Page 45 of Uncharmed

Chapter Twenty

DON’T OPEN IT

O nce Maeve had stopped cackling at the turn of events, Annie managed to cobble together what she hoped was a vaguely believable story to explain her transformation from perfection to distinctly imperfect.

‘I assumed it was a mid-life crisis, but ditching caffeine also explains it,’ Maeve said breezily, scooping the guts out of a pumpkin and plopping them into a bowl.

‘I too would lose the plot within the first morning of such a decision.’ Annie had decided that pumpkin carving felt like something that might calm her nerves and let her take out her frustrations on an unsuspecting gourd.

‘A mid-life...?! How old do you actually think I am? Actually, don’t answer that,’ Annie said grumpily, having managed to spill a bowl of cereal, break the vacuum cleaner and bang her head on the bookshelves before midday.

It seemed that the spell had been carrying a lot of the legwork for natural clumsiness, as well as everything else.

‘I don’t think my ego can handle the answer. ’

While her risk factor was seemingly in the red, it had been Maeve who’d suggested to Annie that perhaps they should let Hal take a turn at magical guardianship.

In the days since the storm, he and Annie had taken to communicating in sheepish looks and furious blushes.

Both sides were yet to make any mention whatsoever of the compromising position that they had woken up in together.

One quiet Sunday afternoon, Hal dragged Maeve away from her sketchbooks to help in his search for a particularly uncommon form of ghost orchid running low in his Alchemy stash – an opportunity that earned an entirely unenthusiastic reaction.

But, as a result, Annie found herself with a rare afternoon alone to decompress.

To begin with, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with herself, pointlessly flapping from one room to the other, but soon found that curling up in the armchair with books and perpetually reheating mugs of hot chocolate was in fact very good for her soul.

It was only when the warlock suggested to Maeve that the one thing missing from their autumnal setup was a bonfire, around which to share a conversation about the basics of healing magic, that Annie reluctantly surrendered her pillow fort.

Annie may have felt different to who she was before, but she was still powerless to resist charred, gooey marshmallows. That was just a rule of the universe.

For a little extra warmth against the chilly night, she threw on a plaid shirt that had been left lying around over the top of her flowy pink dress.

She may not have been perfect any more, but it would still always, always be pink.

She pulled the long sleeves over her hands in a comforting way that made her feel like some kind of tiny soft creature.

The exact, soothing sensation that she required to quell the puddle of feelings that sat so heavily in her chest: dread, regret, frustration, a selfish wonder whether she should just get it over with and inevitably return to the clutches of the spell already.

..They were all new, unfamiliar feelings to her touch and they glowed like white-hot coals when she brushed against them.

With a grumpy huff, she took a seat on a hay bale that Hal had placed around the small bonfire, which spat a spectacular spray of rainbow sparks, courtesy of Maeve’s magic.

She’d argued for fireworks, but Hal had argued back that Annie was too much of a risk factor to introduce any form of rocket for the evening.

She was inclined to think he was probably right.

Hal’s dark features were lit and shadowed in the glow of the fire. She noticed his Adam’s apple bob as she sat down across from him and stretched her hands out to warm them. ‘That’s mine.’ His voice sounded thick.

‘The shirt? Oh, sorry. I just found it and it’s freezing. Do you want it?’ She went to shake it off her shoulders.

‘Keep it,’ he grumbled, then took a moment while he smooshed a melted marshmallow between two crackers. ‘Looks better on you, anyway.’

In the dim fire light, neither of them noticed Maeve roll her eyes so hard that she almost toppled backwards off her hay bale.

Underneath the silver spyglass of a waxing moon peering down upon them, it dawned on Annie that she had no obligatory tug towards a midnight finish line any more.

The hour didn’t matter. She wasn’t required to spend her evening watching the clock, counting down minutes instead of enjoying them.

For tonight and the rest of her nights at Arden Place, she could just be .

Hal was making Maeve laugh hysterically with an impression of a troll he’d encountered in the depths of Devon several summers ago and Karma was curled up by her side.

The gloomy, pessimistic feelings didn’t disappear entirely.

