A Witch in Love (6 page)

I ignored his jibe and only said, ‘He might join us, depends how busy it is. Where’s Emmaline?’

‘At the bar. No, I tell a lie; here she is.’ He waved an arm as she turned from the bar with a frosted glass and a packet of crisps in one hand, ‘Em, over here.’

‘Hello, Anna.’ Emmaline squeezed up to the tiny table. ‘Merry Christmas.’

‘Merry Christmas to you too. Thanks for telling Abe about my little problem.’

‘Hey,’ Emmaline bowed her head in mock seriousness, but there was an amused smile at the corner of her mouth, ‘a problem shared is a problem halved, you know.’

‘Well, thanks for being so caring.’

‘Did you tell him about the parcel under your step?’ Emmaline wanted to know.

Abe said, ‘Already heard, from Simon. He’s not happy.’

‘Nobody’s very happy, dur-brain, least of all Anna, I imagine. It’s just so weird. Why would anyone put it there?’

‘As I see it there are three possibilities.’ Abe raised three fingers to tick them off. ‘One, to help you, Anna. Two, to harm you. Three, it’s nothing to do with you and was there before you moved in.’

‘But like Anna said – how could her mother have moved in without noticing a reek like that?’ Emmaline asked. ‘Someone
must
have put it there after her mother left, when Anna was small.’

I took a deep breath.

‘About that. About my mother …’

‘Yes?’

‘I think…I think…’

‘Oh my God,’ Abe said slowly. His black eyes met mine, and I saw a kind of horrified understanding there.

‘What? What about your mother?’ Emmaline looked from his face to mine. ‘Hang on – you don’t think … your
mother
did this?’

‘It seems like the most logical explanation,’ I said. ‘She left – and before she did, she buried a charm to hide us and …’

‘And a charm to
cripple
you?’ Emmaline finished incredulously. She was shaking her head, her face twisted with disgust. It was as if … as if I’d suggested that my mother had cut off one of my hands as a keepsake. ‘The hiding charm, yes. That I can see; it might be to protect you in some way. But stunting your magic like that, deliberately? Why,
why
? It’s such a hideous, horrible thing to do – what kind of mother would do that to her newborn baby?’

What kind of mother would run away and leave her newborn baby? That was what I wanted to say. But I bit my tongue and only shook my head.

‘Did your dad know anything about it?’ Emmaline asked. I shook my head again, more bitterly this time.

‘I couldn’t ask him … I know, I know.’ I held up my hands. ‘But, Emmaline, it’s not like I haven’t tried. I’ve asked and asked him about my mum. But it’s like he
can’t
tell me – he’s just a brick wall. I don’t know what to do.’

‘You’ll have to try again,’ Em said flatly. ‘If this – this
thing
is true …’ She trailed off, shaking her head, and her expression confirmed what I’d already guessed; that charm was not a step anyone would take lightly, least of all a parent.

So, why? Why had she done it?

There was only one way to find the answer: start delving into the past. Find out the truth about my mother’s life, and death, and what had set her running.

‘Is there anyone else you could ask?’ Abe put in.

I shook my head. ‘My dad’s lost contact with my mother’s family – or severed it, I don’t know which. And I can’t trace them. I don’t even know her maiden name.’

‘It’d be on your birth certificate, wouldn’t it?’ Emmaline asked. I shook my head again.

‘Not on the version I’ve seen – it’s just a little thing with my name and date of birth and stuff.’

‘That’s the short version,’ Abe said. ‘There’s a longer version, an A4 sheet with more information. You have to write off for it, I think. But depending on the surname I don’t know that it’d get you much further – if you know she was Jane Smith then that doesn’t help a whole lot. Is there really no one else you can ask?’

‘No, well …’ A thought suddenly struck me. James, Lorna, Ben and Rick had all known Dad for years. Could I … ? Did I dare? They were all leaving on Boxing Day – that gave me tomorrow, basically, to find out. ‘There might be someone … I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.’

