The wizard had been quiet since he’d picked me up, and he wasn’t making eye contact with me.
The problem was that I didn’t want to worry about it too much because he could read my mind anyway. So he would already know what I was thinking. In which case, why wasn’t he reassuring me?
I knew he was a man who kept to himself, and that was okay; maybe he wasn’t used to making a lot of small talk. But on the other hand, he seemed far more uneasy than when we had last met.
I wondered if it had something to do with Fletch. Was there something that the wizard didn’t want to tell me?
Which would explain why he still wasn’t speaking even though my concerns must be coming through to him loud and clear.
Bob, too, seemed unsettled. But I think he was picking up on my concern rather than vice versa.
“Can I let Bob out now?” I asked, thinking that both Bob and I would feel more relaxed if we were in contact rather than with him in a cage.
“I’d rather you didn’t while I’m driving,” the wizard answered, still not taking his eyes off the road.
That was when it occurred to me that maybe he was just a nervous driver. He was probably concentrating too much on getting home safely to focus on my silly thoughts.
He only had a camper van for a car, which couldn’t be easy to navigate on these roads. We were getting further and further into the wilderness, passing through occasional small villages, but the hills around us were getting higher and I supposed that we must be passing from the Brecon Beacons into the Black Mountains. Finally we began to ascend up what can only be described as a dirt track, before going back down into an empty valley with only one house to be seen for miles.
I frowned slightly at how isolated it was.
“So where is the Coven meeting being held tonight?” I asked.
“Not far,” he said. “Some friends will come and collect us later.”
I puzzled over his use of the term “us”; he had previously given me the impression that it was all young people and the wizard was just going to drop me off there.
“I thought it was just other teenagers?” I said after it became clear that he still wasn’t reading my mind, or if he was then he still wasn’t answering my thoughts.
“Mainly,” he said, evasively in my opinion.
My concerns about his mood returned. Especially as he had now stopped the car and was still not really looking me in the eye.
I climbed out of the van and before he could say a word I let Bob out of his cage. Bob flew straight to my shoulder and gave the wizard a defiant stare. He and I were clearly of one mind about something being off.
The wizard gave an irritated look at Bob sitting on my shoulder, and then he seemed to shake it off and became all smiles again.
“Don’t look so worried, Emily. Just like you thought, I’m a bit of a nervous driver and it probably rubs off on everyone around me.”
So he had been able to read my mind during the journey. In which case…
I decided I had better stop thinking about it too deeply, seeing as how my thoughts weren’t private anyway.
“Let me give you a quick tour,” he said, “and then I’ll show you your room.”
He led me up to the solid wooden door of a farmhouse. The building itself wasn’t large, but there were several outbuildings, and an enormous barn, all set in a generous square around the courtyard, so it was quite impressive.
He didn’t use a key, he just pushed the door open.
“No one comes to visit, except the wolves, so there’s no point in locking it.” He smiled, reading my mind again.
His expression turned serious for a moment as we paused on the threshold.
“Just between you and me, Emily, I’m leaving all this to Fletcher. He doesn’t know, but should anything happen to me…” He paused for a long moment as if thinking about how much to say. “Should anything happen to me,” he repeated in a stronger voice, “then you can find my will behind the clock above the fireplace. Do you think you can remember that, Emily?”
He finally looked me directly in the eye, and I nodded.
“Thank you.” His expression returned to its usual one of amused interest in the world around him, and he ushered me into his kitchen.
It was a large and attractive space; lots of warm natural wood made up the cabinets and the kitchen table, and an old-fashioned arga gave off a cheerful heat as well, despite the fact that it was the middle of June and quite warm enough to have all the windows open.
“It runs on oil all year round,” the wizard said, pointing to the arga. “I haven’t turned it off in over twenty years. It’s a bugger to get going again if you do.”
I nodded absently, my eye drawn to a huge cauldron set in a massive stone fireplace.
“Do you brew?” I asked.
“Yes, though not particularly successfully.”
I smiled, remembering all my own failed attempts at potions. Most of them came out an alarming dark grey, which bore no resemblance to the ingredients I’d put in.
“Don’t worry, little witch,” his eyes twinkled, “we all have our talents; and you already have more than most.”
