by Natasha Lowe
Chapter Fifteen
* * *
Spiders Are a Girl’s Best Friend
"THE LATE BLOOMER’S GUIDE TO MAGIC" lay open on Cat’s bed. Since her mother had refused to help her, Cat would just have to do this by herself. There was no other way. If she wanted to learn to control her magic, she had to start conquering her fears.
It took Cat fifteen minutes to open the container with the spider in it. Every time she got close to lifting the lid, she’d cram the top on again and back away. “I can’t do it,” Cat whispered. “I just can’t.” What if the spider crawled up her sleeve, scurrying over her skin on its fat furry legs? Spiders moved so fast. One of the things Francesca Fenwick advised in her book was that naming your fears made them easier to face, so Cat decided to call the spider Boris, hoping this might make her feel less scared of him. This was all much harder than she had anticipated, and by the time she finally got the lid off and peeked inside, her palms were damp with sweat and her face was flushed pink. Once she had done it though, it wasn’t quite as hard the next time. Cat managed to take the lid on and off twice more before her mother called her down for dinner. On the third time Cat even managed to hold the container in her hand rather than peering into it on the floor.
Dinner was a quiet affair. Over shepherd’s pie and peas, Marie Claire did most of the talking while Cat and her mother said very little, avoiding eye contact with each other. It was a relief when the meal finally ended, and after helping wash the dishes, Cat went straight back up to her room. She planned to practice a little bit more. Maybe even touch Boris with a finger, but her skin tingled at the mere thought, and Cat decided she might not be ready for that yet.
“Cat, are you there?” Peter said, his voice crackling through the walkie-talkie.
Cat grabbed the receiver and sat on her bed. “I’m making friends with the spider, Peter. I’ve called him Boris.”
“Cat, listen a second. This is really important.” Peter was breathing hard. “I think I’ve worked out where Madeline Reynolds is going. And it’s definitely not Italy!” There was a crackly pause. “You’re not going to like this, but I thought you’d want know so you could be prepared. I’m quite certain she’s coming here to Potts Bottom.”
“What?” Cat hunched up her legs, glancing around her room. “How on earth did you figure that?”
“You have to go back to the root of the problem to find out the answer,” Peter said, sounding excited. “Just like a simple math equation.”
“I’m not following at all, Peter, and you’re making me extremely nervous.”
“Well, I’ve been mulling over what your mum told you. How she always thought Madeline Reynolds was sad because she didn’t want to be a witch.”
Cat could almost hear Peter jiggling up and down. She imagined his hair sticking out in wild, frizzy clumps the way it always did whenever he had one of his brain waves.
“And I keep looking at that photograph of her in the paper, Cat, and she does look sad.”
“But why would that make her come back to Potts Bottom?”
“Because this is where her unhappiness began. At Ruthersfield,” Peter said. “Just like Auntie Poppy.” There was a burst of static. “Can you hear me, Cat?”
“I can hear you.”
“I bet she’s so angry at this place, she’s planning to come back here and do something really awful,” Peter continued. “Imagine being locked up in jail for years and years, all that evilness and anger brewing away. And then you escape. You bust free. Who would you want to take your fury out on?”
“Peter, stop it!” Cat cried out at the same time that Peter yelled, “Ruthersfield!”
“Now I’m not going to sleep one wink tonight. Have you told your dad?”
“Course I have,” Peter answered. “He yawned, said ‘Nice idea, Pete, reminds me of your asteroid one!’ and flopped onto the sofa. Apparently every police precinct in the country—actually in the whole world—has been flooded with calls from people worrying that Madeline Reynolds is coming to their town.”
“Well, I really wish you hadn’t told me.”
“But it makes such perfect sense,” Peter said proudly. “I’m sure I’m right.”
“Which is why I wish you hadn’t told me,” Cat snapped, switching off her walkie-talkie.
Suddenly Boris didn’t seem quite so scary. Cat put his container on her bedside table and picked up the old cardboard periscope. She dangled it over the side of her bed and looked through the top, which from Peter’s clever angling of mirrors showed her exactly what was going on underneath. To Cat’s great relief, apart from a great many dust balls, there was no Madeline Reynolds hiding there. She wished she could call downstairs for reassurance. When Cat had been little, Poppy used to climb onto her bed and cuddle her fears away. There was nothing more comforting than the solid warmth and cake smell of her mother. But that certainly wasn’t going to happen tonight.
