The Language of Spells

by Painter, Sarah

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Cam made the sharp turning into Gwen’s road. His Lexus bumped over the rough ground. ‘You need to resurface this.’

  ‘When I win the Lottery,’ Gwen said, more sharply than she intended. ‘Sorry. Nanette doesn’t like it much, either. Not doing her suspension any good.’

  ‘Nanette?’

  ‘My van. Nissan Vanette. Nanette. Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Cam said.

  He parked outside End House. The light in the hall was on and it glowed through the stained glass above the front door, casting colours onto the overgrown path.

  ‘Thank you for tonight,’ he said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Gwen said stiffly. ‘Thank you for the lift.’

  Gwen got out of the car and her heart began thudding when she heard him switch off the engine and follow her. Just being a gentleman. He’s just being nice.

  Gwen fumbled with her keys, trying to unlock the door. Cam’s hand closed over hers and she turned to find him barely an inch away.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘I thought we were just friends now?’ Gwen said.

  ‘Closure’s overrated.’ Cam smiled crookedly. And then he kissed her.

  She kissed him back, feeling nothing but relief that he was holding her again. ‘I don’t want to do this if you’re not sure.’

  ‘I’ve tried keeping away from you, Gwen Harper. Doesn’t seem to be working.’

  In the hall, Gwen’s bag hit the floor and their coats followed a moment later. Cam was walking Gwen backwards towards the stairs when he suddenly stopped short and groaned.

  ‘Cat!’ Gwen said.

  Cat removed his claws from Cam’s leg and began winding around his ankles.

  ‘I’d better feed him,’ Gwen said.

  Cam had rolled up his trouser leg and was investigating the claw marks.

  In the kitchen, Gwen tried to regain some sanity. One night was a one-night. Doing it again the following night was – what?

  She was distracted by Cat. He was standing by the back door, fur on end and tail swishing angrily.

  ‘What now?’ Gwen opened the door.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Cam put his hands on her shoulders and she realised she must’ve cried out.

  ‘Sorry. Just got a shock.’

  There was a furry mound on the back step. It wasn’t moving. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s too big to be one of Cat’s gifts. I hope.’

  Gwen crouched down, peering through the half-light. It was a large rabbit. Grey fur, streaked with dried blood. Spread around it on the step was what could be more blood if it weren’t so crumbly. Soil.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Cam said. ‘It was probably very old. Had a good life, ate lots of dandelion leaves.’

  ‘Blood and bone and earth.’ Gwen’s voice was hollow. She moved away from Cam. ‘I’ve got to bury it.’

  ‘Now?’ Cam said, but Gwen had already stepped over the body and into the gloom of the garden.

  She was vaguely aware of Cam saying, ‘Right, then.’

  Gwen was shivering. She should’ve picked up her coat. Probably should’ve told Cam to leave, too. Now he would think she was truly mental. She felt sick, though. Sick with the need to bury that creature, to try and neutralise whatever bad magic had been raised by its murder.

  ‘You don’t have to do that now, Gwen. Gwen…’

  Cam’s voice seemed to be coming from very far away. What had her mother always said? Blood and bone and earth. Blood magic was ancient and powerful and really, really scary. Oh, crap.

  With a heavy heart, Gwen went to the shed at the side of the house. She found an iron coal shovel and used that to scoop the rabbit into a bin bag. After digging a shallow grave at the end of the garden, marked with a lump of granite taken from the overgrown rockery, Gwen was sweating inside her top. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and discovered it was crispy with frost.

  She was breathing heavily and became aware that Cam stood watching her. He had his woollen overcoat back on and his expression was unreadable.

  ‘That’s better,’ Gwen said brightly.

  ‘I did offer to help,’ Cam said. ‘I don’t think you heard me.’

  Gwen walked past him, trying not to think how messy she must look. ‘Let’s go back inside. Have a drink.’

  Cam didn’t answer, but he followed her.

  As soon as Gwen’s foot touched the tile of the kitchen floor, she could feel the wrongness. It flooded her. Bad mojo.

