Winter reached across and squeezed my hand while Clare stared at me. ‘I think I hate you both.’
I beamed back at her cheerfully. ‘I would hate us both too.’ I lifted my head up. ‘Now let’s crack on. Which window is going to be the easiest?’ I pointed at one on the second floor. ‘That looks large enough to wiggle through.’
‘It’s sealed shut,’ Clare said. ‘The only one which opens is that one.’ She floated upwards until she was hovering in front of the highest – and smallest – window in the house.
Winter followed my eyes. ‘The window on the right?’ he enquired.
‘Apparently it’s the only one that will open.’ I flicked him a look from under my eyelashes. ‘We should definitely wait for the bomb squad.’
‘Clare?’ Winter said, looking in the wrong direction. ‘Can you check whether there are any more booby traps?’
She nodded eagerly and disappeared back through the walls of her house.
‘She said she can’t,’ I told him. ‘On account of the fact that her ghostly presence might upset the spiritual atoms and set them off, blowing us all to smithereens.’
Clare’s head appeared from the chimney top. ‘There’s nothing else here!’ she called. ‘It’s only the front door that’s been tampered with.’
Winter, reading my expression, smiled. ‘Great.’ He gestured in front of him. ‘Ladies first.’
I stared at him. ‘What do you expect me to do? Scale the wall? I’m not Spiderman.’ I shifted my body slightly so he couldn’t see what I was doing, then I put my hands behind my back and drew out a rune. Ever so slowly, Winter began to rise up. The best part was that, because it happened at such a snail’s pace, he didn’t even notice until he was at least a foot in the air.
‘Ivy!’
I smirked and continued raising him. I had the most amazing view of his arse from here.
Clare’s mouth was hanging open in astonishment. ‘He can fly?’
‘Nope.’
‘But…’
‘I’m making Winter levitate,’ I explained. ‘But it takes a lot of energy and I can’t hold him for long.’ We both watched as he reached the window and began to tug at it, trying to open it up. ‘Do you have any wards in place?’ I asked. If there were any, they should have been blown when Blackbeard entered but it didn’t hurt to ask.
‘Oh yes,’ Clare said proudly. ‘I have several.’
Winter finally managed to open the window and stuck his head inside. A beat later he was violently thrown backwards, somersaulting through the air and down to the ground. In the nick of time I managed to cast a rune to cushion his fall but he still groaned very loudly.
I ran over. ‘Are you okay?’
He squinted up at me, pain clouding his gaze. ‘We should have waited for the bomb squad.’
Alarmed now, I crouched down, searching for visible wounds. ‘That was a bomb? Another grenade?’
‘No.’ He raised his head then thought better of it and dropped it down again with a thud. ‘A ward. Your mate Clare might have been non-Order but she knew her guard magic.’
A huge smile cracked Clare’s face, spreading from ear to ear. Almost as quickly as it appeared, it vanished. ‘It wasn’t really me,’ she said, her head hanging. ‘It was part of the protective spells the coven put in place when we thought we were being followed. We worked together to set them up on all our homes.’
I sucked on my lip. ‘And yet Blackbeard wasn’t troubled by them in the slightest.’ The magic plot thickened.
She frowned. ‘You’re right. He’s definitely doing something to avoid being affected by magic.’
Of any sort. I sighed. If even latent spells like wards didn’t stop him, what would? The fact that he’d managed to gain entry and set up his own entirely non-magical yet death-inducing ward was incredibly worrisome.
I helped Winter up to his feet. ‘My turn,’ I said grimly.
‘You don’t want to wait?’
My mouth flattened. ‘No. They’ll be hours and I’ve had enough of this place. I want to go home. The faster we do this, the faster that can happen. No serial killer is going to get the better of us.’
I must have sounded determined because Clare looked impressed. ‘You go girl.’
‘The wards…’
‘You can disarm them with the password. Coventastic.’
Coventastic? Good grief. It was probably wise not to say anything aloud. If Winter realised he could have avoided being thrown out of Clare’s window at great speed by simply uttering a word, he wouldn’t be best pleased. I avoided his eyes. ‘Beam me up, Scotty,’ I muttered.
Winter used the same rune I had, sending me up smoothly through the air towards the window. All the same, I could feel gravity working against me. The laws of science never enjoy coming up against the laws of magic – it’s like oil and water. At least Clare’s house was only three-storeys high. It could have been much worse.
When I got to the now-open window, I realised with dismay that it was smaller than I’d thought. Squeezing inside was going to be tough. I grabbed hold of the windowsill, whispered, ‘Coventastic,’ and started to wiggle through.
To begin with it was fairly straightforward but I was only pushing my arms and head through. My shoulders scraped painfully against the frame and, when I had to push my chest through, it didn’t seem that I was going to make it. No amount of holding my breath was going to make my breasts any smaller. Still, I managed to squash in just enough to squeak them past. Now the only worry was my hips. I shuffled forward with the top half of my body hanging into Clare’s house and my bottom half hanging out. It bloody hurt. Matters didn’t improve when there was a sudden loud shout from outside.
‘Oy! What are you doing? I’m calling the polis!’
‘It’s Pete from down the road,’ Clare said, sounding surprised. ‘Aw, bless. He was never interested in joining the neighbourhood watch before and now he’s looking out for me. That’s really sweet. At least someone cares.’ She paused. ‘Even if he is a scary bastard with facial tattoos and a vicious Chihuahua called Bruiser.’
I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the fact that having a Chihuahua meant he was a scary bastard, or whether it was the Chihuahua’s name that created that effect. Either way, this wasn’t the time to ask, not with my arse hanging out of her window. It wasn’t like I could back out now; the only way was forward, whatever Pete from down the road was doing.
I continued my slow wiggle, growing more and more uncomfortable by the second. Clare kept up a running commentary on the events outside. ‘Oooh. Winter has approached Pete and he’s looking tough. But I think Pete is tougher. Winter’s not acting scared, he’s doing that glowery thing that I’ve seen him do to you. Pete is growling back at him. So is Bruiser.’ She clapped her hands. ‘This is exciting.’
If she weren’t already dead, I’d probably wring her neck. ‘Tell Winter,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘to get Pete to back off. We don’t have time for this.’
‘But Winter can’t hear me.’
Damn it; I kept forgetting that part. ‘Rafe!’ I shouted. ‘Get Pete to leave! We’ve got Clare’s permission to be here!’