‘It’s probably easier if I show you.’
Rolling up the sleeves of her silk shirt, she reached down to retrieve the discarded branch of the woody shrub she’d chopped in half. Catherine snapped her fingers and the branch burst into flames.
‘My abilities express themselves through the elements,’ she said as I reared back in my chair. The fire burned fast and fierce, white at the centre, black around the edges until there was nothing left but a pile of ash. Suddenly my ability to name random plants didn’t seem quite so cool.
‘Water, air, earth, and fire. That’s my specialty.’
‘But I can see ghosts as well as understand plants,’ I said, watching the ashes of the shrub slip through the decorative ironwork of the table and disappear back into the earth. ‘And then there are the other things, the visions, the Spanish moss. How do those things connect to me being an apothecary?’
‘The blessing adapts to our needs,’ Catherine replied, her demeanour still calm but perhaps not quite as certain as before. ‘My grandmother came into her magic during World War Two. She was a conduit, her abilities allowed her to move through people’s dreams and communicate with those who had passed which was a great help to the war effort and a comfort to those searching for closure. Her grandmother was a healer who saved hundreds of lives during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.’
‘Did either of them have more than one ability?’ I asked, lightly tracing a finger along my itchy, sunburned skin.
‘Not that I know of,’ she answered. ‘But perhaps you are in need of greater strength for what lies ahead.’
I froze, my finger pressed against the tip of my nose.
‘Well, that doesn’t sound terrifying.’
Catherine pulled my hand away from my face and stroked another dot of aloe into my skin.
‘Our family’s story may begin with Emma Catherine Bell but the history of the blessing goes back much further. The origins of it all, why each of us has different abilities, it’s lost to the ages. All we know is that our blessing is protective, it expresses itself differently in every witch, serving whatever need is most dire at that time. Also, we know it is bound by the natural order of things, but you’d be surprised at what nature and the human body can do when necessary, at what a person is capable of when they have no choice.’
‘I don’t want to find out what I can do when I have no choice,’ I replied, extremely alarmed. ‘Having a choice is my favourite thing in the entire world.’
Dusting a sprinkle of ash from her lap, Catherine stood and picked up the tray, carrying it over to a bright little sunspot by the fishpond.
‘Don’t worry so much,’ she said with sweetness. ‘Everything will be clearer after your Becoming.’
‘Mywhat?’
I stared at her from my seat, barely even noticing as all the flowers and leaves I’d picked from the herbs regrew right in front of me.
‘There’s no need for that reaction, it’s just a name. Our ancestors had a tendency towards the dramatic.’ She picked up the watering can to drench the herbs as they bloomed. ‘The Becoming is simply a brief ceremony, a sort of initiationritual, performed on the full moon closest to a witch’s seventeenth birthday as she comes into the fullest expression of her magic.’
‘Sounds completely chill,’ I replied. ‘Totally normal and not weird at all.’
‘How lucky I am to be raising the first Bell witch in existence to call the Becoming “chill”,’ Catherine said drily. ‘My Becoming was one of the best days of my life and yours will be even more beautiful. Did you know you were born under a full moon?’
I shook my head, I did not.
‘And it just so happens, the full moon falls on June twenty-first again this year. Your Becoming ceremony will take place on your birthday.’
‘Is that good?’ I asked, gulping down a nervous breath.
‘It’s very good.’
Catherine had left one plant on the table. The aconite. Its blue flowers trembled in the sun then exploded, a storm of indigo carpeting the whole garden. One of the petals landed on my arm, leaving a bell-shaped mark.
‘Such a fascinating plant,’ Catherine said, watching the red welt fade away. ‘What do you know about it?’
I blew out a steady breath and carefully picked a single leaf from the plant.
‘It first grew from the saliva of Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades,’ I recited. ‘It’s one of the most toxic plants on the whole planet, if ingested incorrectly, it can make the heart stop.’
‘And what is its most common name? What do we witches call it and why?’
‘Wolfsbane,’ I said, quiet, disbelieving.
