a butcher, weighing out sausages. “I heard that Death’s come for her before and she slammed the door on him!”
“Thirteen dozen sausages, please,” said Tiffany. “Cooked and delivered.”
“Are you sure she’s going to die?” said the butcher, uncertainty clouding his face.
“No. But she is,” said Tiffany.
And the baker said, “Don’t you know about that clock of hers? She had it made when her heart died. It’s like a clockwork heart, see?”
“Really?” said Tiffany. “So if her heart died, and she had a new one made of clockwork, how did she stay alive while the new heart was being made?”
“Oh, that’d be by magic, obviously,” said the baker.
“But a heart pumps blood, and Miss Treason’s clock is outside her body,” Tiffany pointed out. “There’s no…tubes….”
“It pumps the blood by magic,” said the baker, speaking slowly. He gave her an odd look. “How can you be a witch if you don’t know this stuff?”
It was the same everywhere else. It was as if the idea of there being no Miss Treason was the wrong shape to put in anyone’s head. She was 113 years old, and they argued that it was practically unheard of for anyone to die aged 113. It was a joke, they said, or she’d got a scroll signed in blood that meant she’d live forever, or you’d have to steal her clock before she’d die, or every time the Grim Reaper came for her she lied about her name or sent him to another person, or maybe she was just feeling a bit unwell….
By the time Tiffany was finished, she was wondering if it really was going to happen. Yet Miss Treason had seemed so certain. And if you were 113, the amazing thing wasn’t that you were going to die tomorrow but that you were still alive today.
With her head full of gloomy thoughts, she set out to the coven meeting.
Once or twice she thought she could feel Feegles watching her. She never knew how she could feel this; it was a talent you learned. And you learned to put up with it, most of the time.
All the other young witches were there by the time she arrived, and they had even got a fire lit.
Some people think that “coven” is a word for a group of witches, and it’s true that’s what the dictionary says. But the real word for a group of witches is an “argument.”
In any case, most of the witches Tiffany had met never used the word. Mrs. Earwig did, though, almost all the time. She was tall and thin and rather chilly, and wore silver spectacles on a little chain, and used words like “avatar” and “sigil.” And Annagramma, who ran the coven because she’d invented it and had the tallest hat and sharpest voice, was her star pupil (and her only one).
Granny Weatherwax always said that what Mrs. Earwig did was wizard magic with a dress on, and Annagramma certainly dragged a lot of books and wands along to the meetings. Mostly, the girls did a few ceremonies to keep her quiet, because for them the real purpose of the coven was to see friends, even if they were friends simply because they were, really, the only people you could talk to freely because they had the same problems and would understand what you were moaning about.
They always met out in the woods, even in the snow. There was always enough wood lying around for a fire, and they all dressed up warm as a matter of course. Even in the summer, comfort on a broomstick at any height meant more layers of underclothing than anyone would dare guess at, and sometimes a couple of hot-water bottles held on with string.
At the moment three small fireballs circled the fire. Annagramma had made them. You could slay enemies with them, she’d said. They made the others uneasy. It was wizard magic, showy and dangerous. Witches preferred to cut enemies dead with a look. There was no sense in killing your enemy. How would she know you’d won?
Dimity Hubbub had brought a huge tray of inside-out cake. It was just the thing to put a coating on your ribs against the cold.
Tiffany said: “Miss Treason told me she’s going to die on Friday morning. She said she just knows.”
“That’s a shame,” said Annagramma in a that’s-not-really-a-shame tone of voice. “She was very old, though.”
“She still is,” said Tiffany.
“Um, it’s called The Call,” said Petulia Gristle. “Old witches know when they’re going to die.