Mathilda, SuperWitch (Mathilda's Book of Shadows #1)(43)

Aidan didn’t let me finish. “Yes, she does have him, she’s also being watched and I’ve been watching her watcher. So get in the car Matty.”

Yay!

I wanted to kiss him but instead I got in the car.

“What will Dr. Bennett think of this?” I asked, trying to sound casual but instead sounding terrified.

“I’ll worry about that later,” Aidan replied, sounding damnably cool and collected.

I needed to be cool and collected.

I needed to get my shit together.

I didn’t pay attention to where we were going. I was opening up the channels of my mind, reaching out to my sisters, calling out to the black dragon at the same time I was gathering my power, every bit of it that I could muster.

In other words, I was breathing deeply and trying to stay calm.

He took me somewhere in the town next over, a once-wealthy seaside resort that had fallen on hard times now that it was cheaper for English folk to find other, warmer beaches on the Continent (where they could bake themselves into unholy, wrinkled messes). Now, for some reason, the town was full of drug rehabilitation centers which meant it was also full of the drug users who’d dropped out of them and the not-so-lawful flotsam and jetsam that came naturally after that.

I was chanting and rhyming when Aidan pulled up to a hump-topped, dilapidated building with a peeling sign that said, ‘Community Centre’.

I looked at Aidan to ask where the f**k we were but he put a finger up and then pointed to something outside the car.

Across a desolate, muddy field that perhaps was supposed to be a place where kids played but looked like something from a documentary movie about Sarajevo one day post siege, there was a Volvo. Aidan handed me a nifty pair of binoculars which I put to my eyes and trained on the car.

In the car was Ichabod, better known as Jeremy.

Agatha Darling’s Watcher.

Of course.

Shit.

“We’re on the roughest council estate in the region,” Aidan informed me.

“Is Darling here?” I asked.

“I’m guessing there.” He pointed at the Community Centre.

“Why here?” I asked, staring at the building and then looking around.

There were shops across from the Volvo. Not someplace you’d hang out for a latte but somewhere you could buy some fish and chips, place a bet, get a stamp or buy a bottle of booze.

There were houses and blocks of flats also surrounding the field, most of which had debris of some sort resting around it, from old bicycles and dirty mattresses to enormous amounts of cigarette ends and flapping, discarded grocery bags.

Kids were loitering outside the shops, old folks and incredibly young mothers with strollers were hanging at the bus stop.

There were people everywhere.

This wasn’t a place to take a kidnapped child.

“On this estate, you don’t ask questions and you don’t answer them. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” Aidan asked.

I just stared at him.

“No one sees anything here. They don’t hear anything… are you understanding me, Matty?”

Shit.

“I’m going in,” I announced.

“Alone? No you’re not.”

I pulled my Glamour Girl pink mobile out of my back pocket and tossed it in his lap. “Call my sisters and get their asses here.” Why hadn’t I thought of that earlier? “If she’s got Rory in there, I’m going in. Now.”

I think he said my name but I didn’t pay attention.

I heard him get out of the car and slam the other door, exposing himself to Jeremy.

I couldn’t worry about Aidan; I just walked to the front doors of the Centre and went in.

The whole time I was walking, I told myself, “I am Glamour Girl. I have mint green toenails and no one will f**k with a woman with mint green toenails. Especially when she’s The Chosen One. And if they try, I’ll kick their ass.”

At least it sounded good in my head.

The inside of the place couldn’t have been more different from the outside. A small entry opened to a huge room that had a stage at the far end and a kitchenette to the side. There was local art on the walls, posters promoting events and classes, kids drawings from a competition, photos of the queen and her court from a fair.

There was some kind of club going on, kids dancing in rows to KC and the Sunshine Band while a gravel-voiced, punk-haired woman shouted encouragement to them.

No Rory.

A soft-spoken woman came up to me just as Aidan caught up with me.

“Al’right?” she asked.

This is what people say in England. “Al’right?” means anything from, “Hi, how’s it going?” to “Can I help you?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, still scanning for Rory. “I think I’ve got the wrong place. I’m looking for a woman with –”

“Some men and a boy?” she asked, her eyes flicking from me to Aidan to the kids in the hall.

Ask no questions, get no lies, my foot.

The woman was petite and pretty. She had great style (fab boots) but you could tell that even though she didn’t (couldn’t) spend a fortune on her clothes, she was damn well going to make the effort anyway.

I could appreciate that.

She also looked like nothing got by her and if it tried, she’d wrestle it to the f**king ground and then, if she cared enough, she’d spit on it.