A Witch in Time (Time Jumper Book 1) by Heide Goody & Iain Grant

Author:Heide Goody & Iain Grant [Goody, Heide & Grant, Iain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pigeon Park Press
Published: 2023-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

9

Maddie would have run all the way into town, but she got stitch in her side after a hundred metres and slowed down to a panicked walk. She still had the crimson scarf from last night. She wound that round her lower face to disguise herself a little. She’d have wrapped the rest of it round her like some sort of niqab/hijab/thing, but firstly, didn’t know how to and secondly, worried that it was probably racially not cool.

On speedy fearful legs, she got to the town hall and swiped in twenty minutes early. She was in her draughty office moments earlier than the first of her colleagues but not so early that she could sit down before they noticed her less than informal attire.

Tracy Taylor-Thomson looked at Maddie’s dog blanket skirt.

“Is that a … a kilt?” she hazarded.

“Yes!” said Maddie, gratefully. “Yes it is.”

“I didn’t know you were Scottish.”

“Och, aye,” said Maddie, immediately thinking bad Scottish impressions were probably as racially insensitive as impromptu hijabs. She didn’t have enough brain power to work it out right now. She had just witnessed a domestic terrorist preparing for something and she was living through her third version of the same day without a wink of sleep in between.

“I suspect someone has been out late and not had time to change,” suggested Monica McMahon.

“Oh, those were the days. To be young, free and single.”

“Yes. Yes, that,” said Maddie, putting in her earphones and logging on to work.

The morning was quiet. There were no emergencies and, critically, no call from Astrid Bohart. She checked the parking database intermittently. There was no parking charge notice for the little red CitiGo. She wondered if she should call the police and tell them that there was a bomb-maker in Acacia Crescent. She googled anonymous police tip-off lines and still didn’t know what to do.

The greatest danger she faced that morning was falling asleep. That and hunger. Her mind tumbled from thoughts of hunger, to the idea of getting a Gregg’s sausage roll, to the one she’d had two days before, to her lunchtime rendezvous with Gregory.

“Shit,” she said, standing up involuntarily.

The women in the Amenities and Facilities office stared at her.

“I … need a shit,” she told them and left.

She called Gregory as she made her way down the stairs. “You want to meet up at lunch time,” she said to him.

“You said you were at home,” he said. “I’m heading over now—”

“I’m in town. How soon can you get to Alice’s place?”

“Two minutes.”

And he was true to his word. He was in the windy courtyard behind Wirkswell Museum in no time at all. He had his parka pulled up against the cold.

“I thought you were working from home. An asbestos leak or something.”

“False alarm,” she said.

“You know asbestos doesn’t leak, don’t you? It just … exists.”

“Whatever. You’ve got something for me. Hand it over.” She didn’t mean to sound rushed, but Gregory was now just another box she needed to tick off today.

“You okay?” he said. He took out a spliff and was putting it to his lips to light it for her.

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