A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3) by Ruth Warburton Page B

anyone have done it up here without being seen?’ I gestured to the street.
    ‘We’ll have to persuade the police.’ His face was grim. ‘By one means or another. Now are you going to help me, or not?’
     
    Jonathan was sick as we wrestled Caradoc’s body up to the ground floor and sick again as I tried to lay his body as close to how I’d found him as possible. It was as I was putting his hand across his breast, just as it had been downstairs, that I noticed the tiny scrap of paper between his clenched fingers.
    I pulled it out and smoothed it. It was a corner, no more, printed in heavy black-lead type, of the sort used in Victorian novels. Beneath the bloodstains, it read:
     
    A Rydelle
    A childe shalle be born on the feaft of Kings
    A childe of the Rook tho
    And t
     
    ‘What is it?’ Jonathan asked, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.
    ‘I think,’ I swallowed against the sharpness of the grief in my throat, ‘I think it’s what they came for. A riddle. And it’s gone.’
    ‘A riddle?’ Jonathan raised his eyes to the ceiling and his face twisted into an expression of such heartbreak that I looked away. ‘Oh Caradoc, you gave your life for a bloody riddle.’
    And then he began to sob – huge, heavy, tearing sobs. I tried to comfort him, but he put out a hand.
    ‘Go. Just go, Anna.’
    ‘But – the police …’
    ‘Just go.’ His voice was rough and torn. ‘You can’t help. It’s better not to complicate things any more. I can just say I found him.’ He pulled out the cash drawer of the till and threw the contents on the floor, the coins skittering towards the exit. ‘There. It was a burglary. Now, I’m calling nine-nine-nine, so go.’
    ‘But – but my clothes. They’re all covered in blood.’
    ‘You’re a damn witch,’ Jonathan cried. ‘You sort it out.’
    He sank to his knees on the shop floor, while I crept away.
    The bloodstains were gone by the time I reached the main road.
    The tears on my face took longer to dry.
     
    I trudged aimlessly, trying to walk away the dread and agony. Leicester Square, Soho, Oxford Street, Regents Street, Piccadilly, Bond Street – I zigzagged across London, the pavements hard beneath my feet, the outwith parting before me like gusting leaves. My feet were throbbing, but the feeling somehow kept the memory of Caradoc at bay, and I kept putting one foot in front of another, until I ended up in Green Park.
    And there – bizarrely, inexplicably – Emmaline was standing on the path in front of me, her face full of fury and shock. She ran towards me, gripping my arms with painful intensity, and then threw her arms around me.
    ‘Thank God! What happened?’
    ‘What do you mean?’ I asked dully.
    ‘Abe heard you – I don’t know how. He heard you screaming and he rang me at school. And that was when I realized, you hadn’t come in all day. So I went to your house and you were gone – what the hell are you doing here?’
    ‘I came …’ I sank to the grassy verge and drew my knees up to my chin. ‘I came to see Caradoc.’
    ‘And? Anna, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
    It was too close to the truth. I shut my eyes, pressing my palms to my face. The words swelled and choked inside me, lodging in my throat like stones. ‘Caradoc’s dead,’ I managed.
    ‘ Dead?’
    ‘I asked him to trace a text, a riddle, that my mother stole from the Ealdwitan. And he found it and called me to tell me. But he was killed before I could get to him.’
    ‘Oh my God.’ The colour had drained from Em’s face and she sank to the grass beside me. ‘This is serious, isn’t it?’
    ‘Caradoc should never have been involved!’ I cried. ‘It’s all my fault – I asked him to look for that riddle. I should have known!’
    ‘How on earth could you have known? This is not your fault.’
    ‘So people keep saying – not my fault … not my fault … None of it’s ever my fault – Bill’s death, Bran’s death, now Caradoc’s