I snorted slightly at this overstatement. “Not so that you’d notice it, but thanks anyway.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Do not underestimate how special you are. It is a very rare gift that you have.”
“For causing total mayhem whenever I cast?” I joked, not sure how to take his praise when I didn’t feel I had really done anything to earn it.
“Your skills are coming along, and your magic will get stronger and more stable with time,” he said, kindly.
Then we did a quick tour of the rest of the house, which was basic but homely. My room was obviously a designated spare room; in contrast to the higgledy-piggledy furnishing of the other rooms it was immaculately tidy, and had flowery curtains and a matching bedspread. But just like all the other rooms it also contained an overflowing bookshelf, with old books crammed into every available space.
I dumped my bag on the bed and walked straight over to look at the books.
The wizard was clearly pleased. “Cicero once said that a room without books is like a body without a soul,” he told me.
“That’s cool,” I said, not willing to admit that I had no idea who Cicero was.
After that the wizard (whom I really must start calling Brian, because that’s his name) and I did some basic casting together.
We went outside and he showed me some trees he had planted, in a pattern similar to The Seven Sisters, a circle of trees near my home in Dremouth.
“I’ve been trying to create an energy centre, like the one you use. But there has been no decent magic done here to charge it up so to speak, so right now it is still just a circle of trees. And rather young trees at that.”
It was true, the trees only came up to my waist, and they were a circle of five rather than seven, but I thought they had plenty of potential. It felt like a good place, in a witchy way.
We wrote out some simple spells and I waved my wand around a bit and said them, but nothing really happened. So in the end we sat down in the middle and I showed him my use of the four elements. I managed to get a stick very hot, though I couldn’t get it to catch on fire. I created a wind only just strong enough to feel, but it did do an obvious lap of the circle space, which was quite gratifying; and then I failed to get any water out of the ground, but several worms crawled out instead, only to be eaten by Bob. I was a bit upset by that as I felt I had lured them to their deaths, but Bob told me not to be so sentimental about “creatures without the brains to stay away.”
After all that we went back into the house and Brian suggested that I go and get washed and dressed up for the evening ahead while he made us some dinner.
I put on my long white dress, and brushed my hair loose down my back before twisting flowers into it, as is Solstice tradition. Iris had given me garlands made of Ivy to go around my wrists and ankles and a moonstone necklace to connect me to the Goddess.
In a funny way I felt far more powerful wearing all the garb than I did in my regular clothes. Maybe that was why bishops and priests got all dressed up too.
When I got downstairs, Brian had gone quiet and edgy again. I wondered if he was somehow affected by the full moon. I didn’t really know what brand of magic he could wield. Was he merely a psychic? But if so, then why have the cauldron? Was he a Druid? His books suggested he was. On the other hand, they also seemed to suggest he was a history professor, so that wasn’t helpful. I wanted to ask him, but as he could read my thoughts anyway, I waited for him to tell me in his own time.
As I watched the huge summer moon rising out of the window I began to wonder about Fletch. How was he? Where was he? Had “the change” started yet? Was he also looking at the moon? Was he thinking about me?
“Not until about ten-thirty tonight,” Brian said randomly as he pulled some warm bread from the oven.
“What?” I asked, coming back to the present from my thoughts of Fletcher.
“The Change. It doesn’t happen until the moon is completely full, which is at about ten-thirty tonight.”
“Oh,” I thought a bit more about Fletch. Was he a couple of hundred miles away in London right now? Somehow he felt nearer, but maybe that was just because I always thought of him at full moon. I remembered the night when he had been in a coma and he’d sensed me at his bedside even though his consciousness had been in his wolf, and I wondered again if we had maybe bonded a tiny bit already. Sometimes I felt like I could tell when he was thinking about me, and then just minutes later I would get an email from him. Was that really just a coincidence?
“Everyone is a little bit psychic,” Brian said, setting my plate down. “Some people are just more in tune with it than others; parents, for instance, get a feeling if their child is in danger. You and Fletch just happen to have strong feelings for each other, so yes, if you are feeling in a receptive mood then you occasionally pick up on him thinking about you and vice versa. It’s not uncommon; have you never noticed that sometimes you know who is on the phone before you answer it?”
“I have caller ID,” I said, with a grin.
He rolled his eyes. “That sort of thing is dulling society, making people less in tune with quite standard low-level psychic ability.”
