‘As a matter of fact,’ he said in slow, careful tones. ‘Forget about knocking it over. Why don’t you see if you can make the bottle dance?’
‘Dance?’
‘Yes. Dance. Go on, give it a try.’
I must have looked about as unsure as I felt, because he came closer to me, helping me to readjust my hold on the wand, and correcting my stance while he continued. ‘I had a nightmare of a Simple Spells and Incantations teacher when I was at school. Everything was so constricted. She insisted we learn the spells on the curriculum. Nothing more, nothing less. Learning that way was a chore. So you and I are going to do things a little differently. Pretend that the bottle is a living thing. Pretend that it’s a friend, a friend you’re having some fun with.’
Even though he was doing his best to make it seem like a casual suggestion, he was a little too breathless for me to believe this was an off-the-cuff idea. Just as I was trying to decide whether to give it a go or not, he broke out into laughter, pointing at my hair.
I hadn’t realised, but sometime during his speech I’d started to curl my hair around the wand. And seeing as half of my hair was now in tight curls while the rest of it was just as straight as ever, it was clear that my absentminded fiddling had turned into absentminded magic.
He pulled a long wooden wand from his pocket and waved it over my hair. ‘Scáthán,’ he said, raising his hand. His palm became a mirror, reflecting my image back at me.
‘Oh my stars.’ I gently patted the soft waves he had formed in my hair – being careful to keep my wand well away. ‘This is a lot better than the poodle perm I didn’t even know I was giving myself.’
I looked at him, taking in the crinkling smile that reached all the way to his green eyes. He’d seemed so staid in the shop. Even now, he was dressed impeccably, with his black trousers and burgundy shirt crisply ironed, and not a single one of his short black hairs out of place. But appearances could be deceptive. Brent was proving to be someone I could like.
‘Well,’ I said, moving away from him and concentrating on the bottle. ‘You seem to be able to cope with even the most extreme clumsiness, so let’s see if I can make this baby dance. Y’know – before I make it smash to pieces again.’
I didn’t point my wand. Not straight away, anyway. Instead I regarded the bottle, taking in all of its contours and trying to see something lifelike. If I squinted my eyes, I could almost imagine it was Fuzz. But how could a bottle dance? It didn’t have legs. Perhaps I could make it fly and dance in the air?
Satisfied with what I was going to try and achieve, I cautiously pointed my wand. In my mind I envisioned the bottle coming to life, rising up from the rock and twirling in the air. I tried to control the leap of electric-like energy that was desperate to escape through the wand’s tip, keeping my stance as firm as Brent had shown me.
There was a scraping noise, as the bottle shifted on the rock. There was a second scraping noise, before the bottle rose, just an inch or so from the rock, tilting itself back and forth through the air, then swaying higher and higher, before looping over on itself. It looped higher and wider, doing circles of eight in the air. As it moved more fluidly, I wasn’t sure I was the one controlling it anymore.
A trickle of fear was beginning to flow through my veins, and I turned to Brent.
‘It’s okay,’ he said softly. ‘Point firmly at it and say Neamhbheo.’
I shook my head frantically as the bottle started to dance towards me. ‘You say it. I’ll only do something wrong again.’
‘I can’t say it. Trust me. It has to be you.’
Criminy! Who would have thought that a dancing bottle could freak me out so much? I’d wanted it to dance, after all. I’d imagined it was just as alive as Fuzz was. But now I wished to the goddess that it would go back to being a plain old bottle. I didn’t recognise the word Brent had uttered, but I pointed my wand anyway and said, ‘Neamhbheo.’
The bottle dropped gently against the sand, two inches from my feet.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Brent, placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘But I had to know for sure.’
‘Had to know what?’ I asked turning to face him. ‘Had to know whether I was dumb enough to do anything you asked? Because I think we’ve safely established that that is the case. What did that word mean?’
Brent brushed a hand through his hair, standing back from me. ‘Neamhbheo means inanimate, Aisling. And I would never ask you to do anything dangerous. Being an inanimage isn’t something to fear. It’s a great talent. One you share with your mother.’