A dog barked outside, and goose bumps broke out on Cat’s arms. Fear shot up her spine, and she scurried over to shut the curtains. Usually Cat liked seeing the moon above the canal, the same moon that her dad was looking at somewhere on the other side of the world. It made Cat feel closer to him, but tonight with Madeline Reynolds on the loose, she drew her curtains tight.
If Cat slept at all, it was only very lightly, dozing off somewhere around five a.m. She had spent the night with her lights on and the wand under her pillow for protection. Not that she would ever get her magic under control with fear welling up inside her like rising bread dough. Spiders she could manage. It was this big, smothering panic that threatened to overwhelm her every time she thought about Madeline Reynolds. That was the fear she needed to conquer. There was no way Cat’s magic would behave until she could manage this. “And that will never happen,” Cat said, realizing she was talking to Boris. He looked almost friendly this morning, and a small beam of pride glowed inside her. A few days ago Cat would never have imagined making friends with a spider. But if she could master spiders, maybe, just maybe, she could master Madeline Reynolds. After all, Cat tried to convince herself, the real Madeline Reynolds couldn’t possibly be as awful as the witch Cat imagined in her head, could she? And besides, it was just too tiring, being this frightened of a childhood terror. She had to start getting some sleep. “Don’t let fear stand in your way,” Clara Bell had said. And she was right. If Cat wanted to go to Ruthersfield and be a witch and do what she knew she was destined to do, she couldn’t let Madeline Reynolds stop her.
“Boris, I believe I’m getting an idea,” Cat whispered to the spider. “It’s what my dad would call a ‘wild idea,’ but I think it just might work.” She considered waking Peter up to tell him about it, but Peter was not a morning person. And since Cat didn’t feel like getting shouted at right now, she decided to wait until she saw him at school.
Chapter Sixteen
* * *
A Sticky Situation
I’VE HAD AN IDEA,” CAT told Peter later that morning, waylaying him on his way to science club. “I think you’re right about Madeline Reynolds coming back here.”
“I know,” Peter nodded. “Adam says I’m brilliant. No one else seems to believe me,” he added.
“Well, I do, and I’m going to try to capture her,” Cat said, keeping her voice soft.
“What? Oh, you’re joking!” Peter laughed. “For a second there I thought you were serious.”
“I am serious,” Cat said, gripping Peter’s arm. “It makes perfect sense.”
“It makes no sense whatsoever. You’re terrified of Madeline Reynolds.”
“I was terrified of spiders until yesterday, and now Boris and I are rather good friends. In fact, I’m thinking of keeping him as a pet.”
“Boris?”
“My spider. Well, your spider. But the point is I’m not that frightened of him anymore.”
“Cat, you cannot compare a spider to Madeline Reynolds. A spider wouldn’t hurt a fly—well maybe a fly—but spiders are soft a
nd hairy and good for the environment, and Madeline Reynolds washed away half of Italy.”
“She’s also eighty-five years old and she doesn’t have a broomstick or a wand with her. Look,” Cat said impatiently. “If I can conquer my fear of Madeline Reynolds, I’ll definitely be able to get my magic under control, and think about what Ms. Roach would say.” Cat gave an excited little jump. “She’d see how dedicated to magic I am. How brave I can be. She’d have to give me a place. I’ll probably get fast-tracked to broomstick flying right away.”
“Small question,” Peter said, “but quite an important one. How do you propose to do this?”
“Well, no one except for me, you, and Adam believes that she’s coming here, so I’m not going to have any competition from the police or anything. I just need to find a good spell.”
“I’ve said this already, but I’m going to say it again. You’re terrified of Madeline Reynolds.”
“That’s why I have to do this,” Cat explained. “Francesca Fenwick says naming your fears takes away some of the power they have over you, but since Madeline Reynolds already has a name, I thought I’d give her a nickname. Like Maddie. That’s much less scary, isn’t it?”
“The worrying thing is you actually think this is a good idea,” Peter said.
