There was an unmistakable air of hostility in the room. Constance kept her eyes locked onto Stephanie; waiting to see where her former friend would take this particular conversation. They had never spoken to each other after that night. They had never sat down and discussed what happened. She scanned the face of the other woman and read nothing but hatred there.

"Constance?" Alice's nervous, reedy voice broke the deadlock.

"If she won't tell you, then it's down to me." Stephanie slowly circled Constance, moving round out of her field of vision. "When Eliza and I left them, Veronica was still alive. She had started the binding spell, but Veronica was still very much with us."

Alice looked lost, her gaze flitting nervously between the two women. "No…she couldn't have been."

"Oh, but she was. She was alive and Constance here cast the spell. She cast the spell knowing exactly what it would do."

Alice shook her head, obviously not wanting to believe a word she was hearing. "Tell me she's wrong," she pleaded with Constance. "Tell me she's lying."

Constance looked directly at her old school friend. "Veronica was no longer there," she told her softly. "The magic that was in the air had taken her, she was being controlled by it."

"That's not answering the question," Stephanie told her, wagging a finger in her direction.

Alice's eyes were saucer wide. "You said she was dead. You told us all she was dead"

"Don't put her through this," Constance abruptly broke her eye contact with Alice and made the plea to Stephanie, but the woman wasn't in the mood to listen.

"Tell her," Stephanie's words were firm, unshakable. It was clear that she was going to get her way, whatever she had to do. Constance gathered her thoughts.

"The magic had been building in the air. It was a presence, a physical entity that you could almost reach out and touch. I held the barrier with Veronica until his magic overcame our own. It raced through the building; whipping the air around us and making it impossible to proceed." Constance paused as her mind catapulted her back to the night in question. "That magic overran us both, we'd never faced anything like it before."

She closed her hands into tight fists, her fingers digging into her palms as her memory threw unwanted images of that night into her mind. She had stared into the pale blue eyes of one of her closest friends and seen no flicker of recognition. There had always been a spark there; something that promised that another practical joke, another prank was only a thought away. She had looked into those eyes and they had been lifeless; all sense of character drained from them.

"She was still alive when you cast the spell?" there were tears streaming down Alice's face as she realised what had transpired.

Constance lowered her eyes, not wanting to meet the accusing look on the face of her former friend. "I had no other option. Veronica was gone. He was in control, he had taken over control of her mind as well as her body. If I had hesitated then none of us would have made it out. He would have overtaken me, and then you and then the rest of the coven."

"You killed her? You sealed her up inside that place and she was still alive?" Constance saw the blow long before it landed, but did nothing to get out of its way. Her head snapped to the left, her face stinging as contact was made. "You killed her and you lied to us all about it."

Alice collapsed into loud, heaving sobs, her fists pounding down hard on the table.

Constance turned to look at Stephanie; the woman's face was unreadable. "Did you get what you wanted?" she asked quietly. "Are you happy now?"

"Don't speak to her as though I wasn't here." Alice was shaking with rage, struggling and failing to control her emotions. She looked down at her own hands, and watched as raw magic sparked at her fingertips. She'd not thought that anything remained, but now, as she lost the last of her self-control, back it came; reaching the surface and finding its own way out into the world beyond.

"I never lied." Constance's calm voice did nothing to ease Alice's escalating temper. She wanted to lash out at the women who sat before her; the woman who spoke such damming words so matter-of-factly. "I never lied. I told you that Veronica was gone and that was the truth. I saw her eyes; I looked into those eyes as I cast the spell and it wasn't Veronica looking back at me."

Alice shook her head, not wanting to hear the words, not wanting to have any level of understanding. There had been a chance to save Veronica, there would always have been one last chance. She blinked away the fresh tears that sprang to her eyes. "She's still in there! We left her in there."

There was the slightest of twitches at the corners of Stephanie's mouth. "No-one has set foot in the place since we left it… Since Constance here sealed it up."

Alice was wiping the seemingly never-ending stream of tears from her eyes. "So we go back and we get her out."

"Even after all this time, that wizard's magic may still be viable." Constance knew it was unlikely her words would be listened to, but she had to try and make her voice heard. "We must not go back."

"Would you stop me, stop us from attempting it?" Stephanie argued, and Alice soon joined her voice to the protest.

