Witch - By Fiona Horne Page 0,65

at my feet, his shirt covered in blood. On the other side of the room Dean was on top of Mr Barrow, straddling his chest and punching him in the face.

‘Bryce!’ I cried, dropping to my knees by his side.

‘It’s just my arm . . . Get Barrow,’ he said shakily.

The twins were beside me, pushing me out of the way. ‘Vania, move. Let us help him.’

I saw Mr Barrow throw a punch at Dean, knocking him off his chest. Dean grabbed after him, but Barrow managed to evade his reach and get up, racing for the door.

I hesitated, looking at Bryce, but the twins were already laying their hands on him, and by the way their hair was standing straight up on end I could tell they were using their psychokinetic skill to stop the bleeding – they were making the blood flow back into his veins, not out of them.

Dean was running out the door after Barrow. I followed close behind.

As I bolted out into the yard I heard a car engine roar to life.

Barrow was in his car and, with tyres squealing, was reversing backwards down the driveway with Dean running alongside, holding onto the side mirror.

‘Dean! Be careful!’ I screamed.

He let go rather than be crushed under the wheels as Barrow swung the car around into the street. I caught up to Dean and we both stood at the end of the driveway bathed in the headlights of Mr Barrow’s car. For a moment I wondered if he was going to charge forward and run us over, but then with a screech of rubber the car turned and roared away down the street.

The black snake churned inside me and a volcanic eruption of fury burst through me. I thrust my hands at the retreating car. ‘THOU ART BEHOLDEN TO ME!’ I screamed. And suddenly I was sitting in the passenger seat next to Mr Barrow. ‘You are not getting away with this,’ I growled.

He turned and looked at me in shock. ‘What the hell?!’

I opened my mouth and the snake came out of me like a torrent of black tar, wrapping itself around Mr Barrow in thick coils, pinning his arms to his sides.

The car started to careen wildly.

And then in the headlights I saw a tree falling across the road. I squeezed my eyes shut – now I was going to die for sure. But I suddenly found myself standing next to Dean as I heard an explosive bang. ‘Oh. My. Gosh,’ I gasped. ‘I was just in the car with Barrow.’

‘No you weren’t, you were standing right next to me waving your arms around!’

‘Dean, I was with him, in the car. I think it just hit a tree.’

It was then that I noticed Dean did not look good. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah. He busted my lip pretty bad, though.’ The full-moon light revealed the blood on his mouth and chin as a dark-purple stain.

Lights were coming on in the houses around us, and a man and a woman in dressing-gowns were walking towards us from across the street.

In the distance I heard the wail of police sirens.

Fifteen

Brenda came over carrying a tray of lemonade and cookies. It was good to be together again at the Purple Raven. Everything seemed to be back to normal. Well, except that Bryce’s arm was in a sling, and Mr Barrow was in jail.

‘Yeah, apparently when the police found him in the wreckage he immediately confessed to having killed the woman of Queen’s Cross and Captain Sharpe,’ Dean said.

‘I think Vania’s spell was still working on him,’ said Amelia, taking a sip of her lemonade before turning to me. ‘And you brought the tree down, too?’

I nodded and took a big bite out of my cookie – business as usual . . . I could make trees crash down and killers confess, and eat cookies without a care in the world.

As my coven chatted among themselves I thought about my decision not to tell anyone what Barrow had said about me being the child of the woman of Queen’s Cross and a real witch, or the existence of the Anti-Witches League. I was still coming to terms with how bizarre it all was, and I didn’t want to freak out my coven. I needed more time to process everything on my own before sharing it.

I hadn’t said anything to my parents, either. When I’d been brought home by the police that night, my father had grounded me for the rest