Witch's Bell Book One (43 page)

So she left them there, her beautiful
lavender heels, just sitting on the roof of the Turkish Takeaway.
Maybe one day she'd be able to go back and get them. Or, more
likely, Mohammad would go outside to find it raining
shoes.

Ebony continued along barefoot, her
toes and heels practically digging into the metal like hands into
dirt. She tried to grip the old metal as best she could, while
trying to keep low and crouched. So far it seemed to be working,
but it was also giving her a perfect little backache.

By the time Ebony had made it
to the far side of Mohammad's roof, she'd started to get the hang
of her awkward roof-gait. She even managed to leap the small
distance between his roof and the next with relative ease, even
though she did give out a little grunt worthy of a gymnast
– a very quiet
gymnast who was doing her very best to hide from the judges with
guns and wands.

With tremendous care, patience,
and the agility that no amount of magical punishment could take
away
– Ebony
actually made it. Though the last leg of her journey was dire
indeed – with the risk that any sound she made would carry easily
down to the police below – she finally, painfully, and carefully
made it onto the roof of her own shop.

She could feel it move ever so subtly
underneath her feet too. Harry gave a sigh that brought a rising,
but pleasant, heat to the roofing tin.

“
I'm glad to be back too,” she
mouthed. Not wanting to even let a whisper escape her
lips.

But now she was on his roof, Harry was
going to protect her. She found herself walking with relative
comfort and ease until she made it onto the nook of flat concrete,
and finally to the door.

The door swung open without her having
to say a word. And finally, finally, Ebony Bell walked back into
Harry's Second-Hand Bookstore.

But she wasn't going to be able to
mooch around with her music on full-bore, eating candy and dancing
like a loon. No. There was a gaggle of cops and wizards trying to
break-in, and she doubted they were after something cheap to
read.

Ebony steeled herself with a breath,
and tried to think of what to do next.

Chapter 19

Ebony needed a plan, and she
needed one right now. About twenty cops and wizards were about to
burst through her door, if they could get past Harry, and
then
... and
likely do something.

That was the thing; she had no idea
what they wanted. She could guess though, considering the general
lamentable theme of her day, that they didn't want to invite her
out to tea. Likely the Grimshores had ramped up their curse, and
were getting ready to punish Ebony further.

All she hoped, all she could possibly
wish for right now, was that Harry's magic would hold. She wasn't
kidding when she said that he'd been a powerful wizard, and that he
still retained the majority of that power. In his day, Harry
Horseshoe had been a force to reckon with. And he still was; he
just had more heavy books and sharp bits of wood to do the
reckoning with.

It was a very good sign that they
hadn't broken in yet, it meant that Harry could handle them. But
get a gaggle of wizards on her doorstep, all casting fire-spells at
the shop, and even Harry might start to sweat.

“
Harry,” Ebony said in a full
voice, knowing that Harry wouldn't let the sounds carry outside to
alert the police that she was actually in here, “what are we meant
to do now?”

“
Blast the trumps off the
blasted pavement,” Harry boomed in his crackly voice.

Ebony, once again, blinked, shocked by
his sudden use of his voice. He hardly ever talked to her. Really,
in the several years that she'd owned this store, Harry had only
mumbled at her a hand-full of times, and only ever when there was
some pressing maintenance issue.

But now his voice was as loud,
present, and dusty as the rest of the store.
“Ebony, there's powerful magic
in the air – clinging to you like a cloud.”

Ebony nodded, taking an
automatic, deep breath. Really, it seemed the only two bodily
movements she was capable of at the moment were deep breaths and
blinks. Her body was obviously reverting to its primal state. Her
hind brain taking over the majority of her processing power, just
to keep her upright.
“I know, Harry, I know,” she brushed at her arms
compulsively.

“
Then lets blast it away,” he
said, voice as gruff and grating as wood splintering from a shotgun
round.

Even though Ebony had hardly
heard him speak, she knew from experience that Harry liked the
term
“blast”
almost as much as comic books liked the word “blam.” During his
adventures as a wizard in the ‘20s, Harry Horseshoe had come up
against some seriously powerful and hideous creatures. And all in
the name of writing a good book, or retrieving an important tome –
he'd “blast the trotters away,” as he'd put it.

“
How?” Ebony sighed, always
keeping an ear out for the front door below. She really hoped they
at least had some time to plan. She didn't fancy everyone bursting
in during her think-tank session. She'd be able to throw a couple
of books and cushions at them from over the staircase railing, but
that would be the limit of her strategy and defenses. “Do we even
have any time?”

“
Ha!” he roared, every
light-fitting shaking as if a bolt of thunder had just landed
nearby. “They're going to have to try a lot harder to get in here.
These new young wizards aren't like us oldies, Ebony, they're soft
and silly.”

Ebony, beside herself, giggled.
If the bikies outside were soft, then Ebony couldn't really imagine
what was hard.
“So, you can hold-out?”

“
Hold-out?” he rumbled back. “I
can stand against a whole fleet of them, a whole army. Don't you
worry, Ebony. I've made friends with most of the buildings along
this street—”

Ebony's expression deepened for
a second.
“You have? But they don't have spirits inside. And how did
you even make it out of the building?”

“
Don't interrupt, girl, I'm
sharing important information for our plan. If I want to, I can
pull this whole street up from under their plastic little boots.
I'd like to see them cast fireballs at me while they're tumbling
around in the sewers.”

Ebony, still brimming with nervous
energy, walked over to the little kettle she had by the wall, and
flicked it on.

She could really do with a cup of
tea.

“
Are you making yourself a cup
of tea, girl? At a time like this?”

