The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 4

CHAPTER FOUR

f all the places Mika had ever lived since she’d left Primrose’s house (and as she never, ever lived in one place for more than six months,O there had been an awful lot of places), the one thing that they all had in common was the sea. From the tiny shed she’d rented from a lovely old couple in Cornwall to the crumbling cottage she’d found in Lancashire, she had let herself be led by what she could see out of the window. If there had been so much as a glimpse of ocean, she’d said yes.

In short, she loved the sea. (Well, within reason. A bitterly cold, rainy pier in the furthest reaches of the country? No, of that she was decidedly less fond.) It was the sea she was looking at now, through the window of her flat, as she waited for her kettle to whistle. Nowhere House was in Norfolk and this was Brighton, and yet the sea here was just as it had been there when she’d seen it yesterday: wild, foamy, and a perfect, sparkling, silvery blue.

It didn’t matter if she was looking across a garden with a tree house or through the shutters of a tiny shed or out of the window of a slightly grotty flat—the sea was the sea. It frothed and frolicked and had a beastly temper, but Mika would never wake up one day and find it gone. It knew all her secrets. It knew her. And it stayed.

The kettle whistled, but she didn’t notice. Instead, she considered the peculiarities of Nowhere House.

By the time she’d gotten back to the flat the previous night and checked her phone, there had been an email from Ian waiting in her inbox. It had included a contract, one that had informed her that she had been hired for a two-week trial period followed by at least six further weeks of unspecified

tutoring, would be paid a very decent wage, and that her employer was one Ian Kubo-Hawthorn.

Had they told Lillian about her? Would she even care? It seemed unlikely, considering she appeared to be so unconcerned about the home, friends, and children she’d left behind that she couldn’t be bothered to fly back from her excavation for a few days and sort out some paperwork.

There were still a number of unanswered questions looming over this whole thing, but none of those questions had stopped Mika from signing the contract and emailing it back. She didn’t understand all the peculiarities of Nowhere House, but she did know that there were three young, untrained, uncertain witches there and her doubts could not be allowed to get in the way of her giving them whatever help she could.

Someone knocked at the front door, tugging Mika’s attention back to the present, the kettle, and the distressing lack of clean teacups.

“It’s open!” she called, embarking on a quest to find something one could drink tea out of.

At the sound of her voice, there was a joyous bark from the hallway outside the flat. Then her front door swung open and a big, beautiful golden retriever bounded in. Tail going a mile a minute, the dog made a beeline for the tiny kitchen area and butted her head lovingly against Mika’s legs, demanding immediate attention. Mika obliged, crouching to ruffle, nuzzle, kiss, and squish her much-loved companion.

“I missed you, too, Circe,” she said. She straightened, grinning at the young man who’d trotted into the flat on Circe’s overexcited heels. “How was she?”

“The best pup in all of Brighton, as usual,” said Noah, who lived next door. “And as someone who sees just about every ball of fluff in this city on the daily, you know I don’t say that lightly.”

The day Mika had moved in just five months ago, she’d bumped into Noah in the hallway. He was quite possibly the most beautiful man Mika had ever laid eyes on, all glowy dark skin and laughing brown eyes, and he had seemed so instantly enraptured with her that she had spent five idyllic minutes lost in scandalous fantasies . . . before discovering that Noah had

been admiring Circe, not her. They’d laughed about it and she’d invited him in for tea and now here they were. Noah, a veterinary nurse, was easily Circe’s favourite dog-sitter.

“Down, Circe,” Mika said now, returning to her doomed quest for a clean cup. Was she going to have to wash one up? She was, wasn’t she?

Sigh. “Are you staying for tea, Noah?”

“As if I’d ever turn down a cup of your tea,” he said, but he sounded distracted. Mika glanced up and saw that he was looking around the flat, his brow furrowed. “Where’s all your stuff?”

Mika hated this part, but she’d done it so many times now that the words

came easily. “Packed. I’m moving.”

