“So, I may not have been totally honest with you when we were trading our scars. I actually have a lot more than I said, but this,” he said, pointing at his chest, “this is my favorite one.”
“I still don’t—” Matilda said.
“You can read, right? It’s your name,” Oliver interrupted. “You know how it works. I do something bad and then the recipient of the badness gets their name scarred on my body forever.”
Matilda shook her head, but closed her eyes and stopped, the motion making her queasy. She stared at Oliver, waiting for him to reveal a sick joke she didn’t understand, but he just looked back at her, his usually warm eyes flashing with something she’d never seen in them before.
Danger.
“I don’t under—What is this, Oliver?”
“What is this?” he said, folding his arms as he looked up at the moon. “I guess, technically, it’s revenge, but it’s kind of graduated into more than that.”
“Revenge?” said Matilda, the word like a foreign object in her throat.
Oliver smiled. “You’re so confused. Makes a change from the patronizing bullshit I’ve been smiling through for the last few weeks. Every witch has a broomstick, Oliver. Witches don’t believe in the devil, Oliver. God, I’m not going to miss pretending you were enlightening me with all that shit. I’ll fill you in; I know you think I’m some clueless amateur, but I’m not. I’ve been practicing magic for nearly two years.”
“What?” said Matilda, feeling as though her brain had been mis-wired. Her hands shook in the autumn air and Oliver’s cold, wicked truth. The wind swirled around her and whispered in her ear that she should back away, but she couldn’t move.
“Two glorious years of magic. Seriously, it’s all that’s kept me going since my life was torn away from me, thanks to you. Magic was my salvation, and then I realized I needed to come back and share it with you.”
“Come back?”
“That’s right. I used to live here.”
“What?” Matilda shook her head and blinked down at the ground, desperately trying to make sense of what Oliver was saying. “Please, I don’t understand what…”
“My sister,” said Oliver sharply. Matilda flinched, her heart sinking, as she knew that Oliver’s sister could be any number of her victims. “You still don’t have a clue, do you? Well, take your finger and run it across your head until you find Sophie. Remember her?”
Matilda’s stomach plummeted. “She’s your sister?”
“Half sister,” said Oliver, picking up a rag and wiping at his fingers.
Matilda stepped forward. “Oliver, I really don’t know what’s happening right now, but I didn’t know Sophie was your sister. I told you that I tried to—”
Oliver laughed and shook his head. “I don’t give a shit about her. I told you she’s a pain in my ass, and she is. This is about me.” Oliver dropped the rag and tapped his chest with his finger. Matilda recoiled at the anger that sparked in his eyes and set his jaw rigid, like he was a statue carved from stone. “Remind me again what you did to her.”
Matilda looked down at her hands, wringing her fingers together like she was trying to twirl back time.
“Night terrors.”
“Yeah, that was it: night terrors. For eternity.” Oliver picked his hoodie up and put it on. “Do you know what it’s like to live in a house with someone who starts screaming the second they fall asleep? All day and all night? Screams rattling through my house, through my walls, through my pillows until they became my night terrors, Matilda. It was like living in a torture chamber.”
Matilda shook her head, shame flushing her cheeks as she stared at the ground and listened to Oliver.
“My parents spent every moment orbiting around Sophie, while my life was disappearing with each one of her episodes. They took her to doctors, therapists, tried everything, until they ran out of the money they were spending on my education at the school she was too stupid to get into. They sold our house and their business and moved us closer to the city where she was admitted into a sleep clinic.”
“I was ripped out of my school, my future was snuffed out, and I was then homeschooled, which meant packing me off to the local library every day while they sat by her bed and held her hand. I was so desperate I read everything I could find on night terrors, but nothing seemed to match up with what was happening to her until I found a book on a subject I never even considered.”
“Witchcraft,” whispered Matilda as tears streamed down her cheeks.
