Mathilda, SuperWitch (Mathilda's Book of Shadows #1)(21)

“Come on!” he shouted and reached a hand out to me.

Uh-oh.

I had a decision to make.

Baddie behind me was recovering and cutting off escape route to The Gables.

Aidan was in front of me and seemed to have both trees and faeries on his side (or at least not against him).

Hmm.

I had two choices.

Take on bad guy again (and I had kicked bad guy in the crotch so would be slightly more angry at me now which I guessed would put him off-the-charts-angry).

Or go toward Aidan.

Oh, wait. Pandora calling me.

* * * * *

Later:

Sometimes customers are so annoying, wanting coffee and muffins when I’m writing in my journal.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh… yeah.

I ran toward Aidan.

We took off, the baddies after us, the faeries after them.

Aidan stopped at a car (not any car, a metallic blue BMW Z4 Roadster, oh me, oh my).

He beeped the locks, the lights flashed and as I stood there (half indecisive, half admiring the car) he shouted, “For God’s sake, Matty, get in.”

I turned and looked back. One of the baddies was closing in on us, faeries rocketing around him like very pretty firework-esque gnats.

I got in the car.

At this point, you would expect me to demand an explanation of midnight rendez vous and plumbers owning £35,000 cars.

But no. Instead I kept quiet because Aidan drove like a bat out of hell.

I mean, it was Indy 500 time.

I thought it best to let him concentrate.

When we got on the motorway, he said, “Who were those guys?”

I said, “I don’t know, I thought you knew.”

He said, “Hell, I don’t know.”

Mm.

New subject.

“Why did you want to meet at midnight?”

Silence.

I tried another.

“How did you know about my tree?” I asked.

Silence.

Then he sighed.

“Long story,” he murmured.

“How about sharing just a little bit,” I suggested.

“I can’t,” he replied.

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye (which I wished he wouldn’t do, he should keep his eyes on the road, especially when whizzing up the M5 at over 110 mph).

“Damn, let’s get somewhere safe and then we’ll talk,” he muttered.

That sounded like a plan.

* * * * *

We drove and then drove back and then drove on again. Aidan said he wanted to lose them just in case they were following (?!).

We stopped at one of the few all night gas stations that existed in all of England (my guesstimate, there were three, if you didn’t count Services, which I wasn’t because we weren’t at one of those, “Too exposed,” Aidan murmured) and he filled up and went inside to pay. He got in the car and handed me a bag of Jelly Babies and a Diet Coke (bless him). I tore into the Jelly Babies and instantly commenced my search for the orange and green ones (because they were the best) and ignored the dark purple ones (because they were blackcurrant and blackcurrant-flavored candy was the work of Satan).

He watched me bite the heads off Jelly Babies for a minute and then asked, “Did you use magic back there?”

My head shot up and I stared at him. He didn’t see? Pixie dust and faeries frozen in mid-air?

“Uh,” I answered.

“It didn’t work, did it?”

“Er,” I answered.

“Just as I thought,” he said then he said quietly to himself, “Damn.”

He drove on. We stopped at a telephone booth and he told me to call Mavis and let her know I was safe. It was nearly three in the morning but she answered the phone, “Hello, darling,” sounding wide awake and cheerful then went on to ask, “Having fun?”

Ack!

“Fun? No, I’m with Aidan, we’re… somewhere… I don’t know where.”

“Tell her you’ll call her when you’re safe,” Aidan suggested, all snuggled up in the red phone box with me smelling all manly-musky and making certain parts of me quiver.

I took a deep breath, ignored the quivering and did as I was instructed.

“I’ll call you when I’m somewhere safe.”

“Okay, my dear… oh wait here’s –”

The phone clamored and then Ash, sounding wide awake but not-so-cheerful, “Where are you?”

“Ash, I think there are a couple of bad guys in the wood –”

“Not anymore,” he interrupted in a tone that made my quiver turn to a shiver. “Where are you?”

“Hang up.” (Aidan)

“Um.” (Me)

“Who’s that? Where the f**k are you?” (Ash – deep voice very scary now)

“Er.” (Me)

“Hang up now, we’ve got to go!” (Aidan)

“Dammit!” (Ash)

Then Aidan hung up for me and tugged me out of the booth.

“They’re here.” He pointed at lights, far off, coming down the road at us.

We got in the car and off we went, Aidan doing his bat-out-of-hell-in-a-BMW routine and me being quiet.

We drove forever and ever, stopping for Aidan to make a phone call. I played sentry with my hand on my wand inside my cloak, practicing spells under my breath. He seemed very animated and yelled, well, not exactly, too posh for yelling but he said things loudly like: