Spellweaver (17 page)

She was astonished
when her father spoke again.

“She was standing by
the bar when I saw her first,” he said quietly. “Talking to another
lad. Well, he was the one doing all the talking. She was listening
- she was good at that. Listening.” He paused for a few seconds
before continuing. “This lad. He was giving her a bit of trouble.
Bothering her. So I went over and, uh, pretended like I knew her.
That she was my sister, or some other fib. Well, that got shot of
him.”

Felicity imagined the
scene running through her head. “What was she like?”

This question appeared
to pose a bit more difficulty. Felicity’s father frowned as if
thinking and concentrating, searching his mind for the memories he
had locked away for so long.

“She was fun,” he
answered at length. “She knew how to have a good time. Was full of
jokes and always laughing. A bit silly, too. Girlish and young and
pretty. And...” He paused. “Mysterious. Didn’t talk about herself
much. Seemed more interested in finding out about me, but I’ll
never understand why.”

Felicity nodded,
understanding more than her father knew.

“She was... grateful,”
he continued. And then, as if he knew that his daughter was
picturing that night in her head, he added: “Red. She wore
red.”

It had been a
beautiful, romantic event, Felicity decided. She saw her mother
sitting at a crowded bar, wearing a long, red, glittering gown and
with not one but several men all fighting and bartering for her
attention. But she didn’t give them a second glance, because
Felicity’s father had entered the club. With one look from him, the
other men left her alone, and from that moment on, it was true
love.

She didn’t ever want
that memory to change, although it had been shaped to her own
recommendations and didn’t even belong to her. She would still
cherish it as if she had been there and seen it all
herself.

But she did want to
know one thing, regardless of the risk it posed to this newfound,
borrowed memory. There was a few moments of silence as she worked
up the courage to ask that important question, and then: “Why did
you split up?”

Her father let out a
long sigh, as if he had been expecting those very words for some
time. He looked at her for the first time since the conversation
began. “She was very young, your mum, when she found out she was
going to have a little baby. You,” he added, as if the point
required clarification. “I wanted to do right by her, to marry her
and bring you up.”

He stopped, so
Felicity prompted him. “But?”

“But things don’t
always work out like you plan,” her father continued. “Your mum
wanted to take you somewhere else, somewhere nicer and better where
you could have a good life.” He let out another sigh and turned to
the window. “I had to let her go. It wouldn’t have been right,
keeping her here.”

“Why didn’t you go
with her?”

“I wanted to. But your
mum... she didn’t want me. And who can blame her?” He sighed sadly.
“So I let her go.”

The perfection of the
memory shattered and Felicity felt a sudden and almost overwhelming
sadness. For the first time, a strong wave of emotion surged inside
her, and it was all directed towards her father - a feeling of
sympathy for what he had sacrificed to allow another to be
happy.

“That’s how things
work sometimes,” her father added quietly. “You can either hold on
to the thing you love most, even if it would ruin them, or you can
let it go and just be ruined on your own.”

With that, he got up
from the sofa and wandered unhappily over to the kitchen. Felicity
listened to the familiar sound of the fridge opening and the
clinking of glass as her father rummaged for a beer.

She sat alone on the
sofa. She had got what she wanted; she felt that she knew her
mother better - and her father, too - but the feelings were not
what she had expected. She must have known, deep down inside, that
there would have been a depressing end to the tale, since her
parents had not stayed together. But when she had heard her father
talk about her, her spirits had lifted; she had noted the fondness
in his voice and imagined scenes of romance and happily ever
after.

Real life wasn’t like
that.

Felicity was left with
an unsatisfying animosity towards her mother now, as much as she
tried to fight it. She wanted to remember her mother with the same
fondness her father did, but unlike him, she found herself unable
to forgive her. The years she had spent living in that big, old
house in the distant countryside instantly tasted bitter. Her
childhood should have been happy, and though it hadn’t exactly been
the opposite, it had been empty; it appeared that that was all her
mother had left her father with, too. Emptiness.

Everything that Oliver
had told her suddenly came flooding back to her in crashing waves,
as if they had been held back for far too long and their dams had
burst from the pressure. They swept aside the calm sadness that had
been her father’s story about her mother and reunited her with the
anxieties she had attempted to abandon. She remembered what he had
said about the ‘others’, how they were on their way and would be
here soon. A sense of panic made her heartbeat quicken.

She didn’t know what
to do. Her father’s flat felt very inviting then, for it seemed
worlds away from the cellar at Jamie’s house and all her problems.
She could just stay there and forget than anything strange was
happening at all; she could pretend to be normal.

That was one
option.

Option two was to
assume that Oliver was lying, that there was no one coming to get
her and that he was only saying it to escape his predicament.
Felicity, Hollie and Jamie would have to decide what to do with him
later.

And the third and
final option was to accept that Oliver was telling the truth and
set him free. Of course, there was the chance that he was lying and
would attack her as soon as his hands were loose, but Felicity had
thought of that. The one thing that Oliver wanted the most was the
journal, so she would hide it somewhere safe so he wouldn’t be able
to harm her or her friends if he wanted to get hold of
it.

But once the two of
them got out of London, all bets would be off. She would have to
give him the journal and run the risk of being attacked as soon as
he possessed it, or refuse to give it to him and run that very same
risk. She couldn’t use it to protect herself forever.