  ‘What now?’ Cam’s voice was on the edge of exasperation, but Gwen couldn’t worry about that now. She paused, one foot held up in the air. She forced herself to put it down, to feel the vibrations that were pulsing through the ground. She took a breath. ‘Somebody killed that rabbit and left it for me. It’s really bad—’

  ‘No.’ Cam closed the door and locked the new bolts. ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘It’s bad magic,’ Gwen said. She was shaking and couldn’t stop. Shuddering. ‘It doesn’t feel right in here. I think the house is angry. Or something in the house. Something isn’t right and I don’t know how to make it better.’

  Cam turned slowly. ‘You’ve had a shock,’ he began.

  ‘Can we go to your house? Please? I think I need to give this place time to calm down.’

  The drive to Cam’s flat was quiet. Gwen didn’t speak again until they got there and she was grateful that Cam didn’t try to make conversation. He drove carefully and her tension eased with every mile that sprouted between her and End House.

  At the flat, Gwen shucked off her hooded fleece and tossed her bobble hat onto a perspex Philippe Starck-style chair.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘No. Yes, go on then.’ Gwen looked around. ‘Nothing that’ll stain if I drop it, though.’

  ‘Why would you drop it?’ Cam looked perplexed.

  ‘This place.’ Gwen waved a hand. ‘It’s an invitation for mess. It’s a question waiting to be answered. A glass of red wine waiting to be splattered across the rug.’

  Cam frowned at his pale beige carpet. ‘I don’t have a rug.’

  ‘The sofa, then.’ Gwen gestured to the white couch.

  ‘Please don’t. That’s quite new.’

  Gwen sat on it, slipped forward, said, ‘Whoops,’ and hastily straightened up.

  ‘Yes, there’s a bit of a knack to that. I think the leather is polished or something,’ Cam said. He disappeared for a moment, then returned with a glass of white wine and a bottle of lager.

  He passed her the glass. ‘You seem calmer, anyway. What was all that about?’

  ‘I feel much better for getting away,’ Gwen said. ‘I think the house was angry, even though I buried the rabbit. I’m just going to give it time to calm down and then I’ll be out of your hair.’

  Cam took a swig of his beer. ‘You are aware that you sound a little nutty right now?’

  ‘I’m not crazy,’ Gwen said. ‘Someone wishes me harm. I don’t know what I’ve done, but somebody really hates me. And whoever it is knows their stuff, because that rabbit was no accident. Blood magic.’ Which, Gwen realised, put Patrick Allen out of the frame. Gwen could imagine him paying somebody to break into her house and sabotage her boiler, but she couldn’t see him anywhere near something like this. Blood magic wasn’t just the darkest magic or the most powerful, it was the ickiest, too.

  ‘So you think someone killed a rabbit and left it for you?’ Cam said.

  Gwen took a swallow of her wine. ‘Could you stop avoiding the subject, please? You were there when I found that dog, when I cured Brian, I’ve told you about finding things for my business, knowing things about objects that I couldn’t possibly—’

  ‘The dog was a fluke.’

  Gwen stopped speaking, her expression carefully blank. After a moment she said, ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Look, I know you had an…um, alternative…upbringing, but you don’t really believe this stuff.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I don’t have much of
a choice. I know you think I’m unhinged.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Cam said. ‘I think you were brought up believing certain things and that’s very powerful.’

  ‘You knew about Mum?’

  ‘I heard the rumours.’ Cam looked uncomfortable and Gwen felt a familiar sinking in her stomach.

  ‘You never said anything.’

  Cam gave a gallant attempt at a smile. ‘I was trying to get you naked.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Gwen saw a wave of irritation pass across his face. ‘Magic powers don’t exist. You can’t believe that you have them. Not really.’

  Gwen gave a small laugh. ‘Look, what about cooking? That’s a kind of magic. You take eggs and flour and butter and produce something that doesn’t look like any of them.’

  ‘That’s called chemistry, Gwen.’

  ‘Now, yes, because we know about it. In the future, science will probably explain why I can find things, too.’

