She laughed, as though lost in a fond memory. ‘So there I was, stuck in a coven where I didn’t belong, until I looked out my window one afternoon, and saw that little wretch snivelling away to himself, sitting on a damp log.’

  She glanced at Hans momentarily, then focused on the rest of us with a malicious smile. ‘I knew exactly who he was. I had a plan, too – oh, it had been just fantasy up until then. But seeing him sitting there, so pathetic and desperate, I knew that it would work, and that he would be the one to help me. I added a little more of the enchantment to my gingerbread spell, and prepared some hot chocolate with A Good Dose of Suggestion, and over he came.’

  While Hans glared at Niamh, her smile only broadened. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like you’re the wounded party. I didn’t exactly use you and abuse you, did I? I genuinely felt for you, you see. I truly did see a kindred spirit in you. That’s why, when I could have taken most of your sister’s power and skill for myself, I gave you lots of it too. You can’t see it beneath that mop of hair you wear, but your mark glows when your sister is around, pulling more and more of her fabulousness into you. That’s what gives you your exceptional riding skill, Hans. By wearing the mark, you draw from your sister every single day of her life. And the process only increases when you’re in close proximity.’

  Hans jumped up, backing towards the door and as far away from Gretel as he could. ‘Even now?’

  ‘Even always,’ said Niamh with a smirk.

  ‘But that would have all changed after today, wouldn’t it?’ challenged Sinead. ‘All of these years, Niamh, you must have been finding opportunities to get close to Gretel in different guises, anytime you needed a boost. In between, she continued to replenish, time and again. But now … now you’re using a spell so terrible that even our elders stayed away from it. A total extraction. Gretel must drink the Marrow-infused potion three times in quick succession. After the third drink, all of her skill, all of her smarts, all of her magic, even, would have been given to you. Congratulations, Niamh – you have now become the monster you always wanted to be. Thank the stars Wanda figured it out in time.’

  Niamh sniffed. ‘What is it they say? Go big or go home? Gretel has a very special essence. I enjoyed having her gracefulness, her brains, her power. And Hans wasn’t exactly making the best use of his share, was he? What did I expect, I suppose? You can’t polish a turd, can you? But yes … the very moment Gretel drank my potion today, everything of hers would have become mine. Forever.’

  With a shaking voice, Gretel said, ‘So I almost … I almost lost even the little magic that you’ve left me with so far? But I still don’t understand what Wanda’s exams have got to do with any of it.’

  Niamh sighed. ‘Well, it’s your fault really, Gretel. Over the years, you seem to have become incredibly sensitive, able to recognise when you’re being drained. Hans, too, in a way, sensed the same. As time passed, either you would move away from him, or he would push you away. And, with me, you developed a sense too. Your mother was right – I’ve found ways to get close to you, staying in disguise, all so that I could take a little bit more. I’ve played the part of healers and restaurant workers and even a woman who sat close to you when you regularly rode the train to Riddler’s Edge.

  ‘But after a few occasions, no matter what guise I wore, you seemed to develop some natural awareness that I was there, and that I was bad for you. So I had to find a way to take what I could, once and for all, and to do it in a way which wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

  ‘When I heard that you were to be Wanda’s guinea pig for her Potions’ test, I knew I couldn’t waste the opportunity. You’d be focused on helping your friend, and far less likely to listen to your inner warning system. Unfortunately, it seems like you’ve gotten yourself an external warning system as well.’ Her lip curled as she looked my way. ‘In the form of the annoying Miss Wayfair.’

  The room was silent for a few beats, absorbing all we’d just been told. Niamh had caused all of this trouble, even killing, in order to get close enough to strip Gretel for good. My friend had been fighting harder than we ever knew since she was thirteen, replenishing herself, regaining her strength time after time – as long as she was nowhere near her brother or Niamh.

  ‘Will she be all right now, though?’ Hans asked in a whisper that pierced the silence.

