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Just to be sure, Leo did a complete circuit of the house before going back to the car to get his bag. He walked up the path to the front door – ran a hand through his hair, trying to dispel the fog clouding his brain – and fumbled in his bag for his house keys. He was just about to fit the key into the lock when the front door swung open. Merry was standing there in her pyjamas, frowning.
* * *
Leo didn’t look especially pleased to see her. ‘Oh. I mean, hey. Were you waiting up for me?’ He shut the door behind him, locked and bolted it, put the chain on. ‘You didn’t need to.’
He sounded really tired. And tense. He didn’t look good, either. There were dark circles under his eyes.
‘I wasn’t waiting up for you,’ Merry lied, trying to make her voice light and casual. ‘It’s just that … I heard your car pull up, about ten minutes ago. I was wondering what was taking you so long. That’s all.’
Leo picked up the post from the hall table and flicked through it, but he didn’t respond.
Merry knew she should probably go to bed and leave him alone. But, after what she’d seen earlier, in the scrying water …
She tried again.
‘Leo, is everything OK? I mean … was the film good?’
He turned and looked at her. For a split second he seemed to waver, an expression Merry couldn’t quite identify flitting across his face. Then he shrugged.
‘It was OK. Probably not something I’d bother to see again. But the others enjoyed it.’ He brushed past her and walked into the kitchen, stopping at the sink to fill the kettle. ‘You want some tea?’
Merry’s insides began to knot up as she followed Leo into the kitchen. She knew where her brother had been this evening. But how was she supposed to bring it up without accusing him of lying, or without admitting that she’d been using her powers to spy on him?
‘No, thanks. If you’re hungry, there’s some leftover lasagne in the fridge. I could heat it up for you, if you like?’
Leo shook his head.
‘I ate already. Went for a kebab after the film.’ He smiled at her, but the anxiety didn’t leave his eyes. ‘Sorry I’m back so late, by the way. Lost track of time.’
‘No worries.’ Merry sat down and watched her brother as he made tea. He was fidgety, tapping his fingers on the kitchen counter, glancing out of the window every few seconds.
‘So, why were you outside the house for so long?’
‘Geez, Merry. Why don’t you just get me microchipped and then you can track my every movement.’ He opened one of the drawers, took out a teaspoon and slammed it shut.
‘Calm down – I’m only making conversation. You’re always out, I’m always training; I – I miss talking to you. Remember us talking? Remember when we used to tell each other stuff? It wasn’t that long ago.’
‘Fine,’ Leo muttered eventually, turning round to face her. ‘If you really must know, I thought – I thought I saw …’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Forget it. It doesn’t matter.’
Merry looked at him steadily.
‘Leo – it’s me, Merry. You can tell me anything. Right? Because after everything we’ve been through these past few months, I wouldn’t be fazed if you told me you’d found a secret way into Narnia through the bottom of your underwear drawer. Trust me.’
That brought a genuine smile to Leo’s face.
‘OK. Well, it was probably nothing. But when I got home I thought I saw someone outside the house.’
‘Oh.’ That wasn’t what she’d been expecting. ‘You mean, a prowler?’
‘Yeah, exactly. It was only for a second, but I could have sworn I saw … someone, standing in the garden. So I went after him. But there wasn’t anyone there.’ Leo went to the cupboard and got out a packet of biscuits. ‘There’s nothing else to tell. I must have imagined it.’
Merry shivered. The last time there had been an intruder in the house, it had been Jack. That night he’d crept into her room and threatened her with a knife – it was one of the times she’d spent in Jack’s company that she really wouldn’t mind forgetting. ‘I dunno, Leo. Maybe … it was an animal that you saw? Like, a really big fox?’
Leo raised his eyebrows.
‘Seriously? A really big fox. A giant mutant fox, in fact, stalking round the garden on its hind legs …’ He shook his head and sat back down.
‘Well, I don’t see how it could have been a person. Mum put extra protection spells on the house and the garden. She even got the coven to strengthen the runes they carved last time.’
Her brother looked surprised.
‘Really? I thought Mum was keeping a safe distance from the coven.’
