Maggie reached out and squeezed Joel’s hand. “Kaden can stay,” she said finally, as though reading his thoughts.
Joel held his breath, not sure if he was relieved or not.
“If there’s any trouble, I’ll have my phone,” he said, tapping his jeans pocket. “I won’t be far away. Call me if anything—and I mean anything—”
Maggie simpered. “Joel,” she stopped him. “I know. I get it.”
“But I mean it,” he said, his fingers tightening around hers. “We still don’t know if we can trust him.”
“No, we don’t,” Maggie agreed softly. “But I trust you. And I know you know what you’re doing.”
He pulled her closer to him. “Thank you, Maggie,” he whispered, then planted the smallest of kisses on her lips. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Thank you for trusting me,” she echoed, and she kissed him again.
“You kids,” came Opal’s voice from the corridor as she backtracked from the kitchen towards her bedroom, leaving a trail of cigar smoke in her wake.
Joel rolled his eyes and reluctantly stepped away from Maggie. With one last look, he retreated into the hallway and went out the front door.
Outside on the porch, the air was cold but the snow had stopped falling. The blizzard was over, and now the night was clear. Joel trudged through the snow aimlessly, heading towards the forest of towering evergreens.
“Evan!” he called. His voice reverberated back to him.
He kept walking, venturing deeper into the dark forest now. Blindly he plotted a course through the trees, feeling his way between the thick trunks. Cold, damp bark scraped roughly over his hands as he slipped deeper and deeper into the darkness. But it was okay; he liked the darkness. He could hide there, and Evan would be there, too.
Even alone, Joel took comfort in the sightlessness, relishing in the feeling of his other senses taking over. Instinctually, he listened for his brother’s heartbeat, so in sync with his own that they almost beat as one. Their hearts were the same: tatty and frayed, broken and mended so many times. Their scars were stitched sloppily with childlike love, because they’d stitched each other’s scars. They’d healed each other, time and time again.
Joel walked on, listening to something deep inside his mind—something that was perhaps a piece of Evan resounding within his very soul.
He knew he could find his brother anywhere.
And he did.
Tonight, he found Evan in a small clearing in the forest. The snow was only a thin dusting on the ground here, and the moonlight was casting stripes of shadow through the trees.
Silently, Joel walked up beside his brother, and together they stared at the full moon.
It was a long while before either of them spoke.
“I’m sorry,” Evan said quietly.
“I’m sorry, too,” said Joel.
Another lapse of silence fell between them. The forest was silent too, seemingly in reverence to their bond.
“What are we sorry about?” Joel asked.
“I don’t know.”
Joel breathed into his hands to warm them. “Are you going to come home?”
“What’s home?” Evan’s voice had a distant quality.
He’s right, Joel thought. Home was supposed to be a place where loving parents doted on their children no matter what. Where fathers didn’t just up and leave. And mothers didn’t either, for that matter.
“Right now, home’s that crappy run-down mansion Really Old Aunt Pearl used to live in,” he said instead.
Evan almost smiled.
“Are you going to puke?” Joel asked.
Evan laughed. “I hope not.”
“Why are you looking at the moon?”
“Why are you?” Evan echoed distantly.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m just doing it because you are.”
There was a pause.
“You want to believe Kaden,” Evan said, picking up on an unspoken question.
“Don’t you?”
“I can’t.”
A shiver moved through Joel. “Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Evan,” Joel muttered, his breath fogging as he exhaled. “We don’t have to be his brother. We don’t have to like him. We just have to be glad that he hasn’t killed us, and that we don’t have to kill him. That’s got to be a bonus, right?”
Evan’s face remained impassive.
“You know we’re not capable of murder,” Joel went on with a frown. “Ainsley could probably do it, but . . . Wait, forget I said that. I don’t want that going on the record. You know, in case he actually does it one day.”
“If you could have Dad back, would you?”
