The Broken Spell (12 page)

‘And now
you
have a coven.’

Grace swallowed hard.

‘And I’ve brought him right to us.’

Adie hadn’t meant to spy. When she saw Grace on North Street, she had tried to catch up with her. She wanted to talk to her alone, when Jenny wasn’t there and no-one was angry. She had only fallen back when Delilah joined Grace at the crossroads, and they turned down Macken Street towards the library. Then curiosity had got the better of her, and she had followed them, keeping to the shadows. Maintaining a little distance, she crept through the doors after them, and climbed the stairs to the library on the first floor.

The maze of bookshelves provided good camouflage as she watched the two girls set up at one of the PCs at the back of the room. They were engrossed by whatever was on the screen, but Adie couldn’t make any of it out. She inched closer, darting from bookshelf to bookshelf, until she stood
behind a stack, just feet from Grace and Delilah.

One quick look
, she told herself,
just to see what’s so
interesting
. Taking a quick glance around, she stuck one foot on the second shelf from the ground, and grabbed the top with her left hand. She kept climbing until she could peek over the top of the stack, and catch a glimpse of the grand old house on Grace and Delilah’s screen.

‘Can I help you, young lady?’

Adie gasped as her feet lost their purchase on the lower shelves, her hands stayed glued to the top, and her teeth banged painfully off the shelf directly in front.

‘Oww!’ she said, dropping to the ground and holding a hand over her mouth.

‘Is there something in particular you’re looking for?’ The librarian glared over her pince-nez spectacles.

‘Yess,’ Adie replied, still holding a hand to her face. ‘Thiss one.’

She reached out and grabbed the first book to hand.

‘
Lawnmower Maintenance and Repair
?’ the librarian said.

Adie stared hard at the front cover.

‘Yess,’ she said finally.

The librarian watched her for a moment, then pointed a long, bony finger to the desk at the centre of the room.

‘Check out over there,’ she said.

‘Thankss.’

Adie made her way furtively towards the main desk but,
before she reached it, she saw Delilah get to her feet and walk her way. Dropping the lawnmower book on top of a pile of Harlequin Romances, Adie jumped out of view and made a run for the door.

Outside, she ducked down the alleyway alongside the building and stared up at the illuminated windows on the first floor. Sighing deeply and squeezing her eyes shut, she gripped the brickwork with her fingertips and whispered a verse under her breath. A reluctant whimper escaped her mouth as her feet lifted off the ground. Using the wall for balance, she continued to rise, until she could grip the brick windowsill. Peeking over the wooden frame, she could see Delilah wandering between the bookshelves, while Grace stayed seated at the computer.

After five minutes, Adie’s fingers had started cramping, and she had just decided to give up, when Delilah did something a little odd. Standing in front of a stack of books just to the right of the window, the small girl laid her palms flat against the book spines, closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the books too. She stayed like that for nearly a minute, until there was a tremor in the stack that Adie felt through the wall, and a book shot out of a shelf further down, falling open on the floor. Delilah slowly turned, gazed down at the book, then picked it up and headed back to Grace at the computer desks.

Adie gradually lowered herself to the ground, stretching
out her aching fingers. She couldn’t make sense of what she’d just seen, but she was feeling more and more uneasy about Grace’s new friend.

12

WONDROUS BEINGS

The teenaged Beth Lemon sat on the curb, just inside the school gates, watching the sun go down. She smiled as a lovely pink glow spread across the sky, giving the school grounds an other-worldly feel. She thought of the old saying,

Red sky night, shepherd’s delight,

Red sky morning, shepherd’s warning.

Or was it sailor’s? Either way, it should be a beautiful day tomorrow. She jumped as two girls on roller skates whooshed past her, flying across the empty car park and squealing as they avoided colliding with each other, while doing
figure-of
-eights on the tarmac. A third, much smaller girl with curly pigtails, crept gingerly past, stepping awkwardly on the stoppers of her roller skates, and chewing on her lip.

