‘Thank you,’ I whispered, surprised when she patted the top of my hand.
‘And I’m glad you went into her craft room yesterday,’ she added on a deep exhale. ‘I didn’t want to say anything but, Iguess, I’d been a little worried about what might be lurking inside.’
‘Me too,’ I admitted. ‘But it wasn’t bad at all. Beautiful, actually. Waking up in the dirt aside. Catherine was the darkness, not the room.’
She leaned forwards and flicked her long brown braid over her shoulder. ‘Kind of thought maybe she’d be in there.’
‘Yeah,’ I said gently. ‘I kind of thought it too.’
‘We any closer to working out where she is?’
‘Nope.’
‘And the prophecy?’
I shook my head.
‘Just let me know as soon as you find out,’ she said. ‘I’ll be damned if I’m filing taxes if the end of the world is right around the corner. Ain’t no audits in hell.’ She paused and her ice cream dripped onto the back of her hand. ‘Unless that’s all there is.’
‘Emma Catherine said things would be clearer when the other witches arrive, like they’ll amplify my signal or something.’
‘More witches?’ She groaned before tossing the end of her cone into her mouth, talking while crunching. ‘Exhausting. You do know they’re not staying with us, right? I’m not running some magic-friendly B&B.’
She scowled and I smiled, leaning forward to rest my forearms on my thighs. I watched a pair of squirrels chase each other around a tree, one tagging the other then racing away in the opposite direction, both of them chattering with delight.
‘When I was little, I always wanted a sister,’ I said, turning my head to watch Ashley examining an ice cream stain on her shirt. ‘I hated being an only child. I used to dream of moments like this.’
‘Sitting on a bench, eating ice cream and discussing howyour matriarch went mad with power?’ she replied, smirking when I laughed. ‘You must’ve been a weird kid.’
‘Takes one to know one.’
This time her nudge was more of a shove and I had to grab hold of the bench to avoid slipping right off. When I righted myself, she put her arm around my shoulders and rested her head against mine. It was a small gesture, but it made my heart swell and all of a sudden I was fighting back tears. It was nice, having a family. It was something worth fighting for.
‘You know the Powells used to be witches?’
‘I did,’ I confirmed. ‘Catherine told me.’
‘You think Lydia …?’
‘No.’ I tugged on a loose thread on my denim shorts, pulling until it unravelled, adding a millimetre of new light blue fringe to the hem. ‘No way to know for sure, but she did some research and it’s not promising.’
‘Good,’ she said with a puckish grin. ‘Imagine that little monster with magic. Although if she was a witch, at least I could understand why you might consider ending the world.’
Squinting against the setting sun, I wrinkled my nose at my aunt. ‘Do you think Alex Powell knows the truth about our family?’ I asked.
Ashley stood up and dusted off her hands, taking her time before she replied.
‘Only one thing I’m sure of,’ she said, gazing off at the pretty orange-pink sky. ‘All the women in this town are very good at keeping secrets.’
Chapter Twenty
It had been the longest day but I still couldn’t sleep.
The house attempted to coddle me with the hypnotic sound of the wind rustling leaves in a tree, gentle birdsong from the friends painted on my bedroom walls, all the colours of my room muted, soft and soothing. Nothing worked. When the grandfather clock chimed eleven, I gave up, rolling over to open the drawer in my nightstand and pulling out a sachet of recently harvested lavender. I tucked it into my pillowcase and breathed in deeply, the herbaceous perfume trying its very best to knock me out, but there was only so much one plant could do.
Especially when there was someone opening our front gate and creeping across the lawn. Shooting out of bed, I almost tripped over my own feet as I knelt onto the window seat, throwing open my window to look outside.
‘There’s no way to surprise you, is there?’ Wyn asked with a chuckle as his head popped up in the magnolia tree.
