I wrinkled my nose up. Xander definitely had a point about attracting customers, but he was very new to magic; I wasn’t sure how he’d handle the counselling. Plus, of course, it’s my thing. Mine. I wasn’t completely happy about
Spiritual counselling is the name I’ve given my witchcraft. It’s not explicit in my ads, or even talked about with my clients. But they come in with a problem, we chat about it, talk about some solutions and I come up with a spell. The way I see it is I’m almost writing them a prescription. I’ve got a loyal group of discreet clients and all my new customers come from word-of-mouth recommendations.
I looked at Xander.
“Have you had another session with Esme?” I asked him. He nodded.
“We’ve had a couple of sessions now. She’s a good teacher.”
“What have you done?”
Xander sat on the desk next to me and gave me a dazzling smile. He really was beautiful. I could see why he had the effect he did on women. He saw me looking and stretched his arms up above his head. It was obviously a well-practised move. His T-shirt slid up, revealing his smooth, taut stomach with a sprinkling of dark hairs. I prodded his six-pack with my biro.
“Stop it,” I said. “You know that doesn’t work on me. Tell me what you know.”
Giving an over-dramatic sigh, Xander ran through what he’d learned from Esme. I was impressed. She’d covered all the basics and even started him on a few simple incantations. She wasn’t normally so keen. I wondered if he’d tried the midriff trick on her.
“Okay,” I said, pushing him off the desk and starting to type again. “You can sit in on my sessions for the rest of the week – we’ll work together – then from Monday you can go it alone. As long as you run everything past me first.”
Xander blinded me with his smile.
“It’s going to be brilliant,” he said.
He was right, of course. I emailed the flyer about Xander’s half-price sessions to my regular clients and asked them to pass it on to their friends. By the end of the day our new appointment book was full for the next two weeks and beyond and any fears I’d had about the future of the spa were calmed. At least for a while.
At about five pm I decided to call it a day. It had been an exhausting week and I was desperate for a hot bath and a night in front of rubbish TV.
I switched off my computer, put on my coat and picked up my bag, then I paused at the door of my office and thought again. Spinning round on the heel of my boot, I marched back to my desk, unplugged my laptop and slipped it into my bag. Then I dug through my desk drawer for the keys to my office, the keys I never used, and took them out. As I left, I locked the door behind me for the first time ever.
I walked down the hall, towards reception and allowed myself a tiny smile. The spa was comfortably busy. Lots of the treatment room doors were closed and inside I could hear a quiet murmur of voices and the soft music we played. I walked past an open room and caught the eye of the therapist, Jane, who was in there preparing for her next client. She smiled at me as she smoothed a clean towel over the bed. And then the plinky-plonky calming music stopped. Jane raised an eyebrow at me, questioning what had happened. I shrugged.
“I’ll go and find out,” I said, walking on.
I pushed open the door to reception and suddenly deafening heavy metal music blared through the sound system.
Two women waiting on the sofas shrieked, and Nancy leapt to her feet in shock from behind the reception desk, knocking over her chair.
I dropped my bag and ran to where the spa’s iPod was plugged in.
Soothing Sounds 2, it read. Whatever this noise was, it certainly wasn’t soothing. I jabbed at the buttons. Nothing happened.
“Turn it off!” squealed Nancy. I glowered at her and yanked the iPod out of the dock altogether. Nothing happened. She dived past me and pulled the plug out. The music continued to blare.
Women – and one man – were flooding out of the treatment rooms in various states of undress, pressing their hands to their ears. The two women who had been waiting grabbed their coats and fled outside, followed by a flock of therapists and clients. I looked round in desperation, my head pounding and my ears ringing. At a loss about what to do next, I grabbed a pile of robes and handed them out to clients who weren’t wearing many clothes.
“I am so sorry,” I bellowed over the music. “I have no idea what’s going on. Please get dressed and I’ll refund the cost of any classes and treatments.”
Nancy had put on her coat. Now she went to leave and I caught her arm.
“Wait,” I said in her ear, fishing a handful of notes out of the till and shoving them at her. “Take everyone for a cup of tea while I sort this out.”
She took the money and almost ran out of the door followed by a crowd of clients. As she went out, Xander came in, his face a mask of horror.
“What’s going on?” he yelled.
“I don’t know,” I shouted back. “I don’t know what this is.”
Xander smiled briefly.
“I think,” he said, “it’s Iron Maiden.”
I thumped his arm.
“I meant, I don’t know why it’s happening.”
“Can’t you shut it up?” he asked. “Man, it’s loud.”
He put his hands over his ears.
I waved the unplugged iPod in his face.
“I tried,” I said. “It’s still going.”
Xander put his mouth to my ear. I could feel his breath hot against my face.
“Harry,” he said. “Do something.”
I suddenly realised what he meant and cursed my own stupidity.
Raising my arms into the air, I waggled my fingers and muttered some words.
A shower of sparks flew around the room, bouncing off the walls and ceiling and startling me. And the music switched off.
Xander hugged me.
“Well done,” he said. “Must have been an electrical fault.”
But I wasn’t pleased. I was relieved the noise had stopped, but something wasn’t right. That wasn’t an electrical fault. No way. An electrical fault wouldn’t have sparked back at me like that when I tackled it with magic. All witches send out sparks when we use magic, but each of us spark in our own way. My silver shimmers are very like my mum’s. Aunty Tess produces a cloudy grey mist and Esme shoots out pink sparkles that I love, but which I can see are pretty hard to disguise. When I’d switched off the music, it had sparked back at me, sending vibrant blue crystals shooting across the room. An electrical fault wouldn’t have done that. In fact, an electrical fault wouldn’t have responded to magic at all. Only another witch could produce sparks like that. I was convinced this was witchcraft. And I had absolutely no idea where it was coming from.
I didn’t want to think about how much the Iron Maiden incident, as I’d started calling it, had cost me in refunded classes and vouchers for free treatments to apologise for the inconvenience. But, the only silver lining to the whole nightmare was that for a few days everything calmed down. There had been no more loud music, no more power cuts. All my staff were fit and healthy. I tried not to hope that it was all over, but it certainly looked that way.
Lou had emailed to say things had kicked