scott street

8: AGATHA

"Aggie, are we going to talk about the... witch thing?"

Agatha, dangling backwards off of a sofa in the common room with Blunt Force Trauma in Borna Coric and a plate of biscuits, stared upside-down at Sophie.

"You're going to pass out," added Sophie.

"Which witch?" said Agatha.

"Mm. Funny, darling..." Sophie seized her legs and hauled her the right way around, then dropped in a heap of puffy black fabric next to her. "What the scarecrows conjured up for you? You know what we do to witches in Gavaldon?"

"Oh. Hmm..." Agatha swung into a sitting position and put her chin on her knees. "No."

"Agatha."

She truly was serious, if she wasn't pet-naming her...

"I don't know what you want me to say," said Agatha, trying to avoid getting hostile. "We do know, don't we?"

Sophie worried her lip, but somehow avoided getting lipstick on her teeth. Agatha suspected she was using magic to stop her entire face of makeup from budging an inch. It was practically bulletproof.

"I didn't realise you were... really afraid, though." she said. "I thought you just spurned the villagers... thought they were full of rot..."

Agatha decided not to tell Sophie that she was about as observant as a rock.

"Well, they are," she said. "But I think you'd have to be pretty stupid to not be at least slightly afraid of being hauled off to be burnt at the stake..."

"Is it after what Callis said?"

It was, admittedly. The knowledge that they'd gotten as far as the pyre with her mother had given her a good few sleepless nights, and made her notice exactly how cautious Callis was around fires...

"They couldn't get her now," Agatha mumbled, more to herself than to Sophie.

"Probably not, now magic seems to be slowly starting to work, again," said Sophie quickly. "She'd probably... explode their hearts or something."

"Mm..."

The truth was, they both knew that if Gavaldon got it into their heads that they were going to rid their village of a wicked woman, there was not a lot they could do to stop them, short of Sophie committing another mass murder. But if they gagged her, what could she do? And if they bound Agatha and Callis's hands, what could they do? Agatha didn't think her mother was a good enough witch to do magic without her fingerglow...

"It's why I went along with what we told them so easily." she said brusquely. Part of the reason, anyway. "I'm used to it, and they're used to me. If they knew you were a witch, they might panic, and turn on you..."

Sophie stared at her, face creased. She seemed to be remembering something–

But just as she looked on the verge of saying it, the door swung open.

"Um, this is our shit-talking spot." said Chaddick, taking up most of the doorway with his burly frame. Agatha could still see the heel of a boot and the gleam of an eye behind him, though, and knew who he was trying to conceal from view. Her stomach sank. She'd almost forgotten about the Camelot delegation from dinner.

"Oh, goody," said Sophie, springing up. "Handsome boys! I was getting withdrawal symptoms from being in Evil all day. What did your poncey old delegation have to say, Teddy? Apart from we look terribly silly, we're middle-aged men wearing tights?"