Spell or High Water Read online

  I turned around, and struggled back towards my house. The charm was not to lessen the storm. That would blow itself out overnight, anyway. It was just to store up some wind for the future, much like I also filled my cupboards with marmalade and toilet rolls and wrapping paper and other useful things. I went through the garden door into my study, and dropped the cord onto the desk, checked my email, and logged off.

  I got myself ready for bed rather early, and was just drifting off when the phone calls started, and the news of the death came in.

  Chapter Two

  The first one to break my slumber was a text from my friend Clare. She was away at a week-long conference, and I had been worrying about her constantly, as she had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Right up until going away on the conference, it had been touch and go whether she would be well enough, but she had gone, and I had fretted ever since. As soon as I saw it was her sending me a text, I sat bolt upright in bed and read it.

  “Corey dead! What’s happened?”

  I turned on the bedside light and got out of bed. I tapped out a reply as I wandered to the living room to flick the television on. “No idea, first I’ve heard of it.”

  “Tell me if anything happens.” That was her reply, and I rolled my eyes. She wasn’t a witch but she clearly expected me to have some kind of psychic hotline to events.

  I didn’t, but I did have an actual hotline – in the shape of my sister, Bernie, who was a very highly placed police officer. I texted her and then scrolled through on the television to find the rolling news channel.

  Bernie sent me a terse text in reply. “Suicide. Don’t meddle.”

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I’d helped her out in a number of local crimes. But if it was suicide, that was awful. The news channel was talking about war in some far-off places, and even the local news didn’t mention it.

  I turned the television off and was about to head back to bed, thinking nothing more of it, when someone began hammering at my door.

  “Gloria!” I squeaked. “You damn near enough gave me a heart attack, woman!”

  “Corey!” she wailed, and pushed past me. She had thrown a long coat on but underneath she appeared to be wearing a pair of pink satin pyjamas. She threw herself onto my sofa and picked up the nearest object – a tasselled cushion – that she could fiddle with. Some part of Gloria always had to be in motion. “She’s dead!”

  “I’ve heard. How come everyone knew before me?”

  “It was on the local facebook page. My phone went bonkers.”

  “Of course.” Who needed news anymore? “What happened? And when? Bernie said it was suicide.”

  “It was not,” Gloria said darkly. “She would never.”

  “No one really knows anyone,” I commented, trying to sound both wise and enigmatic.

  “Yes, they do. Don’t talk rot. She was a happy, lively woman full of hope for the future, in spite of her dragon mother-in-law and that man-about-town rake for a husband.”

  I felt that ‘dragon’ was too nice a thing to say about Penelope, the mother-in-law. She was literally my sworn enemy though we had avoided one another for the past few years. “Even so,” I tried to say, but she interrupted me by throwing the cushion straight into my face, and shouting, “No!”

  “Okay, okay.” I threw it back at her. “Tell me what you know.”

  “She didn’t come to the shop at all. I phoned her but there was no reply. On her mobile, I mean. I wouldn’t phone her house.”

  “Why not?”

  “She lives in that huge old manor house. It’s a bit weird, if you ask me. Instead of her husband Alex moving out of the family pile, instead, he moved Corey in. Imagine living with your mother-in-law!”

  I shuddered. “Ugh, no. What then?”

  “She was found about an hour ago, washed up on the beach.”

  “In the storm?”

  “They are saying she must have been walking and got swept out to sea, and they say she must have deliberately got too close, because who in their right mind would go out in this?”

  Apart from me, I thought, to do magic. “It does sound strange.”

  “Strange? It’s murder!” Gloria exclaimed. “It’s straight-up, low-down, murder. And I’ll tell you who did it, too! That smarmy husband of hers, Alex. And he was probably in cahoots with that old bat of his mother, too!”