  Cam shook his head. ‘I don’t want to talk about this. You’re better than this. Magic is a word used by children and by adults as a way to scam the vulnerable and stupid.’

  ‘You think I’m faking this to make money?’ Gwen’s face was white, her lips a narrow line. She placed her wine glass on the coffee table with exaggerated care.

  ‘I don’t know. I hope so, because the alternative is that you’re a gullible half-wit—’ Cam stopped. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Yeah. You did.’ Gwen picked up her fleece and made for the door.

  Cam caught her arm. ‘Don’t go. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Gwen avoided his eye. ‘I’m fine. Thank you for the drink.’

  ‘Look. It’s a touchy subject for me. I don’t like people being taken advantage of and you have to admit there are a lot of charlatans out there.’

  ‘I’m not one of them,’ Gwen said tightly. ‘I’m going home now. Thank you for the drink.’ She shoved her arms into her fleece.

  ‘Let me drive you back at least,’ Cam said.

  ‘No. The walk will do me good. I need to cool off. Let the house cool off, too,’ Gwen added and opened the door.

  ‘I’m really sorry.’ Cam had crossed the room. ‘I believe you.’

  Gwen blinked. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I believe that you believe it. Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s not the same thing at all,’ she said bleakly.

  ‘It’s the best I can do,’ Cam said, looking wretched.

  She knew how he felt.

  ‘Please let me drive you back,’ Cam said after a pause.

  ‘I’m sure it’s perfectly safe. As everyone keeps telling me, this is a nice town.’

  Cam frowned. ‘Why do you sound so bitter about that?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ You belong here.

  Cam looked at her with total frustration. ‘Why do you keep doing that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You go quiet. Or you give a bit of an answer. Or you evade the question. Or you change the subject. You used to do it all the time, too. I’d forgotten because I think I’d idealised everything about you. About us. But it’s really fucking annoying. Why can’t you just talk to me?’

  Gwen realised she was pausing again. Going silent. Whatever. ‘You don’t want to hear about what I’m going through,’ Gwen said. ‘It’s difficult to talk when I know you think half the things I say are insane.’

  ‘What about other stuff? Real stuff?’

  ‘But that stuff is real. I know you don’t believe it. I know you think—’

  ‘I think you use it to hide behind,’ Cam said. ‘Like when you left. You couldn’t handle things so you just ran away.’

  ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Probably not. That’s exactly my point.’

  ‘Do you remember your dad’s fiftieth birthday party?’

  Cam frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘You told me about it, but I didn’t know if I was going or whether your father even knew I existed or what.’

  ‘I don’t see—’

  ‘Your mother called me beforehand. To make sure I wasn’t attending. She also told me I was no good for you.’

  Cam smiled a little. ‘That sounds like her. She didn’t mean it; she’s just very—’

  ‘She said that I was holding you back, that if I cared for you even a little bit, I should leave.’

  Cam stopped smiling.

  ‘She said I was going to ruin your career and your life.’

  ‘And you just left.’ Cam’s face was hard, his expression a closed door.

  ‘I was eighteen. She’s pretty scary.’ Gwen knew that was a cop out. She’d been eighteen years old, not eight.

  ‘But you didn’t say anything.’

  Gwen chose her words carefully. ‘Things weren’t brilliant with you and your parents. I didn’t want to make things worse and, besides, I thought she was probably right.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I was never going to fit into that world.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to.’ Cam ran his hands through his hair, visibly annoyed.

  ‘No.’

  There was a pause that lengthened into a silence. Gwen waited, hoping he would say something else. Something about how he’d been wrong, how he should’ve formally introduced her to his parents, how he should’ve shown her that he was proud to be with her. That he hadn’t been ashamed of dating that ‘crazy Harper girl’.

  They looked at each other for a beat longer, then Gwen left. She closed the door carefully behind her, making sure it didn’t slam, and made it out to the pavement before the tears spilled onto her cheeks.

