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Joy’s heart crashed to her boots. “What—” she started, but she was suddenly too breathless to finish. Arrested? Joy had never been arrested in her life. She’d never committed acrime, unless you looked really deep into her internet history and found the one time she’d torrented an episode ofGilmore Girls(before she’d suffered a bout of guilt and deleted the episode without watching it.)
Joy had never … and now she …arrested?
“Excuse me?” Gabi demanded in a cold, steely voice. Joy didn’t dare look at her fully, but she saw Gabi from the corner of her eye: she stormed down the path, her long coat flaring out behind her and her black ponytail trailing like a whip on the wind. “On what grounds? Ijustfinished questioning her. What evidence do you have that I don’t?”
“What I have,” Paulina replied coolly, adjusting her pointed hat on her red head, “is a witness who saw a woman matching this witch’s description half an hour before Mackenzie called in the body.”
Every time Paulina said Joy’s surname, more and more derision oozed through. Joy couldn’t stop shaking, each word falling like a nail in her coffin. She wanted to defend herself, but she couldn’t get her mouth to open.
She wished Bo hadn’t gone home and left Gabi to interview her, wished he was here—he was the only person, other than Joy’s absent dad, who’d ever been allowed to stand up to Paulina. If Paulina told Gabi to arrest Joy … she’d have to. Joy’s next breath let out a pathetic whimper.
“Well,” Paulina snapped, flapping her doughy hand. “Get on with it.”
Joy peered up long enough to see Gabi reading the arrest warrant, her mouth set in a hard line. She handed it back and took a pair of handcuffs from one of her coat pockets with a growl of a sigh. Joy startled at the sight of them, another cry tumbling from her without her permission.
She flinched, screaming at herself to fight, to draw her wand, to say something to defend herself, as the cold shock of the metal met her wrists, the warm touch of Gabi’s fingers as she efficiently locked Joy’s hands in front of her body just as unbearable.
The spelled metal cuffs rattled as Joy trembled, her eyes fixing on Gabi, pleading. But all Gabi did was dispassionately rattle off Joy’s rights.
Everything Joy had said, everything she’d shouted and spat at her the last time they spoke … she didn’tdeserveto have Gabi still on her side—but if she just handed Joy over to be locked up in the Town Hall’s damp, rotting cells … Joy was going to break. Her heart would crack in two, her composure would shatter to pieces, and the tears stinging her eyes would come pouring out.
“You still have no evidence,” Gabi told Paulina in a neutral tone, her fingers lingering on Joy’s wrists a moment too long. Joy clung to the moment, taking comfort in it that Gabi probably didn’t intend to give. “I assume it’s my job to find it before forty-eight hours are up?”
“It’s your job to find it,” Paulina agreed, a sour twist to her mouth as she looked at Joy. “But I can hold Mackenzie for as long as I want. You’re playing by human rules, Pride. You need to remember that Agedale’s a witches’ town.”
Gabi said nothing to that, and Joy desperately scanned her expression. Gabi’s whole face was studiously normal. Flat. Joyknewthat look—it meant Gabi was feeling too much at once. It meant she wasangry. At Joy. Because she thought—she thought Joy killed that girl.
Joy’s bottom lip caved in, wobbling. She wanted Bo, she wanted her mum back, but mostly she wanted her coven. They’d get her out of this … right?
“Well,” Gabi said finally, “I’d better get to work.” Her eyes flitted to Joy and held her gaze, but Joy couldn’t read anything in those dull, brown eyes. “I’ll be around to see you tomorrow morning for follow-up questions.”
Joy’s breath caught—Gabi thought she was … she really believed Joy was guilty.
Joy was so numbed by that realisation, by beingarrested for murder,that she’d been bundled up the high street and down the road to the ruins of Town Hall before she realised. People were watching, whispering, as Paulina led Joy, handcuffed, up the still-intact stone stairs and through the ancient columns that led to the restored lobby. Even though Gabi had argued it was her job to transport a prisoner to the cells, Paulina had grabbed Joy and hauled her off personally, enjoying every moment, especially whenever Joy stumbled.
Joy caught the eye of Old Josie, a woman Joy had always considered a friend, and her tears finally spilled over. The grey-haired woman tutted, and Joy’s chest crumpled, thinking the sound was directed at her until Josie spat, in her usual acidic way, “What a way to treat that poor girl. As if she hasn’t been through enough with Charity’s passing.” One of Josie’s friends murmured her agreement, but Paulina barked, “Away with the lot of you. This is none of your business.”
“Joy?”
Joy twisted her head, knowing that voice. Neil Ivers, her neighbour and her mum’s best friend—her friend too, in that way of next door neighbours who knew everything about each other. She saw the shell-shocked expression on his face change to outrage, but then she was shoved past the marble columns and into the lobby.
Town Hall staff watched with open mouths as Paulina roughly guided Joy across the marble floor, past the towering statues of head witches past—the founders of Agedale from the fifteen hundreds. Joy tried not to hyperventilate as Paulina huffed, leading her to a heavy door that led away from the restored section of the building to darkness and decay, to the cells that lurked below.
Joy knew this place inside out, had run wild through both the restored halls and the eroded ruins as a girl when her dad was Head Witch. But she’d never been through this door. She’d never fumbled her way handcuffed down the dark steps on the other side, water trickling down the rough stone around her.
Her childhood playground had become a tomb, and the saltwater and magic smell of the building was no longer a comfort. It was a reminder of all the spells wrapped around the town hall, keeping her locked down here.
She could have tried to fight, but she’d have lost. Paulina was Head Witch for a reason: she was the most powerful.
Joy didn’t have anyone outside waiting for her to get home, worrying when she was late and then absent altogether. She had friends, she had her coven who were her new family, but they all had their own homes, their separate lives. Her mum was gone, her dad lost, and the rest of her family … Joy knew very little about them.
But at least Neil knew—he might be able to find her coven, let them know Joy was in trouble. And she had Gabi and Bo, although with what Gabi had said about finding evidence … shedidn’thave Gabi. Not at all. Not in any way.
Paulina shoved Joy down the last few steps, the temperature dropping the lower they got, until Joy was shaking because of cold as well as terror. Would she ever be released? Paulina had always been out to get her family, ever since the coven voted her dad as Head Witch instead of her years ago. And even though he ran and she got the position in the end, she still glared at Joy and her mum, still hissed about them, still turned the main coven against them until Joy was forced to form her own—something without precedent in Agedale.
Now, Paulina brimmed with victory and satisfaction. Joy could see it in her eyes when they finally came face to face with the ancient cells. The metal had been set with sea magic; when Joy stepped into that cell, every bit of magic she possessed would be stripped from her.
Joy’s heart sped up at the thought, her whole body chilling, but she never thought Paulina would hold out her hand and demand, “Your wand, Mackenzie.”
