Half Bad by Sally Green Page B

one of the few things Marcus is bad at. I have weird noises in my head, and I bet that runs in the family as well.
    “Marcus hates White Witches. I’m not fond of most of them either. But I don’t go around killing them!” I shout that last bit at the treetops.
    “He leaves no survivors. He kills women, children, everyone, except he didn’t kill my mother. He would probably have killed Jessica, Deborah, and Arran, but they were with my gran the night he attacked my mother. He killed their father.”
    Silence.
    I look at Mary and speak quietly now. “He didn’t kill my mother. He didn’t kill Gran either, though you say they’ve met. You say Gran knew him better than you did, so I guess they met more than once . . .”
    Mary nods.
    “So Marcus knew my mother. And Mother didn’t hate him . . . or fear him, or despise him?”
    “I don’t believe so.”
    I hesitate. “But they couldn’t be . . . friends . . . or lovers . . . That would be . . .”
    “Unacceptable,” Mary says.
    “If they were, they would have to keep it secret. . . . Though my Gran found out?”
    “Or knew from the start.”
    “But either way it wouldn’t make any difference; Gran couldn’t do anything except try to keep it secret too.”
    “That was the best way, the only way, in which she could protect your mother. I admit she did well, considering. I believe your mother and father met once a year.”
    “So, Marcus and my mother . . . they wanted to see each other . . . they arranged to meet, sent the kids to Gran’s . . . but the husband turned up unexpectedly . . . and Marcus killed him.”
    Mary is nodding to each one of my statements.
    “But my mother killed herself because of the guilt. . . .” I sense Mary is shaking her head.
    “Because she couldn’t be with Marcus?”
    Mary is still shaking her head.
    I hold my gaze away from her, eventually saying what I have always known. “Because of me?”
    Mary’s hand is on my arm and I turn to look at her pale eyes, watery with age. “Not in the way you think.”
    “How many ways can there be?”
    “I suspect she hoped that you would look like her, like her other children. You didn’t. It was clear once you were born that your father was Marcus.”
    So it was because of me.
    Mary pushes me on. “What would the Council want your mother to do?”
    I remember Jessica’s story and the card she said had been sent to Mother. I say, “Kill me.”
    “No. I don’t think the Council has ever wanted that. But your mother was a White Witch; she loved a Black Witch and had his child. And, because of her relationship, her husband—a White Witch, a member of the Council—was killed.”
    The truth leaves me hollow. They would want her to kill herself. They made her do it.

Two Weapons

    The next morning Mary makes porridge. She sucks hers up slowly, making disgusting noises. I haven’t slept, and the slurping sets me on edge.
    Between spoonfuls she says, “Your gran has done the best she can with you.”
    I scowl at her. “My gran has lied to me.”
    “When?”
    “When she didn’t tell me that she had met Marcus, that she knew Marcus. When she didn’t deny that my mother was attacked by him. When she didn’t tell me that the Council was responsible for my mother’s death.”
    Mary pokes me with her spoon. “If the Council ever found out where I was and what I’d helped you discover, what do you think they’d do to me?”
    I look away.
    “Well?”
    “Are you trying to tell me that they would have killed Gran?”
    “And will do.”
    I know she’s right, of course, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.
    Mary gives me a string of chores to “help me get out of my morning grouchiness.”
    As she supervises my scraping out of the chicken house, I say, “Gran told me that you left the Council in disgrace.”
    “Well, I suppose that’s one way of describing it.”
    “How would you describe it?”
    “A lucky escape. Finish that and