A Long Day in Lychford (Lychford #3)(11)



She went to the full-length mirror in the corner and saw what it was. All around her were wrapped . . . they looked like fibres made of light, hundreds of them, in different colours. They led off from her in many directions, taut, attached to unseen anchors, fading where whatever Judith had thrown on her ended its influence. She was so wrapped up in them it was surprising she could move. She put a hand to them, and it went right through. She could move because they were still intangible to touch, as they had previously been to sight. Even to her own magically enhanced sight.

Judith marched up to her again, grabbed her by the shoulders, and wrenched her round to face her. “Last night you marched right through every line of force attached to the town’s borders. You did what fairies do, walk to what’s inside places, only you had no idea what you were doing. The gestures and words we use when we do magic are sometimes about limiting what our emotions want to do. The worst of us realise that emotions can connect straight to magic and let that go to their heads, don’t try to regulate it, and that’s what you did last night. You smashed through everything in your way, and now you’ve got the boundaries wrapped round you like a . . . bull in a knitting shop. The boundaries. They’re . . . what was I saying? No, shut up, this is important.” Autumn watched, bemused, as Judith stepped away and took a moment to lean on something.

“Judith, are you all right?” Lizzie asked.

Judith just shook her head. This silence, this effect on the old woman, was scaring Autumn more than the yelling had. But before she could start to argue, Judith had turned again and raised a finger to resume berating her. “Do you see? When you heaved off out of his kitchen, Old Rory was caught in the backlash and sent flying like he was on a catapult, off into who knows where. That’s probably what’s happened to the lorry driver that’s gone missing. It might be what’s happened to however many bloody people were at that dance or whatever it is that we’re still hearing. And it’s why the prince had so much trouble coming to see the reverend this morning. That’s why I say what you did was worse than murder. You might or might not have hurt Rory. But you’ve hurt all the rest of us. Maybe everyone in the world. You’ve done what nobody’s ever done, messed up the borders around Lychford. Now every dark thing that’s out there, soon as they realise, they’ll be heading here to mess with us. Some of the great nations too. There’ll be summat happening among the fairies. And I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it. All because you’d had a few!”

Autumn looked to Lizzie. She didn’t look away, but was there something on her face of what Shaun had had in his expression earlier? “Well . . . what are we waiting for?” she shouted, her guilt bursting out of her as anger. “If it’s so bloody urgent, shouldn’t we be out there finding those people?” And not in here accusing me of something I’m utterly guilty of.

“Don’t you take that tone with me. Don’t you take any tone now.” Judith was still blazingly angry. “I’m only waiting for—” There came a buzzing sound from the pocket of her dress. She put her hand in and pulled out a kitchen timer. “—right. My defences are ready. Come on.”

And with that Judith headed for the door, and Autumn was horrified to see that she was actually running.





2


Lizzie would normally, for the sake of her exercise tracker, have been grateful for the opportunity of an impromptu jog, but when it was across the town, following a pensioner who was now displaying an astonishing turn of speed, with the future of everything at stake, well, that wasn’t really one of the workout settings. Judith was sprinting, and sustaining it. There were cheers and laughs as they dashed past the locals. That could not, Lizzie was sure, be done without supernatural help. It must have taken some restraint, in her younger years, for Judith not to have tried out for the Olympics.

But restraint was what Judith was all about, wasn’t it? And the lack of it was the great sin she was judging Autumn for. But was there something else, alongside that? Lizzie had a good ear for the interactions between people experiencing trauma, and beneath Judith’s fury at Autumn, there seemed to be some unspoken anger, something personal. How gently, she wondered, had Autumn been dealing with her employee’s grief? Or had she heard only stubbornness and replied in kind? And what about in the other direction? Autumn had been down and put upon for months, and Lizzie really hadn’t been paying enough attention to that.

This was what their lives were now, that Lizzie not being there for her friends often enough might have led to the end of the world.

Surprisingly, since she had mentioned her defences being cooked, Judith led them not to her house, but up the hill to the Tatchell farm, baked mud flying from her sensible shoes. The sun was now beaming down on the three figures as they rushed up the spine of the bare hillside, along the track beside Tatchell’s field of ripening wheat.

Judith staggered to a stop, stretched out her arms, and spun slowly, as if seeking something. Autumn just about fell beside her, until Lizzie grabbed her and managed to get her to her feet. But then Autumn started to throw up. Only another intervention by Lizzie stopped it from going over Judith’s ankles.

“Over here,” said Judith, not bothering to notice. She pointed and marched off across the corn, not caring about damaging the crop.

“Are you okay?” Lizzie asked Autumn, helping her to follow. At least the visible threads that had been wrapped around her had faded in the last few minutes. That dust, presumably, was wearing off.

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