Skinned (11 page)

Callum scribbled an answer below Melissa's message.

Stress! Still no visions. Heard Tom & Ben laughing about seeing ghosts just now too. Feel like something's coming, but don't know what to do about it
.

Melissa answered back almost immediately.

It's good they didn't really believe it. Did Jacob have any ideas?

Callum glanced over at what she'd written and shook his head.

Melissa shrugged as she carried on writing.

We still have time though, C. You've got the hang of healing and shield, right?

Callum read quickly and then scribbled back:

Kind of. Just hate all this waiting around
.

Callum didn't use written communication much – he had no computer at home and no mobile phone,
and no one to send letters to anyway. It surprised him how much writing his worries down helped.

If only there was some way to draw Annis out . . .

Are we too old to act as bait for her?!!
Melissa wrote.

Callum raised his eyebrows and shook his head disapprovingly, flipping the sheet over to continue on the back. He'd completely lost focus on anything to do with school, English, or Shakespeare . . .

Don't even joke
.
You saw what she did to that girl. Seriously, this is not good. Need a breakthrough, and soon
.

He slid the page back across to Melissa's desk, and she nodded at him with a more sombre look on her face. She bent over the paper to write.

I know. Well, it's Sat tomorrow. Am due round at yours again for magic lesson, and we can do a good sesh on chime child books too
.

Callum read Melissa's note, then glanced over at her and shrugged. It was all they could do really. Melissa beckoned, as if she wanted the page back so she could add something to it, and Callum picked it up to hand it to her.

‘CALLUM SCOTT!'

A copy of
Much Ado About Nothing
came slamming down on Callum's desk, pinning down the sheet of paper. Callum jumped and looked up to see his English teacher standing in front of him, seething.

Mrs Higgins wasn't one of Callum's favourite teachers. She was a tall, thin woman, and a real stickler for rules.

‘Taking notes on the
play
, are you, Callum?' Mrs Higgins asked with icy sarcasm.

Callum stared up at the teacher mutely, too startled to lie.

‘They're
my
notes, Mrs Higgins,' Melissa injected quickly.

Mrs Higgins glanced at her. Melissa might be the class oddball at times, but she was one of the top English students in their year, and rarely gave the teachers any grief.

‘Is that so?' Mrs Higgins said suspiciously.

‘Yes. Callum asked to see them. We're only reading through the play at the moment, right? It's not a test or anything. I thought it would be OK to show him. I mean, there isn't much there, I guess maybe
it's not worth his while going over it yet –'

‘I'll take that,' Mrs Higgins demanded, glaring at Callum and ignoring Melissa's reasoning. Callum felt panic rising in his stomach. He and Mrs Higgins both reached for the sheet of paper. Callum would have crunched it into a ball and hurled it out the window, if necessary, to avoid his teacher – or anyone else – reading it. They'd been so careless, what were they thinking?

But, to Callum's surprise, Melissa smoothly pulled the page from his desk a second before either Callum's or the teacher's fingers touched it. With the wrong end of her pencil she made a rapid, sweeping gesture over the page, as though she were pretending to rub something out.

Then with quiet confidence, as Mrs Higgins stretched her hand toward her, Melissa handed the teacher the sheet of paper without protest. Callum clenched his teeth and his fists. He sat and waited, looking down at his desk and feeling his cheeks burning furiously as Mrs Higgins scanned the page.

After a moment, Callum heard the sheet of paper
being flipped over as the teacher glanced at the other side. Then she tossed the piece of paper down on Callum's desk and walked back to the front of the class.

‘Go on, Mark. Sorry about the interruption. From: “
Everyone can master grief but he that has it
.”'

Callum looked at his desk and gasped. He couldn't believe it. Apart from those five original lines Melissa had written about the opening of the play, the page was entirely blank.

Flames flicker at the feet of the human magic-users who assemble once more in their meeting place. It has been ten days since they gathered last. The coven members regard one another solemnly, until finally their leader speaks.

