“We’re home!”
As soon as I’d jumped off my broomstick, Tansy, my squirrel familiar, raced ahead to the summit of the hill and looked out on the town of Wildwood Heath. I followed at a slower pace, finding it a little hard to summon up any enthusiasm. Yes, the scenery was as pristine as ever, as if the sun shone a little brighter upon its vibrant green fields and verdant woodlands than it did anywhere else, but the sheer amount of broomstick traffic criss-crossing the skies above our heads brought a dark cloud which reminded me of my real reason for being here.
Even on the day of the Head Witch’s funeral, Wildwood Heath didn’t look like a town mourning its most beloved coven leader. The enclave held the title of the Midlands’ most popular magical tourist spot for wildlife lovers and nature, in addition to its high ranking in several regional sporting championships. Wildwood Heath—and the coven which gave the town its name—played to win.
A flock of broomsticks zoomed overhead, nearly blowing Tansy head over heels downhill. She scurried back to my side, tail fur in disarray and eyes bright with excitement. “I bet there are witches from all over the country flying in.”
“They’re supposed to be here for a funeral, not the regional Sky Hopper championship.” I positioned my broom over my shoulder to avoid it being swept away in the breeze kicked up by the new arrivals as I walked downhill towards one of the forested paths leading into the town. With a little luck, I’d be able to get undercover before I ran into the press.
I should have known better than to tempt fate. No sooner had I entered the woodland than the flash of a camera dazzled my eyes, and a witch and wizard in identical red cloaks and hats leapt out of the bushes. The wizard held the camera while the witch waved a microphone in front of my face. Tansy, typically, climbed up my shoulder and hid herself behind my hair.
“Hello, there!” the witch said. “We’re Clarice and Speck from the Blue Moon, and we’re looking to interview some out-of-town witches and wizards for our segment on the funeral of the former Head Witch.”
“Good for you.” I knew better than to offer a single word to the region’s most notorious magical tabloid newspaper. A fair proportion of its most sensational and ridiculous stories over the past few decades had centred on my family—or more specifically, my grandmother. Grandma had had the last laugh, though, clinging tenaciously to her position of Head Witch until the moment she’d died peacefully in her sleep last week.
Unconcerned by my rebuff, Clarice tailed me down the path through the woodland, microphone hand outstretched. “You’re going to the funeral, aren’t you? What was your relationship to the Head Witch?”
Long-suffering granddaughter, I thought.
Behind me, Tansy jumped off my shoulder to chase one of the local squirrels out of a tree.
Speck came to such a sudden halt that he almost dropped his camera. “It can’t be.”
Clarice’s gaze followed my familiar, and then understanding crossed her face. Uh-oh. I beckoned Tansy to come over to me, and she scurried protectively up my leg as I quickened my pace.
“Want me to stop them?” she whispered in my ear.
“Please,” I breathed. “We need to drive them away before they reach the coven’s territory.”
“Wait!” Clarice cried. “The Head Witch’s granddaughter has a red squirrel familiar, doesn’t she? You must be Robin Wildwood.”
I tried not to cringe at the mention of my name, but it’d been unrealistic to expect to fly under the radar for long. Everyone had to come to the funeral of the former coven leader and Head Witch of the region. Even her estranged granddaughter, whose magic was good for only one thing… havoc.
Luckily, havoc was precisely what the Blue Moon’s reporters deserved. While Tansy scurried back down my arm with a flick of her bushy tail, I whispered a quick spell under my breath, directed towards the birds nesting in the nearby trees.
Clarice and Speck leapt back with cries of surprise when a flurry of birds descended in a sweep of falling leaves. While they scrambled to protect their precious recording equipment from the aerial onslaught, I took the opportunity to disappear among the trees. I had to use my broomstick to whack some low-hanging branches out of the way, but at least the thick trees hid me from view. Even in the most tangled part of the woods, it wasn’t hard to spot Tansy’s bright tail bobbing in the air as she leapt from one branch to the next until we reached the boundary of Wildwood Coven territory.
If I knew Mum, she’d expressly forbidden the press from setting foot anywhere near the house, so I exhaled in a sigh of relief as I left the thicket behind.
