Witching Tree (Alice Gray Book 1)

31

                 
"Actually, it's not. I've heard of it before," Anne confirmed. "My gran told me all about our ancestors. That's why your mother wore the pendant. I wondered about you when I saw how many, ahem, followers, you had."

Anne looked quickly from Evan to Thomas to Stephen.

According to the manuscript, I was the lucky recipient of an unusual gift among our kind. Magic that allowed us to attract and manipulate others, especially individuals from those 'unusual' communities, of which I was only just learning. It was a gift inherited from my namesake, the original Alice Gray, the witch who had escaped hanging at the Pendle Witch Trials in the seventeenth century.

Alice had manipulated Thomas Potts, the clerk of the court, into helping her escape. Potts then obscured her participation in the trial in his 1613 account .

I already knew all this from Anne's account of our family history. It was what came next that worried me.

Apparently, the pendant that had been stolen from my apartment subdued this effect. It had been forged by the original Alice Gray after she had escaped from Lancashire. The pendant allowed her to appear a normal woman.

It hid her, and her ancestors, from other witches and their hunters for generations to come.

The potency of the allure faded over time, until it became the power of persuasion that Anne had demonstrated; a weaker but nonetheless handy version of the original Alice's magic. And with none of its unwholesome side effects.

The manuscript predicted the birth of a child whose power would equal Alice Gray's. All well and good. An end to the dilution of Gray magic didn't sound too bad. Surely a power boost would be a welcome development.

But it wasn't.

For without sufficient control, Gray magic would rain madness down on all those who succumbed to its attraction.

"I'm not sure I believe any of this, I hardly ever wore the pendant before my mother died."

"You think this is normal for somebody like you?" Emily said, raising her hands to imply the attention of the three men in the room.

Great, she was back to her bitchy self.

"No," I replied, trying not to lose my temper. I inclined my head towards Stephen. "You've just explained this one. The other two are after something too, no doubt."

I kept my eyes trained on the manuscript. The pregnant girl with silver eyes captured me in her fierce gaze. I didn't believe that I was the one described in the manuscript, but something, some strength or purpose transferred from her to me. It was telling me not to trust others too lightly.

To have confidence in myself.

"Alice, before you came here, I don't think that your gift had fully manifested. Remember what we discussed back at the house?" Anne said.

Only Anne knew about my ability to see life-force, and the visions that I'd had at the cottage. Looking at the picture of the manuscript, I suddenly understood who'd been in the rocking chair.

The original Alice Gray.

And she'd done something to me, something that dulled my emotions.

I was happy to follow Anne's lead and keep all that to myself, but a deep-seated suspicion took root in my mind.

What if my mother had kept me separate for a reason?

From the history I now knew, they'd hardly been generous to her. Leaving her to fend for herself in a world that they cautioned was hard and dangerous to our kind. Deep in my gut, a fear that they wanted something from me settled. Something that was vital to my wellbeing. Something that my own mother had been unwilling to give.

"Look, interesting as all this is. It doesn't answer any of the relevant questions," Thomas said, moving back towards the window.

"Who hired you? Who broke into Alice's apartment and took the pendant? Why would they want it?"

"We don't have all the answers yet," Stephen said, running his hand through his hair in frustration. "I traced the manuscript back to the British Library, where it had been stolen from the rare books collection. The catalogue had it listed as an excerpt to a first edition of Potts's Wonderful Discoverie, and whoever had sent it to us had managed to lift it from the most secure room in the library. I'm still following leads, but the package it arrived in gave us little to go on."

"Wait, how did an excerpt of my family's grimoire end up in the British Library?" Anne shrieked, her voice reaching a note that shot a dart of pain through my battered head. Judging by Evan's wince, I wasn't the only one. "Please tell me it wasn't accessible to the human population?"

Looked like I wasn't the only one freaking out about the unanticipated celebrity of the Gray family. 

"Don't worry, the public don't have access to this collection. Only those in the know can see it," Emily stated, trying for reassuring but only succeeding in sounding bored.

"In the know? No-one is supposed to know about us," Anne squeaked, panic pushing every other consideration out of her mind.

"Chill," I said, taking her hand.

The warmth of her golden life-force flowed into me, infusing me with delicious energy. Focusing on my cousin, I sent it back to her, willing her to be calm. A swirl of silver flashed round her iris, and then Anne nodded, drawing in a deep breath to steady herself.

We hadn't reached the end of the story, and I needed to know it all.

"When I found out that you had quit your job, I knew something was going on," Stephen said. "It killed me to step back and let Emily take the helm. When the trouble started and we realised that undercover wasn't going to cut it this time, I thought if I saw you again, maybe..."

"No chance," I interjected before he could go any further. "You hurt me enough when I thought what we had was real. I never would have taken you back then, and I certainly won't now."

Stephen looked at me, the pain of my rejection in his deep blue eyes. He had no right to pull that shit, after the tale we'd just heard.

The problem was, as I looked at him, I did feel something. You don't stop loving somebody after so long together, even after everything he'd put me through.

I vowed there and then, I would never let him get close to me. He would never know what I felt for him; never get the satisfaction of fooling me for a second time.

"This is what is going to happen now," I started, meeting the eyes of every person in the room.