by Mara Webb
I looked down to laugh with the cats at my funny quip, but none of them seemed to find it funny. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as he says it is, he just needed to explain that he was engaged before and probably embellished a few elements of the story for a little flair.”
“I’m not so sure, I’ve heard about this you know, cursed jewelry,” Quin said. He walked over to the stairs to sit down on the bottom step. “There was some couple that owned a high-end boutique about a hundred years ago. They sold all sorts of stuff. The wife had magic in her blood, and when she discovered that her husband was cheating on her, it all kicked off.”
“Kicked off?” I asked.
“Oh yeah! He went after everything in their divorce and he tried to leave her flat broke, so she cursed everything in the store. If anyone bought something from her husband as a gift for someone else it would ruin the recipient’s life, pretty dark right? The justice department caught most of the shoes, coats and handbags but tracking and destroying cursed jewelry is harder for some reason. It’s entirely possible that Brent stumbled across one of these cursed pieces by accident.”
“But what are the odds he walked into this same shop?” I asked.
“It didn’t have to be the same shop,” Quin said. “And I doubt it was. Did he mention where he got it?”
“He just said from a vintage shop in town.”
“Well there you have it! All the items in those places are second-hand. Cursed jewelry is hard to come by, Nora, but I’ve heard rumors that a few of these pieces have wandered through this town. What does your gut tell you?”
It told me what I already knew, and I had a chilling realization that Brent’s suspicions were right.
How was I supposed to handle all of this?
My boyfriend had just alluded to a proposal, I should have been elated. All of our problems should have melted away and let us have just one day of celebration. Instead, I was not engaged.
I was not proposed to, but instead informed of a wicked ex-fiancé who could start stalking me at any moment and things could turn nasty. I didn’t get to parade up and down the street I lived on in the hope of bumping into a neighbor and saying ‘Yes, that is a ring on my finger! We’ll be sending out save-the-day notes soon, check your mail!”
“Why have you not mentioned this before? You talk all day long, that is a pretty interesting story you know, much better than some of the stuff you normally come out with,” I said. I was sulking a little now.
“Hey! Don’t lash out at your maid of honor like that, we are on the same side! Wait, can I be maid of honor and the best man?” he purred as he thought then quickly became distracted.
“You’re getting way ahead of yourself,” I said.
“You’re right!” He beamed. “Why don’t you eat, take your mind off things. Maybe make enough dinner for all of us, then you should probably go and check your emails. You left your laptop unlocked upstairs and I was reading through all your stuff and O.W.L. have been in touch.”
O.W.L. stood for the Online Witch Learning school, it was a distance learning program that my aunt Edith had signed me up for before she died. I had successfully navigated my way through the first year of intense reading and assignments and was one step closer to becoming a full licensed witch without limits on my powers. Quin knew I was waiting to hear from them about starting my second year, I didn’t even want to know why he had been scrolling through my inbox.
“Maid of Honor? You should be so lucky. Let me run up and check this email and then I’ll make dinner. I’ll not be long,” I said. I was already jogging up the stairs before the cats started their chorus of complaints that they were starving hungry.
The house had changed the carpeting upstairs at some point between me leaving for work this morning and arriving back home. It was now pale gray with flecks of silver catching the light. It was thick and soft, perfect to walk on with bare feet as the weather got colder.
“I like this carpet!” I said to the house. “Can we keep it?”
I suppressed some of the nerves I had about the O.W.L. email, I had never known what to expect from each correspondence and I had survived them all. This should be no different. Imposter syndrome was gripping tightly as I walked into my bedroom and towards the desk where my laptop lay open.
Quin hadn’t even tried to pretend that he hadn’t been messing about on my computer, the empty packet of his favorite snack cookies next to the keyboard was a dead giveaway. I didn’t take a seat at my desk yet, something was calling me to the window.
The house had rearranged everything in my bedroom too and there was now a window above one of my nightstands that looked out over the front of the house. Did the human neighbors not notice these changes? It seemed like a huge risk to take. I looked out at the street below and standing there, still as a statue, was a woman with long, dark hair staring right back at me.
Joanne was here.
4
It felt like I had imagined it. A woman had been standing there, right in the middle of Charm Close, and was staring at the house, at me. I had turned to shout for Quin but when I looked back through the glass, she was gone. There was a tension in the air now as to where she was.
Had I imagined it because of what Brent had told me? It was like noticing a huge spider in your bedroom and somehow losing track of it, the threat is still there but you have lost the advantage of knowing where it is.
I knew that the house was protected, or at least there had been attempts to protect it. I had put protections spells on this place, as had my aunt Edith and Quin, yet intruders always seemed to find a way through. I tried to call Brent’s cellphone, but he wasn’t picking up, he must still be too busy with work.
What would I even say to him? ‘I think that I saw your ex-fiancé staring at me despite having no idea what she looks like,’ that would be crazy. My instincts seemed to be telling me that it was her, but I might be being paranoid.
