Chapter 31 Loose Ends

31

Loose Ends

IT WAS WITH great trepidation and an extensive phone call explaining that everything was fine, except not actually that fine, that Belle reluctantly agreed to bring her mother back to Quill Lane by transference.

She would have much preferred for Bonnie to drive for safety, but they had only a handful of hours to put a plan together before the moon of All Hallow's Eve. And, like most aspects of life, she couldn't settle on anything without her mum's verdict on the matter.

It had been a long conversation, a convoluted one. Belle attempted to explain what exactly the matter was in a roundabout way, wary of upsetting her mother with the shocking details—including the small matter of a visit from her long passed maternal grandmother. Bonnie, in her usual fashion, kept swinging the conversation off-kilter to something else entirely—dog updates, the restaurant she'd been to last week, gossip from her allotment. The phone was promptly passed to Artorius, who made slightly better progress. He only stumbled when Bonnie, still not having taken on the gravity of the situation, remembered that she'd meant to ask him for his scone recipe. When Belle heard mention of sultanas, she seized the phone and shoved it towards Rune as a last resort. Surprisingly, he did the best job of the three.

"So you see, Mrs.Blackthorn, that's why we could really do with you making your way down to London when you get a moment," Rune said, simultaneously trying to remain polite and attentive while Belle mouthed various other snippets of information for him to interpret as and when they popped into her head.

"Get her to come here as soon as possible," Belle stage-whispered. "Actually, no. There's something I have to do before we go and effectively unleash chaos on the magical structure of this country."

Rune pulled an indignant face and rolled his eyes but began to pass on the message.

"Actually, no," she began again, thinking out loud. "Could she meet us here, but tonight? So we can travel to Hecate House together? How are we going to know where it's incarnated for Halloween? We're more likely to run into problems if we're split up."

Rune took a deep breath but nodded again and mouthed "fair point" in response, suggesting the new plan in between Bonnie relaying something or other about needing to walk Wolfie. But yes, that would work.

"Hang on. New plan. Rune, as far as they know, you don't know anything that we know. You know?" Belle's eyes were so wide, it was as though the speed at which her brain was operating was causing some kind of inflating friction against her skull.

"What are you…Excuse me, Mrs.Blackthorn, one moment." He covered the end of the receiver with his palm. "Sorry, what are you talking about?"

"The Gowdens. They're none the wiser to the fact that you were with us for the scrying. And the Necromancy spell was private magic. What if you go to Hecate House, act like everything's peachy ahead of my retrial and get the new incarnate location for us to meet you there? Tonight, at sundown."

Rune rubbed a thumb over his forehead, trying his best to keep up. "I think I follow. But you won't be able to take the main entry into Hecate House, anyway. They'll know as soon as you walk through the door." He pondered for a moment. "Leave it to me."

He handed the phone to Belle to take over. His hands took hold of her upper arms as he navigated her out of the way, and she felt him give an almost imperceptible squeeze as he did so. He transferred himself away with the promise to be in touch with answers as soon as he could.

The plan—or as much of a plan as a highly unqualified witch, a banished elderly warlock and a witch dithering somewhere up north could have in place without entirely knowing what it was they were hoping to achieve—was vague. All that they knew was that Selcouth needed to know the truth and that the Gowden sisters had landed their positions of power through treacherous means. Not to mention, it was highly likely that they were behind the sabotage of Belle's mentorship, therefore controlling coven admissions for their own gain. They could have been manipulating prospective members of Selcouth, the future of magic itself, for decades.

But there was another crucial matter that she had to tackle first, before she could even consider the possibility of Hecate House.

She explained to Artorius that Rune or Bonnie would transfer with him to wherever it was they needed to be that night once Rune had gathered the facts. Artorius pointed out that it was a loose plan—barely a plan at all, in fact—to which Belle politely encouraged him to suggest his own if he had anything better.

"Well, it is something," he replied brightly. "And that is a start."

"ALL RIGHT?" ARIADNE grunted, picking at a plate of fish fingers while she flipped through a magazine, having returned from her sister's the previous night. Belle suspected she'd grabbed it hastily the moment she heard the door opening, because it was upside down while she read, and Ariadne didn't seem to have noticed.

