Waywood

by Sarah Goodwin

  I learn how to change pebbles into money so that I can buy small things from shops in town (nothing too big, nothing that would cause a stir when the money for it changed back into stones). I even make food out of leaves and dirt, but that’s what it tastes of; leaves and dirt. I learn that to get food, real food, you have to use conjuring powder.

  In our second week Nara even shows me how to see through amateurish glamours. Any glamour only lasts seven hours, but you don’t have to wait that long to see what’s real and what isn’t. A thin glamour looks like a cheap market knock-off. Too shiny, too colourful, tacky and fake.

  At last Nara says I’m ready for another lesson.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ilex takes me out after my second week of being an initiate, when I’ve just about got used to glamouring things. Changing myself is another thing entirely because I can’t see myself (using a mirror’s no help because the image is backwards) and it makes changing my face or hair really hard.

  “You’re going to have to start with the basics of self-glamour, and it’s a lot easier to look like nothing, than like something,” Ilex says as he leads me down the long windswept drive to the university and on towards the nearest student building, a crescent of red brick.

  I’m pleased with my clothes for once, mainly because they’re my old clothes, only done up with glamour. My old black jeans are shimmery like fish scales and the faded My Chemical Romance t-shirt (the one I could never wear or be mocked by Chloe) is now brand-new, signed by the whole band. The best thing is, I’ve changed my trainers into black patent heels, four inches high, but I’m still as comfortable and able to walk as if I was in my old shoes. Magic, you can’t beat it.

  Ilex tries the door at the back of the building, but it’s locked.

  “Usually some drunk idiot leaves it open,” he says, “but, to get through locked doors you can use this charm.” He takes a white stick out of his pocket and shows it to me. There are runes carved on it, and the end has been sharpened to a point. It takes a moment for me to realise that it’s not a stick at all. It’s a bone.

  “What is it?”

  “Skeleton key,” Ilex says, with a dry grin.

  I’d meant ‘what kind of bone is it?’ but Ilex is already pushing it into the lock. Probably from the same dog we ground up for the conjuring powder anyway. Gross.

  The door springs open, and he steps inside into a dimly lit hallway.

  “What if there isn’t a keyhole?”

  Ilex looks just a little impressed that I thought to ask the question. “Then you’d use the spirit of the creature that gave you the bone. You’d summon it, and get it to open the bolt on the other side.”

  I thought about this as he led me through the warren of corridors that smelled of blocked toilets, beer, and hairspray. Would a magic dog spirit be able to draw a bolt when a real dog couldn’t? Maybe it was a guide-dog ghost.

  The halls look pretty grim. I’m pleased not to be going to university (or even finishing school) if it means I don’t have to live in a building that smells like old piss, and has posters about sexual diseases and rape all over the walls. Over our heads glow yellowy lights and behind the green doors I can hear music playing, two girls arguing, a lot of canned laughter, and two people having sex. It stinks, and sounds like a fucking zoo.

  Two people come through a door at the end of the hall and walk towards us. A boy and a girl, though they’re both wearing the same amount of make-up, which the boy can’t pull off (orange eyeshadow? Yuck). His nose is a mess of acne, and he’s got the greasiest hair I’ve ever seen, which, considering I’m living in a squat, is saying something.

  I falter, but Ilex keeps walking, nodding in a vacant kind of way at the two students and passing them, bumping shoulders with the boy.

  “Watch it,” the greasy student says.

  “Sorry,” Ilex mutters.

  I pass the students and go through the door with Ilex. We end up in the stairwell, listening to people laughing over our heads. Ilex shows me the key he’d lifted from the boy’s pocket.

  “Shall we see what’s behind door number one-eight-zero?” he grins, and leads me off to the second floor, where we find the door to 180 and unlock it.

  Inside is the messiest room I’ve ever seen. Old plates and glasses are stacked all over the desk, and there are tangled jeans and pants all over the floor, mixed with magazines, bits of printed paper and more mugs with scabby, dried out coffee at the bottoms.

