Dark Water: An Urban Fantasy Story

  DARK WATER

  A Pride & Joy Story

  SARUUH KELSEY

  Pietersite

  The Stone of The Tempest

  Mottled dark gold and blue in appearance, Pietersite’s high energy clears emotional turmoil and restores calm. Believed to be connected to the storm, it can be an excellent protection stone.

  One

  Joy Mackenzie heaved for breath and fell back against the wall of the crooked little shop behind her, eyeing the hill that had just attempted murder on her lungs. This was Victoriya’s fault for telling Joy brisk walking was good for clearing the mind—though most things tended to be her witch sister’s fault, so this was no surprise. Joy swept the road with her eyes as she waited for her body to remember how to breathe.

  On the outside, Joy’s home of Agedale was like any non-supernatural town. Well, if you overlooked the fact that it used to be called Magedale. The high street was occupied by tidy, well-kept shops, the streets swept with sand from the beach, and the scent of salt and sea clung to the neat rows of houses branching off from it. But if anyone happened to look closely, they’d notice wands in the hands of witches, some dressed in traditional robes and others in modern coats and jeans and power suits. Or they’d see the gently pointed ears of elves, barely concealed behind long hair and delicate jewellery, or the more severe tips of fae ears. Fae were rare sights in the town centre—they isolated themselves in the community of big houses and bigger bank accounts on the cliffs by the sea, drenched in jewels and designer dresses—but there was no way they could pass for human if an unsuspecting visitor happened upon them. And there was no way this town could pass for normal on close inspection.

  In Joy’s opinion, the most obviously abnormal place in the whole town was the apothecary she was currently leaning against. And being a witch deemed too strange, too wrong, for the main coven, Joy knew a lot about being abnormal. Her breathing mostly normal, she hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and swung around to the door.

  Inside the apothecary, Joy’s heart did the little stumble it always did to see so many ingredients in one place, a greedy part of her wanting to hoard all of it like a dragon. Boxes full of powered roots were stacked as high as her head, rows of glass herb jars even higher, along with shelves of spices and plants, some of which were carnivorous. Fresh flowers and herbs dangled from the ceiling, little waterfalls of greenery above customer’s heads, making the whole room of wonders smell like sage and earthy witchcraft. Joy’s favourite part, the

  whole left wall, was one giant megalith of shelves sectioned into square cubbyholes entirely full of bottles. Some were slender, some dumpy, some clear white glass, some murky brown, but all were marked by a label with its contents scrawled in a dwindling hand.

  Sometimes, when Joy felt like she couldn’t breathe, suffocated by grief and loss and everything she’d done wrong before her mum’s death, Joy would take the wizened old woman who owned the shop a tub of purified water as an excuse to spend a few calm minutes inside the apothecary’s walls. It was part of their arrangement. Because of her nature—fae as well as witch, thanks to her dual parentage—Joy was one of few people who could purify water without boiling it for hours upon hours, so she kept Mor Margaret in supply and received a steep discount on her own spell ingredients.

  It was dim inside the single room of the apothecary, lit only by weak sunlight sifting in through narrow, grimy windows. Joy peered at the nearest shelf. She felt a bit like a child loosed in a sweet shop, as she always did in here.

  “You’ll give yourself headache, frowning like that.”

  Joy looked up, smiling ruefully. A stooped woman older than the town itself sat on a stool behind the counter at the far end of the narrow shop, her dark red hair in a frizzy cloud on top of her head, secured with a black ribbon, and her dark skin lit an amber shade by an old-fashioned lantern dangling above her.

  “Agrimony’s on the shelf above your head if that’s what you’re looking for,” the shopkeeper added, knowing Joy’s weekly order almost as well as she knew Joy.

  For some reason Joy couldn’t fathom, the herbs and raw ingredients changed place every few weeks. It was either a very clever ploy to keep customers in the shop longer or a casualty of Mor Margaret’s boredom.

  Joy collected a sprig of agrimony and inspected a jar of lady’s mantle on the shelf above.