"You're back. Good." Belle slammed the door behind her and marched towards her friend at the table.

"Seems that way," Ariadne said, peering determinedly at an upside-down page as though it were the most fascinating piece of journalism ever written.

"Look, I haven't got time for us to be shirty with one another anymore," Belle said, snatching the magazine away and chucking it over her shoulder. "I love you. I love you to death." She pulled the other chair from the table and sat herself directly in front of Ariadne. "I would play Scrabble with you every day in an old people's home in like fifty years' time, until we've lost the plot enough to think we're somewhere else. I would genuinely live on a DIY barge with you if you so wished. I would do anything for us to be okay again."

Ariadne snorted, then promptly rearranged her face back to lofty and disinterested.

Belle sighed. "I am a horrible, rotten crone for how I've treated you."

Ariadne stuck her nose in the air. "You are, actually."

"And it's no excuse, but I've just had more on my plate than an innocent teenager of thirty years old should ever have to handle by herself."

"You're not supposed to handle it by yourself, woman." Ariadne turned herself on the chair to face Belle. "That's the point. Our whole friendship is just taking it in turns to be insane. You're supposed to dump it on me, and I'm supposed to dump it on you, and eventually everything works out okay. You are so bad at asking for help, it's maddening."

"I know, I know," Belle said desperately. "And I will tell you everything, I promise, if I survive tonight."

Ariadne's eyebrows shot up. "Survive tonight? What's tonight?"

Belle waved her hands dismissively. "I just have to go and see a coven about potential overthrow because I suspect that two nefarious magical leaders of huge influence have possibly been trying to kill me. And my mum. So I just had to come back here and make sure that you're my friend again. I need you to be my friend, always. Otherwise, I'll have to come back as a ghost to haunt you until you forgive me, and I just can't be arsed to do it. It sounds like a lot of work."

"What are you on about? Ow."

Belle grabbed Ariadne's arms from where they were crossed over her body and forced her so tightly into a hug that she snatched the wind from both of them. "Say you forgive me."

"I'll never say it."

"Say it."

"I'll never…"

"Say it!"

"I forgive you, you deranged lunatic," Ariadne laughed, squeezing Belle equally as uncomfortably. "Hang on, I really can't breathe." They let go of each other. "For what it's worth, I am also sorry, for not giving you space when I could tell that you needed it. I should have just backed off and waited until you were ready to come to me about whatever is going on. Which I can only assume really is, of course, a coven? And some murder? And whatever else you just said?"

"I'm going to give you a moment to consider how I would come up with something like that if it wasn't actually true," Belle called back as she grabbed a towel and headed into the bathroom. "I have never needed a shower so much in my thirty years of existence."

On the bus back to the flat, leaning her head against the window, Belle had come to the realisation that her biggest mistake of all had been not confiding in Ariadne. Not telling her everything right from the beginning. Of course she should have shared it all that first night of her fifteenth birthday, mid–movie marathon, when everything felt too big and terrifying for one girl to hold on to. That berating, untrusting voice she'd heard in the entryway to Hecate House might have sounded like Ariadne, but it wasn't her, nor could it ever be.

So it was time to crack the secret open, break it apart with her bare hands and take away the power that it had held over her for so long. If she made it back home, she'd tell Ariadne everything.

"Oh, there were messages on the machine when I got back. Lots of them," Ariadne told her when Belle emerged from the shower. "I'm assuming you've been at Rune's place, because Violet has tried to call you like a hundred times."

"I'm on my way to see her right now. That reminds me, you don't know yet. I quit Lunar."

Ariadne stopped in her tracks to the kitchen. "You quit?"

"Spectacularly so," Belle replied, shouting from her room as she shoved her hair half up. "Bridges burned. Shots fired. Took the wagon, hitched up the horses, sped off into the distance."

"You finally lost it, hey?"

"I think I've actually found something. So I'm now going to go and beg for my little, insignificant life from Violet and tell her that I still want to buy the shop if she'll let me."

Ariadne blinked, baffled. "What exactly did I miss? I spend a week up north and you've gone mad. In a good way."