  “This is disgusting.”

  “This, is the face of modern education,” Ilex says smartly. “Go on, have a shower, then you can help me search.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  Ilex shrugs. “Anything we can use.”

  I open the door into the little en suite shower. It’s in almost as bad a state as the tiny study bedroom. There’s toothpaste all over the mirror, and the sink is caked in soap, shaving cream and bristles. The shower is wet and steamy, and it grosses me out to think that a naked student was in it not too long ago. Even if it wasn’t the greasy git we’d passed in the hall. But, after days of not being able to wash properly, it doesn’t take long for me to get over myself and start taking my clothes off.

  I put my glamoured gear to one side and get into the shower, turning it on and listening to Ilex creeping about in the other room. While I’m lathering up (with what’s probably greasy’s girlfriend’s shampoo) I think about the last few days, the things I’ve been learning. It’s still a kind of dizzy thought, that magic is real, that I can do it. Me! I’ve never given any thought to being anything other than normal, but here I am, being a witch, going out nights with Cray to look at the stars and kiss in secret spots all over the campus. Michaela might have been a regulation pot-head, but Stone is awesome, and I love being her.

  I wash until my skin tingles, and then step out. It feels amazing to be clean, at last. I mean, I could glamour my hair to look clean, but I wasn’t good enough to make it feel that way. I dry myself off with the only cleanish thing in the bathroom – a dressing gown, and put my clothes on before going back to Ilex.

  He’s sitting in the little desk chair, booted feet up on the desk. His pale, blondish hair and fair skin make him look ghostly at the best of times, but in the gloom of the messy room he looks especially creepy.

  “Not much to find,” he says, gesturing to a little heap of things in his lap. “Batteries, some cash, couple of joints and a pack of cigarettes.”

  “What were you hoping for?”

  “Naked posters of Patrick Dempsey,” he says, poker faced.

  I grin. “Can’t you just...zap some up?”

  He shakes his head. “Waste of energy. Anyway, we need to get on with your lesson.”

  “I thought we’d done that. You showed me the skeleton key.”

  “The key is only half of it. You need to know how to move around places like this as if you belong. If you can fool a couple of students, you can work your way up. Security guards, shop assistants...the police.”

  He puts the things he’s found in his pocket then beckons me closer, until he can put his cold hand on mine.

  “To be invisible, you can’t just throw out a blinding hex, you’ve got to shroud yourself in a veil. Constantly send out this signal – ‘nothing to see here, look away, keep walking’ and you do that by focusing, and drawing your power around you.”

  He looks at me expectantly, then frowns.

  “You’re not trying it.”

  I flush. “I didn’t know you wanted me to. Hang on.”

  I focus, drawing all the smoky blackness through me. I’ve become good at calling up my power, even if it do sometimes get away from me, slipping back into the cracks. I cover myself as if I’m glamouring my clothes again, only this time I pull the power over my face and hands, until I’m a shadow; a twisty, smoky shadow.

  Ilex grins and his own form shimmers like I’m looking at it through a wall of hot air. I suppose because I’m a witch now I can’t be tricked by his ‘invisib
ility’, just like I can tell that his black velvet jeans are a glamour, a lazy one – he’s really wearing old combats.

  “Right, now, the object of this game is to get in and out of all the rooms on this floor,” Ilex says. “No one can see you, and you can’t open the doors yourself, you have to be sneaky. And, you have to take something from each room. A trophy.”

  I feel a twinge of excitement, I’m a great thief, I know that. I mean, I’d sustained my little habit with pick pocketing and small thefts for two years. And that was before I’d had magic to help me.

  “If you get into trouble, do what you did to that bus driver. Throw them with a magical jolt, and run for it.”

  I nod, and Ilex slaps me on the arm in a matey way. I’m starting to think he’s not so bad, a bit of a twat, but ultimately pretty cool.

  “I’ll see you outside,” he says, and leaves me.

  My third lesson has officially begun.

