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  His lips began to tremble, and his nostrils flared. ‘You’re about as unpleasant as my stupid wife was. She never could accept that my word was truth. She kept scrabbling around in that feeble brain of hers. Trying to break free of me. Lot of good it did her in the end.’

  My eyes flitted to Gabriel junior. ‘I thought your mother killed herself.’

  He opened his mouth, but his father cut across him. ‘She did. Because she drove herself mad trying to free herself from a fate she should have embraced. And you’ll go the same way, if you don’t just give in and let us do what must be done.’

  I made to interrupt, but his father raised his voice and kept on talking. ‘What you need to realise, Wayfarer, is that we are the most powerful force in this world. We hybrids move through all walks of life, supernatural and human. We are the movers and the shakers. The power behind the throne. We decide who we want to be in charge, and we make it happen. We put Justine Plimpton in power. And we ended her life, too. Everything that happens, we decide. We are the most–’

  ‘Whoa there, Nelly,’ I said. My head was beginning to hurt again. They were trying to make me accept everything they were saying, but there was a lot more that they weren’t saying. ‘You were the one who slipped my dad that love potion back in college, weren’t you? The one who split him and my mam up.’

  Gabriel senior sawed his jaw. ‘No. I was the one who realised it was a love potion and got them back together.’

  I clutched my head. I could feel him needling in there, trying to control the direction my questions took. ‘No!’ I cried. ‘You did it. You did it because you were Dark Team even back then. You did it because Justine paid you and for no other reason. But then you changed your mind. Why?’

  He gave me a lingering look, then pulled his eyes away and shrugged. ‘You know what ... why not tell you the whole truth? I’ll have made you forget it again in a little while. Yes. I broke your mother and father apart for nothing other than money. But then I heard of a prophecy. A girl child would be born. A Wayfarer, as powerful as the original. I had reason to believe that the child might be the offspring of your mother and father. And if there was a girl that powerful, then I wanted her. I want you, Wanda. You’ll marry my son. You’ll bear his child. A child that will give my family more power than ever. So ... I gave your father back to your mother, to make sure you were born. Once you were, I left it a while and then gave him back to Justine again. Because like I keep telling you – I decide the way the world turns. I shape destinies.’ He smirked. ‘And now it’s time for you to embrace your destiny. All you have to do is relax.’

  Gabriel stepped forward again. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to wind up like my poor mother, do you? Just give in. It’ll be much easier for you. You just need to sit there quietly, free your mind, drink what we tell you to drink and listen to every word we say.’

  I looked at him, doing my best to look like a frightened wretch. Not too hard, considering I was frightened. I needed him to feel confident, to feel like he was winning. I needed him to stay the hell out of my head while I tried to pull at my power. I’d done it when Kilian Berry had me in witch irons, so surely I could do it now. As I felt the tingle begin, rising from my centre, trickling slow but steady through my body, I hid my excitement as best I could. When I felt like I had built enough up, I concentrated on the shackles that bound me and thought: Open.

  Both Gabriel senior and junior gasped, as the cuffs dropped to the floor. Without giving them the time to react, I sent them reeling against the wall. I was about to form a freezing spell, when they suddenly began to dissolve.

  No, not dissolve, actually. They were vaporizing.

  I could see the filmy fog, sometimes looking humanoid, sometimes disappearing altogether.

  ‘You can’t catch us,’ said Gabriel senior. ‘We could come at you right now. We could hit you with a death spell before you even registered it.’

  Yeah, right. They weren’t going to kill me. Not when they wanted me to play the happy little wife and mother. ‘So do it, then!’ I shouted, calling their bluff. ‘Kill me! It’d be a relief, compared to the thought of marrying into this family.’

  Laughter filled the room. The others had vaporized, too, and I could sense all of them moving invisibly towards me.

  ‘Kill you?’ Gabriel senior’s voice reached my ears. ‘Now, why would we do that before we’ve given you a chance to beg for your pet dog’s life?’

  The lighting dimmed, and the enormous screen flared to life once again. This time, I wasn’t looking at the dining room. This time, I was looking at something that scared me even more.