‘So far, our preparations have gone to plan,' Varick begins, his voice echoing around the cold, empty space. ‘Soon our ceremony can take place, and the unknown measures of power that await us all shall finally be revealed. When the Demon Lord treads upon mortal soil, there will be no end to the time of the Shadowing.'

‘Soon may he come,' the other coven members chant eagerly. Varick holds up his hands.

‘But first, brothers and sisters,' he says, ‘there is one final element that we require. The most important of all.'

The others nod, but then the grey-haired woman speaks up.

‘Brother Varick, would it not be possible to seize the crone direct from inside her lair? We know the entryway. Surely we could take her by surprise?'

‘Maeve, someone of your years of experience should know that things are never as simple as they seem,' the red-headed woman, Aradia, interjects, her beautiful emerald eyes glinting in the candlelight.

Maeve frowns at the younger woman but says nothing. She knows that speaking out against Varick's chosen deputy could mean dismissal from the coven, and she does not wish to risk such a thing when their goal is so close at hand.

‘Aradia is right,' Varick says. ‘We must not underestimate Black Annis' power and cunning. She crossed over, just as we had hoped, at the start of the
Shadowing, but she has lain low now for quite some time – something has thrown her into a state of caution. Her lair will almost certainly be difficult to penetrate. No, what we need is subtlety. We must lure the hag with . . .
bait
.' Varick turns to Aradia.

‘I trust you are up to the task?'

‘Of course,' Aradia purrs.

*

The boy in the supermarket is around six years old. His chestnut hair forms thick curls, offsetting large, round blue eyes from which fat tears are spilling. His father is doing his best to ignore the child's loud cries.

‘No means
no
, Leonard!' the man says to his son at last, but the boy is relentless, picking up a large, silver-wrapped chocolate bar once more.

‘I want it!' he shouts, but his father calmly removes the bar from the boy's hands and replaces it on the shelf.

‘What did I
just
say? Stop it, now.' The man turns and begins to browse the shelves further down the aisle, leaving his son to run out of tears. He does not
see the tall, beautiful woman with the long red hair watching them from a distance in the store. She makes no pretence of shopping for groceries. She observes the boy carefully, her arms folded.

She has chosen him.

The boy's sobs continue unabated, but his round eyes soon fall on the red-headed woman. She smiles slowly and presses one long, perfectly manicured finger to her lips.

‘Shhh,' she says. The boy instantly quietens, though tears still drip down his face. ‘That's it,' she says in a low voice. She knows the child can hear her, although she is at least fifteen metres away from him. She pauses for a moment as the boy's father speaks again – but he does not look round.

‘
Finally
– thank you! This doesn't mean I'm not going to tell your mum about how badly you've been behaving . . .'

The red-headed woman removes her finger from her lips and holds her hand out in front of her. With a flick of her wrist, something begins to move off the shelf and float towards the boy. Something shiny and silver.

The child gasps with excitement and reaches out to grab the chocolate bar as it moves through the air away from him. He takes a few steps towards the floating chocolate and then stops. He knows it is wrong. He turns to look at his father, and then back at the treat suspended in the air. He opens his mouth to speak, but the moment he does so, the woman frowns and balls her outstretched hand into a fist.

The boy's own hand flies up to his face and clamps over his mouth, stopping his words.

‘I said,
shhh
,' the woman hisses.

The child's eyes widen with panic, but he makes no noise. His feet take him slowly, silently, steadily towards the woman – it is as if he is unable to stop himself taking the steps.

It is only when the boy has disappeared from view that his father looks around and sees that his son is gone.

‘Leonard?' the man calls. His throat is tight. ‘LEONARD?'

It is no use.

Aradia has him now.

It was a novelty to actually be going to
rugby
practice, rather than trying to practise his chime child abilities with Jacob. Callum walked out of the changing rooms into the crisp air. The sun had barely made an appearance all day. Still, he felt he could use the exercise and the fresh air – it might inspire him, doing something he actually knew he was good at. And it might fend off the growing worry that if they didn't get some clues soon, something terrible could take them all by surprise.

