‘About time,’ Ashley said, her words muffled by a mouthful of traffic-cone-coloured fabric. ‘What took you so long? The zipper is stuck and I can’t get the damn thing off. A little help before I dislocate my shoulder?’
The house and I both gave a sigh of relief at the same time. No ghosts. No witches. No wolves.
‘You scared me half to death,’ I said as my heart rateskittered back down to something nearer normal. ‘I thought you were in trouble.’
She stared at me with big green eyes.
‘How is this not trouble? Why do people even wear stuff like this? It’s not a dress, it’s a torture device.’
‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘You’re the one who bought it.’
Along with half of Broughton Street from the look of the endless shopping bags scattered around her room. I grabbed the hem of the dress and she sucked in a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut in the hope that it might somehow make her significantly smaller. It hadn’t worked when she drove her brand-new Mini Cooper through an ultra-narrow ‘shortcut’, as the scratches up the side of the car would attest, and it wasn’t going to work now. She grunted impatiently and I shifted my attention to a tiny concealed zipper, fabric snarled up between the teeth, and did my best not to pinch her skin as I wiggled it loose.
‘What’s going on back there?’ Ashley said. ‘Can’t you just magic it off of me, oh super-mega magic witch?’
With a stern look and a sharp tug, I felt the zipper give and yanked the dress-slash-straitjacket up and over her head, my aunt yelping with joy as her arms were released, and spinning in a semi-clad circle to celebrate her freedom.
‘For a minute there, I thought you were going to have to bury me in that thing.’ She snatched the dress out of my hands and tossed it in the general direction of her wastepaper basket. ‘I think I pulled something in my neck. I should sue the store.’
‘Did you try it on before you bought it?’ I asked.
She replied with a glare, an Ashley Bell special.
‘Sorry, what I meant to say was, you must absolutely call a lawyer,’ I said. ‘How dare a clothing store exchange goods and services for money? They must be stopped.’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,’ Ashley informed me as I crossedthe room, retrieved the dress from the trash and gave it a shake. ‘You’re not good at it.’
I answered her with a glare of my own.
‘Then thank goodness I’m learning from the best.’
Laying the straightened-out dress on the bed, I ignored her as she pulled on an oversized blue shirt, then glanced towards the door, her nose twitching as she sniffed.
‘What is that smell?’ she asked. ‘Did you spill perfume or something?’
‘Um, something like that.’
With one eye on the door, I willed the flowers and trees that still filled the parlour to return to the earth. As pretty as they were, a field of flowers in the parlour wasn’t exactly practical, especially when non-magical company came calling. A blanket of living plants underfoot was the sort of thing people tended to notice.
‘Are you hungry?’ I asked, quickly changing the subject. The last thing I needed was another lecture from Ashley about controlling my magic. ‘I thought maybe we could go out for dinner tonight. I don’t know why, but I’m totally craving barbecue.’
‘While I would bite your arm off for a half-rack of ribs, I can’t.’
My disappointed face only earned a huff of frustration.
‘Since Catherine is still “visiting friends overseas”, I have to show my face at the historical society meeting,’ she explained with air quotes and a look of distaste. ‘Unless you want to conjure my mother up from whatever godforsaken magical hole she’s hiding in before six p.m., in which case, ribs are on me.’
While I had spent the last four weeks getting to grips with my new reality as a witch, Ashley had spent it getting to grips with reality altogether. For eleven long years, Catherine kepther magic-less daughter tethered to Bell House, unable to leave the enchanted grounds without permission. At twenty-seven, she was free to stray, and shop, as she pleased for the first time in her life, but Catherine’s absence came with a price. Someone had to take over all the responsibilities that came with belonging to one of the most prominent families in Savannah and, super-mega witch or not, I was still only seventeen, which meant most of the dull day-to-day stuff fell on Ashley’s shoulders. I felt terrible. The blessing only visited every other generation; so Catherine and I were witches, but Ashley was not. Instead of enjoying her new-found freedom, her days were taken up with Catherine’s business interests, her volunteer groups, council meetings, and the historical society. Not quite the stuff dreams were made of, but there was no way around it.
‘Oh gosh, why didn’t I think of that before?’ I exclaimed in my very best Georgia peach accent. ‘Let me just snap my fingers and bring her on back – I sure would hate for you to be inconvenienced in any way, Miss Ashley.’
‘No need to be so touchy,’ she said with a smirk. ‘It was only a suggestion.’
I attempted a smile but my reply came out as a rough-edged whisper. ‘You know I’ve tried. I want to know where she is as much as you do.’
It was the truth. Catherine wasn’t just Ashley’s mother, my grandmother and a grand dame of Savannah society. No, first and foremost, she was a Bell witch. Just like me but at some point, she had decided magic was more important than the lives of people she was supposed to love. She killed my mother and my father, her own son, but when she tried to siphon off my abilities for herself, it was one transgression too many for our ancestors to forgive. Even when she offered up her own life to save mine, it wasn’t enough to appease them. One moment we were together in our family crypt, surrounded byevery Bell witch to have ever lived, the next she was gone. Whatever plane of existence Catherine found herself on now, she was lost to me and Ashley until our foremothers decided otherwise.
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Or maybe she really is …’ My aunt’s eyes drifted over to the window. ‘Maybe she really is gone.’
