Sticky Witch XXIV
Let's not panic. We just need to break into a witch's cottage.
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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. In her spare time, she’s hoping to date a man who is not terrified of magic.
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Previously on Sticky Witch:
Rosen has temporarily lost her magic due to iron sickness after being compelled to make an iron circlet for Malcolm Anderson. She was rescued from his car by an unusual couple - an elderly man called Tali and a large, Welsh woman called Beca. They brought her to a small chapel for recovery. Sadly, the rest of the firm was not so lucky. You can catch up with the last episode here.
“Oh, thank Gods,” John said, picking up on the third ringtone. “Did you not get any of my calls, texts or screams for help?”
I hugged my blanket around me, whilst staring at the Chapel ceiling. I had not looked at my mobile since the wild surge in Glastonbury, and I didn’t know where it was. My jacket pocket, possibly. This conversation was taking place through a landline phone, with cords, buttons and a receiver straight out of the 1990’s. I was lucky I had the firm’s number hammered into my memory, which had been rerouted to John.
“Sorry. I’ve been kidnapped, iron poisoned, rescued, and I’m in some kind of Welsh chapel with…” - I glanced at Tali and Beca – “a Victorian Gandalf and female priest.” I wasn’t sure which description was correct, but it was better than saying a busybody and a walking mountain. I had no magic, no transport and no idea where I was, so I didn’t want to be rude. Beca cracked up at my description, making the rafters boom with her laugh. Tali gave me a little bow, his lips quirking upwards under the moustache.
“May I?” he asked with old-fashioned courtesy.
“By all means.” In fact, I was looking forward to seeing what John made of him.
“John, it’s the bard from Wendel’s Forge. Yes – I know – it’s been a long time. I had a warning from a raven of mine that Rosen was in trouble. I pulled her, half-dead, from Malcolm Anderson’s car. Hmmm? Yes: he’s a Government minister. She’s better now. What?”
His eyebrows shot up. “All of them?” He looked over at Beca, casually draped over a pew. “Mynydd bach, we need the map-skins.”
He tossed the phone back to me as Beca moved unhurriedly to a corner cupboard. I heard furniture shift and the rattle of a broom handle against the wall.
I got John back on the line. “John, what’s going on?”
“Did you feel the wild magic surge this afternoon?” John asked, his voice dropping an octave.
“Yes, on the High Street just before I met Malcolm. Why?”
“Everyone else in the firm went missing at that moment, too, Roz. I can’t get hold of anyone! No one is answering their phones or showing up.”
My heart rate sped up. This was the other shoe dropping; the one I had been waiting for since the party - perhaps ever since my car had been vandalised.
“What happened when you went to their homes?”
“All dark. No response when I hammered on the door. Their phones are dead or in a blackspot; I could not track them at all. Same as yours. No one’s answering on social or via the coven chatrooms.”
I pressed my fingers against my forehead. “What about the rest of our families? Could they have gone elsewhere?” Another thought muscled in. “What happened when you dowsed - anything on the maps?”
John exhaled, then half-laughed. “Em’s got us all under anti-surveillance cantrips, so I can’t get a read on them. It’s so fucking ironic. My pendulums keep spiralling over the maps.”
“They are all at home,” Tali interrupted. He must have fantastic hearing. I swivelled around to find him smoothing out an old vellum sheet on the nearby pew. It was splattered with ink. As I watched, he dropped three more purple drops on the skin. They fanned outwards, forming symbols that looked like complicated runes. “But they are bound up, somehow.”
I frowned at him. “How…?”
“Land nae lie, little rose,” Beca said, coming up beside me and patting my shoulder. It felt good, like a touch of sun after a damp day. “Where they touch the earth, she knows them, and we know her.”
I slid the phone back to my ear with a new resolve: “John, you need to break into their house.”
John fell silent; I could almost see him staring upwards in concentration. “Roz, do you know how many spells, booby-traps, wards and bog-standard security measures Em and Mike keep around their home?”
“No”
“Neither do I. The front and back doors are locked. Forcing an entry will trigger everything.”
I closed my eyes. Thinking.
“There are no open windows?”
“Already checked.”
Which meant he had been desperate enough to climb the walls.
“Have you tried the coal chute?”
“What, the what?”
I carefully got up and stretched, trying to ease my cramped muscles. Even with the blankets, I was cold; a reminder of my magic loss. I felt incomplete, like a person without eyelids. Every time I unconsciously reached for it, I got this blank little void. “Em and Mike’s house used to have coal deliveries at the turn of the century. They still have the chute in the garden. It’s that weird, flat plate next to the wall. I got lectured on it for two hours at a BBQ last summer. You won’t fit down it, but a familiar might.”
I was clutching at straws, with panic bubbling up underneath. None of the firm had the time or inclination to raise magic-linked pets, and it would take an exceptional creature to make it past Em’s wards. Should I phone the police? I briefly envisaged myself talking to a dispatcher.
That’s right: I want a team to break into my boss’s house after I was kidnapped and enspelled by my local MP. I haven’t heard from them in a few hours. No, I don’t have any proof they are in trouble. Yes, I’m accusing the Home Secretary of a crime.
It sounded nuts, even in my head.
For a moment, I had just a glimmer of sympathy with Glenda’s idea of a coven-run regulator. Then, I thought about the power-drunk curtain-twitchers who would end up running it. Nah, I would take my chances with standard justice. The covens would bring back ritual disembowelment, given half the chance.
From behind me, Tali cleared his throat. “I think it’s time you met Pete.”