Chapter 4.36 – Two Young Rebels

As Lilith had guessed, as the full moon appeared in the sky, Bruno, who was usually the boisterous centre of attention, was nowhere to be found.

Lilith knew exactly where he was.

She just needed to get to him and, thankfully, Leyla was busy looking after Brodie and Mollie during the esbat celebration, meaning that if she slipped away for a minute, she might not be missed.

But a minute was all she was going to have.

Wyatt wasn’t technically supposed to be in the Coven’s meeting room. It was a place reserved for the High Priestess and the senior witches to discuss important matters like the recent debates about the age limit on invisibility spells and whether it was still ethical to make potions with goat tongue. For what it was worth, Wyatt thought that all spells should be taught at any age, properly, so that rebels like him didn’t learn them independently and wreak unintended havoc. And as for goat tongue? Bleurgh. Nope. But he was a lowly, barely-qualified witch so his opinion counted for bugger all.

He sidled in, like a movie spy on a secret mission, then realised that made him look super suspicious, so he detached himself from the wall and walked in like he owned the place.

The wall had pictures of the three most recent High witches of the coven; Marigold ‘Ma’ Hogwash – Hoggy’s awesome grandma – was the most recently deceased. Egbert Spoon preceded Ma, one of the only High Priests the coven had ever seen. He’d succeeded his own sister, Kathryn, who had been High priestess for barely a year before she was taken and, allegedly, killed by vampires.

Wyatt often found himself drawn to Kathryn, partly because they were distantly related, but mostly because he’d been compared to her a lot. She was also a witch who’d had an insane well of magic at her fingertips and one who’d had to be extremely careful how she’d handled it.

But unlike Wyatt, Kathryn hadn’t spent her few years being restrained. She’d mastered her magic and won over her coven, becoming High Priestess aged only 21 years which was more than Wyatt could achieve in 121 years. Heck, even a 1021 years, not that he’d live that long, unless him and one of his vampy buddies had a two-way nibble.

Although, come to think of it, he’d not been told of any vampire that had lived that long, the Vatores were only in their 300s. He wondered if that was just because vampires were so ruthlessly hunted or whether, after a few centuries of being cast out, they simply opted out.

Could vampires opt out? How would they do it?

Why was he thinking of this shit? He had work to do.

He tore himself away from Kitty’s gaze and scanned the room, looking for the book.

Aha, there it was, well-hidden on a bookstand in the centre of the room.

He stepped up and whizzed through the pages with his find spell, skipping through births and marriages and arriving at deaths.

“What are you doing here?”

Wyatt jolted, almost leaping outta his skin and shitting his pants. He spun to face the source of the voice and breathed a huge sigh of relief, followed by a heavy, sick feeling.

“Tilly,” he gasped. “Geez, you scared me.”

“Did I?” she asked. She walked over, ignoring the fact that Wyatt was on a page of the book titled ‘murders’ and fixed him with a long stare. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Where have you been?”

“Here and there,” he muttered as he flipped the page back to ‘births’. With her this close, he could smell her perfume, he could picture her a couple of months back, in her red, lacy underwear, wiggling her bum at him…

It was making him flustered. Suddenly his head was full of the kind of thoughts he shouldn’t be having in a sacred space.

But Wartilda didn’t seem her usual, flirty self. She was even dressed more demurely. Shit, was it even her? Had he got the twins mixed up?

“Have you thought about me at all?”

Yep, definitely her.

“Sure I have,” he lied.

“Then why didn’t you call me? Was that too much to ask? A call?”

She was right up in his space with that burny, burny, sexy fire of hers swirling around her.

Her gaze drifted to the open book and then back to Wyatt immediately. “Wy, can we talk about that night in the flower shop?”

“Look, I’m sorry my mum walked in—”

Wartilda made a face. “No, not about that. You see—“

“There you are!” came a booming voice as Wartilda’s dad, Snotrag Globrot, burst into the room. Wartilda instinctively leapt away from Wyatt like he’d caught fire. Snotrag looked between his daughter and Wyatt with a smile, before clapping Wyatt on the back. “Two young rebels, sneaking into the meeting room. Haha! Good to have you back, isn’t it, Moon?”

Moon, who had been standing in the doorway, entered slowly and nodded. “It is.”

“The coven wasn’t the same without your antics! Remember that time you turned your toes into potatoes?” he roared with laughter.

“Yeah…”

“Oh, and when you tried to water the High Priestess’s plant using magic and caused it to grow legs?”

“Sure do…”

“Or the other time when you tried to—“

“Okay Snotrag, I think he gets it,” Moon said quietly.

Snotrag straightened up and nodded. “Right you are. You doing well, Wyatt?”

“Uh, yeah,” Wyatt muttered. He’d always been a bit intimidated by Snotrag, but especially as he stood there in that moment, fighting an erection that didn’t seem to want to die.

“Ahh, this kid!” Snotrag guffawed, still lost in his memories. “Almost causes me as much trouble as this kid.” He patted his daughter on the head. “Come on, you, let’s find your sister and a good spot around the bonfire.”

“I just need to talk to Wyatt for a while.”

“Find me after,” Wyatt said. “I’ll wait around for you.”

