Page 34 of Uncharmed

Chapter Fifteen

SILVER SECRETS

A nnie returned inside to deliver a coffee to Maeve, but more importantly to assess how the girl felt about the prospect of this unscheduled arrival sleeping on the couch.

Their couch. His couch? She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it herself, caught off guard by his odd combination of easy kindness and general scowling.

But uprooting Maeve again, just when it was starting to feel like an understanding had settled between them, was not the right solution either.

Annie was comforted by how many times she had heard other Selcouth members sing Hal’s praises.

She had once even heard Morena reluctantly admit that he was ‘irritatingly considerate’ and ‘offensively decent’, apart from the way that he insisted on traipsing mud through the entirety of Hecate House on every visit.

Maeve told Annie that she couldn’t give two hoots (in slightly less polite terms) where Hal slept, providing that he’d give her an insight into some of his adventures.

Even a slightly sullen teenager could not resist a tale of exploring various realms, sleeping under the stars among some of its most legendary beasts.

A result of Maeve’s eager interest in Hal’s fieldwork, her first question being whether he’d ever slain a vampire, the unlikely trio spent the morning getting to know each other.

If not entirely broken, it did at least melt the ice of their first encounter.

Annie, between flapping to make sure that everybody had the breakfast they wanted, was learning that Hal seemed to mostly prefer communicating in grunts and low hums about almost everything – apart from his lifelong love for animals.

Sharing memories of his voyages lit a fire behind his eyes, the green turning richer as he got carried away on a tidal wave of nostalgia and adventure.

She had to catch herself once or twice when she realized that she was watching his face tell the story almost too intently, resting her chin on her hand while he recalled the time he had been tasked with tagging a flight of young dragons for the coven to monitor.

‘But that must be, like, insanely dangerous. Weren’t you scared?’ Maeve asked, wide-eyed.

‘Of course I was scared, especially after one of the adults broke my nose a few years ago. Anyone who says they don’t get scared is an idiot.

These are really good by the way,’ he said off-handedly, ripping apart a pecan and pistachio croissant from Celeste’s supply.

His table manners were, frankly, atrocious and Annie made sure to focus on that fact while he carelessly licked the remainders of the filling off his fingers one by one.

‘But I did also happen to know that a dragon’s favourite treat, aside from the roasted flesh of man, is. ..Any ideas?’

‘Roasted flesh of literally anything else?’ Maeve chanced.

‘It’s actually a scotch egg.’

Maeve looked disgusted. ‘That might be even grosser than the roasted flesh of man.’

‘Dragons love scotch eggs. Can’t get enough of them when they’re babies.

So I laced a whole packet of them with a dozing draught, trailed them through the forest, waited until they were all fast asleep after the feast and then tagged them all on the ear with no bother.

Even managed to give most of them a little stroke on the beard for good measure.

Dragons are pretty cute when they’re sleeping. Just big puppies really.’

Maeve slumped at the anti-climax of the story. ‘Scotch eggs? That’s the worst conclusion to a dragon-hunting story I’ve ever heard.’

‘Heard a lot of them, have you?’ Hal grinned, popping the last of the croissant in his mouth and dusting the crumbs off his hands over the tablecloth.

‘Right, come on, you. There’s witchery to do,’ Annie said, attempting to coax Maeve away from the tantalizing conversation, as much as she wanted to sit and listen to more of it herself.

‘I thought we’d try some more Incantation today.

I remembered this nifty little trick from when I was your age of scribbling spells onto parchment, crumpling them up and making them burst into glitter. You won’t believe how...’

‘Absolutely not. No glitter,’ Hal said. He looked accusatorially at Annie. ‘If your magic is anything to go by, that damn stuff will get absolutely everywhere and I’ll never see the end of it. I’ve already noticed yours, hanging everywhere around the place.’

‘You don’t like it?’ Annie said, genuinely baffled. As a firm believer in extra sparkle at all times, she had tinkered with her own magic to ensure the glitter lingered a little longer than the average.

Hal cleared his throat. ‘Well, it’s not that I don’t like it.

It’s just...Oh, do what you want. Best believe I’ll be charging Morena a redecorating fee when you’re done, anyway.