Joel looked at Evan. “I can’t answer that,” he replied honestly.
Evan managed a wry smile. “Can’t, or won’t?”
“I can’t answer that, either.”
“Joel,” Evan said in a faraway voice. “I can’t take care of the family. I don’t know how to. I don’t know how to be an adult. I mean, look at me,” he said, gesturing to himself. “I got drunk and I’m staring at the moon.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” said Joel. “That’s normal.”
“It doesn’t feel normal.”
“Not to you, maybe, because you’re not the screw-up brother who gets drunk at parties and does dumb things. I am,” said Joel with a self-deprecating grin. “So why don’t you be me for a while, and I’ll be you? And we can be each other and take care of everything together. We’ll look after the little brothers, we’ll look after each other, we’ll complain about the alleged relatives . . . Together. Just like it’s always been.”
Evan flinched. “I’m scared, though.”
“Well, I’m not,” said Joel, hiding the tremor in his voice. “So I’ll take care of everything, I’ll take care of you. I won’t let you fall.”
With that, he let Evan drape his arm over his shoulder and they began walking home through the forest, blindly. Together. Just how it had always been.
And Joel didn’t once let him fall.
MAGGIE AWOKE ON Monday morning to the shrill sound of her phone ringing. Her eyes shot open and she blinked to focus them. She was in Joel’s room. The drapes were fluttering from the draught that was creeping under the French doors, but other than that, everything was still. Shimmers of morning sunlight danced across Joel’s face as he slept undisturbed in the bed beside her.
How she had ended up here instead of in her own room was hazy, as it always was. The last thing she remembered was staring up at the ceiling, gazing at the kaleidoscopic pattern of shadows and moonlight while she and Joel talked about nothing and everything late into the night.
Now it was Monday morning and the ceiling was once again white, dotted with iridescent flecks of purple light reflecting from the chandelier, real and yet not real all the same time. Just like magic.
In a daze, she held the phone to her ear and pressed answer. “Hello?”
“Miss Ellmes?” a sharp voice returned to her.
“Ms Joy?”
“This call is to confirm that school will indeed reopen today,” Ms Joy went on joylessly. “Classes will resume as normal.”
“Oh.” Maggie sat up, causing the covers to shift off Joel’s sleeping body. “Okay. What about the boarding house?”
“The pipe work is taking place this week. You should be back in by Friday at the latest.”
Maggie glanced down at Joel, who was now awake and blinking sleepily back at her.
“I shall expect to see you in class today,” Joyless went on. “On time.”
Maggie checked the digital display on her phone screen. “But school starts in half an hour!” she said in alarm. “It’ll take us that long just to get there!”
“I suggest you leave immediately, then.”
Maggie made a noise.
There was a bated pause. “And your weekend?” Ms Joy prompted, her voice awkward now as her tone softened slightly. “Any problems?
”
Now there’s a question, Maggie mused.
One out-of-hand party? Check. One near-swarming massacre of a boy overcome with an attention-grabbing enchantment? Check. One potentially psychotic Tomlins half-brother and best-friend-charmer showing up? Check.
Not to mention the fact that this potentially psychotic Tomlins half-brother and best-friend-charmer now appeared to be crashing at the mansion indefinitely while everyone tiptoed around the fact that only a few months earlier he’d tried to kill them all. No one commented when he popped a slice of bread into the toaster and chatted about the weather. No one commented when he stood at the sink washing dishes and talking about some acoustic gig he’d been to in the city.
Kaden was here. And no one was commenting.
“Everything’s fine,” Maggie said aloud. “Mr Tomlins is taking good care of us.”
“Right. Is he available to speak to me now?” Ms Joy asked. “I was hoping he would call me on the weekend.”
Join the queue, she thought.
“Actually, he’s already left for the day. For work,” Maggie improvised.
“Oh. I see. Well, please do be sure to get him to call me as soon as possible.”
Maggie bit her lip. “Right. See you soon, Ms Joy.”