Noah blinked. “You what? When?”

“Friday.”

“This Friday? Why?”

“I have to be somewhere else, so I didn’t see any point in putting it off,” said Mika. “The flat came furnished, just like yours did, so it hasn’t taken me long to pack.”

“You have to be somewhere else?” Noah repeated. “Where?”

She stuck as close to the truth as she dared. “I got a job, but it’s not in Brighton.”

Noah knew she’d been looking for work since her waitressing job at a local café had ended in September. They’d sat together over a number of cups of tea, swapping stories about rejected job applications and rapidly dwindling savings accounts. Mika had even warned him that she probably wouldn’t be able to afford to renew her tenancy next month. (It was the truth, but she had decided not to mention the fact that she had never intended to stay on in the first place.) Poor Noah. He was looking at her in such bewilderment. And why wouldn’t he? In his world, people didn’t just up and move house with barely any warning. They had employers to give at least a month’s notice to, family members popping in to help them pack, and scores of friends to throw them tearful going-away parties. They didn’t pack up their possessions in a single morning, say “I’ll be off, then,” and just go.

Noah flung himself into one of the chairs at the chipped, wobbly monstrosity that passed for a table and scratched Circe behind the ears, a rather mournful look on his face. “I’m going to miss this most excellent of dogs,” he said. “And you, of course,” he added, as something of an afterthought.

Unoffended, because Circe really was the most excellent of dogs and absolutely deserved the lion’s share of Noah’s sorrow, Mika put two freshly washed teacups down on the table and scooped up her jars of tea leaves.

“What’ll it be today?”

Noah perked up. He studied the labels on the jars, considering the question as if it was of the utmost importance. “Luck,” he said after a moment, nodding decisively. “If I’m going to have to deal with a new neighbour, one who may or may not own a clown costume like the man who lived here before you did, I’ll need all the luck I can get.”

“Good choice,” said Mika, who felt that she, too, could use a little luck.

She unscrewed the lid of the jar labelled LUCK, shook a handful of small, dried tea leaves into a teapot, and returned the jar to its place between SLEEPY and WHEN YOUR UTERUS IS UP TO ITS USUAL TRICKS.

Steaming water from the kettle went in over the leaves. As Mika popped the teapot’s lid back on with a clink of ceramic, she wondered, like she had a hundred times before, what Noah would say if she told him why he was so fond of her tea. There’s more than just tea in those leaves, she imagined herself saying. When you drink it, you take a bit of magic with you for a little while. Noah, like every neighbour and almost-friend Mika had had before him, didn’t believe the jar labelled LUCK would actually bring him luck. And if he happened to be particularly lucky after drinking it (which he would be), he would brush that off as a coincidence.

She’d never told him or anyone else the truth. Noah didn’t know she was a witch. He didn’t know that she slept on her sofa because there was a greenhouse and pond in her bedroom, which took up so much space that she’d had to get rid of the bed frame the flat had come with. He didn’t know that she moved house every few months, never went back to the same place twice, and had never found somewhere she truly felt at home. She didn’t

keep these secrets just because of Primrose’s Rules, either. After a lifetime of going out of her way to fit in with the people around her, after years of perfecting a nice, normal mask to hide who she really was, she couldn’t fathom taking it off.

Pretending to be a witch on the internet? Easy-peasy. Telling someone she was a real witch in real life? Unthinkable.

Noah clinked his teacup against hers. “To your new job,” he said. “What

will you be doing?”

“Tutoring kids.”

“As in teaching?” He looked dubious. “I didn’t know you had any

teaching experience.”

“I don’t,” Mika admitted.

“You don’t sound very sure about this.”

“I’m a little nervous,” she said truthfully, “but it’ll be okay. I can deal with my doubts. It’s the kids’ that might be trickier.”

As it happened, doubt was not an adequate word for the way Terracotta Nowhere was feeling. And, as Jamie found out that night, she was more

than happy to say so.