‘She is. But they still came here after school one day when you were at work. Gran said it was unnecessary, cos it’s not like any more cursed Anglo-Saxon princes are going to show up. But you know Mum.’ Merry shrugged. ‘Anyone with “evil intent” couldn’t have got anywhere near the house. They wouldn’t get past the garden boundary.’
Leo just stared down at his tea, frowning. Merry nudged him.
‘Perhaps it was one of your mates. Come to drop something off? Or – I know: I bet it was Simon. He probably came to apologise, then chickened out when he saw you.’
‘No way, Merry. Simon hasn’t forgiven me for punching him and hasn’t suddenly become less of a jerk. He hates me. He made that abundantly clear when I bumped into him in town last week.’ Leo downed the rest of his tea, dumped the mug in the sink and stood there, head down, hands gripping the edge of the countertop.
‘Honestly,’ Merry began, ‘there has to be some other explanation. I’m sure if—’
Leo swung round.
‘What if … what if it was his ghost? What if he’s come back to haunt me?’
Merry’s stomach flipped.
She opened her mouth to say that there were no such things as ghosts, but thought better of it.
Because, honestly, I don’t know. I didn’t believe in magic swords and cursed princes this time last year. And those visions of Meredith I had were kind of ghostlike …
‘But why would Dan come back to haunt you?’ she asked gently.
‘Because it’s my fault that he’s dead. I should never have gone to Northumberland with you and Mum. I should have stayed here, warned people. Maybe if I’d said the words from the manuscript, I could have stopped Jack from … from killing …’
Merry got up.
‘Don’t you dare blame yourself for anything that happened in the spring, Leo. Don’t you dare! We did what we could. We both almost died.’ She put her hands on his face, forcing him to look at her. ‘Dan was murdered when we were under the lake, remember? And if you hadn’t been there with me, Gwydion would have won. And lots more people would have died. What happened to Dan – that was Gwydion’s fault. Not Jack’s, not mine, and definitely not yours.’
She tried to put her arms around Leo, to hug him, but he pulled away.
‘But I could have warned him!’
‘He would never have believed you!’
‘I – we could have made him. We could have shown him your powers. He would have had to believe us.’
‘You’re wrong. People don’t want to believe in things that are scary or dangerous, not really. And even if Dan had believed us, who else would we have had to tell? The whole town? Let them see what me and Gran and the rest of the coven really are?’
Leo stepped back.
‘Is that all you witches care about? Protecting your damn secrets?’
‘Protecting you. That’s what I care about!’ Merry grabbed her brother by his arm. ‘You need to stop this. I know you miss Dan. But this isn’t healthy. And –’ the words came out before she could stop them – ‘and neither is sitting by the Black Lake obsessing about what happened. You have to move on.’
Leo shook her hand away.
‘What? How did you know?’
‘I’m worried about you. Really worried. So I … I cast a spell that would allow me to see where you were tonight.’
Leo shot her a furious look, the colour draining from his face.
‘You’ve been spying on me? I can’t believe you, Merry. Why didn’t you just talk to me, if you were that worried?’
‘But I’ve tried to! You know I have. I’ve kept asking—’
Leo interrupted her.
‘And as for me “moving on”, I’ll do that when I’m damn well ready to!’ He turned and strode out of the kitchen before she could say anything else.
Merry smacked her palm against her forehead.
Way to go, Merry.
She sighed, put the biscuits away in the cupboard and unlocked the back door. Switching out the lights in the kitchen she stood on the threshold, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The night air was heavy with the heat and the scent of roses blooming somewhere nearby, so still that every sound seemed muffled. There was nothing amiss as far as she could see. And yet …
She closed her eyes.
And there it was, like a single wrong note in the middle of a symphony, or a dab of jarring colour at the edge of a painting. Something barely discernible, but just not quite … right. So faint as to be almost not there at all.
There was something in one of the wisdom books Gran had given her. Something about certain times and places being … points of intersection. Points at which the boundaries between different realms of existence stopped being like solid walls and became more like Swiss cheese.
Merry locked the back door again and went up to her room. The summer solstice had been more than three weeks ago, and if there was something odd about their garden, surely she – and for that matter, Mum and Gran – would have noticed it before now? And even if they’d all missed something, the protection put in place by the coven had been enough to keep Jack out. The runes would hold against anything.
