I Put a Spell on You (25 page)

“Harry,” Esme said, slightly out of breath. “I need to go home. Will you come with me?”

I laughed. Esme and I had often been ‘in tune’ as youngsters, but it hadn’t happened for years.

“I was just on my way home,” I explained. “I was going to get you to come up to Claddach with me.”

“I’m ready,” she said. “Hurry up.”

We were both jangling with nervous energy all the way up north, but eventually, we both sat on the old slouchy couch at Mum’s, Esme with her hands wrapped round a mug of hot chocolate, and me with a coffee. Together, our words falling over each other, we told Tess and Suky exactly what had been happening.

We told them about what we’d seen in the mirror – the snapshots we’d seen of a younger Mum in India. I showed her the photos I’d taken and she looked a bit wistful as she watched her teenage self bounding along the dusty Indian road. And we told them how Esme and Xander had been caught kissing by Jamie, and how Esme felt out of control.

When Esme described the feeling she had when she was around Xander, the way her skin tingled, and how she felt like nothing else mattered, Mum and Tess exchanged a glance. Mum got up and left the room and, worried, I looked at Tess

“She’s got an idea,” she said. She patted Esme’s arm. “Carry on, darling.”

“It’s like when I’m near him, he’s the only thing I can see clearly,” she said. “Like he’s in focus and everything else – Jamie, Harry, work – is blurry.”

Mum came back into the room carrying a bottle of wine and four glasses. She had a book tucked under her arm.

“Is that your spell book?” I asked. I sat up and took the bottle from her, unscrewing the lid.

Mum nodded.

“I think we’re going to need it,” she said.

Esme looked confused but I knew exactly what Mum meant.

“What for?” Esme said.

Tess took Esme’s hand.

“Darling,” she said. “I think Harry’s right. You’re enchanted.”

Mum was nodding.

“That tingling?” she said. “Smacks of magic to me.”

I sloshed wine into each glass and took a swig.

“I just don’t understand why anyone would enchant me,” Esme said.

Mum put her glasses on and started leafing through her book.

“Probably the same witch who’s been targeting Harry,” she said, running her finger down the page. “Ah ha.”

“Got it?” Tess said.

“Think so.” Mum showed her the page she’d been reading and Tess nodded. Then she showed it to me. It was a typed page, written on an old-fashioned typewriter and it said:
Determining if a subject is enchanted
.

“What?” Esme said. “What have you got?”

“We need to find out if you really are enchanted,” Mum said.

“Ooookay,” she said. “And how will we do that?”

Tess took a mouthful of wine.

“We need to try and enchant you ourselves,” she said. “You can only be the subject of one enchantment at a time. If you’re already enchanted, our spell will show up the other one.”

“Show it up?” I said. “How?”

Tess made a face.

“Not sure – we’ll have to wait to see what happens. Sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes it’s physical.”

Esme was looking worried.

“Hang on, so we don’t know what will happen if I am enchanted?” she asked.

Mum looked apologetic.

“Not really,” she said. “It won’t hurt.”

“Oh well that’s a comfort,” Esme said, sarcastically. I nudged her, quite hard.

“We need to do it, Ez,” I said. A thought struck me. “What kind of enchantment are you going to try to cast?”

“Erm,” said Mum thoughtfully. “What shall we try?”

“Something obvious,” Tess said. “So we know it’s worked.”

“How about we enchant her to flap her arms like a chicken,” I said with a sly grin.

“No!” Esme wailed. “Something else.”

“How about singing songs from
The Sound of Music
instead of talking?” Tess suggested, knowing it was Esme’s favourite show.

“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I’m not convinced this is the right thing to do.”

“But you do know there’s something very odd about the way you act round Xander,” I said. “So what else can we do?”

“Go on then,” she said, draining her wine. “What do I have to do?”

Tess and Mum clasped hands across Esme. I knelt on the floor by Esme’s feet and took one of their hands in each of mine, completing the circle.

“Nothing,” Tess said. “Just sit there.”

“And keep quiet,” I added.

Esme made a face at me, but she didn’t talk.

Mum began to read the words from her spell book, very softly. The air around us began to shimmer and, as the shimmers landed on Esme’s skin, she began to shiver.

