I stiffened. Wait, what? My pockets? That didn’t sound good.
She gauged my expression. “Yes, I know about all the creepy voodoo.”
“What creepy voodoo?”
Damn, damn, damn. She’s bluffing.
“The sage, the knife, the coin,” Rose reeled them off one by one.
She’s not bluffing. How does she know about those? Damn, my clothes! After the shower I’d left my clothes in the bathroom. Idiot!
She must have gone through my pockets. I racked my brain, trying to recall what she had said she’d found. My cluster of sage, my ceremonial knife, my talisman coin…
Rose began to tremble. “You’re some kind of… something.”
I licked my lips, struggling to retain a blasé façade. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. You bumped your head, remember?” I leaned over her, talking slowly and carefully. “My name is Oscar.”
She took a swipe at me. “I don’t have amnesia! I know exactly who you are.”
“Hmm. Well, you seem to be talking nonsense.”
She staggered unsteadily to her feet. She stumbled and unthinkingly grasped my shoulder for support, then immediately yanked her hand away as though she’d been burned by me.
“You can hold on to me if you want,” I said with a vague, satirical smile.
“No, I don’t want,” Rose shot back. She began stumbling across her room.
Uh oh. “Where are you going?” I stood from her bed.
“I’m going to expose you for the psycho you are.” She stormed for the staircase.
Caicus, I called silently. Go to the bathroom and empty my jeans pockets. Quickly!
“I’m going to prove that you’re lying,” Rose insisted, stomping down the attic steps. “And then Mary will see you for who you really are. What you really are,” she corrected herself.
I jogged behind her, my heart racing.
Rose charged along the corridor and into the bathroom. Heaped on the floor beside the shower were my discarded clothes. Rose riffled through the pile until she found my black jeans.
I hovered in the doorway, holding my breath.
Please be empty, please be empty, please be empty…
Empty!
Hallelujah.
“I-I don’t understand,” Rose stammered. She dropped the jeans onto the tiled floor. “You,” she turned to face me. “You must have emptied the pockets.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Sorry. I don’t follow. I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Rose’s emerald eyes turned frosty. “Just leave me alone,” she hissed. “And leave my family alone.” She stormed out of the bathroom, deliberately shoving past me as she went.
I watched as she thundered up the attic staircase and slammed her bedroom door behind her.
I let out a breath. Another disaster averted.
Hastily, I bundled my clothes together and returned to my own bedroom.
Caicus was sprawled out on his bed. The contents of my jeans were scattered over the daisy-print duvet in front of him.
“Close call,” he commented.
“Why didn’t you reply when I told you to clear out the pockets?” I scolded him. “I didn’t think you’d done it in time. My little black heart was practically beating right out of my chest.” I paused to glower at him. “You’re lucky I didn’t die from heart failure.”
Caicus smirked. “Payback for earlier. Now you know how it felt to be standing outside the bathroom with her about to burst in on nobody in the shower.”
I grinned.
He grinned back.
“It was close, though,” he said, his tone dropping to a serious note. “I only just made it back to our room before she came down the stairs like a whirlwind. You must have really riled her this time.”
“I can’t believe that sneak went through my pockets.” I slapped my head in disbelief.
“Sneaky shrew! We’ll have to be more careful in future. And no using our powers around her.”
I sat down on my own bed. I still hadn’t told Caicus about my little cliff-jumping show the week before. And I intended to keep it that way.
“So,” Caicus went on, thankfully changing the subject, “turns out you weren’t quite her knight in shining armour, eh?”
I smiled complacently. “It’s too difficult being the hero. I think I’ll just go back to being me.”
“Oh good. You know I have a weak stomach for heroic gestures. It was upsetting to see you being so…” he grimaced, “considerate.”
“Sorry about that. Minor error in judgement. Happens to us all from time to time.”
Caicus puffed out his chest. “Not me. You’ll never catch me being considerate. Not out of choice, at any rate.”
