Wyn raised a hand in a goodbye and as I stumbled away, Icould feel his eyes burning into my back, the connection between us stronger than ever.
The front door of Bell House swung silently on its hinges as I slipped inside. Easing off my shoes, I tiptoed up the wooden staircase, somehow managing to avoid every creaking floorboard. It almost felt as though Bell House was complicit in my sneaking around. Not only that, it approved.
Gritty with sand and smelling of sunscreen, I floated across my room to hide my new phone and the charging cable that came with it in my nightstand, alongside Catherine’s silver pin. Keeping secrets wasn’t something that came naturally to me but neither was having an aunt or a grandmother or finding out I was a witch. All I wanted was one thing that was just mine. That thing was Wyn. I wasn’t ready to share him just yet.
On my desk, my parents smiled at me from the folding silver picture frame but I could only find a frown to return. So many things might have been easier if my dad had told the truth. His version of our world was the only one I’d ever known and I’d trusted him completely. But now here I was in his old bedroom, asking myself if I’d ever truly known him at all.
‘I wish you were here,’ I told the smiling photograph. ‘I wish you could make this stuff make sense.’
My whole life, I’d studied the pictures of my mother so closely they felt more like memories than photographs, as though I’d somehow gone back in time and taken them myself. But today, for the first time, I noticed something new. My parents were posing under a tree, Dad facing the camera, Mom resting her head on his shoulder, arms wrapped around his waist and both of them wearing their matching black and gold sweatshirts. But there was something else. Above my mom’s tilted head, an arrow shot through a freshly carved heart, containing the letters P + A.
Just like the heart I’d seen on the tree in Forsyth Park.
‘Aren’t you just precious.’
I turned quickly to see Ashley standing beside my bed.
‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ I said as I folded up the silver frame, laying it face down. She didn’t get to look at it.
‘Jinx,’ she replied. ‘You said you wouldn’t be gone long. Catherine is going to flip when she finds out you disappeared all day.’
‘I told you, I was with Lydia,’ I lied. The muscles in my legs twitched, ready to run. ‘We lost track of time.’
The door closed slowly behind her, protesting all the way with a long, complaining creak as she hopped up onto my bed and lay back against the legion of pillows I removed every night and replaced every morning.
‘So,’ Ashley said, staring through me like an X-ray machine. ‘How’s it feel to be a witch?’
‘OK,’ I answered. ‘How does it feel not being a witch?’
Even though it wasn’t my intention, that made her laugh.
‘Well, I’ll be. Do you know, you’re the first person ever to ask me that?’ She crossed her legs at the ankles and I noticed her muddy shoes shedding a trail of dirt across my comforter. ‘For a long time, I was real mad about it. Can you imagine growing up around women capable of incredible things and knowing your only destiny is to be a glorified babysitter?’
She picked out a soft round cushion from my pile and held it to her chest, cuddling it like a stuffed animal. ‘The generations before me, they were honoured. Even when I was too young to understand, my grandmother would try to convince me this was another kind of sacred gift, a blessing of our very own.’
‘But you don’t see it like that,’ I guessed.
‘All I saw was a blank space where my life should have been.’
I kept one eye on the door, sympathetic but still on edge.
‘Things got worse after Paul left,’ she said, picking at a feather that poked out of the cushion. ‘Catherine was terrified I might try to run away so she kept me on a short leash. No dating, no college, no parties, no friends.’
‘No friends?’ I repeated. ‘How could she stop you having friends?’
‘It’s pretty difficult to make friends if you never leave the house.’ Her eyes flickered towards the closed door. ‘No one ever cared about me. Except for Ellie. But that didn’t last long.’
‘She must’ve been a special friend if you still think about her,’ I remarked and from the look on her face, I was fairly sure Ellie was more than just a friend.
‘I saw her on the street,’ Ashley said, an almost smile warming up her features. ‘She was painting Bell House, painting a picture of it, I mean. She was such a talented artist. After that, she came by every day for a week and we just sat on the porch talking each other’s ears off. I could talk to her for hours and never run out of things to say.’
‘Why aren’t you friends with her now?’
She looked up and met my genuine curiosity with fiery resentment.
‘Because she had a whole life to live and I have to waste mine here, taking care of the extraordinary Bell witches.’
The weight of her resentment pinned me to my chair. I’d never felt so guilty about something I had no control over. Even though I couldn’t possibly have done anything to change things, her unhappiness was due to me.