We ate our meal while Brian filled me in on other everyday skills that people had and often overlooked, like sensing the mood of a stranger standing near to us, or sensing physical illness in people who didn’t even know they were sick, or being able to see the spirit of an elderly relative slipping away and knowing the end was near, yet not really acknowledging it.
Now I thought about it, I realised he had a point. When we were little kids my friend Bryony had become weirdly clingy with her older brother several months before anyone realised his kidneys were failing. But thankfully a doctor had spotted it and he was fine now; and Bryony had quickly stopped shadowing him everywhere he went. And there was the time when my dad suddenly insisted we go to see my grandpa who had been ill for months and months, and then he died shortly after we arrived. Dad and Grandma had been with him at the end, instead of at the beach where we had planned to go that day.
Brian and I were just finishing dinner when there was a knocking at his front door.
“Ah, that will be our ride,” he said. “Are you all ready?”
“Yes.” I picked up my bag of supplies and went to get my cloak while Brian opened the door.
Two fairly large men stepped in, and for some reason both of them gave me the creeps. Plus they were both in their late twenties and not really what I was expecting. At first I thought that maybe it might be the parent of one of the other teens, but these men both looked too young to have kids my age, and too old to be part of the Coven that Brian had told me I’d be meeting.
The first of the men turned to me with a warm smile and held out his hand. “So, you must be Emily, I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I shot Brian a nervous glance. We were only allowed to expose our powers to other paranormals. He nodded encouragingly, so I took the hand offered to me and shook it politely.
I felt a tingly shock go up my arm and jumped in surprise. Fletch had told me that it always happened the first time when one paranormal touched another, kind of like a warning system or perhaps as a sign of kinship, I wasn’t sure. But he’d also said it wouldn’t happen with your own kind, which meant that whatever this man was, he wasn’t a witch. So definitely not part of the Coven.
“What are you?” I asked, feeling that I’d had enough of being kept in the dark.
The man looked towards the wizard. “Maybe we should cut to the chase, Wolf Whisperer?”
Brian began to act panicked, which made me start to back away from the stranger.
Suddenly I knew that Brian was using his gifts to talk to the man inside the man’s head, just as he had done with me in the past when he wanted our conversation to remain private.
The man began to look around the room, his eyes finally settling on Bob, who was perched on the table.
“Get the bird,” he commanded the second man. “Whatever you do, don’t let it escape.”
Bob rose into the air with a squawk.
“Stay away from him!” I said in the most threatening voice I could manage.
The man moved fast, grabbing me and pulling my arms behind my back. He made a motion to Brian, who said, “Sorry, Emily, we can’t risk you doing any magic just now,” and he handed the man some rope.
I looked at him in horror. Guilt was written all over his face; he had somehow betrayed me.
Bob began to attack the man who held me. He was a serious force when he wanted to be, pecking at the man’s head, clawing close to his eyes. The man swore loudly, and shook me.
“Call off your bird, or so help me I’ll wring his neck.”
I said nothing because Bob actually seemed to be winning. But then the man grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back, and addressed Bob instead. “Stop it, you overgrown budgie, or I’ll permanently damage this pretty face.”
Bob flapped in midair for a second and then rose and perched on top of a Welsh Dresser, far out of reach of the men.
“Emily?” Bob waited for my orders.
“Just stay safe,” I told him, before I was frogmarched out the door.
“You were supposed to keep him contained. He can’t be allowed to go for help,” the horrid man shouted, turning on Brian.
Brian shut the door firmly. “What does it matter now? There are no doors or windows open, he can’t get out of the house.”
“You’ll be sorry if he does. Get the witch in the van.”
A large white van was parked outside with its back doors open. Brian climbed in first, then I was pushed in and after that the second man followed. The first man slammed the doors and then went round to the driver’s door and climbed in. Seconds later the van started and we were bumping along the road.
I sat on one side of the van on a long leather seat, my wrists still bound behind my back, and glared at Brian.
My instinct was to start crying and begging, but what they didn’t know, and I was very careful to try not to think about, was that I could still sense Bob. His presence was calming me. Wherever we were going right now, he was coming too. I didn’t know how he’d escaped the house, but he was flying along just outside and our bond was going strong.