She was certain of it.
Besides, Gwydion and Jack were both dead. There was nothing left to be frightened of.
The next day Leo was out of the house before Merry was up, giving her no chance to apologise. In the daylight, she couldn’t pick up any hint of the strangeness she’d noticed last night. The garden seemed to be exactly the same as normal: suburban, ordinary, extremely non-magical.
At least she had plans for the day: a trip into London with Ruby and Flo, which would give her something else to do other than obsess about Jack or how much she’d messed up with Leo. She’d been hanging out a lot with Flo over the last three months; it was kind of relaxing, having a mate who knew the truth about her secret life, who understood it. And they had more than witchcraft in common. Merry couldn’t help wondering whether the last few years would have been easier if she’d been allowed to train, and if she’d had a friend who was going through that training at the same time. She really wanted Flo and Ruby to get along, and so far they seemed to be hitting it off pretty well. Her own relationship with Ruby was better, but it wasn’t quite back to normal yet. Merry hoped that shopping, eating and sightseeing – with a third person to smooth over any awkward silences – might push things in the right direction.
They caught the train from Tillingham station, and an hour and twenty minutes later got off the tube at Oxford Street. After spending the rest of the morning trying on clothes and shoes they really, really couldn’t afford, they bought some sandwiches and headed into Green Park. It was another beautiful day, sunny and cloudless. Ruby flopped down on the blanket she’d brought and stretched her legs out in front of her, face turned towards the sun. Flo arranged herself cross-legged on the grass, adjusting her huge floppy sunhat so that most of her was in the shade. Merry sat down in between the two of them and immediately rifled through her bag for her sunscreen. She squirted a big dollop of it on to her hand and began covering her arms and legs.
‘Blimey, Cooper!’ Ruby exclaimed. ‘Why don’t you live dangerously for once, let yourself develop a light tan? It’s the middle of July and you’re still Snow White’s even pastier sister.’
Flo giggled.
‘Gee, thanks,’ said Merry, pulling a face. ‘Flo’s wearing a sunhat.’
‘Yeah, but she’s already a nice golden colour –’
‘Thanks,’ Flo beamed.
– ‘whereas you …’ Ruby shook her head sadly.
‘Huh. You’re just lucky, inheriting your mum’s skin colour.’ Merry grinned, ‘Not to mention her dress sense …’
‘Take that back,’ Ruby scowled. ‘Right now.’
‘Yeah, yeah, all right.’ Merry pulled her sandwich out of her bag. ‘But while we’re on the subject, why don’t you tell Flo about your plans to take over the fashion world?’
‘Oooh, yes, please!’ Flo clapped her hands together and sat forward.
‘OK.’ Ruby put on her newly acquired, almost-designer sunglasses. ‘Well, people are always telling me I look good. Always asking me what I’m wearing. Aren’t they, Merry?’
Merry nodded.
‘So, I’ve been thinking I could become one of those online fashion/make-up/hair-care gurus. Only, like, much better than the other girls who are already doing it. So I started a fashion vlog. Last weekend.’
‘Fab, I’ll google you. Sounds like it’s going to be epic!’
Ruby laughed, and she and Flo began discussing the various crimes against fashion that were currently being committed around them in the park.
Merry took a bite out of her sandwich. It was such a long time since she’d had a day like this. Looking around, she could see dozens of other people hanging out among the trees, sunbathing or chatting or listening to music. And apart from Flo, none of them knew she was a witch. It almost made her feel normal.
Almost.
‘Hey! Are you still with us?’ Ruby was waving a hand in front of Merry’s face. ‘I said, do you know yet what you want to do next year? After we leave?’
Merry shrugged.
‘Dunno. Something to do with sports, maybe.’ Perhaps she could really work on her fencing, even take it up professionally. Jack would have approved of that.
‘PE lessons –’ Flo interjected, ‘one thing I’m definitely not going to miss.’
‘Me neither,’ Ruby replied. ‘Can’t wait for the day I no longer have to waste an hour a week being bored on a netball court. But seriously, Merry, what are you going to do?’ She sat forward, closer to Merry, pushing her sunglasses back on her head. ‘I know the spring term was hard for you.’ Ruby glanced at Flo. ‘Has she told you about what happened?’ Flo nodded, her face carefully neutral, and Ruby continued. ‘But you seem better now. Right?’