"If there is the slightest chance that Veronica is still alive…"

"Veronica died twenty years ago," Constance pushed home the words, her voice gaining strength. "He killed her not me, and he will do the same to us if we are foolish enough to go back there. We weren't strong enough then, and there's nothing to say that we'd fare any better now."

Alice rose to her feet and it was only the quick reactions from Stephanie that stopped her from lashing out at Constance again. Stephanie held her friend's shoulders, pulling her away from the table; her own expression making Constance very aware of exactly how she felt.

"She's not worth the effort Alice. We'll let Eliza decide what's to be done."

"Did someone mention my name." All heads turned at the sound of the slightly shaky voice from the doorway. Eliza stood there, both hands gripping the handle of the door for support. Alice and Stephanie were at her side in seconds; helping her over the threshold and settling her down onto a chair.

"Would someone care to tell me what's been going on?"

Alice wiped her eyes; they were red with the spilt tears. She pointed unsteadily in Constance's direction. "Is it true? Did she…. Did she…" her voice cracked and she was unable to finish the sentence.

Eliza reached out and took one of Alice's hands within both of hers; holding it tight. "None of us are proud of what we did that night. We had to get out of there; we had to survive. Constance just did what she had to."

Constance had seen the way the situation would unfold from the outset. Eliza, it seemed, had been the one amongst their number who had changed the least. She had always known how to get what she wanted, how to turn and manipulate anyone and any situation for her own ends. When they had been younger it had been a skill she had admired. She would sit there in silence and watch as Eliza would twist and turn words and events to her will. A born politician one report card home had said, and Eliza had been proud of that label.

"I didn't kill Veronica. That was all his doing. His magic was stronger than any of us gave him credit for." Constance offered up the explanation; knowing that Alice wouldn't want to hear it.

"Let's not talk about that now. Constance; I think you and I need to have a word." She squeezed Alice's hand as the woman stifled another sob. "Stephanie, could you look after Alice for me?"

There was a muttered acceptance and Stephanie led a gently sobbing Alice from the room, leaving Constance alone with Eliza.

"I hope you're proud of yourself. You didn't have to put the poor woman through that." Constance looked levelly at Eliza. "I assume you're the one who put the idea in Alice's head, and made sure Stephanie was on hand to act as the heavy."

"Me?" There was fake horror in Eliza's tone. "I wasn't the one who murdered my friend to save my own life."

Constance's hands bunched into tight fists as she struggled to keep a lid on her temper. "That wasn't what happened, and you are not manipulating me into saying anything of the sort."

"Veronica died, and she was alive when I left the two of you."

Constance shook her head. "This wasn't what played out, and I'm not having you of all people lie about what happened."

"She was my friend and you killed her!" There was genuine anguish in Eliza's tone. Constance waited for a few moments before breaking the tension in the air.

"She died, but I wasn't the one who killed her. Magic took her long before I finished casting that spell. I looked into those eyes and it wasn't her looking back at me." She paused as a thought struck her. "Andrea… Andrea came past as we were trying to get out. She'd remember." She looked searchingly at Eliza. "Have you found her too? Do you know where she is?"

There was a long silence. Eliza sat back in the chair and folded her arms. "Oh yes, I know where Andrea is."

There was something in the tone of her voice that made Constance uneasy. "What happened?"

"So now you care. Now you're forced to face it again. Now you decide that you care what happened to us." Eliza did nothing to disguise her contempt. "Andrea is dead. She took her own miserable excuse for a life five years ago."

Constance closed her eyes and let Eliza's words sink in. Andrea had been the serious one; the one most likely to be found with her head buried in a book. She had enjoyed study, and the others had teased her mercilessly about it.

"I had no idea…"

"Of course you didn't. You never once came looking to see what happened to us."

Constance opened her mouth to say something, but Eliza didn't let her speak.

"I don't want to hear about rules and what the council told you you could or couldn't do. We were family Constance. We were everything to each other and you just shut us out of your life. Andrea… Andrea tried to change who she was. She took another name; tried again to be accepted back into the community but someone realised who she was and she was hounded out of her job and disowned all over again. Somewhere in the midst of all that she decided that it just wasn't worth it."

The words were spat out with venom; Eliza shifting her weight on her chair as she struggled to keep her emotions in check. Her breath came is ragged shallow gasps as she ran out of energy and cold sweat pricked her skin.

