Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (33 page)

And then it snapped.

Rosa felt it go, the jagged edge scoring the back of her neck as Sebastian staggered backwards, sprawling over the foot of the bed with the broken collar in two halves in his hands. He looked down at the broken pieces of metal and then up at her, his eyes full of a stupefied disbelief. And then, as Rosa raised her hand, feeling her magic flood through her like wine in her blood, something else came into his expression: fear.

‘Rosa . . .’ He tried to scramble to his feet, but he tripped, too drunk to steady himself. ‘Rose – my darling—’

‘Don’t call me that,’ she snarled.

‘
Ábréoðe!
’ he roared, and she felt his magic buffet her, but she flung the spell away before she had even time to think about.

‘
Ádræfe!
’ she shouted back, and he flew across the floor to slam against the wall between the two windows. There was a cracking thud as his head met the plaster, and a Ming vase on the dressing table rocked gently, but did not fall.

Rosa crouched, waiting for him to rise again. But he only lay, slumped against the skirting board, blood running from a cut on his temple. Was he alive?

‘God forgive me,’ she whispered, horrified by what she had done. But she knew in her heart that if the time came she would do it again. She had been fighting for her magic, for her life.

She felt the magic flowing through her bones and muscles. She closed her eyes and let it run to her fingertips, filling her with a wild, formless joy.

The necklace lay on the floor, its two halves winking in the candlelight. Rosa picked it up, weighing them in her hands, and then she rolled Sebastian on to his side, so that his hands were behind him. She picked up the collar and wrapped the broken halves around his crossed wrists, pushing them together with her mind and magic. The gold shivered beneath her finger, shrinking away from her touch as it melded into one so that he was bound, his hands clasped behind his back. She wasn’t fool enough to think it would hold him for long – Sebastian knew the secrets of the jewel and she did not. But perhaps it would slow him for long enough to let her accomplish what she wanted to do.

She looked at herself in the mirror. There was a smear of blood on her cheekbone – hers or Sebastian’s, she could not tell. But when she wiped it away, the girl that looked back at her from the glass might have been dressed for a ball or a dinner. Her throat was bare – no locket, no collar – and the ivory lace dress fell in folds and ruches to the ground. She pinned her hair again, where a lock had come loose in her struggle.

Then she took a breath and turned to open the door.

Luke held on to Castor’s mane with numb fingers. It was snowing, the flakes driving into his face as they galloped through the night, and he had no gloves. His rib screamed with the pain of the long ride through the darkness, but he did not dare stop.

Behind him lay the Malleus, who might even now be sending Brothers out to find out why Leadingham had not returned. When they found Luke’s cell empty, they would start the pursuit. Whether they found him depended on one thing: if Leadingham had told anyone about Sebastian. If anyone knew that Leadingham had traded Rosa for a sack of cash and the promise of cooperation, they would know where to find him.

He could only hope that Leadingham had kept his treachery silent, but he would not know for sure until he heard hoof-beats on the road behind and felt a knife in his back.

Castor was tiring, he could feel it in the horse’s lolloping gait and the way he had begun to stumble in the snow. Clouds of white came from his flared nostrils and his flanks were hot and wet with sweat beneath Luke’s legs. But he could not allow the horse to rest.

‘Come on, boy,’ Luke whispered, his teeth gritted against the pain of his rib. ‘Come on. Black Bess carried Dick Turpin from York to London in a single night, I’m not asking the half of that. Fifty miles – that’s all I ask. You can give me that.’

And then? But he couldn’t think about what lay at the end of his journey – the high walls of Southing, the wreathing web of spells. Rosa. He would think of Rosa – and he would pray that she was still alive.

The room was in almost complete darkness as Rosa stepped inside, but there was a fire in the grate and as her eyes adjusted she could see a woman lying on her side on the burn-spotted hearthrug, staring into the flames. She said nothing as Rosa entered, closing the door behind her with a quiet click. Only the fire flared up, the logs spitting and crackling, fed by the woman’s magic.