‘Better?’ Merry wasn’t sure what to say. Ruby was still smiling, but there was something in the way she was looking at her – searching her face – that made Merry want to look away. She’d so wanted to tell Ruby the real reason for her weird behaviour the previous few months, for missing classes and messing up at school, for never being around when Ruby needed her. She wanted to tell her the truth about Jack and Gwydion and the curse, about being a witch and all that it meant. Apart from Leo, Ruby was her best friend in the entire world: it would be amazing to let Ruby see her for what she really was. But Merry didn’t know how to begin. Perhaps she and Flo should just … show Ruby their powers. Turn the parched turf in front of them into a bed of multicoloured daisies.
Ruby tugged at the shrivelled blades of grass.
‘I just mean, that since that guy left, you seem more yourself again.’
Jack. Even here, Merry couldn’t get away from him. Not that she wanted to. Thinking about him, talking about him – even if she never used his name out loud – it kept a little bit of him alive. Somehow.
‘Um …’ Merry’s throat was dry; she took a sip from her bottle of water. Ruby tilted her head, her curiosity nudging at Merry insistently. ‘Well … Yeah. I guess. I mean, it would never have worked.’ She knew Ruby was about to ask why, so she rushed the words out. ‘I think he was still in love with someone else. Someone from his past.’ With Meredith. My ancestor from fifteen hundred years before I was born. Two witches from the same family, in love with the same boy.
‘Really? What a loser,’ Ruby commented, satisfied. ‘I’d want to seriously injure anyone who messed me about like that. Hope you dumped him from a great height.’
Merry stared at her friend.
You have no idea what he meant to me. And no idea what we had to do to him—
She caught her breath and shrugged, trying to look unconcerned even as her heart ached. ‘It was months ago. I’m fine with it now.’
There was a surge of sympathy from Flo; she knew a little of the truth about Jack, about how Merry had felt about him. But Merry could tell Ruby didn’t believe her. Not one little bit. A hint of panic began to swirl in the pit of her stomach.
Ruby nodded.
‘Good. So you can begin dating again. Prove to him that you’ve moved on. And I know exactly the guy for you – he’s completely lush.’
Ruby started swiping through the photos on her phone, looking for a shot of Mr Lush, talking about how amazing he was. But Merry couldn’t take any of it in. How could she move on from a boy she’d been so desperate to save that she’d been willing to let him die? It felt impossible.
Guilt mingled with the panic.
I really wish I hadn’t told Leo last night that he needed to move on.
It was time to change the subject. But her mind was blank.
Luckily, Flo came to the rescue.
‘Ooh – speaking of lush, I spent most of last weekend binge-watching Poldark. Have you seen it, Ruby? Aidan Turner is so hot.’
Merry’s hands unclenched as Ruby and Flo began a long discussion on whether people really used to work down mines with no shirts on. For now, at least, she was off the hook.
A few hours later they were on the train back home. Flo started texting a guy she’d met at a party a couple of weeks ago, while Ruby put her headphones on and seemed to fall asleep. Merry’s phone had died, so she looked around for something to read and located a discarded newspaper a few seats down.
The headlines seemed to be the usual mix of regular news, human-interest items and celebrity gossip. A politician had been caught doing something dodgy, some poor guy had been murdered for his collection of antique knives, and yet another Hollywood couple had split up. Nothing interesting enough to make her read the rest of the article. Until a picture of a woman caught her eye. The woman looked like she was in her early thirties, and she was going for a seventies hippy vibe: multicoloured peasant blouse, flared jeans, fringed suede bag. She was smiling flirtatiously over her shoulder. For some reason, her face seemed familiar, though Merry was certain that she didn’t know her. She looked at the headline next to the photo:
Birchover death: police believe Ellie Mills’s body lay undetected for days
Merry read a bit more of the story and grimaced. Ellie Mills. The name didn’t ring any bells. And where could she possibly have seen her before? After a while she gave up trying to figure it out and stared through the window instead. She watched the landscape streaking past, until her eyelids grew heavy.
