Illicit Magic (Stella Mayweather Paranormal Series #1) Read online

  Étoile glided towards the hallway door and had her head cocked to one side again. When she looked at me briefly, I couldn’t tell if she was impressed that I’d managed to pack in under ten minutes flat or surprised that I really had so little.

  “They’re nearly here but they’re confused. They haven’t decided what they are going to do yet,” she breathed. Her eyes had an unfocused faraway look and her voice was just loud enough for me to read an undercurrent of fear. She didn’t strike me as someone who normally broke into a sweat when under pressure so that note of fear had me concerned. “Have you got everything?” she asked, hurriedly nodding towards the bag.

  I scanned the room. I had my clothes, shoes and jewellery bits in the bag. I had taken nothing from the bathroom. “Toothbrush,” I said and made a move towards the damp bathroom. It was the best move I could have made.

  The fiery missile that exploded through the window and breezed into the room in a gush of wet air, was just a whisper from my face and I felt the rush of heat as it whistled past me to thud onto my sofa bed. Glass fragmented in its wake, shards sucked into my room with the force of the sudden rush of oxygen, and I shrieked in terror, throwing myself towards Étoile who caught me with steady arms. Flames erupted on the bed and the smell of petrol leaked into the air from the crude weapon. I pushed myself free from Étoile and grabbed my duffle bag before it was consumed in the eager flames. I started towards Étoile and she grabbed my hand to tug me away from the inferno as a loud crash sounded at the door.

  We wheeled around to see the wood splinter as the head of an axe burst through. Étoile spread her arms behind her to reach for me. Alarm bells sounded in my head as danger approached us from every angle, cutting off both our escape routes. I could hear cries erupt from the street below and anger from the hall. The cruelty carried itself through the air and rained all around us. I knew in that moment that this was what real terror felt like.

  Étoile had the foresight to grab my shoulder bag from where I had dumped it when I came in and was edging closer to me, my body between hers and the flames, which were already billowing black smoke. Now we were half facing the door that in just four strokes was almost shattered. A hand reached through and stubby fingers grappled with the flimsy lock.

  “We have to go now,” Étoile cried, catching my hand and gripping firmly.

  Between the Molotov cocktail through the window and the formidable axe smashing through my door, I couldn’t have agreed more. Somewhere in the shadows of my mind, I registered the thought that I could smell the hairs in my nose getting singed.

  As her hand grasped mine, I spied the little, square tin caddy on top of my TV. “I have to get it,” I cried back, stumbling a step away to grasp it with my free hand. I had a few things in it, meagre treasures, the last relics of a life I’d once had but I couldn’t let them burn. Smoke stung my nostrils and I coughed against the rising darkness that even the half moon couldn’t permeate. I barely had time to wrap my fingers round the hot tin as Étoile grabbed me around the waist.

  The door smashed open with a groan, the small frame crowded with first one stocky figure, then two and more behind.

  They thought we only had two ways out, both impossibly blocked.

  They didn’t have a clue.

  The air fizzled and burned around us and I cried out as we vanished from the flames.

  When I opened my eyes, I was momentarily blinded by having my face pressed against Étoile’s silky blue shoulder. I detached myself from her and pushed back my hair. Between the drizzle and smoke, it had begun to stick unpleasantly to my face. I sniffed. The acrid stench of smoke was on me, not quite fully formed but still repellent enough. Bewildered, I blinked back tears and looked around. We were in a tiled cubicle with a toilet behind me, a sink and a hand drier in front, the kind that you dipped your hands in for the blast of air that was so strong it made your skin ripple. There was a long cord with a red blinking light next to the toilet.

  “When you said we had to get away, I didn’t realise we were escaping to a disabled toilet,” I muttered.

  Étoile didn’t look embarrassed. “It was the best I could do on short notice,” she sniffed. She set my shoulder bag on the floor and rummaged in her coat pocket until she found a little mobile phone. She pressed a number, then the call button and held it to her ear, turning slightly away from me as if to prevent me from hearing every word she was saying.

  “It’s me,” she said, her voice low but without that trace of panic she’d had before. “I’ve got her, but I was only just in time. They’re getting faster and stealthier. I could tell they were coming, but not that they were right outside the door! I think they are, well, we discussed that theory already. If I had been a minute later ... Just a minute! Well!” She listened before continuing, sighing. “We’re fine. We’ll check in straight away. Yes, of course ... See you soon.”

  Étoile stuck the phone back in her pocket. She crouched in order to see herself in the low mirror, ran long fingers through her hair, fluffing the front slightly and rearranged the collar of her jacket before shrugging, seemingly satisfied with her perfectly lovely and unhurt self. I decided she was probably the type who could survive any disaster while still keeping her lipstick fresh and her heels on.

  If only I had fared so well. I tucked the tin caddy I was still clutching into my sports bag and ran the tap. My face had a smear of smoke, made even messier thanks to some stray tears from where my eyes had started to sting. I scrubbed at my cheeks using a wad of toilet paper and the curiously, and slightly revolting, green liquid soap from the dispenser and a trickle of water. I thought my hair might have singed slightly but there was nothing to trim it with so I settled for pulling it into a ponytail and twisting the ends under. The skin between my thumb and forefinger, where I held the tin caddy, was starting to blister and I prodded the puckered red skin carefully. It had begun to sting already. I had my bag and Étoile remembered to grab my shoulder bag, but in the chaos, I hadn’t thought to snatch my jacket. Damn it. It was cold outside.

