The Wyrd of Willowmere

Chapter 4

The next few days were quiet and uneventful. Myra booked a flight for British Columbia and phoned Claire the night before she left, asking her to pet-sit while she was gone. "Mrs. Hodge will house-sit as usual, but it will help her if she doesn't have to do all the feedings and walkings and the rest. And Koko does get so neurotic if he doesn't get attention every day ... And Claire, I promise I'll let you know immediately if I learn anything." About your mother, she implied but did not add.

Claire continued going to school, and found it rather pleasant now that she was a member of a group at last. There was always someone to sit with in the cafeteria. Lunch had been something to endure, since she had always sat apart at a corner of one of the tables, bolting her food while pretending to read a book or her phone screen and leaving as soon as possible. Now she lingered over her meal, listening to Donna and Brian and the others talk and frequently joining in when the topic was something she was interested in.

"Want to do something after school?" Brian asked her at lunch on Wednesday. "We could go to the cafe."

"Thanks, I'd really like to but I have to look after a friend's pets," explained Claire, wondering who he meant by "we": all the group, or just himself and Claire? The two of them were alone at the table; Donna and the others were still queuing up at the counter. "She's away for a few days, so I'm helping her house-sitter feed the animals. And the dog needs to be exercised."

Brian's face lightened. "Hey, I know! There's a great trail through the conservation area behind my house. People are always walking their dogs there. I bet your friend's dog would love it. Why don't I take you both there?"

"Well—okay," replied Claire. Was Brian searching for reasons to be with her alone? Or was he just being helpful? She decided she didn't object if it was the former. He didn't seem at all like the kind of guy who would try anything. "Thanks," she said, returning to her food.

"I can use the exercise, too," he said. "I've been spending way too much time at my computer."

She looked up at him again, meaning to ask a question; but then her blood seemed to congeal in her veins. Over his shoulder she spied two figures that stood out strangely in the lunchtime crowd of students. They were adult men, both clad in Elizabethan-looking attire, with lacy ruffs around their necks, tall beaver hats, doublets, and trunk hose that swelled above their knees like cloth balloons. One, a heavyset man with thick dark eyebrows, was dressed entirely in black. The other's clothes were of a deep rust-red colour and his hair and spade-shaped goatee were also red, giving him a slightly devilish look. Those faces—she knew those faces. They shouldn't be here, not now—in the twenty-first century. It was Edward Morley and Anthony King, the witch hunters.

"What is it?" asked Brian, turning to look in the direction she was staring.

He couldn't see them. No one else in the cafeteria reacted to them either. She was able to move then, as if his query released her from some horrible spell. Taking hold of her glasses, she eased them down the bridge of her nose and peered over the tops of the lenses. The figures were still there, sharp and clear, even though everything else was blurred and indistinct from her myopia. They were false images, imposed on her brain to startle and alarm her; the enemy daimons had gained access to her mind while she was distracted. Go away, she thought, and flung up a mental barrier around her thoughts. The images faded—but not before the red-bearded Anthony King gave her a mocking smile, one that she recalled all too well. He had smiled like that when he threw her into the river ...

"Claire? You okay?"

She pulled herself together, restoring her glasses to her nose. "Uh, yeah—I just thought I recognized someone. You were saying—?"