seven weeks away? They could make a decent start in six weeks, but most of the

important stuff will take years to master. Altamira’s only seven. I was fifteen before I could trust myself not to lose control.”

“But if you were here,” said Ken, “couldn’t you help them stay in control while Edward’s in the house? Or keep their power in check if they do lose control?”

Mika grimaced. “I’ve never been in a situation like this before. I don’t know anyone who has. I can’t make you any promises. I might be able to keep all the power in Nowhere House on a leash, but if I can’t, the magical outburst will be worse than anything you’ve seen before. It’s a risk to all of us.”

There was a moment of quiet. Mika heard a shriek of laughter from a

child outside.

Her tea had gone cold.

“I need to think about it,” she said, standing up. The whole afternoon had been an enormous shock and she couldn’t quite think straight.

“Do you want to meet the girls before you go?” Ken asked gently.

“No,” Mika said at once. “It wouldn’t be fair to meet them if I decide not to come back.”

But when she got back into the Broomstick, she didn’t drive away immediately. Hands gripping the wheel very tightly, she found herself thinking not of Primrose’s wrath (which would be mighty) or how very dangerous it was to put herself in a position where exposure was so probable (and it was far too probable), but of a little girl in a safe, comfortable house with a string of safe, comfortable nannies.

Sometimes, when she looked back on her childhood, Mika had trouble remembering all her nannies and tutors. There had been so very many of them that she would sometimes catch herself forgetting names or struggling to conjure up a face or attaching a memory to the wrong person.

What she did remember, in perfect, crystalline detail, was the loneliness.

She remembered how much she’d longed for company. A parent, a sister, a friend. Someone who was there because they wanted to be and not because they were paid handsomely to be. She remembered how terrifying and exhilarating it had been to turn eighteen, to make her own way into the

world, and to do Normal Stuff. She’d gone to university (like a lot of other people), had had sex for the first time after a rowdy night out (like a lot of other people), had lived in eleven different cities (this was maybe less like a lot of other people), had made friends (only briefly, which was probably not like a lot of other people), and had, in short, kept herself busy. And yet, somehow, the loneliness had never gone away.

Maybe that was because the loneliest part of growing up, the part she remembered most vividly, was the one thing that had never changed.

Magic. As a child, she had discovered the existence of her magic alone, had been afraid of it and then fallen in love with it alone, and had learned to use and control it alone. Even now, thirteen years into adulthood, she continued to experience the joy and wonder of magic alone.

Apart from when she posted her witchy videos online, of course. That was the closest she’d ever gotten to sharing who she really was with anyone.

What wouldn’t she have given to have grown up with more?

Before Mika knew what she was doing, she was out of the car and back at the front door of Nowhere House. Ian must have been spying on her (frankly, she’d have been disappointed in him if he hadn’t) because the door opened before she could knock on it.

“I’m supposed to be moving out of my flat in a month,” she said. “If I come to stay here, I’ll need to bring all my things.”

He squealed like a toddler at a birthday party. “Of course! Anything at

all. Everything. All of it!”

“Like my plants.”

“We have plenty of space.”

“And my dog.”

“We love dogs.”

“And my koi. With their pond.”

Ian cocked his head. “An actual pond?”

Mika waited.

“Of course you can bring your koi and their pond,” Ian said. “You can bring a whole bloody lake if you need to!”

“Okay,” said Mika, wondering what she’d gotten herself into. “Then I’ll be back on Friday.”

“You’re a gift from the gods, Mika Moon.”

“Don’t get soppy yet, Ian Kubo-Hawthorn,” she replied. “This is either going to be the miracle you hoped for or it’s going to be an absolute fucking disaster.”

OceanofPDF.com