The problem was they’d undoubtedly be worried about stepping on my dad’s toes and telling me secrets that were not theirs to share. I’d have to be very tactful about who I approached, and how. Lorna perhaps? Could I pull some kind of fellow-female appeal, motherless girl, surrogate mum, schtick? But Lorna was pretty discreet, besides which I wasn’t completely sure how far back she and Dad went. I couldn’t bear the idea of screwing up my courage to ask, all for nothing.

Ben was probably the best bet. He’d been at Oxford with Dad so chances were, he must have met my mum. But would he know much? He’d lived in New York for several years after university. Perhaps that period covered my parents’ brief marriage?

I was staring into space, only half listening to Emmaline and Abe’s good-natured bickering, when a flash of red at the bar caught my eye and I saw a red-headed girl leaning confidentially over the bar to speak to Seth. It was the girl from the restaurant.

I bit my lip as she bent over, her breasts almost spilling out of her low-cut top. She was incredibly striking, with wide dark eyes made up with smoky eyeshadow so they looked even bigger and more soulful, and her flamecoloured hair spilt over her shoulders and back like a mane of fire. She was whispering something to Seth.

‘What?’ I saw him yell back irritably. ‘Can you speak up? I can’t hear you.’

She beckoned him over the bar and he leant forward. Then she grabbed his collar and pulled him towards her, her lips at his ear. I didn’t quite see what happened next, but I could guess. Seth sprang back with a mixture of shock and astonishment in his face, wiping at his ear reflexively with a bar towel. There was a streak of her lipstick from his ear right across his cheekbone and the girl was laughing, her tongue caught provocatively between her teeth. I felt my cheeks flush scarlet with anger.

She said something else and I saw Seth shake his head and point to me, seated in the corner. Then he turned away to serve another customer. The girl shrugged and started to scribble something on a beer mat. Seth just ignored her. He stretched up to get a beer glass from the rack, his T-shirt riding up to expose a slice of tanned skin and an arrow of dark hair, and the girl leant across the bar and pushed the beer mat down the front of his jeans, behind the broad silver buckle of his belt. I gasped. Seth jumped convulsively and dropped the beer glass, sending shards of glass skittering across the floor.

Fury exploded inside me. How dare she? How
dare
she!

Out of nowhere came a terrible smell of scorching. Smoke filled the bar and the girl gave a scream, clutching at the back of her head.

‘My hair! My hair’s on fire!’

There was an immediate hubbub – someone threw a drink, someone else batted at the sparks with their hands. The girl was weeping now, her hair drenched with beer, and her friends clustered around patting her back.

‘Zoe, are you OK?’

‘What happened?’

‘It must have been someone with a cigarette – who’s smoking in here?’

Seth just stood and watched with his mouth open and eventually leant across the bar to ask, ‘Are you OK? Is there anything I can do?’

‘She’s fine.’ One of the girl’s friends put her arm around the heavily sobbing Zoe. ‘She’s had too much to drink. I’ll take her outside.’ She raised her voice. ‘Whoever’s smoking in here, I hope you’re bloody proud of yourself. There’s a reason it was banned, you know.’

She glared around the bar and then ushered the still-sobbing Zoe outside.

Emmaline looked at me. I had my hands to my face, covering my flaming cheeks.

‘Anna?’

‘Oh God, Emmaline. What’s happening to me?’

Emmaline shook her head and her mouth compressed into a grim line. ‘It’s not working, Anna. All this pretending to be a normal person, whatever normal is. You’re not. And your body knows you’re not. Just admit what you are and stop pretending.’

She looked over my shoulder as she spoke and her expression changed, to something halfway between disgust and resignation.

‘I’ve got to go anyway. Abe?’

Abe looked past me and nodded.

‘I’ll drop you. I’ll be over the limit if I have another one anyway. See you later, Anna. Bah humbug and all that.’

I turned to see what had changed their mood. It was Seth.

