The Crone's Stone Read online

Alp-bound castle. But steep stairwells, tangled passages, abandoned cellars, and nooks made it a snap to evade the dorm matron and her cronies, who patrolled the night like walkie-talkie clad Pac-Men. I’d been running for an hour, tearing ever downwards to approach the hotel-sized kitchen on the ground floor. Not usually one for caution, some instinct made me halt just outside the swinging entrance doors, through which an argument eventually became clear.

  “Lift him higher, dick!”

  “You keep calling me that and you can do it yourself, Mallory,” said a sulky male voice.

  Mallory and her sidekick – the incredibly hot, incredibly dopey, Chad – up to no good, as usual. I peeked through a round window embedded in the door.

  “Stop! Please. It’s so cold,” a young male voice pleaded. A sliver of light fell across the kitchen floor at the room’s furthest reaches. The trio were in the outback rubbish area, a bricked-in dead end housing several dumpsters, unless cross-country skiing appealed.

  “Maybe this will teach you to mind your own business!”

  “It was an accident!” their victim said. “I only needed to use the bathroom. I didn’t mean to see you. Please, please,” he sobbed.

  “Maybe we should let him be, Mal? It was only a headjob.” The slaps of Chad’s arms keeping himself warm echoed around the interior. I pushed through the split door, seeking a hiding spot. The space was large, lined with industrial cookers along one side, cooking benches opposite. Several floor-to-ceiling storage towers filled with dry goods cut the area in half like bookshelves. There was a walk-in refrigerator in one corner containing the white-chocolate cheesecake I raided often. “It is pretty cold out here.”

  “No one sees me on my knees! Do you hear? No one!”

  “I won’t tell anyone, I promise! Please, Mallory,” the boy begged.

  “You’d better forget you know my name, you little prat. Let this be your motivation.”

  It was impossible they’d be so homicidal as to dump a kid in a waste-filled skip in the sub-zero snow. They preferred public thuggery, a ring of onlookers cheering them on. Digital displays from the stoves added a green tinge to the yellowed light pouring from the bin receptacle, making hiding in the shadows difficult. My every step further inside seemed to disrupt the quiet like a mortar blast.

  “I can’t get his singlet off,” Chad whined.

  “Let me go!”

  “Just hurry, we’ll get sprung!”

  “He’s struggling.”

  “You cretin, Chad! Do you expect him to undress and jump in himself?”

  Chad swore: in this his vocabulary excelled. I snuck as close as I dared, squatting behind tuber-filled bins across from the back door.

  “This is dumb, Mal. The kid’ll freeze.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake. We’ll let him stew for a few minutes and then dump him inside somewhere.”

  “Ahh, his motivation,” Chad said sagely.

  From this position, I achieved a relatively unobstructed view. Stripped of his clothing, the poor little boy’s flesh was blue-tinged. He huddled barefoot on chilled concrete, not a scrap of fat on his body and I didn’t think he had the luxury of minutes before the cold damaged his fingers and toes. He shivered uncontrollably.

  It was at this point I bumped a pyramid of potatoes. Spuds frolicked about like vegetables on a spree. I silently stole one of Chad’s tamer words.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  My breath plumed the air. One of them, I could take. Two of them? A trial beyond my abilities.

  “You need to stop watching Twilight. It’s giving you bad dreams,” she snorted. “Is the scary, sparkly fairy coming to make you his boyfriend?”

  “Shut up, Mal!”

  “Shove him in and we’re outta here!”

  “What d’ya mean? Leave him here?”

  The poor kid yelped, cries muffled as the lid moaned shut. They truly were spineless wretches. “Is there someone in the kitchen or not?”

  “I’m tellin’ you, Mal. I heard something.”

  “I don’t believe you, but you better go and check anyway.”

  Uh-oh! A huge silhouette blocked the doorframe, torchlight piercing the gloom. He took a step and a potato bounced across the linoleum.

  “See!” he called, turning back to Mallory. “Where’d that come from?”

  From my crouch, I dived into the large open bin of onions. Chad swung back into the kitchen, while I flattened myself beneath the lip. Moving at all would trigger an avalanche. A Neanderthal shuffle hinted at Chad’s closeness.

  “Shit! If we get caught, Chad, you kidnapped me and forced me to do it.” The dumpster lid ground open. “What am I going to do with a nosey little turd like you?”