‘Come on, Scott,' one of his team-mates called. ‘First time you've been to practice in days and
you're already running late.'

But Callum saw the familiar figure of Melissa striding towards them as he headed to the pitch.

‘I'll be there in a minute,' he said. He jogged over to where Melissa was standing, her cheeks rosy from the wind whipping across the open field.

‘What's up?' Callum asked.

‘I've been thinking about this whole Black Annis situation,' Melissa said in a low voice, her eyes shining. ‘I have an idea.'

Callum raised an eyebrow suspiciously. Something told him that whatever Melissa's idea was, it was going to involve something unorthodox at best, and downright dangerous at worst.

Still, he'd take anything if it meant they'd get things moving.

‘Go on then,' he said, folding his arms.

‘Not here,' Melissa replied, looking over Callum's shoulder at a couple of the boys who were watching them talk. ‘But basically, I think we've been too passive, just waiting for answers. What we need to do is seek them out.' She smiled mysteriously.

Callum frowned.

‘Hmm, OK. I'll look forward to hearing this grand scheme later then.'

‘Yeah, I'll see you at the cottage,' Melissa said. Then she turned and with a tense wave, hurried back across the field.

As Callum jogged back over to the other boys they laughed and made kissing noises. Callum shook his head and smiled. They were totally off the mark, but Callum decided it was better that they had the wrong end of the stick than knew what he and Melissa were really talking about. He just hoped that Melissa's idea would be the thing to get their search started again. Before it was too late.

*

It is the turning point of the night. The dark, quiet moment when one day becomes the next while mortals sleep. Black Annis crouches alone in her lair. The ancient earth around her, which was once a welcoming home, now seems like a taunting prison. Black Annis is weak with hunger, and
very close to breaking her cover and striding out into the world once more to claim another child.

She is almost salivating at the thought. Her talons flex and stretch anxiously. But, suddenly, something draws her out of her reverie. Her gnarled nose twitches. There is a smell wafting down the tunnel and into her lair. It is faint, but Black Annis' sharp senses still pick it up. Could she be deceived, or is that . . .?

She stands up, her skirt of dried skins rustling around her bony legs. She doesn't quite dare to hope, but the smell grows stronger now, closer. Black Annis scrambles up the tunnel towards the entrance to her lair. She sniffs the air fervently, her teeth clattering together involuntarily at the thought of a meal straying so near, at so opportune a moment.

She hesitates only for a second before emerging from the ground and out into the open. The air outside is filled with the smell of the child, but she cannot see it at first. Then Black Annis' eyes alight on a boy. He is a prime specimen, plump, his blue eyes wide. Black Annis' own eyes narrow – what luck would gift her such a prize? She looks left and right, but can see nothing. Suspicion
takes hold at the edge of her mind, but Black Annis' desire is powerful to resist. She springs towards the boy, and with one deft movement she pierces his heart. Her teeth sink deep into the child's neck and blood oozes instantly from the wound. His body falls limp; death is immediate.

Euphoria floods through the demon as she clutches the corpse. She sucks at it with fevered hunger. Delicious.

Somewhere in the haze of her desperate feeding, Black Annis realises that she must take the boy down to her lair. The circumstances of the boy straying so close are making her uneasy. However, as she moves to return to the entrance of her lair in the ground, she butts against what feels like an invisible wall. She moves back, and again bumps into some unseen barrier. She is unable to move more than a step in each direction. She lets go of the boy and his body slumps to the ground. Her pale eyes narrow, baffled. What magic is this? Panic rises in the demon's bony chest.

Black Annis whirls around as she hears a voice behind her.

‘Do not resist, Black Annis,'
a man says calmly
. ‘You
should conserve your energy.'
The hag sees four other humans step out of the shadows to stand beside him. She can feel that it is their united power that maintains the invisible cage
.