Wartilda looked back as her father shepherded her from the room. She knew that Wyatt would rather turn all his digits into root veg than have to field questions about why he’d humped and dumped her two months earlier. She knew that he wasn’t going to wait around after.

He felt a bit bad about that, but it was what they’d agreed. Just a casual thing.

Maybe they had different definitions of casual. But… whatever. Wyatt had bigger fish to fry.

Moon had hung back after the Globrots had left and gently closed the door a bit as she entered. “You know you shouldn’t be in here. What are you doing?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

“Looking for details of murdered witches.”

Moon didn’t seem surprised. “Why?”

“Dunno, Lilith wants them, says it’s something to do with the vampire cure.”

“Ah,” Moon opened the door wider and stood in the archway. She glanced right, then left then back at Wyatt. “Go ahead.”

With Moon keeping guard, Wyatt flipped the pages back to ‘murders’. He took a knackered old pen from his pocket and started scribbling things down on his hand. Surprisingly few witches had been murdered and a number of them must’ve never been found as their burial sites were just listed as ‘unknown’. Still, he found a few so he hoped that that would be good enough.

He walked back over to Moon, pocketing his pen as he did. She looked at his forearms and shook her head. She stroked her fingertips lightly down his arms and he watched the markings disappear.

“I need those!”

“They’ll be back… after you’ve talked to Wartilda,” she said with a chuckle and left him staring at his naked palms.

Broof was ambling around the dock as the sky began to darken and the full moon became visible through the clouds, although it wasn’t truly night yet. He was swatting away mosquitos and dodging planks that had seen better days while he waited for the esbat celebration to start. He’d walked twice past a man sitting on the bench with a face that looked not unfamiliar. On the third pass he knew that he knew the sullen looking man looking at him, but just couldn’t place…

…him.

As memories of The Worst Day Of His Life gripped at Broof throat, the not-quite-a-stranger walked over.

“Well,” he said softly. “Mr. Hogwash, isn’t it?”

Broof could only nod, remembering the broken-hearted wail of his ex-wife behind him as his heart had vacated his body. He suddenly couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

The man nodded carefully in a practised way and reached out through Broof’s fog to place a solid hand on his arm.

Speechless and wracked, once again, with guilt, Broof gripped at the man’s fingers as his memory flitted through snippets of that night, of the days that had followed. They were fractured and fleeting yet still penetrated to his core and left him with that weighted, sick feeling even though years and years had passed.

He knew this man. This was the officer who had visited the house the night Cabbage had died. The one who had brought with him the worst imaginable news that had sent him on his downward spiral into the darkest mood and even darker magic.

When he finally managed to raise his head to look at the man, his beard was wet with tears.

“Time never heals, does it?” the man said softly.

“No,” Broof whispered. “Not entirely.”

The firm grip on his arm released as the man let go and slid it into his pocket. “It’s been a long time; I’m surprised you recognised me” he said casually. “Although to look at you, you wouldn’t guess it. In fact, I think you might look even younger than when I last saw you. Given where we are and who we’re here with, I can hazard a guess as to why.”

It took Broof a moment to catch up as the trees appeared back in his vision and his time-healed wounds sealed shut. Almost. Time… look at you…

Oh, right.

“Yes,” he said. “You’d likely guess correctly.”

“And your wife—?”

“Ex wife,” Broof mumbled. “Yes, she was a witch too.”

“Aren’t they all?” the man laughed and shuffled awkwardly on his feet.

Broof nodded as his final marbles fell back into their box. “Officer Ralf Widdlefinkle, right?”

“Not anymore. You’re talking to Raife Fiddledinkle, general member of the public, now.”

“I see,” said Broof, not really seeing at all. “What brings you here, Raife? You’re not a witch…?”

“Oh, no,” Raife concurred. “Although I did have dealings with one. She offered me a new identity and a place to lay low.”

“Oh, right,” Broof said, his butler politeness kicking in as he thought if it was correct to ask Raife why he’d needed a new identity, and why a witch had granted it and not some witness protection programme.

“I bet you’re wondering how that all came about, aren’t you?” Raife grinned. “Well, it all started when I hired a new recruit to the police force, Jessica Spoon, have you had the pleasure of meeting her?”

Broof hadn’t and responded in kind.

“Well, she was a bit of a kooky one, put her on a case that seemed straightforward enough, a bust up in a bar in Forgotten Hollow. She only goes and uncovers some crazy underground supernatural scene, and—”

An almighty howl reverberated through the tree canopy, cutting Raife off mid-sentence. “What the hell was that?”

“Sounded like a… wolf?”

“That’s some big wolf.” Raife turned over his shoulder at what sounded like oncoming footfall. But not the sound of shoes, or the pattering of bare feet – the distinctive sound of claws on wood. “What the—?!”

It all happened so fast. One minute Raife was turning, his hand patting his side where he’d no doubt holstered a gun throughout most of his life, the next there was a splash, people screaming, flashes of magic streaking past.

Broof felt something puncture his arm. He thought he was running but he couldn’t feel the floor.

He could smell vanilla and formaldehyde.

He had no idea what was happening.

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