A Very British Witch Boxed Set Page 21

  “And I didn’t have the key to the shed,” Ronnie said. “Though the truth is, I drove home without thinking and realized the next day that the wheelbarrow was still in the back of my truck, so I brought it into the yard so it wouldn’t be seen from the street.”

  “And it all would have been irrelevant if that farmer hadn’t ploughed his field on Monday,” said Cliff.

  “And if Scarlett’s memories hadn’t returned,” Tarquin said.

  Something else puzzled Scarlett. “How did I get home, then?”

  “I took you,” Cliff said. “You wanted to forget the awfulness of that night, so we made you some more tea, as Tarquin said. You talked about putting it all behind you and getting on with your life. The second cup was your own idea, actually. I got you home shortly after sunrise. You couldn’t have slept for more than an hour or so.”

  “And even then,” Karl said, “you were late for work.”

  “Sorry, boss, for being so late,” Scarlett snarked. “It won’t happen again.”

  Karl laughed. “Not like that, I’m sure!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Malaprop’s Bookstore, Bicester, England

  “But Tim still has evidence,” Scarlett said. “The video footage, and the body…”

  “I’ve handled that,” Karl said.

  “Handled it?”

  “When I slipped off a while ago. He was following you in the street.”

  “He was?”

  “He’s been following you. Spying. When you left tonight, he tailed you in the shadows. We’ve been aware of his activities from the beginning, but we allowed him to see us here.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a trained soldier, and potentially dangerous, even to us. We wanted to catch him when he was at a disadvantage.”

  “I was the lure,” Scarlett said.

  “Tonight, yes. You came to us, and he followed. We showed ourselves to you and to him. This focused his attention so that when I slipped away, his mind was on you and the others. I could approach him and catch him off guard.”

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  Karl hesitated, as if considering how much to reveal. “Tim and I… had a little chat.”

  Scarlett felt a chill ripple through her.

  Though Tim had once implied that she was the killer, he was just doing his job. For all the trouble he’d caused her, he seemed to be a good man trying to do the right thing. She didn’t think he deserved to be killed for that. Or worse.

  “What do you mean, a chat?” she asked. “You killed him?”

  Karl smiled. It wasn’t a malicious smile but a patient one. “No, thankfully that was not necessary. However, I did take his notes off him. And his phone.”

  “The evidence, you mean.”

  “Yes. Anything that would connect the death of Bill Knight to one of us.”

  “And then what? You just let him go?”

  “I compelled him to forget everything.”

  “I don’t know what that means. ‘Compel.’ Not in the sense you mean. You keep saying that, but what is it?”

  “A kind of power over others. Over the weak-minded.”

  “He didn’t seem weak-minded.”

  “To you, perhaps. But to a vampire, he is… human. Mortal. With the weaknesses of his kind. No more or less than most others.”

  Scarlett eyed him cautiously. “How did you do it?”

  Karl shrugged. “Difficult to explain to someone not born with the power. It’s a tone of voice, and intention of thought. More than that, but perhaps it captures the essence.”

  “So you spoke to compel him. That was that chat, as you called it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you say? Some kind of spell?”

  Tarquin seemed offended. “Not a true spell.”

  Karl laughed. “No, not like that. We leave the true spells to Tarquin and his kind. What I said to Soldier Tim was, ‘Go have a drink and wake up tomorrow without a care in the world.’”

  “Like hypnosis, then,” said Scarlett.

  “If that makes you understand it better, then I suppose so, yes. But hypnosis can be taught. The power to compel is deeper, like the surge of blood in the veins.”

  Scarlett didn’t want to talk blood to a vampire. “What about the investigation, then? He has mountains of evidence in his room at the hotel.”

  Cliff nodded. “We know about that. We’ve tracked his movements. We’ll tidy up his investigation room at the hotel when we’re done here.”

  “Just like that? The whole investigation goes away?”

  Karl nodded. “Pretty much. Tim will write his report and fill in the things that he doesn’t know to make sense of them. Normally it’s something pretty mundane.”

  Scarlett caught her breath. “Normally? Wait, hold on. How many times have you done this?”

  Karl looked to the others. A conspiracy of glances.

  “A few,” he admitted. “Over the years.”

  Scarlett looked at Cliff.

  You too? she thought but didn’t need to say it.

  He nodded in confirmation.

  “So why didn’t you just compel Bill then?” she asked him.

  “He’s was a witch, believe it or not. Not that he knew. A warlock. Witches are human, but not like other humans. Through the centuries, a small number of humans have learned to defend themselves against the supernatural, becoming almost supernatural themselves. Certain spells and rituals protect them. There may be a genetic component as well, as witches tend to run in families. Though they mingle quite easily with normals, easier than vampires and werewolves to be sure. Still they have become a tribe unto themselves, everywhere and yet hidden from plain sight. You, Scarlett, are one of them. A witch. Untrained, to be sure, and in denial about what and who you really are. Yet still there is an ancient power in you that protects you. That’s why I couldn’t compel you that night at the White Hart. Or since.”

