A Trick for a Treat

by A. A. Albright

  ‘I want to go too,’ said Wolfie. ‘Can I go too, Max?’

  Max rubbed his head. ‘Sure you can, Wolfie. You don’t need to ask my permission.’

  Wolfie ran inside, leaving Max and me alone on the deck.

  As soon as the dog was gone I moved closer to Max. ‘So then is Maeve your cousin too? Or half-cousin or whatever? And ... is she a witch? Wait, is Lassie a witch, too?’ I didn’t think so. I could sense witches, and I was sure Lassie had no magic.

  Max shook his head. ‘Maeve and Lassie had the same dad. His relationship with Lassie’s mam was a big secret, because ... well, you know.’

  I felt a sickly swell in my stomach. Lately, a lot of people had been joking about Max and I being a couple. It wouldn’t be a laughing matter if it were true. Legally, we wouldn’t be able to marry. It seemed like the dumbest law in the history of law. If Max really was my boyfriend, it would be just the sort of law that I would love to flout.

  ‘Anyway,’ Max went on, ‘their dad was a witch, but Lassie didn’t inherit any of his magic. It was Lassie’s mam and my dad who were brother and sister. They were crazy close.’ He let out a bitter laugh. ‘So close they even died together.’

  I swallowed. In all the time I’d lived with Max, I’d never broached the subject of his father. I figured that he’d tell me when he was ready. Apparently, he was ready. This was big. Super-sized, in fact.

  He pulled an old, cracked photo from his wallet. A tall man and woman were standing with their arms around each other, grinning at the camera. They both had the same brown hair as Lassie and Max. ‘They were out for a run in the Phoenix Park together one full moon,’ he said in a quavering voice, passing me the photo. ‘They got knocked down. And my mam died in childbirth, and Lassie’s dad died a few years after her mam so ... we were both orphans. We’ve been together for years. It’s really weird living without her, Wanda. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it. It makes it easier to know she has such lovely flatmates here, and that she gets on so well with her sister.’

  Wolfie chose the perfect moment to come skittering out onto the deck and roll a tennis ball in Max’s direction. ‘Throw it for me, Max. Callum is ignoring me. He’s trying to kiss Melissa.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Max pulled away from the rail of the deck. ‘I think that’s our cue to get Melissa home.’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said, passing the photo back to him. Together, we rushed inside and up to the music room. ‘We’ll throw the ball for you all the way home, Wolfie!’

  I was half way up the stairs when I met Melissa running down. Callum was a few steps behind her, calling out, ‘Please, babe! I’m sorry I tried to kiss you. I’m not used to being with girls who ...’

  ‘Respect themselves?’ Melissa called back. ‘And for your information, Callum, I wouldn’t have minded if all you’d done was kiss me. But kissing does not require such enthusiastic travelling of hands, now does it? Nor does it require you trying to unbutton my blouse. And there was me, thinking you could change.’ She looked back at him, flicking her hair and giving him a theatrical sniffle. ‘Do you know what the most upsetting thing of all is? It’s that I really wanted to kiss you too, Callum. At the end of the night on my doorstep, like a proper young lady. But now I realise you don’t see me like that, do you? You think I’m just one of your ... one of your ... groupies.’

  He gave a fervid shake of the head. ‘I don’t think you’re a groupie, honest I don’t. Come on, let me walk you home, at least.’

  Melissa snorted. ‘So you can have another go at groping me? As if.’ She grabbed my hand. ‘Come on, Wanda. This isn’t the place for respectable young women like us.’

  Max followed us out the door, doing his best to keep from laughing, while Callum shouted out, ‘But I have to go back to yours, anyway, doll. I mean, darling. I mean ... Melissa. My car is there.’

  ‘We’ll magic it back to you,’ Melissa shouted, slamming the door behind us.

  As we walked down the cliff road, I couldn’t help but ask the question that was foremost on my mind. ‘So, Melissa ... since when are either of us respectable young women?’

  7. Which Magic?

  ‘There’s some curry left over,’ said Christine when we arrived home. ‘Plenty for all of you.’

