She swallowed. “That’s what we’re going to find out. You ready? Are you grounded?”
“Grounded?” said Oliver, watching Matilda as she turned her neck side to side as if she were warming up before a race.
“When you practice witchcraft, you’re using all that’s around you to work your will, and you need to become part of it, to ground yourself.”
“Okay,” said Oliver, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t believe me if you want, but young witches spend hours alone in the woods or in fields listening to the heartbeat of what’s around us, what we need to tap into when we’re using magic. A good witch should be able to ground herself in the blink of a billy goat.”
“Or himself,” said Oliver, mirroring Matilda’s seating position and stretching his arms over his head.
Matilda smiled. “A witch should be able to tap into the energy that turns the world, not just when they’re practicing but at any time, like sticking your finger in the air to check the direction of the wind. So, make yourself comfortable and listen to the breath of my ancestors inviting me to draw on their souls.”
“Sounds kind of … intimate.”
Matilda met Oliver’s eyes. “It is. There’s nothing more intimate than the connection between a witch and her bloodline. Nothing close.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that,” said Oliver, a smile twinkling in his eyes.
Matilda silently thanked the nighttime for concealing her flushed cheeks from Oliver, then pulled a photo from her jacket pocket and handed it to him.
He frowned as he opened it up, tilting it toward the glow of the fire so they could both see the photograph of Erin.
“Where did you get this?” asked Oliver.
“Like I said,” said Matilda, looking at the photo she’d torn down the middle, removing herself from the image but not the memory. It’d been taken a lifetime ago at a theme park after they’d been on the Big Dipper for the sixth time, which explained Erin’s even wilder than usual hair. “We used to be friends.”
At Matilda’s nod, Oliver stuck the corner of the paper into the fire, then held it up as they both watched it burn, blue flames licking at Erin’s smiling face. He held on to the paper, his fingers creeping away from the flames until, at the very last minute, he dropped it into the cauldron with a fizz.
The wind whooshed through the trees, sweeping down to tickle the leaves on the ground with its wispy fingers. Matilda took a long breath and looked at Oliver from under her heavy eyelids.
“Can you feel that?”
Oliver frowned and glanced side to side and then locked onto Matilda’s eyes, a smile on his face as bright as the embers bubbling in the cauldron’s contents.
“I feel it,” he said, nodding.
Matilda could feel the magic approaching on the air, in the plant’s stems pulsing down to their roots, and in the blood pumping through the hearts of the nighttime creatures they were sharing the floor of the woods with. Animals often visited her during her magic, so Matilda wasn’t surprised when she and Oliver were joined by a white rabbit. She smiled as it hopped over, its eyes as black as the smudges of dirt that striped over its fur, fixed on the magical proceedings.
Something in the air nipped at Matilda, whispering to her that she wasn’t in control of her spell, that there was something pushing her aside with crooked elbows. Matilda’s eyebrows pinched together as she tried to gain control of her surroundings, to ground herself in the same way she had told Oliver to just minutes before.
“Matilda?” said Oliver.
Matilda ignored him and watched the rabbit as it twitched its nose and peered at her. Movement caught her eye, and she squinted into the darkness as another dirty white rabbit emerged from a hole deep in the muddy ground. It moved across the ground, not hopping like the first one, but hobbling. It came to a clumsy stop next to its companion, and she gasped when she saw why it hadn’t hopped like a cheerful woodland creature.
Its front paw was at an angle, a tiny gnarled foot under its dull white body. Matilda’s muscles poised to rush to its aid and save its unlucky foot, but the breath froze in her lungs as her eyes met its own.
Its own, one eye.
A gash dripped from the side of the rabbit’s face. Matilda gasped as it was joined by a third rabbit, with one ear poking up like an antenna, the right side of its body matted with blood. It hopped to join its companions, the three of them twitching their noses and blinking as if they were just cute little pet-shop bunnies and not like something that had escaped from a slaughterhouse.
