About this serial:
Sticky Witch is a modern fantasy tale with a mystery, myth and romance, set in Wiltshire. Rosen Pearce is a modern-day mage, capable of binding any material. She’s in high demand for fixing cracked walls and broken structures. Unfortunately, she’s also caught up in the machinations of the local covens, a magical terrorist movement and the return of the fae. She’s also trying to fit in a date with a magic-adjacent man.
Newcomer? Start with chapter 1 here. | Missed a chapter? Here’s the full title list.
Previously on Sticky Witch:
Gia has announced it’s return, putting the Mundane Mages on high alert. Em and Mike (the firm’s power couple) are making gargoyles to protect everyone, whilst Roz is out looking for missing artefacts around Glastonbury that could explain Gia’s comeback and the deadly power surges at Avebury Stone Circle.
Malcolm’s car turned out to be a converted London taxi. Instead of the usual boxy layout, it was a luxurious leather-lined office, with USB ports, tinted windows and embedded LED screens opposite our seats. The only remnant of the original taxi service was the privacy glass between us and the driver.
I boggled at Malcolm - full on popping eyes and open mouth. He grinned back bashfully, reminding me of a 12-year-old showing off his favourite toy. “I spend so much time on the road, it was worth getting it done,” he said by way of explanation. “It’s a hybrid, so it’s helpful for the environment.”
“Oh, good,” I said faintly. “Listen, if you are busy, we can chat by phone…”
Malcolm huffed. “It’s a delicate commission, Miss Pearce, and one I need to talk about in private. Unfortunately, there’s been a few security breaches recently and all the Ministers have been bollocked about talking over unsecure networks.” He skewered me with a quick stare and raised eyebrows. “As the Home Secretary, I don’t need that kind of embarrassment.”
For a moment, the genial gentleman-pirate mask dropped, and something much more dangerous shone through. The expression poked at me through the pink haze of his words - where had I seen it before?
Instead of punching him and running for it, I found myself nodding. My lips curled up in a smile: the traitors.
“I understand Mr Anderson. Happy to help.”
Malcolm stashed his umbrella in a small side pocket and ushered me in, whilst his driver stowed my backpack in the boot. I felt slightly boxed in as he gestured to the seat belt and leaned forward to flip open the small, hidden fridge in the wall opposite my feet. “Pick a refreshment,” he said with another pointed smile. “We don’t have alcohol, but there’s soft drinks.”
I selected a small can of lemonade - the type you use as a mixer - and politely dropped it into my cup-holder. I’d bet, pennies to pounds, that the whiskey came out when he was alone.
Malcolm made himself comfortable, banged twice on the roof of the taxi-office and the driver moved off. I tried to focus.
“Why are you going to the train station, when you have this?” I blurted out. “Why not just drive back?” I touched the bump where Em’s Hello Kitty necklace lay under my clothes. The charm necklace lay quietly against my skin.
Malcolm turned his blue-eyed gaze back on me. My hands dropped to my lap. “I plan to, Rosen - may I call you Rosen? Well, I want to pick a colleague of mine up from the station and this detour allows me to kill two birds with one stone.” He reached over to the plastic wall under his LED display and I realised, with a slight start, that it had a keyhole. Malcolm fumbled with the keys on his ring and unlocked it. The door flipped upwards, turning into a desk, and underneath was a small rack, holding files. Malcolm pulled out a plain, A4, blue folder and passed it to me.
The taxi purred to itself as we slowed down for the traffic lights, the electric engine purring to itself. I glanced at the door; locked. Malcolm, meanwhile, was talking.
“I have an interest in archaeology and a few weeks ago, one of the museums in the area reached out to me, Miss Pearce. They found an artefact in a recent dig and they think it might be magical. We can’t use modern methods to pin it back together, but perhaps you could help?”
I opened the file and flicked through it. There were a number of glossy photos and a printed sheet with the following sentence;
“Iron fragments, poss medieval. 3rd layer down, Rendzina/Chalk. SU1828068707”
The photos themselves were less than helpful. They were a scatter of black fragments, with two or three of the biggest-looking, curved. Two of the photos were close-up pictures, taking in the decorative knotwork on the fragments, and what looked like an inscription. I ran my fingers over it softly. Was this the sort of thing I was looking for?
Malcolm cleared his throat. I hastily shuffled the pictures back into the file and handed it back to him. “Sorry. I’m a materialist, not an archaeologist. I can fix a dodgy wall, but I wouldn’t know where to begin with this.”
