The Secret

With special thanks to

Siobhan Curham and Catherine Coe

First published in Great Britain 2017

by Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Copyright © Egmont UK Ltd, 2017

First e-book edition 2016

ISBN 978 1 4052 7741 9

Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1699 4

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

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Dedication and Copyright

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There was a time when I really looked forward to school trips. When the worst thing I had to worry about was whether one of the boys would be sick on the coach from one too many speed bumps or way too many sweets. But that was before. Before I moved to Fairhollow, my mum’s home town, and before my life was turned upside down and inside out with the revelation that I am a witch.

Yes, you read that correctly. And no, I don’t fly about on a broomstick or turn people into frogs or eat my dinner from a cauldron. But it turns out that a few families in Fairhollow still carry some kind of witch gene, and mine happens to be one of them. Having the witch gene means you are born with some kind of witch power – like invisibility or being able to harness energy or move through walls. My power is being an empath, which means I can tell how other people are feeling – and sometimes what they’re thinking. This is not as cool as it might sound. Now everything in my life – including school trips – comes laden with issues. Like how I’m going to deal with the other witch kids at my school who’ve chosen to embrace the dark side.

‘I heard that a girl got murdered in Mad Bess Woods,’ Izzy says loudly from the back of the coach.

‘Yeah,’ Izzy’s sulky-faced sidekick, Vivien, chimes in, equally loudly. ‘That’s how the woods got their name. Apparently she was lured to her death by the ghost of a Victorian orphan girl called Bess. Who was mad.’

Next to me, my friend and fellow good witch, Holly, gives a dramatic sigh. ‘If they’re going to make up stories, they could at least use a little imagination. Lamest plot ever.’

I can’t help laughing. Holly is the biggest bookworm I’ve ever known. I bet if doctors looked inside her brain, in the interests of medical science or something, her memory would look just like a library, with shelves and shelves of the books she’s read all stored away inside.

‘That’s right,’ Stephen’s voice booms down the coach. ‘They, like, found her body hanging from one of the trees and she was, like, all dead and stuff.’

Stephen is Izzy’s other sidekick. All brawn and no brains. And until recently, no eyebrows, thanks to an ‘accident’ Holly orchestrated with a Bunsen burner.

I feel a sudden shiver coming from the right of me and I glance across the aisle at Eve. As usual, she’s sitting by herself, and staring grimly through her huge glasses at the back of the seat in front of her. She’s bolt upright and her face is as white as a sheet. I think about leaning across and asking if she’s all right but something stops me. Eve always seems so unapproachable, so self-contained. Instead of saying anything I take a deep breath, relax my body and focus on Eve. I’m going to use my empath abilities to try to pick up how she’s feeling. I picture unlocking a huge wooden door in my mind and imagine Eve walking through it. A wave of fear rushes in. It’s so intense I have to slam the door shut again. My body fills with concern that’s all mine.

‘So . . . should be a fun trip,’ I say, leaning across the aisle to Eve.

Eve gives the world’s smallest nod and continues staring at the seat back.

‘What was that, Nessa?’ Izzy calls to me down the coach.

I get a sinking feeling. Ever since things came to a head between us in Aunt Clara’s kitchen, and Holly and I showed them how strong our powers were, Izzy and the other Blood Witches have been really wary of us. It’s been months since she’s talked to me.

‘Isn’t it nice how all the odd ones out end up coming together on a school trip?’ Izzy continues. I turn to look at her. She’s all blonde curls and dimples and sweet smile. Sickly-sweet smile. If only people knew how evil she could be.

‘Yeah, really nice,’ Vivien echoes, her thin lips pinched together, sour to Izzy’s sweet.

I glance at Holly and she mirrors my frown.

‘Just like a flock of sheep,’ Izzy says with a giggle.

‘Why’s she being like this?’ I mutter to Holly. ‘Why’s she being so brave all of a sudden?’

