12. Thirteen Flynn

CHAPTER TWELVE

THIRTEEN: FLYNN

" S hift it over there!" I snapped as a large metal spike bore down on my foot.

"Where?" Blake lifted the other end of the statue, digging the corrugated iron into my toes.

"Not there. Pull it left!"

"That is left!"

"The other left, you eejit."

We managed to wobble our way out of the trailer and drag the statue across the darkened town green. In the center was a low concrete plinth that had once housed a statue of Winston Churchill. Two years back, some local gobshites lobbed one of the arms off and the Council had taken the statue away while they argued over how much it would cost to repair. Along with other local artists, I submitted a proposal that we should replace the arm with a steampunk-style machine-gun. My proposal went unacknowledged. Wankers.

This Irishman's getting the last laugh.

It took us three tries to heft my statue on top of the plinth. I checked the feet. Perfect. I'd lined the bolts up exactly.

I went back to the rental car for my concrete drill. Blake held the statue while I drilled in the bolts. The sound shook the night and my heart pounded. Any moment I expected someone to run over and stop us.

One. Two. Three. Four. I tossed down the drill and reached under the balaclava to wipe away a sheen of sweat from my forehead. The greene was surrounded by shops, none of which were open after 9PM except the pub. And tonight was the monthly folk night, so the place would be busier than a confessional after Saint Paddy's Day. If anyone heard the drilling, they'd be too legless to investigate.

Maybe we really will get away with this.

I fitted and tightened the bolts, then stood back to admire the statue.

"She looks wicked fierce," Blake grinned.

She did indeed. I'd made the witch a flowing dress out of sheets of corrugated iron. Hair made from wire brushes stuck out from all angles from beneath her pointed gramophone hat. She held her broom in one hand, the other raised – a garden fork with the tines bent and curled into a claw. On the end of the broom sat a tiny, long-necked cat, with its paw raised in a similar menacing gesture.

Some of my finest work, and it wasn't even the half of what I had planned. "Now for the pièce de résistance ," I slapped my hand on the witch's shoulder and retreated into my feelings, the way Candice taught me to do. I forced myself to think of all the times people had looked at me weird, told me I didn't belong, all the times my uncle belted me around the head for being too much of a gas, all the times I'd wished I could be normal…and I poured that into the metal.

You want to believe we're witches. You want to believe we're the ones who are going to marmalise you. Have at it!

I poured more magic into the statue, focusing on the bolts, on holding them true, making them impenetrable by any human tool that might try to remove them.

The metal heated up as Blake's spirit magic shot through mine, mingling together to create a vacuum for belief. When it was so powerful it tugged at my power, pulling more into itself than I'd been willing to give, I stepped back. Blake sealed it with the spell we'd memorised from the grimoire, so that the statue would collect the belief rising from the village and store it like a giant belief grain silo.

I might have let go of a tiny piece of my own magic, but as the village woke up in the morning and saw this statue on the greene – having appeared from nowhere in the dark of night and held down with bolts that couldn't be broken – we'd have all the magic we could possibly need.

I tugged my balaclava down over my face. My heart raced. I was just like Banksy, sneaking around in the dead of night, planting controversial art in a public space like a subversive curator. Only, unlike Banksy, the village would be interacting with this piece in a way they'd never believed possible.

We stood back to admire our work. The edges of the statue shimmered with magic. The air hummed with anticipation as our spell called belief to itself. I grinned back. "And to think, I was just going to stick it beside the letterbox."

"I'm impressed," Blake whistled. "This is a plan so tricksy it's worthy of the fae?—"

"Hey, what you think you're doing?"

Footsteps thudded on the grass behind us. I didn't even turn around, just ran like mad toward the car. No time to shut the doors on the trailer or pick up my concrete drill. Luckily, I'd left the engine running. I dived into the driver's seat and shoved my foot on the pedal. Blake grabbed the back of the seat and yanked his legs inside the car just as I swung away from the curb.

Something thudded against the bonnet as we skidded around the corner. "Satanic scum!" a deep voice roared after me.

"Eat my bollocks!" I yelled back as I sped toward Briarwood, leaving a trail of sizzling belief in my wake.