She just shrugged. It really
didn't seem like there was anything else she could do. Harry was
the one who was going to make a stand. And, well, lord she was
thirsty and tired and scared and
– she just wanted tea.

“
Excellent idea. Put some gin in
it. And tip one through the floorboards for me – always good to
have a bit of Dutch courage on board your boards before a bit of a
barney.”

Ebony smiled, still nervous,
but unbelievably happy to just stand here and listen to Harry's
blustering. He was on her side; he was really on her side. And
while she couldn't say that their relationship was always smooth,
she knew that he was there for her. They'd get in fights, he'd hurl
books her way
– but none of that really mattered, because deep down he
cared for her. It wasn't the kind of relationship Ebony was used to
– with adoration and pleasantries – but considering all her other
friends now thought she was the most terrible criminal in the whole
world it was the only relationship that mattered any
more.

Witch, or former witch, and her
magical bookstore.

“
You go ahead and put mostly gin
in mine,” Harry added, “with only a dash of tea. I'm going to need
it to think.”

As Ebony pottered around, grabbing
mugs and tea bags from under the bench, she kept taking stuttering
breaths. She couldn't help it. Her breath just spluttered along
like a car about to die. Or rather, an old little wagon protesting
at the sight of a hill. Could she make it, or end up getting
half-way there, only to roll back down to crash fantastically and
die in burning flames?

“
Alright, you can stop sounding
like that, girl,” Harry gave her a little bump from the
floorboards. “It's courage time.”

“
Courage?” she grabbed at
Harry's tea and poured it down one of the prodigious cracks in the
floor. A strange gulping sound met her ears, and not a drip of
liquid remained on the floorboards once she was done. “What does it
matter? I mean, I don't have any magic, Harry, nothing. What am I
meant to do? I was planning on coming back here, finding a book
about the Grimshores,” she shuddered as she said the word, looking
over her shoulder automatically in case they rappelled through the
windows and shot her point blank. “And maybe using it to vindicate
myself. But we're past that! So very past that,” she said
dejectedly as she took a draft of hot tea. “It was horrible,
Harry,” she added after a dreary moment, finally realizing that
Harry probably had no idea what she was talking about. He could
sense the magic in the air, and realize the police were rudely
trying to break-in, but he wouldn't know the extent of this
horrible situation.

“
Ah yes. No need to explain,
girl, I know what's going on. I'm connected to you, Ebony Bell, you
are my charge. I am also a powerful wizard,” the blinds gave a
shake, and a wizard outside gave a little yelp, no doubt as a shard
of wood exploded from Harry's door like a woody exclamation point.
“I have been in Vale for so many years. I have been with you for
many years too. I know a powerful spell when I smell one, and
there's one lingering above you like a cloud of flies. There's a
curse drawing you into it, and it's getting my goat.”

“
But what is it, Harry, and why
are they doing this?” she took a deep breath and groaned right
through it. “Who are the Grimshores, and what do they want with
me?”

“
Start from the beginning, girl.
What do we know about them? Where did you first meet, when did this
whole business begin? If we start this story at the beginning,
Ebony, then we're far more likely to make sense of our present.
And,” he let out a rollicking laugh, “we'll have a sporting chance
of blasting their ending out of the water and replacing it with our
own!”

Ebony smiled, though it was
hardly exuberant. She was thankful that Harry was here to protect
her and raise her spirits. Though even he couldn't stop her from
dwelling on the world-of-horrible that was now descending on her
life.
“The
beginning .... Okay, I guess it started in the crypt. A man had
kidnapped a woman and was calling Death—”

“
Kidnapped, Ebony, are you
sure?” Harry cleared his throat, wherever that might be. “Or is
this your interpretation of events? I'm not asking you to
paraphrase here, I'm asking you to tell me exactly what happened,
and when.”

Ebony scratched at the back of
her neck.
“Okay. Exactly what happened? I walked into that crypt, and
managed to break through the little protection it had far too
easily. I became worried that other creatures were pressing in on
the place, waiting to gobble up the magic and the man inside. So I
convinced myself that I couldn't do any magic – not with what was
lurking all around us. To do so would only increase the
risk.”

“
Entirely possible, Ebony,”
Harry agreed. “Entirely possible,” he repeated ominously. “People
these days do not appreciate the true risk of magic. They
appreciate only power, the fools. You did the right thing, child.
You wouldn't have caught me performing magic in that environment.
It would be like covering yourself in chicken's blood and jumping
into a tank full of hungry sharks.”

Ebony's smile grew a fraction
wider. Finally someone who not only believed in Ebony's version of
events, but agreed with what she'd done. If only Ebony had bothered
to confide in Harry earlier, maybe she wouldn't have had such a
rough time these past several weeks.
“The man had a book in his hands,” she
continued, “and Harry, the darn thing had a picture of a family
crest on the front,” she took a sharp breath. “I realize now that
it was the Grimshore family crest.”

“
Ah,” Harry said, voice
trilling. “Interesting.”

“
I saw a picture of the crest in
the magical files at the station. But I didn't recognize it at
first, I couldn't recognize it,” she scratched at her
arms.

“
This is important, very
important. “But go on, Ebony, get to the end, so we can hurry up
and rewrite it.”

“
The man was close to
consummating the spell, he only needed the flesh from the corpse,”
she shuddered.

“
Indeed, the flesh would have
given the spell power. It would have sapped the Truth and Meaning
from the corpse's life, and transferred them to the spell.
Powerful, dark stuff.”

“
Well he couldn't get to the
corpse with me in the room, so he went for blood instead. He moved
towards the woman,” Ebony's voice trailed off as she tried to
remember the precise series of events. Had the man actually ever
threatened the woman? Or was Ebony only adding those details in
now?