“What the hell?” Matilda said, her voice barely audible as she gaped at the rabbits and then at Oliver, who was frowning at her.
“Matilda?” said Oliver, pulling himself onto his knees and edging around the fire toward her.
“No!” she shouted as Oliver edged closer to the rabbits. They glanced at him, then looked at Matilda again, shuffling closer to her until the first one was sniffing at her knee.
“No, what?” Oliver looked over his shoulder, then back at Matilda, who’d frozen as the rabbit with one eye hopped into her lap. “You’ve gone gray.”
“Get it off me,” she whispered, holding her hands up in case her fingers brushed its dirty fur. “I can’t … get it off me, Oliver.”
Oliver’s eyebrows drew together, and he shook his head a fraction, his eyes running up and down Matilda’s body. “Get what off you? You’re really scaring me, Matilda.”
“That makes two of us,” she said, swallowing a scream as rabbit number two joined its friend in her lap. “You don’t see them, do you?”
Oliver was on his knees by her side, his eyes wide and searching her face.
“See what, Matilda?”
Matilda closed her eyes as tiny little paws climbed over her legs and rested on her stomach. She opened her eyes and looked down at the one-eared rabbit on its hind legs with its front paws on her chest, its nose twitching wildly as if it were talking to her in some silent rabbit language.
The shadows were coming again, but for the first time Matilda was happy to let them swoop their cape around her and pull her down into the darkness. She took one last look at the three faces staring up at her, then lifted her head and focused on Oliver before he was consumed from her vision.
“Death,” she whispered, slumping on her side.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Matilda opened her eyes and blinked up at the pitched roof of her garden room. She looked around and her shoulders relaxed; she was lying on her bed with a teal crocheted blanket draped over her, the one Nanna May had made for her, and there wasn’t a single wisp of white fur to be seen. Movement caught her eye, and she shifted her head, checking that one of the rabbits hadn’t come back for an encore.
“What are you doing?” Matilda said, her voice soft and slow from sleep.
Oliver looked up from her bookcase, a flash of relief in his eyes followed by a crooked smile that brightened his face. He glanced back at the shelves and picked up a worn book, its spine cracked and blue cover torn from years of Matilda carrying it in her schoolbag or reading it by flashlight under her duvet.
“Just looking at your little book collection,” said Oliver, holding the book up. “The Worst Witch?”
“It’s a classic for all young witches.” Matilda stretched out and smiled, too comfortable on her bed to pull herself upright.
“As are Winnie the Witch and Meg and Mog, obviously,” he said over his shoulder as he read the spines hiding behind glass jars and stubby candles. “Is there a witch reading list that I don’t know about?”
Matilda felt like she was getting a warm bear hug just from hearing the titles of her beloved books. Oliver left the bookcase and moved to the side of her bed, crouching down so his face was level with hers.
“My mom got them for me. She didn’t want me to think that the whole world thought all witches were green and evil.”
“That’s pretty cool of her.”
“I guess,” said Matilda. She remember
ed curling up with her mom and reading each of the books at bedtime, loving the fantasy plus the pebbles of truth making up the witches’ worlds. Something tugged inside Matilda’s chest as she thought how different her and Lottie’s dynamic was now. “Plus, she always said there were little seeds of truth about our kind in all those books.”
Oliver perched on the side of her bed and studied Matilda’s face. “You’re not the color of my sports socks anymore, so that has to be a good sign. How do you feel?”
Matilda nodded, then pulled herself upright. She grabbed a cushion and tucked it between her back and the wall, then smoothed her hair out of her eyes. She was still pretty shaken, but not so much that she wasn’t aware of how close Oliver was to her, in her room.
On my bed, she thought, praying to the goddess of wild things that she didn’t have a trail of drool on her chin.
“I feel okay,” she said, pulling her knees up to her chest and trying to ignore the growing blank spot in her magic.