“Okay, okay.” I rolled my eyes. “I get it. You’re faultless and can do no wrong.” He was so smug it made me want to clock him. “Anyway, if I hadn’t taken her up to her room, we never would have had a chance to clear out my pockets before she showed the contents to Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.”
“True,” Caicus agreed. “How did you explain it?”
“I told her she’d imagined it.”
Caicus doubled over with laughter. “Don’t tell me she actually bought that?”
“Maybe. A knock on the head can make you go all kinds of crazy. But she also mentioned something else. Something about eyes. Crow eyes.”
“Crow eyes?” Caicus repeated, his eyebrows pulling together. “What’s that about?”
“I think it’s Lathiaus.”
He tensed. “She’s seen him?”
I contemplated it for a moment. “Only in her sleep. In her dreams she must be close enough to see his eyes now.” The thought made my heart wrench.
“Then it’s almost time.”
“Yes,” I said quietly.
“We’re nowhere near prepared,” Caicus grumbled. “It could have been today, you know. Right there, in the bathroom. And we’d have missed the whole thing.”
“It’s not today,” I told him.
“It could be today,” he argued. “We’re not ready. We need to prepare the brew, we need to get the others out of the house—”
“It’s not today,” I snapped.
“What makes you so sure?” he challenged.
“It’s just not, okay? There have been no signs. The weather’s glorious, no tremors or storms, nothing.”
“What about your visions? Are they getting any clearer?”
I felt my shoulders tauten at the mention of my visions. Or my dreams, if you will. Well, not my dreams exactly. Rose’s dreams.
For the past few months, our dreams had somehow fused together. Almost as though I had slipped through a crack in between dimensions and ended up in her unconscious mind. I was a spectator, watching her nightmares play out like a Hitchcock horror. And that was how I was able to track her to Millwood.
It was strange, but I’d developed a bond with her through our subconscious meetings. Every time she had a nightmare, I was there too. Yes, I always stood out of sight, skulking through the shadows like a creature of darkness, but I saw it all. I saw Rose walk mechanically towards the demon Lathiaus, and each time I wanted to call out to her—to stop her. At first he was just a mound, hunched beneath a black cloak. But with every dream he grew a little stronger, forewarning of his imminent awakening. Now he stood tall before her, gigantic and intimidating.
The nightmares were terrifying—even for me, who kept to the sidelines. But I saw her, and I learnt so much about her from those unearthly encounters. I felt as though I knew her better than I knew myself. It was because of this connection that I was able to find her. That was my power—I could find anything I wanted, as long as it had a place in my heart. And she did.
“It’s not time yet,” I said to Caicus. That was all he needed to know.
“I wonder if she knows,” Caicus muttered to himself. “Maybe she knows about Lathiaus.”
“No. She doesn’
t know. She blames everything inexplicable on me.” I looked over at the former contents of my jeans, which were sprawled on Caicus’s bed. My cluster of cleansing sage, tied together with a piece of red string, and my ceremonial dagger, the handle engraved with our coven symbol—basically just an elaborate ‘V’ for Valero. How imaginative.
“Great,” Caicus grumbled. “If she’s suspicious, then it’s only a matter of time before she finds us out.”
“So what? What’s the worst that can happen? She exposes us and your powers of persuasion no longer work on her? Guess what, numbskull, your powers already don’t work on her.”
“No, numbskull,” he echoed back. “The worst that can happen is that she blabs to Mary and we’re booted out of the family home. Things will be a little less straightforward if we’re exiled. You know full well we can’t stick around if we’re not invited. Not to mention the fact that the prophecy girl’s not going to be so willing to guzzle down a potion brew handed to her by two witches.”
“She doesn’t know anything,” I repeated. “And you’ve got Mary eating out of the palm of your hand, so you’ve got nothing to worry about there.”