  Chapter 17

  I’m so angry with her. How can she lie to people? Telling them what they want to hear and charging them for the privilege. It’s immoral. I raised her better than that. She’s changed. She says she has no choice and it’s for the sake of the girls, but she’s doing no better than I did there. Ruby’s expecting. It’s not common knowledge, but it will be soon. If only she’d come to me, I could’ve given her something to take care of that little situation. Too late now. I had one of my urges. I had to give her a nail, probably because of the iron. Couldn’t do anything else until I’d delivered it. I left it for her outside the house because I’m not allowed in.

  Gwen felt grateful for the first time in her life that her gift was finding lost things and not something else. Iris’s compulsion to give people what they needed sounded awful. Especially when she wasn’t even allowed to see the person to explain. Gwen knew what the ache of finding was like; it consumed her until it was done. What if Ruby had never found that nail lying outside her house; what if Iris had always felt that incompleted task, like something sharp digging into her skin?

  Gwen stared at the open journal and, on a whim, ripped out the page with that entry. It was about Ruby, not her. If she could persuade Ruby to read it, maybe she’d feel a little differently about Iris. After all, it showed that she’d cared. She’d known that Ruby had pregnancy-related anaemia and, in her own slightly nutty way, had tried to help.

  The next page in the journal had a recipe for fruit cake. She ripped that out too, and tucked it into one of the blank notebooks that Iris seemed to have bought in bulk. Then she started to go through the rest of the journal systematically, clipping out anything that featured Ruby and adding it to the pile. She wasn’t Iris. She wasn’t going to hex Ruby into changing her opinions, but perhaps she could open her mind with a little family history.

  The phone beeped as she began sticking the fragments into a new notebook. She held her breath until she saw that it wasn’t from Cam. It was Katie. She swallowed her disappointment and replied that Katie was very welcome to visit after school. She put the phone down and carried on sticking. There was a peculiar thickness in the air around her. ‘You left everything to me, Iris,’ she said out loud. ‘This feels like the right thing to do.’ Feeling only marginally foolish, she t
urned up the volume on the stereo and wrote ‘Ruby’ on the front of the notebook in different coloured pens.

  Gwen was just sticking the last entry down when a sound in the hallway almost gave her heart failure. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Gwen said when Marilyn Dixon walked in.

  ‘The door was open.’ Marilyn didn’t look even slightly abashed.

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Gwen said. ‘I bet you wouldn’t have just walked in on Iris.’

  Marilyn wrinkled her nose. ‘It smells of glue in here. And isn’t it a bit early for Christmas music?’

  ‘That’s The Supremes,’ Gwen said. She flipped the notebook shut.

  ‘Brian’s gone,’ Marilyn said, sinking onto the floor. ‘He says he doesn’t love me any more.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. I’m sorry.’ Gwen wiped the glue on her hands onto her jeans.

  Marilyn looked up at Gwen. ‘Please help me.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything—’

  ‘I know you sorted him out before. You can do it again.’

  Gwen sat cross-legged next to Marilyn. ‘Brian was acting under the influence of some bad advice. Some advice that was very compelling and I broke the … Well, it was like he was hypnotized …’ Gwen trailed off.

  ‘That witch put him under some kind of spell, I know,’ Marilyn said.

  ‘Who do you mean? Who did you go and see?’

  Marilyn looked defensive. ‘Well, you wouldn’t help.’

  Gwen closed her eyes. The frustrated witch. The phantasms. Her interest in Iris’s notebooks. Lily Thomas.

  ‘Lily Thomas,’ Marilyn said, confirming Gwen’s thoughts. ‘And you stopped it.’ She grabbed Gwen’s knee and squeezed it hard. ‘I want you to do the same again. Please. He says he’s leaving everything behind. He’s handed in his notice and bought a round-the-world ticket. He says he’s going backpacking.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gwen said again.

  ‘Backpacking! He complained about carrying the shopping.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything I can do.’

  ‘But you can’t just meddle in people’s lives, you know.’ Marilyn balled her hands into fists. ‘It isn’t fair.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re asking me to do now?’

  ‘I’m asking you to fix it. I want things back the way they were.’