The Iron Witch (5 page)

Shaking him off, Donna carefully picked her way around the sharp-edged tools and sea of paper on the floor. Looking up again, she saw that one of the windows had a huge crack in it, spider-webbing outwards in a crazy pattern. Her eyes came to rest on Maker’s super-advanced wheelchair, overturned and dumped in the far corner. The old man didn’t always need the chair to get around—he had built it himself, and it looked like something out of a comic book—but it helped him when his legs grew weak after too much work.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“Whoever you’re looking for isn’t here, Donna. I think we should leave.” Navin sounded as nervous as she felt.

Donna raised her chin. “No, someone broke in. I’m going to check the kitchen and bathroom before we do anything.”

“I think we should just go. We could call the police.”

“
You
should go, Navin. You don’t even belong here.” Donna’s voice shook.

“You can’t make me do anything, Donna. You’re my friend and I think you’re in trouble. I’m not leaving you.”

Exasperation flooded Donna’s chest and she squeezed her hands into fists. He wasn’t making this easy. “Nav … ”

“Something’s not right—even
I
can see that, and I’ve never set foot in this place before. It feels … wrong. We should call the cops and just get out.”

Donna’s mouth thinned. She shook her head as she walked toward the rear of the workshop, heading for the small corridor out back.

“You are so stubborn, woman,” muttered Navin. He followed her, nervously checking behind them as though expecting someone to creep up on them at any moment.

Donna couldn’t blame him. She had the same feeling herself; the back of her neck was gripped by a horrible prickling sensation, and her stomach clenched with a nauseating sensation of vertigo. “Listen,” she hissed.

They both stopped at the entrance to the hallway and held their breath.

A slow scraping was coming from somewhere down the hall, a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard, which was then followed by a high-pitched clicking.

They stared at one another.
What is that?
mouthed Navin, eyes huge.

Donna slid her gaze from his, dread blooming in her gut like a black rose. She couldn’t be entirely certain, but she had a very strong suspicion that whatever was in there wasn’t human. Or animal. She hated that she knew these dark and unnatural things, but sometimes you just can’t deny who you are. Taking a deep breath, she pushed down her fears as best she could and stepped into the dark, narrow corridor.

It was short, and only wide enough for Donna and Navin to walk single file. It ended in a blank white wall. There were only two doors, one on each side of them, about halfway down. The kitchen was on the left, the bathroom to the right. When they reached the left-hand door, Donna turned the handle and pushed it open as wide as she could.

Nothing
. The kitchen was tiny, with barely enough room for the two of them. There was a steady
drip-drip-drip
from the tap over the sink. Donna tried to shut it off, but the dripping continued. The tiny window, added almost as an afterthought, was filled with thick patterned glass covered by swirling shapes that precluded any view outside. She could just make out that the morning sun seemed tired and thin, now that winter was almost here.

And then, there it was again.
Scrape-scrape-click-click
. Donna and Navin jumped, and Navin tried to push her behind him, but she pushed back. Harder. She stepped out into the corridor and listened at the other door. She knew that the bathroom was almost as small as the kitchen; there was a little more room in there, but not enough space for much more than the toilet, a sink, and an ornate old-fashioned bathtub.

Scrape-scrape-click-click
. The sound set Donna’s teeth on edge and made her skin crawl.

Navin nudged her, looking as though he was about to speak. She put one gloved finger to her lips and turned back to the door. She bent against it and listened.

The sound had stopped.

Donna yanked down on the brass handle and pushed. She had to remember to use a “normal” amount of strength. If Navin weren’t here, she could break it down without too much trouble.

The door was jammed. Or locked. “Help me,” she said, pulling Navin over to the door. “Quickly!”

They both leaned their weight against it, pushing and straining. Donna glanced down at the handle again. “It can’t be locked, look. No lock or keyhole. It’s just jammed. Hurry up and push. Whatever’s in there, it’s not getting away.”

