‘Or anyone,’ I added.
‘The blessing works hand in hand with nature and there is nothing more natural than life coming to an end,’ she replied with tenderness, confirming my assumption. ‘We can speed things up and slow them down, but we cannot and should not interfere with the natural order of things. That would be very dark indeed.’
‘If we’re good witches, does that mean there are bad ones?’
‘Good and bad are subjective concepts.’ She took my hand, ran it over the orchid’s brand new blossom once more. ‘Naturerequires a balance of light and dark and the blessing exists to uphold that balance.’
One by one, the petals floated down to the coffee table and rocked back and forth on the marble before they shrivelled up to nothing.
‘There is always a before and an after,’ Catherine said softly. ‘That is all we know for certain. Dawn and dusk, fire and ashes, life and death. We treat both sides with respect, neither one is good or bad. When it comes to the light and the dark, they both have the power to blind you.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘And where are we going this morning, little witch?’
I had one foot out the front door when I heard Ashley’s voice and froze. She’d been invisible ever since I’d asked about her abilities the day before, even choosing to eat alone in her room when dinner time rolled around. Not that I’d missed her, my evening was consumed with questions about this so-called blessing and by the time Catherine finally convinced me to go to bed, my head was spinning. But here she was, Sunday morning, lurking behind the staircase, waiting to pounce.
‘I’m going to meet Lydia.’
It was a lie. Could she tell?
‘Does Catherine know?’ Ashley asked, prowling around me.
‘I think I mentioned it.’
Even under the arctic blast of the air conditioning, I was starting to sweat.
‘She’s out, isn’t she?’ I added, knowing full well that she was. She told me she had business to attend to this morning and I’d watched her leave twenty minutes earlier, peeping out of my bedroom window as Barnett drove her off.
‘That doesn’t mean you should be running around town,’my aunt replied. ‘Not right now. Who knows what kind of trouble you’ll get yourself in, especially with that Lydia Powell.’
‘You don’t like Lydia?’
‘No, I don’t like Lydia. She’s loud and impertinent and I don’t know how her grandmother stands her.’
I had to duck my head to hide my smile. Ashley probably didn’t need to know the feeling was mutual.
‘Well, I can’t just not show up. I don’t have the number for her cell and she’s probably already on her way to meet me.’
It was mostly the truth, only it wasn’t Lydia I was supposed to meet.
‘I don’t know.’ Ashley slipped her hands into the pockets of her skirt. ‘Catherine might not like it.’
‘Catherine wouldn’t want me to be rude,’ I countered. ‘I won’t be gone all that long anyway. She’ll never know.’
I held up my hand in a Girl Guide salute, about the only thing I remembered from the two meetings I’d convinced my dad to let me attend years ago, right before we moved again.
‘Before you go, how do you feel?’ she asked and if I didn’t know better, I might have said she sounded worried about me.
‘Tired,’ I replied. ‘Very tired.’
It was the easiest honest answer I could give her. Sleep did not come easily, and even with the help of my favourite hot tea, I’d tossed and turned for hours. Catherine was right when she said people were afraid of the unknown. I was people. I was afraid. But underneath the layers of anxiety and trepidation, all the what ifs and the why me, something else had burrowed its way under my skin and into my bones. Excitement. Curiosity.Magic. The tingling I felt when Catherine and I repaired the orchid had never fully left me, instead it covered me like a warm blanket, protective and strangely familiar.
‘And what are you planning to do if there’s another incident?’
‘There won’t be,’ I replied, even though I didn’t feel as certain as I sounded.
Ashley raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re sure about that?’