  Sinead nodded. ‘The third drink of Marrow would have sealed Gretel’s fate. As she hasn’t drunk it, she’ll build herself up again slowly. We will have to perform a ceremony to detach yourself and Niamh from her, but it’s not too difficult. We’ve kept the instructions in our coven library, hoping that we’d never have to use them again. It seems that now is the time.’

  ‘But why so – so over the top?’ Gretel wondered, gazing at Niamh. ‘Why did Athena have to die? You could have found a hundred other ways to replace her. And I understand you recruited Carmel and her gang of Wanda-haters to help you pull the fire alarms and make it look like it was all about Wanda, but … did you have to kill poor Athena? And did you have to make her husband be the one who gave her the Mimic? I mean, you were behind that, right? Manipulating Carmel with A Good Dose of Suggestion. Using the same, plus a love potion on Anton to make him step in line. But having him kill his own wife? I … I can’t think of a strong enough word to describe just how horrific that is.’

  Niamh’s lips were twitching as she tried to keep a straight face, but she couldn’t hold it for long, and eventually a cruel smirk took over. ‘Have you met Athena? Sure, I could have found another way to take her position as examiner. But killing someone as annoying as her was far more satisfying. She was always poking her nose into my work at the Maze’s apothecary, thinking she knew better than me. And she and Anton, going around like love’s young dream all the time – who wouldn’t want to cut them down to size?’

  With a shiver, she sneered, ‘Gosh, they were a sickening pair. So yes, I enjoyed making Anton fall for Carmel and kill his wife. I even convinced him that what he was injecting into those chocolates was a cure for her Toadstool Tumours. Heck, I actually managed to make he and Carmel believe that Emily Caulfield was a master manipulator and a murderer, and that she was the one who’d orchestrated it all.’

  Gretel shook her head in horror. ‘You made them set Emily up to take the fall, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, of course,’ said Niamh. ‘Emily was a bit of a fly in the ointment, you see – I thought she’d easily fall in line with Carmel’s gang of Wanda-haters, but instead she started doing some sleuthing of her own. I had to get rid of her, and what better way than to set her up? But Carmel and Anton, well … they became a little bit unhinged. Anton in particular. Cracking under pressure, I suppose. At that stage, I didn’t really care who got the blame. Emily, Anton, Carmel … by the time you lot figured out that it was all just distraction, I would have been far away from here, with all of Gretel’s power and a new identity.’

  Once again, she curled her lip in my direction. ‘That was the plan, anyway.’

  With an arm around Gretel’s shoulder, I looked Niamh in the eye. ‘And I couldn’t be happier that you failed, you horrible Hag.’

  22. A Parting Gift

  Thanks to my Bookworm pals, I had become a big fan of the Mrs Magely Mysteries. But having read a lot of those books, I had come to realise that the real world bore very little resemblance to fiction. Mrs Magely often summed things up neatly, in a library or a glamorous drawing room, with all of the suspects lined up as she went through their motives and opportunities, revealing the killer at the end.

  What the narrator of the mysteries never mentioned was just how exhausting those revelations could be. Perhaps I had listened to far too many evil psychopaths try to explain themselves in the past few years, because Niamh’s explanation didn’t leave me feeling satisfied or triumphant at the mystery being solved. It left me feeling a strange mix of emotions – part angry, part jaded.

  She’d taken everything from Gretel, manipulating a little boy, murdering a beloved wife, just so she could have something that was never meant to be hers.

  In the story of Hansel and Gretel, the boy was the greedy one, gorging on gingerbread and on everything that the Hag gave him, while he waited for his sister to save the day.

  But the more I thought of that story, the more I realised that Hansel wasn’t really the greedy one, and neither was Hans. Niamh Night was our Hag, and she was the one who had fed on them all – on Hans’ insecurities, on Gretel’s power, and on the hatred in Mizz Plimpton’s heart.

