AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Joy couldn’t believe what she saw through her swimming vision. Tears poured down her face. Healers and medicine were already waiting for them by Town Hall’s wide steps, the whole effort organised by a red-faced, furious Paulina, who had not abandoned them but gone to get help. Joy took one look at Mrs. Stone marching right for them, looking as wrecked as Joy but determined and so, so worried. Mrs. Stone’s arm settled across Joy’s back and Joy sagged, relief and security catching her up in a firm embrace. The wild creature that had driven her to Gabi, to Perchta, now left Joy to face the world alone and she fainted.
THIRTY-SIX
GABI
Gabi had woken up hours after Perchta forced the sleeping draught down her throat with a massive headache screaming between her eyes and no idea where she was. It had taken a good few minutes to place the open, white room around her as being in the clinic, lights blaring above her and the whole place smelling of disinfectant. At the time she hadn’t known how she’d got there, but she’d been told after that Peregrine had gone back for her. Joy had gone back for her. Her dad would have too if he hadn’t fallen on the stairs while helping Gus get Victoriya out of Town Hall, his leg giving out. He now had a sprained ankle to go with the previous injury, and a bad mood that would probably take longer to heal despite the long hug Gabi and he had shared.
And Joy… While Gus, Maisie and her dad had gotten Victoriya to her mum, while Eilidh got Salma out, Joy had done something Peregrine had never seen before. That in itself was so rare Gabi had been speechless for minutes. Joy’s hands had turnedblue, from fingertips to the crease of her wrist, full on blue as if she’d been born that sky blue colour.
But when Gabi had crawled out of bed, disobeying orders from three nurses and one disgruntled Peregrine, Joy’s hands had been their regular pale colour. She’d looked normal except for the bandages around her stomach and the bruises and cuts on the rest of her. Gabi herself had a scar so bad, so deep and messy that even the advanced healers couldn’t erase it. Her arms and the rest of her had healed fine, though, so she tried to be grateful. Even though there was a part of her that had looked in the mirror every morning since and not recognised the body reflected back at her.
Now, five days after she’d gone into Town Hall to confront a murderous witch with a coven and two elves, Gabi sat at Joy’s bedside—herbedside, technically, since Mrs. Stone had released Joy yesterday. Joy would recover better, process the many potions and healing tonics in her system better, in a more familiar environment. And since the Law House was closer to the clinic, meaning the nurses could make twice daily trips, Joy now slept here, where Gabi could watch over her. Not that she hadn’t watched over her vigilantly at the clinic, refusing to be moved and driving the nurses mad when they weren’t kept busy and frazzled by Joy’s coven. They had come here with Gabi too, the witches, filling the Law House with worry and chatter.
Victoriya had recovered quickly once the full-strength sleeping tonic had worn off, the slice on her arm shallow enough to give the healers no trouble. Gabi could hear her downstairs even now, shouting at Gus and Maisie for something and nothing. The others, Salma, Eilidh … all fine, to Gabi’s immense relief.
“You need to eat something, Gabi.”
Gabi lifted her head. Her dad leant against the doorway, an uncompromising look on his face. This was how the last few days had gone. First, he would casually remind her to eat, then he’d start nagging, and finally he’d come and march her into the kitchen where she’d shove down whatever food had been made. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to eat; she didn’t want to leave Joy’s side in case she woke up, still terrified. Or in case something happened. Something Gabi shied away from.
“Can’t you just bring something up?” she asked on a sigh.
Her dad’s footsteps sunk into the thick carpet, his eyes passing over Joy before they settled on Gabi. She wilted under that look, her heart aching so badly she clenched her jaw to keep her expression neutral, which he saw through, of course. He hooked an arm around her neck and drew her against him, hugging her tight, and for a moment Gabi let herself sag against him, let herself be surrounded by that comfort.
“She’s going to wake up, Gabi. The healers said she’d be fine.”
That wasn’t exactly what they’d said. Joy was healed, scarred like Gabi in places but completely healed of her injuries. And unconscious. She’d been that way for five days now, since she’d … done something to Perchta. Grabbed the witch’s wrist with her blue hands and sucked something out of her. The healers said she was in perfect health, externally and internally, but whatever power she had wielded, it could take her body a long, long time to recover from that.
Gabi got to her feet, her knees cracking, but not to follow her dad towards food—to puff up Joy’s pillows, tuck the covers tighter around her the way she liked, to smooth a wayward strand of pink hair back from her flushed cheeks. She was breathing steadily but her face was sweaty and red like she had a fever. What if she never woke up? What if she wasn’t the same when she did?
“Food,” Bo said, and Gabi couldn’t argue as he wrapped a solid arm around her waist and steered her to the kitchen.
Eilidh shot to her feet at the sight of Gabi. “How is she?” Five demanding pairs of eyes met Gabi’s. She sighed, her shoulders sagging.
