Page 33 of Star Witch
And with that, they all trooped off the stage.
***
‘Enchantmentis most definitely being targeted,’ Winter told me in an aside when I caught up with him near the main producers’ tent.
I raised an eyebrow. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘There were some herbs found on the body last night. They were matched to a clump discovered in Bellows’ trailer. And,’ he reached into his pocket, ‘I found more of the same scattered around the perimeter.’
I sucked in a breath. ‘All the way around?’
Winter nodded, his expression grim. There were only two reasons why you’d encircle an entire area with herbs. To protect it – or to attack it.
‘So we’re looking for a witch again.’ Except why would an Order witch care about a reality television show that used only the weakest forms of magic?
Surprisingly, Winter disagreed. ‘I don’t think a witch is behind this.’
‘But you just said…’
‘The amounts are all wrong.’ He trailed his index finger through the herbs in his hand. ‘In every location I’ve checked, there are two parts cinquefoil to one part mandrake, with a tiny amount of prickly ash bark thrown in. I can’t see how that would have an effect on anything. Even in small quantities, the prickly ash bark would completely negate the mandrake. And there’s no known spell that uses mandrake and cinquefoil together. I’ve spent the best part of the night on the phone to the Herblore Department back in Oxford. They agree.’
I pursed my lips. ‘Is the Order being set up?’
‘Either that or we have a dangerous amateur on our hands.’ Winter swept a hand around. ‘Given where we are and who we’re surrounded by, that’s not a great shock.’
‘But the thing that attacked us last night was a damn zombie. A zombie!’
He sighed. ‘I explained that to you already. It wasn’t a zombie. It was an animated anomaly.’
‘Of course it was a zombie! It was a dead body which clawed its way out of its grave and attacked us!’ I still found it difficult to believe but the evidence had been there.
‘Keep your voice down.’
I put my hands on my hips. ‘Seriously? You don’t think that the people here have a right to know about this? There could be an army of the dead on their way!’
‘There’s no army.’
‘You don’t know that!’
‘Ivy, it’s impossible to raise more than one un-dead being at a time. Unless there’s an army of necromancers, which is not going to be the case, there’s no army of the dead.’
I met his gaze head on. ‘I bet,’ I said, ‘that if I had asked you last week if it were possible to raise one dead body, you would have said that was impossible too. Except that’s already happened. How could an amateur manage it?’
‘I don’t know yet. Necromancy is so rare that we don’t know much about it. There’s very little written in the Cypher Manuscripts because any spells designed to get the dead even to twitch are highly unreliable.’
‘I wouldn’t call what happened last night as a corpse merely twitching!’
Winter placed a hand on my arm. ‘I know you’re concerned. I am too. But one of the conditions of being permitted on set is that no one finds out what’s really been going on.’ I opened my mouth to continue arguing but he didn’t let me start. ‘The Ipsissimus agrees. We can’t have the world and its dog knowing that necromancy is real. We have to deal with enough conspiracy theories as it is. Not to mention that people up and down the country will be trying to raise their loved ones. Or worse.’
‘But the peopleherecould be in danger, Rafe.’
Winter’s voice softened. ‘I know. It’s up to you and me to make sure they’re safe until we find out who’s really behind this.’
‘Can’t you do one of your herby spells to find out what happened in Bellows’ trailer? That’ll give us something to work with at least.’
He sighed. ‘I tried that first thing. There have been too many people coming in and out of the trailer for it to work. All it conjured up was a mess.’
Fat lot of good that was, then. I tried a different tack. ‘Morris Armstrong said that they chose this area for filming because there are historical links to magic.’