Caicus grinned and cast his pale blue eyes upon me. Fooling around, he blinked his irises into an icy white. Of course, it had no bearing on me because I was a witch. But to a human it was mesmerising, like a blinding flash dazzling them into believing and agreeing with everything Caicus said. That was Caicus’s power. The one loophole to this was that if the victim exposed him to be a witch, then his power would be weightless. All bets would be off.
Rose was the exception. It was odd. We couldn’t be sure how exactly she was immune to Caicus. She certainly didn’t seem to know that we were witches. Our only explanation was that she herself was a witch—or part witch, anyway. After all, the prophecy did refer to her as ‘the girl with the heart of a witch’.
I clasped my hands together and rested them in my lap. “I don’t sense her to be a witch,” I said absentmindedly.
“Neither do I.”
“I wonder why the prophecy forecasts her? Her, and only her.” It was a question I’d asked myself often.
Caicus shrugged. “Perhaps she’s the only one of her kind—the only known entity with the heart of a witch but the body of a human. Like a rare jewel.”
“What do you think will happen…you know, when we hand her over?”
Caicus let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know, Oscar. But I imagine it’ll be quick.”
My chest tightened. I nodded my head.
“Then it’ll all be over,” he added. “And things can go back to normal.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway,” said Caicus, his tone lightening, “you should put these away.” He tossed the contents of my pockets over to me. “And find a better hiding place this time, dimwit.”
My sage, my dagger…
Wait.
Something was missing.
“Oh hell!” I shouted.
Caicus jumped at my outburst. “What? What is it?”
I leapt to my feet and began flinging up his bed sheets. He shuffled back until he was sitting on his pillow.
“What?” he demanded.
“My talisman. Did you get it from my pocket?”
Caicus’s eyes widened a fraction, but he said nothing.
“Have you seen it?” I barked.
“No!” he yelled back. “It wasn’t in your pocket.”
“It’s always in my pocket.”
“Well, obviously it’s not, because I emptied your pockets and it wasn’t there,” he fired back. “So don’t blame me.”
“Argh!” I pounded my foot on the floor. “She’s got it.”
“Damn it, Oscar! The talismans are inscribed. If she finds out we’re witches, we can kiss the plan goodbye. It’s over. We’re out of here, and Lathiaus will kill us all.”
I kicked my bed in temper. I must have kicked it a little too hard, though, because it skidded across the room and crashed against the wall.
“Oscar!” Caicus hissed. He threw a pillow at me.
I took a deep breath. Okay. This wasn’t irrevocable yet.
“I’ll get it back,” I told Caicus. Before he could reply, I was out of the room.
Slow down, I reminded myself.
I inhaled deeply, tasting the air. Rose wasn’t in her bedroom. That was handy.
I closed my eyes. Talisman, I willed. That was how my power worked. I pictured what I wanted to the finest detail: the thin, cold brass, the faded tawny colour, the words imprinted on the surface… I felt it in my heart and envisioned it with the deepest love.
Got it.
I was able to see it clearly in my mind’s eye, tucked safely into a secret compartment of Rose’s jewellery box.
Nice try. I smirked.
In a heartbeat I was in her room and rummaging through her jewellery box. Bracelets, rings, blah blah blah… talisman!
“Hello, love,” I said, kissing the brass coin.
And then I heard the attic door open.
Busted.
Words
I SAT ON MY BED with the covers bunched around me.
Maybe Oscar had been right. Maybe I really was imagining things. Perhaps that was a symptom of concussion? Come to think of it, I was feeling a little light headed. Although I presumed that was fairly common after being bombarded with a serious overload of unexplained events.
I touched the bump on my temple. It was sore. Of course it was—I’d clipped it on the porcelain sink. Ouch. Even the memory hurt.
I leaned back against my pillow, gazing out of the window at the cloudless blue sky. It was nice to see a clear day for a change. I’d spent the past week watching the rain fall, working my way through Mary and Roger’s literature collection, and playing chess with Oscar. Conveniently, Oscar always seemed to show up whenever I was alone. It was strange. I still didn’t exactly trust him, but I hadn’t come any closer to uncovering his agenda. If there was even an agenda to uncover.
