Cut Off (Book 3): Cut Loose Read online

  “Ghost,” she said. “It’s been long, too long.”

  “Nice to see you, Yasmin,” Bill said.

  “And you, Bill. And you.”

  Bill didn’t lead the women toward the tool shed as Katie expected but to the lodge. When they went inside, it was empty, save for Jodie who was finishing off the meal for that night.

  “Can you make us some tea, Jodie?” Bill said.

  “Your tea?” Yasmin scoffed. “The horrible stuff caged in bags? No, no. I use loose leaf tea. The only tea there is. Here.” She produced a small package from a wide sleeve. “Use mine.”

  Jodie came down the steps and took the bag. She was about to turn to leave when Yasmin grabbed her by the arm. She looked the frightened girl in the face without blinking. The loose bracelets about her skinny arms jingled and jangled along with the ore that decorated her fingers, neck, and danced in her wiry hair. It would have been a scary sight to a girl so up close and personal. And, of course, without choice.

  “You poor dear.” Yasmin’s eyes still hadn’t moved from Jodie’s. “You are very strong to have survived such a thing. Very strong. It would destroy most women and no mistake. Do not worry. Tonight, I will put a hex on all the men that touched you. They will struggle to perform for the rest of their days, you have my word. Now, are you sure you know how to make proper tea?”

  Jodie clutched the packet in both hands and backed away, nodding her head nervously.

  “Very well, have at it,” Yasmin said. “And, girl, feel free to experiment with whatever ingredients you think will suit. I have faith in you.”

  Jodie wasn’t relieved at the faith. She was terrified. Katie wasn’t sure the girl could bring herself to dribble so much as hot water on the lady’s loose leaves.

  “Did you come to talk about your great niece or just scare my girls?” Bill said.

  “Scare? Who is scaring? If I do manage to scare, then so be it. I do not get to enjoy the same fun I once did. Besides, there is only one more I need terrify. From what I hear, you were not the one responsible for keeping the young ones here. But my hearing is not what it used to be.”

  Katie snorted inwardly. She didn’t want the matriarch to overhear her cynicism. She doubted very much if anything got by this old bird.

  “You have my granddaughter to thank, or blame, depending on your mood.”

  Yasmin spun on the spot, her dress twirling about her like some sort of hypnotic dance. She focused on Katie. “So, you are the one.” She took Katie by the hand and she felt an electricity shoot through her. The old woman relaxed her grip and patted Katie on the back of the hand. “Yes. You’ll do. You’ll do all right.”

  “Preston came to see me,” Bill said.

  Katie caught a glint in the old woman’s eye but it was probably only a trick of the light.

  “Oh? How is he?”

  “He looked fine. In good shape, considering his age.”

  “We should all be so lucky.” Yasmin sniffed. “Now let me concentrate. I must see the value of this one. I sense a great deal of fire in you, girl. Then again, she is related to the great Ghost, is she not?”

  “Ghost?” Katie said.

  Yasmin chuckled and the metal instruments danced in her hair. “You’re not aware of the Ghost’s exploits?”

  Bill interrupted. “What can I help you with, Yasmin? You and your coven.”

  “They are not my coven, darling, though they have helped me with certain spells in the past. You know why I am here. I came to help you with your inherited problem.”

  “Auntie!”

  Louisa came running into the lodge and barrelled into the older woman. Yasmin stroked the girl’s hair and got a good look at her.

  “You are looking well,” she said.

  “I am well. I’m so happy!”

  At the door, the other aunties looked Luke up and down. Poor boy might have been the last chicken in a butcher’s window with the way they gawped at him.

  “So, you’re the reason for all this commotion,” Yasmin said. “Come closer, boy. I’m old and I cannot see well in this dim light.”

  Katie didn’t believe that for a moment. The woman looked as strong as an ox.

  Yasmin put her hands on him, squeezing his arms, checking his hands, and pulling his cheeks down to look into his eyes. Finally, she ran a hand through his hair.

  “Tongue.”

  The boy had no choice but to poke it out for the old woman to inspect. She might have been looking for a new broodmare.

  “Good, strong hands and teeth. Hair’s a little thin. But we all make do with what we’re given, aren’t we? Yes. He’ll do. And a pretty face to boot. I see what all the trouble is about.”

  Louisa clutched her hands to her chest and spoke in the sickly sweet pleading tone someone can only manage when they’re too young and too in love. “Then you like him?”

  “I don’t know him,” Yasmin said. “But I’m willing to get to know him. Alas, I am not the problem. I’ve never been the problem. It’s the men in our family – in both families – that have always been the problem with their short-sighted and stupid pride.” She turned to Luke. “Tell me, boy, what is it about you that makes you so different from all the others?”

  Luke shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always been the black sheep of the family.”

  “That’s interesting,” Yasmin said. “So has this one.”

  She pointed a finger at her niece.

  “We have to get back to work now,” Louisa said, hugging her great Yasmin once more. “It was wonderful seeing you!”

  Luke dragged Louisa out the door and looked relieved to be away.

