Spellweaver (15 page)

The three of them were
in this together, whatever ‘this’ was; these tales of magic and
spell books, of strange people hunting for her and her mother’s
journal - they had seen and experienced all of these things
together. Felicity had seen how Hollie cared for her and how
protective Jamie was over the both of them.

It felt...
good.

Felicity didn’t know
how she had managed to cope without people like the twins in her
life before she had arrived at Greenfields, and she swore that she
would never be like that again. She had tasted genuine friendship
and she was not going to let it go.

She nodded at Jamie’s
offer. “Let’s go, then.”

The walk back to the
flat didn’t take long, partly because Felicity’s mind was so
restless, and partly because Jamie wouldn’t stop talking. She knew
that he was only doing it to distract her, to stop her from
thinking about all of her troubles, and to a certain extent he
succeeded, but as soon as she said goodbye and closed the door,
everything just came back again, as inevitable as the
tide.

Her father wasn’t
there. A note pinned to the fridge by a magnet informed her that he
had been called into work for a night shift and wouldn’t be back
until the morning.

It wasn’t particularly
late - only about nine - but Felicity felt exhausted. She trudged
through the flat to her room and collapsed on the bed. It was cold
in there; the window was still stuck open, as it had been ever
since she had moved in. Without bothering to get dressed into her
pyjamas, dressing gown and thick socks, she pulled the duvet up to
her chin and stared at the ceiling.

She couldn’t sleep.
Her eyes wouldn’t even allow themselves to close. It was quite
frustrating, she mused as she tried in vain to force herself into a
slumber. She was so unbearably tired and her mind was full of so
many anxieties that she knew a good night’s rest would help her
think more clearly. But still, she couldn’t sleep.

The Christmas gift
from her father caught her eye. It stood still and solitary on her
bedside table, the only secret she had not shared with her friends.
She hadn’t had a chance to act upon her father’s suggestion to use
the box to store her mother’s things, and since sleeping was
proving to be so much of a difficulty at present, she decided to do
so now.

She swung her legs
over the side of the bed, clicked her bedside lamp on and stood up.
She had managed to weigh the protruding floorboard down with heavy
books and other items in an attempt to save herself from tripping
up, but had been less than successful. She pushed them aside,
lifted the floorboard and peered into the space beneath. The brown
padded envelope was still there, of course, though it had caught a
lot of dust since she had placed it there several months ago.
Felicity had not got it out since then.

Until today. She
reached in and slipped her finger beneath the seal, tipping the
contents into her lap. The diary, the small stone and the watch
were all still there, whilst the ring was still on her
finger.

She looked at them
differently this time, for they held more mystery now. Rather than
the belongings of a woman who never seemed to have the time to show
her only child any affection, they were now the belongings of
someone who had powers that appeared only in the imagination,
someone who had precious secrets contained in a diary that was
being hunted by people who could spout fire from their very hands
-

Felicity inhaled
sharply as a disturbing and unwelcome thought abruptly forced its
way into her mind.

What if her mother’s
death hadn’t been an accident?

Murder. The word
echoed inside her skull, an extra weight forced upon her already
heavily burdened mind. Could it be possible? But then, it made
sense, didn’t it? Her mother had been powerful, and she had been
carrying a very desirable, magical arsenal around with her, if what
Oliver said was to be believed. It stood to reason that someone
might kill her to get their hands on it -

Felicity shook herself
physically, as if that might help her lose these troubling new
thoughts. She reminded herself that she needed to sleep, not
formulate wild, crazy theories about her mother. Audrey Lucas had
died in a car accident, a tragic collision that saw her vehicle
slammed into a tree just off the side of the road. There had been
no suspicious circumstances - the police had told her
that.

She ran her fingers
over the grooved surface of the stone that had been in her mother’s
possession the night the accident had happened. It was such an odd
little thing. Felicity had often wondered what it was and even gone
so far as to ask her father about it, but no one could provide her
with an answer - not even the internet. She brought it up to the
light of her lamp and studied the markings more closely, but they
looked more like patterns than any kind of wording. She placed it
inside the box her father had bought for her, along with her
mother’s watch and diary.

The box was a far more
fitting home for these precious items than the old carrier bag.
They seemed comfortable there, safe, secure and welcome, as if they
had always been meant to find their way there.

Felicity reached for
her mother’s journal and curled up in the corner of her bed,
pulling the duvet around her and pressing herself up against the
two walls. With a click, she turned out the light and was left in
darkness. She somehow felt safer that way, perhaps because she had
spent so long lingering in the shadows of the background and was
therefore used to it. She was alone in the flat, so it made sense
to pretend that she wasn’t there at all, in case those who came for
her mother came for her, too.

She shook the thought
from her mind irritably, cursing herself for thinking it. But every
time she closed her eyes it came back to her. She imagined the
scene of the crash, her mother driving her car, innocent and
unaware of the danger that was following her. The sky was dark and
the rain was pouring down; it had to be raining, of course. And
then, out of nowhere, there came a burst of light and energy that
struck the vehicle and turned it upside down. Over and over and
over it rolled; her mother didn’t stand a chance. When the car
finally stopped, she was already dead.

It was ridiculous,
Felicity knew that, just as she knew that the accident had occurred
very early one morning in summer at a time when the sun was
shining. Her morbid imagination was only making things worse and
she had to learn to control it.

She had opened her
mother’s journal without even realising it. Though the room was
dark, there was just enough light streaming between the gaps of her
makeshift blanket curtains to see that it was on the page of the
defensive spell Oliver had recited to her earlier. The words still
made no sense to her, but she couldn’t forget how they sounded.
Their shape, their tone, their pronunciation; she felt as if they
had been burnt into her very soul. Even thinking about it made her
feel queasy.

