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The Witch’s Tears
Katharine Corr
Elizabeth Corr
Can true love’s kiss break your heart…?The spellbinding sequel to THE WITCH’S KISS by authors and sisters, Katharine and Elizabeth Corr.It’s not easy being a teenage witch. Just ask Merry. She’s drowning in textbooks and rules set by the coven, drowning in heartbreak after the loss of Jack. But Merry is not the only one whose fairy tale is over.Big brother Leo is falling apart and everything Merry does seems to push him further to the brink. And everything that happens to Leo makes her ache for revenge. So, when strangers offering friendship show them a different path, they’d be mad not to take it…Some rules were made to be broken, right?The darkly magical sequel to THE WITCH’S KISS burns wickedly bright.
Copyright (#ulink_f37a5e8a-e047-59bd-a310-f58ebbc15c89)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Text © Katharine and Elizabeth Corr 2017
Cover design © Blacksheep-uk.com
Ice © Shutterstock
Katharine and Elizabeth Corr assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008182991
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008188443
Version: 2016-12-07
Dedication (#ulink_499f8dcc-ce1a-5714-865b-01e219523314)
For our mum, who was beautiful both inside and out.
E.C.
In memory of Geoff, for his love and enthusiasm.
K.C.
Contents
Cover (#u7722f122-1eff-5c8e-9d95-4f644ec0ed72)
Title Page (#ub86d9bb1-8bd3-58f0-bdcb-cdde7f310098)
Copyright (#u1b5c5855-becd-5b77-8321-a2e749ffe087)
Dedication (#ua5b0119f-1085-5ad5-98a9-8956326d83e4)
Prologue (#udff133ae-cd84-5ccc-b8f7-7221963f3ed9)
Chapter One (#u3f901fbb-5c68-534a-8084-5365492e64ac)
Chapter Two (#ubb17e147-aff7-5935-b312-efa5c18b44e9)
Chapter Three (#u0a3592b5-4974-54fa-ba85-4a048242619d)
Chapter Four (#u10162af7-80cd-51c1-9b98-026a584c95e0)
Chapter Five (#u7e6bf633-4a43-5515-bcc6-e14e54d35d55)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Authors (#litres_trial_promo)
Books by Katharine and Elizabeth Corr (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
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Jack was sprawled on the grass, gazing up at the blue sky. Merry was lying next to him, leaning on one elbow. She had a paperback open in front of her, but she wasn’t reading. Instead, she was studying Jack’s face: the line of his jaw, the shape of his eyes, the curve of his lips as he thought of something and grinned.
‘What’s funny?’ she asked.
‘Nothing, really. I’m just enjoying the sunshine. Enjoying the fact that you are here, and Gwydion is not.’
‘Gwydion?’ Merry searched her memory. ‘He was a wizard, wasn’t he?’ She glanced back at her book. The paperback had gone, replaced by pages of parchment bound together with a leather cord. That was weird. But she didn’t really want to read, anyway – she wanted to feel Jack’s lips against hers. Tossing the manuscript aside, she shifted so she was lying right next to him.
Jack smiled, pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
Eventually Merry drew away and rested her head on his shoulder.
‘I’ve missed that so much.’ She shivered a little; the warmth of the day was fading and there were dark clouds gathering in the north. ‘You know, I think it’s about to rain. Let’s go.’ She sat up and reached for her bag.
But Jack didn’t move.
‘Jack?’ She nudged him. ‘Aren’t you coming?’
He shook his head, not looking at her.
‘You know I can’t come with you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m dead, Merry. You killed me, remember? True love’s kiss?’
He pulled the front of his shirt open and Merry saw a gaping wound across the centre of his chest, dark with dried blood.
‘Oh God …’ She pressed her hand to her mouth.
‘There wasn’t a happy ever after, Merry. Not for us.’
And now she could see that Jack’s lips were pale and waxy, and his eyes were cloudy, unfocused …
Merry gasped and sat up.
It was a dream. Just a dream. Or at least –
She brushed her fingers against her lips. It had felt real. He had felt real.