He frowned and I felt myself squirm, even though logically, I hadn’t done anything wrong. “I was under the impression you could bind iron, Rosen? If so - with guidance, of course - could you do the same here?”
“Magic and iron don’t mix,” I protested.
“But you were at the docks last week, mending that ship? A very modern steel ship.”
I licked my lips and picked up the small lemonade can; more for something to do than because I wanted to drink from it. “That was a desperate measure to prevent an oil spill and I itched for days afterwards. Can’t the museum use other techniques to recreate it?”
Malcolm’s eye twitched. “Sadly, not. We need to put the original together again before we can create a copy.” He shifted closer; I could smell his cologne. “It’s a personal project of mine, Rosen and I would pay well for the attempt.” I could feel myself sway in towards his words, like they were a well-mixed margarita and I needed the last sip. He leaned back and plucked the can out of my hands. “Allow me.”
The sharp metallic ting of the ring-pull and the fizz of the drink shook me out of my stupor. I took a sip and mentally slapped myself for agreeing to this meeting in the first place. “Which museum was it?” I asked politely.
Malcolm waved his hand irritably. “Marlborough Trust. They are intensely private and keen to avoid messy publicity. There’s a high chance that this was found and reburied by the medieval monks, so we think it might be magical. You know how the press would distort that.”
I kept my face in a light expression of interest. “Fascinating. I would love to know more. Can I meet them?” I took another sip from the can. Malcolm’s eyebrows went up. “It’s possible, “ he said slowly. “But only if you agree to help. They don’t waste their time on chancers.” He gave me another long look and I nodded vigorously in agreement.
“Why don’t you show me what you can do?” he suggested, suddenly jolly. “A tiny demonstration. At your normal rate per hour, of course.”
I hesitated. Between the surge on the High Street and Mike’s warnings about magic going awry, I wasn’t sure I wanted to use my gift. It could go wrong and jam up the car - now chugging along at a comfortable 45mph down the country road. The shrinking voice inside my head - the one labelled self-preservation - screamed ‘do you really want a traffic accident with a Government Minister, on top of everything else?’
No, I did not.
“I don’t perform well, on demand,” I hedged.
Malcolm guffawed. I half expected him to slap his thigh at the same time. “Shy, Miss Pearce? I’ve been told you are the strongest materialist in the country! You regularly boss buildings back into shape and you channelled a surge at Avebury that killed lesser men.” He held out both palms upwards in admiration, as though he were performing in front of a crowd. “You might, might just be our first modern fairy smith.”
My cheeks flamed. “Erm…I’ve never tried to work with metal. I wouldn’t call myself a smith.”
“But you could be.” He leaned closer, his lips at my ear. It felt creepy and uncomfortable. I opened my mouth, ready to yell, then the feeling was washed away with his next words on a damned cloud of pink cotton candy.
“Stop being a coward. Show me how strong you are.”
His hand touched mine and unbidden, I exposed my palm. Something thin, cool and hard dropped in it. I wanted to look; I could not. My eyes couldn’t skip past his beard. It was like that time I accidentally wound up on a Dutch nudist beach; eyes anywhere but down there.
“It’s OK, Rosen,” he said, as though he read my mind. I brought my hand up and saw two black, slender bars, each one no thicker than the band of a wedding ring. My skin was already starting to itch as my magic sidled up between the layers of flesh and bone, wrinkling its nose at the iron.
“Bind them together,” Malcolm whispered to me. “Imbue them.”
I smiled woozily and started to twist the bars together. By rights, my fingers should not be strong enough to do it; this was a job for a wrench, pliers and possibly a hammer. But my magic corralled the metal, pounding it with a ferocity that buzzed my teeth. I left thumbprints on the surface like it was putty.
“Look at you go,” Malcolm purred.
The car lurched us to one side as it went round a sharp corner. The movement jerked my hands upwards, slapping the iron against the back of Malcolm’s hand. He winced at the impact, flexing his fingers to dissipate the sting. “Careful!”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, then wondered why I sounded afraid. My brain wasn’t keeping pace.
“You are forgiven. Keep going. Finish it.”
I bared my teeth. The bars were swaying badly and it took me a moment to realise it was my hands shaking, and not the car. I felt sweat break out on my forehead and my stomach cramp, even through the pink fog. I twisted the iron again. And again. And again.
