Read The Ice King (A Witch Ways Whisper) for Free Online Page B

volumes Lachlan was tired, packed up his notebooks and decided to head home.
    He saw the black dog first in the reflection in the butchers shop window. He had glanced at the array of chops and joints on the white marble display and seen the black dog printed onto the glass. He turned. The street was busy, people crowded past on their way. There was no dog.
    At the furniture shop the black dog’s reflected image was standing, ghostly, by an occasional table. Lachlan looked round. The street once again, was crowded with shoppers and passers-by, he watched and he waited for the crowd to thin but, there was no dog.
    He didn’t eat his supper, instead he stood vigil by the kitchen window. Todber came up to clear the dishes.
    “You not hungry?” he asked. Lachlan shook his head.
    “You expecting someone?” Todber asked moving to stand on the opposite side of the window. He glanced down. “Only I’ve locked the gate.”
    He looked at Lachlan, Lachlan nodded.
    “Was it locked the other evening?”
    Todber looked at him for a moment and before nodding.
    “I could fetch you a dram while you’re waiting?” he suggested.
    “I rather think I need a clear head tonight.” Lachlan confessed. Todber agreed and made a move to the kitchen door.
    “You need anything, you give me and Murny a shout, eh?”
    Lachlan listened to Todber’s footsteps as he made his way downstairs. At the last footstep the black dog lifted itself from the shadows below.
    When Lachlan arrived in the yard, the gate was locked, and the black dog was gone.
    The following evening Lachlan Laidlaw was waiting in the lane, hiding in the shadows himself. When the black dog emerged from the back gate of Todber and Murnhall, he followed it.
    It was an interesting creature, the size of a wolf or a deerhound, it padded through the gate like an apparition and yet its form was solid in appearance, a muscular, meaty black hound, the sound of its breathing carrying back along the lane to Lachlan. At the end of the lane it turned left into the street as before. Passers-by stepped aside from the hound’s path without paying much attention. It was, to Lachlan’s eye, as if they did not see the dog. Lachlan hurried along on the opposite pavement, half running to keep up and then breaking into a run at the corner of The Close by the thin parish church of St Margaret Martyr. The dog trotted up the path and paused. As the doors opened to allow out a crack of light and the sound of the choir practising, the dog slipped into the church and out of sight.
    Inside the old building Lachlan felt the chill of the stones. The church was lit by yellow lights in cheap-looking elaborate sconces. The organist was repeating a phrase of the psalm and the choirmaster sounded half despairing as he addressed his singers.
    “Can you hear it? Reaching up to that last third before the step-and-step down to the minor key…?” at the back a young boy yawned and two of the older choristers had their heads bowed, chatting. There was no sign of the black dog.
    Uncertain what else to do, and aware that he had been brought here, Lachlan took up a pew. He was once again, he knew, that boy perched on the five bar gate at the Goose Fair and as the thought struck him so his mind’s eye flew a pennant, a black wolf on a white ground. Lachlan knew, he must wait to see what would happen.
    The man stepped out from behind the pillar and walked towards Lachlan. He was tall and broad shouldered, his hair slicked back and was wearing a heavy black woollen coat. He moved with confidence and purpose, sliding into the pew beside Lachlan. For a moment they listened to the choir until the psalm collapsed on itself and the organ ground to a halt. The choirmaster gave up at last and dismissed everyone. As the choir bustled out through the vestry and the organist put his music away Lachlan waited. The man in black leaned back into the pew, lifted his gaze to the lights. As he did so the choirmaster clicked several rows