‘Mrs Knyvet? Are you awake, ma’am? It’s me, Rosa.’ Rosa spoke very quietly into the deep, rich darkness. The woman said nothing, she just sighed, and the flames in the grate gusted up and settled back. ‘Do you remember? I came earlier. I am the girl . . .’ She stopped. The girl Sebastian wanted to marry. The girl who kissed him. The girl who took his ring and slashed his face, and would not give in.

The woman didn’t answer. Rosa walked into the darkness, feeling for a chair beside the hearth.

‘I saw your picture. It was you, wasn’t it? You were the one with the snake’s-head cane. You murdered a couple, one night in Spitalfields, long ago. Do you remember?’ She shivered, in spite of the heat from the fire. She could feel it flaring in the grate, flickering with the woman’s uncertainty and suspicion.

‘What do you want?’ the woman said, and her voice was bitter. ‘Why do you come, raking up the past?’

‘Why? Why
them
? Just a poor man and his wife, and his child who hid under the settle. You dropped your cane, he remembered it.’
He dreamt of it, every night, for fifteen years
 . . .

‘I don’t remember,’ the woman said sullenly. She did not look at Rosa, she only stared into the fire. ‘Rich or poor, they all bleed red.’

Rosa shuddered.

‘Lexton,’ she managed, trying to push away the images that were crowding her head: a sobbing woman, a man bleeding his guts out on to the floor, a child beneath the settle, closing his eyes as the blood pooled on the flags . . . ‘Lexton, their name was. Don’t you remember?’

The woman said nothing at all. At last Rosa shook her head and got to her feet. She had tried, for Luke’s sake she had tried, but she was not going to get an answer from this shell of a woman. And Sebastian might wake any moment and find her gone. She would be better off making her escape, trying to make her way back to London and free Luke from his prison cell. If he was still alive.

The thought almost made her choke, and for a moment she stood holding on to the door frame, steadying herself.

But before she could leave and close the door behind her, the witch-woman raised her head from the hearthrug. Her eyes glittered in the firelight.

‘I wore black kid gloves,’ she said, her voice hoarse and yet strangely excited, as if even now the memories thrilled, fifteen-years dimmed though they were. ‘To hide the blood.’

‘Why?’ Rosa said, almost in spite of herself. She felt like stopping her ears and slamming the door and trying to expunge the memories of the dark firelit cave from her mind for ever. Part of her felt a desperate pity for the ruined creature crouched in front of the fire, and part of her could barely master her disgust for what she had done, and the still-vivid excitement of those memories. ‘Why them?’

‘They were enemies,’ the woman said. She picked up a coal from the fire and poured it from hand to hand, the flames spitting as she did. There was a smell of burning flesh, and Rosa gagged and put a hand to her mouth. ‘I did it for my husband, for my son. Outwith! He was no outwith. I could see in his eyes as he walked around the factory, asking his impertinent questions. He knew.’

Rosa’s blood seemed to freeze.

‘What did you say?’

‘He knew,’ she repeated sullenly. ‘Knyvet laughed, said he was a poor fool of an outwith, and to let him write his stupid article; we would sue the publication and they would lose every penny. But he was no outwith. I don’t know what he was – he was no witch either. But whatever he was, he
knew
. He could see the spells, the bindings – I saw it in the way that he looked at the machines, at
me
.’

He knew
. The words pounded in Rosa’s head. He knew. As Luke had known.

‘He was going to expose the conditions at the match factory,’ Rosa whispered, ‘wasn’t he? And so you killed him.’

‘No one is allowed to stand against us.’ The woman flicked the coal at Rosa’s feet, so that she had to jump back or risk being burnt. Then she picked up another, clenching it in her fist. When she breathed, smoke came from her lips. Rosa remembered Cassie’s panic and she took another step back, into the corridor. She knew she had to slam the door, but she could not. She could not bring herself to do it, to trap the woman back into her dark prison cell, as she herself had been trapped just hours before.