  I certainly knew Penelope Aldershaw-Pike better than I knew Corey. I had interviewed her, once, many years ago, about the role that the minor gentry played in the preservation of the traditional British countryside. She had been effortlessly posh, with an accent that made me think of 1950s BBC newsreaders. I couldn’t imagine women like that ever scrubbing the loo or wearing stained sweatpants. She had been aloof, gracious, easy to interview, and ever so slightly terrifying.

  She had also objected, in the strongest terms, to how she felt she had been portrayed in the final article. I had been fair, but she saw it as “unhelpfully focusing on the negative to the detriment of my family name.” I had refused to retract it. I’d only shown her the article before submitting it, out of politeness, and she was not allowed to request anything other than factual changes. I think it was my refusal, more than what I said, that had really upset her. We’d had a public argument where she’d rather dramatically vowed to “destroy” me in the way I had tried to “destroy” her family – utterly ridiculous – but one unfortunate effect was that she’d used her influence to prevent me from ever working for that particular editor again, and I lost a fair bit of potential money.

  I did not have much good to say about Penelope Aldershaw-Pike. She was spiteful, arrogant and bitter. But was she a murderer? I doubted it.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, before Gloria jumped up and grabbed the pitchforks to descend on Aldershaw Manor. “We both heard the Yow-Yows. We know what they are. But what if Corey heard them, and was called out to her death? I mean, that’s what they do, right? It really could be nothing more than a tragic accident.”

  Gloria looked sulky. “I don’t know. She was a nice person.”

  “Nice enough to go out in a storm if she thought someone was in distress?”

  “Probably.”

  I shook my head sadly. “There we have it, then. Not suicide, as you say. But a horrible, horrible accident.”

  “I’d kill those Yow-Yows,” Gloria said. “If they weren’t already dead, that is.”

  The Yow-Yows are a Norfolk phenomenon. One night, far back in time, a ship sank just off the coast, and the sailors shouted and begged for help. No one came. The fishermen on shore were too scared – or was it too lazy? – to come out and rescue them. All the men on board ship perished, and ever since then, they have called out before a storm, luring people to their deaths, taking a painful revenge on the people of this area.

  So, yes, I could believe that they had called out to Corey and dragged her into the sea and drowned her.

  I had a fitful night of sleep after Gloria had left – we’d both had a few whiskeys to settle our nerves, but it wasn’t enough to knock me out, just enough to give me a mild hangover. The death of Corey was nagging at me, and when I left the house for my early morning walk, I found myself heading – not to the beach, as usual – but inland, and towards Aldershaw Manor. Everyone knew the way. The Aldershaw-Pikes were the closest we had to an aristocracy in the area. There were rumours that they were linked to the royal estate at Sandringham, and that Penelope Aldershaw-Pike had once dined with the Queen. Poor Queen, I thought.

  The road that led to the manor was wide and gravelled, and lined on either side with ancient trees. The only reason the family hadn’t put huge gates up was that there was a public right of way that ran up alongside the driveway. They had had enough influence to re-route the path from going directly through their inner gardens but it still skirted quite close to the house, and I was able to get a good view of the place.

  It was wide, tall, imposing, and covered in ivy. It even had crenellations, which was how you knew they were posh. An ob
ligatory surly gardener was digging in the flower border. I bet they hired the staff from “Tweed Cap Peasants 4 U” or some such online place.

  I couldn’t help myself. I sidled off the path, and headed towards one of the smaller doors at the side of the manor. It opened when I was only twenty feet away, and I was caught.

  The maid stared at me. She was wearing a neat black skirt, a white blouse, and an apron. I’d have preferred an attitude of abject misery and servitude, too, to complete the fantasy, but she seemed quite normal and perky.

  “Oh!” I said. “Am I lost?”

  “I don’t know. Are you?”

  I stared. She smiled. It was then that I noticed she had dark bags under her eyes, hidden under make-up but still there. And those eyes were slightly pink. She was either being cruelly abused in the manner of a Gothic novel, or she was mourning the loss of Corey.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll start again. My name’s Jackie and my sister is Chief Inspector Bernie Hardy…”

  “Oh! You must be here about …” and she tailed off.