“I think it’s working,” I whispered. Tess shushed me with a look and Mum carried on. Esme shivered again.

“Do you feel like singing?” I asked her quietly. Esme shook her head.

“Say something,” I said.

“I don’t feel like singing,” she said. I slumped in relief. I knew she’d not been herself.

“Is it tingling?” I said, seeing her rubbing her arms like she did when Xander was around. Esme nodded. She pushed up her sleeves and looked down at her arms. They were covered in tiny pinpricks of shimmer – like phosphorescence in a tropical sea.

“Ohhh,” she breathed. Abruptly, Mum stopped talking and almost straight away Esme stopped shivering and the sparkles on her arms faded.

“So,” I began.

“So,” Tess echoed.

“You’re definitely enchanted,” Mum said. She closed her book with a snap. “The question is, my love, who’s done it and what are we going to do about it?”

Chapter 37

In times of crisis my family – and I suspect we’re not alone in this – call on an old friend to help. Wine.

We finished the bottle Mum had produced and, when we were halfway through another, Tess waved her arm and from nowhere a whiteboard appeared, complete with a packet of pens.

“Nice,” I said, impressed. Tess smiled and pulled the lid from a red pen with a flourish.

“We have to get to the bottom of this,” she said with a hiccup.

In a slightly unsteady hand she wrote a list of all the bad things that had happened to me – the computer problems, the sewage, the Photoshopped prostitute’s card. Next to that, in blue pen, she wrote
Esme enchanted. By who?

“I think that should be whom,” said Mum. Tess gave her a fierce look and Esme and I laughed.

Ignoring us all, Tess picked up a green pen. In a third column she wrote
pregnancy
and
Suky in India
. Then we sat in a row on the sofa, sipped our wine, and stared at the whiteboard.

“What’s the link between all these things?” Mum said.

“Me,” Esme said, her voice slightly shrill. “I’m the link.”

“Maybe,” Tess said. She tapped her wine glass against her lips. “Maybe not.”

“Xander’s a link,” said Mum. “But not to me in India. And I’m guessing the pregnancy we saw was me – I got pregnant while I was there.”

“That’s what we thought,” Esme told her. “So would that make Harry the link?”

“I guess so,” Mum said. She stroked my hair. “You’re the one all the bad stuff has been happening to, and you were conceived in India, so the pregnant woman could be me…”

“But why would someone who wanted to hurt Harry enchant me?” Esme said.

We all thought for a moment.

“It’s made us fall out,” I said. “We’re fighting all the time right now.”

Esme nodded. “Harry’s right,” she said. “It’s horrible. But perhaps it’s just part of this whole vendetta against Harry.”

Tess chewed her lip.

“It’s a bit extreme,” she said. “But it is possible.”

Mum was looking worried.

“Why would anyone want to hurt you?” she said, squeezing me. “My Harry?”

Esme looked as if she was about to answer, then thought better of it.

“You’re loyal and kind and fun,” Mum was saying. “I can’t understand why you’re being attacked in such a horrible way.”

She got up and went to the whiteboard.

“Do you think this is my fault?” she said, touching her fingers to where Tess had scrawled
India
. “Do you think it’s because of something I did back then?”

“It was nearly forty years ago,” Tess said. “Who can bear a grudge that long?”

“Harry could,” Esme pointed out. I kicked her in the shin.

“Anyway you didn’t do anything back then,” Tess said. “You went to India, made some friends, and came home.”

“I met Clara,” said Mum with a smile. She poured more wine into her glass, and her face darkened. “And I met Dhani.”

A thought struck me.

“Did Clara have red hair?” I asked, remembering the two people we’d seen in the mirror.

“Yes,” said Mum in surprise. “Amazing red hair. How do you know that?”

I explained we’d seen two other people in the mirror and Mum looked uneasy.

“You didn’t say who else you’d seen in the mirror,” she said.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t think it was important – did you, Ez?”

Esme shook her head. “We said there were other people there,” she remembered.

“Yes you did – I just assumed there were lots of them,” Mum added. She paused.

“The man,” she said. “Was he dark-skinned and very handsome?”

“Yes,” I said.

Mum and Tess looked at each other then Mum looked at me.

“That’s Dhani,” Mum said and I gasped at the familiar name.