AFTER THROWING ON clean tights, a velvet skirt and a top with large billowy sleeves that made her feel as though she had her life together, Belle power-walked straight to Lunar Books. Confronting all of this at a million miles an hour was the only way that she'd be able to stick by her guns without buckling.

"Vi?" She burst through the door of the bookshop, the dainty bell tinkling its familiar sound as she arrived.

"Out back," Monica called, reaching on her tiptoes to slide a couple of titles onto a high shelf. "She's got a right cob on with you. As have I."

Belle grimaced, shrugging off her coat, scuffing her boots against the book-shaped doormat. "Thanks, Mon. We'll talk, I promise. Don't hate me. There's a plan. Sort of."

She hurried across the shop floor, giving small waves and polite smiles as she shimmied through the regular customers. No sign of Christopher, she noted with relief. She slid open the stock-room door into the space where she'd come face-to-face with Rune what felt like such a long time ago. Violet, feeding a letter through the fax machine, turned on her stick towards Belle.

"Vi. I'm here. I'm so astronomically sorry for missing your calls."

"Ah, she's alive after all. Call off the searches, Jim." He was hunched over a comic book, munching on an apple in the wobbly corner chair reserved for break times. "Give us a minute, will you?" she added, waving her stick in the direction of the door.

He sighed and chucked his apple core into the bin as he stood up. "Can't a man enjoy Spider-Man in peace anymore?"

"Not when I've seen that he's got two entire boxes of delivery to fit onto the fiction shelves before he should be clocking off," Vi responded. She prodded him in the back with her stick as he left, and he pretended to stumble spectacularly to earn a cheap laugh. It always worked with Vi.

"To what do I owe this pleasure?" Violet asked, tapping the numbers on the fax machine to make it clear that she was far too busy and important for this conversation.

"You know I wouldn't have ignored your messages on purpose. I got called away and have had a week like you wouldn't believe." Belle sighed, tidying up a small stack of proof copies by instinct. "But that's no excuse. I'm so sorry. And I totally understand if the offer doesn't stand anymore."

Violet turned with a neat, smug smile. "There is no longer an offer, Belle."

Belle's face fell.

It was over. The dream had slipped away once and for all. How could she have dared to think that it wouldn't?

But there was a glint in Violet's pale eyes. "There's no offer because it's confirmed. Lunar Books is yours."

Belle's hand flew to her heart. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. This is instruction to my lawyer to begin the process, in fact." She gestured to the fax. "It'll take a while to deal with the legalities, but I'm ready to pass this place on to someone who I know truly loves and cares for it, who has the time and energy to keep hold of its charm in this mad modern world."

Belle's grin momentarily turned to a frown. "And…what about Christopher?"

"Thanks to your venerable colleagues out there, who finally decided after you walked out that honesty would indeed be the best policy, rather than your well-intentioned-but-ridiculous approach of trying to save me from the truth, I am now well aware that my son is not that someone. We have had words. I'm cutting him off, so it's up to him to support his own ridiculous lifestyle. And I can't believe he didn't like the fabulous window display. The fabulous window display stays."

Belle couldn't help but let out a disbelieving laugh. "I tried to tell you…"

"Well, you should have tried harder. But I was wrong to blindly believe that he knew what was best. I should have remembered that, as it always has, almost all of the magic of Lunar comes from you."

Belle grinned. "We're really doing this?"

"I've known you for long enough, Belle. I know by now that you wouldn't ignore me on purpose. I know this place is a part of you. I know your heart."

"I won't let you down, Vi."

"I know you won't, sweetheart."

Violet left Belle with a file of dense documents and insisted that she at least take a peek at them before she left. Violet herself couldn't stay. She had her monthly women's meeting, which Belle had never really known too much about, other than the fact that a selection of elderly wealthy women all seemed to enjoy getting together to moan about their elderly wealthy husbands, and it drove Violet up the wall because they were all so dull.

Now wasn't the time for important legal documents, hefty paragraphs about deeds and ownership and freeholds and leaseholds. But she jotted a pen across one or two, slid a highlighter over a couple of paragraphs so that Violet would see that she'd given it a try. Hopefully it would seem as though she'd been distracted by the shop floor instead. Her mind was entirely elsewhere. Although utterly relieved that she hadn't lost her chance of owning her own little bookshop, now all Belle could focus on was what lay ahead.

