‘But you left when you came to collect me?’
She winced, sucking the air in through her teeth. ‘Because she let me and it was still agony. Even though Catherine willed it, every mile I travelled away from Savannah was like another knife in my heart. You can take all the herbs you like but they can’t do a damn thing for that kind of pain.’
On the opposite side of the room, the brushstrokes on the wallpaper rearranged themselves and a new picture took shape. The storm dissipated and a narrow country road came into view, a clear blue sky, my dad’s car travelling at a sensible speed. I watched the little blue Ford making its familiar journey as the skies darkened and the rain came.
‘She sent the storm,’ I said, incredulous.
‘Almost killed her too,’ Ashley confirmed. ‘Catherine’s magic ain’t meant to travel so far but she really wanted you home, her special little witch.’
On the walls, the terrible tableau played on. The windshield wipers wouldn’t work, the headlights wouldn’t come on, and when he hit the brakes, his car sped up, racing to meet the tree as it fell.
‘At least he didn’t suffer,’ she breathed. ‘Not like we will.’
The scene faded away and everything was idyllic again, powder blue skies, unmoving birds, willowy trees, but I was forever changed. Nothing could go back to the way it was.
‘No point blaming yourself,’ Ashley said. ‘Paul knew she’d be coming sooner or later. If he didn’t want her to have you, he should have killed her and don’t look at me like that, you know it’s the truth.’
‘What kind of person kills their own son?’ I sank down to the ground, shivering in the non-existent cold. Magic buzzed over me, no longer a tingle or prickling sensation, but a constant vibration, coating my whole body like a second skin.
‘People will do all kinds of things when they’re desperate,’ Ashley said with enthusiasm. It sounded like she was enjoying her new freedom, every word bubbling out of her. ‘And she was desperate.’
‘To keep her magic,’ I replied. ‘She doesn’t care about me or the prophecy. She didn’t want to lose her magic.’
‘Two things can be true at the same time. Her magic may be the most important thing but don’t underestimate my mother’s pride. She really does believe in the prophecy and she wanted her witch back.’
‘I’m not hers, she doesn’t own me,’ I said, replaying my conversation with Wyn.
We’re not our families, we belong to ourselves. And each other.
‘Might want to tell her that,’ Ashley clucked. ‘For a real long time she believed he’d bring you back, didn’t think Paul would be able to cope on his own with a new baby. She waited as long as she could but as time wore on, her patience ran out. Her regular magic couldn’t locate you, she spent half her fortune trying to track you down the human way, private detectives, that kind of thing, but Paul must have spent just as much hiding you. Did you know your mom was rich?’
My head jerked up, not sure I’d heard her right.
‘Oh yeah, Angelica was a very wealthy woman, but money only works for so long. Once Catherine accepted there was only one way to find you, she went all in. You wouldn’t believe the darkness she channelled, and that was just to put a pin in a map. Then we went through weeks of how to bring you home. The original plan was to have you abducted and keepyou sedated until the Becoming but that wouldn’t work because you’d fail the Wilcuma. Had to be your choice to be here. And what better way to accomplish that than to take away all your other choices?’
‘So she conjured the storm, made it look like an accident. She used magic to take a life.’
Ashley flinched with pain as she turned her head to look at me, still shaking by the bay windows.
‘Catherine’s blood brought Paul into this world,’ she replied, all her enthusiasm gone now. ‘It took her blood to take him out. Almost all of it. I sat at her bedside round the clock for days. Eventually she came around. I didn’t even know if the spell had worked until she woke up.’
‘That’s a neat way to say she murdered her eldest child.’
Ashley didn’t correct me.
‘It took all those weeks between the storm and the day I came to get you for her to get right again,’ she said. ‘She’s still struggling. All those meetings and appointments? Most of the time she never even leaves the house. She’s hiding away in her craft room, doing everything she can to restore her magic.’
I felt sick. I felt hot and cold and shaky and furious. I felt everything and nothing. All this time, she was in the house? Every time I’d wished she was home to help me, she was right here, behind that little blue door? The image of Catherine bleeding out, Ashley sitting beside her while the ground swallowed up her offering, made me nauseous. Across the room, my aunt huffed out a violent sigh, beads of sweat forming on her forehead.
‘There were so many times when I thought she might not make it,’ Ashley said. ‘But she pulled through in the end, she always does. If she hadn’t, you and I would both be free now. Imagine that.’
‘She didn’t need to kill him,’ I said, spinning through myemotions like a ball on a roulette wheel, no idea where I would land. ‘If she’d sat him down and explained everything, explained how we would lose all connection to the magic if I wasn’t here on my birthday, he might have understood.’
Ashley scoffed with disappointment.
‘When I told you not to be a fool for love, I wasn’t only talking about the wolf,’ she grunted, the glassiness in her eyes starting to clear. ‘Why don’t you get it? I tried to tell you, Paul was surplus to requirements. She only needs you.’
‘And I need her,’ I admitted, my teeth grinding with my great reluctance. ‘I can’t go through the Becoming in this state. It’ll be 1820 all over again. I need her to bind me.’