  Please don’t see me, I begged silently. Please don’t see me! I squeezed my eyes partially shut and cowered, as Chad’s lumpy head appeared and his flashlight framed me in brilliance. Through my lashes, he gawked at me, mere centimetres from my face. But the shade tugged closed and he moved away. Was he blind as well as witless?

  “It was nothing,” he said.

  “Wait ten minutes and then get out. And if you breathe a word of any of this, you’re mincemeat. Got it?” Mallory eventually joined him. “Told you no one’s here!”

  Their voices faded along the corridor and I exhaled relief. There was no explanation for my stay of execution. Chad had been stoned the day they gave out mercy and missed his quota. If he’d seen me, I was bloody sludge beneath his Vans. So … He must not have seen me? Strange. His mother – or the thing that laid his egg – might need to get his eyes checked.

  I rescued Jaime from his fate as a popsicle for rodents, waited while he showered, and got him back to bed. I’d teach him to fight, buy him some mace for the time being. I could have left it at that. Should have. But anger at the injustice of Chad and Mallory winning got the better of me.

  “Winsome! I am talking to you.” The crow gripped the arm of my jacket and shook. I glanced down at her fingers and she hastily let go. Smoothing her own jacket, her face was a pinched-lip blend of disgust and lost opportunity like when you open the carton, rather than checking the date, and take a huge whiff of two-month-old milk turned to cottage cheese. “The issue is by no means resolved, Miss Light.”

  The rest of the school was dismissed for classes. Except for the real culprits, who’d earned the fabulous welts all over their arms.

  “My skin’s sensitive! I’m having a reaction to the tape,” Mallory complained.

  If honesty ruled, my biggest regret was not stripping them naked and parking them on the Academy driveway. I so wanted to say, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!” The crow’s sermon droned and I tried to look engaged. I rationalised the awful odour of death and decay had been a symptom of ether contamination, not my own psychosis. Inhaling chemicals was a poor excuse for the morbid voice in my head, though.

  “I shall leave no locker, bathroom cabinet, sports bag or dresser drawer unchecked in my quest to punish the offender. Rest assured, Miss Light, I will discover the facts!”

  Screeched hysteria from Mallory announced that Chad had thrown up down the front of her nightie. Chunks of last night’s lasagne splattered the floor. From her bilious expression, Mallory looked set to return the favour. It made everything worthwhile, if only for a second.

  “Winsome Light!”

  My name was sure copping a work-out today. An intimidating man in black commando pants and a tight t-shirt strode across the dining hall, unmoved by snowflakes steaming his form. Werner trotted after him, objecting loudly to unauthorised personnel on school premises. He reminded me of a toothless yapping terrier.

  “It’s alright, Mr Werner. I am familiar with Mr Hugo,” said Bird.

  Since when? If the guy was a mountain, he’d answer to Everest. His voice rumbled like a Harley Davidson, his attitude take-no-nonsense. He frowned down at me, bringing an entirely new sort of trouble. He’d materialised to take me home, proving there was plenty of merit in
the old phrase ‘Be careful what you wish for’.

  Three

  “Have you recently consumed salted peanuts, Winsome?”

  Damn! I should have had a mint, although sweets were just as incriminating. I took a quelling breath.

  “Yes, Aunt Bea.”

  “In the G5?”

  “Correct.”

  “Salted peanuts in my jet!” she huffed, grasping the pearls about her throat. I think she wore them when she slept. “All that dreadful sodium chloride.”

  I’d smuggled the nuts – which were a crime against good nutrition – onboard from the private airport lounge in Vienna. I’d taught myself pickpocketing and was spectacular at hiding things. If only I could make a career out of it, aside from as a drug mule. Why, oh why, did I not eat them straight away?

  Bea leaned forward to rap on the window separating us from the limousine driver, as we sped from the airport. Her auburn bob swished with determination. In front, the Sydney skyline glittered in its evening coat. I couldn’t wait to get home to the cats, our warehouse, and the freedom of my new moped. Six months since my last holiday here was far too long.

  The chauffeur happened to be the very same walking boulder possessive of acres of muscular flesh who’d escorted me from the Academy thirty hours previously. His manliness had encouraged a trail of drooling, giggling girls through the hallways as they made their way to lessons. Bird was absent for my departure. She couldn’t have given me a better farewell gift.

  Hugo wore his straw hair jarhead-style, a single bulging biceps harder and thicker than