Navin grunted as he pushed high up on the door, bracing himself against the rotting door frame. Donna heaved from below, leaning her weight on the handle as she used her true strength. The next moment, there was a loud crack as the door burst open and she found herself flying into the room after it, Navin close on her heels. A splintered wooden chair almost tripped her up—it must have been what was jamming the door.

Standing on top of the old-fashioned toilet tank and reaching toward the small, half-open window was a creature that Donna now only saw in her nightmares. As a child, she had played a game where she desperately tried to convince herself that they didn’t exist. Not
really
. Even then, she knew it wasn’t true.

The creature had nut-brown skin mixed with patches of ash. It was vaguely humanoid, but its skin looked like the bark of an old, old tree. Although about the same height as Donna, it was spindly, with arms and legs that were all joints and angles. Its face was narrow and pointed, with hair like thick moss and narrow black eyes that glinted even in the dim light of the room. The thing’s body was clothed in lichen and moss, vines twining around its sharp limbs.

What she found most shocking, though, wasn’t its presence, but the fact that it wasn’t wearing its
elfskin
—it was acting as though it didn’t have anything to hide. Then, with a sudden flash of insight, Donna realized that there was too much iron in the room—the creature wasn’t able to hold a different shape in here; its
glamour
was pretty much worthless. That old iron tub was causing it all sorts of problems.

She was only vaguely aware of Navin beside her, breathing heavily and too fast. She felt a stab of sympathy for him as he tried to make sense of the impossibility standing right in front of them.

The creature opened its lipless mouth, a dark slash across its twisted face. Donna’s mind flashed back to the shadow she’d seen sliding through the darkness outside Xan’s house. She hadn’t been imagining things, after all.

The wood elves had returned to the city.

Scrape-scrape-click-click
.

The sound kicked Donna out of her trance. She grabbed Navin’s arm and pushed him back toward the door. “Get out.”

“Donna … ”

“Get out!” she yelled.

He backed up a step but didn’t leave.

Donna moved slowly toward the creature—the elf—on shaking legs, trying to look braver than she felt. She tried to ignore the sudden, stabbing pains in her wrists. Nightmarish images crept at the edges of her mind and she tried to block them, not wanting to remember. The smell of wet earth filled her nostrils as she got closer, making it seem all the more real.

“Stay where you are,” she said quietly, but with an unmistakable edge of menace. She sensed Navin glance sharply at her, and registered the surprise on his face from the corner of her eye.
Damn, he was still in the bathroom
. Trying to protect her.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded of the creature. “Where’s Maker?” She didn’t really expect a reply. At least, not one that she could understand.

A sly look crossed the elf’s face—it was a disturbingly human expression. Its feet clung to the ceramic toilet tank like gnarled roots.

And then it sprung at them with no sound or warning, throwing itself forward and using its deceptively strong legs as pistons. Its bony, twiglike fingers latched onto Navin’s shoulders and its full weight drove him straight back against the sink. All the air rushed out of Navin in an audible
whoosh
, and he made a strangled cry of pain as his back struck the chunky ceramic basin.

Donna, knocked off balance, scrambled to regain her footing. She looked frantically around for some kind of weapon. Her eyes fell on a sink plunger, and she made a grab for it. Navin was trying to pry the elf’s clawed hands off his jacket, but the thing was stronger, hanging on and making that inhuman clicking sound at the back of its throat. Its jaws opened to reveal a mouthful of needle-sharp, yellow teeth. It tried to reach Navin’s terrified face with them.

With a shout of rage, Donna began hitting the elf over the back of the head with the wooden end of the plunger. “Get off him!”

The thing hissed and turned toward her, keeping one hand attached to Navin. It tried to bat the improvised weapon from her shaking hands, but she had a death-grip on it. A sudden idea came to her and she reversed the plunger, brandishing the suction end at the elf.
Yeah
, she thought,
like
this is
gonna work
.

Navin, who was still trying to pull the elf’s claws off his jacket, throwing in a few hard kicks at its spindly legs for good measure, suddenly appeared to have an idea of his own; Donna caught the flash in his wide brown eyes and knew he was up to something. With a twist of his shoulders and a violent heave, he shrugged himself free of his jacket and threw himself out of the way.

