Witch out of Luck Read online

  Maybe it’d been Terrence, maybe not, but he hadn’t drowned until later in the evening. “Did you see anyone near the woods, or on the path to the falls?”

  “There was another student,” she said. “I heard them yelling at him, and they called him Claude, I think. He kept dive-bombing people and knocking them off their brooms.”

  Hmm. Claude wasn’t someone I’d questioned. I’d need to go back to the academy if I wanted to find out if he’d been involved.

  “Okay,” I said to them. “Thanks.”

  I turned away, my phone buzzing with a message. I expected it to be Nathan, but found a disgruntled text from Alissa saying she’d had her shift extended thanks to a certain old mischief-making seer.

  Looked like I was back to square one—unless I talked sense into the elf or jogged his memory. If only Annabel could do that, then it was worth speaking to Ava about her granddaughter’s sudden ability to see the future. If nothing else, talking to the old seer might give poor Alissa a break.

  8

  Ava wasn’t hard to find. She spotted me the instant I walked into the hospital waiting room and crowed with delight. As usual, she wore a purple wig with a plastic wand tangled in it and a dress patterned with bright flowers.

  “Let’s go on an adventure, young Briar,” she said, grabbing my arm.

  “Uh, great idea, but you’re not supposed to be out of the ward,” I said. “Also, it’s Blair.”

  Ava seemed confused about me at the best of times. She might have known my mother and had been the one to tell me my maternal grandmother had died shortly after her daughter had left town, but she never managed to get my name right.

  “Beware the wild one, Briar Wilkes,” she said. “Beware the wild one.”

  Okay… “Who’s the wild one?” I decided to humour her. “You mean the elves?”

  She spun on the spot in a dramatic dance. “Elves? Tricksters, they are. Nasty little tricksters.”

  “Have you seen any elves in your visions lately?” I asked, in a desperate attempt to get her to sit down.

  “I see water,” she said. “I see glass. I see death.”

  Right. I knew better than to wonder if she was having an actual premonition. “Have you seen Annabel this week?”

  “Oh, not for a while,” she said. “She hasn’t got the time for the likes of me, not now she’s spending all her time with that elf. Never mind her, let’s go on an adventure.”

  “Hang on.” I moved my arms behind my back in case she grabbed me again. “Did you know they split up? Understandably, Annabel’s not happy. I wondered if she’d talked to you about it.”

  “Split up?” She sat down next to me. “No, no. She never said anything to me.”

  I hesitated. “Well, she split up with him and they’re both very upset. The thing is… did she ever talk to you about developing the Seeing gift?”

  “No.” Her glassy blue-grey eyes clouded over in a manner similar to her granddaughter’s. “No, she didn’t develop the gift when she hoped she would. We were both disappointed, but these things are rare. What you and I have is a gift, Briar.”

  “What if she did develop it, though?” I asked. “What then?”

  “I would need to teach her,” she said. “No seer can learn without guidance.”

  Hmm. Either Annabel had found a mentor, or she’d gone it alone. But she had so much faith in her vision that something must have convinced her that it was real.

  “Of course, if she had the gift, she’d tell me,” Ava said. “She tells me everything. Even about that elf.”

  Maybe not everything. That was a conversation those two needed to have in their own time.

  If most of what Ava said was nonsense or unreliable at best, maybe that was why Annabel had opted not to tell her. Still, most of the time, witches and wizards discovered their gifts in childhood. I was one of the few exceptions. If she hadn’t asked her grandmother for advice, who had taught her? I’d thought there weren’t any other seers in town. Unless she’d self-taught, but her level of conviction in her own vision suggested there was something more going on.

  “If you see something in a vision, does it always come true?” I asked. “I mean, how did you go about predicting the future?”

  She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I used a crystal ball,” she said. “People say it doesn’t work, but it does. When you gaze into the depths of the crystal, you see. Doesn’t mean what you see is necessarily useful. You might see that your friend is going to get a cold, or it’s going to rain at the summer picnic. Of course, it’s often already happened by the time the vision’s taken place.”