“See you soon, Maggie.”
And the line went dead.
A FEW HALF-an-hours later, and with Pippin tentatively left in the care of Topaz, Joel steered the Jeep into the school parking lot and cut the engine. In the front seat beside him was Evan, and in the rear-view mirror he could see Ainsley, Maggie, Isla, and Kaden all crammed onto the back bench. The blizzard had ended two days before, but slushy snow still covered the tarmac.
Joel swung open his door and stepped out into the sludge, then watched as the others piled out after him.
Together, the little group trudged towards the school to the tune of Ainsley’s gripes about teachers, the education system, the snow, and anything else he could think of until eventually he disappeared into the middle-grade block.
Now five remained.
In the sudden silence, Joel felt awkward. The chorus of quiet, tense breaths screamed in his ears, and every step towards the annex felt deafening.
“So,” he and Kaden said at the same time.
Joel found himself grinning at Kaden, relaxing at the irony of the awkwardness. Kaden grinned back.
Evan wasn’t smiling, though.
Joel’s face fell and he looked down at the sludgy snow. Maggie quickened her pace to walk beside him, leaving Kaden and Isla to hold hands behind them.
Maggie squeezed his arm as they reached the annex, and together the group stepped inside from the cold. Now their footsteps echoed off the mosaic-tiled tunnel, growing louder and louder in the renewed awkward silence. Eventually Evan left to go to his senior class. He didn’t say goodbye.
Numb, Joel watched him leave.
“I should go to the office,” Kaden said, untangling himself from Isla for what seemed to be the first time all weekend. “I’ve got to re-enrol.”
“Do they know you’re back?” Joel asked.
“Nope,” Kaden said simply.
Isla sucked in her breath. “What if they don’t let you come back? Will you have to go to a different school?”
Kaden shook his head, then smoothed back the coal-black strands from his brow. “It won’t be a problem.”
Joel eyed him carefully. Was Kaden going to charm Ms Joy like he had done only a few days before? Or was he planning on doing something even more extreme? He thought back to the night at the carnival a few months earlier. Kaden would have no problem entrancing Ms Joy if he’d managed to enchant even an accomplished witch like Maximus.
Maybe hypnosis is Kaden’s strength, Joel wondered.
“See you,” Kaden said now, jolting Joel from his reverie.
As he left, Kaden clapped Joel on the back. It was something that Joel and his brothers did to each other all the time—a familiar and comfortable gesture.
And again, Joel was met with the unnerving thought, that’s my brother.
BY THE TIME Joel, Maggie, and Isla had made it to class, third period had already begun. It was Chemistry with Mr Hickman.
Joel didn’t mind the class, and he considered Mr Hickman to be the most interestingly insane of all his teachers. He had a full face with a wide smile and even wider eyes. His hair had turned white long ago, though it was still peppered with strands of his formerly ginger youth. He was eccentric and partially deaf—or selectively deaf, as Joel often suspected.
Today Mr Hickman was apparently practicing his selective hearing, as the chatter around the lab appeared to be overshadowing any work that was supposed to be taking place. Joel quietly made his way to the work bench he shared with Charlie, leaving Maggie and Isla to discretely sneak to their own work station—all of which went selectively unnoticed by Mr Hickman, who was preoccupied with a beaker at the front of the classroom.
As Joel took his seat, Charlie gave him a hearty elbow in the ribs. “That party!” Charlie boomed. “Am I right? Can I throw a party or what?” He grinned broadly, waiting for some form of congratulations.
“Yeah,” Joel muttered. “You might wanna give me a little warning next time you plan on hosting a party at my house.”
“Sure, sure,” Charlie agreed heartily. “Absolutely! Next time . . . man oh man, next time!”
Joel frowned.
“But seriously,” Charlie went on, lowering his voice and glancing furtively around the lab. “What’s the deal with Kaden showing up?”
