Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

thinking, isn’t it? Oh God, Luke, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can go back there. What if they see me? What if Sebastian—’
    ‘I’ll go. You can wait in the park.’
    ‘No – if the servants see you . . . they know you’ve been turned off. Oh God.’ She put her hands to her face and he saw the ruby give a flash of fire.
    ‘Cover that up!’ Luke said urgently, and Rosa gave an exclamation of frustration and thrust her hand inside her shawl. ‘Look,’ he said more quietly, ‘we’ll wait until dark, then go round by the mews. No one will hear us.’
    ‘But they’ve engaged another groom already, and he’s sleeping above the stable. Mama was spending money like water on the promise of my marriage to Sebastian. No, I must go. I can make myself invisible if the worst comes to it.’
    ‘But will that work against a witch?’
    She flinched, and he said, ‘What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?’
    ‘It’s that word,’ she said quietly. ‘W-witch. It’s not . . . not polite.’
    ‘What do you call yourselves then?’
    ‘Nothing. What do you call yourselves? Normal. We call your kind “outwith”, do you know that?’
    ‘No.’ He felt again as if he’d fallen down a rabbit hole. ‘At least – I think I heard Sebastian call me that, once. I thought it was an insult.’
    ‘It’s not insulting,’ she said slowly. ‘Although he might have meant it that way. It’s just . . . the word we use to describe someone without magic. But to answer your question, it’s complicated. Another, well, someone like me – we can see through a spell an outwith might not be able to penetrate. But we would have to try. We would have to notice that the spell was there in order to break through it. I suppose it’s a bit like being a confidence trickster. Maybe you’re more likely to see through a deception because you know how it’s worked, but that doesn’t make you infallible, it doesn’t mean you’ll never be duped yourself.’
    ‘So – you’re less likely to get caught, but it’s not impossible?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But if they catch you . . .’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was bleak. ‘I don’t think Sebastian will let me go. I know what he did at the factory. I could give evidence against him. And my mother and brother will be bankrupt without this marriage. I think they would force me into it, or try to.’
    ‘No one can force you to marry!’ Luke burst out angrily. ‘This isn’t the Middle Ages, Rosa!’
    ‘It’s not that simple,’ Rosa said. Her face was tight, her lips pressed together. When she spoke again her words were clipped. ‘I’ve had no choices, no freedom, Luke. Not ever. It’s not like I can earn a living – I have nothing but what Alexis and my mother give me – whether that’s food, or clothes, or freedom.’
    ‘But no one can make you say, “I do”!’
    ‘Oh really?’ She looked at him, her small pale face full of a weary kind of anger. Luke shook his head, ready to argue his point, but found his head was no longer shaking but nodding. He opened his mouth to tell her to stop, to shout at her for playing with his mind like this, and he found his unwilling lips forming words that were not his own.
    ‘ I  . . .  do  . . .’ It came out like a strangled gasp, through lips that were stiff and teeth clenched together, but they were unmistakably words. Then, abruptly, she loosed the spell.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was cheap and cruel. But you see what I mean.’
    He shuddered, but still his mind refused to accept it.
    ‘But you’re a witch! You could fight them – fight the spell.’
    ‘I have magic, yes.’ Rosa pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders. ‘But I’m not particularly strong.’
    ‘You’re stronger than Alexis.’ He said it with certainty, remembering Rosa’s dazzling blaze of fire, compared to Alexis’s weak green haze.
    ‘Yes.’ There was no boasting in Rosa’s voice, just