Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Three

‘Good morning,' Catherine said, already at the table when I came down to breakfast the next day. ‘How are you feeling today?'

‘Amazing actually,' I told her, taking my seat. ‘Better than ever.'

There was only one more moonrise between me and my Becoming and my body was all too aware. When I woke up, I could feel every thread in the fabric of my sheets and see each individual brushstroke on my wallpaper. Without moving from my bed, I knew Ashley was getting ready to put biscuits in the oven and preparing a pot of lavender, rose and lemon balm tea, and when I closed my eyes and searched across town for the Powells, I could tell Lydia was still in bed while Jackson was completing his run. It was as easy as changing the channel on the TV, all the information right there in front of me. I didn't even have to try.

‘What time is everyone else getting here?' I asked, staring at the absurd amount of food on the table. There was easily enough to feed twenty people or more. As well as the tea I could smell from my room, there was coffee, orange juice, milk, freshly cut fruit, cinnamon buns, pancakes, toast, grits, sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, hash browns, fried chicken and waffles, and of course, biscuits and gravy.

‘I woke up early,' Ashley said by way of explanation as she walked in carrying a platter of her famous French toast. ‘If you don't want any of this, I've got scones, pound cake, yoghurt and granola back there. Or I could make you a frittata?'

‘No, thank you, this is more than enough.'

My teeth sank into a cinnamon roll and the sweet icing exploded on my tongue. With my heightened senses, the pastry felt soft and pillowy in my mouth, the cinnamon filling melted, smooth and warm. Suddenly, I wanted to devour everything on the table.

‘Ashley, do you feel OK?' I asked, covering my mouth with my hand as I chewed. ‘You're not getting sick, are you?'

The cinnamon roll was the best thing I'd ever tasted but Ashley looked the worst I'd ever seen her. There were black circles under her eyes, her already pale skin was a sickly greyish-white, and her usually glossy brunette braid was dull and uneven, wisps of hair coming loose around her face and at her crown.

‘I haven't been sleeping well,' she replied, pouring herself a cup of black coffee before retreating back into the kitchen without further explanation.

‘Please tell me she hasn't gone to get more food,' I said to Catherine.

‘It's your last day as a sixteen-year-old,' my grandmother replied as the door swung back and forth in Ashley's wake. She didn't appear to be the least bit alarmed by the state of her daughter. ‘Every bit as important to celebrate an end as the beginning, we wanted to do something special for you.'

‘We?' I felt for Ashley, slumped over the kitchen table with her head in her arms. ‘Ashley doesn't look like she's in the mood to celebrate.'

Catherine waved her fork in the air, totally unbothered. ‘Her seventeenth birthday wasn't the best. She was nursing some sad little crush that broke her heart. Inevitable, I'm afraid, but unfortunate it had to happen on her birthday.'

I chewed slowly, remembering my aunt's version of events. She hadn't mentioned it happened on her birthday.

‘It would be best if you stayed home today,' Catherine added, a mild but clear warning. ‘This close to the big day, everything is in flux, and we don't want any accidents. I'm sure you can feel the change already, I've had gooseflesh all morning but there is still a lot to do. I will be gone for most of the day.'

‘You're leaving again?' I said, aware of the whine that stretched out my words.

‘Nothing about the next twenty-four hours should be taken lightly, honey. I need to be completely prepared for every eventuality. There is still work to be done.'

The binding, I thought. She's talking about the binding.

‘Don't waste the day worrying,' she advised. ‘You're as prepared as it's possible to be, heck, you've spent a whole lot more time studying than I ever did. You are going to do me proud, little witch, I just know it. Promise me you'll stay home and stay safe.'

‘Stay home, stay safe,' I recited, letting my eyes wander around the dining room. ‘Guess I can't get into too much trouble around here.'

‘Exactly,' Catherine agreed. ‘Bell House is the safest place for you today.'

But we both should've known if trouble was looking, trouble would find me.

True to her word, Catherine disappeared as soon as she'd eaten, and when the front door closed, Bell House trembled to let me know we were alone. Ashley was in the garden, sweating out her anger on the plants and herbs. I watched her through the kitchen window for a moment, still grey, still miserable and felt another swell of sympathy. If I was her, I might enjoy bashing things with a shovel too.

I went to my room and pulled out my laptop from underneath the bed. Things had been so hectic over the last few days, I hadn't spent as much time as I'd have liked going through Dad's files, but I needed to feel his calming influence. It helped to know he'd spent so many years here, walking on the same floorboards, sleeping in the same bed. Maybe reading his words would help settle my nerves.

Tucked away in the window seat, I opened, skimmed then closed endless documents. More notes, more research, nothing helpful. Even though I'd watched him digitizing his journals with my own two eyes, I couldn't find them anywhere. Not that his research into eighteenth-century agricultural practices wasn't fascinating (to someone other than me) but it wasn't especially helpful.