“Good,” said Oliver, nodding. “So maybe you can tell me what the hell happened?”
“It was another blackout,” said Matilda.
“Bullshit,” said Oliver. “It was more than that. You don’t need to cover up this stuff from me. Tell me what it was.”
Matilda sighed. “I don’t know for sure. I could see these three white rabbits, but they were, like, rotting, disfigured.”
“Rotting rabbits?” Oliver said, his mouth turned downward. “Gross. What do you think it was?”
Matilda looked out of the windows and shook her head.
“I don’t know. I need to do some research, but I think it was a warning.”
Oliver’s eyebrows drew together, and he inched closer to Matilda, pulling his feet up in case whatever the warning was about might grab his ankles from under the bed.
“A warning?” he asked, swallowing.
Matilda nodded. “About everything that’s been happening, with the animals and Erin.” Or my mom, thought Matilda. “Just before I passed out, when we were doing the spell, I could feel something in the air, something, like, nagging me, scratching at me. It was darkness, but not like nighttime. A hollow shadow.”
“What was it?”
“Something not good,” said Matilda. Oliver blinked at her, his eyes brimming with concern. “Are you okay?”
Oliver shook his head. “Not really. This is a side to witchcraft I haven’t experienced. I’ve been picking and choosing the cool bits of practicing. I’ve never had a rabbit corpse warn me about something.”
“Oliver, this isn’t my life, either,” said Matilda, shuffling forward. “I’ve never seen anything like this, not so much all happening at once anyway.”
“What do we do?”
“We still need to talk to Erin.” Matilda looked around the room. “What did you do with my spell stuff?”
Oliver stood and walked over to the door where the cauldron and Matilda’s bag were sitting.
“I managed to pack everything up.”
Matilda stood and joined him. She crouched down and peered into the glossy liquid resting in the bottom of the cauldron.
“I didn’t spill any,” said Oliver. “I got everything, and everybody, back safely.”
“How did you manage to get me back?”
The muscles in Oliver’s jaw relaxed, and he bit his lip as he crouched down opposite Matilda.
“Broomstick.”
“You think you’re joking, but there’s some truth in all that,” said Matilda, tucking her hair behind her ear and raising her eyebrows.
“What? Flying broomsticks? Come on.”
Matilda nodded. “In a way. Witches used to rub themselves with ointments made with plants that had hallucinogenic qualities, and then they felt like they were flying.”
“On a broomstick, though?”
“Every good witch has a broomstick, Oliver. We have one in the house. They’re a symbol of cleansing, infused with the essence of the home, life, family. Anyway, when they used the ointments, they’d feel and see things, like an out-of-body experience. They felt like they were floating through the air, above the earth, flying past the moon.”
“You really know a lot about all this, don’t you?”
“I have to. It’s my heritage. I’m just glad all the books my grandmother made me read and all the stories she’s told me have actually stuck.”
Oliver nodded gently as he smiled at her. “Well, I’m impressed.”
He bit his lip again, gently, then locked his eyes on Matilda’s as the space between them got smaller and smaller. Matilda held her breath, watching Oliver’s mouth as it got closer to hers. She almost forgot they were in her garden room until a jangle of breaking glass startled them both. Oliver stood up.
“What was that?” he whispered.
Matilda’s eyes darted around her bedroom, seeking out the culprit that had interrupted her potential bliss. If Victor is in here, he’s in big trouble, she thought, then spotted glass shards twinkling on the floorboards.
The black bramble bush that Nanna May had been trying to hack back outside Matilda’s garden room had grown up the sides of the building and was now creeping across the windows. A gnarled tip was tapping against the weathered wood where it had just pushed one of the diamond-shaped panes of glass out of the frame. Matilda jumped up and stormed over to the window.
“This stupid weed, whatever it is, has been growing outside my room,” she said, furious with the bramble for disturbing her and Oliver. “And now it’s started growing through my window! Look. I mean, how?”