It resembled a plaited circle now, something you could put on a wrist. I sobbed as I pinched the ends off; this was worse than the ship at Bristol. There, I was shoring up the hull’s strength; here I was forcing it against its nature to absorb a foreign energy. I could hear my heart thundering in my ears and my breathing coming out in gasps.
“Oh, Rosen.” He touched my hair, stroking it like a pet. ‘You are so nearly done.” Something rustled; then he was dabbing my forehead with a paper napkin. “You’re exactly as advertised. All that’s left to do is name it.”
I froze. I could hear Em screaming from my memories: ‘DON’T!’
“Rosen? Roz? Can you hear me?” Malcolm pinched my cheek. The car had slowed down at some point; now it slammed to a stop. My arms and head flew forward, whilst the seat belt bit into my chest and hips.
Malcolm groaned, then swore when the passenger door opened on his side. I felt the passage of cold air, a brief, violent tussle, and he was gone.
I raised my eyes to the level of the LED screen, then a little further, through the windscreen, to the scene playing out at the front of a car. We had stopped at a zebra crossing, halfway over the striped white lines. The driver had got out and he was being punched by a severe, white-haired old man. He wore gold rimmed glasses, and despite the extra decades, he was winning the fight. I looked to the left-hand side; Malcolm was there, nursing a bloodied nose.
I needed to get out. I dropped my hand to the side, accidentally hitting the seat belt’s buckle and hissing at the burst of pain. My hands were curled and numb, like they’d been held in a bucket of icy water. Despite my heart rate, I felt cold.
“Gotta get ow,” I told myself. I inserted my elbow into the door handle, flipping the lever. It worked a little too well and I fell sideways when the door gave way. Luckily, someone caught me. Massive, soft arms and boobs you could use as pillows. Her breath tickled my ear; she smelled of cherry drops.
“Go-go,” I slurred.
The woman (because mountains don’t walk), looked down at me. “Stop yer mythering,” she said with soft, slow lilt to her voice. Someone else passed nearby, I saw a pair of shiny brogues splash in and out of my view, followed by a deep, masculine voice shouting “Bant Annie!”
I didn’t get the chance to ask questions. My rescue party bundled me into the boot of a tiny black Skoda and we drove off.
*
I don’t know how long we travelled, or where to. The boot had it parcel shelf removed, so I could see a slice of the roof and the grey sky, through the rear window. I couldn’t stop shaking. At some point, after a quick-fire discussion in Welsh (I hoped it was Welsh), a light fleece blanket was tucked around me. It smelt of wet dog.
When we finally stopped, I felt sick from the lack of motion. I heard the doors slam and footsteps crunch as they moved away. After a few minutes, I felt a gust of cold air hit my face, smelling of woodsmoke and salt. The boot lid was open.
“Take yer time getting up,” the woman said, taking her time with each syllable. “I can see yer head’s giving yer jip.”
I could see her now. A massive woman in every sense of the word, high and broad with a prominent nose and forehead, large thighs and a large stomach. Her brown hair was cropped in a boy’s bob and when I looked again, I realised she was wearing costume contact lens. No human had alien irises.
I shuffled upwards. “Who ‘re you?” I croaked. “Annie?”
“Naw. I’m Beca.” She rolled out the c in her name, like the bend of a roller-skate rink.
I closed my eyes and concentrated. “Someone shouted ‘Annie,’ when you grabbed me.”
“Ah. That would be Tali, speaking Welsh. Meaning; ‘get a bloody move on.” She saw my confusion and carefully pronounced each word with a pause. “Bant â ni’ - see? Tali was ready to leave.”
With her help, I got over the lip of the boot and onto the ground. We were in the shadow of a tiny stone chapel, at the end of an earthen road, paved with gravel and surrounded by trees. In the distance, sheep dotted the fields and overhead, I saw a kestrel hover. If Beca and Tali planned to kill me, they couldn’t have picked a better spot.
I reached for my magic. Nothing. Horrified, I counted backwards, breathed through my nose and even tried tapping my knuckles with one of my frozen fingers - a technique Em swore always worked. I got the faint backwash of iron and blood.
Oh gods. What had happened to me? What had that bastard done?
Come to think of it; how had Malcolm done it? I’d never felt a compulsion like it.
“Come along, cyw,” Beca said, cutting through my panic. I felt her hand curl under my elbow; carefully, as thought I were made of glass. “We’ve been waiting for someone like you to surface. We’ve got lots to talk about.”
Oooh, oh no. Did he put her magic in the iron ring??