I staggered back from him, throwing the bright orange wand to the sand. ‘I knew Grace told you about the possibility I was half sióga, but she never said she told you who my mother was. Was it Malachy? Did he spill the beans? And what’s an inanimage when it’s at home?’
Brent moved to the rock and sat down once more. ‘Malachy might seem like the biggest gossip in all the enclaves, but he never talks behind his friends’ backs. It wasn’t him who told me you might be Abby’s daughter. It was you – or rather, it was the argument you had with Arnold Albreit in the Fruit of the Vein a short while ago. It’s all over the enclaves, Aisling. Everyone knows you’re a reluctant Albright. And no one blames you for being cautious of Arnold, either. Least of all me. Malachy and I were a couple when Arnold hired a steady stream of Abby lookalikes, only to let them go shortly afterwards. So when Grace brought you in for a Revelation spell, it wasn’t too much of a leap for me to think you might be an Albright. Particularly seeing as you look so much like your mother. I went to school with her, you see.’
‘You knew her?’ I could hear the crack in my voice as I spoke, so I cleared my throat and pulled a nonchalant expression. ‘Actually, I don’t need to know about that. You still haven’t explained this whole inanimage thing.’
He gave me a bittersweet smile. ‘You might not need to know about her, but just now I feel the very strong urge to speak about her. I only knew her for one school term. We were eleven at the time. She’d been home-schooled before then. She’d somehow convinced her father to finally let her go to the school in Riddler’s Cove, but he pulled her out again a few months later. Even though I only knew her briefly, I missed her so much when she was gone. I tried calling round to her house, but her father never let me in.’ His eyes were watering, and he brushed a tear from his cheek. ‘It’s funny how big and bright childhood friendships can seem. All these years later and I still remember every moment Abby and I shared.’
My own eyes were feeling far too salty, so I decided to get things back on track. ‘You still haven’t explained this whole inanimage thing, Brent.’
He sniffled and looked me in the eye. ‘You’re right. Okay, let’s see. Well, it’s rather rare among witches – or at least it’s rare to be able to do it well. But Abby’s magic was rather normal in every other way. She was more interested in reading and writing than performing spells, to be honest. She didn’t even share her strongest gift with anyone else at school. I saw it by accident after she’d been at the school for a few days. She was rather shy, you see. Unused to being around other children. I could see that she really wanted to mix in, but she didn’t know how. So one day I sought her out in the playground. It was springtime, and she was sitting by an elm tree. She had this little doll with her. It was a raggedy thing with red woollen hair, stuffed into her schoolbag. But as I got closer I could see her chatting with it.’ He pulled his mouth back into a slight grimace. ‘It was a little disturbing at first. The other girls her age were into glamour spells and bad boys. And I knew if any of the other boys from school saw her, the first thing they’d do was steal the doll and taunt her with it.’
‘So what did you do?’
He scratched his head, looking uncomfortable. ‘I told her she should leave the doll home the next day before anyone else saw her. I told her if she didn’t I’d tell the others she was a freak.’ He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘It was my idiotic little boy way of looking out for her. But anyway, I
was halfway through telling her what I thought when the doll jumped out of the bag and punched me in the nose.’
I let out a snort of laughter. ‘No!’
‘Yes,’ Brent said with a groan. ‘And she followed it up with a swift kick to the chin. It was then that I realised what Abby could do. Over the next few days I saw just how strong her talents were. I think it was due to all the time she spent alone. She had no friends except for the ones in her imagination. If there was even an ounce of inanimage power within her, then isolation was bound to make it stronger. I was so impressed by her. By everything about her. Her talent, her strength, her stubbornness. Even her gorgeous strawberry-blonde hair. In fact, I think she’s probably the only female I’ve ever had a crush on. When she was taken out of school I was devastated. I saw her again years later, but by then she was firmly under her father’s thumb. She came to do a story on the opening of my shop, and I hoped we might at least grab lunch together. She turned me down, and said she’d get in touch with me as soon as she had the time. But … I guess she never had the time.’
