A Long Day in Lychford (Lychford #3)(18)

Something was standing right beside her.

She leapt up, spun round. But there was nothing there. It had been just in the corner of her eye. But she was sure something had been there.

“Did you see anything?” she asked Marcin. It was obvious he hadn’t.

She shook her head, checked the binding, and carefully helped him to his feet. The splint held.

“Good,” he said. “Who are you? What do you, about—?” He indicated what was around them.

Autumn decided she had to tell him something. “Good witch,” she said, pointing at herself. Not that she believed that in any sense of the words.

To his credit, Marcin only boggled for a moment. He put a finger to his nose and wiggled it. “Dee dee, dee dee . . .”

Autumn was glad she’d seen clips from Bewitched online. She joined in with humming the theme tune for a moment. “Yeah, and her spells kept going wrong too, with hilarious results.”

“Witch with doctor, leg?”

She felt awkward. Not so much. “I try to do science too.”

“Get us home, okay?”

“Okay—” And there was the thing in the corner of her eye again. This time she managed to stop herself from jumping, and tried to look sidelong at it. This was something that could keep itself just about hidden, even from her extra senses. It was just a white blur, a furtive figure, the same shape as a human being, but . . . no, she couldn’t see any features.

She leapt back, sure that in that second it had moved to touch her. It had been the jerk of a predator striking. She felt like it had only just missed.

She grabbed the startled Marcin and heaved him up. “Come on!” she bellowed.

She was sure he could just about hobble along. But where could they run to?

*

Stewie had sighingly headed with Lizzie and the bearded lad to the makeshift car park. It should, it seemed, have been at the end of the lane that ran up the other side of the hill. But as they’d made their way through the trees, Stewie had got increasingly confused, had even stopped to look at the map app on his phone. Whatever he found had just made him swear. “How can we be lost? It was just over here.”

Finally, having walked in a straight line, they’d returned to the barn.

“No,” he’d said, turning slowly round. “No. Who put something in my water? You think that’s funny?” He’d swung to point at Lizzie, his hand going to his back pocket, where he may or may not have had a knife. “Who are you?”

Lizzie had seen two large individuals in high vis jackets coming over to see what was agitating their boss, and had decided to put her cards on the table. “I’m your only chance of getting home.”

It had taken some doing, but in the end, once the big lads had also gone to find the cars and returned from the wrong direction, startled looks on their faces, Lizzie had got Stewie to listen. He’d gone to the tent, got the DJ to switch everything off, and had shepherded the crowd, who were now sure the police were arriving, into an audience around them.

Lizzie had told them the truth, or as much as they needed to know, and had found them, perhaps unsurprisingly, pretty easy to convince of just about anything. Not that what she was telling them hadn’t created its share of sobbing, shouting, and hysterical laughter. At least while she’d been talking she’d come up with the start of a plan to get them out of here.

She pointed back to the tent. “We need to get that PA started up again.”

They showed her how they did that, and she got up behind the DJ’s mixing decks, on stacks of crates at one end of the barn. Thank goodness nobody was taking a photo of her. She would look like the worst possible trendy vicar. The DJ, who looked like she was about twelve, couldn’t stop staring. “Could you turn up the volume to full?” Lizzie asked. She bent to the microphone. “Testing,” she said. “This is Lizzie, calling Finn. Come in, Finn. Or anyone in the Court of the Unseen. Come in.”

“It’s not a radio,” said the DJ, obviously wondering if the newbie knew anything at all about the world.

“But,” said Lizzie, “I know the people I’m talking to can hear it.”

*

Judith, getting tired of being dragged along like she was in a half-arsed mime troupe, had finally shouted to Rory Holt to stop. She’d been about to tell him that she was here to rescue him, but then, over his shoulder, Judith had seen something appear out of the nothingness. She’d grabbed Rory, put a hand over his mouth, and, while he was wetly yelling into her palm, spun him round to see.

A group of the flying beings had gathered. More of them this time. Too many to count easily as they shifted and melted into each other. Between them was . . . this was their version of a device, she realised. It was a solid golden sphere that shot between them.

Rory stiffened in horror. “They’ve brought their cooking pot. That’s meant for us.”

Judith didn’t believe for a second that that was what was going on here. “What do you see of what they’re doing?”

“It’s some kind of native religion. We’re in Ooga Booga Land here.”

Judith wondered what sort of books Rory had read when he was growing up. If they could see these beings now, it was because they wanted to be seen, though Rory was now miming parting foliage with his hands, as if he was spying on them at the edge of a clearing. “I think,” she said, “these might be what some call sprites. There are loads of different ones. They’re summat to do with elements, not like iron and whatnot, more like principles. This lot are fire sprites. Back when we lived in caves, they’re meant to have come over and started campfires. To be on speaking terms with one was summat people boasted about, or more often kept to themselves. Then we get electricity and—”