hand and the many silver rings that adorned her fingers glinted as she made a mysterious sign in the air.
‘What’s she doin’?’ Angie asked nervously.
Lil took a deep breath and half closed her eyes.
‘Selvedge aran intarsia shibori sirdar attente echantillon,’ she chanted.
‘Stop it!’ Bev cried nervously.
‘She’s castin’ a spell or somethin’!’ Angie said, moving away. ‘I don’t like this.’
Bev and Angie ran past Lil and darted back through the passageway. But Tracy wasn’t so easily intimidated.
‘Pathetic!’ she yelled after them before glaring at Lil, who was still drawing shapes in the air and muttering strange words.
Tracy swung Verne’s rucksack round with all her strength and threw it as far as she could into the white foaming waters. It vanished into the deep. Verne cried out in dismay and Tracy laughed like a donkey.
‘Little kids,’ she said, striding past Lil. ‘You’re both saddo losers.’ And she jabbed the girl sharply in the side with her elbow.
Lil turned on her, but before she could do anything there was a rumble far out at sea. The storm that had been threatening all afternoon was about to break. The waves smashed with more fury against the pier and one huge swell raced towards them. Tracy screamed as it broke over the stone wall, right where she stood, drenching her from head to toe. Seawater poured from her sleeves and sloshed in the hood of her coat. For several sopping moments she could only gag and spit out the brine that had crashed into her mouth. Then she saw what the great wave had deposited at her feet. It was Verne’s rucksack.
Tracy spluttered with disbelief and she stared back at Lil and Verne with bulging eyes. The wave hadn’t touched them.
‘What are you?’ she said fearfully as she stumbled away. ‘You’re not normal! They should bring back burning!’
Lil and Verne watched her stumble and squelch out of sight, back into the town. Then Lil helped the boy to his feet and retrieved his rucksack for him as he loosened his scarf.
‘She’s such an ignoramus,’ she said with irritation. ‘They didn’t burn witches in England. You all right, Verne? Maybe I should’ve made you a bobble hat for Christmas instead of that scarf. You can’t throttle someone with a woolly hat.’
‘How did you do that?’ he asked, amazed.
‘It’s easy. You just cast on and get knitting.’
‘No. I mean summon that wave to bring my bag up from the bottom of the river and soak Tracy?’
Lil laughed. ‘Don’t be daft!’ she said. ‘That was just a massive, freaky coincidence.’
‘But those words, the spell . . .’
‘That wasn’t a spell, you thicky. They were knitting terms and types of wool! I wouldn’t waste good Latin on that lot. Besides, I keep telling you – there’s no such thing as magic. My mum and dad might think they’re witches, but that doesn’t make it true! Still, it should keep her off your back for a while. She’s a nasty piece of work.’
The boy eyed her doubtfully as he hoisted his wet bag on to one shoulder. Wearing that long black velvet cloak, Lil looked entirely capable of commanding the sea to do her bidding.
She glanced at the darkening sky. The low clouds were trawling a curtain of rain towards the harbour.
‘We’d best get out of this,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘Come back to ours and get dry. There’s cake.’
High on Whitby’s East Cliff, in the old churchyard, the biting wind whipped round the church of St Mary and raged between the hundreds of blackened headstones. The day was getting darker and the sea and the clouds were the same threatening brownish-grey. The storm was gathering in strength. When its full force hit the small seaside town, it would be brutal. The streets below were empty now; everyone had sought shelter.
But through the graveyard a lone, slender figure was creeping. The bright pink raincoat the woman wore almost glowed in the deepening gloom. Stealthily, she threaded her way across the clifftop, staring searchingly at the worn tombstones.
‘Gotta be one here someplace,’ Cherry Cerise muttered to herself, pushing a pair of large retro sunglasses further up her nose. ‘Those little critters love a foul day like this. This is precisely the sort of soaker that always brings them out. So where are . . . ?’
She halted suddenly and caught her breath as a long grey feather blew into her face. Brushing it away, she saw it was streaked with blood. The woman smiled grimly. Gulls were a favourite snack of squalbiters. Another feather rushed by, then another and she stared across the churchyard to where they had come from.
Clinging to the corner of one of the headstones, digging its hind claws into the pitted surface, was a repulsive creature – a squalbiter, just what she was looking for. Cherry had read descriptions of them in the books she kept in a locked drawer back at her cottage, but this was the first time she’d got close to a live one. They were amphibious vermin; vicious imps from the deep regions of the sea, only surfacing to bask in the most violent storms. One of the books contained an old engraving, but even that hadn’t prepared her for the ugly reality.
It was the size of a small terrier, and covered in black and silver scales. Barbed spines ran down a ridged back to the tip of its hooked tail. The four yellow, fishlike eyes in its flat face were fixed on the twitching remains of the bird grasped in its front claws. As Cherry watched, the squalbiter tore off the gull’s head and chewed and crunched it noisily, swallowing the tasty mouthful beak first.
The sea imp was so preoccupied with its meal that Cherry managed to sneak up unnoticed. She lunged forward. Before the creature could react, she caught it in a purple net bag.
Dropping the gull, it let out a scream, reaching through the gaps to attack the human who had captured it. Cherry held the bag at arm’s length and the squalbiter’s talons raked empty air.
‘You play nice,’ she warned. ‘Else I’ll swing this round and smash you against the stone so hard, your nasty carcass will resemble a mess of dropped eggs. You hear me?’
The squalbiter continued to struggle and it began chewing through the purple string.
‘Hey!’ Cherry protested. ‘That’s a Mary Quant original!’
Whirling the bag in a wide arc, she crashed it against the headstone, more as a warning than with any real force. Even so, the creature within screamed and pulled its limbs inside, whimpering.
‘That’s better,’ the woman said. ‘You be a good little monster or I’ll turn you into a gull buffet. If they’d even go near your stinky guts.’
Through the netting, the yellow eyes blazed at her and a snarl gargled behind the rows of sharp teeth.
‘Zeer knows you,’ a thin, rasping voice hissed. ‘Zeer knows.’
‘What do you know, squidbreath?’
The creature’s thin tongue flicked out at her.
‘Witch,’ it said.
Cherry’s jaw tightened.
‘Who told you that?’ she demanded.
‘Zeer hears much,’ came the snickering rely.
‘What else did you hear? Tell me about this storm blowin’ in. This ain’t natural. I know there’s somethin’ awful behind it, somethin’ stronger than I ever sensed before.’
‘Yes,’ the creature said with a vile grin. ‘Very strong. Zeer likes it much.’
‘Who sent it and why?’
‘Won’t