A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3) by Ruth Warburton Read Free Book Online Page B

came.
    ‘Well, there you go,’ Marcus said. ‘Please keep the number. If you need it.’
    ‘Thank you,’ I said. He bent and kissed my cheek. Then he was gone.

CHAPTER FOUR
    T he hall clock was chiming midnight as I closed the door carefully behind me, then locked it with the unwieldy key. Wearily, I kicked off my shoes and climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the little white spare room awaited. This was ‘my’ room when I stayed – and I should have walked thankfully inside and flopped onto the narrow white bed.
    Only – for some reason – I kept climbing. Up into the darkness.
    The bulb had gone at the top of the stairs and, as I climbed, the shadows closed around me. By the time I reached the top floor it was almost completely dark and I had to feel for the doorknob by touch. I didn’t know what was inside. But I could guess.
    I turned the knob, the door swung open, and I stepped inside my mother’s bedroom.
    It was a teenager’s room, but a teenager of decades ago, frozen in time the day she’d left it.
    There were fading posters on the wall: bands I’d never heard of, plays that closed decades ago, gigs in venues long since disappeared. A timetable for A-level revision was pinned over the desk, giving me a guilty twinge about my own revision, which was somewhere around the bottom of my list of priorities.
    Photos were stuck around the frame of the mirror: laughing girls, groups of friends, their arms slung around each other. I looked carefully, but didn’t recognize anyone. No, that wasn’t true. There was one face I did recognize. A girl with long dark hair and smoky blue eyes, laughing at her friend. It could have been me, but it wasn’t. It was my mother.
    Suddenly there were tears in my throat; hot, painful tears that lodged hard in my gullet like a sharp piece of bone. My limbs were shaky and I sat down hard on the bed. Her bed. The covers were rumpled. The last person to sleep here had been …
    I lay down, very carefully, feeling as if I was disturbing a museum relic. And then I turned my face to the pillow and breathed in the smell of my mother, the scent of her hair, the ghost of her perfume.
    ‘Please,’ I whispered to the silent house, to her ghost, ‘help me.’
    But only the night-sounds of London answered me.
     
    When I woke up I was stiff and cold, and my mouth felt acid and hungover, though I hadn’t drunk much at dinner. I looked at my watch. 4.10 a.m. Yuck.
    Something about the quiet of the house told me that my grandmother was still not home. I made my way stiffly down the stairs and sure enough the door of her bedroom was still gaping wide, the bed covers smooth and flat in the grey dawn light.
    In the spare room I pulled on a jacket and scribbled a quick note.
     
    Dear Grandmother,
    I’m sorry, I had to leave unexpectedly. I hope the meeting goes/went well. Call me when you have time.
    Anna x
     
    Then I walked out into the pale, sour dawn and began the long trudge towards Victoria Station and the first train to Winter. I wanted to be out of London. I wanted home. I wanted … The answer as it came to me, surprised me.
    I wanted Abe.
     
    ‘Abe!’ I yelled through the door again. Surely he wasn’t out?
    He wasn’t. As I was just about to knock again, I heard a coughing shuffling sound from inside and the lock clicked. A tousled head, face crumpled on one side from the sheets, peered blearily around the door.
    ‘Anna – what are you doing here? I thought you were in London?’
    ‘I was. I had to come home. Can I come in?’
    ‘Sure, yeah. Sorry I’m a bit …’ He opened the door wider and looked down at himself. He was wearing stubble, a towel slung around his waist, and not much else.
    I don’t know why, but I flushed red. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth and he shrugged.
    ‘I wasn’t expecting guests at the crack of dawn. Wait a sec.’
    ‘It’s hardly dawn!’ I called down the corridor towards his retreating back. For answer, he