  At least, it was if we were still in London.

  “I left my jacket.”

  “It was ripped. Weren’t you going to get rid of it?”

  “I would have mended it.” How did she know it was ripped? Was she watching me when it happened? Fat lot of good she had been then, if she was.

  “Oh,” Étoile nodded thoughtfully. “Make do and mend, hmm?”

  “That’s a nice way of putting it.” I eyed the cubicle rather than meet her eyes.

  Étoile was quiet for a moment then she said, “I’ll get you another one.”

  “Where are we anyway?”

  “Heathrow. Terminal five to be exact.”

  I hadn’t realised I’d been holding my breath so I took a gasp of air. I may have never been to the airport before but at least now I knew where we were. My Oyster card was probably in my bag. I could get the tube home. Hmm, maybe not. “What are we doing here?”

  Étoile frowned and snickered. “Catching a flight, of course.” If she’d added “well, duh,” I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “I don’t have a passport.” I’d never needed one.

  “All taken care of.” Étoile produced a slim clear plastic envelope from the inside of her coat with a little flourish. She opened it and handed me a slim passport. I leafed through it. My name and picture was inside, but it wasn’t a British passport.

  “Is this a forgery?” I gasped in disbelief. Didn’t people go to prison if they were caught with a fake passport? I didn’t want to go to prison and spend a lifetime dodging fallen soap.

  “No,” she sniffed, seemingly insulted. “We have someone who helps us from time to time when we need a rush job.”

  “I’m not American, either,” I pointed out, tapping the blue cover.

  “Well, technically, you’re only half American but that’s good enough for a passport,” replied Étoile, as if it should have been obvious. “Anyway, I’ve only been here a few days and there
wasn’t time to get a British one as well, but it will hardly matter.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think you’ll be coming back for a vacation anytime soon.”

  “Am I ever coming back?” I’d deal with the absurdity of throwing my lot in with a woman I’d known for ten minutes, whose first name was the only thing I did actually know about her, later. Scratch that, I knew she was more like me than a regular person. That had to count for something. Plus she hadn’t left me to roast. I was feeling positively warm towards her.

  “I can predict shorter queues at immigration,” said Étoile which apparently was supposed to suffice for an answer. “We should check in. The sooner we are out of this god forsaken country, the better.”

  I slung my bag across my shoulder, taking care to avoid using my blistered hand and picked up my sports bag; then followed Étoile as she opened the door to the bathroom and stepped outside. I felt gross and hoped I didn’t smell but no one glanced our way as we followed the signs for check in. Étoile avoided the queues and walked straight to the empty business class aisle. She took my passport and handed it, with hers, to the uniformed woman behind the desk who checked them, inquired after our luggage and printed our boarding passes, all while barely glancing in our direction. I meekly followed Étoile to the security queue and we silently stuck our bags and shoes in the plastic trays before walking through the metal detectors. There was something slightly absurd about seeing Étoile in her socks.

  Once through, we rejoined the throng of people putting shoes back on, fixing belts and buttoning up jackets. I shivered, reminded once again that even indoors it was still cold at this time of year and my jacket was probably burning to a crisp right at this moment. I wondered what I might have had in my pockets. I’d dumped my gloves on top. Drat. At least I’d kept my boots on. I wondered what the hell I was doing following this woman around when I should probably make a break for it.

  “I don’t think that would work out too well for you,” said Étoile as if she had plucked the thought from my head and I opened and closed my mouth like a fish. The look clearly wasn’t working for me and my shoulders shuddered with the cold. “Let’s do something about that,” she said and, taking my hand, she pulled me in the direction of the closest shop in the duty free zone, as I looked about me, drinking in the sights. Airports were a new and interesting thing for me, despite the situation. I’d never had the chance to go away anywhere. I spent my holiday time hulking around London’s many museums and parks.

  Inside the shop, Étoile walked straight to the row of jackets and ran a practiced hand across them, pulling out three. She nodded politely to the sales assistant and told me to try them on. Shaking her head at the first two, she signalled her approval with a small incline of her head at the third. I looked at myself in the long wall mirror. It was grey wool with a full length zip, concealed by a small panel with a dropped waist, a belt that tied in a loose knot and sleeves that flared into gentle bell cuffs. It was well tailored and fit me snugly. It was obviously better quality than anything I had ever worn. I twisted the card attached to the sleeve and winced at the price. It was well out of my league of affordability.

  I shrugged it off but Étoile caught it before I could gingerly place it back on the hanger and marched it over to the counter.

  “I can’t afford it,” I hissed in a low voice, as I caught up with her at the till, just as the sales assistant scanned the tag with the wand.

  “It’s on me seeing as I didn’t think to get yours,” replied Étoile with a dazzling smile that she re-aimed at the sales assistant with a flick of her head, handing over a black card. “No bag. She’ll wear it now.”

