“Of course I’ll help you.”
Matilda felt some of the muscles in her body loosen as Erin gently spread the scarf across the table on top of the blanket. She fussed with the corners and once she was happy it was straight, she stepped away and watched Matilda place Ivy’s book on top of the sacred space they had created together. Matilda sat down in the chair and nodded at Erin to do the same.
“So, I take it you changed your mind about giving that psychopath your grimoire?” asked Erin, pulling out the chair next to Matilda so they shared a corner of the table. Matilda nodded as she angled the book so they could both see it. “Good! Katrina told me what would happen to you and your family if you did. We’re here because of him, though, aren’t we? Did he do something else?”
Matilda opened the book, her soul swirling in wonder as she looked at the black curled letters that had flowed from the fingers of her ancestor, a witch so notorious that there was an entire festival celebrating her terrible fate.
“I have to stop him, Erin. I have to. I thought I could give it all up, my magic, when he was just coming after me and I couldn’t take any more, but now? He’s gone too far, and I have to stop him before he hurts anyone close to me.”
The image of Nanna May holding Genie in her hands was so clear in her mind that Matilda knew she would carry it with her for the rest of her life. She blinked at Erin, not afraid to let a tear for Genie spill down her cheek.
Erin’s own eyes sparkled with tears, and she nodded vigorously.
“Okay,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear, then pulling her chair in closer to the table. She looked down at the open book, then up at Matilda, her mouth set in a serious line. “What do we need to do?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Matilda, relieved that Erin had agreed to help her but anxious that she didn’t know where to start.
“Oh,” said Erin, then, sensing Matilda’s disappointment, she nodded in encouragement. “But we can find something, right?”
“We have to,” said Matilda. She looked at Ivy’s book, then turned to the rows of books that must have contained thousands of spells and secrets from hundreds of years back, maybe even before Ivy’s time. “My magic is so shaky, and I don’t know how to stop Oliver, but I think we can find help in this room, in these books. Witches look after their own, and I just feel like they want to share with me, especially Ivy. I felt it the moment I held her book in my hands; it was like she was trying to tell me something.”
“Well, of course,” said Erin, leaning over and reading Ivy’s words, still too afraid to touch the book herself. “I mean, Ivy’s got to be like some kind of Merlin-type figure in the witch community, right? I bet she can help us.”
Matilda looked at Erin’s face, her freckles and green eyes so familiar to her that sitting at the table together felt like the most natural thing in the world, only she couldn’t remember the last time they’d done it. Erin looked up from the book and frowned at Matilda.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“I just…,” said Matilda. “I don’t deserve anything from you, let alone getting you caught up in all this, not after how I treated you. I just wanted to thank you.”
“It’s okay, Matilda,” said Erin, smiling gently and letting her eyes roam around her old friend’s face. “Can I…”
“Can you what?”
“Can I ask … what did I do?”
Matilda didn’t think it was possible for her heart to break any more than it had, but she felt a little tinkle as a long-hidden part of it shattered with pain. She wasn’t surprised that Erin had asked the question, but that didn’t dissipate the shame Matilda felt as she sat in a room filled with books written by women who held honesty and loyalty so close to their hearts. She took a deep breath, then turned in her chair so she was facing Erin, and Erin did the same.
“So, I’m not using this as an excuse, although I guess I am because otherwise I wouldn’t have said that, but it was literally the week after my dad left. I was all over the place, in shock, I think, that he’d suddenly just gone and left us, left me, but I was going through the motions, getting up, doing school, coming home, doing my spells.”
“I remember,” said Erin, the moment clearly fresh in her calendar of memories. “Not the spells part, obviously, but I remember when it happened.”
“The day he left I went up to my bedroom and found an envelope with my name on it on my bed. I tore it open, sure he’d written me a letter about where he was going and when he was coming back to get me … but it wasn’t.”
“What was it?” asked Erin, her voice soft.
“It was a piece of paper, folded up, not even neatly. I opened it up and didn’t recognize the handwriting across the page; it wasn’t his.”
“Whose was it?”
Matilda looked down at the book in front of them. “Well, now I think it was Ivy’s writing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how much Katrina told you, but the family grimoire gets passed down through generations so our craft can continue and our knowledge is shared. Each daughter receives the grimoire when she turns seventeen, so I’d never even seen ours.”
Erin nodded. “She’s read up on grimoires and what they mean to witches like you, that nobody else is supposed to touch them.” She looked around the room. “Are these all grimoires?”
“Some of them, I guess,” said Matilda. “We keep our own diaries or spell books, but the family grimoire is where our power is held.”
“Which is why Oliver wants it.”
“Exactly. Katrina is right about nobody touching a family grimoire. Only lineage witches should handle them, for a learned or a nonwitch to touch one is disrespectful. What my dad did, I should have known then … he found my family’s grimoire and took a photo of one of the spells and left it for me.”
“Why would he do that?”
“At the time, I thought it was because he thought I deserved it, but now I think it was because he knew how much it would piss off my mom and Nanna May.”
“That’s pretty messed up of your dad, Matilda,” said Erin. “So, what was the spell?”