I was halfway through a file full of documents from our first year in Wales when I heard it, a low hum coming from downstairs. I closed the laptop and concentrated. Was it something I could hear or something I could feel? Maybe both. With the computer tucked under my arm, I tiptoed downstairs, running my fingers over the wallpaper, the vines and leaves and happy birds following as I went. The house had never responded to me like this before. I felt like Snow White with all of the woods around me as I searched for the source of the humming. I tried all the downstairs doors, the parlour, the dining room, the library, even the locked garden level guest rooms, but there was nothing. A tiny rabbit, no bigger than my palm, hopped along the skirting board, twitching its nose at me.

‘Hello,' I said as it brushed its ears and blinked. It bounded into the next panel of wallpaper then waited.

‘You want me to follow you?' I asked, dropping my voice as it hopped onto the next one, then the next, then the next. When the rabbit stopped, there was only one door left to try. Catherine's craft room.

The rabbit pulled back, trembling, as the painted vines wrapped themselves in an arch around the door, leaving a very definite gap between themselves and the sky-blue door. This was the source of the humming and Bell House wanted me to know it. I'd promised Catherine I wouldn't go in. It was her private, personal space. But that promise was made before I knew the truth. Lots of people had a craft room, somewhere they could concentrate on their hobbies, sewing, quilting, knitting. I suspected Catherine wasn't doing much needlework in hers. My hand hovered over the brass doorknob. Why would Bell House guide me to this specific room if I wasn't supposed to go inside? Shaking my head, I grasped the handle and screamed.

Black flames tore up the door, the wallpaper shredded, a cacophonous roar coming from all the animals and birds that lived within, and right beside me I saw Ashley, a walking pile of ash and bone. The moment I let go of the door handle, it all disappeared, and by my foot, I saw the rabbit with its ears pulled down, shaking as it shuffled away.

Laptop still in my arms, I backed away from Catherine's craft room, picking up pace until I was out the front door and running, as fast as I could, away from Bell House.

It was busy on the waterfront, it always was. A bunch of big hotels lined the banks of the Savannah River and tourists congregated around the souvenir shops and riverside restaurants with their beautiful water views and, according to every Savannahian I knew, overpriced and overrated food. Busier was better, I decided, huddling up into the smallest possible bundle on the corner of a bench. I wanted to see people; happy, smiling, laughing people, drinking from paper cups, eating treats and strolling along, their only concern how many free praline samples they could get from River Street Sweets before someone got wise and cut them off.

I hadn't spent a lot of time this close to the river. Bell House was like a beacon, always pulling me back whenever I drifted too far away, and there was something about the way the light found its way through the trees and the moss that always kept me close to home. The energy here was different, washing my panic and fear away downstream. I liked it. The ocean's tides pushed and pulled at my magic but the Savannah River flowed in one direction, always driving forward. It was exactly what I needed to help drown the dark memory of the deathly flames.

A black bird with a red and yellow patch on its wing skipped along the ground, flicking its head this way and that, one beady eye fixed on me. It glowed, like the stone I'd found in the ashes of my failed invocation, the one currently hidden in my bedside table alongside Catherine's silver pin.

‘You must see so much,' I said as it hopped back and forth. ‘So many things that we all miss.'

It took a few stilted steps towards me, pecking at the air with its sharp little beak.

‘Not much of a talker, are you?' I smiled.

Strangely enough, it didn't reply. I anchored my too-long hair behind my ears, the waves falling over my shoulders, way down past my collarbone. When was the last time I got a haircut? Months ago. In another life, that was the kind of thing I'd be doing today, a visit to the salon, maybe a manicure, some new makeup. I'd been dreaming about turning seventeen forever, that's when I was sure my life would really start. There was so much I was going to do, my dad and I had made so many plans together. But not nearly as many as he'd made without me.

The bird flapped its wings twice, just enough to lift it up onto the bench beside me. It lurched forward and pecked at my laptop, fast and ferocious.

‘Easy!' I exclaimed as it hopped backwards to glare at me with its dark diamond eyes. ‘I only have one of these and I don't think you can afford to replace it.'

With what looked suspiciously like a disappointed shake of its head, it took off, flying into the bony branches of a nearby tree, right in front of the paddle-wheel riverboat and its long line of tourists. It continued to glare at me until I opened the laptop.

‘Perfectly normal stuff,' I mumbled as I tapped in Ashley's date of birth and opened my dad's files. ‘A black bird telling me to do my homework.'

Without touching the trackpad, I watched the cursor dance in circles around the screen, flickering over the stacks of folders until it landed on an image file, a close-up photograph of a camellia. I'd looked at it before but hadn't paid much attention. It was just a flower, pretty enough but nothing special. In the tree, the bird cawed loudly.

‘OK, OK,' I murmured. ‘I'll take another look.'

I zoomed in on the camellia. A tiny grey dot appeared, hidden in the shadow of the petals. One click and the cursor blinked. I clicked again, twice in quick succession, and a password box appeared. I tried Ashley's date of birth but the box shuddered its refusal and a message appeared, one I hadn't seen before. ‘Password attempt one of three. Three or more incorrect attempts will delete all files.' I must have tried a hundred different password combinations to get into the laptop and it never locked me out. Nothing else was protected with this level of security. I tapped in my mom's birthday but it declined again and the warning came back, this time in red. ‘Password attempt two of three.'