  Scarlett took a moment to process that.

  I’m a witch?

  Her rational mind wanted to reject the thought, but in her heart she knew it was true.

  Somehow, she had always known there was something different about her. Something special, and dangerous, and even terrifying. A potential. A power. She wanted to be normal, to fit in with the world around her. But there was no denying the underlying truth of her life. She was not what she thought she was.

  I’m a witch…

  “You mean you tried?” she said finally. “To compel me?” she pressed, her indignation catching up.

  Cliff laughed. “For a moment there at the bar, I thought I’d lost my mojo. And yes, of course I tried. But now that I know you’re a witch, I’m happy to report that my mojo is still very much intact.”

  Something still bothered her. “What about that time you bumped into me on the street?”

  Cliff sighed and told her.

  Cliff had been walking along high street, following Scarlett and her friend Amanda. It was Friday morning and the two women had just had coffee together. He was worried that Scarlett may have told Amanda too much about the night before and the death of Bill Knight.

  The night before he had tried to compel Scarlett to forget, but he’d felt a resistance in her mind.

  Other vampires fed on humans or, if desperate, other animals. But Cliff had found another way. He no longer needed to kill to feed. In this day and age people donated blood to help the sick. It was the perfect solution to the ancient problem, and yet…

  What if his “new way,” as he called it, was weakening him? What if he needed the hunt in order to maintain his powers? Was it the hospital blood that sapped his strength, causing him to lose the power to compel normal humans?

  Only if she’s a normal, he realized. But what if she’s a witch?

  He had to know.

  So he followed her, he explained, to reintroduce himself, so that he could spend time with her.

  Then when her memory was coming back he was ideally placed to invite he
r for a coffee and top up her dosage of the forgetting spell.

  Scarlett listened to Cliff’s version of what happened in the days that followed. It was all coming together for her now.

  “That’s why my mental clarity kept coming and going,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Cliff.

  She felt anger rise up inside her. She felt violated. “You drugged my coffee.”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have killed me.”

  “Hardly,” said Tarquin. “The worst that might have happened is a bit of brain damage, that’s all.”

  Her voice rose with indignation. “That’s all?”

  “The alternative was worse,” said Karl.

  “Worse than possible brain damage?”

  “The psychic shock,” Karl explained. “We were trying to protect you.”

  “From what?”

  “A lifetime of nightmares and fear, of trying to make others understand the truth and being outcast by society.”

  “That choice should have been mine,” she said. “You had no right to wipe away my memories.”

  “Perhaps,” Tarquin admitted. “But in any case, it didn’t work. Your mind was too strong. Your subconscious knew the truth and fought for that truth to come out. In memories and nightmares.”

  “So now,” said Cliff, “the choice really is yours.”

  Tarquin reached into his desk drawer and removed a plastic baggie. Inside was a greenish powder of crushed herbs.

  “I can increase the dose,” he said. “Your tolerance is not one hundred percent. I can offer you a life free of the knowledge of what you saw.”

  “The knowledge of good and evil?” she said with a hint of sarcasm.

  For a long while no one said anything. She looked from Tarquin to Cliff to Karl to Ronnie. She knew now who they really were, and they were offering her a life of comforting lies.

  The choice was hers and hers alone.

  “No,” she said finally. “I think I need to live with this. Or tell Tim.”

  “Tim’s not going to be able to get his head around it,” Cliff said. “You’ll never convince him. Not now.”

  She felt suddenly at a loss. “So then… what am I supposed to do?”

  “Go home,” Karl said. “Get some rest. Come into work tomorrow and get on with your life.”

  Scarlett nodded slowly, feeling the weight of her choice.

  Get on with my life?

  She knew that was going to be very hard to do.

  Scarlett allowed Ronnie to walk her home. It was still dark when they first stepped out of the bookstore but she could feel a change in the air as morning approached and the veil of darkness slowly lifted from the sky. It felt strange seeing the morning from the wrong end of the day.

  Now that she understood what had happened, and who Ronnie really was, she felt much safer in his presence, though. It also helped knowing that as a witch she could not be compelled by the vampires.

  They were the only people on the street at this hour, so it seemed safe to talk. “Were you always a werewolf?” she asked him quietly.

  “Yes and no,” he said. “It’s hereditary, mostly. I come from a family of werewolves. But I didn’t know until my first Change.”

  “When was that?”

  “For me it happened at sixteen.”

  “Can you control it?”

  “Only a little. It’s like sleep. You can put it off for a while but that only makes it worse. I thought it was something I had to manage, but as I grew older I realized it’s completely natural. I’m different than normals, and I have to hide that, but you adapt. The worst thing is to deny who you really are.”

  He seemed to be saying that rather pointedly.

  “You mean like me maybe being a witch?” she asked.

