A Witch In Winter (24 page)

A couple of hours later I was woken from deep sleep, by the same doctor shaking my shoulder gently.

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‘Anna, Anna,’ she was saying insistently. I opened my eyes painfully and blinked, and she whispered, ‘I’m so sorry to wake you up, but your friend is awake and asking for you. Also your dad’s on his way. We finally managed to get hold of his phone.’

I struggled up and out of bed, ignoring the swooning dizziness in my head, and pulled the cannula painfully out of the back of my hand. The drip bag was empty anyway.

The doctor persuaded me into a wheelchair again and we set off, infuriatingly slowly, with pauses at every security door for her to fumble for her key fob, and a maddening wait at the lift.

Corridors, more security, then at last Seth’s ward, Seth’s cubicle, with the curtains open, and Seth sitting up in bed, wild-eyed and furious.

‘I don’t care.’ I heard forcefully down the corridor. ‘I’m going to see her. I’ll sign whatever you want, just get this bloody thing out of my arm.’

‘Seth!’ I called. I shoved the brake on the wheelchair and levered myself out, hobbling down the corridor as fast as my weak legs could go.

The doctor’s protests came as if from a long way off, her words a senseless jumble. All I could hear was Seth’s cry of ‘Anna!’ as he struggled off the sheets and limped out of bed, into my arms.

‘Oh Seth, oh Seth!’

A tangle of bruised limbs and IV tubing, and our rushing, sobbing words tumbling over each other:

‘They told me—’ ‘I thought—’ ‘I knew that you’d never—’ ‘You saved my life—’ ‘I’ll never leave you again …’

Sometime later, as we sat, curled together on Seth’s bed: ‘Nice dress, Anna.’

‘What do you mean?’ I looked down at the hospital gown and then behind at my naked back.

‘Shut up!’

Later still:

‘Anna …’

‘Mmm?’

‘How did you do it? My van – it must have been in fifty feet of water. The doctors all assumed you must’ve been in the truck when it fell, but I know what really happened. I didn’t say anything but …’

I sighed. There didn’t seem much point in pretending any more – not now.

‘You know, Seth. You know what I am.’

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‘What? A witch?’ He spoke the words with shocking loudness and I winced. ‘Sorry.’ He lowered his voice. ‘But are you really?’

‘You saw what I did.’

‘I half thought … The apple tree – I mean, I began to think I must have dreamed it, or had some kind of posttraumatic stress episode.’

‘Well, you didn’t dream it,’ I said shortly. ‘I am a …’ It was extraordinarily hard to say the word, and suddenly I understood Maya and Emmaline’s reluctance to use it. I took a deep breath. ‘I
am
a witch. That’s why I’m not a safe person for you to know.’

‘And that’s why you ran off, right before the accident?’

I nodded. My heart hurt.

‘Seth, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?’

‘Forgive you?’ He shook his head, and for a minute I went cold all over; so this was it … But then he carried on, his voice slow, full of incredulity. ‘
Forgive
you? Shouldn’t you be asking how I can ever repay you? Anna, you saved me. You gave your
life
for me.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said shortly, trying to hide the tears rising inside me. He shook his head violently.

‘I saw what happened on the beach. You were dead. Your heart had stopped – your lungs were completely saturated. You don’t come back from that.’

‘But I came back,’ I said.

‘But you came back,’ he said softly. I nodded, and a tear escaped, running hot down my cheek.

‘Seth, I don’t know what to do. There are people out there – people who want to hurt everyone I care about. They’re trying to persuade me to do something – and unless I do it, everyone I love is in danger. It’s better if you just forget me, don’t see me. I can’t bear for them to hurt you because of me.’

‘If I disappear, will you forget me?’ he asked quietly.

‘No!’ My shocked response burst from me before I had time to think what it meant. Suddenly I saw. How could I have been so stupid?