MERRY WASN’T SURPRISED to be back at the lake again. Somehow, it seemed … inevitable. Whatever path she chose, she kept ending up in the same place. But today it looked different. The water wasn’t sparkling, or reflecting the cloudless sky above. Instead, the lake lurked within its hollow: shrunken, dark, stinking of rotten vegetation. As she got closer to the edge, she saw that it was choked with algae, and she thought, This place is dying …
Finding a clear spot, she knelt on the bank, staring down into the water. She could see him there, gazing up at her, his blond hair floating about his head.
‘Jack?’
He stretched out his arms towards her, struggling to reach her. Instinctively she leant forward – forward – until her face was almost touching the surface of the lake, until—
Terror suffocated her. Scrambling backwards, she froze the surface of the lake, trapping Jack underneath. But she could still hear him, beating on the underside of the ice, screaming her name over and over …
‘Hey, Merry?’ She sat up with a jerk. Ruby was shaking her shoulder; the train was just pulling into Tillingham. ‘You OK? You were muttering something in your sleep.’
‘Uh … no, I’m fine. Just tired.’
Flo was staring at her, frowning. Merry shook her head fractionally; she didn’t want to start discussing her strange dreams in front of Ruby.
Merry stumbled off the train after the others. Flo said goodbye to them there as she lived on the other side of town and was getting a bus home. Merry got into Ruby’s car and turned the air conditioning on to full, trying to blow away the cobwebs of sleep still clinging to her brain.
Thankfully, Ruby seemed happy enough listening to the radio as she drove.
Merry was supposed to meet Leo at Gran’s house for dinner, so Ruby dropped her off there. Gran was in the kitchen, and despite the heat outside, the house was pleasantly cool.
‘Hey, Gran.’ Merry kissed her grandmother on the cheek. ‘That smells good. Where’s Leo?’
‘I made a chicken pie. And he’s not coming. He called and said he’s not feeling well.’ Gran gave Merry a searching glance, but Merry didn’t offer any explanation. She was hardly going to tell Gran that she’d been misusing her magic to spy on her brother.
‘Can I do anything?’
‘No. Go and relax.’
Merry wandered into the living room, spent a few minutes playing with Tybalt – Gran’s tortoiseshell moggie – then began browsing her grandmother’s bulging bookshelves: fiction, political memoirs, history, lots of knowledge books and wisdom books. And in a separate bookcase, Gran’s journey books. Merry opened the doors and ran her fingers along the spines. Gran favoured brightly-coloured, cloth-bound notebooks, though the bindings of the earliest books were faded now. As her nails bumped across the rainbow fabric, Merry remembered the photo of Ellie Mills, and that strange feeling of familiarity. And then she remembered an evening at Gran’s house a couple of months ago when Gran had asked her to copy out a spell from one of the journey books.
Ten minutes later Merry was sitting on the floor, a jumbled pile of discarded notebooks by her feet, one open upon her knees. Here was the spell: a charm Gran had developed for getting rid of acne. And on the opposite page was a photograph. Gran, with a group of six or seven other women of different ages, all standing a little awkwardly among four large, irregular-shaped rocks. A younger Gran – it had obviously been taken quite a few years ago. The camerawork was a bit wonky, but Gran had helpfully written the names of the women underneath the picture. And at the edge of the group – her hair bright pink in this photo – stood Ellie Mills.
Merry took the journey book into the kitchen. Gran was laying the table.
‘Gran, who’s this?’
Gran glanced at the photo.
‘Oh, it was taken at a convention in Derbyshire, held by a local coven. We went on a day trip to visit a nearby stone circle. About ten years ago, I think.’
‘But why is she there?’ Merry tapped the photo. ‘Ellie Mills.’
‘She’s one of the local witches. I don’t know her that well. Powerful, but rather … scatty, as far as I remember. Of course, she was only young when that was taken. She might be more disciplined by now. Why?’
Merry hesitated. Gran didn’t seem to know Ellie Mills that well, but still …
Her grandmother was peering at her over the top of her spectacles.
‘Merry?’
‘Er, the thing is … I think she’s dead. There was a photo of her in the paper today, and it said …’ Gran had gone sort of rigid, staring at the knife still in her hand. ‘I’m really sorry, Gran. I s’pose it was an accident. I didn’t read the whole article, but—’