Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

23

Bright white. Harsh fluorescent strip lighting. Exposed toilet, sink and shower. Basic cot bed made up with white linen.

The least they could do is provide a Cosmo or something.

The cell opposite me was identical. Thankfully it was empty. There would be no privacy for prisoners housed in these opposing rooms.
Sweeping the ceiling from corner to corner, I noted four cameras. After pacing the cell, I realised that every inch of floor space was covered by the little swivelling eyes.

Guess I should have expected that.

To hell with it. A quick sniff at my hoodie told me that I couldn't put it off any longer, and here was a shower designed specifically for dangerous prisoners like me. If there were any pervs on the other side of the security feeds, let them look. It wouldn't be much of a show. I performed a two-finger salute to the closest camera anyway, just to cover my bases.

As the hot water sluiced over my clammy skin, I couldn't help but feel thankful that cold water wasn't part of my punishment. There was always a silver lining, if you looked hard enough.

Clean and dry, I got dressed in the white prison jumpsuit that had been laid out. There was nothing worse than putting dirty clothes back on after a shower. I curled up on the bed. The silence in the sealed room made the blood pounding round my brain deafening. Never thought I'd miss the comforting white noise of normal life quite so much.

Hungry, tired and alone, the only thing that I could fall back on was the magic that had got me into this mess in the first place. I pictured the silver tendrils of my life-force uncurling from around my organs. Liver, kidneys, lungs and heart. As they unwound I whispered the words to the White Paternoster, the prayer that had been used by my family for generations.

Open, open heaven door keys,
Shut, shut hell door.
Let christened child
Go to its mother mild.
What is yonder that casts a light so farrandly?
Mine own dear son that's nailed to the tree.

I thought of my mother singing the words to me as a lullaby, and the warmth of the memory heated my insides, encouraging the silver particles of my magic to multiply, to knit together to form the web of my magic.

This charm had been used for centuries by the Northern Coven to break curses and ward against evil. But the song was more than that. Its words were sacred; words of religion changed and claimed for magic.

They were words of power.

I knew the White Paternoster was more than a charm. Those words could do more than break curses. Jennet Device had used them to control a courtroom, to strip a whole coven of its magic. She'd used them to cage powerful vampires.

She'd moulded them into the shape of the Eye.

The trial started in less than twenty-four hours and I had little to no faith in the DPA's judiciary system. Back when my ancestors the Pendle Witches stood trial for witchcraft, their fate had already been decided before they had even been arrested. King James had a thirst for the blood of witches, and every judge and nobleman wanted to please him.

Getting rid of the parish's poor and needy was a boon for cruel and greedy men. Superstitious landowners believed that an angry gaze and a bitter word could bring them real misfortune; physical harm to their own bodies, or to their chattels. The Pendle folk used hard words and curses when alms were refused to them, it mattered little whether they contained magic or not. Nobody cared to speak for those poor, ignorant souls; not when it might draw unwanted attention onto their own families.

I might be standing trial under an administration that understood magic, had resources to study and ways to investigate it. But the strains of prejudice were still strong, and I knew that those in power wanted to get rid of me just as much as Roger Nowell had wanted to rid himself of the Pendle Witches. I was an inconvenience with dangerous magic, just like them.

But that wasn't it. Not all of it anyway.

Somebody had put Nowell onto the Pendle Witches in 1612. Somebody with power and influence in seventeenth-century society.
Lying on the hard cot, I tried to make sense of why the Knyvets had targeted the Pendle Witches four hundred years ago, and why they'd come after me. What could have brought those events crashing into the present day?

What was different about right now that could have triggered the centuries old feud?

It didn't take a genius to realise that it was all about the Eye.

The All Seeing Eye through which the cosmos sent the witches their magic all those years ago and then closed it off from them. The Eye of providence through which some fuzzy deity has already foreseen every event in the cosmos and was probably laughing at the joke of how they'd let the first Alice escape only to repeat history with me. The Eye that had given me back my magic just in time to get me in trouble with the DPA.

Yeah, that Eye.

When I killed Baroness Knyvet two weeks ago, a chain of events was set in motion that brought me face-to-face with the fate of the Pendle Witches. But Thomas Potts was not on hand to save me like he had my ancestor. No, Thomas and I were on the outs; he wasn't my Knight in shining armour.

I would have to save myself.

Come on then Alice, you can do it! Hope you're enjoying the story!