The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 6

CHAPTER SIX

n their way back out to the car, the girls paused to show Mika the rest of the house. The two closed doors downstairs, between the frontO door and the kitchen at the back, led to Lillian’s master bedroom and her study. The bedroom was spare and uninteresting, like a hotel room, and it was clear that the study was the place Lillian spent her time.

Someone had obviously made an effort to dust the room, but they’d been up against the insurmountable obstacle of Lillian’s scattered, untidy papers, reference books, and fossils. Indeed, as the girls pointed out to Mika, they were allowed to stand in the doorway and look inside, but they weren’t allowed to touch anything in the room because “there’s a lot of important stuff in there, and Lillian likes it to be just so, and she could be back any day.”

Mika resisted the temptation to point out that if Lillian would only be a little less controlling, her solicitor wouldn’t need to come here and put three children’s secret witchiness at risk.

“Come on,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s go make sure Ian hasn’t fallen into the pond.”

Altamira had already run outside ahead of them. Ian, it turned out, had not fallen into the pond, but he seemed to have befriended the koi.

“You were gone a while,” Lucie said, beaming down at the girls.

“Everything okay?”

“I started floating,” Altamira informed them, “so Mika had to rescue me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I rescued you—”

Ian patted Mika on the shoulder, looking enormously pleased with himself. “Best idea I ever had,” he said proudly.

“Thank you,” Ken said to Mika, his eyes twinkling. “He’ll be insufferable now.”

“Why don’t you tell us about some of the other spells you can do?” Ian asked enthusiastically. Ken and Lucie looked slightly pained, like they were afraid Ian was too nosy, but Mika didn’t mind. “What, say, is your most spectacular spell? Can you make yourself breathe underwater? Can you transform yourself into a fish, or a bird, or another person? Can you—”

“Where’s the pond going to live?” Altamira interrupted, peering so closely at the koi that her nose practically touched the surface of the water.

“Are you going to put it in the attic?”

“I was thinking it could stay outside,” said Mika, looking over at Ken.

“If that’s okay with you?”

“Of course,” he said at once. “We can put it in the back garden. The greenhouse, too. There’s a lovely sunny spot by the back wall, and the pond could go in the shade by the sunflowers.”

“But—” Ian started to protest.

“We can talk about spells later,” Lucie said firmly, taking him by the elbow. “Let the poor girl settle in first.”

So Mika floated the pond and the greenhouse around the house to the back where, just as Ken had promised, they found the perfect spot for each.

As soon as Mika settled both into the ground and broke the spell that had kept them suspended in the air, she felt an almost physical weight lift off her. She rolled her shoulders, easing out the muscles.

After that, it only took a couple more trips to ferry the rest of Mika’s possessions up to the attic. Then she went back outside to move the Broomstick into the barn while Ken and the girls stayed upstairs to unpack Mika’s books (or so they said; Mika knew the girls, at least, just wanted to play with Circe), and Lucie and Ian went to start on lunch.

By the time Mika returned to the attic, her arms full of half a dozen potted plants she’d decided to bring in from the greenhouse, Ken had departed and the girls were rolling a ball across the attic floor for Circe to fetch.

Mika worked around them. She found homes for the plants by her bed, desk, and on the balcony, set her cauldrons and her tools on the desk, and unpacked her clothes. Just as she finished, Circe wandered off to explore the house and garden. The children stayed behind.

“While you’re here,” Mika said, “Would you like to see me cast one of

my favourite spells?”

The girls’ faces lit up. “Yes, please!”

Feeling an unfamiliar thrill (had she ever been able to show her magic off like this before? She couldn’t think of a single time, not even with Primrose. Especially not with Primrose), Mika reached for a roll of sunflower-patterned fabric on the desk.

“Isn’t that for paintbrushes?” Rosetta asked curiously.

“Usually,” said Mika, unrolling the fabric to reveal eight small glass vials tucked into the elastic slots inside. “But I use it for what I call my Can’t-Do-Withouts.”

Each vial was labelled, of course, and Mika watched the girls read the labels with avid interest: the relatively mundane LAVENDER, PEPPERMINT, and CEDAR; the more curious MUSHROOM DUST, POPPY POLLEN, and CRUSHED PEARL; and finally, the downright exciting MOONLIGHT and STAR SHAVINGS.