Constance moved her hands across the table, trying to see if there was anything she could do, but Eliza was quick to pull away. "No," she forced the one word out before wracking coughs overtook her. "I'm not taking sympathy from you, not now."

The coughing finally subsided and Eliza's heavily bloodshot eyes focused on her fellow witch. "We are cursed, all of us. Only you walk without shame. Audrey is locked up in Ash Vale, to all intents and purposes dead to the world. No-one knows what became of Clara." She tilted her head. "Oh yes. Audrey is at Ash Vale. Private room… private prison more like. I dragged her out of the building that night and she was unconscious. She's still in that state. Still separate from the world, separate from us, but I got her out. I didn't leave her there. I didn't let my friend die and do nothing to prevent it."

The words hit their target and Constance tried and failed to stop her mind catapulting her back to that night. She felt the tang of magic in the air. Eliza's emotion was at the heart of it all, but there was something else there, something needling away at her that she tried to push down and deny. Their magic had linked them together that night, but there had been another presence and it was the touch of that magic she thought she could sense in the air.

"Nothing to say?" Eliza was regaining her composure; pushing down her own emotions, but that sense of something other had been there; Constance was sure it had been there. She needed a way to pull it back to the surface again.

"You think that I went through nothing, that I suffered nothing? Do you know what it's like to go home and know that your mere presence causes your family pain?" Constance's voice was calm, without emotion. "My mother; never what you'd call a demonstrative woman, but there was a distancing, a removal of herself from my life after what we did. I'd go home and she'd quietly make excuses and move herself to another room. My father would hide behind newspapers and pretend I wasn't there." She paused, checking that she had Eliza's full attention. "After a few visits I just stopped going back. They never asked if anything was wrong, or when I would be able to find the time…. It just quietly became apparent that I was no longer welcome. Move on a few years and the letters I did send came back unopened. New people in the house, no-one in the community willing to tell me where they'd gone. Oh I have paid for what we did. Do not imagine for one second that I have not. I didn't just lose the family we created for ourselves; that night took my own family from me as well."

There was no immediate reply from Eliza and Constance turned to regard her. "We are all marked by what happened to us. It has stayed with all of us; affected us all in different ways." She paused. "You still hear his voice, don't you?"

"What?"

"His voice; you still hear it." She pushed on.

"Shut up."

"That alone tells me enough. I go to the hill each year. I go and I check that everything is still as it should be. I go and I check that the barrier is still in place, and that no-one else has attempted to gain access. At least that's what I try and convince myself. I tell myself the lie because it's easier than facing up to the truth of the matter." The widening of Eliza's eyes told Constance that she was on the right path. "He is still there in my head, as he is in yours. I try, but I can't catch the words he says, yet I hear them all the same. They are there, just on the very edge of perception…. Needling away at me, demanding that I listen. You hear him, don't you? You wanted honesty from me, well I am giving it to you. I felt the spark of magic in the air, I felt that spark as you threw your own guilt, your own hate in my direction. He is in your head as he is in mine." She paused to take a breath, scanning Eliza's face, hoping to see some sort of acceptance. "The council decreed we should never consort again, I wonder if they knew then that we'd never truly be able to rid ourselves of his presence. He is still there; he is still beyond the barrier in that house of his, reaching out and whispering words directly into our heads. We cannot, we must not go back there. It would be the death of us all."

"He has power; he has his strength still." Eliza hadn't acknowledged anything, but her words told Constance everything she needed to know. "We go in and we take what we need and we bring Veronica home."

Constance shook her head, trying hard to comprehend what she was hearing. "Have you lost your mind; is that it? You open up the barrier to that place and who knows what you'll bring down upon the world."

"We are older now, and some of us at least are stronger."

"It would be suicide." She gestured with her bound hands towards the door. "Would you sacrifice Alice and Stephanie so willingly?"

"I need us to go back in there."

There it was, the admission that Constance had been waiting for.

"Whatever he's promised you; it's not going to happen. You do know that, don't you?"

"What makes you think…"

"You are not well, that is obvious to see. Has he promised you something? Has he told you that he can make it all go away." She reached forward but Eliza only pushed her chair further back from the table. "Going back will not provide you the answers you are looking for. Going back will only kill us."

Eliza didn't reply but drew herself shakily to her feet and crossed the short distance to the door. She pulled on the handle and then paused, not bothering to turn around. "We go back tonight."