“I thought you might like to come home after school with me today so I could practice on you.”
“Absolutely, one hundred percent no way.”
“Oh, Peter, please. I think you’ll find I’m getting better.”
“You are not practicing magic on me, Cat. I have seen your magic, don’t forget.”
“Then I’ll practice on Boris, which will probably be better anyway, because I’m still a bit scared of him. He’ll be good training for Maddie.”
“Cat, you are bat flaking nuts,” Peter said. “Just take your walkie-talkie with you, okay? Because I guarantee you’re going to need to call for help.”
“Thanks for your support,” Cat said rather huffily.
“Just being honest,” Peter replied with a shrug, heading off to science club.
It would probably be best not to practice magic in the bakery, Cat decided, just in case things didn’t go as planned. Not that she expected anything to go wrong, but it was good to be prepared. Cat grabbed the copy of Practical Magic from the box under her bed and shoved it into a bag, along with Boris’s container and the wand. At the last minute she slipped the walkie-talkie in too, wrapping a few more rubber bands around the booster box to keep it in place. Marie Claire and her mother were busy in the shop, so Cat slipped out through the kitchen door and headed for the little shed that her dad had built. It housed the lawn mower, some old paint cans, and a collection of assorted junk, and was, Cat decided, the perfect place for practicing magic.
She sat down on a sack of organic fertilizer and started to flip through Practical Magic. Clearly her mother had used this volume a lot, because a number of the pages were stuck together and covered in sticky stains. “The Stop It Now Spell might work,” Cat murmured. It was supposed to freeze fast-moving objects, but what if Madeline Reynolds wasn’t fast moving? What if she just stood there flinging magic around? On page ninety-two Cat found something even better. The Trapped like a Fly Spell looked perfect. Running her finger down the page, Cat read, “The Trapped like a Fly Spell has many uses. It is mainly performed as a way of restraining out of control individuals. Highly effective when used to truss up a child in the middle of a tantrum, keeping them safe and out of danger until the tantrum has passed. A convenient carrying loop is attached to the back of the binding.”
Long sticky threads were meant to shoot out of your wand, “tying up your target like a spider wrapping up a fly,” Cat read.
“Except you’re going to be the one getting wrapped up,” she told Boris, lifting his container out of the bag.
“So wave the wand in a smooth spinning spiral,” Cat murmured, “and in a loud, clear voice say, ‘Intra . . .’ ”
She frowned and studied the word. It was a hard one to pronounce. “ ‘Intra . . . Intratangledcat.’ No, that’s not right.” Cat sighed and tried again, saying the word slowly as she ran her finger underneath it. “ ‘Intratangledcacoono!’ Yes!” She fist-punched the air and practiced a few more times to make sure she had got it correct.
“Well, that all looks okay,” Cat said, speaking to her spider. “Now I’m going to open the lid and let you out, Boris. But please don’t do that scuttling thing, all right?” She could feel her heart starting to race as she flipped off the lid. He looked so fat and hairy, and Cat took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself. “Ready, Boris?” She tipped the container over and scrambled to her feet.
Holding the wand tight, Cat pointed it at the spider and made a rather jerky spiraling motion. “Intratangledcacoono!” she said in a clear, confident voice, just as Boris scurried toward her as if he was racing to see an old friend. Cat screamed, falling backward over the sack of fertilizer.
Her spell bounced off the ceiling and ricocheted straight down, wrapping her up in a tangle of sticky threads. The fact that she couldn’t really move and had no idea where Boris had gone made Cat scream again.
Wiggling her hand, she managed to grab the walkie-talkie. Cat could push the button, but she couldn’t hold the receiver to her mouth because her arms were trapped. “Peter,” Cat yelled. “Can you hear me?” Please be in your room. Please be there, Cat prayed.
“Problem?” Peter replied as if he had been waiting for her to call.
“Please come to the garden shed, right now. And bring a pair of scissors.”
“I’m not going to say ‘I told you, Cat,’ but I did tell you,” Peter said, attempting to cut her free. It wasn’t easy because the threads kept sticking to the scissors. “This is an absolute mess. Not a tidy, neat bundle like the book says. And where’s your carrying loop?”
