The Midnight Carnival (23 page)

‘
I
will research Murdrina and give Bob whatever help I can. You lot are staying out of it.’

‘But, Miss–’

‘No buts! This is not up for discussion. Don’t you realise what you’ve …’

The teacher rubbed her head hard, and seemed oblivious to them for a moment. When she spoke again she was mumbling to herself.

‘If Mr Pamuk still has those Creole volumes, then maybe there’s something in there. Maybe …’ She tutted. ‘Enough, I need to think. Out you go.’

Grace slipped her mobile into Delilah’s hands as the girls got up to leave.

‘We’ll text you,’ she whispered.

Despondent, everyone said their goodbyes on the street. Slowly they started to make their separate ways homewards.
Grace stopped on the bridge and rested her chin on her arms, watching the water flow solemnly underneath.

‘Not going home yet?’

Adie stood beside her and copied her pose.

‘Not yet. You?’

It was a silly question. Adie’s watery eyes were the only reply.

‘Sorry,’ said Grace. ‘I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you, with that thing in your house.’

‘Do you think it would be ridiculous for me to stay out all night? I could wander around town, sit by the river.’

‘What about your brothers? And your dad?’

‘Yeah, they might worry, I guess,’ said Adie. ‘I envy them. They haven’t a clue. I’m not sure how, she’s nothing like mum. She’s a great big stranger sitting at the dinner table.’

‘If you knew nothing about magic and hadn’t seen all the stuff we’ve seen, you probably wouldn’t suspect for a while either.’

‘Yeah, s’pose.’

Grace sighed.

‘We can’t stay out all night, but we could go talk to Bob before we go home. What do you think?’

‘Anything to pass the time.’

Bob’s campfire wasn’t lit. In fact, Bob’s campfire wasn’t
there. There was a scorched scratch in the earth suggesting there had once been a fire, and that was all. No wrought-iron pot, no stools, no fishing rod, no hut. Worse still, Bob’s camp looked like a blast site, as if something had exploded in the small clearing leaving the surrounding woodland scarred. Large stones were embedded in the trees circling the camp, some of them had hit so hard they had burst right through the bark, splitting the trunks in two.

The girls stared around in shock. Grace bent down and picked up one of the rocks – a remnant of Bob’s stone hut.

‘What happened?’ she said.

She was answered by a groan that came from deeper in the woods. She and Adie followed the noise, finally stumbling upon Bob tangled in a web of brambles. They tore at the stringy branches and rolled him out onto the flat ground. There he lay, taking big gasping breaths. His face was battered and bruised, tiny cuts covered his skin with some of the bramble thorns still buried in his jaw. Grace was horrified.

‘Murdrina,’ said Adie.

Almost apologetic, she pulled a small pot of Choki balm from her pocket and began rubbing it into the wounds on his face. He pushed her away but she persisted. Eventually, the dried blood and bruised purple swirled over his skin in unnerving patterns. When they settled his face was clear, except for a
cho ku rei
symbol on his right cheek.

‘That’s a little better,’ Adie said, ‘but we should cover any
bigger cuts, in case they get infected.’

She tried to pull up his sleeve, but he swatted her hand away.

‘That’ll do,’ he growled.

Grace noticed the telltale glint of a jewel clenched between his fingers. Her heart sank. The jewelled fishing fly added to Bob’s powers; he was holding it when he was attacked, and yet he still couldn’t prevent the destruction of his camp.

‘It
was
Murdrina, then,’ Grace said.

He didn’t reply and she took that as an affirmative.

‘Ms Lemon says you’re the only one who can beat her,’ Adie said. ‘That you’re the only one who can save us.’

‘Can you?’ Grace asked. ‘Save us?’

He got up off the ground and pushed past them. He paced around the remains of his home. He picked up stones here and there, depositing them in a pile on one side of the clearing. His dented iron pot was dragged from a cluster of nettles and thrown on top of the stones.

Grace watched Bob clear the wreckage of his hut and despaired.

‘Anything we can do?’ she said. ‘Do you need help?’

‘No,’ was the gruff reply.

She signalled to Adie and they left the clearing.

‘Yes, you do,’ Grace whispered as she pushed her way through the woods in the dark. ‘You
do
need help.’

22

The Plan

Grace and Adie stood at the back at of the school holding their jackets closed against the fierce wind. It was bitterly cold. Grace hadn’t once mentioned Murdrina, knowing that Adie must be worried sick about her family after witnessing the state of Bob’s camp. But her friend hadn’t questioned her for a moment when Grace asked for her help in gathering a few things for a spell, and texting the others about an urgent meeting. Adie was no use to her family all by herself, and she knew it.

One by one, the girls arrived. Grace thanked her lucky stars that she had given Delilah her mobile phone. Being the only one of the girls without one, calling Delilah would have meant calling Ms Lemon’s landline.