  “Corey Aldershaw-Pike,” I finished for her, nodding sadly. Bernie would actually kill me if she knew I was name-dropping her like this. Actually, literally kill me. Slowly.

  “Do you want to come in?”

  She began to walk around the house towards the front. I followed, but reluctantly. No, if I went inside, that would definitely count as meddling, not to mention Penelope was likely to have me shot by a gamekeeper. I said, “Just out of interest, where was Mrs Aldershaw-Pike – Penelope, the elder – yesterday?”

  “She was out all morning,” the maid said innocently. “Walking in the garden, I think. Then she came home and stayed at home.”

  It was infuriatingly vague. I needed to ask Bernie exactly when Corey had died. “And Alex, Corey’s husband?”

  “I’m not sure, but you can talk to him if you like. Ah!” A dark blue sports car, the colour of midnight assignations, swept up the drive and spun in a circle in front of the house. A slim woman with dark glasses nearly as large as her head stepped out. She seemed to be mostly made of well-turned leg, topped off with a neat square jacket and designer handbag. “Here’s Sophie, Alex’s sister. Oh – look, do you want to speak to anyone? I had better get inside. I’ve got jobs to do and Miss Aldershaw-Pike is…”

  “I’m what?” said the woman as she walked towards us. She stepped like she was walking a narrow line, perhaps down a modelling runway, and her voice was low, rich and awfully, awfully upper class. “Daphne, you should be inside. And who might you be?”

  Daphne scurried away instantly. I smiled brightly, and thrust out my hand, which she took limply, as if touching me might infect her with something. Commonness, perhaps. “Jackie Hardy, Chief Inspector Bernie Hardy’s sister…”

  “But you yourself are not with the police, are you? I know your name. Why do I know your name?”

  I could have told her – well, your mother swore to obliterate my career – but I kept quiet. She shook her head and dismissed me. “Anyway, whoever you are, I don’t care. Get off our property.”

  “I’m just using the public footpath.”

  “No, you’re not. The path is over there. You are trespassing. Leave now or I shall phone your sister and have you arrested. You know that we can. And I certainly shall.” She sniffed with disdain and turned away, already assuming that I would snap to her orders.

  I bristled, but it wasn’t worth making an issue about. I waved a hand at her, nice and polite, but I don’t think she saw it. I was an insignificant dot in her world.

  As I walked away, I glanced up at the blank face of the manor house again. There was another woman in an upstairs window, staring at me with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. I thought it was Penelope herself. As I considered whether to wave cheerily to her, perhaps with just one middle finger, she withdrew into the darkness of the room behind her.

  My skin prickled and I felt waves of unwelcome feeling push me all the way home.

  I couldn’t let it lie. I just couldn’t. There were secrets hidden in that house, and I was still annoyed at how imperiously Sophie had spoken to me. Like mother, like daughter, obviously. She didn’t live there any longer. People said that she lived in London and worked in “fashion” but no one could define what that meant. She could be doing anything from cutting out patterns to handling huge multi-million-pound budgets.

  Why would an apparently happy young woman walk on the beach in a storm, and wade into the sea, and die? It did not make sense. She had lived in the area all her life. She knew the dangers.

  I saw that Gloria had put out Corey’s driftwood sculptures again, and I stopped to admire them. On an impulse, I bought a small and easily-handled one. I then spent some time in my garden, putting it in different places, trying to find the right setting for it. I eventually settled with it at the end of my patio, but later that night, when I looked out, it didn’t seem right.

  I walked outside into the cool darkness. There was a full moon and it lit the whole garden. I picked up the driftwood. It was long and thin and twisted, like a seal swimming, I thought suddenly. I lifted it high in the air to look at it from different angles.

  As the moonlight bathed it, I thought I saw some letters shimmer. This was all getting a bit Lord of the Rings, I thought with a smile, as I squinted at it. Then I realised they weren’t magically carved elvish runes or anything, but just a normal piece of writing carved very lightly into one smoother, flatter side of the abstract figure. I just hadn’t noticed them before.