  My heart began to beat far too hard again. But it had nothing to do with a potion, and everything to do with fear. Max was on the screen, running through the forest in his dog form. A group of three men were chasing him, riding brooms. They had bows and arrows, and were shooting purposely wide, herding Max through the forest, laughing every time one of their shots drew near. Heber Montrose was one of them, cackling like he was having the time of his life. Alf Owens, the Godbody gamekeeper, was another. I didn’t recognise the third.

  Gabriel junior began to rematerialize in front of the screen. ‘Now, you might not be in love with Max, but you do love him. That much has become irritatingly clear over the past months. So I’ll make a deal with you. If you relax, let down your guard, and make it a little easier for us to reprogramme you completely, then we might let him survive the night.’

  I blinked. Now that I’d received the antidote, my feelings for Max were confusing, to say the least. For a few precious days everything had seemed so simple. It was as though the truth had been staring me in the face for months, and I finally knew – Max and I were perfect together.

  Now ... now I might not know whether I wanted to be with him romantically, but I knew that I loved Max. I loved him as much as anyone in my family. I needed to come up with a way to save him now, to save all of them. Because after they did this reprogramming thing, who knew what horrors I’d be forced to let them away with?

  My head was aching again, and my ears were ringing so loudly. As I winced with the pain, a muscle in Gabriel’s jaw tensed.

  ‘You need to stop this, Wanda. Sure, you’ve bumbled your way out of a few dicey situations, but that was all down to stupid dumb luck. You’re no match for us. So stop trying to shut us out. Stop trying to come up with stupid plans. Because you won’t win this.’

  Laughter echoed through the room as, one by one, the rest of them appeared. They had me encircled, and I could feel them all, each and every one of them rummaging around in my mind.

  I pushed at the walls of my brain, trying to shut them out, trying to think without them all needling in there. But they kept at it and at it. My ears hurt so much. My head felt like it was about to explode. I felt myself falling to my knees, felt my hands clutching my head, heard myself scream in agony.

  ‘Give in,’ Gabriel senior said with a smile. ‘You will take your potion like a good little girl, and you will marry my son. After that, we’ll do a bit of work on you and the rest of your coven, make sure you stay on side, make sure all of your family and friends are delighted about you joining my son in unholy matrimony. You shall bear Gabriel a child, to be named Gabriel Godbody the Twenty-Second. That child will be the most powerful hybrid ever to have walked this earth. That is all we ask of you. All you need to do is relax and let us get on with our job. And before you interrupt again, remember – this is the only way that your precious Max survives.’

  Still on my knees, unable to get up, I looked around at them all, desperately trying to think of another way. But the pain I was feeling was driving the truth of the situation home – this was the Dark Team. They murdered people and left no trace. They influenced minds without ever being suspected. I knew what they did, and now I knew how they did it. Sure, I’d managed to get free of the witch irons, but all that had achieved was putting them on their guard.

  If this was just me, just my life at stake,
I would rather die trying than spend a life shackled to Gabriel. Because if, in all the months he’d been dosing me and playing with my head, I still hadn’t quite fallen head over heels, then how was this ever going to work? They’d feed me drugs, the same drugs they had the ex-Minister feed to my father, and they’d muck about in my head, changing what I thought, what I felt, day after day. Until nothing felt real. Until I was crazy enough to throw myself off the tallest tower of the mansion, the way Gabriel’s poor mother had done.

  I eyed Gabriel senior. If that’s what she did. I had no doubt that this man killed everyone who was the slightest problem. Hell, he probably killed my father’s familiar, just for kicks. Once I had this wunderkind, what would happen to me?

  I looked back at the screen. I could see Max, panting with exhaustion while Heber Montrose and his cronies chased him for laughs. Would they really stay true to their word? If I gave in now, would they spare his life?

  ‘Maybe we’ll spare his life,’ Gabriel said, his voice cold. He moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a small vial, then carried it towards me. ‘But only if you give in. Now, tip your head back like a good girl, and drink it all down in one go.’