Matilda took a deep breath. “You probably know from Katrina that when a witch uses magic to hurt someone else they get a scar of that person’s name on their body?”
Erin nodded. “Katrina has a small one running down her spine.”
“Well, the spell my dad had left for me was a way to cover those scars, meaning whoever has the spell can basically—”
“Do whatever they want to anyone with absolutely zero consequences, and the more bad they do the more they become a numb, coldhearted bitch?” said Erin, giving Matilda a knowing look. “I take it you’ve used the spell?”
Matilda nodded, feeling ultraexposed to Erin but knowing she had to share this with her. “All the time.”
“Okay…,” said Erin, straightening up in her chair a little.
“I knew what the spell was since I’d heard my mom talking about it with my dad before and the name of it was at the top of the page. A Spell for a Witch’s Cloak. My head was really messed up and without thinking, I got everything I needed to try it out. You know Eric Walsh, how much of a dick he was?”
“Still is,” said Erin, curling her lip like she’d smelled something nasty.
“At the time, he was taking my lunch money every single morning, and—”
“You didn’t tell me that!”
“Sorry, kind of had a lot of stuff going on, I guess,” said Matilda, Erin’s fiery loyalty warming her. “Anyway, he was the perfect test for the spell, so I wanted to get him where it really hurt.”
“His soccer skills?” Erin rolled her eyes. “The boy thinks he’s David Beckham.”
“Once I’d done the spell to hurt him and got the scar, then I could see whether the spell my dad left me actually worked.”
“Had you never done a spell to hurt anyone before that, then?”
“No,” said Matilda, shaking her head, “
I was always way too scared. Anyway, in PE the next day the boys were playing soccer on the field while the girls were playing hockey. I’d planned it all out the night before and had a small branch from a rowan tree that I’d snuck out and left on the sideline with my water bottle.”
Matilda paused. She could feel the energy between her and Erin changing, pushing them apart. She stared at the scratches on the table and carried on.
“I watched Eric score his third or fourth goal and run back down the field, his hand held out to all his friends like he was some pro athlete, and I’d had enough of his stupid, smug face. I dropped my hockey stick, ran to the side to where my bottle was, and crouched down facing Eric.” Matilda blinked back the tears that were welling up from the memory of what she’d done. “I whispered the incantation and snapped the branch in half.”
She looked up and Erin was staring back at her, her eyes wide and brimming with tears.
“I heard the scream the moment the branch was in two pieces, but it came from behind me and Eric was still running around. I turned around, and everyone was running toward someone who’d collapsed on the ground.” Matilda shook her head, her voice full of shame. “I’m so sorry, Erin.”
“You did that to me?” whispered Erin. “You broke my leg? I mean, it wasn’t just broken, it was clean in half…”
“I know, and the moment I saw you on the ground I knew it had gone wrong and later I realized it was because of the rowan tree branch. It represents friendship and … and I was wearing your hoodie when I got the spell ready, so it was all misdirected, and Erin sounds like Eric, and with my head all over the place it just all…”
“You didn’t even come and see if I was okay,” said Erin.
Matilda shook her head. “I know. I got up to run over when I saw what happened, but then the scar started searing into my skin. There was blood everywhere and I was so ashamed and I … I just ran away.”
Matilda’s words sank like quicksand into the silence between them. Erin looked down at the table and suddenly felt much further away from Matilda than she ever had before. Matilda looked at her hands, letting them tremble for the terrible thing she’d done to her friend before she abandoned her.
“I couldn’t play hockey for a year, Matilda. I missed the county tournament, and it was because of you?” said Erin, shaking her head. “I was in the hospital for weeks … You never came to see me and I was so confused, and that’s why? Because you were the one who did it to me?”
“I’m so sorry, Erin. I just couldn’t be around you after what I did, and I couldn’t tell you what I was. I was so confused, and so hurt … I’m sorry. Please, I understand if you don’t want to help me after this. I don’t deserve your help.”
Matilda bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut against the sobs that were rising up in her throat, but she didn’t deserve to be the one in pain and she bit them back. In the years since she’d cut Erin out of her life, she’d walked the hallways alone or charmed someone into being her friend, but there was never any substitute for a real friend, for someone like Erin. Matilda braced herself, waiting for the chair to screech across the floorboards as Erin left the monster she was sitting at the table with, but instead she felt Erin’s soft hand on top of her own.
Matilda looked up and Erin leaned closer.
“We all make mistakes, Matilda.”
“W-w-what?”
“Am I thrilled that my best friend literally broke my shin into two pieces? No, not exactly,” said Erin, her eyebrows set in a line above her sad eyes. “And then said best friend abandoned me when I was writhing in agony and ignored me when I got back to school? Not great, either. Not great, in the slightest. But … we all make mistakes and I know you would never have hurt me intentionally and, honestly, I’m just relieved to know what the hell happened.”
“Really?” The word came out as a sob, along with a snot bubble that Matilda wiped with the back of her hand.
“Gross,” said Erin, pulling out a pack of tissues and sliding them to Matilda. “But, yes, really. And hey, bright side? I had no school for weeks, and it didn’t affect my hockey game in the long term. Did it?”
