Leo picked her up as arranged. The smile slid off his face as she got into the passenger seat. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I looked in the box again this morning.’ Merry reached for it and realised her hands were shaking.
Leo leant over and pulled it out of her bag. ‘Key?’
‘Front pocket.’
He opened the box, took out the parchment and read it. ‘This is it then.’ He put his hands on the steering wheel, and Merry saw that his knuckles were white. ‘It’s started.’
They were in the kitchen. Mum wasn’t back from work yet. Merry was curled up on the old sofa, a crocheted patchwork blanket round her shoulders, holding the small glass of brandy Leo had poured for her. Leo was sitting at the big oak table, the parchment – manuscript – whatever it was, spread out in front of him.
‘So, this word—’ he tapped the manuscript.
Eala.
That was all it said. Four handwritten, angular letters, in dark brown ink.
Leo was looking at his laptop screen now.
‘The top listings for “Eala” are EA Los Angeles, whatever that is, East African Legislative Assembly, and the European Air Law Association. I somehow doubt any of those are relevant, but—’
‘It must be something in Anglo-Saxon.’ Merry took another sip of brandy, grimacing as the fumes hit the back of her throat.
‘Er, yeah. I was just about to say that.’ Leo tapped on the keyboard a bit more. ‘OK, here’s an Old English translator. I’ll just—’
Merry had a sudden vision: she was standing on a high peak, surrounded by the blackness of space, and if she took one more step forwards she would fall away from everything she had ever known –
‘Leo – wait!’
Leo paused, his fingers poised above the keys.
‘What? Why?’
‘Because – I – I need more time.’
Leo sat back in his chair, his arms crossed.
‘Merry … we don’t know how much time you – we – have. Nobody’s died yet, but,’ he sighed, ‘how long until things get even more dangerous? For you, I mean. Forget everyone else.’
‘I—’ Merry paused, trying to decide how to explain to Leo; what to tell him. ‘I’m just not ready for this. Like I said, I haven’t cast any spells for nearly a year, apart from accidently, and to just launch into something this big …’ She nodded at the manuscript. ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen, once we figure out how to work that thing. I need more training.’
‘No,’ Leo was shaking his head, ‘what you need is to start dealing with this. Now the manuscript’s … working, you don’t have any choice. Wizard Man and Psycho Boy aren’t going to conveniently take a break while you have remedial witchcraft lessons. You said you were at least going to try—’
‘I know what I said!’ Merry stood up and went to pour the rest of the brandy down the sink. Last night she’d really thought this was all going to turn out to be a mistake, that somehow she was going to be let off the hook. But now …
‘And I am going to try.’ She grabbed the manuscript, folded it up and shoved it back into the box. ‘Just not today.’
‘Fine. Well, you let me know when you’re feeling … up for it.’ Leo shook his head again and shut the lid of the laptop. ‘You’d better phone Gran, by the way. Let her know what’s happened.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Merry picked up the box and marched out of the kitchen.
Right now, she needed to be alone.
Merry switched the light on and looked around her room, half-expecting to see the dark-haired girl standing in the corner, wagging her finger and tutting. But the room was empty. She dropped the trinket box on her desk and threw herself on to the bed. What was Leo’s issue, anyway? Sure, she knew he was just trying to help her, would do anything he could to help her; but at the end of the day this was her problem. She was the one who was going to have to try to kill this Gwydion guy. She was the one who was going to have to try to break the curse …
Just thinking about it made her hands shake.
Of course, being frightened of what she was meant to do would have been easier to deal with if she wasn’t also frightened – terrified – of the magic that was meant to help her do it.
Ha. Not going to tell Leo about that though, are you? Or why you’re frightened of it. He doesn’t know what you did …
Oh shut up. It’s not like I actually killed anyone. Alex is still alive.
Maybe it had been a mistake: reacting the way she had done, swearing off witchcraft completely. What if she had a go at a spell now, when she wasn’t under pressure, when there was no one else around to get hurt if things got out of hand? Her power might respond normally again. Merry took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and brought to mind the words of a charm for finding lost things. It was one of the first formal spells she’d learnt – on the quiet, by sneaking a book out of Gran’s study – and it was easy. She’d used to find it easy, at any rate. You mentally pictured the lost thing, said the words and – abracadabra – you’d end up with a new mental picture of where the lost thing was. She tried it now, carefully, calmly, on an earring she’d dropped somewhere in the house about a month ago. Picturing the earring was simple enough: it was long and dangly, five little crystal-set snowflakes with two silver chain-links between each snowflake. And she remembered all the words of the charm: O Sun by day and Moon by night, shine on the thing I seek, a light; guide my steps and light my mind until that missing thing I find …
But her mind – apart from the image of the earring – remained stubbornly blank.
Oh, great. If I’ve managed to break my powers somehow, are Gran and the coven still going to make me go out there, face Gwydion and his King of Hearts –
Something started rattling. Was the earring stuck at the back of a drawer somewhere? Merry had never had a physical indication of the whereabouts of a lost object before, but her magic had been so unpredictable lately … She jumped off the bed to investigate.
It was just the trinket box, twitching on the desk just like it had been doing the night she and Leo found it.
Merry swore at the box, slammed it up and down on the desktop a few times for good measure, wrapped it up in an old blanket and threw it in the bottom of her wardrobe.
No way was she phoning Gran now: she needed to get her head round what was happening, not be pushed into stuff by a box.
And I’m not going to look up what ‘Eala’ means, either.
So there.
But clearly, she was going to have to do something about that damn manuscript eventually.
The solution came to her overnight. She would ask one of the other witches in the coven – one of the official, properly-trained witches – to have a look at the manuscript for her. If another witch could get the manuscript to work, maybe Gran would change her mind, agree to the coven at least trying to deal with Gwydion without her.
But