by Amy Casey
“Coco the Clown over here giving fashion advice.”
“That’s inaccurate. Coco the Clown didn’t wear anything like what I’m wearing.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Dad. If it helps you sleep at night.”
My dad sighed and ushered me towards him. And it was at that point as we went to re-enter the Sparling’s restaurant and head upstairs towards the function room that I realised the stairs were at the back of the restaurant.
I stopped.
Dad stopped too. Turned and looked at me. “Stella?”
“Dad…”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“I can’t walk across this restaurant with you when you’re dressed like that.”
I saw a look cross my dad’s face then. And although I didn’t understand any of this—although I didn’t get why he was wearing what he was wearing, why he was dressed in the way he was dressed—I felt sorry for him. Because he looked so comfortable in these ridiculous clothes. And the entire restaurant was pointing and sniggering at him.
“Dad, what’s going on? Is it your medication? Because the doctors can adjust that. They can trial new things. Really, medication’s come a long way since you were younger.”
Dad sighed. “It’s nothing to do with bloody medication. That’s what your generation is like, isn’t it? All medication, medication. A pill for this, a pill for that. No wonder global warming’s destroying the planet.”
“I’m not sure pill popping is the reason behind global warming,” I said, as I walked reluctantly by my dad’s side through the restaurant. “I’m talking more about the fancy bloody dress you’ve decided to wear all of a sudden. What’s going on?”
“Oh, it’s everything to do with global warming,” he said, with no apparent sense of awareness of the eyes glaring at him, at the funny glances he—and therefore by extension, both of us—was getting.
“I just want to know what’s happening,” I said.
“It’ll become clear soon enough.”
“And this family. You’ve never said anything to me about family visiting. Are you in trouble with some people, Dad? Because you can tell me if you are. You know I’m here for you, right?”
“Jesus, Stella. Stop treating me like I’m some kind of basket case.”
He turned. Glared at me, right in the middle of the restaurant.
“You’ll understand soon enough. Okay?”
I wanted to disagree with my dad. I wanted to argue back.
But something caught my attention.
There was a man at a table in the corner of my eye. You know the type—perfectly gelled hair, expensive suit, big teeth. So rich his shit-roll is probably made of money.
I wasn’t sure why, but I heard his words more clearly than anyone else.
I heard them, and I couldn’t stop replaying them in my mind.
“Old fool,” he said. “The sooner she takes him off life support, the better.”
A flash.
A flash of the story Dad told me about Mum being on life support.
The pain I’d felt when I learned she hadn’t made it—even though Dad insisted she was fighting, she was getting better, that she hadn’t really gone.
All of it sparking up in this one moment.
I wanted to challenge this guy. I wanted to confront him.
But something else happened.
Something else entirely.
He threw the wine glass up at his face, covering himself in dark red wine.
He looked down at the table, like he didn’t understand what’d just happened.
Then he looked at his suit.
“My blazer. My blazer. Quick! Somebody get me a towel. This damned thing cost more than half of you in here are worth!”
Pandemonium erupted, then. And the attention was drawn away from my dad and I as this toff started undressing, started stripping himself of the wine-drenched clothes—at the same time as receiving the wrath of the rest of the restaurant who thought he was a spoiled brat for his comments.
And as I walked, Dad’s hand in mine, I knew deep down now that a part of me must still be in touch with my powers.
Because I’d made that glass fly into the idiot’s face.
I’d ruined his expensive suit.
Dad and I reached the door at the back, then the stairs. There was shouting in the restaurant now, and chaos.
“Now it’s time you got changed,” Dad said, catching his breath. “Oh, and you’re a fool for doing what you just did back there.”
“Bit rich calling me a fool. One of Shakespeare’s dudes would’ve lapped you right up, poor Yorick.”
“Careful,” Dad said. “Or you might find yourself covered in wine, too. But congratulations on gaining a bit of culture. I always thought Shakespeare was a bit highbrow for you.”
“Again,” I said, signalling what he was wearing. “Can’t comment on highbrow or low brow when you’re dressed like that.”
He grumbled something and pointed to his right. “There’s clothes in there. Get changed. Then come upstairs. Oh, and smile. Get that frown off your face for once. It’s making you line-y. And my family don’t like lines.”
He turned and started walking up the stairs.
“You still haven’t told me what this is about,” I said.
Dad stopped. “You’ll see—”
“No. No more messing around. You tell me right now or I go home. You tell me right now or I leave here. You tell me right now or… or I make a scene in front of this so-called family of yours.”
Dad looked at me, fear in his eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”
I smirked. “Try me.”
I started to climb the stairs.
“Stella, please—”
“Tell me the truth or I make a big fool of myself.”
“But I—”
“I’m going to walk past you. And I’m going to walk in there.”
“It’s not—”
“Last chance. Five steps, four steps, three steps, two—”
“Your family are magic!” he said.
I stopped then. Frowned. Because as much as a part of me had expected this revelation, it still didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem real, somehow.
And it took the wind out of my body.
“What?” I said.