  Melissa set about dishing it up, while Max went up to arrange Wolfie’s bed in his room. It had to be up there, because Wolfie was afraid the cats would steal it. An understandable fear, seeing as they had been terrorising the poor dog ever since his arrival.

  I sat next to my mam and Christine at the table. They were still huddled around two scrying bowls. ‘No luck?’

  ‘That depends on your definition of luck,’ my mother replied. ‘Come and have a look.’

  She shifted over so I could sit next to Christine. ‘I’ve frozen a hundred scenes that I managed to envision from Caulfield’s today. This is the one that has us worried.’

  A vision was fading away in the water, but she waved her hand, whispered, ‘Reform,’ and the water turned into droplets, dancing up through the air and reforming into a snowflake-shaped ice-cube. Christine dropped the cube back into the water, and the vision began to play.

  I was looking at the counter at the front of Caulfield’s. Nan was rushing into a back room to answer the phone. As soon as she left, Emily appeared at the counter, looked from left to right, and placed an unopened, heart-shaped box of chocolates on top of the rest. A few seconds later, Emily scurried away and the werewolf entered the shop.

  I watched the werewolf’s whole tantrum, exactly as it had played out earlier on. After shouting at Nan, she lunged across and grabbed the very box of chocolates that Emily had placed on the pile.

  When Melissa put my curry on the table in front of me, I felt way too sick to eat. ‘It can’t be her,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t be who?’ Melissa tore up a poppadum and began using it to transport curry into her mouth.

  ‘It’s Emily,’ Christine told her daughter with a troubled frown. ‘We’ve recorded her placing the poisoned chocolate on the counter just before the werewolf came in.’

  ‘Saskia Monroe,’ Melissa said. ‘That’s her name. Or was her name. She was just about the most famous werewolf supermodel in the world. Wow. I can’t believe shy little Emily Caulfield could murder someone. I mean why would she do it? I seriously doubt it’s true about her and Jasper Jaunt.’

  ‘It’s not true.’ I picked half-heartedly at my food. ‘I mean, I don’t want it to be true. I don’t want any of this to be true. And I definitely don’t think he’s her type. Could this be magic?’

  ‘Which magic, though?’ asked Melissa.

  Max came back in, with Wolfie trailing behind him. ‘Witch magic? Isn’t everything you guys do witch magic?’

  He sat down and began to dig into his dinner, handing Wolfie poppadums and pieces of spicy potato.

  ‘No, I was asking which magic,’ Melissa clarified.

  ‘Oh.’ Max looked none the wiser and kept on eating.

  ‘It could be someone using a glamour,’ I suggested. ‘I’ve read about glamour spells that are so strong they can transform your appearance into anything – or anyone – you want. Because I’m pretty sure Emily was serving people when the werewolf – Saskia – arrived. No, I know she was. She chatted to us for a second, took an order from another table, and then the kerfuffle started. I say it’s someone pretending to be Emily.’

  My mother heaved herself out of her chair and went to fetch a bottle of wine. As she poured some for us all, she asked, ‘But why Emily Caulfield? Why frame that sweet girl?’

  ‘Are you sure she was down the back all that time?’ Christine asked.

  I looked at Max. ‘She was talking to us, right? A few seconds before Saskia arrived?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Max nodded. ‘Then she went and took a couple of orders, then the werewolf started shouting and going nuts at Nan, and Emily went to try and calm things down.’

  No one’s face grew any less troubled. ‘Even if you were absol
utely positive – and I don’t think you are – it still wouldn’t be proof of innocence,’ said Christine eventually. ‘It could be someone using a glamour to frame Emily. There are plenty of doppelganger spells, too, that they could use to do the same. But it could also be Emily doing the spell, creating a copy of herself so she can be in two places at once. There are just too many possibilities.’ She took a long gulp of wine. ‘So what do we all want to do about this? Show it to Emily and see what she has to say? Show it to Finn Plimpton? What?’

  My mother and I looked at one another. ‘We wait,’ she said decidedly. ‘We haven’t gotten the results back on the chocolate yet. When – if – we know for sure it was poisoned, then we question Emily again.’

  ‘Finn had his Peacemakers scan for magical signatures, too,’ said Christine. ‘If they did their job correctly, we might be able to tell what spells were used in there today, and who cast them.’