Oliver joined her and frowned at the glass on the floor, then the space where the bramble was poking through.
“Maybe the wind blew it?” he said, gesturing for Matilda to follow him outside.
They walked around to the broken window outside and Matilda put her hands on her hips as she peered at the overgrown bush.
“Nanna May keeps cutting it back, but it doesn’t seem to stop growing.” Matilda sighed. “Oh well, just another thing to add to the list of weird.”
Oliver nodded. “The ever-expanding list of weird,” said Oliver. He looked at the window, then at Matilda, his eyes moving across her face. “Hey, listen, what’re you doing tomorrow?”
Matilda shrugged. “It’s Tuesday, so school.”
“It’s not just Tuesday, though, is it?” Matilda frowned at Oliver, then rolled her eyes. “Thought I’d forget it’s your birthday tomorrow?”
“I never do anything on my birthday,” she said, folding her arms.
“Until this year,” said Oliver, smiling. “Let’s skip again. I think we deserve it.”
“What’re we going to do?”
“Leave that to me. I think I have a plan, birthday girl.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nine days until Halloween
“Excited?”
Oliver glanced at Matilda as he drove, his window open a crack, letting the crisp autumn breeze ruffle his hair. Happy to be hanging out with another witch, especially because that witch was Oliver, Matilda mirrored his smile and looked back at him.
“I’m not sure excited is the right word. Maybe if I knew where we were going?”
“And ruin the surprise? No way, birthday girl. We’re nearly there anyway,” said Oliver, looking between the map on his phone and the road ahead.
They drove down twisty-turny lanes on the outskirts of Gravewick, where lone cottages on crocus-lined tracks hid behind ancient wooden gates. It felt good to leave school and her mom and the blackouts behind and let the natural beauty of her surroundings distract her.
“So what did you get for your birthday?”
“Nothing,” said Matilda.
Oliver whipped around to look at her so quickly Matilda felt the car move.
“Nothing?” he asked. Matilda shook her head. “Why not?”
“Some witches don’t celebrate their birthday until the first new moon after.”
“Is that what you’ll do?”
Matilda let out a long sigh and nodded. “It’s what my mom and my grandmother want to do. They like tradition. I’ll receive gifts, there’s a big deal about passing the family grimoire down to me, and then there’ll be a feast.”
“So, what sort of stuff’s in this grimoire, then? Why’s it so special?”
“I don’t actually know, as I’ve never seen inside it, not until they give it to me on my ‘birthday,’” said Matilda, doing quote marks with her fingers around the word.
“Why not?”
“A witch isn’t considered responsible enough to access the family grimoire until she turns seventeen. Lineage magic is powerful, and its source is the grimoire. The idea is that if you learn everything you need about the craft before you turn seventeen, then you can be trusted with it.”
Oliver glanced at Matilda, narrowing his eyes as he looked between her and the road ahead. “You’re not telling me something.”
Matilda flushed. “What do you mean?”
“You’re holding back on me, I can tell. Come on, birthday girl, spill.”
“Well,” she said, looking out of the window, “I have seen a part of it.”
“Ha! I knew it. What did you see? Love spell?” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
“You can find a basic love spell in most books on witchcraft.”
“Good to know, thank you.” Oliver’s eyes crinkled as he glanced at Matilda. “So, what was it, then?”
Matilda took a moment to look at Oliver’s profile as he drove them toward whatever birthday surprise he had in store for her. She felt so light when she was around him, not having to drop a potion into his drink or snatch a piece of stray hair from his shoulder. Talking to him was so different from whispering incantations behind her hand from a dark corner, and the more time she spent with him the more she realized how isolated she’d felt before she met Oliver, creating friendships instead of building them.
“The spell to hide the scars on my face,” said Matilda. “My dad found it in our grimoire and left it for me before he left.”
“That was cool of him,” said Oliver.
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