“I’ll tell you all about each of these another time,” Mika promised them, taking the vial of pure peppermint essence out of its slot. “For now, I want to show you a different way to cast a spell. You’ve probably figured out by now that using magic is like running or climbing trees or painting. It uses energy.”

They nodded. “I always need a nap after I accidentally set something on fire,” Altamira admitted.

“I used to, too,” said Mika. “If we were to try to do a spell that needs to be left in place for hours, maybe even days, it would be impossible for us to have the energy to keep that up. But something I wish someone had told me years before I finally worked it out for myself is that you can use tools to keep a spell in place for you. Like the wards around Nowhere House.

Lillian’s thousands of miles away, but the spells she cast are still in place.

That’s because she tied the wards to something that has its own magical

energy. If I had to guess, I’d say she probably used the biggest, oldest trees as anchors.”

“Is that why she goes out into the woods every spring?” Rosetta asked.

“Is she recasting the warding spell?”

“She probably is, yes. All spells wear off sooner or later, no matter how powerful the witch or anchor is. Getting a whole year out of a spell is really good.”

“It’s more like a year and a month,” Rosetta clarified conscientiously.

“We know that because one year, Lillian didn’t come back from a trip in time and the wards were down for a whole week.”

“I thought you were going to cast a spell,” said Altamira, uninterested in this tangent.

“I am.” Mika held up the vial in her hand. “This is peppermint essence.

Like the trees outside, it has its own magical energy. Watch.”

Kneeling in the balcony doorway, on the threshold, Mika let three drops of the essence fall to the floor, right into the corners. They looked completely ordinary, like drops of water, but then she squiggled the familiar lines of a rune in the air and cast her spell.

At once, the drops of essence started to sparkle. Altamira gasped. The essence shone brightly, almost pure gold, and then subsided to a faint, scarcely noticeable glow.

“I just tied my spell to those drops of peppermint essence,” Mika explained. “So now it’ll stay in place until the magic in the essence wears off. It doesn’t have as much power as a living tree does, so I usually add a new drop and top the spell off before bed every night.”

“What does it do?” Rosetta asked curiously. “What’s the spell for?”

“To keep spiders and bugs out of the room.”

The girls burst out laughing. “We’re witches,” Altamira cried, practically rolling on the floor in her mirth. “We’re supposed to embrace nature!”

“I embrace nature,” said Mika, shuddering. “Outside. But I draw the line at creepy-crawlies in my bedroom.”

This seemed to tickle them no end. Mika grinned, not in the least surprised. There’d been a time when she, too, had been unbothered by

spiders and had chased frogs around the garden like she had absolutely no doubt Altamira did. Ick.

“Lunch!” Ian’s voice boomed from two floors below them. Mika was frankly amazed it had reached them all the way across the house, but she supposed that was one of the perks of stage training.

Downstairs in the kitchen, the girls went to work getting plates out of the dishwasher while Mika was sent across the room to the table.

Mika had only just sat down when Terracotta, the last of the girls, entered the room. She came straight to the table and, somewhat to Mika’s surprise, smiled at her. “Hello,” she said, her voice high and young and

sweet.

“Hi,” said Mika, smiling back.

Unlike Altamira, who looked like she hadn’t bothered to change out of her pyjamas this morning, and Rosetta, who was wearing a pair of jeans and an old pink T-shirt, Terracotta had dressed up. Her straight black hair had been scraped into a high, rather severe ponytail and her outfit was a formal, knee-length black dress with ruffles at the ends of the cap sleeves.

She continued to regard Mika with a steady, unwavering pair of brown eyes, but didn’t say anything more. Mika wondered if she was waiting for

someone to notice her outfit.

“That’s a lovely dress,” Mika offered.

Terracotta beamed. “Thank you. I’m wearing it because I might be going

to a funeral later.”

“You might be?”

She slipped nimbly into her chair, apparently satisfied that her outfit had

been duly noted. “Yes. It depends.”

“On what?”

“On you,” Terracotta said, smiling angelically.

Mika supposed she really ought to have seen this coming, considering everything Rosetta had told her earlier. She considered the child across the table from her. “How would you do it?” she asked curiously.

