Authors: Laura Powell
Witch Fire
For my Dutch family, Wim and Kikki Van Dam
Contents
The two runners on the roof were barely visible in the dawn light. The sky was low and grey, except for a blush of primrose at the horizon. If anyone had been out on the street, the figures above would have been little more than shadows, moving quickly but unevenly as they skirted obstacles and ascended and descended slopes.
The city was never entirely quiet. But early on a Sunday morning, the throb and grind of it was a distant hum. Up on the rooftops, the running boy and girl were conscious only of their own gasps, the thump of their feet on slate, brick and stone.
It had been an even race, but now the boy was drawing ahead. The top of the building ended in a parapet wall and there was a gap of at least two metres between it and the slope of the neighbouring roof. The boy came to a halt a few steps back from the parapet. While he hesitated, his companion gained on him. ‘Catch me if you can,’ she called out gleefully as she hurtled past, barely slowing as she reached the wall and the dizzying drop beyond. She threw out her right arm and a small brown pebble flew through the air and fell with a clatter on to the pitched roof on the other side.
The girl flew after it. It was an elongated half-leap, half-glide, and slower in motion than an ordinary jump. But no ordinary jump would have covered the distance. The girl landed with a smack, tilting forward, her right palm slapping hard against the sloping tiles, her feet lodged against the stone gutter. It took a second or so to get her balance, then she scrambled up and over the peak and into the roof valley beyond. A few moments later the boy joined her.
‘I won,’ she said, breathless and triumphant. ‘I knew it.’
‘I was being polite. Ladies first.’
‘You’re so full of crap.’ She laughed. ‘ ’Sides, I ain’t no lady.’
Lucas and Glory were in training. They had the ability to sky-leap because they were witchkind, and permission to do so because it was part of a government-approved exercise. Both wore the blue uniform with the W on the back that WICA – the office of Witchkind Intelligence and Covert Affairs – wore when committing witchwork in public.
All witches were required to be registered, although legal witchwork had been decriminalised in Britain in 1753. Those who chose to be non-practising were bridled in iron cuffs that blocked their power. Those who continued to practise sought employment in the public sector. Witches of all kinds were monitored by the Inquisition. The Inquisition still burned witches convicted of the most serious crimes, and continued to hunt down those who operated outside the law.
Their race over, Glory and Lucas leaned against a chimney stack, gathering their breath. Their jackets had hoods to shield their faces from view. Glory pushed hers back, and shook out her white-blonde hair, which had got entangled in the hoops of her earrings. Lucas kept his own hood pulled low. His black hair stuck damply to his forehead. His face, naturally pale, was flushed. They had run hard.
London sprawled around them, smudged and sullen in the thin light. Glory fixed her eyes on the horizon.
‘I could do this for ever,’ she murmured. ‘On and on, higher ’n higher . . . There’s times I don’t want to ever come down.’
Today was the first time they had sky-leaped unsupervised. It was not, however, the first time Glory had outdone Lucas in the exercise.
Witchkind’s unnatural abilities, their Seventh Sense, or fae, as it was usually known, varied in strength. Lucas and Glory’s fae was of the highest level: Type E, as registered in the Inquisition’s files. Only about one person in a thousand turned witchkind, and most of these were in their twenties when it happened. Lucas and Glory were still only fifteen.
Glory saw the fae as her birthright. Her grandmother, Cora Starling, had been one half of the infamous Starling Twins, the beautiful blonde witch-sisters whose outfit, the Wednesday Coven, had dominated the East End during the sixties and seventies. In the criminal underworld, the twins were remembered as celebrities and heroines. Respectable society regarded them as dangerous felons.
Lucas’s family were as respectable as it got. He came from a long line of witch-hunters and his father, Ashton Stearne, had been Chief Prosecutor at the Inquisition. The fae wasn’t only rare; it was usually hereditary. For Lucas to be a witch should have been impossible. He had joined WICA in a daze of desperation, because he didn’t know what else he could do.
It was while Lucas was on an undercover assignment in the coven world that he had met Glory, and the two of them had exposed a plot by corrupt inquisitors to frame Jack Rawdon, WICA’s director, for witch-terrorism. Nearly three months on from the debacle, the Inquisition was struggling to deal with the fallout.