She touched the page
with her fingertips, just as she had done a thousand times before.
Under her breath, she tried unsuccessfully to read the spell aloud.
Though she remembered it perfectly, she couldn’t quite say it
herself; the language was too alien, the words too
complex.

She tried again,
whispering to herself in the darkness. Had Oliver been there, he
would have mocked her attempt but acknowledged that it was a better
try than the first.

Spurred on by a
refreshing burst of determination, Felicity persisted. The more she
tried to say them, the easier the words became. Eventually her
whisper became a mutter. She thought of Oliver sneering down his
nose at her and making sly comments about her inferiority and found
herself resolute to his imaginary challenge. Before long, her voice
had increased in volume to that of her normal, everyday
speech.

Felicity was so
focused on her task that she hadn’t noticed the page begin to glow
a pale red.

Finally, after what
seemed like only a few minutes but had in reality been much longer,
her mouth found its way through the maze of strange letters and
sounds and pronounced the words accurately; the tone, emphasis and
accent - all were correct.

She sighed
triumphantly, but she couldn’t revel in her success for long; sleep
beckoned to her desperate eyelids. She was so, so tired. But there
were so many things to worry about, so many things to fear - how
could she possibly think about sleeping?

And then a deep,
satisfying slumber finally claimed her.

Oliver’s eyes snapped
open. It took them a moment to focus in the gloom, and a second
longer for his mind to reestablish the difference between dreams
and reality, and then he remembered where he was: in the cellar of
that idiot, Jamie Clarke.

He had been attempting
to sever his bonds when he must have fallen asleep. His neck and
his back ached. His wrists were stinging from the roughness of the
rope. He felt like such a fool to have failed to escape that he had
to take a deep breath to contain his frustration and stop himself
from shouting out, for he didn’t want to draw attention to
himself.

He leaned his head
back on the pipe to which he was tied and wondered when the
daughter would come back to ask him more questions. He had piqued
her curiosity, of that he was certain, and though he was not
exactly within Felicity’s circle of trust, she did not have to
believe everything he said in order for his plan to work. He just
needed a little bit more time with her to convince her to hand over
the book and set him free, and then she would be the prisoner and
he the captor. The task might well require some better acting on
his part, for however good he was at hiding his true feelings and
intentions, he was less practised at pretending to be something he
wasn’t. But if he succeeded, the others would never know how his
initial attempts had failed and he could escape any
punishment.

And yet, one thing he
could not escape was the voice in the back of his head telling him
to give up, for he had no right to claim any kind of success after
the miserable blunders he had committed. He did not deserve the
title given to him by the others; he deserved nothing more than to
face their judgement and sentencing.

No. He would show
them. He would prove himself to be worthy by completing his
mission. By the time the others arrived, both Felicity and the book
would be in his hands.

Suddenly and
unexpectedly, Oliver felt a twinge of fear in the pit of his
stomach. At first he thought it was his body’s response to his
dangerous thoughts, but he quickly began to realise that it was
something else - something far, far worse. The palms of his hands
started to sweat. His breathing quickened.

The others were almost
here.

11.

Felicity turned over
in bed, groaning in protest to the beeping alarm that had roused
her from sleep. Her mother’s journal, which had laid open across
her chest, fell to the floor.

It was still dark
outside, as was usual for the time of year. Felicity had often had
to get up and get ready for school in almost pitch black weather,
so she was used to it, but that didn’t mean that every muscle in
her body wasn’t resisting her tugs and pulls as she reached over to
her digital alarm clock.

It continued to beep,
even as she slammed her hand upon it. For a moment she was
confused, and then she realised that it wasn’t her alarm clock that
was singing to her. It was her mobile phone, the secondhand one
that Hollie had given to her a few months ago so that the two of
them could keep in touch. It was an old model, nothing special, and
the ringtones were so limited that the best of them sounded very
similar to her alarm.

Now fully awake,
Felicity grabbed hold of her phone and answered it.

“Hello?” she
croaked.

“Fliss, you have to
come over,” came the voice of Jamie. He sounded
distressed.

“Jamie?”

“Yes, yes, it’s me.
You have to get over here now, Fliss. It’s Oliver.”

Felicity sat bolt
upright. “What’s happened? Has he got away? Is he - is he coming
for me?”

“No, no, nothing like
that - but Fliss, you need to get here now. Hurry!”

Felicity hung up the
phone and got out of bed as quickly as she could. The last of her
sleepiness had faded as soon as the adrenaline rushed into her
system; hearing Jamie speak Oliver’s name in such a worried, almost
frantic way scared her.

The streets were still
and quiet, for it was only around seven in the morning. As Felicity
approached Jamie’s house, she saw a familiar figure rushing in the
same direction. It was Hollie.

The two of them met at
the base of the steps that let to Jamie’s front door.

“He called you, too?”
Hollie asked Felicity.

“Yeah,” she said with
a nod.

“What’s going
on?”

Felicity didn’t reply,
for she had no answer. She simply shrugged her shoulders and the
two friends hurried into Jamie’s house.

Though it had been
practically silent outside, the difference indoors was staggering.
The bangs of moving furniture echoed in the entrance hall, but
nothing was quite as disturbing as the shouting coming from the
cellar. For a moment the girls couldn’t tell if the voice belonged
to Oliver or Jamie, but when Hollie’s twin emerged from the cellar
and the shouting continued, they had their answer.