‘Get out of the way, Kitty,’ one of the older girls whined,
as the little girl tiptoed between them. ‘You’ll just fall in our way.’

‘I won’t,’ Kitty replied earnestly, stretching her arms out.

‘You can’t skate,’ the other girl snapped, turning in a tight circle around Kitty until the smaller girl lost her balance and fell over.

Undeterred, Kitty scrambled to her feet and rolled
forward
at a snail’s pace.

‘Get lost!’ the mean older girl said, giving Kitty a dig in the back that knocked her back onto the ground. Kitty sat on the tarmac, her face crumpling as she began to cry. But again, even as her tears were falling, she struggled to her feet. At the edge of the car park, Beth tapped her fingertips on the ground, whispering soft words and staring at the little girl’s roller skates.

Suddenly, Kitty was on her feet and moving forward with growing speed. Looking alarmed at first, the little girl’s face broke into a huge grin as her steady feet kept her upright while her skates got faster and faster. The two older girls stopped to stare as Kitty flew over the tarmac, graceful as a butterfly, twirling and spinning and whooping with delight. Beth smiled to herself. She watched the three skaters until darkness sent them home.

Vera and Meredith were late.

She wandered around the back of the school, keeping close to the wall for shelter as a cool wind picked up. As she
rounded the C block, she could see the spot where she knew the anomaly to be. Staring at the flat, grassy area, she
wondered
how it could look so ordinary in the real world when, underneath, it was bursting with a supernatural energy that excited and terrified her.

‘Return any time,’ croaked a voice to her left.

Beth almost screamed. Her back pressed against the wall, her fingertips gripping the cold brick. Mrs Allan, balanced on two walking sticks, stood just a few feet away. That
familiar
smirk played on her mouth, but her eyes were wide and alert. Beth opened her mouth, to scream or speak, she wasn’t sure but, before she could do either, the woman was gone. Beth blinked. No-one there. As she continued to stare,
Meredith
appeared, strolling from the woods.

‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘I mean, what are you doing
here
? Weren’t we to meet in the car park?’

Beth shook her head, then nodded, then shook it again.

‘I don’t…’ she said. ‘I didn’t… did you see her?’

‘Who?’

‘Mrs Allan.’

‘
Mrs
Allan
? Are you feeling alright?’

Beth peeled herself off the wall and steadied her shaking legs.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Hey!’ They both jumped as Vera came marching around the corner. ‘What are you guys doing here? We were meant
to be meeting at the front gates.’

Beth was about to explain that that’s exactly where she
had
been waiting, when she realised Vera wasn’t alone. A tall girl, with thick red hair almost to her waist, followed close behind. Beth recognised her. They took French together.

‘What’s this?’ Meredith snapped.

‘
This
,’ Vera replied curtly, ‘is Vivienne. She’s heading to a party tonight in Marie Riley’s house, and we’re going with her. So come on, it’ll be fun.’

By the time they reached Marie Riley’s house, the party had overflowed into the front garden. David Bowie’s
Sound
and Vision
blasted from the open windows, competing with the noise of the crowd that had accumulated in the driveway.

‘Hey Vera!’ A handsome boy with black hair waved his hand over the throngs of people.

‘Can’t stop, Spud!’ Vera yelled back without looking. ‘I’ll catch you inside.’

As they squeezed through the front door, and into the
hallway
, Beth lost her grip on Meredith’s shirt and was tempted to grab a lock of her blonde hair rather than lose her. But instead, she was pulled apart from the other two and ended up bouncing from one side of the sitting room to the other, like a pinball, as the dancing masses got even rowdier.

After much squirming, Beth managed to free herself and escape to the kitchen at the back of the house. Finally, she caught sight of Vera’s spiky red hair, but her friend was deep
in conversation with Vivienne. She was holding her hand up and pointing to a ring on her middle finger. Beth couldn’t make it out from where she stood, but she knew Vera wore an iron pentagram on that hand. She was probably sharing with Vivienne what it was, and why she wore it. Beth felt her chest tighten, and pushed her way to the back door.