There were infinite possibilities, dates of birth, addresses, pets' names, favourite songs, bands, movies, books, foods, dates of historical events; how was I supposed to guess? I let my hands hover over the laptop then rested my fingers lightly on the keys as I stared out over the water. The sounds of the river, the rustling of the trees and across the way, the soft encouraging caw of a black bird with a red and yellow patch on its wing. The last time I'd been down by the river was with Wyn, right before I spilled chocolate ice cream on Lydia's dress. I smiled at the memory and the tender sense of calm that came with it. When I looked back at the laptop, my date of birth with the numbers reversed filled the password box.

All I had to do was press enter.

Immediately, hundreds, thousands of new files filled the screen. I'd found my dad's journals. My breath caught in my throat as I clicked through the dated entries, some were short, some were long, but every single one began the same way.

Dear Angelica.

It wasn't just a diary. Every day for sixteen years, my dad had written a letter to my mom. A letter about me. I opened a file at random and began to read.

Dear Angelica,

Today we found out Em is allergic to orange face paint. Wish I'd known that before I let Giorgio paint her up like Nemo at the carnival this afternoon. She looked more like a blowfish than clownfish but I sure did feel like a clown. Now she's OK, I can admit it was kind of funny but I don't think Em would agree.

‘No, she wouldn't,' I muttered, remembering my itchy skin and sobbing on the floor of the pharmacy while my dad tried to figure out how to ask for Benadryl in Italian.

I scrolled back to some older entries, searching anything that might explain why we left Savannah in his own words instead of Ashley's or Catherine's.

Dear Angelica,

It's a big day in the James household, we have officially said goodbye to diapers. Damn good thing too, those things were about to bankrupt me. Why is everything kids need so expensive? To be honest with you, everything in New Zealand is expensive but at least it's safe. So far, so good, at least. I know we won't be able to stay here forever but for now, the ocean is enough. There's no way Catherine could travel all this way to spread her poison. I'm looking at Em right now. How can this tiny person be expected to carry so much on her shoulders? Imagine trying to grow up normal and healthy with someone telling you you're destined to save the world or end it one day. She's our daughter, not a prophecy. I haven't forgotten my promise. I'll keep her safe, whatever it takes.

Smearing tears across my face, I pressed my lips together to control my crying when strangers started sneaking uncomfortable glances my way. I scrolled forward, searching for something specific. My sixteenth birthday.

Dear Angelica,

Here we are, Em's sweet sixteen. Not that it's so sweet. I feel like shit, not being able to give her the celebration she deserves, but I have to keep reminding myself it's for the greater good. I wish you could see her today. She's such a good kid, smart, polite, conscientious, and there's something else bubbling away under the surface. She's getting more curious by the day and I don't know how much longer she's going to accept her old dad's version of the world. Wales is working out for now, the farm is far enough away from everything, there's no public transport to speak of, and I keep her busy with her studies. But I remember being sixteen. She's already mastered the eyeroll and every day she's making plans for the future.

Alex emailed to say happy birthday from her and the twins, but there's still no update on Ashley, she hasn't seen her in months and she says Bell House is a mess. The whole thing breaks my heart but my hands are tied. What can I do? I'd get Ash out of there in a heartbeat if I could but there's no way of contacting her without Catherine finding out where we are and that is not an option. Not now, not when we're so close.

There are days when I question it all. What if I'm wrong? What if my mother is languishing in the ruins of my home, frail and failing because of me? Then I look at Em and it all comes back. Catherine never wanted a granddaughter, she wanted a Bell witch. That's the cold, hard truth.

Things will become more difficult as Em gets closer to her seventeenth. Sometimes I think her magic is manifesting already, the way she looks out the window right before it starts to rain. Maybe I'm imagining it. She killed the Chia Pet I gave her for Christmas, hardly an indication of a natural witch. All my research says she'll be fine, the world will be fine, as long as I keep her away from Savannah and away from my mother.

I looked up and stared out across the river. Alex and the twins? Did he mean Alexandra Powell? It couldn't be anyone else. Swallowing hard, I thought back to those days in Wales, trying to remember if I'd ever felt even a hint of my magic. There was nothing concrete I could recall; it rained all the time, if everyone who looked out of a window right before it started to rain in Wales was a witch, they'd have to burn the whole population. I closed the journal entry and scrolled ahead to the last file.

Dear Angelica,

We have to move. I thought we'd be safe here until her birthday but my gut says something's wrong. I know if you were here, you'd tell me not to be so superstitious but you're not, are you? No one is here for me. Sorry, that's not fair but I'm scared. God, I wish you were here to help me, I wish you could see her. She asks about you and our family all the time but I'm keeping my promise; no stories, no photographs. She just has the one picture of you and I, by our tree. Some days that's the hardest part, not being able to tell her about you, the thought that if you were around, she would most likely walk past you on the street like you were a stranger.

As soon as I've decided where we're going, I'll book the flights. Somewhere remote, somewhere in the middle of the ocean. I'll tell Em it's a graduation gift, one last stop on our journey until her birthday. She might not be happy but at least she'll be safe. At least she'll get to live a normal life.

It was the last entry.

The next day, my dad was dead.