Sticky Witch III
Runes, grudges and garlic bread
Rosen is part of a team of Material Practitioners (that’s a ‘witch' without the religious bit), with a beaten-up car and a bad case of mysterious sinking houses across southwest England. She despises Glenda Hale, who is standing outside her front door.
To find out more, read Parts 1 and 2 here (no paywall).
We clustered around my phone, watching the Ring doorbell’s video. Glenda punched the call button twice and frowned at the lack of response from inside the house. My nemesis was a good looking woman in her 40’s with ash-blonde hair and a tailored wardrobe that did a good job of smoothing over her stomach bulge. Today, she looked tired, with smudged lips marring her careful make-up. After a pause, she rummaged in her bag for a pen.
“You should say something,” John told me quietly. My Ring doorbell had a two-way talk function.
I shook my head. Instead, I opened the app, hit one of the pre-recorded responses, and watched Glenda jump.
“I’m away from the house right now, but your presence has been noted and I will contact you on my return. If you have a parcel, please leave it in the lockbox, next to the side gate.”
I smirked at John. “Sometimes paranoia pays off,” I told him. “I’m also under strict instructions from my family solicitor not to approach or talk to Glenda Hale. Something about a threatened injunction and a restraining order.”
“What did you do to her?” Latika asked, staring at my phone screen. Glenda was scribbling on a piece of card, using my door as her writing base.
“Me? Nothing. However, she got into a shouting match with Mum after lying through her teeth in court. Mark got twenty months in prison, thanks to her.”
“Mark’s her brother,” Mike interjected at Latika’s look of confusion.
“Oh.”
The Ring doorbell faithfully recorded Glenda posting the card through the letterbox. She paused, raised her hand just outside of the camera and wiggled her arm. Then, she left.
Mike raised his eyebrows at John. “What do you think? Sigil?”
“Probably, “ John agreed. “But she would claim she was stretching her arm due to a trapped nerve or something. Her lips didn’t move.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, slightly depressed. “Sneaky. She always stays just on the right side of doubt.”
“I thought you couldn’t place a spell on a dwelling without consent?” Latika asked. “So surely, if one of you checks the door, you can prove it?”
Mike heaved a sigh. “Hearsay,” he said briefly. “Since Rosen’s a witch-”
“Hey!”
“A wise-arsed magical practitioner,” Mike corrected himself.
“ – the police will argue she could have done it herself and accused Glenda. It’s our word against hers and everyone will assume it’s part of the ongoing grudge match between the Pearces and Hales.”
“When you do magic, you’re on your own, as far as the law’s concerned,” I explained briefly to Latika. “Unless it has physical effects that can be observed and regulated.”
“That’s terrible!” Latika, said, shocked.
John shrugged. “Better than the Quisition Courts in America. The covens self-regulate and the rest of us play along, in case we get something worse.” He tapped my shoulder. “If I can use your shower, I’ll be your witness and backup for the house.”
“Pack a bag and come back to mine afterwards,” Mike added. “You can stay overnight and we can leave directly for Sion Hill tomorrow.”
“I was going to take the train to Bath.”
Mike shook his head. “We’ll take the motorbike and swing by Avebury on the way back. I want to see the stones for myself. John?”
“Hell, we might as well make it a team day out,” John drawled. “I’ll grab Latika and see you around, say 4pm?”
I did some quick maths in my head and nodded. “It won’t take more than a few hours for my bit. They want the windows and roof sealed off. Mike?”
Mike flexed his fingers. “The same. While you waterproof the house, I’ll hunt down their annoying spirit.”
“I should go,” Latika objected. “I’ve never seen a poltergeist trapping before.”
I glanced at Mike. “It's not a good idea until you can keep your wards up,” he said kindly. We’ll have our hands full, and we won’t be able to protect you as well. However, John can give you some field exercises at Avebury.”
Latika groaned and we grinned. John was an exacting taskmaster.
“You can join in too,” John generously said to me.
“Oh no!” I said, throwing up my hands in mock surrender and backing away. “I still have PTSD from your team-building exercise in February. What kind of sadist buries treasure in a field with a bull?”
John shrugged. “You should have dowsed the location before you went in.”
Mike clicked his tongue. “Enough,” he said briskly. “I’m locking up in the next 15 minutes and calling Em to let her know you’re staying with us, Rosen. She’s cooking tonight. Spag bol.”
I brightened up. Em was in the same league as Latika’s mother for food. “OK, I’ll bring some garlic bread.”
My good mood gave way to a glum wariness, as we drove my street – a row of terraced homes made for the last-century factory workers. I had lucked out with an end-terrace which gave me a bit more garden space and higher heating bills. Instead of using the driveway outside my door, John parked parallel to the curb. It made sense – Glenda could have booby-trapped the front of the house. “This sucks,” I grumbled, getting out.
“Yep,” John agreed. “You should get some protective plants going outside here. Stick a line down the front path and under the window.”
“I rent this place, remember?”