‘I don’t know. But if she doesn’t shut up I’m going to stuff this in her mouth!’ Holly pulls a huge hardback book from her bag. ‘The Complete Lord of the Rings,’ she adds. ‘Eight hundred and seventy-nine pages.’

I laugh. ‘Yep, that should do it!’

‘You’d better watch yourself in the woods, girls,’ Izzy calls. ‘Ghosts love haunting loners like you.’

I glance at Eve. She’s still staring straight ahead but her hands are now balled into tight fists in her lap. Then a horrible thought occurs to me and I turn back to Holly.

‘Do you think Izzy’s being like this because she knows we’re going to be miles away from Aunt Clara? Do you think she thinks we’ll be weaker without her?’

Holly’s face falls. ‘I bet that’s it. I bet they think they’ve got the upper hand now there’s three of them and two of us.’

I feel sick as I remember everything Aunt Clara told us about the Blood and Silver Witches, and how in each generation they compete to complete their pente – or circle of five witches – first, so they won’t lose their powers. At the moment, in our generation, the Bloods already have three witches and us Silvers only have two. Whoever gets five witches first wins and the other witches lose their powers.

‘Yeah, well, if they try anything we’ll have to show them they’re wrong.’ I sit up straighter in my seat. In the months since Aunt Clara revealed that she was a Silver Witch too, she’s helped Holly and I hone our gifts. Teaching Holly how to harness her ability to control energy (and stop blowing up electrical appliances!) and showing me how to use my empath abilities by visualising a door in my mind to help me block other people’s feelings from flooding in.

At the front of the coach, Mr Matthews gets to his feet. As usual, his wiry white hair is springing from his head in every direction and his crumpled suit hangs loosely from his thin frame. He fiddles with the microphone in his hand and a screech of feedback rings around the coach, causing everyone to flinch. ‘Whoops-a-daisy,’ he sing-songs into the microphone and his voice bellows out through the speakers in the ceiling. I’m not exactly sure why the school decided to send Mr Matthews on this trip. Somehow I can’t see him hiking up a storm in the woods. Thankfully our super-sporty PE teacher, Miss Black, is with us too. Maybe Mr Matthews came because he fancied doing some marking in a more tranquil setting . . .

‘Exciting news, ladies and gents,’ Mr Matthews says, his mouth a little further from the microphone this time. ‘We will shortly be arriving in Mad Bess Woods – let the adventures begin! Oh dear . . .’ The coach rounds a sharp bend and Mr Matthews swings straight into the lap of Miss Black. ‘I do beg your pardon,’ he says, the microphone still on.

I look at Holly and shake my head. ‘Something tells me this is going to be the longest three days in history.’

‘Yep. Even longer than the weekend I spent with my parents in Berlin when I had nothing but German books to read.’

‘I didn’t know you could read German.’

Holly sighs. ‘I can’t.’

The coach starts making its way up a bumpy track into the woods. The sky was already overcast but now, surrounded by towering trees, it’s practically as dark as night. The trunks are gnarled and twisted – the kind that look at if they have faces carved into the bark. Tortured, howling faces. Apparently Mad Bess Woods is one of the oldest forests in the country. It got its name from Lady Elizabeth Thomas who lived in a nearby stately home hundreds of years ago. When her son died at the age of seven she went mad with grief and spent months roaming the woods crying. At least, that’s what it said on Wikipedia.

As the coach carries on up the track everyone starts fumbling in the overhead shelf for their coats and bags. Everyone apart from Eve, who’s now looking down into her lap, whispering something under her breath. I quickly visualise the door in my mind opening and feel overcome with a sense of gratitude. Eve isn’t feeling scared any more – she’s feeling relieved. But why?

Finally, the coach pulls into a large clearing. There’s a faded sign to our right that says WELCOME TO MAD BESS CAMPSITE. Or at least that’s what it should say, but most of the B in Bess is missing so it looks as if it says MADnESS CAMPSITE.

Holly looks at me and raises her eyebrows. ‘I hope that isn’t an omen!’

Mr Matthews gets back to his feet. ‘OK, everyone, let’s disembark with a little decorum. Will the people in the seats at the front leave first, please?’

