Elodie beckons Fletcher and Ellis to her side, and using a quick spell makes them invisible. “Follow me.”
They move towards the building. It’s the coven headquarters, and they know this, as well as they know their own names.
Elodie holds a hand up as they stand beside the door. They need to wait for somebody to open it. They are invisible but about to go into a lair full of witches; they cannot risk being exposed or raising suspicions.
It doesn’t take long and two young witches come out. Fletcher, being the tallest, grabs hold of the door near the top and they all quickly duck inside.
They have walked into a huge hallway, full of witches milling around. There are many places to sit and congregate and multiple doors and hallways going off in different directions.
“I’ll go this way, you two stick together. We need to find Sadie. Let me know if you find her. Fletcher, you know what she looks like. Ellis-”
“I do too. Must be a head witch thing?”
“Great. Be careful.” Elodie slinks off, weaving between the witches with ease. Ellis watches her go – the three of them can see each other – and then turns to Fletcher. He takes her hand and leads the way.
He heads for the corridors first, it’s quicker than waiting for doors to open. The first one they take leads downwards at quite a steep slope and ends up in the basement. These are obviously the stores: food, drink, crockery, and the laundry. There are several witches talking and laughing, busy with their jobs.
They back away and head down another corridor. They end up in the kitchen. There are seven witches cooking up a storm here, and although whatever they are cooking smells divine, Fletcher leads them away.
Back to the main hall, they try another way. They find a library, a few rooms that seem like official spaces – full of old wooden tables covered in reams of papers and the first bedroom, but no sign of Sadie.
“She could be anywhere,” Fletcher says, and they walk on.
A small cluster of witches is taking up the whole corridor, so they pause; listening might be useful. “I don’t think she’ll do it,” one of them says.
“Sadie has faith in her,” another argues.
“Sadie has faith in anybody who gives her power.”
They all laugh, and then move off in a group, still gossiping and laughing.
Fletcher and Ellis follow slowly behind.
They reach a fork in the corridor and follow a set of stone stairs upwards.
There’s a locked door at the top. Fletcher magics it open.
It’s a woman’s bedroom, but they have no way of knowing if it’s Sadie’s or not, but they know it’s empty.
Sadie made the original magic when she was head witch. The four supernatural species were battling through a great war – the witches the vampires, the shifters and the fairies – with hundreds of thousands dead on each side, and no sign of an end, when a witch, Ellery, came up with a plan to trick the heads of the three creatures and end the war, with the witches being the victors, and ultimately gaining power and authority over the others. Sadie wanted the power for nefarious purposes, which Ellery wasn’t aware of when she came up with the trick, so even though Sadie died, and the power went to Ellery, Ellery vowed never to use it against the other creatures.
But the power was still the witches and something, somewhere, tied up in the original magic, meant that if they tried to undo it, everybody would die. This is what they want to undo.
This is what Adam was trying to do.
Somewhere in the original magic they’ll pinpoint it and undo it. Change the past and fix the future.
“Come on, let’s find the crazy witch lady.”
Fletcher nods, but then pulls her into a hug. “We’re in the past. How weird is that?”
She laughs, then covers her mouth, unsure about how much noise she’s allowed to make. “Very weird.”
He leans in and kisses her. “We just kissed in the past. Maybe a few hundred years before we’re even born.”
“That’s even weirder.”
A noise outside the door makes them pull apart and freeze for a second. Nobody comes in so they wait for a minute or two and then head back out into the corridor.
“This could take all day,” Ellis says.
“True. Or longer – hang on, that’s my mum calling out to me: she’s found Sadie. We need to go back to the main hall we came into and she’ll meet us there.”
They leave the room as they found it, and head back, with a few wrong turns, to the main hall. Elodie is waving at them, and they weave through the witches to reach her.
“There.”
She points to a throng of witches gathered across the room, and one witch that’s the centre of attention. They all recognise her. The witch who started these troubles.
Ellis leans closer to Fletcher. “The war that’s going on here, what was that about?”
“Same old, same old. Power, I think. All the creatures were separate, four distinct groups, but the vampires tried to take power for themselves, or was it the shifters?” He looks to his mum who rolls her eyes. “To be honest, there are so many versions of this war, so many historical records that contradict each other. The only facts we know are that regardless of who started the war, it was a witch who used magic to trick the other heads to ending the war and giving the power to the head witch – who at the time was Sadie. Ellery, naïve or stupid, we’ll never know for sure, assumed that would be that.”
“But it wasn’t.”
Elodie puts a finger to her lips and nods to the group.
A single witch has threaded through the witches to join them and Sadie has thrown her arms around her.
“That’s Ellery,” Ellis says.
They move a little closer, carefully, trying to hear what’s being said, trying to figure out