‘Then what’s the point?’ Seth spelled it out. ‘It doesn’t matter where I am – whether we’re together or apart. As long as you care about me, I’ll be a target. Can you make your feelings disappear too?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I wish I could.’

‘If you’d go out with me I’d have a witch for a girlfriend,’ he said, his voice teasing. ‘What could be safer than thasaf

I looked up to see him smiling at me.

‘Seth, please, I’m serious. These are scary, scary people. I don’t know how to protect you.’

‘We’ll think of a way. It’ll all be fine, as long as we’re together.’

In that short moment everything changed, shifted, reassembled in a new pattern. It was true. Seth wasn’t better off without me. Keeping away would do nothing to save him from the Ealdwitan – he was in danger wherever he was; in fact I could protect him much better by his side. The realization brought me elation – and despair. I had the perfect excuse to be with him at last – but it might cost him his life.

I don’t know what I would have said next, because there was a rustle at the edge of the cubicle and a disembodied voice said: ‘Knock, knock – I’ve got Mum and Dad here.’

We sprang apart and our parents came through the curtains, their faces wearing twin masks of anxiety – changing to a sort of cross jubilation as they saw us both alive and well.

‘Oh, Seth!’ Elaine grabbed Seth and hugged him furiously. ‘Never, never do that to me again. When I got that call …’

‘Anna, thank God you’re OK – thank God you’re
both
OK.’ Dad crushed me to his chest. ‘What on earth happened? The hospital made it sound like a near-death experience. You had a
car
accident, is that right?’

‘It was my fault,’ Seth said, at the exact same time as I said, ‘It wasn’t his fault.’ We shot each other a look, and I suddenly wished we’d had time to get our stories straight. The only thing we’d agreed on, and that fairly hurriedly, was not to tell my dad, if at all possible, the true severity of what had happened to me. I didn’t think the phrase ‘pronounced dead on arrival’ would be exactly music to his ears, and I hoped the hospital wouldn’t be in a hurry to bring it up either.

‘Please, ladies first,’ Seth said at last, and waved his hand.

‘Well,’ I started, ‘we, er, we were driving to school, and Seth needed to stop the truck for a sec, so he parked on the edge of the road, where it comes quite close to the cliff, and the brakes failed. Seth kept his head and tried everything – the handbrake as well as the foot brake, and then he tried to get it into gear, but the truck had too much momentum.’

‘How could the brakes fail? You only had it serviced last month!’ Elaine exclaimed. Seth shrugged.

‘I know, but it’s old, isn’t it? Anyway there wasn’t time to get out. It fell off the cliff, into the sea.’

Both Elaine and my dad flinched visibly at this so I hurried in.

‘But we 00"and wwere fine – both fine. We just swallowed a lot of water and got rather cold.’

‘Anna was amazing,’ Seth said proudly. ‘I hit my head on the steering wheel so I was pretty useless, but she got me out and dragged us both on to the rocks.’

‘And then a passer-by found us and called the ambulance,’ I finished brightly, trying to make it sound like your average stroll in the country.

Dad blenched and I wondered if I was going to be allowed near the sea or a moving vehicle ever again. Thank goodness he hadn’t heard the full unexpurgated version.

‘Well,’ Elaine said, almost as shaken, ‘all I can say is, it’s a miracle you’re both alive.’

‘Yes,’ said Seth solemnly. ‘Quite magical in fact.’ I resisted the urge to kick him, hard.

‘And of course the police want to talk to you both,’ she added.

That wiped the smile off Seth’s face. For myself, I couldn’t have cared less about a police interview. Our story would probably sound fairly convincing – well, on one level it was the truth. Any evidence to the contrary lay fifty feet down in stormy salt water, being quickly battered into so much scrap metal. No, I was worried about a quite different interview, the one with Mr Brereton when I got back to school.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
he police turned out to be politely sceptical that both brakes on the truck could fail at the same time, and it definitely didn’t help that Seth was already known to them. They never came right out and said it, but I knew what they thought – that either Seth had been driving too fast and had taken the bend recklessly, or that we’d had an argument and he’d deliberately driven off in some bizarre double suicide/murder pact.

