Page 18 of Spirit Witch
‘How is it my fault? I didn’t know what would happen! Besides, would you really be content if that bastard had killed us and got away with it? What about your family? They’d think you’d just run off. They’d never learn the truth. Now we haveher,’ she said, flinging a hand out towards me, ‘we have a chance of justice and our families will know what really happened.’
I flicked my gaze from her to him and back again.
‘You shouldn’t worry about them,’ murmured a voice at my back. ‘They were even worse when they were alive. I always thought they had the hots for each other and it was suppressed sexual tension but I’m not so sure now. Maybe they just hate each other.’ She sighed. ‘I do wish they’d give it a rest.’
I spun round, my eyes landing on a young woman. Unlike the other two, she had several painful-looking bruises and open wounds on her body. She caught me staring and explained. ‘I woke up and fought back. It would have been easier if I’d been asleep like the rest of them. Although at least I didn’t do what Karen did. She woke up at the last moment with no time to do anything except curse our entire coven with her dying breath.’
I must have looked confused because Karen piped up to explain. ‘I wasn’t cursing us, I was cursing him! I didn’t know we’d end up trapped here, did I?’ She glanced at me. ‘I told him we wouldn’t rest until he got what he deserved.’
‘And here we are,’ the male ghost muttered. ‘Not resting.’
Finding my voice, I looked round. ‘How many of you are there?’
‘Seven.’ She looked sad. ‘One man killed our entire coven.’
I quashed my rising horror – it wouldn’t help any of us right now. I had to focus on the details and find out what had really happened. I looked at the three of them, taking in their matching robes. They were white, not red, and even in ghostly format the material seemed to have a homespun quality.
‘You’re non-Order witches,’ I realised. The fact that their disappearance had gone unremarked was starting to make sense. Not a lot of sense, admittedly, but a little.
The man threw himself down the small hill, ignoring the trees in his path, and planted himself in front of me with a bullish stare. ‘You’re in the Order? The one person we can communicate with and they’re in the bloody Order?’ He threw his hands up in disgust. ‘She won’t help us. We’re damned for all eternity.’
I counted to ten in my head. ‘First of all,’ I said calmly, ‘I’m not in the Order. My name is Ivy Wilde.’
Phantom Karen jerked. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard of you. You were kicked out for assault.’
‘And cheating,’ I added. ‘Don’t forget the cheating.’
‘I heard other covens approached you to join them but you told them to sod off.’
I shrugged. What could I say? ‘I’m sure it would be lovely having other witches to talk to. But non-Order covens have to work hard and the results are never that…’ I paused, trying to think of the right word. This lot were grouchy enough as it was without me insulting their abilities. ‘Never that successful. I’m not much of a worker bee.’
She snorted. ‘She sounds just like your kind of person, Amy.’
The other female witch, Amy, looked irritated but she didn’t rise to the bait. ‘And how can you see us?’ she asked. ‘How can you talk to us?’
‘I absorbed the magic from a kid who was playing around with necromancy. By doing that, I stopped half of Scotland from exploding.’
All three jaws dropped simultaneously. ‘No way,’ the man breathed.
‘Yes, way.’
‘That’s so cool.’ He danced around from foot to foot. ‘So you must possess necromantic magic now. You can raise us up! You can let us return to our families and—’
Amy cleared her throat. ‘There’s just one small problem,’ she said. ‘We’ve all been cremated.’
For a moment the man’s brow furrowed and he stopped moving, then he shrugged as if his lack of a body were a trivial matter and returned to bouncing backwards and forwards. He was making me dizzy. ‘I’m sure that won’t be a problem. This woman is clearly a strong witch, just like we were. She’ll find a way around that.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t. And even if you’d been buried, I couldn’t raise you up. Necromancy is evil – not to mention impossible to control. The repercussions are potentially catastrophic.’
‘But you must be using necromancy now if you’re talking to us,’ he pointed out.
‘I am not.’ I was aware that my voice was overly loud.
Bored with the chatter, Karen wandered back to Winter who was watching me like a hawk. It must have been strange for him only hearing half of the conversation. She fell to her knees in front of him and appeared to examine his groin with great interest. ‘I’m never going to have sex again,’ she said sadly.
I’d just about had enough. ‘Karen!’ I barked. ‘Get over here and sit down. You,’ I said to the man, pointing at him as I obviously didn’t know his name.
‘Paul.’