  He nodded. “You need to learn to embrace it. If you lie to yourself, you give away your power. If you acknowledge your truth, you become empowered. The choice isn’t always easy, but it’s always yours to make.”

  She thought about that as they walked, resisting the urge to make some crack about him going Tony Robbins on her.

  “Is it the moon that causes it?” she asked.

  “That’s one trigger.”

  “The full moon?”

  “It’s like I said, something that cannot be put off forever. I live with it every night, that urge to change, even with a crescent moon, but it’s manageable. As the moon waxes the hunger becomes more and more intense until you just can’t help it. Then the change happens, with or without my own control.”

  “But there are other triggers?”

  “Anger,” he confessed. “Danger. As near as I can tell, the ability to shapeshift is a defensive mechanism. Probably an evolutionary adaptation, though it isn’t common enough to have been studied. And what limited scientific knowledge we have has been suppressed. First by the medieval church, and then by lycanthropes themselves. Our secrecy helps protect the tribe. And of course there’s-”

  Ronnie stopped himself.

  Scarlett looked up at him. “What?”

  “Well… er. It’s rather embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing?”

  “Yeah. The other thing that can make us change…”

  Scarlett eyed him, intrigued, waiting for him to speak.

  “Waffles,” he said simply.

  Scarlett looked confused.

  “Like potato waffles. Ever since I was a kid, I always… liked them. But now when I have them, they kinda get me going.”

  Scarlett giggled in disbelief.

  “Yeah, there was even one time I went to a greasy spoon with my mum. I’d forgotten about it, and by this time I had the were thing under control. And then she offers me some of her waffle to try, and… Well I nearly changed. Right there and then, in the middle of Banbury! Broad daylight. People everywhere!”

  Scarlett clamped her hands over her mouth. “You’re kidding me?”

  He shook his head, and kept walking. Then a little smirk flickered at the corner of his mouth.

  “You are kidding me.” Scarlett slapped at him with the back of her arm.

  “Or am I?” he said mysteriously.

  “Well, if you’re just going to take the piss, I won’t ask you any more questions then,” she decided.

  “No, no… I’m playing. Ask away.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “What does it feel like, as wolf?”

  “What does it feel like as a human?” he shot back. “That’s too big a question to answer.”

  “Do you remember after you change back?”

  “Yes, but incompletely. It’s more like a remembered dream. That’s what I thought it was at first, until I learned that my wolf dreams were true and within my control.”

  “So you can control what you do as a wolf?”

  “When I’m a wolf, I think as a wolf. When I’m a man I think as a man. Control means something different to a wolf than to a man. It’s difficult to explain, even to myself. Men argue whether or not they have free will. Wolves don’t argue about it. They simply do what they must to survive.”

  “What about silver bullets and crucifixes and things like that?”

  “I’d rather not speak about that, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “What do you know about vampires?”

  “You should probably ask a vampire,” Ronnie said.

  “I notice they wear distinctive rings.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “The rings protect them. I don’t know how they work, but they give vampires a reflection in mirrors and allow them to live partly in daylight.”

  As they reached her gate, Scarlett asked the question that she’d been reluctant to bring up all night. “Does Amanda know?”

  “No,” Ronnie said. “And I’d like to protect her from this world if I can. Not that she’d believe any of it.”

  “What’s so bad about having super powers?”

  “It comes at a cost. And none of us are safe. The fewer people know about us, the safer it
is for us. And them. That’s why we stick together.”

  Scarlett nodded. She could see the wisdom in that, even if she wasn’t fully convinced she wasn’t going to wake up in a few hours and realize this was all in her imagination.

  “I’m pretty exhausted,” she said.

  “It’s been a long night.”

  She hugged him goodnight. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Opening my eyes.”

  “A blessing and a curse,” he chuffed.

  She went into the house, feeling his eyes on her. When she turned in the doorway he was still there. She waved goodbye and he returned the gesture before she closed and locked the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Clarke’s hotel room, The Bicester Hotel

  Tim woke in a hotel bed with sunlight streaming from a window onto his face. He blinked and rolled his head to escape the glare and wished himself back to sleep before a disquieting sensation woke him again.

  Where am I?

  He craned his head and saw that was a hotel room. It looked familiar. It was the Bicester Hotel.

  He sat up and noticed that he was still in his day clothes. Somehow he’d crawled under his covers in everything but his shoes.

  Tim threw back the covers, shuffled stiffly off the bed and wandered over to the window. His room overlooked the back car park. Nothing interesting, but he could see what the weather was doing at least. And how light it was, giving him a clue as to the time of day normally.

  What day is this?

  He tried to remember yesterday. He was investigating a murder, yes. Bill Knight. The crazy professor who was asking questions about vampires and werewolves and witches.

  It was coming back to him now, but slowly.

  He found his cell phone on the nightstand by the bed. He checked his call log. The last call he received was from the coroner.

  Yesterday.

  Tim tried to think back to that conversion and drew a blank.