I put the photo down and walk quickly through the kitchen.
As soon as I’m outside I feel the relief of fresh air. I take a step, two at most, before I hear the hiss of mobile phones rushing at me. Two black figures appear and their hands are on my arms and shoulders, turning me and slamming me into the house wall. I struggle and am pulled away from the wall and slammed into it again. My wrists are cuffed behind my back and I am pulled away from the wall and slammed into it again.
I’m back in the Assessment room. My restraints had been removed after the journey down, which was in the back of a car with a Hunter either side of me. I gathered from their conversation that Gran was in another car that was following behind.
I think about Arran’s Giving ceremony. Gran will not be there and I realize Jessica came back not to attend the ceremony but to conduct it. The Council will have given her the blood. Arran will hate it. And that’s all part of it too. They love to twist the knife.
I stand before the three Council members. The Council Leader speaks first. ‘You have been brought here today to answer some serious questions.’
I make an effort to look wide-eyed and innocent.
The woman to the right of the Council Leader gets up from her chair and slowly walks round the table to stand in front of me. She’s shorter than I expected. She’s not in the white robe that Council members normally wear for my Assessments; she’s wearing a grey pinstriped suit with a white blouse underneath. Her high heels click sharply on the stone floor.
‘Pull up your sleeve.’
I’m wearing a shirt over a T-shirt and the cuffs are undone as the buttons have been lost long ago. I raise the arm of my left sleeve.
‘And the other one,’ the woman says. Now that she is close to me I can see that her eyes are dark brown, as dark as her skin, but they contain silver shards that spiral slowly, almost fading and then reappearing brightly.
‘Let me see your arm,’ she insists.
I do as she says. The inside of my arm is marked by a series of faint thin scars, twenty-eight of them, one for each day that I had tested my healing ability.
The woman takes my wrist between her forefinger and thumb, gripping hard and raising my arm so that it’s directly in front of her eyes. She holds it there and I can feel her breath on my skin, then she lets me go and walks back to her seat. She says, ‘Show your arm to the other Council members.’
I step forward and hold my arm out over the table.
Annalise’s uncle, Soul O’Brien, hardly gives it a glance. His hair is slicked back in a yellow-white sheen. He bends to the Council Leader’s ear and whispers.
I wonder if they know about the scars on my back. Probably. Kieran would have bragged about what he’d done.
‘Step back from the table now,’ Soul says.
I do as I’m told.
‘Can you heal cuts?’ he asks.
Denial seems ridiculous but I never want to admit to anything here.
He repeats his question and I stand silently.
‘You must answer our questions.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we are the Council of White Witches.’
I stare at him.
‘Can you heal cuts?’
I carry on with the staring.
‘Where have you been for the last two days?’
I don’t take my eyes off him but I answer this one. ‘I was in the woods near our house. I camped out for the night.’
‘It is a serious offence to lie to the Council.’
‘I’m not lying.’
‘You were not in the woods. You were not in any area that the Council has given you approval to be.’
I try to look innocently surprised.
‘In fact, we could not find you anywhere at all.’
‘You’re mistaken. I was in the local wood.’
‘No. I am not mistaken. And, as I said before, it is a serious offence to lie to the Council.’
I’m still holding his gaze and repeat, ‘I was in the woods.’
‘No.’ Soul doesn’t sound angry, more bored and unimpressed.
The Council Leader holds her hand up. ‘Enough.’
Soul looks from me to his fingernails and reclines in his chair.
The Council Leader calls to the guard at the back of the room, ‘Bring Mrs Ashworth in.’
The latch rattles and Gran’s footsteps approach slowly. I turn to look at her when she is standing beside me and I’m shocked to see a small and frightened old woman.
The Council Leader speaks. ‘Mrs Ashworth. We have asked you here so that you can answer the accusations levelled against you. Serious accusations. You have failed to comply with Notifications of the Council. The Notifications clearly state that the Council must be informed if there is any contact between Half Codes and White Witches and White Whets. You failed to do this. You also failed to prevent the Half Code from moving to unauthorized areas of the country.’
The Council Leader looks down at her papers and then up again at Gran. ‘Have you anything to say?’