Their disbelief made me furious – but all I could do was keep stubbornly repeating the story we’d given to our parents and hope that Seth – being interviewed in a separate cell – was doing the same. After all, the evidence was on our side. The tyre marks on the cliff-top showed that the truck had been doing five miles per hour, not fifty, when it went over.

At last, plainly dissatisfied but unable to shake my story, they let me go. I waited outside for Seth, who emerged pale and cross. He made a face as he saw me.

‘That was vile, were you OK?’

‘Fine – were they horrible to you? They kept trying to make me say that you were driving too fast.’

‘It was fairly unpleasant. They found skid marks on the road.’

‘Skid marks? But you were stationary.’

‘Where you grabbed the handbrake.’

‘Oh crap.’ More guilt. ‘What did they say?’

‘That they could tell there’d been a skid earlier up the road, as if we’d jackknifed across the road – and what was that all about?’

‘Oh.’ Some of their questions suddenly made sense. ‘That was why they kept going on about whether you’d been driving erratically, and had there been any skids prior to the “incident”. What did you say? Did you tell them it was me?’

‘No! Of course not. I said that the brakes had suddenly come on all by themselves. I thought that’d add to the story of the brakes being dodgy. And I said that was why we’d decided to stop the truck, because I was worried about the brakes.’

‘Ooh, clever! I wish we’d thought of that for our parents.’

‘I was worried though, saying it, in case it contradicted what you told them. Does it?’

I tried to think back.

‘N-no … I don’t think so. I just said that you stopped the truck, and they asked me why, so I said I couldn’t remember. I thought that a bit of confusion might be understandable, considering what happened after.’

‘Thank goodness, well done.’ He squeezed my hand. ‘Well it looks like we’re in the clear …’

‘Ugh, I’m so sorry, Seth. I never thought they’d blame you.’

He shrugged and kissed the back of my hand, on the mark where my veins were still bruised from the IV.

‘Well, you can’t blame them. It wouldn’t be the first time some teenager with a big car got carried away. And my history doesn’t help. I think they were pretty pissed off they didn’t manage to convict me over the fight, so this probably seemed like a second chance to lock up a menace to society.’

I shuddered.

‘I would never, never let that happen.’

‘I can take care of myself,’ he said softly. But I knew that wasn’t true.

‘Only Mr Brereton now,’ I said, half under my breath.

‘What?’ Seth looked amused. ‘Are you worrying about our History project?’

If only.

‘Look, there’s something you need to know about Mr Brereton …’ I began.

‘Oh. My. God.’ The girl came up to us as we were walking to History. ‘I heard the news. That is just
so
amazing. Like something off
Casualty
. Did you see a tunnel and a white light and all that? Everyone thinks you two are
so
cool, it’s unreal.’

I was thoroughly fed up of gawping students who wanted to congratulate Seth and me on our near-death experience and tell us how amaaaaazing we were. This one I didn’t even know.

‘You ought to get some kind of medal or something,’ she continued. ‘It’s just, like, so cool!’

Seth’s temper snapped.

‘Yes, really bloody cool. Anna almost died in my truck. We were hospitalized. So please, just shut the hell up and leave us alone.’

‘Sorry, sorry!’ The girl backed off, her eyes wide, and I heard her start telling her friends about how the whole business seemed to have pushed Seth Waters, like, off the
edge
or something.

‘I can’t bear this.’ Seth slumped at his desk, his head in his hands. I knew he didn’t only mean the girl. It was the whole thing. The suspense. The goldfish bowl feeling. The wait.

I was a wreck myself. As Mr Brereton entered and began the lesson, Seth noticed my hand trembling and took it gently in his. It was only his calm grip that stopped me from turning tail and running.