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The shopkeeper gave Gabi a funny look—an elf walking into a witch shop sounded like the start of a joke—but when she slammed the list on the counter and said it was for Joy Mackenzie, the crone wasted no time in helping Gabi round up everything she needed.
When Gabi pulled out her purse, the ancient witch waved her hand and wished her good luck. Whatever it was about Gabi’s expression, the woman knew something was wrong.
“Thank you,” Gabi forced out, the bag of herbs and vials cradled in her arms. She fled the shop and ran flat out down the high street to Gus’s flat, praying she remembered how to get to it.
Her breathing remained steady but her heart beat so fast, her mind running even faster. This was how her fear manifested: she couldn’t slow her thoughts.Failure, those thoughts called her,inadequate. And if she failed Victoriya, failed Joy, failed her mum and her dad and their legacy, they called herkiller, too.
Gabi’s heart found a way to beat faster.
She craned her head, scanning the terrace houses that’d been split into flats, and was relieved to see Joy standing on Gus’s fire escape, waving to get her attention.
Gabi ran faster, sped up the stairs, and arrived at Gus’s open door, breathless. Scared in a way she’d never been before. If she failed, Victoriya would bekilled. This wasn’t a nameless suggestion of a victim—it was Victoriya, Joy’s friend, Gabi’s own acquaintance.
Gabi’s throat closed up, but she tried to conceal her fear as she helped the coven finish the location spell.
“This is taking too long,” Eilidh snapped, sitting cross legged on the bare floorboards, tending a pot of clear water, her seagull familiar circling high above and her hand clenching a feather necklace. Beside her, Maisie was bolt upright in her fox form, her eyes darting from witch to witch at every tiny movement.
No one argued. Gus merely kept mashing a paste with a pestle and mortar, sage smouldering in a bronze dish between them. Salma had abandoned her interview and was brewing a tea that, when thrown at an opponent, would smother them in smoke. Joy sat in a circle of delicate pink and purple crystals, breathing hard as she used her witchcraft to cast a defensive spell, readying her gems for when they’d need them most.
Gabi watched from the wall she leant against, feeling even more like an intruder than ever, at least until they finished, one by one, their individual protection and defence spells, and came to the spell that mattered most: the location spell to find Victoriya.
The five of them gathered on the rug spread over the floorboards, sitting in a circle, hands linked.
Gabi’s breath caught at the oppressive air that strangled the room with little warning. If this didn’t work... She wished she understoodwhatthey were casting, just this once.
But then Salma said, “Gabriella, put your hand on Joy’s shoulder. Make sure you’re not touching her skin, just clothes.”
Gabi’s heart quickened. She was in danger of throwing up.
“Oh,” Joy said as Gabi did as instructed despite her fear. Joy craned her head back to look up at Gabi. “Now you’ll be able to see what we see.”
Gabi’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t tell them that she wasn’t sure shewantedto see it, that the hairs on her arms stood on end at the thought. Yet she held onto Joy, and only braced herself for the images that would flood her.
A shudder wracked her; she swore a soft wind of warning blew through the living room.
Salma nodded a signal to the rest of her coven.
Gabi’s stomach twisted.
And then they were all leaning to look into a bowl of clear liquid, the coven adding ingredients with little prompting, and Salma cracked open a well-used book and began to speak.
Gabi had never heard someone speak an incantation before, the cadence of Salma’s deep voice was startling, the rich, almost musical tone of her words magnetic. Gabi was already off balance, out of her depth and afraid, andthenshe felt as if she’d been plunged into an icy pool of water.
Cold but into her everywhere—the tips of her fingers, the back of her neck, all the way from her toes to her scalp.
The room blacked out, and only the comforting solidness of Joy’s shoulder under her hand kept Gabi from yelping and darting away. She held on tight, fingers curled into the wool of Joy’s jumper as the world spun.
A moment later, the space around her lit in stages but it wasn’t Gus’s living room. They were in a room lit in warm shades of gold and orange, with rows of filing cabinets and bookshelves around them, most untidy and unorganised.
Gabi found herself on the floor, too-pale hands bound in front of her grimy shirt. A deafening, drowning pain pulsed from her back as if she had been kicked or stabbed.
It took a moment for her to realise she wasn’t alone; Katrina leant over her, her hair as icy as Gabi felt inside, her lips plump and coated in a pretty peach lipstick. She looked exactly like she had when Gabi first saw her: friendly and warm and beautiful in a ghostly way.
Gabi laughed, but it was someone else’s laugh that came out of her. Sharp—confrontational. “Nice. But I think your other face is prettier.”
Katrina said nothing, only tightened the rope around Gabi’s hands until it dug in painfully. The witch took a clear vial from her pocket and unstoppered it, holding it to Gabi’s mouth.
Gabi gritted her teeth in refusal, but it was like someone else pulled the strings of her body. She had the sense of another body somewhere else, but this one hurt, the pain louder than anything.