  “Oh,” I said. “If, say, you saw yourself breaking up with a partner in a vision, and it hadn’t already happened yet, would it then come true no matter what?”

  “The future isn’t set in stone,” she said. “Because people can’t be predicted. We can see natural disasters, and other such occurrences, but in terms of people’s decisions… it gets murky.”

  Huh. That actually made a kind of sense. Unless I was starting to lose my wits, too.

  “Maybe you can talk to Annabel about it?” I suggested. “She seems convinced, and I’m not a seer so I can’t offer her advice. Perhaps you could ask the nurses to get in touch with her for you?”

  “Tanith had an uncanny gift for reading people, too,” she said. “But not all. Beware the wild one… beware him.”

  “Beware who?” I looked into her glassy eyes. “Ava, who are you talking about? Do you mean the elves?”

  “Ava, why are you out of your room?” Lou, a petite Asian nurse whose uniform was covered in what looked like green slime, came into the waiting room. “Blair, what’re you doing here?”

  “I was waiting for Alissa.” Over Ava’s shoulder, I mouthed, I was trying to stop her from getting outside. Technically true, but part of me wished I could finish our conversation. Who in the world is the wild one?

  Lou sighed. “Ava, you know the rules. I’m guessing Alissa got diverted by that pesky goblin again.”

  “I won’t be taken alive!” Ava proclaimed, bouncing to her feet again and making for the doors.

  “Ah.” I moved to block her way, wondering if she’d flip out if I drew my wand.

  “A hex on you.” Ava yanked her own wand from her hair and waved it at me. Lucky for all of us that the staff had replaced her real wand with a fake one the instant she’d got it back. “A hex on you all!”

  “Ava, come with me and we’ll talk,” I said. “You don’t want to go out there. It’s going to rain.”

  Probably true, considering the upcoming broomstick contest. To my astonishment—and Lou’s, come to that—Ava followed my lead when I beckoned her down the corridor to the ward for long-term patients.

  “Lou, has she seen her granddaughter recently?” I asked.

  The nurse blinked. “Annabel calls every week. Ava talked to her for hours on the phone last weekend.”

  “Oh,” I said. “She said she hadn’t seen Annabel in a while, so I assumed that meant she hadn’t called.”

  Annabel must have avoided mentioning her breakup—not to mention her newfound talent. Weird. If anything, her grandmother might have been the one person who could offer helpful advice in that particular area. Even if her visions were inaccurate, she was bound to have a few tips for a beginner.

  “I think Ava does most of the talking,” Lou added, pushing open the ward doors to let us through.

  “Makes sense.” I walked into the ward and beckoned Ava to follow me. “Annabel’s going through a hard time at the moment. Maybe Ava can help.”

  “A hex on all of you!” Ava yelled at everyone in the ward.

  Or maybe not.

  As the next day was Saturday, there were no classes at the academy. Helen had mentioned taking some of the students to the lake to prepare for the big Sky Hopper match, though. I’d rather swim with the fishes than go anywhere near another broomstick, but it would be the only chance I’d have to question the students without
waiting until Monday.

  My mind, however, was full of Ava, Annabel and crystal balls. I considered paying Annabel another visit, but I doubted she’d seen Terence’s drowning in the crystal ball.

  Alissa went with me to the lake for moral support, so we could claim to be practising magic if Helen tried to rope me into volunteering as a referee.

  “It’s not a pleasant day for it,” Alissa commented, indicating the cloudy sky. “Oh—the High Fliers are over there, too.”

  “Of course they are.” I watched the bright colours of their cloaks swooping over the lake. “Better hope the clouds don’t stick around, because that looks downright dangerous to do in the rain.” Their broomsticks yo-yoed around as though trying to win prizes for how many times they could shake their riders without anyone falling off. The fliers must use a spell to keep their balance, because there’d be a lot more accidents otherwise.