Then Tansy’s tail began to wag furiously. Too late, I spotted the spiky outline of a hedgehog sitting on the path in front of us. The little hedgehog was the size of my palm, but the recrimination in his beady eyes made dread twist inside me, especially when I remembered the tell-tale green glow around my hands from the magic I’d used against those reporters.
“You’re late,” said the hedgehog, who happened to be called Prickles. He also bore a startling resemblance to his owner, my brother Ramsey. Not that either of them appreciated me pointing that out.
“They didn’t move the funeral three hours earlier, did they?” I asked. “Because I checked the time on the email a dozen times in the last day.”
Instead of answering, Prickles gave a sniff. “Your mother wants to meet with you.”
“How on earth did she know I was here?” My plain old bog-standard broomstick wasn’t that distinctive, while my familiar’s bright, bushy tail wouldn’t have been visible to her unless she’d been watching the sky through a pair of binoculars for the past few hours. Surely the future Head Witch and leader of the Wildwood Coven had more important things to do with her time than to spy on her estranged daughter. Like organising a funeral, for instance.
“She sensed your arrival, of course,” said Prickles. “She’s the coven leader, or she will be.”
“So she hasn’t taken the position yet.”
Reading between the lines, she was also still mad at me for skipping out on the last few family gatherings. As was Ramsey, if he’d sent his familiar to reprimand me instead of coming in person. Admittedly, he must have his hands full if he’d volunteered to help Mum with the funeral arrangements as well as being head of Wildwood Heath’s law enforcement. He was the youngest-ever wizard to take the title, as I’d been repeatedly reminded during the last family gathering I’d attended. As if I needed to be told that one of us was the family’s pride and joy while the other… well, I was currently being lectured by a hedgehog. You can work out the rest for yourself.
Prickles gave me a stern look. “No, but there’s a tight schedule, and your mother would dearly prefer it if you didn’t go wandering off on any detours.”
“I only detoured through the forest to avoid the press,” I told him. “They’re ambushing people from the bushes. Does Mum know?”
“She can’t keep them away from the town altogether,” said Prickles. “This is a historic occasion.”
No kidding. The passing of the leader of one of the region’s major witch covens would qualify as front-page news in the paranormal world, especially one who’d also happened to be a Head Witch. Anyone could lead a coven, but each Head Witch had attained the very pinnacle of what a witch could achieve. Already, speculation had flooded the Wizarding Web as to who would be chosen as her replacement, but while covens picked their leaders via a voting process, selecting a new Head Witch was… complicated. Even my control-freak mother wouldn’t be able to guarantee being chosen.
I’d long since resigned myself to her being even less compromising than usual, but my apprehension built when I followed Prickles along the path which led along the back of the houses owned by the more prominent members of the Wildwood Coven. As soon as we came into view of the wide expanse of lawn at the back of Aunt Shannon’s house, Tansy ran off in pursuit of the magpie sitting on the fence: my aunt’s familiar, Myrtle. The bird took flight with a shriek and a scattering of feathers, while Prickles shook his little head. “She’d better not wreck your mother’s roses.”
“She’ll be on her best behaviour.” Another magpie feather came drifting down onto the path. “Besides, you know that magpie was probably spying on you, don’t you?”
Myrtle was as bad as those reporters for poking her beak into people’s business and taking the gossip back to her owner. I’d frequently had to send Tansy to turf the magpie out of bushes and off windowsills where she’d been eavesdropping, and I’d bet she had both eyes open for trouble on the day of the funeral.
While my familiar ran free to her heart’s content, I followed Prickles past Aunt Shannon’s lawns to the equally large garden next door, where carefully arranged beds of flowers surrounded a large greenhouse housing the herbs and plants Mum needed for her spells. I recognised Piper’s handiwork and hoped I might run into my oldest friend, the coven’s gardener, but it wasn’t until I’d reached the whitewashed walls of the house itself that I spotted a blond witch wearing casual clothing which rendered her almost unrecognisable at first. Then my heart did a flying leap into my throat. Oh, boy. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen Mum in a T-shirt and muddy jeans, and most of those had been when I was a toddler. To see her snipping away at the rosebush with a pair of gardening tools was jarring, while the petals littering the path looked alarmingly like droplets of blood. Was she still mad at me? Given that she had to have spotted me by now, I’d have said yes, she was.