  *

  Once, when I was going through the bags of some bitches in the year over me, I found a bottle of really cool nail polish. It was expensive and called ‘something-fleur’ which even I know means flower. The actual colour was a kind of iridescent red, really classy. So I pinched it.

  I got found out, obviously. The first time I used it the cow noticed and started asking me where I’d bought the polish. So I lied and said Boots, only it turned out that it was some kind of frenchy stuff that her dad had brought back from Paris. I was suspended for a day, and in detention for a week after that.

  The point is, right before I got caught, I had this twisty feeling in my stomach, the kind I always get when I’m about to get shouted at. I had that same feeling as I shadowed a girl back to her bedroom.

  There was no way that imagining a shadow over myself was going to fool anyone. At least when I glamour my clothes I can see that it’s worked. Making myself invisible on the other hand feels as effective as closing my eyes really tightly and wishing not to be seen.

  As she unlocks the door I’m only a foot away from her, close enough to see the flutter of blood pulsing under the skin of her throat. She smells like damp washing and about a gallon of Katy Perry perfume. Yuk.

  The door opens and the girl steps into her room, throwing her keys onto the bed. I follow after her, and even once the door is shut and we’re standing together in her shoebox sized room, she doesn’t even blink. I watch as she sits down on the bed and starts taking her shoes off.

  Her room is papered in posters of one band, some indie shit that no one has ever heard of (not a Katy Perry fan then, just a fan of the perfume – why?). At least, I’ve never seen them anywhere. There are wrist bands pinned to the wall and a plastic Hawaiian flower garland draped over a tin lampshade.

  For a moment I just watch her, I’m only a meter away, close enough to see the flaky skin under her foundation, to see the label sticking up out of her sweatshirt. I look around as she continues to ignore my presence, lying back on the bed with an oomf and reaching for a paperback.

  From the alcove by the door, where there’s a toothpaste spattered mirror and a sink covered in long red hairs, I snag a tube of lipstick. Job done.

  I turn to the door.

  Oh. Shit.

  How am I going to get out of the room? Never mind that it’s against Ilex’s rules: opening the door will definitely give me away, even if she doesn’t see me she’ll still freak out at the door opening for no reason. I’d been stupid to think it would be that easy.

  I look at the door for a moment longer, then realise what I have to do. Stepping in to the corner by the door I reach across and knock on it.

  The girl on the bed frowns, puts her book down and comes over, pushing the handle down. Her face is only inches from mine. The door opens and I slide out into the hallway. Ilex is nowhere to be seen. After a few seconds of looking confusedly up and down the hall the girl closes the door with a huff.

  I slip the lipstick into my pocket. My heart is still thumping hard. I am invisible. More than that, I am the clever little witch who got in and out of a room without being discovered. I can’t remember the last time I felt clever – certainly not at school, or at home where Dad was always correcting me or putting me down. But I am, I’m clever.

  I also have eleven rooms left to get in to.

  With the next one I hit a new problem – there’s no one inside and no one going in. The door’s locked and Ilex has the skeleton key. I run through the magic that I know, which doesn’t take long. I can blind someone for an instant, get the fae folk to protect me from detection as I steal a week’s food and a lifetime supply of tampons and I can glamour my clothes and any object that I want...

  I stick my hand into my glamoured jeans pocket. Even magic pockets can hold real items, which is beyond useful. In my hand is a collection of hair slides, my tangled ear buds and a two pence piece I found on the floor. I select a hair grip.

  The lock is silver, so it’s probably safe to assume that the key is too. I picture the key that the redhead used to open her door; silver with a plastic cover on the end, the room number printed on it. This room is number 183, so that is what it’ll say on my key. I curl my fingers around the hair grip and touch the door with my other hand. I have no idea what the toothy bit of the key should look like, but I have the other side of it, the lock inside the door. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I won’t have to see the shapes of the mechanism inside the door to make my own key.

