Page 29

‘Do you think this is how serial killers start out?’ Temperance asked, poking Mark’s jacket down again as it tried rising to the surface, like it was trying to climb out of its poisoned bath and run for help.

A tin bucket in the back garden might not have been as legitimate as their old-school witches’ cauldron, but both sisters were a bit nervous about leaving anything noxious behind on the ancient cast iron pot.

‘You’re not meditating , Tee,’ Susie growled quietly.

‘F said meditating on what we want Mark to be was important. You can’t just wait to read what’s already there, like we usually do.

So stick to the mantra: meek, mild, as ambitious as a child .

That’s what I’m doing. That’s how we take this sod down several hundred pegs.

’ She straightened her posture, sitting on a beaten-up beanbag out in the small garden behind their house.

Susie went back to her mediation, looping the mantra over and over in her head.

Meek, mild, as ambitious as a child. Meek, mild, as ambitious as a child .

She imagined the leaves of the belladonna plant reaching out under the water, twisting tightly around the sleeves of Mark’s jacket, like a kraken about to drown a wooden ship.

F seemed mighty sure that this plant had extreme powers, so Susie was going to trust that it would leech the confidence out of Mark, if she encouraged it in just the right way.

She screwed her eyes even more tightly shut, feeling a muscle twitch along her jaw as she played out imaginary scenes in her mind, like a twisted Geppetto setting his puppets up to fail.

Mark would be nervously stuttering and stammering through a business pitch, the PowerPoint fails to load, his fly is undone.

Eventually, he is laughed out of the room in disgrace.

He’s carrying a box of office supplies out of a building in a cardboard box, dejected and despairing.

No one will return his calls. He sends off email after email but they fall into a void of nothing. He’s finished, and he knows it.

Susie stuck her tongue into her cheek. She didn’t want him to starve, just stay the hell away from ambitious property development.

Mark is retraining as an estate agent. He takes a job in London, driving a Mini and wearing a cheap suit. He can pay his bills. But loses all his friends. And self-worth . And dies single .

OK, that last bit is too much. But the suits are definitely shiny and itchy.

But a hero can’t just take out the bad guy, Susie knew, they had to shore their castle up from any other attacks. Taking deep breaths from the centre of her being, Susie dropped her head onto her chest, sitting deeper into her subconscious and the images she was casting out into the universe.

She imagined good luck raining down on East Prawle, like a glittering summer shower. It touched the buildings, the locals, the beaches. The people there are happy and unchanged. Their lives will go on as they always have, undisturbed by developers. A precious pearl still in its oyster shell.

Usually when Susie read an emotion in something, the pictures she saw would be exactly as real life, if slightly cloudy or grainy like a badly-preserved family video.

But as she was concocting all these visions from scratch, they took on big, bold cartoonish colours.

Everything in her mind’s eye was clear and vibrant as she willed it into being.

There was a tingle in her fingertips, just like she had when reading other people’s clothes, but it was hotter and more spikey than usual.

More like a static shock than a warm bath, but Susie chose to see that as a good sign that the belladonna was really working.

‘The Fairy Princess!’ a sweet little voice gasped from behind them, breaking Susie from her trance. Temperance turned to see one of her fairy minions from the festival looking though an upstairs window of the holiday cottage next door.

‘Hello again, Martha!’

‘Where is your fairy dress today?’

Temperance looked down at her striped jersey skirt and strappy vest. ‘I only wear it for very special fairy occasions, with my special apprentices. Otherwise, I keep it secret, hidden behind a rainbow.’ She tapped the side of her nose and the little girl gave a thumbs up.

‘Is that a fairy potion in your bucket?’

‘ That sounds really inappropriate ,’ Susie whispered.

Temperance cut over her, quickly. ‘Not today, just . . . dying some clothes a new colour.’ She used the garden cane she was stirring the bucket with to lift the jacket out briefly, the purple water sloshing over the side a little, causing Susie to jump.

Martha peered down. ‘Is it for your good fairy friend? ’

‘Huh?’

