Like the Spook’s, most of the damaged houses had been rebuilt, and the main cobbled street that sloped down between the shops was bustling with housewives clutching shopping baskets. People came to Chipenden from distant farms and hamlets, for here they could find the best cheese in the County, and mutton and beef of the highest quality.
I threw the sack of provisions over my shoulder, and set off back towards my master’s house. I was trudging up the lane towards the gate when I saw that I was being watched.
To my left, not far from the place where I had first met Alice, three people were standing underneath a large, wide-branched oak. I knew them of old, and automatically put down my sack and brought my staff up into the diagonal defensive position – for they were witches.
It was Mab, Beth and Jennet Mouldheel.
They came towards me, but halted about five paces away. I kept my staff at the ready.
Mab was a girl of about seventeen; despite her youth, she was a dangerous malevolent witch and the leader of the Mouldheel witch clan. I’d found out what she was capable of on my first visit to Pendle; I’d gone there with the Spook to rescue my brother Jack and his family, who’d been kidnapped. She had a strong personality, powerful magic, and was without a doubt the best scryer in the County. She was attractive too, with big bright green eyes and fair hair. Like the rest of her clan, she went barefoot, and her feet and legs and tattered skirt were spattered with mud. Her two younger sisters, Jennet and Beth, were twins and it was difficult to tell them apart. They lacked the good looks of their elder sister and had thin, pinched faces and hooked noses.
All of them were a little older than when I’d last seen them. They were taller, and their faces and bodies were now those of young women.
‘You’ve taken your time! Been waiting here for you for almost an hour, we have. And you don’t seem too pleased to see me, Tom.’ Mab smiled. ‘Should be glad, because we’re here to help you again.’
I didn’t trust her one bit. Before the battle on Pendle Hill, she had tried to force me to open one of Mam’s boxes for her – the trunks that the Malkins had stolen after raiding the farm and kidnapping my family. When I’d refused, she’d threatened to murder Mary, my young niece. And I’d known instinctively that it was no idle threat. Mab was a blood witch, and would kill to get what she needed in order to practise her dark magic.
However, she had since formed an uneasy alliance with us. She had accompanied us to Greece to fight Mam’s mortal enemy, the Ordeen.
‘Help us to do what?’ I demanded.
‘Help you to finish off the Fiend, of course – destroy him near that big rock. Must make you feel really important to have a hill and a rock named after you!’
I felt cold inside. I’d thought that this knowledge was confined to just a few people – myself, the Spook, Grimalkin, Alice, and the lamia witch Slake.
Mab gave me a wicked smile. ‘I suppose you thought it was a secret! But nothing stays hidden from me for very long. It was easy-peasy to scry what you’re up to. And I know others will find out too, and at Halloween they’ll all head for that hill where you’re supposed to kill Alice! Many will be servants of the Fiend: you’ll need our help to fight ’em off, so don’t you scowl at me like that. I thought you liked me once.’
‘He was a bit soft on you, that’s for sure!’ Jennet said. ‘Once Alice is dead he’ll soon come round to that way of thinking again.’
Of course, it wasn’t true. Mab had used dark magic to make me kiss her, hoping to sap my will and control me. But her attempt was doomed: when we first knew each other, Alice had gripped my forearm so tightly that her nails pierced my flesh, leaving scars. She’d told me it was her ‘brand’. And it meant that no witch could control me in that way. So Mab had failed. I’d never felt anything for her but anger and revulsion.
‘Should I tell him about Alice?’ she said, smiling slyly at each of her sisters in turn.
‘Yes! Yes! Tell him now. I want to see the look on his face,’ Beth gloated.
I thought I knew what was coming. No doubt she was going to claim that she’d scryed Alice’s death again. Had she seen me slay her as part of the ritual? If so, she was mistaken: I wasn’t going to do it. And for all her power, Mab had been wrong about Alice before.
Scrying could be uncertain. In Greece, Mab had predicted Alice’s death. But when she’d been seized by a lamia and dragged deep into its lair, I had saved her with a spell – a ‘dark wish’ given to me by Grimalkin.
But what Mab now told me came as a real surprise.
‘You saw Alice, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘Well, guess what – she’d been back for nearly a week before she bothered to contact you! She can’t care that much about you or she wouldn’t have let you go on worrying, would she?’
I just stared at Mab, wondering if she was simply lying to hurt me.
‘Tell him the rest, Mab!’ said Jennet. ‘I want him to hear all of it!’
‘Alice has found another way to finish off the Fiend. Grimalkin is helping her,’ Mab gloated.
‘I know that already,’ I snapped angrily. ‘She told me what she was doing.’
‘Did she now? Well, I bet she didn’t tell you everything. Alice is going to use the Doomdryte,’ Mab crowed.
That word – Doomdryte – was like a blow. I couldn’t hide my feelings, and all three girls grinned at the dismay on my face.
Grimoires were books full of dark magic spells. And the most notorious and dangerous of them all was the book Mab had just referred to – the Doomdryte. It contained one very long spell. It had to be recited perfectly, without even the slightest pause for rest or mispronunciation of a single syllable. That task had never been accomplished. Every mage or witch who had attempted the incantation had failed.
And the price of failure was death.
I didn’t know what to say. My master and I had found that grimoire in a private library in Todmorden while fighting witches and daemons from Romania. I had been unconscious for three days and nights, then confined to my sickbed for two more weeks after almost dying in the grip of Siscoi, the vampire god. While I lay helpless, Grimalkin had killed or driven away the remaining vampiric entities. She said she had searched for the Doomdryte – but in vain. But if what Mab Mouldheel said was correct, I knew exactly what had happened.