  Helen stood on the bank among a small group of students, watching the fliers. Her hair was dishevelled and there were shadows under her eyes, but she gave me a smile.

  “Blair,” she said, back to her usual bright self in front of the students. “There are a couple of students who’d like to talk to you.”

  She indicated a tall guy who very much did not look like he wanted to talk to me. He was huge, hulking, and had ‘school bully’ written all over him.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m Blair.”

  “I know,” he said, scowling. “I saw you questioning the others. Helen thinks I was pushing people into the water. Someone couldn’t keep their mouth shut.” He shot a glare at the other students.

  “Well, were you?” He must be Claude, the boy the High Fliers had seen fooling around by the lake.

  “Yes. I didn’t kill Terrence, though. I was only messing about.”

  Truth. I looked at the rest of the group. “Did anyone see two people fall into the water?” I asked. “I heard someone tried to jump onto another person’s broom, like the High Fliers.”

  “That was Terrence,” a blond girl put in. “He thought it was funny to jump onto Sherry’s broom, and they both fell in.”

  “Oh,” I said. “How long before he drowned was this?”

  “Dunno, I wasn’t keeping time,” said the girl. “We were all drunk. He thought it would impress her.”

  “Impress… who?” I scanned the group.

  She pointed to a girl with braided hair and dark skin who I recognised as the student who’d said she was a healer. “Sherry.”

  “It was a stupid joke,” Sherry said, her voice shaky. “He was too drunk to fly and could barely swim at that point, even with his magic. But I made sure he got out and he was fine. He called me a spoilsport and took off. I didn’t think he’d run off to the falls and—and—"

  “But you think it was an accident?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” she said. “He was drunk and acting idiotic. He hardly knew his own name, let alone his magical power. The last time I saw him alive was when he ran off after we got out of the water.”

  Truth. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”

  I walked back to Helen. “Neither of them did it,” I said in an undertone. “Do you know if it’s possible for a witch or wizard to forget how to use their power? I mean, when drunk?”

  “It depends on the power,” she said, her mouth pinched. “I mean, theoretically, anyone can forget how to use their power if it isn’t an intuitive one. If he was that drunk, I’d normally be worried about him overusing his power—getting into fights, things like that. But everyone is different.”

  “Well, mine is more of a background noise,” I said. “I barely notice it most of the time, and there’s been a couple of times when it’s switched off…”

  Only twice, in fact. Once was when a vampire employee at the university had used his own power to put mine on mute.

  The other was when I’d encountered the siren’s song for the first time.

  Could a siren’s song make a person forget how to use magic? Maybe. If so, the siren might not even have had to be near to him at the time to cause him to forget how to use his water-controlling power to save his own life.

  Of all the suspects, the siren I’d spoken to was most likely to have the ability to counter Terrence’s power, but I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions without proof.

  “Any luck?” Alissa asked when I returned to her side, leaving the students to resume their game.

  “No.” I shook my head, frustrated. “The other students all said they didn’t do it and my lie-sensing power didn’t pick up on anything weird. The thing is… do you remember when that siren’s ability caused my lie-sensing power to turn off? Might it have the same effect on other magical powers?”

  Her eyes widened. “Yes. It’s possible. The sirens’ song confuses the senses. I mean, I can use my healing power when I’m drunk, but I’ve never tried to use it while listening to a siren’s song.”

  “Maybe it would dampen your powers,” I said. “It’s powerful. I don’t know, though. The sirens would need to be close by for it to work.”

  “So the elf might be innocent?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe he heard the siren’s song—"

  Shouting drew our attention to the lake. A cluster of brooms had descended in a cloud of bright cloaks to land on the shore, where a body lay face down in the shallows, a long blue cloak billowing on the surface.

  “Oh, no,” said Alissa. “One of the High Fliers fell in again.”

  She moved closer to the group, pulling out her wand. “Hey!” she said. “I’m a healer! Let me through.”