  But it was only good for love spells, and she hastily put it back on the shelf. Joy’s love life was abysmal, so maybe she should have bought some. But the chances of her finding someone she liked half as much as she loved her ex-girlfriend was very slim. As it always did, the thought of Gabriella Pride cut Joy to the bone. The way things had ended between

  them was grim, and entirely Joy’s fault. She wanted to apologise. She wanted to see Gabi again. She was terrified at the idea of being in the same room as her.

  Joy busied herself collecting the rest of her order. Sage, lily of the valley, loosestrife—

  always a good idea with Victoriya around, as the herb helped ease an argument with a friend—anise, bay leaves, hawthorn berries, and rue.

  Voices rose outside the shop, along with the judgemental muttering that could only be executed by a gaggle of old women. Joy frowned, glancing at the door, curious, but Mor Margaret ran the gleaming gold bell on her desk five times in rapid succession, and Joy jumped a mile. “Sorry, Mor, what did you say?”

  “Is there anything you need help with?”

  “No, I’ve got everything,” she told the old woman, a shade grouchier than intended.

  The voices rose again, shouting this time. Joy recognised a note of alarm and tried to catch a glimpse of what was happening through the square of warped glass on the door.

  “What is that?” Mor Margaret grumped, sliding off her stool.

  Joy bundled her ingredients into her Bag For Life for somewhere to put them and followed the shopkeeper onto the street outside, the crystals that helped her cast spells rattling in her pockets. The usual loud whoosh of the sea and the wind was covered by shouting and calls of panic. Joy stopped dead in her tracks and tried to pick out individual words, but so many people were shouting—most witches but some elves in their elegant dresses and flowing trousers, all of them wearing worried expressions. All of them looking in the same direction.

  In the middle of the main road stood a fountain; it had been there for centuries, longer even than Mor Margaret had lived, and it had always flowed with clear water. Now, Joy’s heart stumbled to see it burbling with brackish liquid, much thicker than water. The pale, weathered face of the statue perched atop it was choking on the murky ichor. Joy’s senses warned her something was very, very wrong here.

  “What’s happening?” Joy asked the closest woman, an elf with golden hair, taking a step nearer to the fountain but mindful of the traffic. Most cars had stopped to view the black

  fountain but some were still streaming past. Joy stared at the dark water spilling over, marring the pale stone likeness of the town’s founder—Amerelda Lance, a renowned alchemist and witch of the nineteenth century—and wondered what had caused the fountain to do this. People took water from the basin all the time, thanks to rumours of Amerelda’s spirit blessing the water with enchantments for strength. Even the local herb garden was watered from it. Joy supposed someone could have spilled a potion into it, dropped a stray herb of some sort, but to make it this oozing sick colour?

  “That,” said Mor Margaret, “is unnatural. And damned bad for my business.”

  Two

  Two days later, Joy could tell it was going to be a bad day when she opened the door to find Victoriya Stone, her dark eyebrows slashed in a declaration of war and a pack of dogs snarli
ng at her feet. It wasn’t much of a surprise to find Victoriya in a noxious mood, but the dogs were usually friendlier.

  Victoriya shoved past Joy and into the house, kicking various things out of her way with her black boots. Her voice came out a sharp imitation of Joy’s own. “Just talk to him, Victoriya, what could possibly go wrong?” She kicked the umbrella stand on her way past; Joy blinked and shut the door, trying to work out what had infuriated Victoriya today. Not that it took an awful lot. “Oh, I know what could go wrong. Maybe his ex-wife could turn up and assume I’m one of his students. And not just that! Shoo me out of the door with a fucking study guide, a rudimentary spell pack, and a pat on the arm.”

  Victoriya got gradually louder and breathless as she ranted, stomping into the living room where her seven canine familiars—or accomplices depending on the situation—each claimed their regular spots. Joy watched as her friend threw herself into the armchair by the window.

  “Remind me, Joy Mackenzie, why don’t I murder you?”

  “Because we’re friends and the coven will be incomplete without me?” Joy offered. The dogs stopped their snarling at the sound of her voice—the same voice they knew offered treats and walkies.