Oliver had been right
about one thing: Felicity was brave when she saw Oliver restrained
and unable to cast his magic, because that was when she had the
power. But as soon as he was free and had the journal in his
possession, she would have nothing, no authority over him at all,
no bargains to hold sway over his actions. She wouldn’t be able to
protect herself, and that was what terrified her the most, for she
had seen what Oliver could do and what the others had done to her
mother.

Her mother. Had she
really been murdered? Perhaps Felicity would never know. She
wondered if her mother had thought of her before she died. She
wondered if she missed her, if she regretted not spending any time
with her only daughter. If there was an afterlife, was Audrey Lucas
looking back at her life with pride or guilt? Felicity didn’t hold
out much hope for the latter. In spite of everything, she was still
angry with her.

And then, as suddenly
and unexpectedly as that, her choice was made.

12.

“Where have you been?”
Hollie demanded as soon as Felicity came through the front door.
“I’ve been worried sick! Why did you run off like that?”

Felicity shrugged
awkwardly, searching for a reply, but nothing came to
her.

There came some
thudding footsteps from upstairs and then Jamie appeared. “There
you are,” he said, looking relieved to see her. “What
happened?”

Hollie shook her head
at her brother and then turned back to her friend. “Oliver’s been
dead silent ever since you left. Jamie’s been down to check on him,
but he just sits there and stares. It’s... kinda weird.”

“We’re going to have
to do something about him,” Jamie said. “Dad comes back in less
than a week.”

“I
wouldn’t worry about that,” Felicity said quietly.

Jamie looked hopeful.
“Did he tell you something useful?”

Felicity didn’t reply,
and there was somewhat of an awkward silence in the entrance
hall.

As should have been
expected, Hollie was the one to break it. “Maybe I should try and
speak to him.”

Jamie rolled his
eyes.

“Can we... talk about
something else?”

The words had come
from Felicity. They sounded apprehensive and quiet, and caused
Hollie and Jamie to glance at one another.

“Fliss,” Jamie said
steadily. “We have to sort something out sooner or
later.”

“I know, I know,”
Felicity replied. “But - for now, at least - can we just talk about
something else?”

Hollie looked somewhat
curious, tilting her head to one side as if to question her friend
without words, and then she smiled and placed a comforting arm
around her. “Of course we can, Fliss,” she said kindly. “Come
on.”

The three of them
headed to the lounge and turned on the television, which seemed
like a suitably simple and normal thing to do. Hollie linked her
arm with Felicity’s, just as she had the day the two of them had
first met at Greenfields High School, and they sat side by side on
the leather sofa facing the television.

None of them were
paying any attention to the programme that was showing, although
all three of them were watching it. Despite Hollie’s promise that
the friends could talk about something else, they ended up talking
about nothing at all. Jamie was clearly on edge; his eyes kept
flicking to the door as if he expected Oliver to come striding in.
Felicity could feel the tension in Hollie’s arm.

Things had changed.
Felicity’s life had not exactly been simple when she moved in with
her father, but what she had seen and experienced since then had
been unbelievable. She had discovered magic, been attacked and
found out things that she could never have even dreamt about. But
she had not come into the lounge with her friends to dwell on those
things - she wanted to forget them.

Hollie was not the
kind of person to allow a negative atmosphere to permeate a room.
She was well known throughout school for bringing a cheery, bright
outlook to those around her when they needed it most, and when she
saw the weight of the world bearing down on her best friend, she
realised that she had to do something about it.

“Hey,” she said
quietly. “Do you remember that English lesson last term when Luke
Ryan climbed underneath the tables to write on the backs of all the
chairs?”

There was nothing to
respond to her but the noise of the television, which was showing
an advert for a hair product. For a moment Hollie thought she would
have to try something else, and then, from the other side of the
room, Jamie chuckled.

“Miss Anderson didn’t
even notice,” he mumbled.

Hollie raised her
eyebrows. “You laugh about it now,” she said playfully. “But you
were pretty angry about what he wrote on your chair.”

“Yeah, well,” Jamie
said, shuffling awkwardly. “I’m not a geek.”

Hollie giggled, and
with that, the atmosphere changed. Jamie stopped glancing at the
door. Hollie relaxed. This was what Felicity wanted - some
normality and a chance to waste time with the two people she
treasured more than anything else in the world.

Recent memories of
school lessons and lunchtimes made for some much needed cheer.
Anyone watching would have thought that these three teenagers were
completely normal, that their lives were consumed by nothing more
than friendship issues, homework worries and what they were having
for dinner. Felicity’s spirit was lifted. Although she was ever
conscious of the time ticking away the seconds until the others’
apparent arrival, there still lingered the hope that Oliver was
lying and nothing was going to happen. But she was able to shove
those thoughts to the back of her mind for the time being and
laugh, chat and smile with Hollie and Jamie.

The siblings felt it
too. Hollie completely forgot about Oliver as she giggled and
joked, happy that she was able to make Felicity feel better. Jamie
felt relieved of his personal and self-appointed obligation to
protect his sister and best friend, as if there was no danger in
the world, for that half an hour at least; in that time, he didn’t
have a strange, magical man in his cellar to either get rid of or
explain to his father upon his return. Everything was fine;
everything was normal.

And yet, conversation
was hopelessly and inevitably dying.

“It’s looking pretty
grim outside,” Hollie said, flicking a glance out of the window.
She sighed. “It said on my weather app that it was gonna be
sunny.”

The sky had darkened
unusually quickly, the sun hidden by a flurry of grey clouds. As
the three of them watched in silence, there was a loud clap of
thunder that startled them.