Of course, I still had reason to be suspicious. The Valero boys seemed to be magnets for baffling things. One good example was their weightless footsteps. It was virtually impossible to hear them cross the corridor, even with the extremely creaky floorboards hindering their path. In fact, compared to the rest of the occupants of the house, Caicus and Oscar’s footing was beyond light—it was almost illusory.
But the incident that stood out above all was what had happened in Hutton Ridge. Despite the amount of time Oscar and I had spent together, we had never spoken of our encounter that day—mostly because Oscar refused to. Having had over a week to dissect it, I somehow convinced myself that Oscar’s perilous jump was not entirely unfeasible. After all, I’d never jumped off a cliff, so how could I be sure if it was possible or not?
On more than one occasion I had contemplated talking to my aunt about it, but something held me back. It was as though I felt a loyalty towards Oscar that I simply couldn’t betray.
I sighed.
Gazing out at the distant tree tops, I watched the leaves sway gently in the breeze. And then, in front of the window, something else caught my eye. The candle on my dressing table.
Something was different.
I hopped up from my bed and walked over to the table. Carefully I picked up the candle and examined it, trailing my index finger along the smooth wax surface.
Now, that candle had sat in the same spot for the past God-only-knew-how-many years. Subsequently, I could practically picture every detail just from memory alone. Most noticeably, there was a distinctive stripe of ochre trailing from the wick to the base. From my bed I’d always been able to see that marking, and yet that day, somehow, the stripe was facing out to the window.
The candle had been moved.
What? Why would someone come into my room and move my candle? Mary and Roger never went up there, and baby Zack couldn’t walk, let alone climb two flights of stairs and rearrange my room. I knew I hadn’t moved it. That left two people…
&nb
sp; So much for giving the Valeros the benefit of the doubt. They’d been in my room! But why?
My mind was jumbled. I needed to think clearly.
Okay, retrace my steps, I decided.
After bumping into Oscar post-shower, I’d gone up to my room. When I came back down I passed the bathroom and noticed Oscar’s clothes dumped on the floor. I wasn’t usually one for snooping, but I counted that to be extenuating circumstances. I ducked into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. Before I could stop myself, I was rummaging through his pockets. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. In fact, I didn’t really expect to find anything.
But that had been wishful thinking.
In actual fact, I found a whole lot more than I bargained for.
There were three objects in total: a small dagger with some kind of marking engraved on the handle; a cluster of sage bound together by a worn piece of string; and a brass coin inscribed with unfamiliar words.
I didn’t imagine it. The memory was too vivid.
I felt sick just thinking about it. Suddenly everything started to feel a little too real. Why would he carry those things around in his pocket? I mean, a dagger, for crying out loud! Obviously, to me, a non-dagger-carrying citizen, that stuff seemed psychotic.
But it’s Oscar. I found myself saying that phrase an awful lot these days.
In all honesty, when my fingers first touched the cold blade of the dagger, I wanted so badly for it to be the final straw. And it should have been. I wanted to hate him, but instead I began making excuses. Maybe he’s been using it for gardening. Yes, that was fairly believable. Maybe it’s for opening boxes. Shaky, but still not completely unreasonable.
And then my rational side kicked in. He carries a dagger.
That was enough. I didn’t want to see it any more. Any of it. I just wanted to get out of that bathroom. Moving hastily, I returned the items to his pocket and made my getaway.
There was one slight catch, though. I must have slipped on the wet floor tiles, because I remembered falling forward towards the sink. I must have knocked myself out cold, because the next thing I knew, Oscar was sitting at my bedside, dabbing my head with a tissue. Then, of course, we argued, and I stormed off to show him what I had found in his pockets. But when I looked through his jeans again, the contents had vanished.
How I Found You Page 8