‘FYI,’ Una said, trotting towards them from the back gate,
‘if my parents notice I’ve snuck out in the middle of the night, I’ll be on dishes ’til I turn eighteen.’

‘Your sacrifice is noted,’ Jenny said. ‘Grace, what’s up?’

‘We’re going inside,’ Grace said.

She took a damp ribbon from her jacket pocket and wrapped it around the lock of the school emergency exit that led straight into the P block.

‘Open sesame,’ she said.

There was a click and the door drifted ajar.

‘You’re gonna have to show me how to do that one,’ Una said, enthralled.

Grace didn’t say anything more until everyone was safely inside a lab in the P block, surrounding one of the heavy wooden desks in the centre of the room.

‘So,’ Jenny said, ‘you gonna spill, or what?’ Grace took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

‘We’re starting a coven.’

‘We have a coven,’ Rachel replied.

‘No, our own coven. Not one organised by our teachers, where they make the rules and tell us what to do. We’re starting our
own
coven. We make the rules. We decide what to do. It’s our coven, no-one else’s.’

‘I’m liking the sound of this,’ said Jenny.

‘Wait,’ said Rachel,’ is this about stopping Murdrina?’

‘She attacked Bob,’ Adie cut in. ‘His hut was blown to bits, and he was all cut up and bruised.’

‘Bob can’t beat Murdrina,’ Grace said.

‘And you think we can?’ Rachel exclaimed.

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘
I
see why not,’ Una said. ‘She’s an all-powerful sorceress witch-type thing, that could turn our insides out and smash the entire town to the ground. And we’re a bunch of schoolgirls.’

‘That’s it,’ Grace said. ‘That’s the problem right there.’

‘That we’re a bunch of schoolgirls?’

‘That we don’t admit that we’re so much more. I
know
we are, you know we are, but we still turn to Ms Lemon, to Mrs Quinlan, to Bob, when we need help.’

‘Because they have more experience, Grace,’ Rachel said. ‘They’re grown-ups.’

‘They’ve been doing it longer than we have,’ Grace conceded, ‘but who’s to say that’s what really matters?’

‘Em, I’ll say it,’ said Una.

Grace ignored her.

‘We’ve beaten demons, we’ve tricked and fought our way off a magical island, we’ve battled faeries and Hunters and evil witches, and who always comes out on top?’

‘We’ve had help with that,’ said Rachel.

‘Not all of it, Rach. It’s come down to us, too, what we can do. Your glamouring is out of this world. Jenny can outfly anything in the sky. Adie owns the rivers, Delilah’s practically an encyclopaedia of witchcraft, my origination’s just taken a
giant leap forward, and Una–’

Una raised one eyebrow and tapped her finger on her lips.

‘I’m dying to hear this one.’

‘Una, you could stay cloaked for hours without even trying.’

‘That’s no great shakes.’

‘It
is
great shakes. I do it for five minutes and I feel like I’m suffocating.’ Grace turned to the rest of them. ‘There are six of us and we’ve got any number of skills between us. We’re practically an army.’

Rachel still looked unconvinced.

‘None of that would matter if we went up against Murdrina. If she practically finished off Bob in one swoop, she’ll make mincemeat out of us.’

‘Only if we went head to head with her without a plan.’ Grace unfolded a large sheet of paper and smoothed it out on the table. ‘But we have one more thing going for us. We’re smart.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Una.

‘Stop thinking of it as a straightforward fistfight where the strongest wins, because it doesn’t have to be that way. Think outside the box.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Una said, ‘my brain is lodged firmly inside the box. What are you saying?’

‘We have one awesome weapon that Murdrina knows nothing about. And it’s right outside that door.’

‘The P block?’

Grace sighed, exasperated.

‘What’s
in
the P block?’

‘Oh, em… ooh, ooh, ooh, the demon well!’

‘She doesn’t know it yet, but that’s where Murdrina’s going.’

‘Wait,’ Adie said. ‘Murdrina’s inside my mum. You’re not sending my mum down the demon well.’

‘No,’ Grace replied, ‘we’re taking her out of your mum first. And then we’re chucking her down the well.’

Jenny grabbed the sheet of paper on the table.

‘I’m gonna need to see this plan.’

The demon well was the girls’ messy initiation into the world of witchcraft. It was an invisible circle, not much more than a metre in diameter, that was a weak spot in the Earth’s spiritual plane. The thin barrier covering this porthole was all that stood between the human race and an entire realm of dark creatures made of black mist that would possess any poor soul they could grab hold of. Una had been one of those poor souls for a while. The girls had unwittingly summoned a demon from the well and spent the next few weeks in terrified limbo, on the steepest learning curve of their lives. It was a baptism of fire but they pulled through, and so had begun their Wiccan schooling.

‘We used a Chi orb, remember?’ Grace said, going through her plan step by step. ‘To collect those lost souls from the stone house.’