  The High Fliers moved back, depositing the limp body on the bank. Alissa wove through the crowd, but looked at me a moment later, her expression grim. She didn’t need to say it. The High Flier was dead.

  9

  Everyone stood and stared at the body as though hoping that Alissa would be able to perform a miracle, but even a magically gifted healer couldn’t bring back the dead. That long cloak had one major drawback—it was a dead weight when waterlogged and was impossible to swim in.

  Alissa lifted her head to face the others. “I’m sorry.”

  A murmur passed through the High Fliers.

  “That’s unfair,” one of them said. “You’re a healer. Why can’t you bring her back? She couldn’t have been in the water long.”

  “That’s why we warn you about practising so close to the lake,” Alissa said, a tremor in her voice. “I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing more I can do.”

  The rest of the High Fliers landed beside the bank, crowding around to look at her. Alissa and I backed away from the lake, and I spotted Helen gathering the students at a distance to stop them from getting too close.

  Alissa’s mouth pinched. “It was bound to happen eventually. There have been a few close calls this summer already.”

  “But you’re sure it was an accident?” I dropped my voice, but a couple of the High Fliers glanced in our direction.

  “Laurie was one of our best fliers,” said a young Indian woman wearing a bright red cloak and pointed hat. “She wasn’t trying anything complicated, was she?”

  “I didn’t see,” put in an older woman with a pink-and-white hat perched on top of her grey bob. “But she’s been flying since she was old enough to hold a broom.”

  Even an experienced flier could fall victim to a siren. I stood on tiptoe to see over the group but didn’t spot any sirens close by. The merpeople had spotted the ruckus and swam to the shallows. I walked past the gathering crowd until I found a clear spot to view the lake. Its surface rippled with gold, reflecting the sun—and a brighter flash of light caught my eye from the west side of the lake. Then another flash, like a lightning bolt.

  “What’s that flashing?” Alissa caught up to me, breathless. “Is that coming from the falls?”

  “Good question.” I peered to my left, but it was impossible to tell from this angle. It looked like lightning. Or magic. “I’m going to find out who it is.”

  S
omeone called Alissa’s name. As she moved over to help, I tapped on my Seven Millimetre Boots and flew uphill in search of the source of the flashing lights.

  I already suspected who might be the cause. Sure enough, Bracken stood so close to the edge of the path up alongside the lake, it was a small miracle he hadn’t fallen in himself. His hands were outstretched, and bolts of light shot into the air like miniature fireworks.

  “Hey, stop that!” I told him. “Did you just knock a witch off a broomstick?”

  He whirled on me, and a bolt of lightning shot past my head. I jumped, nearly tripping over the edge myself.

  “Watch out,” he slurred.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He hiccoughed. “Nothing, nothing. She used to like it when I summoned the lights, but now I have an audience of one.”

  “Did you see someone fall into the water just then?” I asked. “Did your lightning hit someone?” Surely someone would have seen if it had, right?

  “There’s nobody in the water,” he slurred.

  “There isn’t now,” I said. “Come on, get away from the edge before you fall in.”

  Honestly. Even if he’d knocked her from her broom by accident, an innocent woman was still dead. The police would have a hard time getting a confession out of him if he didn’t remember anything, but the situation didn’t look good.

  “Why are you here?” He meandered down the path with surprising agility from someone who could barely speak.

  “I’m here because someone just died.” I tapped on my boots again and followed him. “Are you sure you don’t remember?” Now I looked out across the lake, it seemed unlikely that he’d managed to hit her broom from this far off—but how else had she fallen in? “Can you remember any more about last weekend?”

  “I remember nothing after she left me.” He hiccoughed, swaying to the left, then the right.

  “Annabel,” I said. “Did she ever mention having the sight before? Because a few months ago, she couldn’t see the future at all.”

  He tripped downhill a few steps. “She saw herself breaking off the relationship, that’s enough for me.”