But Annie was slightly startled as she realized that, for the first time she could remember, everything in her felt.

..alive. Awake. Mixed. Musical. Her joy was like a blanket that she’d pulled out from a box in the attic – a little unfamiliar, a scent that smelled like a memory, but something soft and comforting to rediscover.

A world away from the emptiness that she usually fought to bat away whenever she found herself standing still.

While these early days without the hex were proving difficult, the quiet orchestra of flora and fauna that flooded the nocturnal meadow was a pacifying soundtrack for her to consider that, while many things appeared to have gone terribly wrong, this moment with Maeve and Hal somehow felt altogether right.

‘Do you want a s’more?’ Maeve asked, barely able to get the words out between the glue of stringy marshmallow that stuck her lips together. She grinned a chocolatey smile and Annie laughed.

‘I would actually like several s’mores. These s’mores are about to solve every single problem in my life,’ Annie said, summoning one of the long sticks that Hal had gathered for marshmallow-charring purposes.

‘Why don’t we do this every night for dinner?’ Maeve asked.

‘Because, contrary to popular belief in this house, you do need to eat a vegetable once in a while,’ Hal said gruffly. ‘Your shared passion for sugar is alarming.’

‘I just care very passionately about all forms of sweet treat,’ Annie said, twiddling her marshmallow in the flames. ‘Also, s’mores is the best lip gloss flavour, so I have double the vested interest.’

‘I didn’t even know that existed,’ Maeve said with a tone of wonder.

‘Oh, I still have so much to teach you, child.’

Maeve responded by prodding Annie’s upper arm with a cooled but half-melted marshmallow on the end of her stick, which earned a squeal in return.

Hal suddenly sprang up from his hay bale and rushed around the fire.

‘Annie! Will you please be...’ Coming up behind Annie, he reached a hand around her waist to move her arm away from the bonfire and grab her stick, which had promptly burst into flames while she was distracted by Maeve.

She gasped – whether more at the flames or the proximity of him pressed against her again, she wasn’t entirely sure.

Hal gave a sigh of relief once he managed to extinguish the marshmallow.

He glanced at her with a lip twitch. ‘Maybe a little burnt. Don’t you own a bakery?’

‘That’s how I like them, actually,’ Annie replied haughtily, trying her best not to laugh. ‘It’s still good, just...extra smoky.’

But the more she resisted, the more the laughter insisted on bursting out of her.

And as laughter here always seemed to be, it was catching.

The sight of Annie’s charred black marshmallow smoking pathetically on the ground had Maeve snorting, then cackling so loudly and freely that it enveloped the whole of Arden Place in an echo.

A moment later, Hal was bent double, too, a deep and hearty sound that made his eyes crinkle with fine lines.

Soon, Annie was laughing so hard that tears began to pool.

Happy ones. Real, happy ones. It was a moment that seemed to wrap warm arms around her.

A twinkle, a glimmer, a memory that she would miss before it had even come to an end. Something precious and truly perfect.

Yes , she thought to herself between laughs. This is it. This is how a life is supposed to feel.

A spray of ash fragments blew from the top of the bonfire in a puff and fell like fireflies.

It took Annie a second to slow her laughing and register the way the ashes flickered as they landed on the grass.

At first, she thought it was the night’s cool breeze, catching the fragments like amber lights.

But then they moved again. Further, more definitely.

They were not just fire ash. Gradually, each translucent fragment pulled together, the scorched edges melting back into one another with trails of smoke.

Eventually, a full piece of paper had unscorched itself to reveal an intricate silver star illustration as a rain of magical sparks scattered at her slippers.

It was a letter. She glanced uncertainly at Hal, then Maeve. The laughter had stopped.

‘Is that...’

Maeve swallowed down the end of her question.

Silence strung itself between the trio as the letter levitated above the bonfire, the envelope catching its glow so self-importantly that it filled Annie with a quick hatred.

It was showing off its power, its ability to make everything vanish. Finally, Hal spoke into the quiet.

‘Don’t open it.’

It might have been the bonfire smoke or the knowledge of what was inside that envelope that made Annie’s eyes smart with sharp, stinging tears.

‘I have to,’ she said quietly.