  I feel the object in my hand grow a little heavier and when I open my fingers there’s a key in them, silver and printed with the number 183. With my breath caught in a gleeful squeal, I slide it into the lock and open the door.

  “Took you long enough,” Ilex says.

  He’s lying on the bed, flicking through a creased up copy of FHM. On the bed is a plastic baggie of weed, a small heap of change and notes and a pen knife.

  “Here, for your collection,” he tosses the knife to me, the plastic case, black with the grim reaper clumsily stencilled on the side, hits my chest and I grab it as it falls. “That’s two tools you’ve got now.”

  “Let me guess, my ‘ceremonial dagger’?”

  He smirks. “They can’t all be silver athames now, can they?”

  I slip it into my pocket.

  “Hurry up, ten more rooms to go before everyone gets back from morning classes.”

  “Any hints about getting into the rest?”

  “You seem to be managing OK. Just hurry it up, before I get bored.”

  I roll my eyes. Ilex has a serious attitude problem, and he’s not nearly as cute as he thinks he is. Still, he’s right, there are ten rooms left to go.

  I do well enough, I think. My glamoured key gets me in to most of the rooms, the ones where my knocking manouver doesn’t do the trick. I start to wonder why Ilex even needs a skeleton key, though I suppose simple Yale locks are one thing – electronic keys and bolts are another thing entirely. Besides, it must be convenient not to have to take a few minutes each time to change your key into the next key you need – a key that’ll be a hairgrip again in seven short hours.

  Slowly, my little beaded bag fills with trophies; lipstick, a Topshop ring, a Jack Daniels lighter, a purple candle, a tiny sequinned box, a bullet necklace, a Snickers, photographs, a fountain pen. I’ve always been a reasonably good thief, but this is so easy it’s like...like having a super power. And I do. I have a super power. I am special, and all these people, all their things, are mine to pick over.

  Ilex is waiting for me when I leave the last room, the door clicking closed behind me as I pocket my hairgrip-key.

  “Having fun?”

  “Lots,” I say.

  “Good, because part two of this little exercise is about to start,” he hands me the bag of weed and trails his hand over mine. Just like that I feel my glamour falling away, like he’s just snipped the thin strands holding it together.

  “What...?”

  “Hey!”

  I whip round and see a tall, rugby-thug looking guy standing in
the open doorway of room 183, looking right at me. “That’s mine!”

  I clutch the bag of weed automatically, that horrible squirmy feeling of being discovered crawling all over me. As he comes up the hallway towards me I do the only thing I can think of.

  I run.

  Chapter Twelve

  I am not a sporty girl.

  When picking teams for netball I’m always chosen last, and I don’t care because I fucking hate netball and hockey and any other sport that means I have to stand in the freezing cold in a pair of shorts, watching my knees turn purple while the scary ultra-sporty girls clobber each other to get the ball. I’m not good at sports, or solo fitness stuff like swimming and gymnastics; I’ve had my period every swimming week for the past year. In fact mostly I’ve been bunking off PE for the last few months and spending the period going through people’s bags or in the elder scrub behind the science buildings, smoking and reading shitty magazines stolen from the sixth form common area.

  So my decision to run from a rugby playing student, at least three years older than me and about a foot taller, is a bad one. I realise this as I pelt up the stairs instead of down, and find myself in a large high ceilinged kitchen that smells of off milk and burning things. I sprint through it, already feeling my legs go to jelly and my heart trying to vomit itself out of my mouth. Through the door at the end into another, more or less identical kitchen.

  All the time his footsteps are crashing behind me, thumping the plastic flooring as he shouts for everyone to hear.

  “Get back here you thieving bitch!”

  I throw open another door, trying to look behind me and running straight into a guy in his pyjama bottoms, I shove past him and run through the next kitchen, ignoring his confused shout. I only remember the power, my power, as I stagger down the stairs and back to the residential floor. Only, I can’t pull together enough focus to glamour myself, or do anything else. My legs are all shaky and as I squeeze into a tiny, dank, communal toilet I can’t focus enough to pull any power together.