My dad put his hands on his knees. He shook his head and, more dramatically than ever, he sighed. “Your family. Our family. They are witches and wizards. They are magic. And they’re waiting to meet you.”
Chapter 14
The second I stepped inside the function room, I very quickly became aware that I was indeed the odd one out in my simple shirt and jeans.
There were five people sitting around a table, none of whom I recognised. And judging by the variety of colourful, extravagant clothes they were wearing, they weren’t exactly the kind of people I’d make any real efforts to mix with, either.
There were two men and three women, all of various ages. One of the women was clearly much older than the rest, with long grey hair and wearing a yellow and green tunic—as well as a jester’s hat. I probably would’ve smirked at this whole setup if I wasn’t a little bit creeped out. If they really were my family—my witchy family—as my dad said, then the things they were dressed in hardly fit the bill of the kind of uniform I had in mind that witches wore.
Then again, all my knowledge of witches pretty much stemmed from Sabrina the Teenage Witch. So I hardly had a strong basis for my research, let’s say.
The other people around the table looked decidedly more ordinary—if ordinary were achievable with these colourful garments they were all wearing. The two men had dark hair, smiley faces, and looked very much like brothers. One of them was holding a local newspaper, a whole pile of back issues before him. He looked like he’d got through a few already.
The women were polar opposites—one was tall and blonde, the other was short and ginger. Only the short, ginger one was looking at me. I sensed a glint of judgement in her eyes.
Wow. Being judged by one of these tunic-wearing weirdos. A real low point in your life, Stella.
The old woman looked up at me. She scanned me, head to toe, like she was inspecting nothing more than a cut of meat in a market. “She’s dressed rather curiously.”
I opened my mouth to respond, to fight back.
But it was Dad who intervened before I could say anything.
“I tried to get her to change, Hilda,” he said. “Aunt Hilda to you, Stella. But I really did try to get her to wear the colours. But—”
“But I’m not twelve,” I cut in. “And I can make perfectly good decisions about the clothes I want to wear.”
I looked at my dad and smiled.
He gritted his teeth, that look in his eye like he wasn’t going to forget this.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” one of the two men said. He pulled out a chair, gestured for me to take a seat. “These old garbs are just tradition anyway.”
“And a pretty crummy tradition at that,” the other man said.
“Thomas. Curtis,” Aunt Hilda said. “How dare you disrespect our traditions.”
“Ignore our mother,” Thomas whispered from behind his hand. “She’ll soon get distracted when the trifle comes along.”
“What was that? What did you say?”
“Nothing, Mother.”
I found myself smirking, then, as I took a seat beside Thomas. Sure, I still didn’t totally understand who these people were. But if there was one thing clear, it was that Thomas and Curtis were very much allies in their bemusement at the traditional colours they and their family were sporting.
I glanced ahead at the two women. The blonde was still staring at the table, emotionless. The ginger was glaring at me. I smiled back at her, but this didn’t seem to appease her in any way.
“Don’t worry about my sisters, either,” Thomas said, before leaning over to offer a hand. “Becky’s mute. She’s… she was on the receiving end of a nasty spell. But it’ll fade in time. She’s just not great company for now. As for Tara. Well, Tara’s just Tara.”
“I can hear you from over here, you know?” the ginger one said.
“Oh, I know,” Thomas said. “Just trying to let our guest in on why you’re such an ignorant sod, that’s all.”
Tara mumbled something under her breath. I didn’t hear what it was exactly, but I didn’t need to be a genius to figure out it wasn’t kind—and that it wasn’t kind towards me in particular.
“Thomas,” he said, holding out a hand.
I hesitated before taking his. This was still all so surreal. And I hadn’t even mentioned the food yet. Dessert—and lots of it. Stacks of cream cakes. Jam donuts. Trifles and pavlovas. It looked divine, and it wasn’t long before I was wondering whether it’d be rude to ask to take some back to Witchy Delights with me.
“Oh,” Thomas said, noticing what I was staring at as I took his hand. “Dessert is what we do when we have family reunions like this. Life’s short as it is. Why not just skip to the sweet stuff?”
“That’s… a fair bit of logic,” I said. “I can get on board with that.”
“None of that non-mage rubbish you bake at this shop of yours, either,” Aunt Hilda said.
I glared at her. If I was defensive about one thing—and granted, I was defensive about many things—it was Witchy Delights. “Why? Have you tried it?”
“I don’t need to,” Aunt Hilda said, before sinking her teeth into a chocolate eclair. “Towns like these are contaminated as it is. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
“Considering this is supposed to be some kind of family reunion,” I said, “you don’t seem particularly happy to be here.”
“Happy?” Aunt Hilda said. “Of course I’m happy. Never been happier in my entire life.”
She didn’t sound it. But Thomas soon reassured me that this was what a happy Aunt Hilda looked like, and if I wasn’t sure about it, then I definitely didn’t want to meet her when she wasn’t happy.
We ate dessert. We chatted some more. Turned out Thomas and Curtis were cousins of mine, both of them sons to Aunt Hilda, just as Becky and Tara were her daughters.