I patted his arm. ‘I’m sure she would have if she could. Arnold was an incredibly controlling father, by all accounts. Even when Abby was grown up and working at the paper, according to Grace.’
‘Oh, I know that.’ Brent wiped his eyes. ‘I don’t blame Abby. I never did. And I realise the wisest course of action today would have been for me to tell you all of this before I got you to bring the bottle to life. I had intended to wait some time, though. Until we knew one another a little better. I’m not sure what came over me. It’s just that when I heard people talking about the broom following you around, I thought … well, you must be like her. You brought the broom to life, so I figured surely you could do the same with a bottle.’
I turned away, sifting some sand through my fingers. ‘I didn’t do anything with the broom. It was Abby’s. It followed me from the library in Arnold’s house. Do you think … do you think maybe it was one of the things Abby brought to life herself?’
I glanced sideways at him, seeing him frown.
‘I wish I knew,’ he said. ‘But who knows what she did to keep herself company once she was being home-schooled again? She could have brought the broom to life, I suppose. But inanimagic is not really life. It’s almost a sort of puppetry. The witch needs to be involved, to lend the object the magic. Without Abby there to control it, the broom would have eventually become inanimate again. And seeing as she hasn’t been in Riddler’s Cove for over thirty years, I’d say it’s impossible that any of Abby’s magic could remain within the broom. Are you sure you’re not sending some of your own magic its way? Even unwittingly?’
It wasn’t a bad theory – and definitely not one I ought to dismiss without giving it some thought. But as far as I could tell the broom just seemed to do its own thing. When I told it not to follow me it carried on regardless. And if I’d known it could come to my rescue when Dylan and I almost died at the hands of the witch hunter, then I would have called on it a lot sooner. But I doubted I could call on it. It had come with Fuzz that day because of my connection to the cat – or that was how Fuzz had explained things. I felt safe and secure when the broom was close by, but it came when it wanted. And it went when it wanted, too.
‘No.’ I shook my head decisively. ‘I really don’t think it’s me.’
‘Well,’ said Brent, standing up. ‘There’s one way to know for sure. Use the same spell you used to stop the bottle – Neamhbheo. If you’re the one controlling the broom, that’ll stop it in its tracks.’
At the thought of the broom becoming inanimate, I felt a wave of sadness. What if I couldn’t bring it back to life again? ‘Maybe,’ I said, knowing I had no intention of going through with it. ‘Anyway, I guess you’ll want to be getting back to Warren Lane now.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Grace told me to take as long as I felt you could handle, so let’s give it another half an hour. She’ll have my guts for garters if I don’t at least show you how to do a Solas spell.’
I knew what a Solas spell was. Witches could create their very own magical torches – little balls of light emanating from their wand or their fingertips. Grace told me some witches even altered the spell so they could use the lights in their Solstice decorations.
‘Okay then,’ I said with a grin. ‘Light up my world.’
Brent laughed. ‘By the end of this lesson you’ll be able to light up your own.’
≈
He was almost right. And by almost, I mean barely. I definitely couldn’t light up my world by the end of the lesson – not unless I wanted to set it on fire. It seemed that control was still a bit of an issue for me. I could either make a tiny glint of light that shone for about three seconds before it fizzled, or I could create a fireball the size of a watermelon that scared the bejaysus out of me. I couldn’t seem to find a middle ground.
After my ninth attempt, Brent fixed my singed hair with his wand and said, ‘Y’know what? I think that’s enough for today. Give me a few days to see if I can find out a little bit more on how to work with sióga power, and we’ll see where we go from there.’
I bit down on my lip. ‘It’s okay if you don’t want to do this again.’
‘As if.’ He squeezed my shoulders. ‘This is going to be a learning experience for both of us, I think. I’ll be better prepared next time. But for now …’ He held out a hand. ‘Would you like me to take you to work?’
I shook my head. I loved travelling via magic, but I wanted some time to think before I arrived at the office. ‘That’s okay. It’s a really pretty walk back.’