‘Those poor souls, stuck between worlds?’ Adie said. ‘I remember. That was awful, and nobody can help them.’

‘I know, but it’s the orb I’m talking about here. We could use it to trap Murdrina’s soul, right Delilah?’

The small girl nodded.

‘Yeah, that would work. If you can get her soul out of Adie’s mum to begin with.’

‘And once it’s in the orb, we simply chuck the orb down the demon well.’

‘Which is open,’ said Rachel.

‘Right.’

‘And out of which,’ Una said, ‘many demons are spilling into our world.’

‘I’m getting to that.’

‘Good, I’d hate to think you’d forgotten about the body-possessing demons.’ She shivered. ‘I’m no fan of them.’

‘I know you’re not, Una, but we used these porcelain cups and baggies to keep the demons at bay when we were trying to send your one back down the well, remember?’

‘Mrs Quinlan made the potions for those,’ Rachel said, ‘not us.’

‘But Delilah can source those recipes pretty easily, right?’

Delilah nodded again.

‘How are you going to keep Murdrina still long enough to get her out of my mum?’ asked Adie.

‘Delilah, I hate to mention her, but I saw your mother use a net made of smoke once. Did she ever teach you that?’

‘I know how to produce a smoke strand from each arm,’ the small girl replied, ‘but making enough for a whole net takes hours and hours of practice. You can’t master it overnight.’

‘Would six strands be enough for a net?’

‘Probably.’

‘Then teach three of us to make smoke strands, and we’ll make a net between us.’

‘I suppose that could work.’

‘Wait a sec,’ said Rachel, ‘if the well’s fully open, there’ll be any number of demons pouring out of it. We can’t keep them off and trap Murdrina at the same time.’

‘Drake,’ Jenny said. ‘He’ll want to help, won’t he? Agata, too, if we can get in touch with her.’

‘Maybe that doctor you talked about?’ said Adie.

‘Oh no,’ Una said, ‘he is the creepiest of creepy creeps.’

‘Who was trying to save us from the hex,’ Grace reminded her.

‘What about Ms Lemon?’ Delilah suggested.

‘She told us to stay out of the fight with Murdrina,’ said Jenny. ‘She’s not likely to get on board with this, is she?’

‘Well, we need her,’ Grace said firmly, ‘so she can just think
again and get on board.’

‘Yeow, Brennan. Is this really
you
flouting authority?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ Jenny grinned, ‘welcome to the dark side.’

‘Thanks very much.’

‘So how many demon goalkeepers have we got now?’ asked Una.

‘Drake, Agata, the doctor, if we can find them, Ms Lemon–’

‘Don’t forget Bob,’ said Adie.

‘Bob will be busy,’ Grace replied.

‘Doing what?’

‘Being the bait.’

Mr Pamuk’s beaming face was at odds with the solemn gloominess of his cavernous shop. Adie could see Delilah shivering and felt an instant chill herself within the damp-stained walls of the underground cave.

‘Well, well, little witchlets. All the water-messaging went well, I hope?’

‘Yes, thanks, Mr Pamuk.’

Adie bit her lip nervously. Technically the water-messaging
had
worked. Mr Pamuk didn’t need to know the confused and grave circumstances that had followed that ill-advised trip to Hy-Breasal.

‘We’re looking for a few other things today.’ Adie pulled a
list from her pocket. ‘A Chi orb, some ground locust chitin, a frog’s heart… and some other bits and pieces.’

She could see his mind working as he read through the list, his joyful expression slowly disappearing.

‘An interesting list,’ he said finally. ‘I hope all is well.’

‘It is, Mr Pamuk. Thank you.’

He watched her for a moment, his smile sympathetic as always.

‘Very well. This will take a few minutes, if you don’t mind waiting.’

‘We’ll check out the spell books for a while.’

Adie followed Delilah to the far end of the cavern. There were a few books scattered across the numerous trunks and coffers, but hundreds more were stacked in a little maze of bookshelves at the back.

‘An expulsion spell, a strong one,’ Delilah said, lifting the cover of one book on a table. ‘That’s what we need. I’m trying to remember this one book – by Nefarious somebody – the spells were really old, so they’d be very powerful now. And they were all based around movement of objects and places and feelings–’

‘And souls?’

‘And souls.’

‘Can you remember the title?’

Delilah shook her head.

‘It had something about movement or motion… I can’t
exactly remember.’

‘Alright, well we’ll just have to go through all of them and see if we can spot this Nefarious person.’

Delilah started at the bookshelf nearest, and Adie went to the opposite end. There were countless books written by various authors with strange names, but she didn’t see Nefarious anywhere.

‘Mr Pamuk,’ she yelled back to the storeroom, ‘we’re looking for a particular book but we don’t know the title, or the author’s name. It has lots of spells on movement, or motion or something. We only know the author’s first name, Nefarious…’