from his eyes and blurred the bloody flecks on his skin. He barely noticed them. For how long he stayed there, rocking back and forth, he didn’t know. Crisp black letters marched through the blankness in his head.
My name is Lucas John Augustine Stearne. I am fifteen years old. My father is a twelfth-generation inquisitor. My mother is dead.
I am Lucas Stearne.
I am fifteen years old.
I am Lucas.
I am a witch.
Chapter 6
Glory was often exasperated by her dad but after their last encounter she just felt depressed. She had a sudden urge to celebrate Friday night, to join a crowd and go dancing. In the end, she made peace with Nate and gatecrashed a club night he’d scammed tickets for.
The doorman was a mate of Earl’s, so getting in wasn’t a problem. But it wasn’t Glory’s kind of place: an overpriced basement dive full of scruffy hipsters and the kind of public school type who likes to slum it in style. Nate had got their tickets from one of the latter – a trust-fund brat who wanted to play gangsters, and was dumb enough to think that Nate was the real deal.
It was a strange night. Glory felt tearful and panicky, yet laughed the loudest and talked the most. Her senses tingled all over, black flecks and bright sparks dancing before her eyes. She got home just before dawn and didn’t get up until lunchtime, when she was woken by a row in the room next door. Jacko and his on-and-off girlfriend were yelling blue murder. By the sounds of it, she’d just chucked her phone at his head. Then a door slammed, and it was quiet again.
Same old, same old . . . Glory stumbled out of bed with a groan. The pale yellow duvet ached against her eyes. The brush of a curtain rasped on her skin. A child crying somewhere outside scraped, monotonously, inside her skull.
Her window looked over a clutter of rooftops that widened out to London’s smoky rim. It was a view she loved. Today, however, the city didn’t seem to stretch out in all its possibilities, but appeared to box her in. Cooper Street showed few signs of spring. Since Auntie Angel had a theory that nature attracted germs, their own back garden was mostly concrete and plastic flowers in pots. The garden to Number Seven grew mud, beer cans and nettles; Number Eight’s was a barbed-wire prison camp for Joe Junior’s bull terriers.
This is it , Glory thought. My life, my world. Scams, squalor and stupid bickering . . . I should be better than this. Mab Almighty – I have to be.
Like Lily and Cora: self-made women, and head-witches worthy of the name. Style with substance. And unlike Lily’s thuggish sons, who’d made the Wednesday Coven a byword for viciousness and greed, they’d kept their integrity. That’s why people still talked about them with respect. Glory thought of the other coven women she’d known over the years, who’d grown pinched and sour from always coming second best to their man’s latest con or newest fling. Even Auntie Angel, for all her toughness and wiliness, hadn’t escaped. Married at nineteen to a bully who’d used her fae when it suited him, and blown everything she’d saved on drink and gambling . . . What were Glory’s chances of beating the odds? She leaned against the window frame, resting her hot cheek against the glass.
On the fence at the back of the concrete garden a tabby cat was licking its paws. Glory remembered she’d been petting it yesterday afternoon, even though it was a mangy old thing. Now it looked up towards her, ears pricked. And in that brief moment, the world changed.
Everything was suddenly washed-out, almost colourless, and blurred at the edges, though even the smallest of specks seethed with life. But it wasn’t just the quality of Glory’s vision that had altered. Her view had gone into reverse. She was outside the back of the house, looking up from the garden towards the attic window. For a second, Glory saw herself through the cat’s eyes.
Glory gave a stifled cry. She
My name is Lucas John Augustine Stearne. I am fifteen years old. My father is a twelfth-generation inquisitor. My mother is dead.
I am Lucas Stearne.
I am fifteen years old.
I am Lucas.
I am a witch.
Chapter 6
Glory was often exasperated by her dad but after their last encounter she just felt depressed. She had a sudden urge to celebrate Friday night, to join a crowd and go dancing. In the end, she made peace with Nate and gatecrashed a club night he’d scammed tickets for.
The doorman was a mate of Earl’s, so getting in wasn’t a problem. But it wasn’t Glory’s kind of place: an overpriced basement dive full of scruffy hipsters and the kind of public school type who likes to slum it in style. Nate had got their tickets from one of the latter – a trust-fund brat who wanted to play gangsters, and was dumb enough to think that Nate was the real deal.
It was a strange night. Glory felt tearful and panicky, yet laughed the loudest and talked the most. Her senses tingled all over, black flecks and bright sparks dancing before her eyes. She got home just before dawn and didn’t get up until lunchtime, when she was woken by a row in the room next door. Jacko and his on-and-off girlfriend were yelling blue murder. By the sounds of it, she’d just chucked her phone at his head. Then a door slammed, and it was quiet again.
Same old, same old . . . Glory stumbled out of bed with a groan. The pale yellow duvet ached against her eyes. The brush of a curtain rasped on her skin. A child crying somewhere outside scraped, monotonously, inside her skull.
Her window looked over a clutter of rooftops that widened out to London’s smoky rim. It was a view she loved. Today, however, the city didn’t seem to stretch out in all its possibilities, but appeared to box her in. Cooper Street showed few signs of spring. Since Auntie Angel had a theory that nature attracted germs, their own back garden was mostly concrete and plastic flowers in pots. The garden to Number Seven grew mud, beer cans and nettles; Number Eight’s was a barbed-wire prison camp for Joe Junior’s bull terriers.
This is it , Glory thought. My life, my world. Scams, squalor and stupid bickering . . . I should be better than this. Mab Almighty – I have to be.
Like Lily and Cora: self-made women, and head-witches worthy of the name. Style with substance. And unlike Lily’s thuggish sons, who’d made the Wednesday Coven a byword for viciousness and greed, they’d kept their integrity. That’s why people still talked about them with respect. Glory thought of the other coven women she’d known over the years, who’d grown pinched and sour from always coming second best to their man’s latest con or newest fling. Even Auntie Angel, for all her toughness and wiliness, hadn’t escaped. Married at nineteen to a bully who’d used her fae when it suited him, and blown everything she’d saved on drink and gambling . . . What were Glory’s chances of beating the odds? She leaned against the window frame, resting her hot cheek against the glass.
On the fence at the back of the concrete garden a tabby cat was licking its paws. Glory remembered she’d been petting it yesterday afternoon, even though it was a mangy old thing. Now it looked up towards her, ears pricked. And in that brief moment, the world changed.
Everything was suddenly washed-out, almost colourless, and blurred at the edges, though even the smallest of specks seethed with life. But it wasn’t just the quality of Glory’s vision that had altered. Her view had gone into reverse. She was outside the back of the house, looking up from the garden towards the attic window. For a second, Glory saw herself through the cat’s eyes.
Glory gave a stifled cry. She
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