  I didn’t know what would happen to Carmel, or to Anton now. As we had drilled down into the details, it became clear that Carmel had begun to use her gang of Wanda-haters to tamper with my class schedule a few weeks before Niamh ever got involved. Niamh told us that Carmel had even been the one who originally came up with the idea to become an examiner, inspiring Niamh in her current plan. I would have liked to think that, without Niamh’s interference, Carmel would never have gone to quite the lengths she had. But you never could tell with people.

  Anton, on the other hand, appeared to have been dosed with far more potion than Carmel Plimpton. He would receive no punishment, most likely. But I didn’t envy the judge who would have to decide how much blame to apportion to Finn’s mother.

  And no matter how exhausting it had been to listen to Niamh, the latest in a too-long parade of parasites, explain how hard her childhood had been and why that excused her for her crimes, at least it was over.

  Gretel’s life would be very different from now on, starting from tonight, when her coven would perform a severing ceremony, making sure that no one could ever siphon from her again. It was a private Wood coven affair, but I wouldn’t have been able to go anyway. I had somewhere else to be.

  ≈

  Once more, I pushed open the door of Athena Gale’s cottage to find Minerva sitting at her owl-sized desk.

  ‘It’s done, isn’t it?’ She looked around at me. ‘I know it is, because I feel … different. I don’t think I have much time left.’

  ‘It’s done,’ I confirmed. ‘Athena’s murderer is well and truly caught.’

  Minerva gave me a small, grateful smile. ‘So who was it? One of the staff members from the Maze?’

  I blinked back tears. ‘Yes. It was Niamh Night. She ran the apothecary.’

  ‘Ah.’ Minerva smiled. ‘Yes, that sounds about right. I always thought she was a nasty woman, despite her sweet exterior. She always wanted to know everything about everybody, without ever revealing much about herself.’

  ‘Looking for weaknesses to exploit,’ I guessed.

  ‘No doubt. Well then … what happens now?’

  I pulled Athena’s chair over to Minerva’s desk so that I could sit close to her. ‘I’ll stay with you, until your time comes. And then I shall lay you to rest alongside Athena.’

  Minerva smiled shakily. ‘Yes, I think we’ll be very happy in the afterlife together. There’s bound to be some improvements my witch and I can make over there. Oh, speaking of which–’ She nodded to one of the worktables. There was a bottle of an odd-coloured potion. ‘Last night after you left here, you teleported over a small sample of this Mimic stuff for me. You were just humouring me, giving me something to pass the time until the inevitable. But … I’ve managed to come up with the beginnings of a cure. A little parting gift, from me to you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I smiled at her. ‘That’ll be a big help to me and Ronnie, something to get us started. It’s really a deadly potion that Niamh has invented. I wish I could say she kept the recipe to herself, but Finn tells me she’s been making a lot of money in mysterious ways in recent weeks. The chances are, it’s already hit the market.’

  Still shaking, Minerva said, ‘Well then. I’m glad I took the time to get started on an antidote. I um … I feel that it’s about time I told you that I lied to you when we first met. I told you that I believed I’d make a better job of finding the murderer on my own. That wasn’t true, Wanda. I had the same urge to seek you out, and the same confidence in you, that all familiars do. The reason I pushed you away was because I was afraid you’d find out what I’d done. You’ve discovered that Athena had taken her own cure for Toadstool Tumours. Well, I had, too.’

  She let out a weak-sounding cough. ‘Even before our test models started to die, it was clear to me that, despite some wonderful improvements in the beginning, my illness was back, and worse than ever. I … I found it hard to accept that we’d failed, Athena and I. So I kept working on the cure, hoping I could improve it before you noticed the failure of our first attempt. But these things take time, I suppose. Time I don’t have. Would you … would you and Ronnie perhaps work with Florence on this, as well as the cure for the Mimic? It would ease my journey to know that our work was still of some use, even if only as a starting point.’

  I rushed forward, gathering her into my arms. ‘Of course we will. We’d be proud to continue on with your research, Minnie.’

  Her beak parted in a smile, and she spoke no more. She simply grew lighter in my arms, as her soul travelled on to the next place.