  Yasmin moved to the door, left ajar, and peered out. “Look at them, our very own Romeo and Juliet. I only hope this won’t end in tragedy.”

  “We’re holding them here until we figure out what we’re going to do about them,” Bill said. “But we’re a little thin on the ground when it comes to ideas. Is there anything you’ve never tried before that might work?”

  “A nice big, strong bomb ought to do the trick.”

  Bill chuckled. “That would solve it all right. I was thinking something a little less permanent.”

  “Perhaps permanent solutions are the only ones left available to us.” She sighed and suddenly looked very tired. “I fear her brother will take action before long. When he does, try to take it easy on him, won’t you? He’s not a bad lad underneath all the bluster.”

  “None of us bad boys are.”

  Yasmin smiled. It was a beautiful thing. She looked Bill over. “Although, I seem to remember you being a lot badder than you are now.”

  “Age changes a man.”

  “And women alike. But perhaps not enough.” She turned forlorn again and looked out the window. “I am proud of our Louisa, no matter what her brother might say. He was too young to take over the family. He was next in line, so we went along with it, but he has grown drunk with his sense of entitlement. Now he will stop at nothing to get his sister back. Louisa did something that requires great bravery and I wonder where she gets it from. Not my side of the family. I know that much.”

  “The Wedges are a proud family.”

  “Proud. And stupid.”

  “They fought in wars. They laid down their lives.”

  “For a man they can’t see. I know they are brave in their way. But this is the way of the heart. There is no more perilous path than that. And those two children did it at the drop of a hat.”

  “Maybe they don’t know what they’re letting themselves in for.”

  Yasmin nodded. “There may be some truth to that. That’s why we must protect them. It takes little courage to cast a hex on someone. Talent, yes. Skill, yes. But not courage. But to face your family, to confront them with the choice you’ve made even when you know they will not like it… that takes real courage, and they both have it in spades.”

  Bill placed his hand on her arm. “You have your own kind of courage, Yasmin.”

  “Not the typ
e that matters.” Yasmin’s smile was small and sad. “I had a chance, long ago, to do what Louisa has done but I lacked the bravery to do what was necessary. I could not face my family, could not face disappointing them, and instead, I ended up disappointing myself every day for the rest of my life. Tell me, what is disappointment from family when you take the long view?”

  Her shoulders fell and betrayed the great sadness and sense of loss she carried with her every moment of every day. “I must go now before my family notice I am not there.” She shook her head. “Forty years later, and still I live beneath the yoke of my relatives.”

  Jodie approached with a tray of tea.

  Yasmin took a cup, swirled it around, then threw her head back and downed it in one big gulp. She slapped the cup back on the tray and smacked her lips. “Good. Very good. You have a gift, my girl. Don’t waste it.”

  Jodie’s shoulders released the tension they pent up.

  Yasmin left in a swirl of skirts, rejoining the other women as they marched back the way they came.

  “What was all that about?” Katie said.

  “Yasmin has a touch of magic about her,” Bill said. “She can tell things about people. But even she couldn’t convince her family to stop and think about what they were doing.”

  “Then what chance do we have of doing anything useful about it?”

  “Very little, I’m afraid.” Bill watched the women march away. “Very little indeed.”

  17

  The next morning, exhausted but still full of bile, Peter said goodbye to his family.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re supposed to do?” Michael said.

  Peter gritted his teeth. “I’m a prison guard. I know the difference between locking someone up and letting them out.”

  “Just remember what’s on the line.”

  Peter turned dour and kissed his wife on the lips and his little girls on the forehead. More than an element of ritual about it. The moment he was gone, they ushered the wife and the girls to the front room.

  “All right, girls,” Julia said. “Time we get you ready for school.”

  “No school today,” Michael said.

  The girls shared an excited look as if Christmas had been moved to today and no one told them.

  “They have to go to school today.” Julia was stern. “They’re studying the reign of kings and queens.”

  “I don’t care what they’re studying. Today, the girls get a day off. Don’t you think you deserve a day off school today, girls?”

  “Yay!” The sisters waved their arms in the air.

  Michael ignored the pinched look on Julia’s face and moved past her, further into the house.

  Jill shut the door behind them and lowered her voice. “How do you want to handle this? Two go watch him, two stay?”

  “Yeah.”

  But how were they supposed to divide it up? Isaac would be worse than useless in his current state and might even prove a danger if they let him make decisions with his enlightened beliefs.

  “I’ll take Isaac with me,” Michael said. “You watch the family.”

  “Want a deadline?” Jill said.

  Michael considered the family. He didn’t think the husband would wantonly endanger his family but he’d been surprised before. “If you hear nothing from me, do the wife.”

  “And the others?”

  Jill couldn’t bring herself to say the words ‘girls’ or ‘kids’. It was too close, too personal. She spent the better part of the night playing with them and curled up tight as they slept. She kept them warm and yet, give her the word, and she would cut them down as fast as look at them.

  Across the dining room, standing with his hands together clasped behind his back, unassuming and yet somehow commanding the room, Isaac stood watching the little girls.

  Michael’s eyes felt heavy as he turned to Jill. “Don’t hurt them.”