But Izzy, Vivien and Stephen are already halfway down the aisle. As she reaches our seat Izzy stops and looks down at me. Her pale blonde curls fall in perfect ringlets around her face. Izzy looks really beautiful when you first glance at her but it doesn’t take long to see the hardness inside of her poking its way out through her jutting cheekbones and pointed chin.

‘Better be careful, freaks,’ she whispers. ‘Camping can be really dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing or what to look out for.’

Hatred starts twisting in the pit of my stomach like a swarming mass of snakes. Crap! Her feelings are breaking through my barrier. I picture the door in my mind but it’s wedged open.

Izzy sniggers. ‘This is going to be so much fun.’

I hear Vivien laughing behind her and the hatred starts snaking its way up into my throat, choking me from the inside. I look away from them, out of the window, and see a huge tree. It reminds me of my favourite old oak tree back in Fairhollow. I picture sitting beneath it, soaking up its strength and the hatred inside me starts to fade. I slam the door shut in my mind and get to my feet. I can’t let the Blood Witches win.

‘You don’t scare me,’ I hiss after Izzy. But she’s already stepping off the coach.

Once we’ve all got off and the coach has chugged back down the path, we gather around the teachers.

Mr Matthews takes a pen from behind his ear. ‘OK, so first of all we need to . . .’ He frowns and looks at his clipboard. ‘We need to . . .’

‘We need to put up our tents,’ Miss Black cuts in, folding her huge arms in front of her chest. Rumour has it she’s a black belt in karate and a boxing champ. I’m not sure if it’s true but I definitely wouldn’t want to get in a fight with her. ‘I want you to put them up in a circle around the edge of the clearing and the first ones to finish win a prize.’

Excitement ripples around the group.

‘I bet it’s something really outdoorsy and boring,’ Holly whispers. ‘Like a compass.’

‘Good, good,’ Mr Matthews says, still rifling through the papers on his clipboard. ‘OK, on your marks, get –’

Miss Black blows hard on the whistle that’s permanently hanging around her neck, causing Mr Matthews to drop his pen in shock.

I look down at the tent at my feet. It belonged to Aunt Clara and my mum when they were kids. When Aunt Clara said we could use it on our trip I was really touched. If your mum dies when you’re little you tend to grab on to every memento you can. Holly unzips the bag and slides the tent poles out and we start putting them together. Beside us, Eve starts unpacking her single-man tent and I feel a pang of sorrow. If our tent’s big enough I might suggest to Holly that we invite Eve to share with us. I glance across the clearing to Izzy, Vivien and Stephen. You would think that with three of them they’d be almost finished, but they haven’t even started. Instead, they’re looking around at everyone else with smirks on their faces. Oh, whatever. I pick up the tent tarpaulin and start pulling it over the frame.

‘We’ve finished, sir!’ Izzy calls a second later.

I look over in shock. How can they be finished? They haven’t even started! But their tents are up and all three of them are standing in front of them beaming smugly.

Mr Matthews looks as bewildered as I feel. ‘What? Oh, I say. How on earth . . .?’ He starts to chuckle. ‘Well done. Well done indeed.’

I look at Holly, my heart sinking as I figure out what’s happened. ‘Izzy must have time-shifted,’ I whisper. As a time-shifter, Izzy has the ability to slow down time.

Holly nods. ‘Why’d she have to get that power?’ she sighs. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘Can we have our prize, sir?’ Vivien asks.

‘Yes, yes of course.’ Mr Matthews scratches his head and looks at Miss Black. ‘Do you, er, do you know what the prize is?’

Miss Black sighs and reaches into her bag.

I vent my frustration by hammering a tent peg into the ground. Why should they get a prize for cheating? Then I see what the prize is and I start to grin.

‘Here you go, girls – and Stephen,’ Miss Black says. ‘Some bunting to decorate your tent.’ She hands them streams of bunting covered in pink bunny rabbits.

