Half Bad (12 page)

Celia is an ex-Hunter. She won’t tell me when she retired or why. All she says is that she’s employed by the Council to be my guardian and teacher.

She guards against me escaping and she teaches me about fighting and surviving. We have now moved from unarmed to armed combat, though we are only armed with wooden knives. I asked if we could practice with guns and she said, “Let’s see if you can master the knife,” like she’s some ninja expert, which of course she turns out to be. The pretend knives are all the same unusually long and slender shape. I’m guessing that the Fairborn is like this.

Celia also teaches me about Marcus.

So it all seems to be heading in a certain direction. At first I said nothing, played dumb, but I can’t play along any more. I have to make some effort to fight back, and so the other day I tackled it head on.

“I won’t kill my dad. You know that, don’t you?”

She blanked me.

But I know blank looks and I shook my head. “I won’t kill him.”

She said, “I’ve been instructed to tell you these things. I tell you them. I don’t question why.”

“You teach me to query everything.”

“Yes, but some queries won’t get answered.”

“I won’t kill him.”

“Let’s suppose Marcus has threatened to kill a member of your family: Arran, say. The only way you can save Arran is by killing Marcus.”

“Let’s suppose something more realistic. The Council threatens a member of my family: Arran, say. The only way I can stop them killing Arran is by killing Marcus.”

“And?”

“I won’t kill my father.”

“All your family. Your grandmother, Deborah, and Arran are being tortured.”

“I know the Council would kill them all. They are murderers. I’m not.”

Celia raised her eyebrows at that one. “You would kill me to escape here.”

I gave her a big smile.

She shook her head. “And if they threatened you? Tortured you?”

“They threaten me constantly. Torture me constantly.”

We were silent.

I shrugged. “Besides, I’m not good enough to do it.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Do you think I’ll be good enough, one day?”

“Perhaps.”

“I’ll need my Gift.”

“Probably.”

“Will the Council give me three gifts?”

Silence. And the blankest of looks. I’d tried that question before and not got anywhere.

“What happens to Black Witches if they don’t get three gifts? Do they die?”

“There was one girl I know of, a Black Whet, captured when she was sixteen. She was kept prisoner by the Council, not mistreated. Of course, she wasn’t given three gifts. She became ill with a disease of her lungs and also of her mind. She died just before her eighteenth birthday.”

Would I be another experiment to see what happens? And what would happen to me?

* * *

The lessons about Marcus cover his attacks and his Gifts. There is a huge list of the witches he has killed, where, and when. By
where
I mean what country, town, or city, but also whether it was inside, outside, near water, mountains, streams, cities . . . By
when
I mean dates, but also times of day or night and phases of the moon, weather conditions . . . There are one hundred and ninety-three White Witches on the list and also twenty-seven Black Witches, though the list is probably incomplete for them. Marcus is forty-five years old now, and so in the twenty-eight years since he received his Gift that averages between seven and eight killings a year.

The numbers are dropping off, though; he peaked when he was twenty-eight with thirty-two murders in that year. Perhaps he’s getting old, perhaps he’s mellowing, or perhaps he’s killed most of the ones he wants to.

The Gifts for all these witches are on Celia’s list. He hasn’t eaten all their hearts, just the ones with Gifts that he wants.

Marcus’s Gift, his own original one, is that he can transform into animals. He favors turning into cats, big cats. Most of the evidence is from tracks, a few distant sightings, and the bodies. There aren’t a lot of survivor accounts. In fact, there are just two: a young child who hid behind a bookshelf, and my mother. The child didn’t see anything but described hearing growling and screaming. My mother said she hid too, said she never saw Marcus, so that’s a lie, though the lie only became obvious after I was born, but she never said what really happened, not even to Gran.

The majority of witches Marcus has killed didn’t have great Gifts, potion-making mostly, so he wasn’t killing those witches for their Gifts. Mostly they were Hunters who were trying to capture him, but there are others, Council members and other White Witches. I guess he had his reasons, but Celia doesn’t tell me what they are, even if she knows.

As well as potion-making the Gifts he has stolen are:

 Breathing fire and sending fire from hands (Arran’s father, Council member)

 Invisibility (Kieran’s grandfather, Hunter)

 Moving objects by thought (Janice Jones, an esteemed old White Witch who sounds more like a crook to me)

 Seeing the future (Emerald, a Black Witch. I wonder if she saw that coming?)

 Disguising himself as any human being, male or female (Josie Bach, Hunter)

 Flying (Malcolm, a Black Witch from New York—this ability is questionable, though it seems he can make very big leaps)

 Making plants grow or die (Sara Adams, Council member—does he like gardening?)

 Sending electricity from his body (Felicity Lamb, Hunter)