There was no use gazing out onto the street for the entire evening, I may as well read through the emails I came up here to check. I found the message from O.W.L. that Quin had been referring to. As always, clicking on the email caused an explosion of confetti to explode out of my laptop and fire directly into my face, the little shreds of paper were all oranges and browns for the season, how thoughtful.
‘Dear Ms. Wildes,
Welcome to your second year of study, it must be a weight off your mind to know that you are one step closer to accessing your unrestricted powers.
Your future modules will now be assigned to you in a random order. Needless to say, the professors at O.W.L all love this arrangement as it makes it much more difficult for us to grade papers and we all needed something extra to spice up our lives. Nothing like having every member of your tutor group working on a different topic to confuse you.
You have been allocated the task of mastering an ancient and powerful language: The Theban Alphabet.
It will not enable you to order delicious meals in a European city or to navigate a taxi to your hotel in South America, it is not ‘useful’ in the traditional sense. There are, however, numerous ancient texts that are written in this language that many cannot interpret. It is of great importance that this magic is not lost, that the spells crafted by our ancestors are not forgotten simply because we have allowed the language to die.
It must be preserved and respected.
Shortly after reading this email you will receive your first textbook to get you started, I recommend that you obtain an audiobook copy privately—unfortunately this is not provided by us.
There will be several books on the assigned reading list, upon the completion of this module a small children’s book will be sent to you written in this new language. I will call you to ask questions about what that adorable little tiger ate for his dinner and where on earth his favorite blanket is, demonstrating comprehension.
Strength, love and roller skates,
Professor Alse Eastey.
(It rhymes with ‘else
’. Please do not email the student support team asking us how to pronounce my name.)’
So, I just had to learn an ancient language, navigate relationship politics with my boyfriend, and deal with his crazed ex-fiancé who is now stalking me?
No sweat.
I closed my laptop just as the incoming textbook landed of my desk and caused me to lurch suddenly backwards. I was still sat in the office chair, so I fortunately just rolled back along the carpet instead of tripping over and smashing my head on the wall. It wasn’t great timing to have items appear quickly when I was already on edge after seeing Joanne outside.
I hurried downstairs to prepare a meal for my furry family and threw something in the microwave for myself. I wasn’t in the mood to cook anything extravagant now that Brent was elsewhere, it seemed like a waste of time to stand there for an hour to make one portion of dinner.
The microwave’s ‘Ping!’ let me know that my pasta dish was ready, the cheese was like a thick, yellow plastic on the top, just how I like it. I carried my plate into the lounge and curled up on the couch, letting my food cool so I didn’t burn my mouth on some nuclear cheese.
The cats had been thrilled with their meal of shredded beef that Brent had brought over for them yesterday, miraculously they hadn’t finished it all in one go so there was enough for today too.
I was soon joined by seven cats that were in full self-cleaning mode. I reached for the remote control so that I could drown out the sound of tongues brushing fur but when I turned on the TV, I could see that something wasn’t right. It normally loaded onto the last channel that was being watched, but instead it was playing some sort of slideshow of photographs instead.
I had set up the TV so that we could mirror our smart phones onto the bigger screen, it was mostly for my sanity as the cats would climb all over my back and legs to try and look at my phone if I was trying to show them a video I thought they would like.
There was a code required to set up a phone to do this, it was a secret number and only I had used it so far, not even Brent had set his up. This wasn’t my phone, someone else was sharing photographs onto this television.
“What are these, Nora?” Quin asked. He had stopped cleaning himself to look up at the pictures. “Why have you taken photos of your car?” He was right, I hadn’t recognized it at first because I was lost in the confusion as to how the pictures were streaming like this.
I saw my car, the outside of Charm Close, a photo of the University I worked at, then it took a turn. There were photographs of me driving away from the University parking lot, a photo of me getting out of the car on the driveway outside the house, a photo of me in my bedroom that had been taken through the window.
I looked closer at the last picture, on the desk was the book on the Theban alphabet that had just arrived. This picture had been taken in the last hour. It must be Joanne. As terrifying as this was all becoming, at least my hair looked good from the back. You can never really see the back of your own head, not unless you set up a series of angled mirrors.
I could hold on to the fact that if a maniac broke in tonight, my hair was fit for a princess.
The picture show ended, and the TV returned to normal, jumping to a movie that was playing on a normal channel. Could Brent’s ex-fiancé be a witch? I wasn’t sure what I was up against and it looked like she had been following me for a few days, the outfits I was wearing in the pictures made me think that it might have been almost a week.
The fact that I hadn’t noticed someone stalking me made me think that I would be a bad spy. I decided to finish my pasta and the movie, I was confident I could defend myself if she tried to get in here, and the cats would help me too. The film was about halfway through and we decided to play a game with it, trying to guess the back story that had led the characters to this point. The cats were way off, most of their guesses involved something about ‘dogs being stupid.’
