35. Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Five
‘ Y ou haven’t got a tattoo.’ Nate’s voice brought her back to the present with a jolt. The more she’d spoken, the further she drifted away from herself. Was this what it was like when Amber astral projected for the first time? If so, she could keep that talent to herself. Disorientated, it was a relief to be still cocooned in his arms. He hadn’t let her go. The pillow beneath her was wet from tears she had no recollection of crying. She sniffed.
‘No, but I do have a scar. Every time I saw it, I remembered him, that day, so I had it removed.’ She shuffled away from him and turned to show him the silvery mark on her back. He trailed his fingers over it, circling the blemished skin as if he could erase it and her painful past with his touch alone.
‘The bastard,’ he muttered, his hatred for Rafe brewing under his breath. ‘How did you escape? The vineyard sounds isolated.’
‘It was.’ Willow returned into his arms. He needed to know the rest of the story and the present. Taking a deep breath, she plunged back to the past. ‘Again, it was the maid.’
***
Disorientated, exhausted, and inexplicably cold despite the blazing sun burning her skin, she froze with the sound of an engine creeping closer. Despite her heart holding on to a slim foolish hope this was all a bad dream and Rafe would arrive on his bike to confirm it, the bruises blooming under her skin and sharp pain in her foot with every step proved otherwise. She needed to hide. But it wasn’t the sound of the roar of a motorbike or one of the sleek cars seen in the Amenábars’ extensive garage but the rumble and clatter of a small compact tractor.
‘Senorita Willow?’ A man with a weather-beaten face gazed down at her. Deep lines forged in his brow as he scanned her injuries, and a flurry of what she suspected were expletives caught under his breath. She stepped forward to accept his proffered hand but paused, clocking his dark green uniform emblazoned with the Amenábar Vineyard logo. Was he a friend or a foe? He registered her dilemma.
‘Maria sent me. The maid at the house. Please. Get in. Quick.’ His panicked expression as he looked around spurred her on to make a decision. She levered herself into the cabin next to him. ‘And put those on.’
Willow ripped open the cellophane wrappers of a spare uniform matching his own and wrangled herself into it, shuddering at the thought of wearing something that branded her as part of the Amenábar workforce, but a bikini-clad woman on a tractor would be conspicuous even from afar. She stuffed her now-dry halo of curls under the baseball cap, hoping the drive through the fields would deliver her to safety and it wasn’t part of a twisted game where a predator played with its prey before delivering its death pounce. Again, she cursed her magical restrictions and lack of foresight to check the weekend with her tarot cards or ball. Both now stuck in Rafe’s room with her—
‘My passport.’
‘In there.’ Nico, according to his name tag, pointed to a black rucksack by her feet. Opening it, she saw a small collection of her clothes, including the sandals she’d mislaid days before, and new toothbrush and toiletries. Her journal.
‘You’re not the only witch in the house. Maria has dreamt of this day for weeks and set a rescue plan into action.’
***
‘And it worked like clockwork,’ Willow said back in York. With her back against Nate’s chest, he kept her in the twilight of truth, one foot in the present and the other teetering on the edge of the past. Rather than consume her like before, the images of the rescue played out like a movie on a screen. She could no longer smell the earthly smell of the vineyard or chlorine clinging to her hair. A smell that still turned her stomach decades later.
‘On an isolated road on the edge of the estate stood an old beaten-up Renault Clio with its engine idling. Maria’s cousin Raquel took me to her apartment in Zugarramurdi, which I now know is the town of the witches. She removed fragments of glass from my cuts, bathed them and applied balm to my bruises, all the while berating me for getting involved with one of the Amenábar clan. According to her, their ancestors were instrumental in some persecutions of supposed witches in the seventeenth century. Only happy when they were burned at the stake. They never left that mindset behind, and their paranoia about witches cursing them in revenge grew with Francesca once her husband died. I had a lucky escape.
‘When Maria arrived later to update us of the reaction to my escape it was clear if Rafe ever saw me again he’d fulfil his promise of my destruction, encouraged by his loyalty to his grandmother.’
Later when Raquel cut off her curls and dyed her hair conker brown, Willow Taylor was no more. ‘On the day I witnessed the persecution of our kind first-hand, I learnt about the power of many and a coven network in action. They gave me a new SIM for my phone, clothes, and helped me get a passport reissued under my father’s surname instead of my mum’s maiden name which she gave me, something I never shared with Rafe. My subconscious kept elements of my history safe for the future, I guess. I was shunted from one coven to the next across France and then Germany where I flew east.’