Oliver nodded. “If science didn’t have the answers, then maybe magic did, and that’s where I learned all about hexes and curses. You know, your favorite things.”
Matilda’s head spun as she tried to connect the lies to the truth.
“So, you didn’t really meet a coven?”
“Oh no, I did. I was being Nice Oliver, so they fell over themselves to teach me, just like you did. But then one of them took me aside one day because she said she could sense something dark around me.” Oliver shrugged. “That’s the first time I siphoned magic from someone … learned not to take too much, otherwise you leave a body. Oops.”
“This can’t be real,” Matilda said slowly. She felt the toffee apple she’d been eating travel up her throat.
She watched as Oliver, her Oliver, Oliver who had held her when she cried in desperation at the lake the night before, revealed his true face to her. His true, manipulative, murderous face. Matilda focused on her breath whistling up her nose and out of her mouth as he broke her heart and her mind with each of his words.
“Anyway, after many months of living in a disgusting apartment and tests and therapies that didn’t work on Sophie, yours truly came to the rescue, and she could finally sleep again, so we moved back here. I was so pissed when my parents said they’d spent all the money for my school, but then I realized that the little witch who’d done this to me must go to the same school as Sophie, so I was happy to slum it at Gravewick Academy. Didn’t take me long to work out it was you; you’re not as subtle with magic as you think. Plus, nobody likes you because of the witch rumors so you were easy to find.” Oliver shrugged. “Then I saw the blood on your face after that outstanding bee performance, and I knew I’d definitely found my girl.”
Matilda wiped her cheeks and looked at her feet. “This isn’t real.”
“You keep saying that, Matilda, but I assure you it is. And I really must thank you. I was doing pretty well by myself, but one or two of the things you’ve taught me have come in handy. Made being around you tolerable. That, and having a front-row seat when you were convinced someone was trying to steal your magic.”
“What?”
“God, I didn’t think you were this slow,” said Oliver, putting a hand on his hip. “Your blackouts? That was me. You took everything from me, so I’ve been taking from you. I’ve been siphoning your magic while you were blacked out.”
Matilda felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach.
She shook her head. “That was you?”
“Yep, all me. The more scared you were, the more I could take from you. The maze was excellent.”
“How?”
Oliver tapped his nose. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”
“I can’t hear this. I can’t hear this,” said Matilda, shaking her head violently.
“Truth hurts, Sabrina.”
A chill rattled Matilda’s bones. “You hurt all those animals, didn’t you?” she swallowed, backing away from Oliver. “And Ashley. Oh my God. Ashley.”
“Ding ding ding!” Oliver clapped his hands together. “I was just trying to get your attention and rattle you up a bit. Worked pretty well, huh? Don’t tell anyone, though, will you?”
Oliver winked at her, and Matilda swallowed down the hot, bitter liquid at the back of her throat. She thought back to the moment Ashley’s body fell from the tree and shook her head, trying to shake the memory out of it.
“How … how did you…,” she started, not
sure she wanted to know the answer.
“I went to the party before I picked you up, persuaded her to go down the garden to the swing with me so we could talk about what happened,” said Oliver, shrugging like he was talking about bad weather. “She was loving all the attention because of your little bee thing, so she was practically begging for a new audience to share her hashtag trauma with. Everyone was wasted, even early on, so nobody noticed when she didn’t go back inside.”
Matilda pictured Oliver and Ashley sitting on the exact spot where Matilda had hoped he might kiss her. She shook the thought away, knowing now that it hadn’t been real, but it was rooted in her heart.
“How could you?”
“What I’ve done is no worse than anything you’ve ever done, and you know it.”
“I would never kill anyone!”
Oliver lifted his index finger and frowned. “You use your magic to get whatever you want, and you’ve got the scars to prove it.”
“But I … that was before…”
“Before what? Before you met me?” said Oliver. “Like I said, it’s no different.”
Matilda’s breath puffed in front of her face, then disappeared into nothing as she tried to make sense of what was happening.