  The big wolfhound lifted his head and glared balefully at her. It was true that dogs reflected their owners, and Tiny had enough Victoriya in his personality to make up for the other six being good natured. He even looked a bit like her, narrow in the face and lithe, like he’d been stretched upwards, with the same glaring eyes. It was always fun to watch people meet Victoriya for the first time; her beautiful face and doe eyes gave people the unfortunate impression that she had a sweet temperament to match. They usually ended up with the

  narrow end of Victoriya’s wand shoved into the soft flesh of their throat, or if it was a particularly patronising comment, directed much lower.

  Victoriya waved a hand, conceding the points Joy had made. “Thin ice, Mackenzie, thin ice.”

  Joy ignored the threat because she was more than used to them—in a way, it was how Victoriya expressed affection. Her mood brightened when the door opened again and Gus and Maisie came in, two more members of Joy’s coven.

  “What the hell is going on in this town?” Gus asked, flopping down on Joy’s sofa. Joy leaned against the sideboard behind the couch and watched her coven members fondly, even if they were getting footprints on the floor she’d hoovered earlier. The glossy wood cabinet still had her mum’s old trinkets and ornaments on it—little boxes with shells glued to them, porcelain kittens in petticoats and bonnets, an incomplete series of thatched houses that had once puffed smoke from the chimneys before the witchcraft wore off. Joy hadn’t had the strength or desire to move them in the six years since her mum had died, and doubted she ever would. With all the clutter gone, it wouldn’t feel like home.

  Besides, she thought, trying to clear the dark thoughts, if the place was tidier, I might get annoyed when my friends put their sandy boots up on the coffee table, or when Victoriya’s dogs leave paw prints on the sofas. Some witches were able to use their power for cleaning and home making, but Joy’s personal type of witchcraft—coaxed through crystals and sea glass—wasn’t particularly cooperative when it came to tidying up. And the fae nature she got from her mum was only good for charging water with moonlight or sunlight and purifying seawater for use in a spell. Or for getting her bath temperature to be perfect, which wasn’t such a bad gift.

  “Chaos,” Victoriya Stone replied delightedly from her seat by the fire. “Did you hear about Claribel’s wrinkle cream?” Her grin was a shade sharper than normal. Claribel was one of the witches of the main coven who had backed Paulina very loudly when she agreed to bar Victoriya entry—just in case she had been infected with the extremely rare, and as such unacceptable, brand of witchcraft her mum had: psychometry, the ability to read the history of an object or person with a single touch.

  Joy nodded. She’d overheard a few witches gossiping about it. Apparently, Claribel had brewed her usual anti-wrinkle cream but it had backfired. She now had jowls like a dog and was at the clinic, likely making the healers work around the clock to fix her beloved face.

  “How did you hear about it?” she asked, wondering if Victoriya had actually socialised at the community centre where she worked as a dance instructor. Whoever thought giving her a job where she had to interact with people was a good idea, Joy would never know.

  “Mum told me.”

  “Don’t look so excited,” Joy chided. “I’ve heard of four people’s spells going wrong, and ours aren’t doing much better.”

  “Yeah, you could be the one with jowls next,” Gus added. “Or a spell could go so wrong, it kills you. And I know just what I’ll put on your gravestone. Victoriya Regina Stone, beautiful as an angel, cold as a glacier.”

  Victoria gave him the finger. “Augustus Nevin, killed because he didn’t know when to shut up.”

  Maisie, Gus’s sister, snorted from where she was curled up in fox form on the floor in a nest of blankets. An uncommon witch, she had the ability to shift between various animal forms but after running herself low on energy and witchcraft, she’d become stuck in this form, unable to switch back.

  “Can you stop joking about murder?” Joy chastised. Her heart tightened at the thought of someone getting really hurt. At the thought of losing one of her coven members, the way she’d lost her mum. “If spells keep going bad, someone could be really hurt.” Claribel wasn’t the only case she’d heard about. One man’s lungs had shrunk when he smoked a cigarette with charged herbs in it. Another woman’s hand had blown up in the middle of casting a spell and only stopped when it was the size of a bucket. Witchcraft had become very dangerous lately.