  23. The Wayfarer

  A fortnight later, I went to a party in Foundling Forest. It was a party of celebration. Not only had I finally completed – and passed – the Potions’ exam (the new examiner had been grumpy, but not evil, so that was nice), but Gretel and I had both sat and passed our sergeants’ exam, too.

  In the two weeks since Hans and Niamh had been severed from Gretel, I’d seen vast changes in my friend. She had become more open with us all, and more confident of her ideas and decisions. Tonight was an example of how much she had changed, because Gretel had invited everyone she knew to the party – all of her work friends, and everyone in my coven. She had even invited Emily (Emily had politely declined).

  The party would be taking place mostly outside – the Wood coven seemed to genuinely love the outdoors. There was going to be a barbecue, and later on there would be dancing, all beneath a canopy of trees with lights strung up.

  ‘It looks magical,’ said Melissa as we entered, looking up at the twinkling lights in the trees. ‘Which seems like a strange thing to say, I guess. What with us being pretty magical ourselves.’

  ‘No, I know what you mean.’ Christine squeezed her daughter’s waist as they admired the decorations. ‘It’s years since I’ve been this deep into Foundling Forest. I’d forgotten how special it feels here. It’s what I imagine being back in the Old World was like, when everyone and everything shared all parts of the earth. Frightening and energising all at once.’

  ‘Well, as long as none of those Old World monsters jump out of the shadows, we’ll be just fine,’ said Ronnie. Her voice was a little strained, as she placed a crate of wine on the ground.

  As Gretel ran to greet us, she said, ‘Oh, you didn’t have to bring anything. But thank you.’

  ‘You know me.’ Ronnie winked. ‘When it’s time to let my hair down – figuratively, obviously – then it’s really time to let my hair down.’ She touched her short spiky hair.

  As we began to unload the bottles, stacking them on one of the outdoor tables, Ronnie’s hand slipped, and Gretel reached out deftly just before the bottle hit the ground, saving it from destruction.

  ‘Phew!’ Ronnie wiped her forehead. ‘Good catch, Gretel.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ I grinned. ‘I mean, I already knew the severing ceremony worked, but it is very good to see you in action, Gretel.’

  I almost expected Gretel to blush and mutter something self-deprecating – the old Gretel certainly would have. Instead, she let out a squealing little giggle and said, ‘I know! I can’t believe it! I’m not clumsy anymore!’

  Melissa clapped her hands and joined in with the squealing, and I gave Gretel a great big hug. For a while, we all behaved like idiots, congratulating and hugging Gretel, before moving on to dropping bottles so we could watch as she deftly caught them all.

  After about a quarter of an hour of such wonderful nonsense, a gong rang through the forest and Gretel’s mother called out, ‘Food’s up, everyone. Come and fill your faces!’

  ≈

  Hans had barbecued plenty of veggie delights as well as steaks, sausages and burgers, and we all dug in, the fresh air increasing our appetites.

  ‘He’s looking well,’ my mother said to Gretel’s mother, nodding discreetly towards Hans while we ate.

  Sinead grinned. ‘Isn’t he? His riding skills aren’t quite what they were, but he’s still incredibly talented. I’ve begun to think that his clumsiness when he was a boy was all down to poor confidence.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad he’s okay,’ I said. I really was. Hans hadn’t been responsible for what happened when he was only twelve. As soon as he knew the truth, he had done his best to rectify things. ‘I was wondering, though – how come you called him Hans? Is it actually short for Hansel or …?’

  Sinead winced slightly. ‘I know what you’re trying to say, Wanda. Why did I name my children the way I did, considering the connotations?’

  I hiccupped. ‘Sorry.’ I hiccupped a second time (ever so refined, me). ‘It’s not a polite question. The only excuse I have is that I’ve had four glasses of wine.’

  Sinead chuckled. ‘Well, I’ve had five, which is why I’ll answer you honestly. Now, I could tell you that they’re traditional names in our coven, but that would only be half the story. Yes, they’re popular names for us, but I would never have called my kids those names if it weren’t for the strange dream I had one night.’