“He’s back in town,” Joel replied under his breath. “Actually, he’s in the office right now, re-enrolling in school. But it’s okay. So far, anyway.”
Joel and Charlie had never actually spoken about what Charlie had seen the night Kaden had come after them. It was no secret that the Tomlinses were witches, but it was something Joel buried all the same—something he felt he had to hide. Something he felt ashamed of. After all, it meant that he was different, and different didn’t feel good. So the fact that Charlie had witnessed witchcraft and acted like nothing had happened was something Joel appreciated. Immeasurably.
“So you’re cool?” Charlie asked now, lingering on the topic of Kaden.
“Yeah.”
Charlie closed one eye and studied Joel through the other. “And he’s cool?”
Joel shrugged.
Charlie nodded his head slowly. “Cool,” he said.
Before they could continue any further, Joel felt a hand squeezing his shoulder. He looked down to his collarbone and saw long red fingernails settled on his shirt.
“Sexy Lexi!” Charlie whooped.
She giggled and played with a strand of her copper coloured hair.
“Where did you disappear to on Friday night?” she purred, leaning closer to Joel. “We were having so much fun, talking together in the kitchen.”
Joel found himself edging away from her. He could smell her perfume, and the fumes were stinging his eyes.
“Uh, something came up,” he said uneasily.
She dipped her head closer to his ear and whispered, “We could have had so much more fun.”
Joel leaned away from her and bumped skulls with Charlie, who’d been leaning in to listen.
“I mean, really, Joel,” Lexi continued, coming even closer and reaching out to adjust the collar of his t-shirt. “You don’t know what you missed out on.”
This time, Joel jumped off his stool, putting an extra foot or two of space between them. “Lexi, what are you doing?” he said under his breath.
She batted her eyelashes at him innocently. “Just being friendly, Joel.”
He took a step backwards. “Okay, well, you’ve got to stop.”
Lexi held up both hands, and a plethora of shiny bracelets slid down her wrists. “Stop being friendly?” She gave a throaty laugh. “Why? Don’t you want to be friends?” She winked at him and gave a pouty cerise-lipped smile.
“No,” he said firml
y, his voice louder than he’d intended.
Suddenly he was aware that his classmates’ attention was on him. Even Mr Hickman was suddenly taking notice. “No, I don’t want to be friends,” he said, “because I’ve already got a friend.”
Lexi fixed her eyes on his. “Yeah, I know who your friend is,” she said with a scoff. “But believe me, she’s not the sort of friend someone like you should have.” She simpered and folded her arms. “You know, you could have any friend you want.”
Joel felt a stab of protectiveness strike inside his chest. “I have the friend I want.”
He glanced across the lab to where Maggie was seated. She, like everyone else in the room, was staring aghast at the scene before them.
“Maggie,” Joel went on with vigour. “Maggie is my friend. She always has been.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that this was heading into dangerous territory. These words were being spoken aloud, in front of the entire class. Each word he uttered was another chink in his armour, another crack. Pretty soon, he’d be leaving himself exposed.
This wasn’t him, though. He wasn’t that guy—the kind of blubbering fool who opened his heart in public. This must be some parallel universe in which he had inadvertently turned into Public Declaration Guy. It was as though Joel—normal Joel—was floating above his body, and Public Declaration Guy had taken over. And he was about to say something irreversible. Something unthinkable.
“Maggie is my friend,” he said again, the words falling out in a single breath. “And I love her.”
A strange hush fell over the classroom. A few people chuckled, but most said nothing at all. Dazed, Joel blinked, not sure where to look or where to go from here. He was back in his body now, and he felt hot. Hot, and also feverishly cold.
At the front of the class, Mr Hickman adjusted his safety goggles. “Right. Well, then. There we have it. Thank you, Joel.”
Joel cringed and dropped back onto his stool.
Blackheath Resurrection (The Blackheath Witches Book 2) Page 12