‘What sent them scurrying off so fast?’ Seth asked as he slid in beside me. I shrugged, but in reality I knew. What made it worse, from their perspective, was that I was spilling not just my own secrets, but theirs too. Seth had seen too much, knew too much to be safe.

‘Em’s just tired,’ I lied. Then my heart wrung as I saw how shattered he looked, the shadows under his dark eyes, his T-shirt drenched with sweat from working the bar all night. ‘How are you?’

‘Knackered.’ He ran a hand through his hair, twisting the curls into a tousled, sweaty mess. ‘Completely knackered. I spent all day trying to get this sodding Chemistry homework done and then all night working here. And then that stupid bloody girl! Sticking her tongue in my ear …’ He shuddered. ‘And how the hell did she get her hair set on fire?’

I put my head in my hands, unable even to begin to answer that. Seth saw my face and began to shake his head.

‘No, no, you were nowhere near her! Anna, don’t do this to yourself. You’ve got to stop thinking that everything bad that happens in a fifty-mile radius is to do with you.’

‘She was flirting with you,’ I said in a voice that sounded cold and hard even to my own ears.

‘Anna, this is not you.’ He took my face in his hands. ‘You are a
good
person. I know you are.’

‘What about those men in the alley?’ I asked. ‘What about
you
, six months ago? I don’t remember you being so convinced of my goodness when I enchanted
you
. You said you hated me and never wanted to see me again.’

‘I was wrong. And those men, you saved me from being stabbed, Anna. Would you be a better person if you’d stood by and let them gut me?’

‘Maybe, I don’t know.’ I felt full of wretchedness, not sure how such a lovely night had turned so sour.

‘Come on.’ Seth stroked my hair, running his hands along the nape of my neck where the fine hairs tickled, curling his fingers around the tender skin behind my ear. ‘Come on, sweetheart. It’s Christmas Eve. Don’t let’s spoil it. Look.’ He reached under the table. ‘I’ve got your present.’

It was small and heavy in my palm, wrapped in gold paper.

‘I’ve got yours,’ I said, trying to smile. I reached for the bag. It was unguessable – I knew that. A square, anonymous box that might have been anything.

Seth rattled the parcel and looked intrigued.

‘Is it fragile?’

‘Not very. Don’t hit it with a mallet.’ I shook his parcel to me. It made no sound at all. ‘Give me a clue.’

‘Nope.’ He grinned infuriatingly, happy to see me preoccupied with something other than magic. ‘You’ll have to wait until tomorrow like a good girl.’ Then he stifled a huge yawn. ‘Sorry, sorry. I’m whacked.’

‘You need to get some sleep. I should go.’

‘Don’t go; come upstairs with me.’ I hesitated and he pressed the point with a wickedly enticing smile. ‘Go on; Mum’s in the bar … There’s enough din down here to cover any sounds from upstairs …’

‘What about your grandad?’ I hedged. ‘I thought he was staying for Christmas?’

‘He was asleep in front of the telly when I last checked, out like a light.’

I shook my head. If Bran was upstairs there was no way I was risking a confrontation.

‘Sorry, Seth, I don’t think your grandad would be very pleased to see me.’

‘But he won’t see you! We’ll creep past him. Please?’ He was kissing my hands, one finger at a time. ‘I could give you an early Christmas present?’

Desire coiled in the pit of my stomach like an unassuaged hunger, but I shook my head again, this time resolutely.

‘No. Look, Seth, I make snow fall when we
kiss
. Don’t you think that,’ I looked around and lowered my voice, ‘that doing anything
more
, particularly with your grandad in the house, would be a very, very bad idea?’

‘You’re worried the earth will move?’ His smile was wicked, but I wasn’t laughing.

‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’

‘Most girls worry that it won’t,’ he teased, but the laughter went out of his face when he saw my expression. ‘Oh, Anna, Anna love. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to be an arse. I was only joking.’

He leant forward and kissed me gently, then wrapped me in his arms. I put my head on his chest, listening to the slow thud of his heart, and the hubbub of the bar seemed to drift away.