Destiny of the Witch (The Other Witch #4)

40. Chapter 40

Chapter 40

‘Mum!’ I ran to her. She was having a lucid day, thank the Goddess. She gathered me into her arms and squeezed me. I hissed a little as all my cuts and scrapes made themselves known. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘It calls to me,’ she said faintly. ‘The harkan.’ She looked at me with haunted eyes. ‘I had segregated my mind as much as possible to stop me falling under its thrall, but obviously it didn’t work quite as I intended.’

Lucille was draped around her neck, deathly still. ‘Lucille?’ I asked fearfully. Maybe my potion hadn’t worked after all.

‘She’s helping me,’ Mum admitted. ‘Without her, I wouldn’t be here. Your potion worked. It rejuvenated her completely, and now she’s giving me her all so we can finish this as we should have done years ago.’

‘This isn’t your fight,’ I argued. ‘Go home. Take Lucille. You’ll both be safe.’

‘No, we won’t.’

I didn’t argue with her because that was when I remembered something important. I turned to Bastion. ‘My father said Apollinaire was one of his and that’s how he knew our location.’

Bastion frowned before shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I know Apo. There is no way he would betray me.’

‘Maybe he didn’t see it as betraying you. ’ I pressed my lips together. ‘I know this is hard, but—’

‘No,’ Bastion said, and sent me absolute certainty through our bond. His ability to read people was second to none.

I bit my lip, ‘If it wasn’t Apollinaire who betrayed us, then who did? Someone told my father Mum’s location.’

Bastion shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. We could have just missed a tail one time.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t.’

‘Then what do we do? If we have a mole…’ I trailed off and looked around us. I trusted them all. Charlize and Haiku were standing by Melrose, Meredith and Ria. Benji and Shirdal were talking to Apollinaire and Oscar. Fr ogmatch was sitting on Benji’s shoulder. Ethan and Jacob were standing by Kass.

Kass caught sight of me and swung her blue backpack around to the front of her body as she came over. She rifled in her bag and pulled out potions and paintbrushes. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, even as she started to paint healing runes on me.

I smiled. ‘I’m good. I’m tired and my body aches. I guess I feel a bit like you on a bad day.’ Now wasn’t really the time – but we were about to wade into some sort of battle, so maybe it was. ‘Listen, I’ve been working on a potion to help with your fibromyalgia but I haven’t had time to finish it yet. I’m sorry.’

Kass startled me by pulling me into a hug. ‘Where you find the time and energy to help so many, I’ll never know. Thank you – thank you for thinking about me. It means the world that you’d even acknowledge what I’m dealing with, let alone try and help me manage it.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Luckily, today is a good day and I am ready to kick some evil-witch ass. You got any lying around?’

I grimaced and told her that Beatrice Wraithborne was Madame X .

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Kass muttered. ‘She was standoffish, but I thought she was one of the good ones.’ She closed her eyes in despair. ‘They’re fucking everywhere.’

‘They’re not,’ I reassured her. ‘There’s about fifteen in all of the UK Covens.’

‘Fifteen is fifteen too many.’

‘I hear you, but that’s one bad witch in every two Covens. It’s manageable.’

Shirdal swore. ‘Car approaching!’

We all fell silent and looked in the direction he was watching intently. It took a few minutes for the vehicle to arrive. Behind the wheel was a wild-looking Willow. I had never seen the Coven councillor ever look less than serene, even when she’d hosted the Goddess herself in her body. Behind Willow were the witches I recognised as the Maiden and the Mother.

The Goddess had sent backup.