Now he was free and the creature was left holding the biker jacket. With a look of almost-human disgust on its creased face, it threw the jacket to the ground. Donna used its surprise to her advantage and, feeling only slightly ridiculous, shoved the sink plunger straight into its face, smiling grimly when she heard the satisfying sound of the suction taking hold. She used all her strength, ignoring the stabbing pain in her hands, and swung the creature around with its face stuck firmly to the plunger. Its arms flailed as it tried to grab onto something, but it could do nothing as Donna—almost high on adrenaline—flung it in the direction of the tub.

The plunger came free with a loud
pop
and the elf flew into the tub, crashing over the side and landing inside with an inhuman shriek. Smoke immediately began to rise from its earthen flesh, and it screamed as it tried to scramble over the deep sides of the tub.

The bathroom was filled with the smell of burning, like wood-smoke. Donna pushed Navin toward the door. “Let’s go, come on. Out!”

Navin seemed frozen, looking from Donna to the bathtub with a shocked expression, but she didn’t have time to worry about that right now. “Please, Navin, move!” She shoved him again.

“Wait,” he said. “My jacket.”

“Forget it. Run!”

Navin dodged around Donna and snatched the jacket from the floor. “
Now
we can go.”

The injured creature, meanwhile, had managed to scramble out of the tub and seemed undecided whether to make another grab for its prey or escape while it still could. Smoke swept through the room, despite the partly opened window. Backing toward the door, Donna threw the plunger as the thing hissed and turned away, watching them with its head ducked down low, alternately sneering and cringing.

“Navin, come
on
!”

They bolted from the room. As Donna pulled the door closed, she caught a final glimpse of their attacker, leaping toward the window.

“It’s going to get away,” she said. “Maybe we can cut it off round the back.”

Navin gripped her arm. “What do you mean, ‘maybe we can cut it off’? Are you
crazy
? That thing tried to
bite
me. I’m not giving it another chance to take a chunk out of my face.”

Donna felt shock waves of adrenaline in her chest, making it difficult to breathe. “You’re right, sorry. I got carried away.”

Navin’s face had visibly paled and his pupils were huge, making his normally soft brown eyes look almost completely black. “You think?” His voice cracked.

Taking a deep breath, Donna tried to think calm thoughts. “Are you okay, Navin?” She knew how ridiculous it must sound even as the words left her mouth.

Navin still looked shell-shocked. “What was that … that
monster
?”

Something inside Donna crumbled. What was she supposed to tell him? How could she ever look Navin in the eyes again? After everything they’d been through together over the last few years—his mother’s death, which had been just awful, and her getting kicked out of school, which hadn’t exactly been a cakewalk—now she had to deal with telling him the truth. Her worst fears were materializing, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. There was no rewind button on real life, much as she might wish otherwise. This wasn’t like the many movies they’d watched together, curled up in either Nav’s bedroom or hers, shutting out the world and losing themselves in fantasy.

She took a deep breath. “That was a wood elf … or, a dark elf. They get called that more, these days. It makes it easier for the Order to justify hunting them.”

“What’s the Order? And … Donna, are you seriously telling me that was an
elf
?”

Donna nodded gravely. “Yes. Aunt Paige says—”

“Your
aunt
? What the
hell
is going on, Donna?”

She slumped against the wall, breathing in the dusty air of the narrow corridor and scrubbing a gloved hand wearily across her face. “Look, I know this is a lot to take in. But it’s not like you don’t already know there are strange things about me. About my life. I mean, I know I haven’t told you about those things, but … Nav, you’re not stupid. You told me yourself you’d followed me here because of all the so-called secrets I’ve been keeping from you.” She clamped down on the thought that maybe he’d only followed her because he’d been jealous of Xan. That was way more than she could handle right now.