“My dad?” I said. “He’s my dad?

She took my hand with a sigh.

“Yes, my love,” she said. “He’s your father.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Esme said.

I felt close to tears.

“I knew my dad’s name, but I didn’t know what he looked like,” I said. “I didn’t recognise him. How could I?”

I’d never really been interested in my dad. I knew Mum had met him in India, and I knew his name, but that was it. I’d never tried to find him and as far as I knew, he’d never tried to find me, either.

Tess reached out and took Mum’s hand.

“Could Dhani be doing this?” she said.

Mum shook her head.

“No,” she said firmly. “No way.”

“This is magic,” I reminded her. “It’s a witch who’s doing this. My dad was a witch, wasn’t he?”

Mum nodded.

“He was,” she whispered. “And…”

“And what,” Esme asked in a small, scared voice.

“He was a horrible person. Not just horrible – he was mean, nasty, selfish, ruthless…”

“So it could be him,” Tess said.

“Why would he do this though?” Mum wailed. “Why would he hurt his own daughter after all this time? He knew I was pregnant and he never made any attempt to get in touch. He’s never been remotely interested in Harry. It makes no sense.”

My mind was whirling. Could it be that I’d been completely wrong about Xander? That actually my dad was behind all this? It seemed crazy.

I shook my head.

“It’s just not adding up,” I said. “Why would my dad, who’s never so much as seen a photo of me…”

“Oh I sent him a photo,” Mum said. “When you were born. I wanted him to see how lovely you were.”

“What did he say?” I asked, suddenly interested.

“He didn’t reply,” Mum admitted. “I never heard from him again.”

“Exactly,” I said, hiding my disappointment that my dad hadn’t got in touch. “So why would he wait thirty-odd years…”

“Almost forty years actually,” Esme added unhelpfully. I narrowed my eyes at her.

“Could I finish, please? Why would he wait thirty-something years to track me down, just to make my life a misery?”

Mum shrugged. She looked very upset.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Is there anything you can remember, Aunty Suky?” Esme said. “Anything about him that could help us now?”

“Ooh,” said Tess excitedly. “I know.”

She held out her empty hands and the air shimmered as a bundle of letters dropped into her outstretched fingers.

“Oh Tess, you kept them,” Mum said. “All my letters home from India.”

“Of course I kept them,” Tess said with a grin. Her hoarding habit was the bane of Mum’s life. “I knew they’d come in useful one day.”

Mum looked slightly embarrassed.

“I’ve got some too,” she said. She held out her hands and another bundle appeared. “These are letters I wrote to Clara; she replied to some, then she sent them all back to me. After that everything I wrote was returned. I was very upset at the time; I liked her a lot.”

“Let’s read them,” Tess said. “They might tell us something we’d forgotten.”

Chapter 38

But actually, we didn’t read them right then. I’d suddenly dropped with tiredness, my eyelids so heavy I couldn’t keep them open a second longer.

“I have to go to bed,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

We’d planned to sit down together and go through the letters the next day, but when I got up, I had a message from Louise.

“Can you come into the station?” it said. “It’s quite important.”

“Can’t you tell me over the phone,” I texted back.

“Rather not,” was the reply. That made me nervous.

I explained what had happened to Mum, Tess and Esme over breakfast.

“I’m going to have to go,” I said. “She might have some news. Maybe it’s about my dad. What are you going to do, Ez?”

Esme looked torn.

“I think I’ll come with you,” she said. “I’d love to stay here and chill out but it’s running away really, isn’t it? Plus, I need to break this bloody enchantment.”

“Do you know what to do?” I asked.

Esme nodded, taking a bite of croissant.

“Mum and Suky have gone through it with me,” she said. She raised an eyebrow. “Turns out, it was all written in my spell book – what are the chances? I might need your help though; apparently I need something precious to Xander so I can break the enchantment. I might need you to nick his wallet or something.”

And so we were back on the train again, heading to Edinburgh once more. The police station was near to our flat, so I shared a cab with Esme, dumped my bags then – trembling with nerves – I went to find Louise.

“While of course I’m pleased to see you,” she said as she showed me down a corridor painted a horrible shade of green, “it wasn’t actually me who needed you, it was Claire.”

“Has she found something on the computers?” I asked.