‘Mrs Knyvet, please, be calm,’ she begged.

The woman looked up at her and there were flames in her eyes, flames as bright as gold that seemed to glow in the darkness.

‘Calm?’ the woman said. She laughed, a terrible sound that made Rosa think of someone screaming in pain.

And then she threw back her head and roared.

A wall of flame came blasting from her lips. Rosa smelt the stench of scorching wood, of burning skin and hair. She heard a scream – her own? And she flung every particle of magic that she possessed into a huge shield, trying to keep the flames inside the room, away from the corridor, away from her own skin.

Dimly, through the crackle of burning wood and the blaze of fire and smoke, she could see Sebastian’s mother standing in the centre of the flames, and hear the scream of her laugh.

Oh God, what have I done!
she thought.

She picked up her skirts and ran.

T
he snow was driving hard in Luke’s face as he came over the top of the Downs and began the slippy, perilous descent to Southing village. He was exhausted and so was Castor. Neither of them would have lasted another five miles, but he did not need to travel five miles. The fingerpost said
Southing – 1¼ miles
.

Please
, he found himself thinking, in time with Castor’s plodding hooves.
Please. Please. Please
.

Please let him get there. Please let this night be over and the pain in his ribs cease. And above all – please let Rosa be alive. For all Sebastian’s talk of marriage, Luke couldn’t shake the suspicion that what he had in mind was a colder bed and a grave cloth instead of a bridal gown. He had tried to burn Rosa in the factory in Brick Lane. He wanted her, yes. But he could not afford for her ever to leave Southing. And there was only one sure way to accomplish that. If he married Rosa, it would not be for long.

Please . . . Oh, Rosa, wait for me. Stay alive
 . . .

And then, coming down the Beacon, he felt it, like a punch to the chest, a burning smack that made him catch at Castor’s reins and sent the horse stumbling in the slushing snow. He caught himself and pulled Castor up, his heart beating fast and hard as they stood looking into the swirling snow.

There was nothing there, nothing but the darkness shadowed by the moon and the close-clustered trees that lined the road. But there was no mistaking what he had felt; a huge buffeting surge of magic, from somewhere close. And not just any magic – Rosa’s. It burnt in his chest, like a brand in his flesh, and he knew that she was very near and that she was fighting for her life. But she was alive. And more than that – she had her magic back.

‘Come on, boy!’ He put his heels to Castor’s side, kicking the poor, tired horse into a trot. ‘Come on, we’re nearly there.
Come on
.’

Wait for me
, he thought grimly.
Hang on, Rosa. I’m coming
.

‘Cassie!’ Rosa screamed. She pounded against the green baize door, feeling the spells bend and groan beneath the onslaught, but not break. ‘Cassie! The house is burning! Unlock the door! Get the servants out!’

Could Cassie hear her? She remembered the huge thickness of the door, its muffling spells. She felt a sob rise in her throat and then fought it down.
Cassie!
she screamed inside her head. But the only voice she heard was the one she longed to hear, but knew could not be real. Luke’s.

Hang on, Rosa. I’m coming
.

If only it were true. But he was in a cell in London. And unless she got out of here, he would rot there for ever.

There was a crash, breaking glass, and the reflection of flames flickered against the corridor wallpaper as the fire blazed higher, fanned by the fresh air.

She clenched her fists.

She
must
get out.

If only I had the Grimoire
, she thought despairingly, and then she shook her head angrily. No. She didn’t need the Grimoire any more than she needed the locket she had sold to Phoebe. Papa’s love for her, her memories of him, none of that was in the locket, just like her childhood happiness was not in the bricks and stones of Matchenham. They were inside her. In the same deep well where her magic lay. Yes, she had thought of Papa as she traced the locket’s curlicues with her fingertips, but it was not the source of her memories. It was just a prop, a crutch.