by LJ Swallow
Sofia recently taught me to plunge further into my surroundings in visions, and to picture myself there. I take in the names of the shops around as I attempt to pinpoint the locations. The sign above a building over the road is blurred and sharpens into focus the harder I focus.
A shop: ‘The Music Man’.
I’ve lost sight of the girl and her mother and I shift my concentration back to them. The girl jumps up and down as she waits for the green signal to cross the road, and they step out as the traffic stops.
Why am I seeing this if they’re safe?
I turn a hundred and eight degrees and scrutinise faces around. Is somebody else in danger? Will something else happen?
A repeat of several minutes ago sounds in my head—tyres screeching, a scream. But louder. People around me stop talking and all stare into the road behind, some with hands to their mouths.
I spin back around. A metal reindeer lies in the middle of the road, beside a child’s body.
“Maeve!”
Amelia’s voice and cool hand on my forehead pull me from the horrific scene. Two staff members stand beside her, their name badges covered in Christmas glitter.
I struggle to sit and take deep breaths. “I saw something. Amelia. We need to go,” I croak.
“Is she okay?” asks the balding, middle-aged man whose badge reads ‘Ken’.
“We need to call an ambulance,” says the young girl behind him. Her tinsel crown slips as she crouches down. “You look terrible.”
“No. Amelia.” I stagger to my feet. “I don’t know how long I have.”
The basket containing our shopping rests on the floor and an ashen Amelia watches warily.
“Wait!” she calls as I stumble out of the shop.
My head still spins, black dots dancing in front of my eyes, but I focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Amelia catches up to my slow pace.
“Where’s ‘The Music Man’?” I ask.
“What?”
“The shop. Where?” My voice comes out half-hysterical and she takes my arm. “Someone’s about to get hurt. Please.”
Spurred by my words, Amelia takes my hand and she runs through the street, pulling me behind. I stumble a few times as I navigate the people around, looking out for the small girl.
I pull back on Amelia’s arm as we reach the crossing. I recognise the girl’s fairy costume and her mum’s blonde hair sticking from beneath a woollen hat. The light flashes green and the girl and her mother walk across at a slow pace.
“The girl,” I breathe out to a panicked Amelia. “The reindeer.”
But they reach the other side. Safely.
“The child?” she asks.
I nod, dizzy head now filled with confusion.
Then I see the reindeer in the middle of the crossing. The girl cries out to her mum that she dropped it. She steps into the road as the traffic begins moving.
“No!” I scream out. “Stop.”
Tyres screech. A speeding car pays no attention to traffic, music blaring inside.
“Stop!” I scream again, at the car that has no hope of hearing me.
My mind blackens again and I’m somewhere else. A song plays—a classic from the 1980s assaulting my ears. I glance at the surroundings: a car, one male hand on the wheel, the other typing a text on his phone. No, I yell in my mind. Look up. I lift my eyes and catch a glimpse of a figure metres away in front of the car. Stop, stop, stop. I drop the phone, grip the wheel and slam my foot on the brakes.
I’m torn back to the world as Amelia screams, and I’m standing beside her again. In a split second, the car veers to one side and hits a lamppost with a sickening crunch, and the bonnet crumples. Smoke rises from the tarmac where the tyres burnt, and the silence is broken by another scream.
Some people rush to the door, others to the sobbing mother. The little girl stands in the road crying, with her reindeer back in her arms.
How? In my vision, the car hit her.
A blond man in a grey suit staggers from the car, shaking. “I don’t know what happened.”
“You weren’t paying attention,” another man shouts and the atmosphere around him sours.
“You almost hit the girl,” cries out a woman. “I’m calling the police.”
He stares at his car, eyes black with shock.
“It’s a bloody good job you stopped,” growls another man who stands with his speechless wife.
I stumble over, my head banging.
“I didn’t stop,” he mumbles. “I didn’t see anything. I blacked out the minute I reached the lights.”
“Oh really? Nice excuse,” someone’s voice sneers.
I peer into the car. The airbag has triggered, and the name of the song I heard is on the screen that’s still visible on the dashboard. There’s a mobile phone in the footwell where somebody dropped it.
I turn back to Amelia, no longer hearing what’s happening around me.
A siren sounds across the town, distant but growing closer.
The bizarre and shocking reality hits me like a sledgehammer to the had.
“Amelia,” I whisper, clutching her hand tighter. “I was him. I stopped the car.”
Chapter Eighteen
JAMIE
I’m sick and tired of being ‘poor Jamie who might die’. The thought lurches my stomach, but also spikes anger. Everybody avoids the topic, dancing around the issue as if I can’t cope.
I want to trust Maeve’s predictions, but I can’t put my life on hold because an uninitiated witch has a half-hearted prediction about me.
I need a solution.
Everybody knows that nerdy Jamie studies in his spare time, even if a large proportion of that is spent writing Katherine’s assignments. I stare down at one now, cringing as I make deliberate mistakes. Her work can’t be perfect, or we’d arouse suspicion—something I think we already have.