Her familiar acknowledged me first. Horace, a ginger-and-white cat with an orange tuft on his tail which had caused me to occasionally get him confused with Tansy when I was a kid—usually with disastrous results—looked at me haughtily. “Where’s that squirrel of yours?”
“There.” I pointed over the fence to the bright-red shape of Tansy running along the top of the fence. “Mother, it’s me.”
“Robin.” She didn’t take her eyes off the rosebush she was pruning. “So you finally showed your face, did you?”
“I’m sorry about Grandma.”
“No, you aren’t.”
So much for starting out on the right foot. “I am. She ought to have retired before she worked herself to death.”
“You know that wasn’t her style.” Mum finally turned around. “You’re looking awfully windswept.”
Speak for yourself. Her hair was twisted into a topknot and hardly looked better than my own wild blond curls, while mud stained her pale hands. The steely expression in her green eyes dared me to point it out. Angry and grieving or not, she was still the future coven leader. “That’s because I flew here and ran into a bunch of reporters.”
She muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath. “I hope you didn’t embarrass us.”
“I didn’t.” Technically, the stunt I’d pulled with the birds had been more humiliating for them than it’d been for me. “They’re not allowed to come to the funeral, are they?”
“Certainly not.” More red petals scattered onto the grass. “Any reporter who sets foot on Wildwood Coven territory will spend the rest of the week as a rat.”
“Tansy would like that.” I glimpsed her running across the lawn before she ascended one of the bird feeders and attempted to pry it open.
Mum tutted. “I forgot how wily she is.”
“She’s a red squirrel. She has to be.”
Tansy took pride in being the only red squirrel familiar in town, and while the pair of us shared a similar temperament, squirrels were easier to forgive for being arbiters of chaos.
Mum turned back to the roses. “The funeral is at dusk, but we’ll have to be there an hour earlier to welcome the guests.”
“I know. Rowan told me.”
Her jaw twitched. “You spoke to your cousin, then.”
“Yes, on the phone. She told me the news.” I’d always been closer to my youngest cousin than I had to the rest of the family, but with Aunt Shannon being Mum’s main rival for the title of Head Witch, I should have guessed she wouldn’t appreciate the reminder that I’d contacted her daughter before the rest of the family.
“Did she now?” said Mum. “Are you sure she wasn’t fishing for information to pass on to her mother?”
“It’s not as if Aunt Shannon has any reason to be interested in my life.” I might also have pointed out that Mum and I had barely been speaking to one another at the time, but I didn’t. “Besides, if she hadn’t told me about the funeral when she did, I might not have been able to book the week off work.”
“Work,” she repeated. “Stacking shelves, is it?”
Heat crept up my neck. “Deliveries. I’m saving for—”
“Deliveries?” she repeated. “Don’t they use magic for that these days?”
“I’m a courier for private clients.” In other words, I delivered boxes of priceless magical junk to rich witches and wizards and ensured said artefacts arrived in one piece. The work paid a pittance compared to how much our clients actually earned, but I liked travelling to new places, and it was a mile better than living under the watchful eyes of the Wildwood Coven.
“I thought you said you wanted to be a photographer.”
“I need to save for a decent camera first.” At the moment, most of my salary went towards rent. Mum had offered to keep giving me an allowance but only if I stayed here in Wildwood Heath and worked for the coven. I’d told her point-blank that I didn’t need or want bribery, and it was far more satisfying to pay my own way, even if it took longer.
“Based on the average magical courier’s salary, that’ll take you about a decade, won’t it?”
Thanks for that, Mum. “I’m waiting for a promotion.”
“Always a contrarian.” She shook her head. “Even as a toddler, you’d insist you wanted the opposite of what you did, solely for the sake of an argument.”
“This isn’t the same as that time I wanted to eat a mud pie as a two-year-old, Mother.”
Admittedly, this was my third attempt to make it alone since I’d left home at eighteen, and the previous two had ended with me returning to Wildwood Heath with my tail between my legs. While Mum had raised Ramsey and me more or less single-handedly since she’d divorced our father, she’d balked at the idea of me removing myself from the rest of the family and had barely spoken to me since I’d moved away again three years prior.