Navin ran a frustrated hand through his messed-up hair, holding his jacket almost protectively against his chest with the other hand. “Yeah, but I didn’t expect it to be
this
. I mean, having a paranoid aunt is one thing, but …
elves
? Come on, Donna. There’s weird, and then there’s completely bat-shit crazy.”

“We can’t talk about this now; we need to get out of here.”

Navin continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “And you were fighting it like you knew what you were doing. What’s
that
about?”

Donna gave a snort of laughter. “Yeah, sure, I
really
knew what I was doing. Sink Plunger Girl.”

“Well, you knew a whole lot more than me.” He glared at her, an unfamiliar tightness in his jaw, and then headed back into the workshop.

“Don’t be mad at me, Nav. Please, I can’t stand it.”

He sighed. “I’m not mad. I’m just … scared, I guess.”

Throughout their awkward conversation, Donna had been casting fearful glances around them, half-expecting the elf to appear again although it was probably long gone. She shuddered as she remembered the sound it made, and its dark eyes. She wondered if she would ever be able to shake the image of its razorlike teeth straining toward Navin’s face.

She shook her head and tried to focus on what Navin was saying.

“Who is this Maker dude, anyway?” He was shrugging himself back into his jacket, and Donna was relieved to see that some of the color had returned to his cheeks. “Do you think that thing had something to do with him not being here?”

“I don’t know.” Donna hated feeling so uncertain. She tried to think what to do next. Tell Aunt Paige? Or go straight to Quentin? Something had happened to Maker, and her first move should be to report his disappearance to Quentin Frost, the Order’s archmaster—their “leader” for as long as she could remember. Not to mention report the current state of his workshop, and the fact that there’d been a wood elf hiding out in the bathroom.

“Donna, you’re not
telling
me anything,” Navin said, the frustration clear in his voice. “Help me out here.”

She sighed. “I’ll tell you more at home.”

He fixed her with determined eyes. “You promise? You’ll tell me
everything
?”

Donna squeezed her fingers open and shut, wondering how much Navin could really take. “Everything” would be a lot for even the most open-minded person. “I’ll try, Nav. That’s all I can promise you.”

It would have to be enough for now, and she turned her back on Navin before he could say anything else.
What was she going to do?
All these years of secrecy, and now the lid had well and truly been ripped off of Pandora’s Box. She didn’t think Navin would let her put the lid back on any time soon, and she trembled at the thought of the consequences if she started spilling the Order’s secrets.

Donna wasn’t even thinking about the potential consequences for
herself
; she was far more worried about what it could mean for Navin. He was an innocent. (Quentin would call him a “
commoner
,” an archaic term that she hated.) But how could Navin Sharma really be considered innocent after coming face-to-face with a dark elf?

Not even the alchemists could wipe someone’s memory. At least, she didn’t think they could.

As she walked away from the building, Donna took grateful gulps of cold air. What mattered was that Navin was safe. He had his back to her as he fiddled with his bike, which he’d left by the door. She felt like crying, but knew that wouldn’t help things. Her duty was to the Order—to her aunt. That had to come first.

The door to the workshop, which they’d been careful to close, suddenly banged opened. Navin almost got crushed behind it, and Donna’s heart began racing so hard she felt dizzy.

Maker stood in the doorway, blinking in the brightening sun.

“Maker!” Donna ran toward him. “You’re okay!”

“Okay” was probably something of an overstatement. The old alchemist was leaning on his walking stick and looking frail. The fact that he wasn’t in his wheelchair was usually a good sign—it meant he had strength in his legs that day—but there was no denying how pale and drawn his lined face was. And Donna had already seen his wheelchair, tossed aside like nothing more than scrap metal. The sudden image made her mouth go dry.

“What are you doing here, child?” Maker’s voice was hoarse. He doubled over into a coughing fit.

Distressed, Donna wondered what she should do to help. Theirs was not a demonstrative relationship. She’d known Maker all her life and seen him frequently over the last ten years, thanks to the work he did on her hands and arms, but he wasn’t exactly
huggable
. She touched his arm tentatively.