Tobias expressed surprise at her improved vocabulary, so I’ve reduced the number of educated words in her essays. Rubbing my eyes, I attempt to focus on the blurring pages as fatigue takes over. At least writing her papers when I’m half asleep helps dumb them down.
I save the file on my laptop and sink back in the chair. There’s a strange vibe in the witches’s sanctum. Once over, I thought the room’s location deep beneath the academy gave the place a spooky feel. As my abilities grew, I realised the books influenced how I felt.
Most days I’m unaffected, but sometimes I’m dizzied by the strength of emotions radiating from the books. This sounds ridiculous, but I ‘feel’ them. In recent times, as my link to objects has grown stronger, I’ve seen flashes of faces and rooms from years ago.
One book in particular draws me, and I’ve obsessed about the grimoire since Maeve told me she hadn’t stopped my death on Halloween.
The book is one that Matt used to conjure magic he shouldn’t. Magic that was the final nail in the troublemaker’s coffin. One last mistake led Matt to Ravenhold, where he’s under lock and key, stuck on an island with other kids who need ‘rehabilitating’. Few Ravenhold inmates see the mainland again—the Confederacy who run the place are paranoid they’ll aid the Dominion if allowed back into society.
I’m unsure what happens there and how this rehabilitation happens. Personally, I think locking the kids up is more likely to push them to rebellion, not help.
At the time, I argued with Matt and told him not to take and use the grimoire. Sure, he’s the most skilled witch of our generation, but he didn’t have enough power to control the magic. The magic controlled him, and he couldn’t stop.
But that’s because he kept the book too long—I’m only interested in one spell, which I can handle, and then I’ll return the grimoire to its hiding place.
I bite my lip and look to the high shelf where the simple magic books are kept. The magic we’d learned in primary school—turning water to ice in a click of the fingers or mixing potions that changed food from sweet to sour. Simple. Nothing dangerous. Nobody touches the childish
spell books these days, and I have no idea why they’re held at the academy.
Hidden amongst them is the Blackwood grimoire.
I set down my pen and locate a stepladder from the corner of the room before climbing to the top step. I run my finger along thin-spined kids' books and smile as I remember using these years ago. Two are numbered out of sequence, giving me the clue I need. I pull out several books and find what I’m looking for tucked behind.
The grimoire is the size of a small notepad, with a black cover, and thick with yellowing pages. I saw the book when Matt had it, so I know what’s contained inside. He wanted the elemental spells. I’m interested in the protection ones.
Hugging the book to my chest, I carefully walk back down the steps. As I do, my chest constricts. Where the book touches my body, it seems to heat up. In my mind, I catch the sound of people talking. Images intrude—a family sitting around a long dining table, far apart as they eat from china plates in a vast wood-panelled room. A man and woman argue, but I can’t hear what they say. A girl around my age with raven hair and bright blue eyes eats while staring ahead and ignoring them.
On her lap, she holds this book.
The images flicker away again and my damp palm sticks to the book. The grimoire’s past. Did she own the book or, like me, steal it?
No, not steal. Borrow.
On alert for any sound, I sit with my back to the door in case somebody walks into the study room. Nobody is likely to—few come into the sanctum unless they’re attending a lesson or revising for exams.
The archaic language confuses me at first as I leaf through, but my mastery of the secret, almost-forgotten spell language helps. Fingers shaking, I tear a corner from my notepad and mark the place as I close the book.
I’ve located the spell.
Now I need to find the Blackwood family pendant I hid close by.
Matt once had one which he gave to me for safe-keeping before he left. He knew I’d never use Blackwood magic, because Jamie Greenwood would never do anything to land himself in serious trouble.
The difference between him and me is nobody will know if I use a Blackwood spell—most don’t know what the spells are unless an obvious one is cast, like Matt’s destructive fire spell.
Belongings gathered, and the books neatly rearranged to hide the now-empty space behind, I place a hand on my bag, feeling the book’s outline beneath as I walk out the room. The key slides smoothly in the well-worn lock, and I breathe out relief that I found what I was looking for.
Pausing in the dark hallway, I strain to listen for sounds beneath the sanctum. The strange noise and movement played on my mind since the day I was here with Maeve. This is something I need to find time to look into—is this a coincidence that the strange event happened when Maeve was here for the first time?
I don’t think it is a coincidence. I’ve spent hours down here over the last year and heard nothing.
But that’s not my concern right now. I extinguish the lamps one by one, then I head back from the gloomy hallway to the library’s bright homeliness with an extra spring to my step.
Nobody can kill me if I’m protected by Blackwood magic.
Chapter Nineteen
MAEVE
Theodora and Sofia listen calmly as I stammer out my story, not-so-calmly. Theodora sits behind her desk, and her flawless face remains impassive. Sofia’s eyes widen and her mouth parts further as the story continues.
Amelia stands beside me, arms by her sides, almost to attention she stands that straight.
As I recount the story, I wince with embarrassment at what happened after I left the accident. I hate returning to places where I fainted, especially ones when I burbled like a madwoman before passing out. I’m a coward—I sent Amelia back into the shop to find our purchases and bring them out. As I waited, the cold wind whipped me back into the world and blew away the last fuzziness.
Still in shock, we made our way back to the academy.
