Jan Siegel - Witch’s Honour

‘What happened next?’ he persisted. ‘You woke up?’

She gave a small shake of the head. ‘I had to find the way back. It was difficult. Dangerous. I had a guide…At this party, when your sister passed out, do you remember anything unusual? Or peculiar?’ He saw the alteration in her attitude, a new alertness in her looks, and experienced a pang which might have been hope, or might have been fear.

‘There were people taking coke and E. They were drinking thirty-year-old Scotch and forty-year-old brandy and absinthe and champagne. Some were discussing literature and French cuisine, religion and sex. Others were talking to the furniture. Many were incapable of talking at all. Nearly everyone was in fancy dress. How unusual do you want?’

If he was witty, Fern did not laugh. (No sense of humour, he thought.) ‘Did anyone see…a bird, an animal, a phantom? Something unexpected or uncanny?’

‘At least six people saw a headless ghost in the old tower—one or two had a conversation with it—but I understand that’s par for the course. Several of the guests wore animal costumes. I noticed a woman with a bird mask, rather beautiful and predatory, but—no, not that I know of. Nothing real .’

‘What is real,’ sighed Fern. It wasn’t a question.

There was a silence which he felt he should not break. She was looking at him in a way people rarely look at each other in a civilised society, as if she were assessing him, without either animosity or liking, fishing for clues to his character, trying to peer into his very soul. She made no attempt to disguise that look, and he thought it changed her, bringing her closer to his memory of the girl in the dreams. He found himself responding in kind, scanning her face as if it were the estimated output from some new investment project, or a painting he admired which rumour told him might be a fake.

Eventually she said: ‘You really believe your sister’s condition isn’t…mere oblivion, don’t you? You think she’s somewhere else?’

‘Mm.’

‘And I expect,’ she went on, ‘you sometimes know things without knowing how . You’re very good at second-guessing the market, or whatever it is you do in the City. Your colleagues think it’s sinister; they may suspect you have access to inside information.’

‘I don’t make many mistakes,’ he conceded.

‘You have a Gift,’ she said lightly—so lightly that he knew the phrase meant more than it said, he heard the importance of the final word.

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘By whom?’ Her tone had sharpened.

‘There was a nurse at the clinic, late one night. He was from an agency, filling in for someone who was off sick; he hasn’t been back since. He told me that there are people with certain powers…that I might be one of them.’

He has power, she thought. I can sense it coming off him like static. He has power, and he uses it, but he doesn’t know how. He’s like I was before I learnt witchcraft: he’s playing by feel. Only it’s far more dangerous, because he’s desperate, living on the edge. If his control should snap…

She asked: ‘Does your sister have this Gift?’

‘I don’t think so. Her only real talent is for making a mess of her life.’ After a minute, he went on: ‘I didn’t do enough for her.’

It was a bald statement of fact, not an apology, but for the first time Fern came close to liking him. ‘You’re doing something now,’ she said. ‘We’re doing something. At least, we’re going to try.’

She looked into his eyes: smile met smile. There had been few smiles throughout the meeting and these were understated, hers close-lipped, his tight-lipped, curiously similar. Something passed between them in that moment, something slight and intangible, connecting them.

Fern said: ‘There’s a lot here I don’t understand. Most of it, to be frank. It could be that your sister’s spirit was taken because of you, or even instead of you, but I’ve no idea by whom.’ The one who stole my spirit is dead, she thought, but there’s a new witch at large in the world, according to the goblins. I must learn more from Mabb. ‘I have to make some inquiries.’

‘Who do you ask,’ he said sceptically, ‘about something like this? A medium?’

‘A medium is just a middleman,’ Fern said. ‘Or middlewoman. I don’t need one. I’d like to visit your sister, if I may. I don’t suppose it will tell me anything, but I want to see her.’

‘I’ll arrange it.’ Suddenly, he gave her a full smile, gentling the tautness of his face. She noticed that there was a single broken tooth in his lower jaw, relic perhaps of some childhood accident. He obviously hadn’t cared enough to have it capped, and that tiny act of indifference made her warm to him another degree or two.

He said: ‘I knew you’d help.’ He didn’t thank her.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Fern responded. She didn’t promise.

Fern went home by tube, so absorbed in her own thoughts that she almost missed her stop. When she got back to the flat she made preparations, diligently, her mind elsewhere. She set out bottles, glasses, candles. Knowing she had left it too late, she tried to call Will, but on his home number she got a machine and his mobile was switched off. But she did get through to Gaynor.

‘What are you doing tonight?’

‘I’ve already done it,’ Gaynor said. ‘I went to a dreary film at an arts cinema with Hugh, I think because he hoped it would impress me, and then he told me that Vanessa doesn’t understand him, and then I declined to have sex with him again—I mean, I declined again, not that I had sex with him before—and now he says I don’t understand him either, but—’

‘Why should you want to?’ said Fern. ‘Forget about Hugh; this is important. Can you come round? I’m expecting a visit from royalty and I think I’d like someone else here. It saves explaining afterwards.’

There was a short pause. ‘Did you say royalty? ’

‘Not that kind. Mabb, the goblin queen. Skuldunder dropped in the other night and I asked him to arrange it. I wasn’t going to tell you about it—’

‘Why not?’

‘I didn’t want you involved,’ Fern temporised. ‘After last time…’

‘Look, I was scared last time, and I’ll probably be scared again, especially if there are bats. I scare easily. But it doesn’t matter. I’m your best friend. We’re supposed to be a team.’

‘ Are we?’

‘Yes, of course. You, me, and…and Will.’

‘Some team,’ said Fern. ‘Two members don’t even speak to each other. Swallows and Amazons had better look out.’

‘Do you want me to come round or not?’ Gaynor interjected.

‘Yes, I do. Something’s happening, and I need to talk it over. You’re nearer than Ragginbone—’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘—and you don’t wear a smelly coat. Come round now?’

Gaynor came. Fern had already made coffee and they sat down amidst a scattering of candles while she explained about her meeting with Lucas Walgrim and the information she had received from Skuldunder.

‘You think there’s a connection?’ Gaynor asked.

‘Maybe. In magic, there are no coincidences. It’s very difficult for someone to separate another human soul from its body. I’ve been doing some reading in the last couple of years—Ragginbone gave me a load of stuff—and even the spells for it are obscure. It takes a lot of power. The Old Spirit has done it, and he still had to have the consent of his victim. He seems to be able to bend the rules sometimes; after all, I didn’t actually consent the night I was taken, but I had called him, and I was unconscious, and vulnerable. But when Morgus sent the owl for me I should have been able to return to myself, instead of being wrenched into another dimension. She took you once, too: remember?—only you were the wrong person so she sent you back again. Apparently, she used to collect souls. She would seal them in djinn-bottles.’