“What do you want from me, Oliver?” she said, wiping her wet cheeks with her shaking hand.
Oliver smiled the crooked smile that Matilda had spent so many nights dreaming of, then fixed his eyes on her.
“Well, I’ve been taking your magic already, so I guess that leaves … your grimoire. I know you’re getting it at your little witch birthday party.”
“I can’t. We’d lose everything.”
“That’s kind of the idea,” said Oliver, folding his arms.
“No.” Matilda shook her head and wiped another tear from her cheek. “I can’t let you have it.”
“I was kind of hoping you’d say that.” Oliver stepped forward and put his hand on Matilda’s cheek. She recoiled. He was the only person who knew what secrets she kept hidden on her face, and before Oliver had cracked her world in half, his touch had felt intimate, but now it just felt like an assault. She jerked away and he smiled at her. “Let the fun continue, then.”
Matilda pulled back and whirled around, her footsteps pounding away from Oliver in time with her broken heart. The cold wind blew in her face, turning her tears into sharp little pellets, blurring her vision as she ran.
“See you in your dreams,” shouted Oliver, slamming the car hood down.
Matilda didn’t stop running until she got home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Five days until Halloween
Rain pelted the windows and beat down on the roof of Matilda’s garden room, but it couldn’t silence the thoughts that wailed inside her head. She rolled onto her side and pulled her phone out from under her pillow, her eyes stinging and puffy from a night of tears and no sleep.
She squinted at the photos as she swiped through them, staring into Oliver’s face for some clue or sign that she’d missed. Her stomach churned as the memories of being with him were frozen in front of her: eating at the Witching Well Festival, snuggling under the blanket on the jetty, all of them frozen in lies.
The images blurred behind her tears, and Matilda’s shoulders shuddered, the same way they had been periodically through the night. She turned and cried into her pillow, wailing his name and gripping the sheets in her hands. Finally, she quieted, her body tiring and allowing some respite until the next time the reality of what was happening began to crush her.
She rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling with her phone clasped against her chest. Was this real? How could any of this have happened? Maybe he’d planned to hurt her but then fell in love with her? Maybe he felt bad about what he’d done?
Matilda held her breath as she swiped through her photos of Oliver again, looking for some clue, something hidden in his eyes that might have given her a warning, but he just smiled back at her. She opened the school social site and checked his profile to see whether he’d changed his photo from the selfie they shared at the Witching Well Festival. Her heart leaped in her chest when she saw it was still there. She stared at the image, taken just before they played the apples-in-the-barrel game. Matilda was beaming, and Oliver was kissing her on the side of the head—a perfect couple for the camera.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” she screamed at herself, throwing the phone on the floor, her stomach twisting at the thought that she was wishing herself back to that night, back into the arms of that Oliver. But he was never that Oliver. He was a murderer. “He killed someone!”
Even saying the words out loud didn’t make it seem real; she felt like she was stuck in a nightmare. The Oliver she’d bumped into in the hall was a monster hiding beneath a smile and curly hair—he was a promise that didn’t exist. She put her hands over her face, pressing her fingers on her eyelids, trying to feel something else that wasn’t despair. She should have known that no one would ever truly feel that way about her.
Tiny footsteps trotted toward her, and she looked up.
“Don’t worry, Vic. I wasn’t screaming at you,” she whispered, managing a weak smile as she tickled his chin. He bleated, then bobbed his head and nibbled the edge of her phone case. “Hey, no. What have I told you about eating my stuff?”
It took all she had to haul herself off the bed and pull the phone away from the goat’s mouth. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m mad at you for making me get out of bed.”
Victor blinked at Matilda as she looked down at her phone, pain squeezing her eyebrows together as she looked at Oliver’s profile again. She scrolled through the comments on his page, people inviting him to parties and banter from his teammates. Should she have known she couldn’t trust him? How had she let herself fall so far, so deep for him? Tears fell again, one dropping off her nose onto her phone. She wiped it away, then frowned at one of the comments on the screen, then another, and another.