  ‘If they did it right,’ I mumbled. ‘Oh.’ I pulled the notebook from my pocket. ‘I got this from Jasper’s. The Peacemakers have the ransom note, but I figured it might still be worth a look.’

  My mother eagerly grabbed the notebook. ‘I can see the imprint of the ransom note,’ she said. ‘But there are more marks. Something else was written before it.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ I shifted my chair close to hers. ‘See here? Another page was ripped out, before the Peacemaker tore out the ransom note. Is there a spell to reveal what was there? A teacher I had in one of my human schools did this thing with candle wax once, so you could see the words that had been written.’

  My mother looked closer at the notebook. ‘Well, we have a lot of candles, but they won’t be getting used tonight. As simple revelation incantation should do it, I imagine.’ She looked like she was thinking for a moment, then she waved her hands over the pages and said, ‘Reveal the words once written here, let the letters reappear.’

  Max and I both gasped as the two torn pages reformed in front of our eyes. We had already seen the ransom note demanding that the Call of the Wild play the Halloween Ball. But when my mother flipped the page, we saw something far more interesting:

  You made a promise to me, Jasper. Promises must never be broken. As punishment, I’m going to destroy everyone and everything that you love. Oh, and just so you know? I’m going ahead with my other plan – you know, the one you thought was oh-so-dastardly. And I’m doing it with or without you.

  And because nothing is ever that easy, the note was left unsigned.

  8. Wanda the Genius

  I was stamping around my bedroom, thinking about it all, when I heard squeaking above my head. Dizzy was hanging from the underside of one of the beams. I grinned up at him. ‘You’re back from the attic!’

  He gave me a soft smile. ‘I thought I’d spend some time with you.’

  I patted my lap. ‘Well, come on then. Bring it in, Dizzy. I’ve missed your weird little bat cuddles.’

  As he flew down and snuggled into me, I could feel waves of warmth coming off him. ‘I missed you too,’ he said.

  I stroked behind his tiny bat ears. ‘I thought about going up to the attic to see you. But I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your new friends.’

  He looked up at me. ‘Do you know they don’t even like mango? Those bats up there are weird, Wanda. I mean, there was one girl I thought was okay, but then when we went out flying last night she ate a moth.’ He shivered. ‘It was not pretty. I mean the moth was pretty before it got eaten, as moths go. Little brown thing, just minding its own business flying around a lamppost. I eat fruit, Wanda. Not moths. What would she feed our children? Anyway, what’s up with you? I’ve heard the stupid dog barking, so I know he’s still hanging around.’

  I fluffed up my pillow and lay back, about to tell him all, when I heard a creaking noise on the floorboards outside. A second later, there was a tentative knock on my bedroom door.

  ‘Come in,’ I called out.

  Melissa peeked around the door. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You knocked at my door because you don’t want to come in? You know you’re getting even weirder, right?’

  She sighed, rushed in and turned away from me, prodding at the items in my room. As she poked my training wand around inside the small cauldron Ronnie had lent me, she said in a far too casual voice, ‘So I heard you did amazingly in your recent tests. That’s good.’

  I snorted. ‘Yeah. Great. Now I’ve only got my least favourite class to go.’

  She kept prodding at the cauldron. ‘Is this A Short Burst of Happiness?’

  ‘Yup. I made up a batch for fun.’

  ‘Wow. So ... it’s true, then. You’re a natural at this stuff.’

  I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see me with her back turned. ‘It’s a bit weird, to be honest. I was kind of wondering if Ronnie went easy on me. Or if maybe Mam went and did some spell to make me sail through these classes, because until now it’s been way too easy.’

  Melissa turned around, biting her bottom lip, her eyes filled with guilt.

  I sat up, staring at her, my stomach feeling queasy. ‘Please don’t tell me it was something like that.’

  Melissa shook her head, rushing to my bed and clasping my hands. ‘No, it’s not that. Good Gretel, Wanda, do you even know your mother? As far as Beatrice is concerned, if you don’t earn something then you don’t deserve it. No, it’s not that. It’s ... well, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.’ She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘I’m just afraid that, when I’m done, you’re going to hate me.’