Holly starts to giggle. ‘What a lame prize! It’s even worse than a compass.’

Izzy and the others clearly think so too from the way they’re glaring at it.

‘Go on, then,’ Holly calls over to them. ‘Make your tent look nice and pretty.’

Izzy glares at us. I smile back sweetly.

As Holly and I continue putting up our tent I think of my mum and imagine her and Clara going camping when they were our age. I imagine Mum’s hands on the canvas where mine are and it makes me feel warm inside.

Next to us, David and James start play-fighting with their tent poles. Spiky-haired David is always fooling around. Seriously, you could send him to a funeral and he’d find a way of making a prank out of it.

Holly looks at me and shakes her head. ‘Longest three days in history.’

‘Stop it, boys,’ Miss Black snaps at them from behind us.

‘Sorry, miss,’ David says. ‘We were just . . .’ He breaks off and looks around blankly.

I turn and follow his gaze. There’s no sign of Miss Black anywhere near us.

‘Did you hear Miss Black?’ he says to James.

James nods and stares, confused.

Vivien walks past with a smile on her face. ‘Must have been a ghost,’ she says.

‘She mimicked her,’ I whisper to Holly.

Holly nods. ‘Another wasted power,’ she says wistfully. ‘Still, maybe we don’t need to worry about them on this trip if this is how they’re going to use their powers.’

Miss Black appears from behind the toilet block on the other side of the clearing. David and James start putting up their tent in silence.

‘My rucksack!’ Eve calls out, her voice shrill with panic.

I turn to face her. Eve’s tent is up and she’s looking around wildly. ‘It was right here, now it’s gone.’

‘Are you sure?’ I ask, walking over to her. ‘You didn’t leave it on the coach, did you?’

Eve shakes her head, her eyes wide behind her glasses. ‘No, I was just looking in it for the tent instructions. It was right here.’ She points to the ground by her feet. ‘Someone must have taken it.’

‘Is everything all right, girls?’ Miss Black calls over.

‘No. My bag’s gone missing.’ Eve looks distraught. ‘It’s got my phone in and my clothes and everything.’

Miss Black strides over. ‘Well, it can’t have gone too far.’ She turns to the rest of the group. ‘Has anyone seen Eve’s bag?’

Everyone shakes their head.

‘I don’t understand,’ Eve says, her voice wobbling. ‘It was here just a moment ago. How can it have disappeared?’

I look over at Izzy and she looks straight back at me, her pale green eyes glinting with amusement. ‘It must have been the ghost of Mad Bess,’ she says quietly.

I suddenly feel a very long way from home.

High up above me in the treetops a crow starts to caw.

‘First of all, you need to get your kindling,’ Mr Matthews calls.

It’s the evening and we’re all sat in a circle in the middle of the clearing learning how to make campfires. So far, this has involved hunting around the woods for dry leaves, moss and sticks of all shapes and sizes. Holly and I start putting our twigs and pieces of bark into the small pit we’ve dug in front of us.

‘Make sure it’s well spaced out. There needs to be room for the fire to spread.’ Mr Matthews starts walking around the circle, inspecting our efforts. He’s changed out of his suit into an ancient-looking tracksuit and a battered pair of hiking boots. ‘Good job. Good job,’ he says as he walks past each of us. ‘Now place your tinder on top of the kindling.’

We carefully put our leaves and moss on top of the twigs.

‘And now, you may light the tinder!’ Mr Matthews announces dramatically, as if he was declaring the opening of Parliament.

‘I’ll do it,’ I say to Holly, grabbing our box of matches. Although Holly’s got way better at controlling her energy-harnessing power, there’s no way I’m risking getting my eyebrows singed off.

‘If you insist,’ she sighs.

I strike the match and hold the flame under a clump of leaves. A flame shoots right up. Holly giggles.

‘Was that you?’ I frown at her.

‘I was only trying to help,’ Holly says. ‘And speaking of which, I wonder how Izzy’s getting on.’