’ He took his plate to the kitchen and refolded the ends of his shirt sleeves, which were pushed up past his forearms. Annie had noticed his forearms. Now that they were clean (she had purposefully kept herself busy while he was out back in the tub), she could see that they were tanned. And large.

‘I’ll leave you two to do...whatever it is that you do, exactly, but I’ll be back later,’ Hal said as he tugged on his boots, dropping shards of mud around the cottage.

‘Thanks for the cake – or whatever that was. Not exactly bacon and eggs, but it was...well, delicious, actually. Any more going spare?’

‘You mean a croissant...?’ Annie reminded him, although she suspected that she might as well be telling him it was an aubergine.

She sent a broom sweeping after him as she folded another croissant into a napkin and handed it over.

‘Oh, I probably should have mentioned that the raspberry compote had a few confidence currants added into the syrup. They’re a Celeste recipe, helpful to shake off any self-consciousness in Maeve’s magic exploration, but if you feel extra fabulous today, you know why. ’

She smiled angelically and earned an incredulous glare from Hal in return.

He picked up his jacket from the hook and, as he opened the front door to leave, she noticed him toss his overgrown hair over his shoulder with a particularly superb flourish.

He froze. ‘Bloody berries.’ He turned back to shoot her a final scowl and closed the door behind him.

‘Where do you think he’s off to?’ Annie asked, watching him stride across the meadow into the woods.

Maeve was poking her head around her bedroom door as she brushed her teeth.

With her magic beginning to flourish, she wasn’t even bothering to hold the toothbrush for herself.

It levitated smartly in her mouth while a hairbrush simultaneously tugged by itself at her long, dark hair.

Annie couldn’t help but snort at the sight.

Maeve shrugged and spoke with a mouthful of toothpaste. ‘Probably off to lasso a griffin or something.’

The next few days flew by in a brume of raindrops and smoky silver clouds as October folded in over Arden Place, as though holding it carefully inside warm hands.

Time was spent reading and baking and crafting and making – a current of magic crackling from Maeve as she grew in confidence and calmness.

Hal spent his days outdoors, returning for dinner and sleep each evening, while Annie kept the fireplace roaring at the cottage and the extra silky hot chocolate flowing.

Her secret recipe always involved stirring in at least one wish from the tiny velvet drawstring bag of them that she’d purchased from a useful elf contact.

On a particularly balmy evening, noting that Halloween was less than three weeks away, Annie was keen to harness the increasing enchanted energy that lay in wait, and carry on the positive improvements she’d been witnessing each day in Maeve’s magic.

It was growing at impressive speed and, after Hal’s early comment about the way Maeve seemed to be attracting all things magical within the local radius, Annie was starting to wonder whether he might be onto something.

Not that she would be letting him know that.

But she wanted to challenge Maeve, to push her magic further than just ice-cream sundaes and rainbow paintboxes.

‘Now, I don’t want you to get down on yourself if your spell doesn’t knit quite as you intend it to,’ Annie said, loading up Maeve’s arms with a pink tasselled picnic blanket, a pink hamper full of picky bits to split for dinner and Karma’s favourite pink cushion, plus two telescopes.

Disappointingly, these were not pink. ‘This is very tricky magic; a lot of witches inside Hecate House would struggle with this one.’

Maeve simply gave her a look. ‘Try me.’

With Hal yet to return from wherever it was that he’d slunk off to, the witches headed out into the sprawling meadow at the front of the house, night drenching the long grass in a silvery hue that made the whole garden feel as though it was painted in streaks of watery moonlight.

It was that precise idea that had inspired Annie’s plans for the evening.

Since they’d arrived at the isolated cottage, the sky had felt like it contained their own personal constellations each night – stars that no one else could see – and it was time to put that to good use.

‘We’re going to try something sparkly.’

‘Oh, not again,’ Maeve whined. ‘Didn’t you get the message when I exploded your princess pumpkin?’

‘I think this might be a little more up your alley. Maeve, I want you to harness the stars.’ Annie tried to keep a straight face as she said it, but her heart did an excited skip at how Maeve’s face immediately lit up.

‘Stars? You mean like actual, proper stars? How do I...What do we...? I suppose that sounds pretty cool,’ Maeve said, a gigantic smile almost splitting her face in two.