Grief swelled painfully in her chest. She pulled the duvet back up and curled into a ball on her side, hugging her knees, waiting for the hurt to fade. It was nearly two weeks since she’d last dreamt about Jack, or had a nightmare about Gwydion. More than three months since she and Leo had escaped from the Black Lake. Sometimes – on days when she was busy, or surrounded by people – it seemed like longer. But then a fragment of memory would stab at her, make her catch her breath, and the whole thing could have happened yesterday.
There was a photo of Merry and her brother on her bedside table. In the photo, Leo was smiling. She tried – failed – to recall the last time she’d seen him look that happy. Today was the first morning of the summer holidays. But the brighter the sunshine, the more they both seemed to be lost in the shadow.
She wiped a tear away from her cheek. The day began.
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MERRY WAS SITTING against the trunk of the oak tree in Gran’s back garden, eyes half closed against the mid-afternoon glare, the bare skin on her arms and legs prickling from the grass and the heat. Her fingernails still ached from the surge of magic she’d just unleashed, and the back of one hand stung. When the potion had exploded, it had sprayed across the kitchen, a few drops escaping Gran’s hastily conjured protective screen. Gran had been testing her, watching her make yet another healing salve. Twenty-plus herbs that all had to be correctly prepared and added in precisely the right order, supposedly. Merry had merely tried to … speed things up. It hadn’t exactly gone to plan.
But it might have worked. If Gran had just let me finish what I was trying to do.
And if Gran hadn’t suggested – for the second time in the last fortnight – that Merry needed to go back to the Black Lake. Right at the moment when she’d been trying to concentrate.
She ripped a tuft of grass out of the dry soil. Being a witch meant becoming familiar with hundreds of years’ worth of spells and techniques and history. Merry understood the necessity, sort of. She had to be able to cast spells with the other witches so that she could become a full member of the coven. Witchcraft was a team sport. Or at least it was supposed to be.
But the endless, picky details were driving her crazy: a spell must be cast, and the results recorded, and each member of the coven involved in exactly this way, and this way only. Merry had done stuff by herself in the spring that none of the other witches in the coven were capable of. Not even Gran. Yet even spells that she could do almost without thinking had to be relearnt ‘the proper way’, which usually meant – at the very least – some sort of chant in a language that Merry didn’t speak. Because that was how everyone else did it, and that was how it had always been done. No shortcuts allowed.
Even if you’re powerful enough to use them …
Her fingernails were tingling again. She took a few deep, slow breaths, letting the frustration ebb away.
A tuft of dandelion seeds floated past, and Merry reached up to catch it. ‘Wishes’ – that’s what Leo and she had called them when they were kids. They used to chase them around the garden. She examined the cluster of delicate filaments, remembering the sorts of things she used to wish for – more pocket money, blonde hair: all the really important things in life – and trying to decide what she would wish for now. Right this second.
Being allowed to concentrate on the types of witchcraft she was actually interested in – that would be her first wish. Healing was obviously important. Selfless, and all that. But it wasn’t the kind of magic that she wanted to spend her life doing. Flying, or becoming invisible: those were the kinds of spells that made her heart beat faster. Or the Cinderella potion, one drop of which would transform the user into an utterly gorgeous version of herself. Gran kept promising they’d get on to the exciting stuff, but it never seemed to happen.
Her phone buzzed: a calendar alert. Probably reminding her about a coven meeting, or a practice session …
Merry grimaced. Being left alone for a bit – that would be her second wish. Because almost as soon as she’d recovered from the ordeal of fighting Gwydion – physically recovered, at any rate – her proper witch training had started. And the testing. Gran wanted to know why Merry’s power was still unpredictable. That was why she kept trying to get her back to the lake: to see how Merry’s magic reacted near the place where she’d first learnt to harness it. And the whole coven seemed obsessed with figuring out exactly how powerful she was, and whether the power would start to wane as she got further from the events of the spring.
Further from Jack.
She closed her eyes, shivering, remembering Jack as she’d seen him this morning: dead and cold at the edge of the water.
Merry never wanted to go back to that place.
But … But if I could go back to that time …
If she had a second chance, she might be able to do things differently. Find a way to keep him alive.
That’s my third wish, then.
Perhaps there was a spell for time travel. Or perhaps she could invent one. Though Gran would be less than impressed. Time travel was almost definitely not on the approved syllabus. Maybe it would be better just to wish for Jack to come back from the dead—