“The same,” she answered, and took a seat in front of a steaming bowl of Moroccan stew. Infused with herbs and Salma’s own blend of spices, it afforded Gabi a glint of comfort, eased a bit of her stress and fear. A different sort of fear now—not urgent and pounding but buried deep and slowly festering like an infection. But the food and Salma’s witchcraft helped slightly, and Gabi appreciated it. So, when Salma refilled her bowl when she was done and placed a steaming cup of clear, amber tea in front of her, Gabi finished both of them. She knew Salma was fussing, mothering her the way she did her coven, but it was nice. To have Salma, the rest of the coven, and her dad. In these quiet moments, Gabi felt like she could handle it. What might happen if Joy never woke up. What might happen if she did.
“Thanks,” Gabi said, her voice a throaty scratch. She’d wrecked it by shouting at nurses and crying at Joy’s bedside until, so hollowed out, she fell asleep. She’d lost track of the number of times she’d told Joy’s unconscious body that she loved her, so much it was going to swallow her whole, so much her heart felt like it had been put through a paper shredder and hastily reformed from the scraps.
“Here.” Salma pressed a warm thermos of yet more soothing tea into Gabi’s hands, her own soft, brown hands folding around Gabi’s, another layer of comfort. “For upstairs,” she said, and squeezed Gabi’s hands before letting go. The others were silent, or at least they would be until Gabi retreated back upstairs and Victoriya and Gus returned to arguing, their own way of dealing with Joy’s condition.
The chair scraped as Gabi stood, her hand secured around the thermos, a part of her, the scrap of her that wasn’t burdened by fear, touched at Salma’s thoughtfulness. “I’ll tell you if anything changes,” she said, looking at each of them. Gus rumpled and red-eyed, Victoriya absent her usual makeup but scowling and spoiling for a fight, Eilidh stiff-backed by the counter, her whole body frozen as if she could fight off her emotions by staying still, Maisie pacing the floor, her coat ragged and absent its usual gloss, and Salma hovering by the kettle watching Gabi, wringing her hands. Gabi was suddenly so grateful they were here that her eyes stung with tears. Before they could fall, she turned and made herself walk away.
Upstairs, Gabi paused in the doorway to the living room area. The TV was on low, the Food Network as background noise but there was an air of quiet hanging over the room, the kind that pressed into her until it hurt. Peregrine sat on the couch, staring into space, his head bowed, and his broad shoulders hunched inward.
Gabi’s gaze went instinctively to the door to her bedroom, the lump in the covers—Joy—just about visible, but instead she crossed the living room to sit on the windowsill, setting the flask of tea beside her as she folded herself up in the window seat. Peregrine was now studiously watching an amateur baker fold egg whites, pretending he hadn’t been conscious of Gabi’s every movement since she’d paused in the doorway.
Perchta had broken. After Gabi and the others had been taken from the building, Paulina had gathered her whole coven and they’d stormed Town Hall. Between the fifty witches, they’d expected to come out victorious in the fight, but there hadbeenno fight. They found Perchta sobbing in the lift by the records room; she hadn’t even tried to stop them when they wrenched her to her feet and dragged her upstairs.
She’d been sent to Liverpool, to witches who could better contain her, to cells that had been designed to hold things like her for centuries at a time. According to Gabi’s dad, she kept crying about her magic being missing. Gone. Gabi didn’t want to think of what—who—had done that. It was better to think about the past few days.Thatat least she could think of and not feel sick with worry.
Which brought them to the lanky, nervous man scrunched up on her couch, who would not be removed from the house for longer than a few minutes at a time. Who even though he had a whole army of brothers to look after, was stubbornly remaining to watch over Gabi.
Her brother.
Gabi had never had friends growing up. She hadn’t needed them; she had Peregrine. He’d been the friend she loved most, the big cousin she idolised, and when they got a little older, that childish admiration had turned to solid friendship. And then, somehow, he’d become her best friend. When something went wrong, Gabi went to Peregrine. When her mum died, she ran to him for comfort. Only she wasn’t the only one grieving. Not that she’d known, not that he’d deigned to tell her they were much closer related than she’d been told her whole life. She only found out when she’d finally brought herself to read the letter her mum had given her minutes before she died. The letter she hadn’t opened until she was fourteen, eight years later, even though Peregrine had read his own letter the day her mum—theirmum—had passed.
Now, Gabi gnashed her teeth, anger and frustration filling the hole inside her that had opened when she woke in the clinic. They needed to have this conversation, but Gabi would rather focus on the orderly row of terrace houses outside, the flashes of movement behind curtains and the rare kid racing way too fast down the steep road on a BMX.
Eight years. That’s how long he’d known they were brother and sister, how long he’d lied to her, kept the most poisonous secret. The worst thing was she hadn’t even found out from him in the end. That letter. About her mother’s teenage pregnancy, about her father—Gabi’s grandfather—pushing the baby onto her older sister, saying Clover was too young, too naïve, to raise a child. About how those siblings had grown up as cousins.