  The sales assistant snipped off the tag, passed me the jacket and wished us a great flight. We’d been in the shop only a few minutes and Étoile had happily stumped up more money than I’d ever paid for a single garment and without a single question. I wondered exactly how she had so much money to just throw away cash at a stranger like that. I guessed she couldn’t have been more than a few years older than I.

  “I’ll pay you back,” I promised, pulling the coat back on, now minus its wince-inducing price tag, then zipping it up. I pulled my bag strap over my head again so that it rested across my body like a security blanket. My wallet was, thankfully, inside and I pulled it out. “I have money in my account. Not loads, but enough to give you some back.” I pulled out a card. Étoile took it from me and simply snapped it in half.

  “What did you do that for?” I tried to calculate what was in my account and then what I would have to do to apply for another card. Bother.

  “The minute you put that card in an ATM they’ll know exactly where we are. They will be following you electronically as well as tracking you by other means. We need them to stay confused until we are well out of the way.”

  “I could have used it in... where are we going? What do you mean by other means?” I hurried after Étoile as she tossed my card in the bin and moved on.

  “You couldn’t. They must have no idea where you are. You can never use a bank card traceable to you again, never use your email or your Facebook or anything else that leaves a digital trace. Not even your phone.” Étoile took my wallet from my hand and rudely rummaged through it, taking my only other card and snapping that one too. She tossed them in the bin and handed me the near empty wallet. “As for other means, well, they don’t like us but they don’t mind using our talents when it suits them and when they can get them.” She set her mouth in a grim line.

  “I don’t have a phone.” As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t bothered. Bad enough being a freak, but now I was a freak who didn’t even have a phone in the twenty-first century thanks to my social ineptitude. Great, but hardly my fault I reminded myself. “What am I supposed to do for money?”

  “I told you, I’ll take care of everything,” Étoile shrugged like it should have been obvious. She was being very offhand about the whole thing compared to me. “You won’t have to worry about a thing.”

  “I don’t want to be kept.”

  Étoile sighed and leaned closer speak in a low voice. “Stella, you don’t have a choice. Right now I’m the only person keeping you alive and you have to do what I say. I know you don’t want to. I know you’re scared but I will look after you and I’m taking you somewhere safe. Until then, just let me take care of the bills, okay?”

  “Where are we going?” I asked feeling a little sullen, like I’d just been told off. I didn’t have much choice but to trust her and if I was thinking practically, getting out of the country might be the best thing. She had, after all, rescued me from a firebomb and someone smashing my door with an axe. I was between a rock and a hard place; I couldn’t turn Étoile down.

  “New York, for the moment. We have... people there and they will tell us what to do next,” Étoile told me at last.

  “Couldn’t you just, you know, zap us over there? Wouldn’t that be quicker than flying?”

  “I was stronger once, but I can’t... zap us that far. We would get horribly wet when we landed in the middle of the Atlantic. Better to fly.” It was Étoile’s turn to look petulant and I wondered if I’d hit a nerve. She turned away from me for the briefest moment to scan the departures board. “Come on. We’ve got a little walk to our departure gate and it isn’t long before we board. I’ll tell you more on the plane.”

  Thanks to Étoile’s business class tickets, we swept through the departure gate and settled into large, plush seats fairly quickly and again I wondered how this woman, who didn’t look much older than I, had the money for two tickets, the ability to get passports (fake ones at that) at short notice as well as the resources to buy me an expensive jacket without flinching. I wondered if she flew regularly, unlike me. Perhaps she was some kind of entrepreneur, I decided. Or a criminal with a heart, I wondered as I watched her stow my bags in the overhead compartment.

  I shuffled in my seat to get comfortable but it wasn’t difficult considering how soft it was. É
toile leaned over to buckle me in like a child and grinned. “I hope you don’t get airsick.”

  I shook my head then suddenly realised that actually, I had no idea. It wasn’t like I was a seasoned traveller used to hopping on and off planes at a moment’s notice. In between the air stewardess’ instructions whose arms flapped towards exits that I couldn’t see and hopefully wouldn’t need, Étoile spoke in a low voice so that the other passengers couldn’t hear. She told me there were others “like us”, but not all could do things quite the way we could, she said with a wink, making us sound like conspirators. She told me that they – and I hadn’t quite fathomed whom “they” were – hadn’t been certain where I was for a long time but when they finally found me and thought there might be a threat, they had been keeping a loose eye on me. Apparently, my frequent job changes and home moves had kept them one annoying step behind. It became imperative that I was found, said Étoile, and here she was. She shrugged as if that told a whole story itself.

  When rumours of cruel and unusual happenings to witches had begun to surface over the past few months, they started rounding up the “waifs and strays,” as she put it, taking those who couldn’t defend themselves somewhere safer, pairing the newer of our kind with the stronger, trying to make sure no one was left alone as a target.

  Étoile sighed. “Sometimes we were just too late and now I fear it is not safe for us to go back to England at all for quite some time.”

  “Did you take them all home with you?”

  “No.” Étoile frowned as she thought about it. “No. I only had instructions to return with you.”