‘Like in the park. And the cemetery.’
‘Precisely.’ She poured my tea and passed the glass across the table.
‘You said it passes from grandmother to granddaughter?’ I asked, grasping for solid facts, things I could learn and hold on to. ‘What about people who aren’t assigned female at birth?’
She gave me a sour look over the rim of her glass. ‘Emily, magic comes from nature. Do you think it is concerned with something as vulgar as flesh? Man invented this idea of male and female and like most things created by mankind, it means very little as far as nature is concerned.’
The cold, sweaty glass of tea felt good against my hot skin and I wrapped my hands around it, breathing in the herbal scent before taking a sip.
‘Your abilities will show themselves more quickly now. If you’d been raised here, they would have expressed themselves slowly, over time, but your being oceans away from your family line limited the both of us. Not anymore.’
I swirled the tea around in my glass, listening to the ice cubes clink against each other. Did I feel different? It was so hard to tell, I already couldn’t remember what normal felt like.
‘My abilities,’ I repeated. ‘You mean my magical powers?’
Catherine raised her hand, the internationally accepted sign for ‘hold up’.
‘The first and most important thing you need to learn: the concept of power is corrosive. It simply screams world domination, don’t you think? People who desire power seek tocontrol and that’s a mistake. We work with the world, not against. At its heart, the blessing is simply the ability to see things others miss.’
‘Like little girls who died decades ago and platinum blondes who disappear after saving your life.’
‘People fear what they can’t explain,’ she said. ‘Much like witches, ghosts are just another natural part of our world with an undeservedly nasty reputation. I have to tell you, I’m quite envious. The ability to communicate with those who have passed over is very rare.’
‘If I could regift it to you, I would,’ I replied. Then another thought occurred to me. ‘Unless there’s a way to summon a particular ghost?’
‘I think I know what you’re going to say next. You won’t be able to speak to your father. Spirits can’t cross moving water.’
‘What about my mom?’ I asked, knocked down but not defeated.
‘As I understand it, when one opens a door to the dead, there is no way of knowing who will walk through it,’ Catherine replied, the warning in her voice loud and clear. ‘I don’t think that’s a risk we’re ready to take right now, do you?’
The deep ache of grief returned, stronger than ever, the brief flicker of possibility snuffed out. I put down my glass and looked at the backs of my hands then turned them over to inspect the palms. No evidence of magic here. Just a girl who could speak to random ghosts but not her dead mom and dad.
‘Is it a secret?’ I asked, eyeing my grandmother with curiosity.
She lounged back in her armchair, waving one hand around as though she might pick the right answer out of mid-air.
‘It’snota secret. But I would think very, very carefully before you choose to share the truth with anyone.’
Like I was about to get a T-shirt printed that said ‘I’m a witch, ask me how’.
‘I can’t believe this is something that’s been in me since I was born,’ I said, flexing my fingers as though laser beams might shoot out from the tips at any moment. ‘What if I’d never come here? What would have happened then?’
‘Your abilities would have withered on the vine after your seventeenth birthday,’ Catherine said in a soft voice. ‘And taken mine along with them.’
My hands curled into two fists, holding tight to something I didn’t even know I might’ve lost. Whatever this was, it had only been mine for moments but already the thought of losing it was like losing a limb. No one should be allowed to make that kind of decision on behalf of someone else. No one should have the power to fundamentally change who you really are.
‘That’s why my dad took me away,’ I said, so very sure of the fact. ‘To stop this from happening.’
Catherine looked as though she was struggling to answer my question, biting on her bottom lip and twisting her aquamarine ring as she sought the correct response.
‘There is a difference between knowing something and understanding it. He thought he was making your life easier. Paul didn’t want you to grow up to be different.’
She leaned forward to caress the petals of a live orchid in the centre of the coffee table. It trembled at her touch and when she moved her hand away, a tiny pink bud appeared on the stem.
‘Think of yourself like this flower,’ she said. ‘The blessing is like any other living thing. In order to flourish, it must be nurtured and protected. The Bell family has always taken care of their line. Magic is something you are born with but still something that must be cultivated, otherwise …’
As she spoke, the bud began to pulse, blooming right in front of me and blossoming into a magnificent flower. It wasbeautiful. But it wasn’t done. Even after every petal had unfurled, the flower carried on growing until it was so big, the supporting stem snapped in two and sent the plant crashing onto the floor.
