Page 26 of Witchlore
“What was his name?” I ask abruptly.
“Excuse me?” Bastian almost trips over a small bush.
“What was your brother’s name?” I repeat.
There is a shaft of moonlight that falls across his face and he looks the most shocked I’ve ever seen him.
“Shasta,” he says.
“The Horse and His Boy.” I nod, recognizing the reference to the C. S. Lewis novel.
“Yeah.” He shoots me such a surprisingly fond look that I blush and look away.
“What was Elizabeth’s full name?” he asks. “No one’s told me.”
“Elizabeth Toppings.” I smile, because I always thought it was a cute name, making her sound like she should run a tearoom in the nineteenth century.
“Everyone talks about her at college when you’re not around,” he says.
“They do?” I turn to stare at him. He nods.
“They all talk about how sweet and kind she was, good student, perfect friend. It all seems kind of fake. I still don’t have any idea what she was really like as a person.”
“Oh. Um.” It’s suddenly too much to imagine everything I could tell him about Elizabeth, so much pressure that my mind is drawing a horrifying blank. I end up blurting out the first things that come to me. “She liked trampolining, she had one in her garden. She always took the pickles out of burgers. She loved Christmas movies.…” I feel uncomfortable, realizing that while I loved her so much, the closeted nature of our relationship meant that all the practical things I knew about her revolved around activities we could do in her parents’ house in secret or takeaway we ordered. I can tell Bastian what was in her to-be-read pile, but I can’t tell him what she was like at a party. I try to focus on facts. “Her best friend was Kira Tavi, from college, and her mum leads an Artemis coven in Alderley Edge. Her parents are both academics.”
“An Artemis coven?” Bastian repeats with a frown. “That’s a fertility coven.”
“Yeah.” It was one of the reasons Elizabeth was so nervous to come out as gay to her mum, who had always envisioned a particular future for her.
“You do know that most fertility covens would be against this spell we’re trying to do? That they think that only female-born women can give life?”
“Oh. Yeah.” I try to sound as if I’ve considered all of this but the truth is, I hadn’t even thought about it. I’ve been so focused on the idea that of course Elizabeth’s parents would be happy to have her back that I didn’t consider how her mum’s beliefs might come into play. But surely having your only child back trumps everything else?
As if he’s reading my mind, Bastian asks, “I know we’re still a long way off from this being a reality, but have you thought about how she might react to her daughter being resurrected this way?”
Nope,I think.Not even a little bit.
“Well, it’s like you said, we’re a long way off that.” I try to keep my voice light and my face neutral but Bastian looks like he isn’t buying it. I sigh. “Honestly, I think she would do anything to get Elizabeth back and if it’s something that involves risking my life, so much the better.”
Bastian opens his mouth, probably to ask more about Elizabeth’s mother, but then he closes it, his head snapping up, face watchful, nostrils flaring.
“What?” I ask, feeling trepidation creep along my skin.
“Did you hear something?” he asks, looking over his shoulder. I turn. Behind us, in the thick darkness, something moves.
CHAPTERNINE
I stare between the trees, my eyes struggling to make shapes form in the sudden blackness. It’s like the moment that you wake from a nightmare and suddenly, everything in your room seems strange and alien. You stare at the unknown monstrous form of your coat on the back of your door and dare it to move, frozen in fear, until you lurch awake and realize it’s all in your head. I stand, hearing my own rapid breath, waiting to wake up, for the trees to become trees again, but they don’t. A slithering shape made of darkest night is following us, just on the farthest edge of my vision, and I can hear a snuffling, horribly intimate wet munching.
“It’s eating the cheese,” Bastian whispers.
“Holy crap, it’s real,” I whisper, my voice coming out much more panicky than I expected, but I’m equally as surprised when Bastian, in a similar tone, whispers back.
“It fucking is!”
I realize that, for all his talk, a part of him didn’t expect it to be here, and having a real-life magical creature within ten paces of us is a complete shift in reality.
“What do we do now?” I say, hoping to god he actually has aplan, and cursing myself for not doing some bloody preparation.Ninety-five percent,I chide myself.It’s the five percent that’ll kill you.