And the more I spoke, the more even Tara started to come out of her shell a little.
“I just never…” I started, my stomach full to the brim.
“Never what?” Tara asked.
I shook my head. Looked over at my dad. “I never knew I had a family, that’s all.”
“Well you can’t be the sharpest tool in the shed if you didn’t think you had a family,” Aunt Hilda said. “Where do you think you came from, for starters?”
“And you…”
Aunt Hilda rolled her eyes. “Come on, girl. Spit it out.”
“You’re all magic?”
They looked at one another then. All of them. Even Thomas and Curtis.
And then they burst out laughing.
I felt my cheeks flushing. I didn’t know how to react in a situation like this.
“Stella, of course we’re magic,” Aunt Hilda said. “How on earth do you think we managed to sneak in here in witchy gear like this without anyone noticing us?”
“Well, judging by the way my dad walked through the restaurant like it was nobody’s business, I figured you’d just done the same.”
A series of glares towards dad, as he wrapped his lips around a cherry Bakewell. “What?” he said. “Why you all looking at me?”
“Oh, Edward,” Aunt Hilda said. “Ever the fool.”
The more I sat in the company of witches, the more at ease I began to feel. It was strange. This whole thing was absurd. I still wasn’t sure I’d ever get my head around it. I learned all sorts. Aunt Hilda was my mum’s biological sister. The family name since marriage was “Mudthorpe,” which I found a little weird. They came from a town called Nightthistle. The reason the food tasted so good was that it had been “touched by magic,” a process I didn’t totally understand, only it’d been “simplified” to me by the comparison to how it was just like seasoning foods. Aunt Hilda insisted it was far more delicious when they ate it in their home town of Nightthistle. They’d breached some magic barrier or other, and that changed things, apparently. I didn’t really understand.
But there was something I needed to ask.
“My magic,” I said. “It’s limited, lately. I can’t use it as well as I used to be able to.”
“That’s probably a combination of things,” Tara said. “One, you were an idiot, and you invoked too much hard magic. And two, we’ve been in town, so your powers are naturally diluted.”
So it was true. The real reason I’d been struggling so much was that my family were in town.
“Well, it’s nice that you’re here and all, but there’s something I could really be using my abilities for right now.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Thomas said, ever-present grin on his face. “We’ll be out of your way soon. Back to Nightthistle.”
“You keep banging on about this Nightthistle like it’s the new Vegas or something. Can’t say I’ve heard of it.”
Thomas smiled. “You won’t have. It’s not exactly the sort of place you find on maps.”
My mouth opened a little, the reality of what Thomas was saying crystallising. “You’re saying this is some kind of—of magic town?”
“It is,” Curtis interrupted. “And by right, you are welcome to visit. By birthright, you are welcome to stay.”
I looked at Dad. Saw a mixture of pride and disapproval in his eyes. Because he’d been trying to protect me from this way of life for so long. And now all of that protection was crumbling before him.
“What do you say?” Thomas said. “A new life. A life where you can be yourself. Where you don’t have to worry about whether you’re using your magic correctly or anything like that. How does that sound?”
I put down my fork, totally stuffed, and I sighed. “I can’t lie. It sounds nice. But… but I’ve got things here. Too many things. I’ve got friends. I’ve got
a business. I’ve got a life. And as nice as it is to know I’ve got family, I’m not sure I’m ready to leave this world behind yet. I’m not sure I’m ready to…”
I stopped.
I stopped because I saw something.
The newspaper that Thomas had been reading. The one he’d been catching up on as I’d walked in.
I reached over towards it. Pulled it over.
“Stella?” Thomas said.
My heart started to pound as I looked at the headline. But more so at the picture. The photograph.
The man in the photograph.
“I’ve…” I started, getting up from the table, staggering towards the door. “I’ve got to go.”
“Stella?” Dad said. “What on earth are you playing at?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, looking at all of my bewildered family, at each and every one of them. “I have to go. But this has been nice. Really.”
And then I rushed out of the door before any of them could protest anymore.
I ran down the stairs. Stepped out into the restaurant, which had settled after the chaos of before. I moved over to the front door, stepped out into the fresh air.
But all this time, there was only one thing on my mind.
The headline. BOOST FOR LOCAL BUSINESS IN NATIONAL PROPERTY DEAL
The businessman on that photograph, Herbert Young, hand in hand with the mayor of Clitherford, another local town.
And above anything, the shoes he was wearing.
Those thin-heeled desert boots.
I felt my heart racing, remembered what Chatty Charlie told me about “dodgy deals” that Andy had done, and then I saw those desert boots in my mind again.
I started to wonder if perhaps those footprints near Andy Carter’s body didn’t belong to a woman after all.
Chapter 15
I sat in Herbert Young’s waiting room and for the sake of his business, I hoped he didn’t usually make people wait this long for a meeting with him.
It was first thing the following morning. I’d barely slept a wink. My mind had been so active with a variety of things. First, my new family. Thomas. Curtis. Becky. Tara. Aunt Hilda. Their bizarre way of dressing, and their talks of Nightthistle, the mystical town they came from.