“I was thinking it would be best to do it in your sleep,” Terracotta replied without batting an eye. “Then you wouldn’t even notice. I’m competent, but

I’m not cruel.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” Mika remarked, wondering if the rest of the household knew that there was a tiny psychopath in their midst.

Before the conversation could go any further, the sandpapery voice of Jamie, the librarian, interrupted them. “Cool outfit,” he said, sounding amused. He tugged on the end of Terracotta’s ponytail and Mika watched in fascination as the unnervingly intense expression on the child’s face transformed instantly into a childish scowl.

“Jamie!” she complained, tilting her head back to glower up at him.

“You’re ruining it!”

“Ruining what? Your diabolical plot to scare the new tutor away, thereby saving you the trouble of having to murder her?”

Terracotta shot Jamie a betrayed, outraged look. “I told you,” she hissed, making no effort to keep her voice down, “I don’t want her here!”

Jamie’s face, which had been fixed in a permanent scowl the last time Mika had seen him, was remarkably patient and unscowly as he looked down at Terracotta, but Mika could tell from the way his jaw tightened that he had no intention of letting her get away with such a poor display of manners.

Mika surprised everyone, including herself, by cutting in with: “Suck it up, buttercup.”

“What did you say?” Terracotta demanded incredulously.

“Suck it up, buttercup,” Mika repeated, perfectly cheerfully. “It’s okay that you don’t want me here, but I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to it because I signed a contract. I’m staying put. And I wouldn’t recommend sneaking up on me when I’m asleep, either,” she added, giving the matter a moment’s serious consideration. “I have a very protective dog, you see.”

Terracotta crossed her arms over her chest and transferred her scowl to Mika, but didn’t seem to have anything more to say.

“Oh, she absolutely got that scowl from you,” Mika said to Jamie, marvelling at the resemblance. “It’s uncanny.”

Now they were both scowling at her. She smiled back.

Then Lucie bustled over, closely followed by the others, so there was no more time to discuss Mika’s hypothetical demise.

Lunch came in the form of a large jug of iced tea, bowls of creamy mushroom soup, and buttered hunks of warm, crusty homemade bread.

Mika, who’d been too nervous to eat any breakfast before leaving Brighton, discovered she was absolutely starving and was content to eat in happy silence while the others kept up an easy, steady stream of chatter.

Eventually, the conversation turned to the girls’ tutoring. “While you’re here,” Lucie said to Mika, “we decided we’d cut back on the girls’ usual lessons so that they’ll have the mornings free to work with you. As long as that suits you.”

“Of course,” said Mika. She wondered if Terracotta, who was glaring absolute daggers at her, would even turn up to the lessons. “We’ll start after breakfast tomorrow.”

But where would they start? Mika had no idea. She’d been thinking about it almost constantly for days and still wasn’t sure how she was going to tackle these lessons. She wasn’t a teacher, and she certainly wasn’t a teacher of magic, and it wasn’t like there were handy lesson plans available to download online. Yes, she’d already done a bit of teaching today, but that had been out of necessity.

She was out of her depth. She would do her best, but she knew she was out of her depth. Had she made a mistake in not telling Primrose?

Fortunately, before she could get too lost in self-doubt, Ken had a question for her. “Do you know what you’d like to do this afternoon?

You’re more than welcome to come to the cottage for tea if you find yourself at a loose end.”

“I’d love that,” Mika said. “I could pop over after I’ve taken Circe for a walk.” She smiled at the girls. “I thought I might let her have a run on the beach. Would the three of you like to come along?”

She expected Terracotta to reject this proposition instantly, but it came as a surprise when it was Jamie who said, quickly and a little too sharply,

“No.”

Mika blinked. The others fell silent.

Jamie looked like he regretted speaking, but he cleared his throat and went on, without looking at anybody. “I need the kids’ help in the library this afternoon.”

“Next time, then,” Mika said to the girls, her smile pinned in place so that they wouldn’t pick up on the chill in the air.

It was obvious to her, and quite possibly to everyone except the children themselves, that Jamie didn’t need the girls’ help in the library.

He just didn’t want them going anywhere with her.

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