  And yet if the manner of writing wasn’t magical, the words themselves certainly were.

  “With the blessing of the hyter-sprites and dedicated ever to their guardianship.”

  I lowered the wood to the ground. I hadn’t thought about the hyter-sprites for a long time, and I shivered.

  Chapter Three

  The hyter-sprites lived in woods and trees but as close to the sea as they could get. I knew of one small stand of twisted, stunted trees that was tucked in a hollow by some marshland, and on an impulse, I threw on a coat and headed out into the night. Corey had dedicated her driftwood art to the hyter-sprites, and that would account for Gloria’s impression that Corey was “attuned.”

  Therefore, I reasoned, the hyter-sprites might tell me about Corey.

  It was only about half past nine, and I didn’t start to feel alone and creeped out until I left the road with its passing traffic, and took a path that followed a fence line out past a farm and some scattered outbuildings. An owl swooped past, low and silent. Somewhere a blackbird was still calling, even in the darkness. I could see well enough by the light of the moon, and up ahead was the group of trees. Then the bird fell quiet too, and nothing seemed to stir at all.

  I got to the edge and laid my hand on the trunk of the first tree, and opened my mouth to greet the guardians of the place, and then it all went terribly wrong.

  I was attacked.

  A handful of dry leaves were thrown into my face and as I flung up my hands to protect myself, a branch started to poke at my legs, making me flail and dance around. Nuts and seeds and small, hard things were rained down on my head and I got the impression that long-fingered hands were tugging at my coat.

  I turned around and fled, and was pelted by twigs as I ran.

  “Don’t sulk,” Gloria told me, the next morning, as I sat on a chair behind the counter in her gallery. She was flitting around, dusting things, with the main door open to entice early morning customers into her shop. “It’s like in the real world. Not everyone will like you. Same with magical creatures, isn’t it?”

  “No, not really,” I said churlishly. “I am a witch.”

  “Yes, but you’re not a witch of wild places.”

  “Nor are you. And nor was Corey. What are these hyter-sprites, anyway? I didn’t think they were evil.”

  “Parents tell their children to be home before dark or the hyter-sprites will get them,” Gloria said. “But they are not evil.
They are just protective.”

  I shook my head in confusion. “What do they look like?”

  “Long and thin.”

  “Like snakes?”

  “No! Like long, thin, bony people.”

  “Like skeletons?”

  “NO! Listen, Jackie, I’ve never seen them, and I don’t think they want to be seen by you, but Corey had a bond with them and…” Her voice broke. “Oh, it’s all too awful.”

  “Isn’t it,” said a new voice, and my sister Bernie walked into the gallery. She was dressed in her smart office uniform. “I can guess what you two are talking about.”

  “It’s not suicide!” Gloria said instantly, flapping her yellow duster at Bernie.

  I took a more practical approach. “Do you know the time of death?”

  “Only a preliminary one. You do realise autopsies take longer in real life than a one-hour episode of a crime drama? But there are things that the coroner can tell at a glance – and how long a body has been in water is one of them, due to the swelling and bloating and… oh, sorry, I thought you wanted the details?”

  I had my hands over my ears, although it was for show, as I was still listening with gruesome fascination. “Nope.”

  She shrugged. She probably looked at crime scene photos over breakfast. “Anyway, Corey drowned – death by water inhalation – in the early hours of yesterday morning.”

  “Wait, what? Before the storm hit?” I said.

  Bernie nodded.

  “But not before the Yow-Yows were calling,” Gloria said, wide-eyed. “That proves my theory!”

  “And what theory is this? And what in hell are Yow-Yows?” Bernie said. “This is a mad witchy thing, isn’t it?”

  I glared at Gloria, but a small voice in my head was saying, actually, she might be right. “Gloria thinks that the voices of dead sailors lured Corey to her death.”

  Bernie had grown up with a witch for a mother, and a witch for a sister. She took me seriously. “And what do you think?”