Make it a hat trick at the next game, Tilly.
Tilly for captain!
Won’t be a party without you, Tilly.
“Tilly? Tilly?” Matilda whispered, then looked at Victor. “Tillsbury. Oliver Tillsbury.”
She yanked on her boots, threw open the door, and ran out into the pouring rain. Victor bleated after her, telling her she should be wearing a raincoat, but she ignored him and stormed down the path, her hair plastered to her face and her leggings soaked in puddle water.
Thunder rumbled as Matilda pushed the kitchen door open, her eyes like a missile on her grandmother at her usual spot by the fire. Matilda stomped over to her, holding her phone up.
“You knew, didn’t you?” The old woman glanced at Matilda, then looked back at the pot she was stirring. “Wicked Tilly? You knew this was going to happen?! That’s what you saw in the surface of the pond, wasn’t it?!”
Matilda snatched the wooden spoon from her grandmother’s crooked fingers. “Look at me! Oliver Tillsbury. He’s Wicked Tilly, isn’t he? That’s who you’ve been talking about all this time?”
Nanna May sighed and looked up at Matilda with sad, moist eyes.
“Do you know what he’s done? To me? To other people? I … I thought I was Wicked Tilly, like, like I was going to lose it and … how could you let this happen?”
Nanna May held out her hand, palm up, and nodded her head as she peered at Matilda. Matilda frowned and batted it away.
“If you’d have … if you’d have just told me, then I wouldn’t have … none of this…”
Matilda shook her head, now certain that Nanna May had seen Oliver in the ripples in the pond weeks ago. She’d tried to warn her in the only way she could and tried to protect Matilda from Oliver’s darkness with her knotted handkerchief, superstition and magic all rolled into one, but Matilda had ignored her grandmother’s gift of sight.
Nanna May lifted her hand again, her eyebrows angled in concern, the lines on her ancient face telling so much without having to say
any words. Matilda glared at her, then slowly put her hand into hers, her shoulders sagging as she felt her grandmother’s knotted fingers squeeze around her own. She could feel her grandmother sharing something with her, a warmth throbbing through her paper-thin skin, and Matilda gave in to it.
Her face screwed up and Matilda cried, her sobs rattling her whole body as she squeezed her grandmother’s hand and sank to her knees. Nanna May shuffled around on her stool and held her other hand up as Matilda rested her cheek in her lap, the smell of lavender and basil from the old woman’s long dress calming and comforting her.
“Why, Nanna?” she whispered, her eyes heavy as her grandmother’s calloused fingers stroked her hair. “What am I going to do?”
Matilda let herself fall into the darkness, even though she knew the answer wasn’t hiding in the shadows of sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Four days until Halloween
The night had barely handed itself over to the morning light when Matilda stirred in bed, but there was no way she could get back to sleep, despite her puffy eyes and aching heart. The universe hadn’t righted itself, and Oliver hadn’t knocked on her door in tears over the huge mistakes he’d made. Matilda lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. Her entire body was mourning the loss of what wasn’t real, but there was a small voice whispering in Matilda’s ear: Get up, do something, because even though you might still have feelings for him, that witch is dangerous.
Matilda counted to ten, then heaved a massive sigh before she managed to peel herself from her bed. She put her coat on, pulled a woolly hat over her bed head, slung a scarf over her shoulders, then searched for what she needed in her dresser. She heard the clink of quartz crystals and picked up the velvet bag they were in, carrying it over to the fresh jug of water Nanna May had snuck in during the night. She poured the water into a bowl and dropped the crystals in, swirling them around and rubbing them between her fingers, then picked them out and dried them.
She put them into a smaller bowl, pulled on her boots, and left Victor sleeping on his cushion. The air was crisp, and Matilda breathed in the solitude the early morning brought. She looked up and headed east into the woods.
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