“From your cousin. I’m sure he’ll let you pull up a bit of asphalt if you make it tidy enough.”
“I’ll end up owing him a year’s DIY. Trust me, it’s not worth asking him for favours.”
John joined me at the boundary line. I could see the next-door neighbour's cat study us warily from their comfortable place under the bush, well away from magical shenanigans. Black-and-white smug furball.
“Ready?” John asked.
I grabbed his proffered hand. “Wards up,” I acknowledged. “Can you feel anything?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Here goes nothing…”
We stepped forward, with the same confidence as a soldier walking into the minefield.
Nothing. Nor the next step, or the next step. It was all a bit anticlimactic.
“Let’s try the door,” John said with a mixture of ruefulness and relief.
I ran a hand slowly over the wooden panels and brickwork. Something prickled at the edges of my concentration, and then the rune wheel flared briefly to life, like a neon graffiti sign, before slipping away.
“It looked like a calling rune,” I said uncertainly.
“Yep,” John agreed. “Ansuz, Gebo, Othala. She wanted to know when you got back.”
I swallowed my fear and irritation. It’s one thing to loathe from a distance; it’s another when the object of your loathing takes an active interest in you.
I fumbled for the keys and opened the door, keeping the wards up, all the way. There was a postcard on the hallway floor, showing an aerial photograph of Glastonbury Tor. On the back, Glenda had scrawled “Talk to your brother.” It was unsigned.
“Huh,” John said. “Younger or older?”
I shook my head. “Mark hates her and Aiden knows better.”
“Best do both, then,” John said cheerily. “Where do you keep your towels?”
“Drawer, under the bed.”
John disappeared and I heard the shower start up. With a sigh, I grabbed a rucksack and threw in a change of clothes, and toiletries plus walking shoes. Thank goodness Mike did not insist on a formal suit to meet with clients. I spent most of my time in dust or dirt. That done, I tried calling Aiden, without getting an answer. Scowling, I contacted the prison. John came out as I finished the conversation.
“No…? OK, I’ll visit on Wednesday. Yeah, I’m on the list. Thanks.”
I stabbed at the ‘end call’ button and tossed the phone on the bed.
“Problem?” John asked. He looked surprisingly good clad in a towel, with a long, lean chest and a smattering of grey hair. Time turns most guys flabby, but he was carved from oak.
“Mark gets one video call a month,” I said glumly. “He’s already had one this month: on Saturday afternoon. The prison wouldn’t say who it was, but I know it wasn’t me, Aiden or Mum. I was with them.”
“Glenda?”
“Who else? I want to know how she managed it – the prison’s strict on communications. Mark gets to talk to three people and if you’re not on the list, you don’t in. I can guarantee Glenda’s not one of them.”
John scratched his chin. “I might be able to help. Ask me again tomorrow.”
I subsided. John had a lot of contacts across the county and a large number of people owed him favours. “OK,” I said meekly. “I’ll grab a bottle of wine for Em and that garlic bread, whilst you get dressed. Mike’s not going to like this.”
*
“I don’t like this.”
Mike nodded in silent agreement, his mouth full. Em stabbed her fork in her spaghetti, her other hand occupied with a pencil roving over her notebook. The past two hours had been taken up with wine, facts, maps, more maps, an esoteric discussion on the Mendip Hill rock composition and the latest gossip on the local covens and parish councils (the two frequently overlapped). Everyone looking in from the outside assumed that Mike headed up the firm, deploying and protecting as he saw fit.
They were wrong.
Em was the firm’s founder, wildcard and strongest mage. Mike’s main preoccupation in life was protecting the rest of the world from his beloved wife. The rest of the team were his slightly terrified cannon fodder that diverted Em from her mad scheme of the hour.
At present, she was confined to the house with a broken leg. It says a lot that after her car accident, we had the most profitable quarter in the firm’s history.
I made a face. “Yeah, Glenda is a pain in the -”
“Not Glenda. The numbers. You shouldn’t let that washed-up excuse for a witch get under your skin, by the way.”
“Numbers?” Mike asked indistinctly.
Em slapped the notebook. “Yeah. There’s no way this pattern is natural, but there’s also no way magic caused it. Even if you rounded up every type of magic practitioner in the Southwest and ground them into soup, you wouldn’t get close to this level of power.”
Mike held up a hand.
“Wait – what do you mean this pattern is not natural? What makes you so sure?” From the expression on his face, it looked like he already knew the answer and wouldn’t like it.
Em wheeled her chair backwards to retrieve one of our scribbled maps. She hummed under her breath as she deployed her pencil in ever-widening circles out from the Tor, each circle bisecting with one of my subsidence clusters.
“There,” she said, satisfied. “It’s clear now.”
I stared at the map. It reminded me of ripples from a cast stone on water, but that couldn’t be right.
“Seismic tremors,” Mike said, horrified.
“Smart man,” Em said smugly. “Moving at a snail’s pace of course, or else it would noticed.”
“An earthquake?” I said blankly. “It doesn’t make sense.”