  I stared at the vial. I could smell it from here – that cinnamon smell, Gabriel’s smell, the smell I had been forced to fall in like with. This was it. Time to choose. Max’s life, or my happiness.

  I gritted my teeth. ‘Fine. Let’s get it over with.’

  As I tipped my head back, and Gabriel began to pour, a loud banging came to my ears. And it was followed by the sweetest sound I’d heard all night: the voice of Gretel.

  ‘Open up! This is the Wayfarers! We have a warrant to search this property!’

  24. Sometimes it’s Okay to Ride With Strangers

  I could hear them breaking down the door – no, doors! They seemed to be covering every entrance to the house, forcing their way in with magic or battering rams. I felt a rush of relief that they weren’t just standing there waiting for the door to be answered. But almost as soon as the relief came, it flittered away again.

  Who was I kidding? These vamp-witch maniacs could get out of here in an instant. Disempowering them would do no good, not when they had their vampire tricks to fall back on. I forced myself to overcome the pain in my mind, then opened my arms wide, trying to spread my spell about, hoping to catch as many of them as I could while I bellowed, ‘Conáil!’

  I should have been delighted to see four of them freeze on the spot – crazy Gabriel, his crazier father, his mental girlfriend and some other woman I didn’t know. But all I could think was that the rest of them were getting away. I sent freezing spells everywhere, but I didn’t manage to stop anyone else.

  Gretel barged in, and her eyes widened when she saw me standing in the dishevelled kitchen with four frozen criminals.

  ‘Finn and the others are in the dining room,’ I said, running to the fridge. Handily, the vials of antidote to the love potion were all lined up neatly in a box marked Antidote. As more Wayfarers rushed into the room, I passed the box to Gretel. ‘They’re under a sleeping spell, but it’s their hearts I’m most worried about. Give this to all of the women, straight away.’

  ‘Wait!’ She pulled me back as I made for the door. ‘Where are you going?’

  My throat almost closed up with the effort it took to say, ‘Max is out there. In that forest. Being hunted.’

  I couldn’t say anymore. I just began to run. I could see Gretel pass the box to another Wayfarer before she began to run after me, hot on my heels. She had far longer legs than mine, and she caught me in a few strides and led me to the carriage that had transported them there. She pulled open the door, and grabbed a couple of brooms. ‘We can do a fly over. We should find Max quicker that way.’

  Just as I nodded gratefully, the strangest thing began to happen. One of those things that shouldn’t be unexpected, but somehow is. I always knew that the carriages that Finn’s force used to get around were borrowed from the sióga – the Irish faeries. For some reason, the Queen had taken a shine to Finn, and had given him carriages pulled by Púca, so that anyone with less than stellar magic would still be able to reach a crime scene in a flash. A literal flash, because that was how the carriage generally appeared – in a blinding but beautiful flash of light.

  Anyway, worry makes me ramble. The point is ... well, the Púca are the point. Púca are shapeshifters, and the ones pulling the carriages took the form of sleek black horses. Usually. But as Gretel and I swung our legs over our brooms and prepared to search for Max, two of those Púca shifted in front of our eyes into a man and woman. They were tall, dark haired, blue eyed, and thankfully clothed.

  ‘Get on,’ said the woman. ‘We know where Max is.’

  I felt my forehead wrinkle. ‘Get on? But you’ve just shifted into ... people?’

  Yeah, I ended that one on a question because, well, they weren’t people any longer. I was about half way through my previous sentence when they were suddenly horses again, stooping down so that Gretel and I could mount their backs.

  Most young witches know better than to ride the Púca. They’re tricksters, to say the least. But Finn trusted the Queen. And right now, seeing as these two ridiculously good looking creatures were the fastest way for me to get to Max, I decided to trust them, too.

  I climbed gently on, wondering whether we were going to fly or what, when there was a sudden, blinding flash of light. I felt the air around me shift – no, I felt everything shift and lurch. It was like the world was turning inside out, upside down.

  There was a second flash of light before I found myself in the woodland, with no Púca in sight. Gretel was standing beside me, looking just as confused as I was. ‘How did we get here? Where did they go?’

