Jenny’s face lit up with a smile, but then she frowned. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

“Don’t be afraid to say what’s on your mind. I kept things from John Gregory, and now I regret not being more honest with him.”

“Well, it’s happened more than once, and each time in almost exactly the same way. When I was sitting alone on the bench in the western garden, writing things up in my notebook—it never happened when you were teaching me—I’d sense somebody watching me. I’d look up, and there in the shadow of the trees, a girl stood staring at me. She was always scowling angrily.”

“What did she look like?” I asked, my heart starting to beat faster.

“She was probably about my height, and slim, with dark hair. She was pretty, but as soon as I looked directly at her, she’d vanish. The first time I thought I’d imagined it, but later I knew for sure that she was there. Was it a witch? Was she using magic to disappear? And how did she get into the garden? I thought the boggart was supposed to guard it.”

“Alice!” I exclaimed before I could stop myself.

“Who’s Alice?” Jenny asked. “And why is she so angry with me?”

25

The Shaiksa Assassin

I sighed and decided to tell Jenny the truth—or at least as much as she needed to know.

“For a time Alice lived with John Gregory and me at Chipenden. But although we fought the dark together, she’d received two years’ training in witchcraft from her mother, Bony Lizzie—she’s dead now, but she was a powerful Pendle witch who specialized in bone magic.”

“Bony Lizzie once passed through Grimsargh,” Jenny told me. “It was before I was even born, but people still talk about it. They locked their doors and drew their curtains and refused to answer when she knocked. But it did them no good. A child went missing and was never seen again. And there were five dead cats floating in the local pond, each with its neck broken. Later that year the crops failed—all of them.”

I nodded. “That sounds like Lizzie’s doing. Anyway, my master never trusted Alice; at the time, that made me angry, because I thought she was my friend. But eventually he was proved right. Alice went to the dark. She shares her life with a dark mage called Lukrasta now.”

“Were you close . . . really close friends?”

“We went through a lot together. She saved my life more than once. Yes, we were close,” I admitted.

Jenny nodded and stared off into space for a while. Then she came back with another question.

“But how did she get past the boggart and into the garden to stare at me?”

“She has really powerful dark magic at her disposal,” I replied. “The boggart’s not strong enough to stop her.”

“And why would she be watching me? Why scowl at me like that? What have I done to her?”