  I pulled my hands from hers. ‘Just spit it out, Melissa. What is it? The Minister hasn’t asked you to join her coven, has she?’

  She was barefoot, curling and uncurling her silver-painted toes. ‘What? No. Why would she do that? She hates me. Look, Wanda, here’s the thing. Potions was always going to be easy for you. You were telling your mother what to add to antidotes when you were four for goodness sake. That’s what I need to tell you, Wanda. Before you left us and went off into the human world, you were ... well, there’s no other way to put it. You were a genius.’

  ‘What?’ For some reason, I was feeling incredibly nervous. Dizzy fluttered close to my face, and planted a little kiss on my cheek. How on earth had I ever coped with stress before I had a familiar? ‘No I wasn’t,’ I said. ‘I was about as far from being a genius as it gets. Melissa, I’ve always been dense when it comes to anything witchy.’

  She was having a breakdown. She had to be. Working with Justine Plimpton was bound to drive a person round the bend. Because what she was saying really was nuts. I had been the most useless witch in the world for years. Even without being unempowered, I had no talent when it came to magic. I’d tried my hand at wizardry and failed miserably. No one in my coven knew about that, but it didn’t change the fact. I was about as far from a genius as you could get.

  Her face looked about as stricken as I’d ever seen it, and tears welled up in her eyes. ‘I knew it was bad. I knew you weren’t remembering properly. I’ve messed the whole thing up, Wanda, and I don’t know what to do. I mean, I could do what I did in the first place, I suppose, but ... what if I mess up again? What if you never remember things properly?’ She gripped my hands again. ‘You were a genius, Wanda. You really were.’

  I jumped off the bed and started pacing, with Dizzy planted on my shoulder. Even my eyeballs were feeling uncomfortable. What was with that? How could you feel so stressed that even your eyeballs acted up? Dizzy fluttered his wings and gave me a few more kisses, but it wasn’t calming me down anymore.

  ‘Wanda ... you have to see how weird it is that you’re not questioning things, at least. What about the bracelets you were talking about outside the community hall? You don’t think it’s weird that you forgot about something you wore for six years?’

  I went to the window. I could see the ocean, out beyond the fields of barley. Yeah, it was weird. Everything was weird. But surely that was the life of a witch. ‘Not really
.’ I turned and looked her in the eye. ‘I forced myself to forget. Turns out I was really good at it. I was jealous and mad as hell that I couldn’t do magic. That I was unempowered. I pretended I didn’t care, but if it didn’t bother me then I wouldn’t have moved out as soon as I was seventeen, would I?’

  ‘And what about from six to seventeen?’ Melissa met my eyes challengingly ‘What do you remember about those years?’

  I returned my attention to the sea view. People payed a lot of money for a view like ours. Only a fool would let it go to waste.

  ‘School and stuff,’ I mumbled. ‘Wearing that stupid pendant. The usual. Look, Melissa, I don’t know what you’re getting at. But I can tell you that yeah, I do think it’s weird that I’m finding everything so easy now. Incredibly weird. I thought that I’d stored everything I pretended to ignore somewhere in some dusty corner of my mind, and that ... I dunno ... I’m just recalling it all now. But now I’m not so sure. It all seems way too convenient. I mean, I didn’t even realise how much I’d forgotten until I returned to the coven. And now whenever I am reminded of something, it’s like ... like I can’t understand how I didn’t know it all along.’ I sat beside her again. ‘I mixed up a batch of Bone Balm the other day. Just for kicks. Ronnie said it would take most witches years to learn that. But ... she said it with this funny look in her eyes – like she was challenging me to try. And so I did.’ I waved my hands and a jar of Bone Balm appeared. ‘Here it is. And it actually works. Ronnie brought it in to Night and Gale, and Florence used it on a patient who volunteered. The guy’s broken arm has already fully set. It took two days. And I made it. Me. How the hell is that possible, Melissa?’

  Melissa grabbed my hand again. ‘Because. It’s like I told you. You were a magical genius. Until ... until I made you forget.’

  9. Dark Arts

  Melissa sniffed a few times, curled and uncurled her toes a few more, and then explained.