  I was about to answer her confusion with my bafflement, when I heard a triumphant cry of, ‘We’ve got you now, doggie!’ high on the wind.

  Brooms came whizzing overhead, and Max ran past.

  Without thinking about it, I knew exactly what to do. ‘We have to move fast,’ I told Gretel. ‘You hit your device, and I’ll try to freeze them before they can react.’

  Without hesitation, Gretel grabbed her disempowerment device from her belt, pointed it at the broomstick riders, and slapped the button down.

  As soon as she did, Heber Montrose, the Godbody gamekeeper, and the other man I’d seen hunting with them on the screen went crashing to the ground.

  There was a quick shift in their forms, but I moved quicker. I extended a hand, said, ‘Conáil,’ and watched as they stilled. They had managed to vaporize their legs before my spell took hold, so now they hung there, motionless, like frozen genies in the air.

  I sank to my knees in relief, as Max came limping towards me. His fur was singed from spells. He’d caught his hind legs on barbed wire somewhere along the way, and there was more than one nasty gash. But he was alive. My Max was alive, and I felt more relieved than I’d ever thought possible.

  I grabbed him and pulled him tight. As soon as my arms wrapped around him, I felt my eyes begin to close.

  25. Sleeping Beauty

  It was still dark when I woke up in Night and Gale Healing Hospital. Dizzy was looking down at me from the ceiling above my head, and my mother and father were sitting next to the bed.

  ‘She’s awake!’ Dizzy cried, flying to my shoulder and kissing me all over. ‘You’re awake, Wanda.’

  I sat up a little too quickly, and the room began to spin. ‘Is everyone alright?’ I rasped as my father passed me a glass of ice chips.

  ‘Everyone’s going to be fine,’ my mother said. ‘No lasting damage to anyone. The sleeping spell was easily broken. The antidote to the potion worked like a charm, too. And all of those weredogs and werewolves the Godbodys were keeping up there ... well, they’re being rehabilitated. Some of them were there for decades, so recovery could take some time.’

  I blinked, taking it all in. I’d been so disturbed by those invisible animals every time I visited Godbody House. A
ll that time, they were being kept captive. Just like I might have been, if things had gone differently. Gabriel senior hadn’t just been creepy. He’d been a truly evil man. A man capable of incredible cruelty. A man who was even capable of killing a familiar. At the thought of my dad’s dead cocker spaniel, another dog’s face rushed into my mind. ‘Bowie! Is he ...?’

  A tear slid down my mother’s cheek. ‘He passed away a few hours after we were rescued from Godbody House – which I suppose means that whichever one of the Dark Team who killed Nancy is in Witchfield.’

  ‘Heber,’ I said, my voice still scratchy. ‘It was Heber Montrose who killed her.’ I hesitated, scared to ask the next question. ‘How many ... how many of them did we catch, in the end?’

  ‘Only the ones you froze. So seven.’ My father’s jaw clenched. ‘But it’s only a matter of time before we find the others.’

  I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. These people had been around for years – centuries, possibly. ‘I should get up,’ I said, beginning to push off my covers. ‘I want to bury Bowie.’

  My father shook his head, smoothing my covers back down. ‘We waited as long as we could, but we ... well ... we gave him a good burial. And before he passed, he told us to thank you. He also said something that I didn’t quite understand.’ My father glanced at my mother.

  She leant forward. ‘Bowie said ... he said to tell you that no matter how things seem right now, Will cares for you as much as he always did. He said ... he said that we mustn’t tell anyone but you. We promised him but ...’ My mother frowned. ‘What’s all this about Will caring for you?’

  I pulled at the neck of my hospital gown. ‘Sod it if I know,’ I said. ‘But ... he does seem to have my back when I need it most. Well, except for tonight. Wait ...’ My brain began to kick into gear. ‘What do you mean you waited as long as you could to bury Bowie? How long have I been asleep?’

  My mother and father looked at each other, and then my dad said, ‘It’s em ... it’s been quite a while. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.’