Once my story is told, I drop back into a chair in Theodora’s office, feeling like someone who’s just given a recital.
Moments tick by before anybody speaks.
“I have not heard about such things,” says Theodora as she crosses her hands onto the desk. The rings on her fingers shine. “Is this written anywhere in witch history, Sofia?”
I’m unnerved by the strength of Sofia's scrutiny. “There are instances where spirit-attuned witches can influence people’s actions, but this is a power separate to future-sight. This is a vampire power and rare amongst witches.”
“Maeve has two powers?” Theodora finally shows surprise. “If so, these are a strong combination.”
“Do you think I influenced the driver's actions?” I ask.
“You saw yourself inside the car, therefore you were inside his mind.” Theodora says the words matter of fact, while I’m still trembling with the shock, hours later.
Sofia tips her head. “Amelia? Do you have anything to add?”
“I don’t think so.” Her tiny voice is inaudible, so she clears her throat and repeats her reply.
“Nothing untoward happened to you?” asks Theodora.
“Not really.”
“Which suggests something did,” says Sofia.
Amelia chews her bottom lip. “I felt connected to Maeve’s magic when we held hands, the way I did with Matt.” At the mention of his name, Amelia’s eyes shift downwards, and an awkwardness fills the room. “Not exactly the same as Matt, but a connection.”
“This is fascinating,” says Sofia. “You used Amelia's magic to strengthen yours.”
Did I? “After my first vision, I struggled to walk as if I were in a dream,” I look at Amelia. “Her magic energy definitely strengthened me, but I think physically too.”
“Interesting,” says Theodora.
“She has a connection to Amelia and Jamie,” whispers an awed Sofia. “The three of them. Attuned witches.”
Theodora purses her lips. “Again, I have never heard of this situation. Yes, two attuned witches, but not three.”
“I’ve lost the connection to Jamie,” I remind them. “He’s unable to step outside his own head currently.”
Theodora's brow pinches. “Yes. I wish that we could solve this issue surrounding his possible death.”
Amelia makes a small sound in her throat.
“And for me to stop his death,” I remind Amelia and squeeze her hand.
But my aunt’s words come back to me: I can’t keep saving lives.
Yet I can't let anybody die, either—not if I could stop the events as I did today. Marie's fate is something I need to accept will be mine.
Theodora and Sofia look at each other. Are they echoing my thoughts?
“Yes. Exactly. Maeve will solve Jamie's situation, Amelia,” says Theodora.
“I have considered why Maeve is struggling,” says Sofia. “Her thoughts are jumbled. She had a vision of her friend on Halloween, but nothing happened to harm this friend.” She side glances me and something in her eyes triggers the hairs on the back of my neck. Has Tobias told her? “Each time Maeve sees Jamie, things are contradictory. The location, especially.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Once, you told me he was walking along a path close to brick buildings. Another, you said he was in the middle of a street. A third time, you saw him standing in the woods.”
What? “I never said that.”
Sofia’s mouth thins. “You don’t always remember the things you mumble when you’re inside the vision.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t remember seeing all that.”
She gives a sympathetic smile. “Yes, which is why there is much work to be done for you to gain control of your powers.”
I rub my head. This makes no sense. Do I really not remember everything I say?
My natural suspicion about people in my new world slips in, and this time are my fears true? Why hasn’t Sofia mentioned this before?
“You look doubtful, Ma
eve. I have notes, if you'd like to see,” she says tersely.
“Do you think Maeve could be linked to anybody else? If three are attuned, why not four?” interrupts Theodora. “Ash seems to spend more time with her than he needs.”
“I think that’s for other reasons,” says Sofia with a light laugh. “Besides, he isn’t a witch.”
“Oh? But isn’t Jamie her...” Theodora trails off and waves a hand. “No matter. If this connection is closeness, we can add in Andrei.”
Amelia meets my eyes in surprise and mouths 'Andrei?'
“Add in Andrei for what?” I ask.
Theodora chuckles. “As a lamia, I sense certain connections between people, and not only a magical one.”
“That’s ridiculous,” retorts Sofia. “Andrei is hemia. They’re completely incompatible. He could kill her and probably would.”
Whoa. Since when did this become a conversation about the guys in my life? I pull a face at Amelia, who's trying not to laugh.
“Sofia, as you know, I refuse to judge the boy based on his family history. I have asked you many times to do the same.”
“What family history?” I ask.
But neither reply. Amelia rubs her nose. Does she know?
“Do you understand how much time I waste supervising hemia and witches to ensure they keep their hands off each other?” she retorts. “Tobias is not helpful in this matter. He refuses to see the danger.”
Wow, someone poked her sore spot. “I’m not concerned Andrei will hurt me,” I say. “Honestly, that’s one of the last things I have to worry about, don’t you think?”
My cheek doesn’t go unnoticed, and I cringe at myself. Hunters. Dominion. They may be quiet now, but quiet enemies can be the most dangerous. Those are the ones watching and waiting. Planning.
“Should we develop this connection between Amelia and Maeve?” Theodora asks Sofia. "Teach Maeve to utilise Amelia's spell power to strengthen hers, perhaps."