As the credits were rolling up the screen, I heard a noise outside, like the crunching of the leaves that had piled up by the front door. Had she come back? What was she planning to do, just bother me until I broke up with Brent and then they would get back together? Some people, eh? I was feeling tired after the heavy, processed food and lame FBI movie, and it looked like Brent wasn’t going to be coming back any time soon. I wanted to go to bed but if there was some creepy woman pacing around the perimeter of the house it would be hard to relax.
I picked up the phone and called for the police.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“There is a woman casing my house, she has been stalking me and I think she is dangerous. I’m at number thirteen Charm Close and she is outside right now. Can you send someone over?”]
I woke up in the morning to the sound of my alarm. I had been hoping for a bit more action from the police the night before, but because of the break in at a bar in town, they hadn’t responded all that quickly. It seemed that most of the town’s police officers had rushed over to check out the crime scene to see if they could help and then got caught up interviewing witnesses. An hour after I had called them, a couple of officers drove over to have a look around and take a statement.
It was obviously not a good idea to mention that she was cursed, so it limited what I was able to say. I explained that I believed I was being followed by my boyfriend’s ex and that she had streamed photos of me to my own TV demonstrating how long she had been watching me and the house.
They took it upon themselves to have a quick look at my car to inspect it for any obvious damage, apparently it wasn’t uncommon for people to cut breaks or slash tires. After walking around the car, they were able to see a three-inch blade protruding from the front passenger tire.
In my opinion, this clearly suggested that she planned to escalate things but as it was the middle of the night, they didn’t seem to be interested in setting up a police guard outside my front door. This was a small town; they didn’t have those types of resources.
I still had to figure out a way to get to work, there wasn’t a bus route to take me to the magical University just outside of town and I doubted a taxi would take me there as humans couldn’t see it properly.
Maybe I could call Brent and get him to shuttle me over there, I hadn’t spoken to him since he left to deal with the robbery, and it would give me a chance to explain what had happened with Joanne. He may have been told by his colleagues already but as he hadn’t called to check on me it was safe to assume that he was oblivious.
I half considered replacing the tire myself, I was sure I had a spare in the trunk. Would I be able to repair it with magic? It might be worth a try. I travelled across my bedroom carpet to the corridor and climbed up the steps to the attic.
The house liked to switch the access method to the attic as well now, ladders and stairs were both fine, but I had not been keen on the fireman’s pole. I quickly found a book called ‘Meddling with your motor’ and located a spell to repair punctures, it specifically mentioned the word ‘sabotage’, so I was confident I had the right one.
I carried the book back down the ladder and shouted to Quin. “I can fix the car! Look at me, little miss independent over here. Watch out, self-sufficient lady coming through.”
“Does that mean you can head to the grocery store today? I follow this ice-cream account on Instagram and apparently there is a new flavor that has an entire raspberry cheesecake at the bottom of the carton.”
“If I can get the car moving, then yes,” I said. The coffee machine was pouring sweet, delicious caffeine into the biggest mug I owned when a scream from outside pierced the calm. I ran to the front door and pulled it open, only to be greeted by multiple neighbors doing the same thing.
There was an elderly lady with a small dog on a leash, she was still screaming as people started to run over to her and join her in horror. I took a few steps out of the door to see what they were looking at. Lying across the top of my car was Joanne’s dead body.
5
Several mont
hs ago, the dead body of a cheerleader had been discovered on my front lawn. I had felt the weight of suspicion on me everywhere I went, even after the real killer had been detained.
It felt like people were beginning to trust me again, well the same as anyone ever trusts a neighbor. Ideally, there are no murderers on your street, and if you suspect that there is one, you avoid them. The screams in the street indicated that I was back at the top of the list of ‘people to steer clear of.’
Maybe I should have said something. I was standing on the bottom step outside my front door with my mouth open in silence. Should I have screamed too? Should I be running around trying to call the police or checking her pulse?
It was clear she was dead; her chest didn’t rise and fall with breath and her skin was a strange color. She was lying on her back with her face towards me, it would be something I would not forget in a hurry.
A neighbor was speaking into a cell phone and kept shooting looks in my direction from beneath raised eyebrows. I hoped that they weren’t trying to land me in trouble before any of the facts had been gathered, but I had to admit, if I were one of them, I would suspect me too. I seemed to attract death in this town. One of Joanne’s arms had flopped down the side of the car, her hand seemed to still be clutching something. It looked like a small scrap of paper.
How could I retrieve the thing in her hand without people looking? I didn’t need to worry about that for long, the police were responding with their sirens blazing and the gathered crowd turned in the direction of the sound.
I rushed over to grab the paper from Joanne’s fist and shoved it into the pocket of my pajamas. When I looked up, I could see that one of the neighbors had noticed me and I was frozen in place, desperate to think of something I could shout over to him in my defense. There was nothing.