Mum and I had never seen eye to eye—possibly because she was a foot taller than me and had a tendency to look right over my head as though someone far more interesting stood over my shoulder. Like my brother, for instance. When her attention skimmed past me, I rotated on my heel and saw Ramsey approaching us. My brother was already dressed in his smartest suit, his blond curls tamed flat against his head, and the sight of Prickles sitting on his shoulder would have been an oddity if not for the fact that their haughty expressions were mirror images of each other.
Ramsey halted in front of me, his own gaze fixed somewhere behind me. Why he’d inherited Mum’s height and I hadn’t was as much a mystery as why he’d inherited the brains and I’d just got the temper.
“Did you know your familiar is running amok around the garden?” he asked me.
“Nice to see you too.” I straightened upright to look him in the eyes. “Tansy had to endure the indignity of flying on a broom, so I thought I’d let her stretch her legs for a bit.”
In truth, my familiar took instructions as well as I had as an apprentice witch, which was to say that my commands went in one furry ear and out the other one most of the time. I didn’t mind, but there was nothing like being around family to make me feel like I was being forced back into the shoes I’d once worn as a kid, which pinched my feet with every step and made me hobble with discomfort. Metaphorically speaking.
My brother did not look convinced. “Did you at least pack appropriate clothing for a funeral?”
“Sure.” Nobody would notice I was wearing my Pikachu socks if I wore my longest cloak, would they? “I just need to change, but we have plenty of time.”
“We most certainly do not,” said Mum. “My sister will be here at least an hour early.”
“So you’re pruning roses… why?”
She huffed and turned back to the flowerbed. “Because I was waiting for you to arrive.”
“All right.” I held up my hands in an attempt to placate her. “You didn’t throw out my stuff, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “You should be glad of it, since you took off without so much as a word of goodbye.”
Ramsey winced, while I watched the back of her blond head. “You weren’t around the morning I left. I looked everywhere.”
It wasn’t like she hadn’t known I was leaving that day, but the building tension over my last weeks in town had culminated in one of our worst arguments the night before, and since we shared the same stubbornness, neither of us had been willing to give ground.
Mum turned back to face me. “You’d be much closer to your goals if you’d taken your grandmother up on her offer.”
Not this again. “She didn’t actually want me to work as her assistant. I guarantee I wouldn’t have lasted a week before she’d kicked me out of the office.”
“If you’d given it a try—”
“I did. Don’t you remember?”
Back as a fledgeling witch, I’d had a brief stint helping out at one of the many Head Witch ceremonies with some of the other witches from the academy. Grandma had requested that we conjure up a stream of live birds to form the words “Head Witch” in the air. Unfortunately, I’d jumbled all the letters, and then the birds had refused to leave me alone, cawing and hooting and leaving droppings everywhere throughout the rest of the ceremony.
Shockingly, I’d been left off the list at the next ceremony and at every one since. The memory alone brought a flush to my face as bright as Tansy’s tail.
“You’re not a child any longer,” she said. “Besides, this week’s ceremony will be the first one where the leadership of the coven is guaranteed to change hands. It’ll be good practise for when your own turn comes.”
My heart sank. So she was still dead set on me eventually leading the coven… and, therefore, Wildwood Heath itself. Despite the process being democratic on paper, the coven leadership was traditionally inherited through matriarchal lines, and almost nobody dared to rock the boat by voting for an outsider. As the oldest daughter, Mum naturally expected to take over from Grandma, and since she’d refused point-blank to remarry or have any more kids, that meant all eyes would be on me next. While Ramsey was the eldest, and we’d hardly be the only coven to be led by a wizard rather than a witch, he’d decided to go into magical law enforcement instead and left me as the only possible contender.
Somehow, the notion of asking me what I actually wanted for my future was not on anyone’s radar.
Luckily—or not—Tansy decided to interrupt at that moment by executing a flying leap onto the bird feeder, sending startled blackbirds fluttering everywhere.
Mum sighed. “Take that familiar of yours indoors and get ready for the funeral.”
This is going to go well.
