From the room at the end of the hall, Arthur let out a loud moan. “I was trying to sleep.”
“Well, wake up. I’ve got to talk to you all about something important.”
Footsteps clattered from every corner of the house, and one by one the guys filtered in – Corbin and Rowan carried plates of savoury scones (half-eaten, I couldn’t help but notice), and Arthur, wearing boxer shorts with pictures of Asterisk characters on them and his bloodlust hoodie.
“Where are Flynn and Blake?” I asked.
Rowan offered Aline the plate. She swiped three scones, looked thoughtful for a moment, and then grabbed a forth. “They went to the village about an hour ago, with that trailer.”
“What trailer?”
“Flynn came inside at dinner and there was a car with a covered trailer in outside his studio, like a horse float. I saw it from the salad garden.” Rowan shrugged. “I assumed you knew.”
I groaned. Only this morning we’d discussednotgoing off with hairbrained schemes on our own, and now Flynn and Blake had disappeared with a mystery trailer. Those two together was guaranteed to equal trouble. What the hell had they got themselves into now?
CHAPTER TWELVE
THIRTEEN: FLYNN
“Shift it over there!” I snapped as a large metal spike bore down on my foot.
“Where?” Blake lifted the other end of the statue, digging the corrugated iron into my toes.
“Not there. Pull it left!”
“Thatisleft!”
“The other left, you eejit.”
We managed to wobble our way out of the trailer and drag the statue across the darkened town green. In the center was a low concrete plinth that had once housed a statue of Winston Churchill. Two years back, some local gobshites lobbed one of the arms off and the Council had taken the statue away while they argued over how much it would cost to repair. Along with other local artists, I submitted a proposal that we should replace the arm with a steampunk-style machine-gun. My proposal went unacknowledged. Wankers.
This Irishman’s getting the last laugh.
It took us three tries to heft my statue on top of the plinth. I checked the feet.Perfect.I’d lined the bolts up exactly.
I went back to the rental car for my concrete drill. Blake held the statue while I drilled in the bolts. The sound shook the night and my heart pounded. Any moment I expected someone to run over and stop us.
One. Two. Three. Four.I tossed down the drill and reached under the balaclava to wipe away a sheen of sweat from my forehead. The greene was surrounded by shops, none of which were open after 9PM except the pub. And tonight was the monthly folk night, so the place would be busier than a confessional after Saint Paddy’s Day. If anyone heard the drilling, they’d be too legless to investigate.
Maybe we really will get away with this.
I fitted and tightened the bolts, then stood back to admire the statue.
“She looks wicked fierce,” Blake grinned.
She did indeed. I’d made the witch a flowing dress out of sheets of corrugated iron. Hair made from wire brushes stuck out from all angles from beneath her pointed gramophone hat. She held her broom in one hand, the other raised – a garden fork with the tines bent and curled into a claw. On the end of the broom sat a tiny, long-necked cat, with its paw raised in a similar menacing gesture.
Some of my finest work, and it wasn’t even the half of what I had planned. “Now for thepièce de résistance,” I slapped my hand on the witch’s shoulder and retreated into my feelings, the way Candice taught me to do. I forced myself to think of all the times people had looked at me weird, told me I didn’t belong, all the times my uncle belted me around the head for being too much of a gas, all the times I’d wished I could be normal…and I poured that into the metal.
You want to believe we’re witches. You want to believe we’re the ones who are going to marmalise you. Have at it!
I poured more magic into the statue, focusing on the bolts, on holding them true, making them impenetrable by any human tool that might try to remove them.
The metal heated up as Blake’s spirit magic shot through mine, mingling together to create a vacuum for belief. When it was so powerful it tugged at my power, pulling more into itself than I’d been willing to give, I stepped back. Blake sealed it with the spell we’d memorised from the grimoire, so that the statue would collect the belief rising from the village and store it like a giant belief grain silo.
I might have let go of a tiny piece of my own magic, but as the village woke up in the morning and saw this statue on the greene – having appeared from nowhere in the dark of night and held down with bolts that couldn’t be broken – we’d have all the magic we could possibly need.
I tugged my balaclava down over my face. My heart raced. I was just like Banksy, sneaking around in the dead of night, planting controversial art in a public space like a subversive curator. Only, unlike Banksy, the village would be interacting with this piece in a way they’d never believed possible.