She remembered how she had latched onto Vera on the very first day of school. Vera had strolled into the A block, like she owned the place, and immediately signed up for Science as her first choice of subjects. Beth had followed her to that line, then to all the others, and wound up with an identical timetable. Rather than being annoyed by the
follower
, Vera had chatted to her with confident ease and, after discovering their mutual interest in all things paranormal, had taken her under her wing. They had been inseparable ever since.

Beth had got to know Meredith when she joined St John’s halfway through their second year. She had attended the Holy Faith girl’s school on the other side of town, a place with a reputation for discipline that didn’t suit
Meredith’s
rebellious character. She had been expelled in an incident that became local legend, and involved the habit of the Principal, Sister Mary Catherine, a tube of superglue and a homemade, spring-loaded device filled with
thumb-tacks
. Her first couple of months at St John’s began much as her days in Holy Faith had ended until, one day, she shared
a lunch-time detention with Vera. Meredith had watched as the girl sketched wicked-looking symbols in her copybook, followed by lines of text in some weird language. Spying an ancient book poking out of Vera’s bag, with one of the
symbols
on the front cover, she had pinched the book and spent several days engrossed in its contents. Vera figured out who had stolen it – and came looking for her.

‘Can you do some of the stuff it talks about in here?’ Meredith had asked when Vera and Beth challenged her at the school gates.

‘Not much,’ Vera had said, shrugging. ‘But we’re learning fast.’

Meredith had grinned at the two of them. ‘Teach me, and you can have it back.’

For Beth, it had felt like a black cloud sweeping over them. She and Vera were a team; just the two of them. She didn’t want a stranger in their group. But she knew Vera hadn’t felt the same.

‘A coven of two is not a coven,’ she had said many times. ‘A coven of three? Now that’s a Wiccan number!’

Vera had returned Meredith’s grin and consented; she loved a challenge.

That all seemed a long time ago now, thought Beth sadly. There were a few stragglers out the back, but she followed a pathway to the end of the garden, behind a little hedge and, at last, found peace and quiet. She stared up at the stars,
begging her tears not to fall. But the evening had been too much, and they spilled from her eyes, and splashed onto the ground.

‘Not your scene either, is it?’

Meredith sat in the shadow of the hedge, on an old tree stump. Shaking her head, Beth quickly wiped her eyes, and sat on the ground beside her. For ten minutes, neither of them said a word. Until Meredith pointed upwards suddenly.

‘Shooting star. Make a wish.’ She looked down at Beth. ‘Do you wish you were at home right now?’

Beth shook her head, and Meredith nodded.

‘Yeah,’ she said sympathetically, ‘I guess not. I do, though. Don’t know why I came to this stupid thing. Just ’cos
she
said so.’

Beth hugged her knees and stared at the ground.

‘I hate parties,’ Meredith went on. ‘I hate being around these people. Don’t you?’

‘I get nervous.’

‘Why nervous?’

Beth shrugged.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t fit in, I suppose. I wish I could chat away to people, like Vera can.’

‘
Why
?’ said Meredith. ‘Why would you want to fit in? You’re better than all these people. Think what you can do, Beth. Think about all the power you have in those tiny little hands of yours. These people are nothing.’

‘They’re not
nothing
, Meredith.’

Meredith sighed.

‘Not
nothing
, that’s not what I meant. I just meant… Oh, Bethany, they’ll never know what we know. They’ll never be able to do what we can do. We’re phenomenal. We’re
wondrous
beings!’ she paused. ‘We hold the power of life and death in our hands.’

‘It comes with responsibility, though,’ said Beth. ‘You know that, right?’

‘Yeah, right,’ Meredith smiled absently, and lifted her head to gaze at the stars once more.