Halloween night was about to begin.

She pulled a pink highlighter across something or other about damp proofing that looked important, but her attention was snatched to the bottom of the page. A line appeared like a footnote, the letters forming by themselves, and soon turned into words handwritten in black ink. They glowed as she read before vanishing again like puffs of smoke.

Queens Wood oak circle. See you all at 6 p.m. Don't forget uniforms.

Rune.

Belle had seen pictures of Queens Wood before, with its otherworldly clearing of trees right at its centre, the space surrounded by oaks in an almost perfect circle that mirrored the Hecate House atrium.

Belle glanced at the clock on the back wall. Twenty minutes to six. Typical Rune to give a moment's notice. She'd have to sprint home, grab her cloak and hat, jump on a train almost immediately…

Unless she risked it. Unless she believed in herself enough to knit a successful transference spell for the first time. Daring to believe it set off an unconscious flare of sparks at the end of her finger. As Artorius had reminded her numerous times, what was the best that could happen?

Belle headed out of Lunar, giving the front door a tap for luck as she left, as though reassuring the shop—her shop—that she'd be back soon.

The high street buzzed in the evening glow with throngs of parents and children dressed up in handmade Halloween costumes. She spotted adorably hilarious vampire collars sticking out at all angles, a trail of toilet paper spilling from a miniature mummy and, best of all, throngs of witches in the early stages of girlhood, all in their best capes and hats, celebrating their own pull towards the magical. They clutched at small brooms, carried little cauldrons and beamed sticky smiles as they skipped along hand in hand.

Belle slipped around the same corner that she'd dragged Bronwyn to all those moons ago when she'd arrived to share the news about the mentorship. Bronwyn, who had seemed so kind thirty moons back, with the best, most selfless of intentions. Belle prickled, trying to grant herself grace for falling for it. She could never have known what was to come. She shuffled back between two large bins and tried to ignore the smell. The air was cold and fresh, coated with the last of the apricot light from the row of shops. She flexed her finger, feeling the rush of that remedying glow, her magic coming to life.

"Take me home," she whispered.

HER STOMACH LURCHED, dropping into the balls of her feet and falling through her heels. It was the sensation of tipping over the edge of a rollercoaster, free-falling at a speed so extreme that she felt her skin shrink back to wrap every nerve ending within her. Her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth from the force, her hair flew upwards, caught in a current. And then it was done. She felt a firmness beneath her toes. The scent of Ariadne's favourite candles was the first thing that she noticed. She opened one eye. The living room.

"What in the ever-loving fuck?"

The slight, now very apparent issue was that she had transferred herself to the very room where Ariadne was currently sitting sprawled out across the sofa. Belle had never seen her move so fast. She jolted upright with such a fervour that it looked like an electric shock.

Belle cringed. She was going to tell Ariadne everything, but this was perhaps not the gentle approach she should have taken in introducing her non-wicche friend to the phenomenon of real-life magic.

And she had to get to Queens Wood.

"I'm so sorry. Ignore me. I'm not here," Belle chimed, heading straight into her room to pull the Selcouth cloak and hat from the pile of clothes on her armchair.

Ariadne, verging on hysteria, scrambled up from the sofa. "Did I miss something? Where did you come from? You left. I thought…What are you wearing?"

"I know, the hat is terrible," Belle said, pulling the point into place.

"Either you're having a breakdown or I am. We can't both have one at the same time."

"It's not a breakdown. This is happening. I have handled this terribly, but now you're in the deep end, and I'm going to need you to keep swimming just for a couple more hours while I go and fix a few things." Belle was rambling at a speed she didn't even know was possible as she gripped her friends' forearms. "Please don't entirely lose the plot until I'm home again. I know this kind of thing has sent people into madness before, but we're strong modern women. We've seen weirder stuff than this. It's just the supernatural. Some people believe in the stock market, in the internet, in aliens…I'm going to need you to believe in this. You can handle this, right?"

Ari made a noise that was somewhere between a confused huff and a scoffing honk.

"Great. I'll be back," Belle said hastily before casting out her finger and transferring straight to what she hoped her magic would know to be the oak circle.