“Look, it may not be perfect, but the spell worked,” Cat pointed out. “It didn’t go crazy and dance out of the shed. I fell over, which was my fault, and it bounced back on me, but it still worked.” She felt rather pleased with herself, especially since Peter had found Boris and put him safely back in his container. “I was hoping you might make me a Madeline Reynolds detector,” Cat asked him. “So I’ll know when she gets here.”
“You won’t need one,” Peter snapped. “She’s a storm brewer, Cat. Just look for a big change in the weather.” He wiped white, sticky goo off his glasses and said, “I think you’re taking this magic thing too far. Trying to catch Madeline Reynolds is ridiculous. You can’t even catch a spider. I bet you don’t have a backup plan, do you?”
“No, but we could think of one together,” Cat suggested. “Just in case.”
“There is no ‘we’ involved here,” Peter said. “I think you’re crazy. I think this whole idea is crazy. Madeline Reynolds is the worst storm brewer in history. You really want to go to Ruthersfield so badly, you’re going to risk your life?”
“Yes,” Cat whispered, wishing Peter wouldn’t sound so mad. “My dad says you risk your life every time you walk out your front door, Peter. I’m not giving up yet.”
Chapter Seventeen
* * *
A Cake to Raise Your Spirits
THE FOLLOWING MORNING AS CAT walked into the kitchen, she was greeted by the low, monotonous voice of the radio broadcaster. “Still no news of Madeline Reynolds’s whereabouts,” he said. Her mother and Marie Claire were rolling out croissant dough in silence. “Italy has now been completely evacuated,” the presenter continued. “Highly trained guards are positioned and waiting for what is expected to be the imminent arrival of Madeline Reynolds.”
“Oh, please!” Marie Claire said, limping over to the radio and turning it off. “Honestly, I’ve heard enough. Do people have nothing else to talk about? All this hysteria over an old woman. She has no wand and she’s been locked in a cage most of her life. What on earth can she possibly do?”
“I quite agree, Marie Claire,” Cat said wit
h enthusiasm.
“You can’t imagine what it feels like,” Poppy burst out, sprinkling raisins over the dough, “being full of hatred and darkness.” Cat had never seen her mother look so unwell. She had dark shadows under her eyes, and Cat guessed she had slept in her braid. “I do. I’ve been there, and it doesn’t matter how old you are. You can still do terrible things. I was ten years old and I turned my parents to stone.” Cat flinched at the strength of her mother’s words.
“With good reason,” Marie Claire murmured. “You were not to blame, Poppy.”
“It doesn’t matter. I did it. And no one has any idea what Madeline Reynolds is capable of doing.”
Cat’s stomach flipped over. She wished her mother hadn’t said that.
A gentle thud sounded from the bakery. “Was that the postman?” Poppy jerked her head up, glancing toward the shop. He usually came early, before Cat left for school, dropping the mail through their brass letter slot so it landed in a heap on the floor.
“I’ll go and look,” Cat offered, hoping that there might be some word from her father. It had been so long since a letter had come from him. She knew her mother was hoping for the same thing, because as Cat left the room she heard her say to Marie Claire, “It’s not just Madeline Reynolds, you know. I’m worried about Tristram, too.” Cat stopped to listen. She couldn’t help herself. Her mother never worried about her father in front of Cat, but she obviously felt just as anxious. “It’s been weeks since we heard any news. I know he can’t call because there’s no service where he is, but he’s always managed to send letters before.”
A weak, sick feeling clutched Cat. What if something had happened to her dad? But she couldn’t think that way. “You’ve got to believe, Cat.” That’s what her dad always told her, never saying what it was he believed in exactly. Just that if you did believe, it would most certainly all be all right. And so far he had not been proved wrong, returning from the jungles of Africa, where he had almost been eaten by lions, searching for the big-leafed bilibead plant, and the mountains of Nepal, where he spent three weeks trapped in an underground tunnel living on nothing but worms and water. And now, even though no one had heard from Tristram Campbell in two months, Cat still forced herself to believe that he would be fine. But there were no postcards with foreign stamps on them written in her dad’s scrawling hand, and when Cat brought the mail through, she couldn’t hide the disappointment on her face.