  Isaac smiled when he heard that.

  “I don’t know what you’re smiling about,” Michael said. “You’re coming with me.”

  Hanging out so close to the prison hardly filled Michael with confidence. Any minute a guard standing atop the wall wrapped around the maximum security section of the prison might recognise him, get the drop on him, and drag him back to his cell. Fortunately for him and Isaac, the guards kept their eyes firmly on the prize at the heart of the compound.

  Three hundred of the hardest, most fear and despised people in the entire country. Terrorists, criminals, anarchists. All of society’s worst ingredients mixed up in a single building, creating a heady mix of hate and contempt, and amongst them, their gang leader. Quentin Morse.

  “It was a good thing you did,” Isaac said.

  “Shut up,” Michael barked.

  Isaac did. For a while.

  “Children are blameless,” he said. “Then again, so were the adults in this situation. It is us who have done wrong.”

  “Will you be quiet? I’m trying to concentrate.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re trying to ignore the conversation.”

  “Can you blame me, when you’re capable of only discussing a single topic?”

  Isaac looked at him. “That’s not true.”

  “Religion. That’s all you talk about.”

  “I’ve never once spoken about religion.”

  Michael gave him a look of incredulity. “Come off it. I thought it was against God to lie?”

  “It is. But I didn’t lie. I’ve spoken about honesty, truthfulness, being one with the Lord.”

  “And those things aren’t religious?” Michael said flatly.

  “They are facets of religion.”

  Michael sighed. “Give me a break.”

  “It’s very simple. You see, if you–”

  Michael raised a hand. “I’m not interested. Talk about something else. Movies. Music. Other countries. History. I don’t care. Just talk about something else for a while.”

  Isaac was silent a moment. “There was a man inside who had a beautiful voice.”

  “Great. Then let’s talk about him.”

  “He sang hymns with a passion unlike anything I’ve ever heard before–”

  Michael squashed his hat on his head. “Argh! I swear, if you say one more thing, I’m going to beat you to death with these binoculars.”

  “You wanted to talk about something else–”

  “That’s not something else!”

  “But–”

  “Just stop talking.” Michael hunkered down for the long haul. “Take a vow of silence for the next twenty minutes.”

  When Isaac didn’t make a sound, Michael sighed with relief. “You know, I remember a very different Isaac. A very calm, caring, and sweet Isaac. Yes, he did some bad things, and yes, he would probably not escape the Lord’s justice but he was a kind boy. A good boy. He was kinder than the rest of us put together. That’s someone I would like to have a conversation with.”

  He thought Isaac might respond, but he didn’t. But he could see he wanted to.

  “Say something then,” Michael said.

  Isaac shrugged.

  “Oh, so now you can’t say anything.” Michael shook his head. “How convenient.”

  “The Isaac you know is still here. He’s just a different version of me, that’s all.”

  “Isaac would never have described a man as having a ‘beautiful voice’ and he wouldn’t have spoken about himself in the third person.”

  “Maybe he would have if you’d only listened.”

  Michael turned to this thing, this creature beside him, and looked for something – besides his appearance – that reminded him of the young lad he grew up with, the young boy they all thought of as their baby brother. But he saw nothing of him, and that made him feel sad. He might as well have died inside.

  Michael turned back in the direction of the prison and sat up. “Here he comes. He’s bringing Quentin through the inner wall now. He’ll have him through within the next few minutes.”

  His hear
t raced at the thought of his friend – his very best friend – soon breathing the fresh air of freedom along with the rest of them. His hair was long and he looked dishevelled like a homeless man. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The maximum security prison was notorious for stamping down on any personal freedoms – including ownership of any personal grooming effects.

  He began to worry. What if his mind had been broken like Isaac’s? What if he was no longer the friend he remembered? He calmed himself down, telling himself that Quentin was too strong to allow that to happen.

  But prison was a funny place. A hostile and unwelcome environment, you had to learn to operate within its walls and its rules or face death by a thousand cuts. And that was a regular prison. What was the maximum security section like?

  Then the prison guard stopped. So did Michael’s heart.

  Quentin was within inches of reaching the outer door. Peter spoke with another prison guard at the entrance to the inner gate. Michael could make out Peter’s face through the small glass window. He wasn’t happy.

  He’s thinking about his family and their fate.

  “Come on,” Michael said. “Just a few more feet. Get him through the outer door. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  “What’s happening?” Isaac said.

  “There’s another guard. He stopped Quentin from leaving. Now… Now they’re heading back inside. No!”

  There was nothing he could do unless he wanted to storm the gates on his lonesome and end up back in the slammer beside his good buddy.

  Isaac reached over and placed a comforting hand on Michael’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. It’s over.”

  Michael looked up with conviction. “It’s not over. It’s not over until he’s out.”

  He stayed low and shuffled along the outer fence where they’d been hiding.

  Isaac struggled to keep up. “What’ll we do about the family?”

  “We’ll let them go, but with a warning. Tell anyone we came to them, and what we were after, and we’ll come back and finish what we started.”

  “How do you know Peter won’t tell them everything?”