The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1) (35 page)

‘She was murdered.’

‘Ten points for you, cleverclogs. And she wasn’t the only one. Son of a bitch got all of us. Damned humans. They’re always coming for us. Burning us alive. At the stake. In ovens. In our own homes.’

‘I think the oven one was just a fairy tale,’ I said.

‘Hah! There’s a lot more to fairy tales than meets the eye.’

I was only half-listening. My brain whirred furiously. The house had been hit by a bomb. It was technically possible some sneaky person could have wandered in, knifed everyone while they slept and then run away minutes before the bomb hit, but the likelihood of such a scenario felt astronomically small.

A more-obvious explanation presented itself. What was war, but murder on a grand scale? ‘It was a bomb, Auntie. Whoever the bomber was, he couldn’t have known who was in this particular house.’

‘You may have our blood, but you certainly don’t have the brains of a hag. You think I don’t know how I died? How any of us died? We
know.
We were murdered. That bomb was meant for us.’

‘Okay,’ I said. And just like that we moved from a mildly bonkers conspiracy theory to completely box-of-frogs crazy. German bombers had deliberately targeted a lot of things during the Blitz, but I doubted a single house full of crotchety old ladies was on their hit list.

From what I remembered from history class, the Luftwaffe’s general bombing strategy was to aim somewhere near the docks and factories and hope for the best. Even if they had wanted to kill the hags, the chances of a bomber deliberately targeting a particular house and then actually hitting it were minimal at best, if not close to impossible. I was sorry she was dead, but for hags, paranoia with a side order of dementia was practically mandatory.

‘A cowardly way to do it, too. None of us even woke up. One minute we’re alive, the next we’re dead. Didn’t even give us a chance to fight back.’

‘I’m sorry you’re dead, Auntie.’ I added, and I was.

She rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t have to believe me. You want a way back? This is it.’

The room began to fade around us, and slowly the parlour reappeared. The hags hadn’t moved. Tilde gave me a sly smile. ‘How about this? I’ll send you back. You find out who killed us, and you bring me their heads in a bag.’

The hags looked at each other. There was muttering.
Crazy old baggage.
I was the youngest, but I wasn’t the stupidest. Whose heads? Some mystery German pilots? Even if someone had murdered them, it had been seventy years ago. The bombers were likely long dead.

But it was the only option I had. ‘Deal.’

‘And you’re going to keep to your side, are you? Or are you going to go back and get on with your life, sniggering about how you pulled a fast one on an old woman?’

‘I’ll look into it,’ I said. ‘I can’t promise more than that.’

Tilde laughed suddenly, a death cackle that made me realise why wicked witches are such a stereotype. She reached out suddenly with a gnarled hand and pulled my hair. Hard. A bunch of strands came away in her fingers.

‘Ow! What was that for?’

‘Collateral, you uppity little whippet. This is a deal, not a gift. You act like you’re superior just because your skin’s still young and smooth as a baby.’ She twisted my stolen hair around her fingers, sniffed at it, then blew on it. The strands turned white. ‘You don’t trust me? I don’t trust
you
. You’re on the clock, chicken. You’ve got until every strand of your hair turns white.’

‘How long will that be?’

She shrugged and turned up her thin lips in another sly smile. ‘Until the moon begins to wane. A few weeks. If that.’ She grinned, showing her rotten teeth again. ‘There may be some side effects.’

Laughter erupted from the audience.
Mad as March hares, the lot of them
.

‘Just send me back.’ One thing at a time. I couldn’t do anything while I was dead.

She reached out her hand. Her long fingernails scratched my chest. ‘Then it is a bargain.’

My soul began to fade, but I could still feel her talons on my skin and the rest of her words echoed in my ear. ‘Until your hair goes white.’