Only a handful of family members and state officials knew that Lucas and Glory were witchkind. In the intelligence world, they were valuable assets, as most people would assume they were too young to be witches. Yet their status at WICA was uncertain. Nobody seemed quite sure what to do with them. Most of their schedule was filled with ordinary lessons and with practising witchwork they already knew how to do. Occasionally they’d attend seminars on subjects such as Applied Behavioural Science, and Fae Theory and Witchcrime. But they had spent just one afternoon on firearms training, and over two weeks on Data Analysis. It was starting to look as if they’d be spending the next few years stuck behind a desk.
The night before their first sky-leaping session, Lucas had the old childish nightmare of flying, in which he spiralled helplessly away from the earth and everyone he knew.
Lucas had only seen sky-leapers in action once, when he was still at school, still living his old life, still sure of his destiny as a thirteenth-generation inquisitor, detecting and punishing witchcrime. Sky-leaping wasn’t just rare; it was risky. In the old days of persecution, a witch would only use it as a means of escape as a last resort. Even Glory, brought up in a coven, hadn’t tried it. The chance of exposure was too great. And when he asked her what was involved, all she’d say was ‘It sorta works like magnets.’ Lucas suspected she didn’t actually know.
WICA’s HQ was a warehouse in the London docklands. The sky-leaping induction, however, took place in an airfield in Surrey that had been converted into a training facility. Their instructor, Agent Austin, a small and rather stout woman who looked wholly unsuited to springing through space, began proceedings in the control tower’s office.
‘Now,’ she said briskly, ‘sky-leaping aside, what do you think is the most impressive act of witchwork?’
‘Um . . . raising a wind?’ Lucas offered.
‘Crafting a poppet,’ said Glory.
Agent Austin nodded. ‘Good answers. Most people would agree that brewing up a storm, or using a doll to control another living being, are extraordinary feats. By comparison, simply moving a small object by force of fae doesn’t seem so impressive. However, it’s something very few witches can do.’
She placed a penny and a pebble on the desk in front of them, and smiled at Lucas.
‘
Try to move the coin with your fae.’ She tapped the metal. ‘Don’t worry; you can touch it first.’
The Seventh Sense was a mental power, but it was channelled through people or objects. Bodily substances were key. Witchwork was often literally a matter of blood, sweat and tears.
So Lucas spat on his palm before picking up the coin. He used his right hand to roll it around his left in a smooth clockwise motion; creating a rhythm, forming a bond. As his mind focused on the task, he could feel the Devil’s Kiss, the small inky blot that was the mark of a witch, begin to warm on his shoulder blade. His pulse quickened, and a second throb – the dark, hot pulse of fae – echoed in his head. The Seventh Sense was reaching out, uncoiling itself from the deepest, most secret part of him.
He placed the coin in the centre of the table. Brow furrowed with concentration, he put out his right hand, and beckoned to it.
Come
, he said in his mind.
Nothing happened.
He frowned harder, gathered up his fae and directed it with a glare towards the penny.
Come
, he commanded, still silently.
Now
.
The coin didn’t so much as twitch. Maybe he wasn’t going to be able to do this kind of witchwork after all. Maybe he couldn’t sky-leap. Maybe he wasn’t as powerful as everyone thought he was –
But Agent Austin was unfazed by his failure.
‘
Try it with the pebble.’
Lucas got ready to repeat the process. He wasn’t optimistic, but right from the start the little stone began to clumsily roll towards him. All of a sudden it flew into his palm and stuck fast. His body tingled with the rush of fae: like adrenalin, but wilder.
Job done, he tried to pull the stone off, tugging at it with his left hand. Glory smothered a laugh. It was as if the stone had been glued there.
He turned to Agent Austin. ‘I don’t get it. Why didn’t this happen with the coin?’
‘Because the penny was man-made. This kind of witchwork only works on small amounts of organic materials. So you could do it to a shell or twig or a bit of bone. But a pebble works best for our purposes. What you’ve created there is a lodestone.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Something what holds the fae,’ said Glory promptly, ‘but ain’t used for witchwork.’
Their instructor nodded. ‘As you know, an object used to commit witchwork is an amulet, if it’s been made from scratch, or a talisman, if it’s something that’s been adapted. But both these kinds of things are tools; a lodestone is simply a receptacle. To summon that pebble, you have “loaded” it with your Seventh Sense.’
Lucas was more interested in the fact the pebble was still wedged against his palm. ‘How do I get it off?’