We look across the clearing. Tiny flames are licking at their kindling like orange tongues. Holly frowns and scrunches up her nose. The flames splutter out. Stephen lights a match and throws it on the leaves. Once again, some small flames flicker – and once again they die out.

I look at Holly and grin. ‘Are you doing that?’

She nods. ‘After everything they’ve got up to today I think it’s time they were reminded that they’re not the only ones with powers.’

‘Good plan!’ I say. Although I can’t help wondering if using our powers to play pranks is part of being a Silver Witch. We’re only supposed to use our powers to do good. Although you could argue that getting one over on Izzy, Vivien and Stephen is a very good thing. I watch the flames in Izzy’s fire leap up and immediately die out yet again.

‘What are you doing?’ Izzy snaps at Stephen. ‘Here, give them to me.’ She grabs the matches from him.

‘Oh, this will be good,’ Holly mutters, staring at them intently.

Izzy strikes a match and the flame leaps up, almost singeing her fringe. She shrieks and drops the match on to the ground, where it instantly fizzles out.

‘Good job,’ Mr Matthews says as he crouches down next to us, placing his hand on my shoulder. ‘Very good job indeed.’ He continues making his way around the circle, inspecting the fires until he gets to Izzy. ‘Oh dear.’

‘There’s something wrong with our matches,’ Izzy says sulkily.

Holly laughs. ‘What’s that saying about a poor arsonist always blaming his matches, sir?’

Mr Matthews smiles. ‘A poor workman always blames his tools.’

Izzy scowls.

‘Never mind,’ I call out to her. ‘You guys can’t be best at everything. And, hey, at least you won the bunny-rabbit bunting.’

The flames in our fire start leaping about as if they’re laughing, blocking the glares coming from the other side of the clearing.

Once we’ve had dinner – blackened sausages cooked on our fires, which actually tasted surprisingly good – Mr Matthews declares that it’s story time.

‘Storytelling around a campfire is a tradition that goes back to the dawn of time,’ he says. ‘It was a way of bonding as a tribe, communicating ideas and –’

‘Would anyone like to begin?’ Miss Black cuts in.

Izzy nudges Stephen. ‘I will,’ he says immediately.

Holly groans. ‘Seriously? He only knows about twenty words.’

‘Once upon a time,’ Stephen begins, pushing his floppy blond hair back from his face, ‘there was an evil demon who haunted a wood, just like this one. The demon’s name was – was – Bloodbark, and he was the grossest thing you ever saw. He had, like, really rough skin like tree bark and these teeth that were, like, so sharp they could shred human skin in just one bite.’

‘Yawn, yawn,’ Holly mutters.

Somewhere in the woods behind me I hear a rustle and a twig crack. I hug my blanket around me.

‘Bloodbark lived in the trees in the wood. He was actually, like, a wood demon. The evil spirit of the oldest tree in the wood. Just like that one.’ Stephen points to a huge old tree at the side of the clearing. As if on cue a chill wind gusts through the clearing, causing the tree’s branches to wave and creak. A shiver runs up my spine. Why did Mr Matthews have to suggest this? Why couldn’t we have had a sing-song around the fire instead? I wistfully think of my guitar, propped against my bed where I left it after my farewell strum this morning.

‘And Bloodbark would creep around the woods at night-time, looking for campers to kill and possess.’ The dying flames from the fire cause shadows to dance on Stephen’s face, making it look as hollowed out as a skull.

Somewhere in the distance an owl hoots.

‘What was that?’ Izzy says. She looks really rattled.

‘It was Bloodbark,’ Stephen says with a grin. ‘That’s how you know when he’s coming – when you hear him howl.’

‘Shut up. It was just an owl,’ Vivien says, but she’s looking really uneasy now too.

‘The thing is,’ Stephen continues, oblivious, ‘you never know when Bloodbark’s going to strike because he looks just like a tree.’

The wind picks up again, causing all of the trees around the clearing to sway.

‘And you never know when his branches are going to reach out and grab you.’

We all sit in silence for a moment, listening to the trees swaying and creaking.