‘Bad Fairy who we made good. He picked strawberries with you, too. I’ve seen him surfing at the beach. I think,’ she checked over her shoulders, ‘that he’s a mermaid as well. But that’s between us.’ She stuck her finger up her nose twice.

Temperance gave a light-hearted shrug. ‘Who knows what he is, love! He’s certainly a mystery to me. Is that your mum calling? You’d better go!’ She waved and turned back to the bucket, submerging the leather jacket once more, forcing it into the murky water.

‘It’s weird with Abel,’ Susie said. ‘Sometimes I see these flashes of the old Miagi and then – whoosh – the shutters come down. He can be fun at the pub with Margie, but then a vibe killer out in Salcombe with us. He’s someone totally different these days.

Abel used to be so fun, so up for anything.

It’s weird that we still don’t know why he left like that.

I can’t get anything out of him. Back in the day, he was pretty much,’ she folded her arms, tucking her hands into her armpits, ‘a brother to me.’

‘Maybe he was just better at fooling us all when we were younger. Maybe this is the real him and he just can’t be arsed to put a gloss on it anymore.’

Susie flicked her eyes to Temperance’s. ‘You can’t mean that!

You guys were thick as thieves – and he was your first crush!

And clearly you loved him enough, once upon a time, that when you cast out for your true love, that’s who the universe brought your way.

Him. Abel . That can’t have all been smoke and mirrors on his side. He must have cared about you too, Tee.’

Temperance blew a long breath out through her nose.

She felt something in her stomach tighten.

She didn’t want to believe it either, not really, but time and again since Abel had come back to East Prawle, he’d proved that he felt nothing for Temperance.

Nothing for her now and not even a shred of warmth for what they’d once had together all those years ago.

Maybe it was time to share with Susie the only proof she had.

Temperance turned on her heel and stalked into the house.

Five minutes later, she returned with a sky-blue hoodie, a washed-out transfer of a white seahorse on the back. Temperance handed it to her little sister, her forehead wrinkled. ‘Read this for me. What do you feel?’

Instantly, as she took the hoodie, Susie’s mouth turned right down at the corners. Her shoulders hunched over as if she’d been winded in the stomach.

The memory dragged her in, even before she was ready for it.

Sickness swilling at the pit of her being: bitter, angry.

A shameful feeling of disgust. A heart-thumping panic to run away, to get far away from this awful mess.

Two teenagers sat in the pub garden, knees touching on a bench, then lips meeting nervously.

But from the point at which they kiss, thick black ripples are radiating out around them, turning the picture grey and muddy.

Abel is packing a bag now, Diane watching him anxiously, her words muddled and warped, indistinguishable.

Susie opened her eyes. ‘Shit!’ She looked dead at Temperance. ‘You’re there, Tee! You’re kissing . . . you’re kissing Abe! But it’s all ringed in this dark disgust. What . . . what is this?’

Sharp jabs stung her fingertips where she would usually feel a warming buzz after reading. Susie threw the jumper down onto the scrubby grass, pushing it a further foot away with her powers so that it turned a somersault in the air. She needed as much distance as possible from this toxic memory .

‘The night Abel left, I’d gone to meet him at the bus shelter like we’d planned.

He wasn’t there but he’d left his hoodie behind, with a note.

The note said he was sorry, he had to go, but when I picked that up, I knew the truth of it.

He was so grossed out and embarrassed by the fact we’d kissed that he couldn’t bear for anyone to know, or to face me again. So he left.’

‘Oh, Tee, Tee,’ Susie jumped up and wrapped her arms around her sister, cinching her into a tight hug. ‘I don’t . . . I can’t believe it. Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’

Temperance pulled back. ‘You were so little and you were already heartbroken that he’d gone.

Besides, it was pretty hard to have a frank conversation when I spent three weeks in my room ugly-crying.

’ She nudged the hoodie with her sandal.

‘It was the first thing I ever read with magic, can you believe it? It taught me how powerful those leftover emotions can be. Not so good for my ego, though.’ She gave a hollow sort of laugh that fell flatly between them.

Susie gasped. ‘You’ve kept it all this time? We could have cleaned it. Or burnt it at the very least. Temps, why would you hang onto something like this?’