The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

Chapter One



The Very Secret Society of Witches met on the third Thursday of every third month, but that was just about the only thing that never changed. They never met in the same place twice; the last meeting, for instance, had been in Belinda Nkala's front room and had involved freshly baked scones, and the one before that had been in the glorious sunshine of Agatha Jones's garden. This meeting, on a cold, wet October afternoon, happened to be taking place on a tiny, abandoned pier in the Outer Hebrides.



A pier. In the Outer Hebrides. In October.



Of course, they weren't actually called the Very Secret Society of Witches. They weren't called anything at all, which was why Mika Moon had decided to come up with a name for them herself. She had cycled through several alternatives first, like the League of Extraordinary Witches and the Super Secret Society of Witchy Witches. She was still rather fond of the latter.



The ridiculous names were mostly to annoy Primrose, the ancient and very proper head of the group, a position Primrose had presumably bestowed upon herself at some point in the past hundred years or so. (This might have been something of an exaggeration on Mika's part, but it was impossible to tell how old Primrose really was. She wouldn't say.)



Now, huddled as deep into her coat as she could get, Mika rocked impatiently on the balls of her feet as twenty other witches joined her on the pier. This, she supposed, was another thing that almost never changed: their number. Mika was one of the newest additions to the thing-that-was-definitely-not-a-society, and she'd been part of it for almost ten years, which meant it had been a very long time since they'd welcomed anyone new. This was not to say that there were only twenty-one adult witches in all of Britain; witches were uncommon, certainly, but Mika knew that there were others out there. Primrose, who had appointed herself the duty of finding and inviting new witches to the not-society, had mentioned that some had turned her down over the years.



Mika found it difficult to believe anyone had been able to resist Primrose's persuasions (which an uncharitable person might say better resembled genteel bullying), but still, it was rather comforting to know that this small, soaked group on the pier wasn't all that was left of them.



Not that their numbers mattered. These meetings were the only time any of them were ever supposed to speak to one another. Primrose Beatrice Everly would never dream of telling anyone how to live their lives (so she said), but she was of the firm opinion that Rules would keep them all safe and so those Rules really ought to be followed. Too much magic left unchecked in one place, she said, would draw attention. For the sake of all of them, they had to lead separate lives. There could be no connection between any of them, no visits, no texts, no emails-nothing, in short, that could lead anybody from one witch to another.



(Primrose, of course, was an exception to the Rules. Mika supposed it was just one of the many privileges of being the oldest, most powerful, and most bossy.)



Consequently, any sense of community and kinship in the group had to be crammed into these short hours once every three months, which made it a very nebulous sense of community indeed.



As rain dripped steadily down from the cold, muddy-grey sky, Primrose cleared her throat. "How are we all, dears?"



"Wet," Mika couldn't resist pointing out.



"Your contribution is noted, thank you, poppet," said Primrose, unperturbed.



"We're pretending to be a book club, Primrose," Mika replied, exasperated. "We don't need to hide in the middle of nowhere! Why couldn't we just meet for a sodding coffee somewhere with central heating?"



"I, for one, think our safety is worth more than our comfort," Primrose said, and then went straight for the jugular. "But, considering the most irregular way you spend your time, dear, I am not in the least surprised that you don't seem to feel the same way."



Mika sighed. She'd walked right into that one.



At thirty-one, she was a rather young witch in a group that mostly skewe...