Destiny of the Witch (The Other Witch #4)

2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Nell had recovered her aplomb. ‘It is incredibly rude to kick in a door. I know you won’t understand that because clearly you have no manners. Quite honestly, as the Crone, you are setting incredibly low standards, and yet—’ she said primly ‘—somehow you’re still failing to achieve them.’

That zing made me smile a little. ‘Whereas you have delusions of adequacy,’ I shot back.

She snorted. ‘Bastion follows you everywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity.’

I grinned at Bastion. ‘Is that it?’

‘No,’ he responded smoothly. ‘It’s the hypnotic swish of your skirts.’

I laughed aloud.

Benji frowned at Nell. ‘You are being very rude to the Crone.’

‘It’s okay, Benji,’ Bastion said. ‘They are rude to each other because they like each other.’

Benji looked at us both aghast. ‘What?’

‘Nell and Amber are both uncomfortable showing affection,’ Bastion explained. ‘So they do it by exchanging thinly veiled insults that they both enjoy.’

Benji sighed. ‘I fear I will never understand the human condition.’

‘That’s okay,’ Bastion reassured him. ‘Neither do they.’

Nell sniggered. I gave her a finger wave and a smile as we ducked out of the building to where Oscar was waiting.

We slid into the car. ‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

‘We have a winner!’ I said triumphantly.

‘It took a while.’

‘Liyana was playing silly buggers.’

‘I hope you put her in her place.’

‘Bastion kicked the door down.’ Benji was almost bouncing on his seat. ‘It was brilliant. I can’t wait to kick a door down.’

‘You’ve pulled a ceiling down,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s even better.’

‘It wasn’t as dramatic, though. They do lots of door kicking in the movies. One day I’d like to do it, too.’

‘You can do it next time,’ Bastion promised with an indulgent smile.

Benji beamed. ‘Thanks!’

Benji had control of the radio so we listened to some classic rock on the way to Mum’s current house. He nodded his head in time to the music; he was turning into a proper headbanger.

When we arrived, Charlize smiled as she opened the door. ‘Hello, lady and gentlemen, come on in. Luna is painting in the conservatory.’

We trooped in. As she’d said, Mum was at her easel. She looked frailer today, and my heart gave a painful twist. It had been too long since I’d last visited. Oscar was right: hard as it was when she didn’t know me, I should still have come. Even so, it cut deeply as her gaze passed over us without a hint of recognition, not for me, not for Oscar, not for Bastion.

My stomach lurched. She was getting worse, so much worse. Why had her condition deteriorated so sharply?

I pulled out the vial but hesitated. Quite rightly, she wouldn’t take medication from a stranger. Charlize saw the thoughts dance across my face and grimaced in sympathy. ‘Pass it to me,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll give it to her.’

I handed her the vial. ‘Luna,’ she said as she approached my mum. ‘I have a new medicine for you.’ She unstoppered the vial and passed it over.

Without comment, Mum drank the contents down in one. I hated that some petty part of me was jealous of Charlize; it didn’t matter who Mum trusted to deliver her medicine as long as she trusted someone . All that mattered was that she didn’t feel alone and scared. I wouldn’t ever wish her to feel that, even if it felt a little like Charlize had replaced me.

I had suffered solitude for so much of my life, but what Mum was going through was so much worse. Losing your faculties must be so hard to bear. If she was comfortable with Charlize, that was a good thing.

I smiled hopefully and braced myself for some visible effect, some sign that the potion had worked. A minute passed. Two. Nothing.

Gutting disappointment wrenched through me and the smile slid off my face. The potion had done what it was supposed to do – healed temporal displacement. Liyana had confirmed that it would. Yet it had no effect on Mum at all .

Confused, I looked at Oscar and saw the resignation in his eyes. ‘Dad?’ I said softly. He turned to me. ‘It hasn’t worked, has it?’ My voice caught.

He shook his head. ‘No, kid, it hasn’t. I’m sorry.’

I knew he was doubly sorry: sorry it hadn’t worked, and sorry that he couldn’t tell me why it hadn’t.

I just wanted my mum back. I closed my eyes and tried to shove the heartbreak down. It wasn’t just about me , I told myself firmly. Without Mum’s help, I couldn’t get into the encrypted CD any time soon. Without the CD, I couldn’t learn what Mum had known about my father and how she had kept him from coming after us for all this time. I couldn’t hunt down the leader of the evil witches. To do that, I needed the code to the damned CD, and the code was locked in her brain.

I consoled myself with the knowledge that Bastion had a hacker friend who would no doubt be back from his mysterious business soon, then we’d get into the CD one way or another. If I was honest with myself, what I’d wanted more than anything was to bring my mother back to me, to see her look at me and see me. Her blank eyes crushed me .

Hot tears rose but I blinked them away. I searched her frail face for something – anything. Just one hint, one micromovement to show that she was still in there.

But there was nothing. I looked into Mum’s unseeing eyes and despaired.