He nodded, gave me a bright smile, and said, ‘See you very soon,’ before clicking his fingers and disappearing from my sight.
6. Women are Players, Too
As soon as Brent was gone, the rigours of my first lesson began to catch up with me. All I wanted to do was lie down on the sand and go to sleep. Or (more truthfully) sneak into Dylan’s lighthouse and have a snooze on his bed.
As I trudged my way up from the beach and onto the road, I heard a rumble above me. I looked up and saw Greg’s Wizardly Wagon, undoing its cloak-mode as it settled down on Dylan’s driveway. Greg hopped out of the van, and went into Dylan’s house.
I’d been to Greg’s flat on many occasions, so I knew he didn’t have a single houseplant – which meant that he was probably inexperienced when it came to watering them. And seeing as I now knew quite a lot about succulents (thanks to some furious browsing on the internet the night before), then he could probably do with my expertise. It was my neighbourly duty to go over there and offer Greg my advice. The plants would thank me. Y’know, if they could speak.
Just as I was turning on my heel, Jared’s Porsche pulled up beside me. ‘Don’t rush off,’ he said through the open window. ‘I just wanted to give you something.’ He held two tickets out towards me. ‘It’ll give you private entry to the Glittering Garden a few days after Midsummer. I know you won’t want to go with me, but I thought maybe you and Pru could go. She could do with cheering up.’
I leaned my hand against the window frame, looking him full in the face. ‘That’s actually really nice of you, Jared.’
‘Hey, don’t sound so surprised. I just want you two to get to do something fun together after the madness of Midsummer is over. I love my little sister, and I care about you.’
I decided to ignore the second part of that comment and focus on Pru instead. ‘I haven’t had a chance to speak with her yet today, but before I do … what was all that about Greg last night? When she heard I’d already had a flight in his van she seemed kind of … I dunno …’
‘Jealous?’ Jared lifted a brow. I’d long grown used to the fact that his brows were at least three shades darker than his bleached hair. I even quite liked the look. ‘Yeah, maybe best you don’t bring it up. Pru’s had a thing for Greg for years, but he knows nothing about it, and that’s the way she wants it to stay. It’s really up to her to tell you why. Hey … you look ki
nd of tired. Are you okay?’ He eyed the lighthouse. ‘What are you doing out this far from the Vander Inn this early in the morning, anyway? Isn’t Dylan on holiday?’
I looked back the way he’d come. ‘You’re wondering what I was doing out so early? Funny, seeing as it looks like you’re only just on your way home.’
His face reddened, and I couldn’t help but stare. It would probably forever fascinate me that vampires could blush, but it fascinated me even more that Jared could. By all accounts he was a shameless womaniser, but shameless people weren’t usually big on blushing.
‘Yeah.’ He scratched his chin. ‘I guess it does look bad. I went to see Wendy – she owns the Glittering Garden – to see if she’d still honour my tickets seeing as we didn’t make it there the last time. And then I went to Three Witches Brew. I was still there this morning when the brothers woke me up with a shot of Sober-Up potion. But I meant it – you look knackered. Can I give you a lift to work and save you the walk?’
I glanced back at the lighthouse. Greg was still inside, and I wanted more than anything to go over there on the pretence of saying hi, just so I could pay the building a visit. It was ridiculous how much I missed a house I’d only been in a few times. But if I went over there, then that would mean giving Jared the brush-off once again. And I didn’t want to do that. Pru and I had become fast friends, and even if I didn’t want to go out with her brother, I certainly didn’t want there to be a bad atmosphere.
There was also the fact that I was still exhausted from my early-morning lesson, but let’s just pretend that my motives were one hundred percent altruistic.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, a lift would be great.’
≈
A lift was not great. In fact, accepting a lift from Jared was probably the worst idea I’d had this century. We were only about twenty metres from the lighthouse when he pulled over at the side of the road, switched off the engine, and turned in his seat to face me.
Lucky Witches Page 4
