Night Witches by L J Adlington Read Free Book Online Page B

anything wrong with it, can there, or I’d’ve known by now? I haven’t heard from Reef either. I got my nerve up to try messaging him once. No connection. Is he blocking me, or is he deep in forest snows again?
    I step away from the packing line and try my keypad.
    ‘Well?’ asks Zoya. ‘Are you getting the same alert as me?’
    I blink. ‘I’ve got to report to People’s Number One Airbase at Loren in three days’ time.’
    ‘Me too! Everybody will die of envy when they hear! Loren’s the main Air Force base, Pip. The centre of the flying world! The absolute home of Rodina’s best fighters and bombers.’ She stops dead. ‘Wonder what they want us to do?’

‘ Y ou’re not going,’ says Mama for the hundredth time, the morning I’m meant to leave. ‘I lost you once, I won’t lose you again.’
    ‘I wasn’t lost, I was just at Air Cadets for training, like Aura said.’
    ‘I don’t mean that! I mean before , back when you were just a baby. You were too young to remember . . .’
    ‘Never mind all that,’ says Papi quickly. ‘I just don’t understand why Rain would be any use for Victory work at an airbase. Still, we have to let her go if that’s what Aura says is best.’
    Mama wails, ‘Why can’t she stay safe in Sea-Ways, making guns?’
    ‘We’ll be safe in Loren,’ I interrupt timidly. ‘It’s hundreds of klicks from the front line.’
    ‘And how long will it stay safe when those Crux barbarians just keep on coming whatever we do to try and stop them? It’ll be over before it’s begun, that’s what everyone said – and now we’re told it’ll be Victory by Long Night, but—’
    There’s a knock at the door.
    Mama goes grey. For a moment we all think, Is it a Scrutiner, listening in on Mama’s negative talk?
    It’s only Pedla Rue, with a sweetly sour smile.
    ‘Heard you’re leaving today,’ she says. ‘You should be careful. Loren’s a long way off, near strange parts – Lim lands and worse. Take this with you. It was my husband’s. I hid it when he had to go away. You never know when you might need it.’
    She holds out a small bracelet with bells like the one that Steen tried to give me.
    Mama practically explodes. ‘What are you doing with bane-metal in the building? You know charms are illegal. Destroy it, quickly!’
    ‘Shan’t!’ says Pedla, with her chin jutting out. ‘It keeps witches away.’
    Papi snatches the thing from Pedla and tells her to shut up before he sicks a Scrutiner on her.
    ‘You wouldn’t! Not after what they did to my poor husband, and me just an old lady, no harm to anyone, and your neighbour all these years . . .’
    Papi pushes past her. ‘Come on, Rain. We’ll go and collect Cousin Zoya and head to the station.’
    I get away without Mama kissing me and pretend it doesn’t cut me up to see her crying. She’s working extra shifts at the factory and can’t see me off. Her last words to me are ‘ Be a good girl, Rain. ’
    When am I not?
    Pedla won’t keep her distance. She reaches out to tweak my cheek just as we get to the stairwell and I have to pretend I’m stumbling on the stairs when I get slammed with a vision of her, flat in a street with a gunshot wound right where her babbling mouth used to be. These visions have got to stop . I dip my face into my coat collar and hide my hands in Reef’s gloves.
    It’s crazy at the station, with bundles of refugees staggering off the trains and ranks of soldiers marching on to them. We’ve got two seats booked on the big double-deck Transnation service that used to go right to the border and beyond. Now we don’t even know where the border is any more, because maps are no longer accessible to anyone outside the military.
    While Zoya says goodbye-and-go-well to Uncle Mentira, Papi pulls me away for a moment, down the side wall of a snack bar. I’m not really paying attention to him because I’m listening to Zoya saying she’ll be homesick, while Uncle Mentira lectures,