  Victoriya rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Sure, let’s be dramatic and gloomy. Life is awful!

  The world is ending! We’re all going to die!”

  “We’re all what now?”

  Joy spun at the new voice, stunned someone had entered the house without her noticing.

  Salma stood in the doorway, tall enough that her head almost brushed the top of it, wearing a long flowing dress that made her skin look exceptionally dark. Her afro was cut close to her head and her long, elegant features were arranged in severe disappointment. She pushed into the room, dropped her messenger bag of books and spell ingredients on the table and levelled a look on Victoriya.

  “Another spell’s gone wrong,” Victoriya offered.

  “Where?”

  “Where do you think?” Victoriya snorted. “Agedale. Town full of witches, elves, and fae.

  You know the one—you live in it.”

  “Less of the sarcasm please, Victoriya.” Salma brushed past her to the chair occupied by Tiny and pointed at the floor. Even he wouldn’t cross Salma, and shuffled quickly to the carpet. Salma sat and crossed her ankles, the skirt of her dress falling to reveal a length of honeysuckle wound around her ankle in case of emergencies. Like most witches, Salma was an earth witch.

  “Where’s Eilidh?” Joy asked, craning her head to see around the door frame for her turquoise-haired friend and the baby of the group.

  “Carrying supplies from my car. I borrowed my mum’s cauldron since yours is dented, Joy.” A casualty of the last few spells.

  “Anything new since Wednesday?” Salma asked, adjusting the village of bracelets on her right wrist.

  Victoriya let out a bitter laugh.

  “She spoke to the guy,” Joy explained before Victoriya could say something foul. “It didn’t go well,” she summed up.

  “Did you speak to him?” Salma asked, “or snarl at him?”

  Victoriya replied by snarling at Salma. The dogs all turned to snarl at Salma too.

  Salma only blinked. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I spoke to him,” Victoriya mumbled, and the dogs went back to sleep. “I won’t be making that mistake again. He’s not interested in me.”

  “And you still won’t tell us who he is?”

 
“I’d rather let Nibble chew my arm off.” The Labrador in question stopped gnawing the coffee table’s wooden leg to cock his head at his mistress.

  Salma shrugged, letting the subject go. “Joy?”

  Joy shook her head. This part of their thrice-weekly meeting was meant for problem solving and airing of worries, but Joy’s worries were impossible to fix. There was no way to bring her mum back. It was three days until the anniversary of her death and nothing was going to ease Joy’s heartache this time of year.

  She tried to brighten her expression, hoping her friends wouldn’t see the pain she’d been dragging around for years—not just grief for her mum but resentment at her dad for leaving when she was young, and the ever-present hurt and loneliness that had dogged her since her vicious last conversation with Gabriella Pride, the one that had broken them up and sent Gabi fleeing to a different city.

  Salma moved on without question. “Gus?”

  “Oh, nothing major,” Gus said, waving a hand. Maisie yipped her disagreement and he amended, “Just mum being mum. I saw her at Marco’s earlier. She couldn’t just let me buy onions in peace, no, she had to tell me she missed me and wished I’d stop this silliness and come home. Silliness,” he repeated and let it sink in.

  Victoriya looked ready to rip out his mum’s throat. Salma sat back, her chin cutting an offended, angry line in the air. Joy’s own hands had curled into the padding of the sofa back.

  Maisie just lowered her head onto her front legs, looking tired.

  “It could be her way of saying she wants you back in her life,” Salma offered, rubbing her temples. Joy eyed her worriedly, turning a chunk of jasper over in her fingers for calm. “Just a headache,” she assured.

  “She wants her daughter back,” Gus said bitterly. “She wants Emily, not Gus, and that’s never going to happen.”

  “We know.” Salma reached across to pat Gus’s arm. “If she won’t accept who you are, she doesn’t deserve you.”

  Gus rolled his eyes, shaking off the seriousness. “Thanks, mom.”