Erin raised her eyebrows, and Matilda remembered Erin slamming the ball through the classroom window when she was under Oliver’s love spell.
“Thank you,” said Matilda.
“It was a long time ago. Okay?” Erin watched Matilda until she nodded. “So, did it work?”
“Did what work?” said Matilda, wiping her nose.
“The spell. To hide the scar.”
“Oh, yes,” said Matilda, looking into Erin’s eyes, feeling some of the weight lift from her shoulders. “But not that time.”
“What do you mean?”
Matilda shuffled forward and tilted her head as she pulled her hair back so Erin could see her neck. Erin’s eyebrows pinched together until Matilda took Erin’s hand and ran her finger along the skin where her hair met her neck. Erin leaned in and trailed her finger across the four letters Matilda kept hidden from sight, her face crumbling as she realized what they spelled.
Erin.
“It’s the only name I ever kept,” said Matilda, still holding Erin’s hand. “I wanted to remember what I did to you.”
Matilda watched tears spill down Erin’s cheeks as they both reached over the table and collapsed into an embrace, squeezing each other for all memories and love that they’d shared and all the laughter and sleepovers they’d missed. Matilda buried her face into the familiar tickle of Erin’s long curls and knew that even after years apart from her best friend, this was exactly where she belonged.
CHAPTER FORTY
Halloween
As the clock ticked them further into the early hours, Erin had grown more confident and decided that they had more chance of finding something helpful if she actually touched some of the books, too. She flicked through the diary of a witch from seventy years ago, while Matilda still pored over Ivy’s book.
It was a fascinating read: part spell book and part diary, detailing little tricks and magic shortcuts along with sketches of plants and arrangements of objects for casting spells. Each spell had a name, but Matilda hadn’t found much that might help them.
“There has to be something,” she whispered to herself.
“We’ll find something; don’t worry.”
But Matilda was worried. While she was looking through books, Oliver was off doing goodness knew what. Her stomach turned over at the thought of her mom and grandmother and Victor back at Ferly Cottage, not knowing what sort of predator was on the loose. The crystals she’d buried around the property should help keep them safe, as long as her magic could cope with a basic protection spell, although she still couldn’t forgive herself for not figuring Genie wouldn’t stay within the confines of the crystal’s protection.
Matilda stood suddenly, her chair scraping against the floor.
“Whoa!” said Erin, her hand on her chest. “Please don’t do that to a person while they’re reading about the history of witchcraft, Matilda. What’re you doing?”
“I’m not finding anything,” said Matilda, rubbing her forehead. “There’s nothing here, and I should be with my family. What if Oliver does something to them while I’m not there?”
Erin leaned over the table so she could peer at the notebook next to Ivy’s book. She frowned and looked at Matilda, pointing at the words scribbled down in pencil.
“But you’ve written loads of stuff down?” she said. “You must have found something?”
Matilda shook her head. “No, I mean yes, I’ve just been writing stuff down that seems…”
“Important?” Matilda nodded. “Show me, then. What have we got?”
“Nothing, it’s just random crap.”
“Random crap you felt needed writing down.” Erin pulled the notebook in front of her and cleared her throat. “Use the weapons of our enemies against them. Well, that sounds promising. How do we do that? Use the weapons, I mean. Like, what weapons?”
“Okay, that’s fine. We can find out what these mystery weapons are, somehow,” said Erin as though she were reading out someone’s homework. “What else do we have? A spell for a statue of stone. That sounds good, like turning him to stone? He can’t do magic if he can’t move, right? Let’s do that; you’ve got all the ingredients listed here.”
“We can’t. It takes a year to brew the potion, and you need a coven for that spell,” sighed Matilda, flopping back into her chair.
“Right, we don’t have a year or, I’m guessing, a coven, so that’s a no go … okay, so the other things you have here are the words why, over and over, bracelet, hair, and poppet.” Erin looked at Matilda, her eyebrows getting higher and higher as Matilda folded her arms and glowered back at her. “I’m so confused. What the hell is a poppet? And why, why, why what?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Matilda sighed. “Why is this happening? Why did he do this to me? Why didn’t I see what he was up to?”
“No,” said Erin, making Matilda jump as she smacked the top of the table. “We are not doing this. You are not blaming yourself for what that psychopath has been doing to you.”
“But there have been signs! So many signs that something was coming, that he was coming for me. Not just my grandmother but the rabbits?” Matilda flicked through the book, then pointed at a page. “A rabbit’s young are born with their eyes wide open, making these creatures recipients of the gift of second sight. To see a rabbit in a dream is a sure warning that something wicked is on its way to your door. See? And those lizards that were crawling all over me in the lake?”
“I’m sorry, what?” said Erin, looking confused. “Rabbits? Lizards?”
Matilda turned the pages of the book again, her hand shaking as she followed Ivy’s words with her finger. “A lizard is a master of trickery and camouflage, deceiving those who look upon them. A lizard coming to you in your dreams is a caution that someone close to you is your enemy.” She looked up at Erin and shook her head. “And I saw loads of them, loads, so you’d think I’d have gotten the message, but apparently not. Then his face in the smoke?”
Mark of the Wicked Page 25