“Over my dead body,” she said.

Jamie raised his eyebrows at the apparition standing over him, unimpressed. “And how do you plan to manifest that grisly outcome?”

“Okay,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and sticking her nose in the air. “We can make it her dead body, then. I actually prefer that option.

I can murder her in her sleep on her very first night.”

“We’ve talked about this,” said Jamie mildly. “Murder can’t be your first choice every time you don’t like something.”

“You’ve talked about it,” Terracotta replied. “I still think it’s a good first choice.”

Jamie dropped his head back against the armchair and put an arm over his eyes. Would it do any good to point out to her that it was one o’clock in

the morning, he’d been asleep less than an hour, and he was decidedly not up to discussing whether or not to violently dispose of the new tutor? No, probably not. Just as it would probably be useless to remind Terracotta that nobody liked being woken in the dead of night by a murderous child in a ghost-white nightgown.

“Jamie,” Terracotta persisted. She perched on the arm of his chair, shoving his elbow unceremoniously out of the way.

Resigned, Jamie opened his eyes. He’d fallen asleep reading in the library, like he did quite often, and he’d turned off all the lights except for the wall sconce above him. It was a soft, golden light, but it illuminated the stubborn expression on Terracotta’s face perfectly. Even perched precariously as she was, her back was straight and her arms were still tightly crossed. She had a direct, unwavering stare, one that she tended to deploy masterfully to get her way, but Jamie had gotten wise to her tricks a long time ago.

“Give it up, brat,” he said, tugging on one of her bare toes. “She’s coming, whether you like it or not.”

Terracotta scowled, which he had no doubt was supposed to be intimidating but instead had the unfortunate effect of making her face even cuter. Which was something Jamie would never tell her, of course. “Why?

We don’t need her! You don’t want her here, either.”

He didn’t deny it. “Where’s this coming from?”

“I don’t trust her,” she said.

Jamie winced. She sounded so much like him. Had he taught her to be mistrustful of everyone and everything? An eight-year-old?

“You don’t know her, Terracotta,” he said. “Neither do I.”

“But you met her, didn’t you? When she came here the other day? What was she like?”

He thought somewhat wistfully of Altamira, who asked things like, “Why is the sky blue, Jamie?” and of Rosetta, who was all “But why didn’t either Romeo or Juliet even check for a pulse?” and wondered why Terracotta never asked him easy questions.

Mika hadn’t been what he’d expected. He’d expected the dewy, glittery, otherworldly sprite from the video, but the woman who had walked into the kitchen had been entirely ordinary. She’d been unmistakably recognisable, with the same tousled dark hair, sunny smile, and long-lashed brown eyes he’d remembered, but there’d been no dew, no glitter, and no soft, soothing chatter about moonlight. She’d been wearing a very ordinary pair of jeans and a very ordinary yellow jumper with a frayed cuff that she’d repeatedly picked at. Really, it had all been so ordinary it had taken Jamie too long to clock the fact that it had been aggressively ordinary. So uncompromisingly ordinary that the truth had to be anything but.

Then Ian had blurted out their story and Altamira had set the tree house ladder on fire and the illusion had shattered. In her surprise, Mika had inadvertently given them a glimpse at a braver, more powerful, and less certain version of herself. He still didn’t want her in their lives, no matter what Ian said, but that had been the moment he’d admitted (silently, and only to himself) that maybe, just maybe, they needed her.

“It’s complicated,” he said out loud.

Terracotta wrinkled her nose. “Grown-ups never say that about good

things.”

Well, she wasn’t exactly wrong.

“Here’s something I do know,” Jamie said. “She’s coming here to help you, Rosetta, and Altamira, and she’s risking just as much in doing that as we are in letting her into our lives. And she’s gaining far less than we will.

So we don’t have to trust her, but I reckon we owe her the benefit of the doubt.”

“I’m not making any promises,” came the ominous reply.

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