Blackheath Resurrection (The Blackheath Witches Book 2) Page 6

  The girls had already made themselves at home, with their clothes unpacked and their vast toiletries stationed around the myriad of snow globes. Now they were lounging on cushions on the floor, flipping through their Maths homework.

  Joel was reclining on one of the beds, pretending to be absorbed in his Algebra textbook as the girls discussed a particularly difficult question. But hidden inside his Maths book was Maximus’s journal, which was proving to be much more interesting than equations.

  Mostly the journal was full of spells and charms, along with a jumble of notes that Joel could not yet make sense of. According to Evan, Chosen One training consisted of building spells strength by strength. Each spell had been marked by a number that corresponded with a strength level. The higher the level, the darker the magic. At the moment, Joel could only handle the lower strength spells, say a Level One or Two. This was in vast contrast to his father, whose forty-something years of experience meant that he could handle more like a Level Three or Four.

  Now Evan, on the other hand—who had been prophesised as the Tomlins family’s Chosen One by some elderly relative that no one had ever met—had been progressing through his training at an alarmingly fast pace while under Maximus’s tutelage. In fact, with proper supervision, Evan could now take on a Level Four spell. The only trouble was, a novice witch like Joel was not adequate supervision for Chosen One training.

  Alas, with no other eligible supervisors in the picture, Joel would have to do.

  He stared down thoughtfully at the journal’s worn pages, each one etched with his father’s familiar scrawl.

  Where are you, Dad?

  He reached out to touch his fingers to his father’s looping handwriting, then drew in a quick breath and pulled his hand away. Maximus wasn’t there, and Joel couldn’t allow himself to feel sentimental over that. Besides, their father-son relationship had been turbulent at the best of times, so Joel certainly wasn’t going to pine for him now. Not when he had work to do. He had to get good, and he had to do it fast.

  And, like Coach Andrews always said, there was only one way to get good at something.

  Practise.

  Joel flipped back through the coarse pages of the journal until he reached a spell he’d noticed that morning. It was rated a Level Two. That was fine; he could handle a Two. Hell, the mind control he’d pulled on Ms Joy that afternoon was probably a Two—or a One-Point-Five, at the very least—and there’d been no problems there.

  Remembrance, the title read. To unearth that which has been lost or forgotten, unlock one’s mind and speak the words aloud: Regression let my thoughts be free. Show me what I need to see.

  Huh, Joel mused. Sounds simple enough.

  It was a long shot, sure, but if there was a chance of piecing together any details about what happened to his mother and Kaden that night at the carnival, then he had to try. Besides, the more he practised Twos, the quicker he’d get to Fours.

  He glanced across the room at Maggie and Isla. Isla was engrossed in an assignment and Maggie was doodling on the open page of her Algebra notebook. She was lying on her stomach, surrounded by the pale pink hue of serenity, and if Joel looked a little deeper, he could see the iridescent gold glow of his own inadvertent protection spell.

  He inhaled slowly. Closing his eyes, he touched his fingertips together.

  “Regression let my thoughts be free,” he murmured under his breath. “Show me what I need to see.”

  On the final word, his body gave way to a shiver. Then he felt the world begin to twist and bend around him, closing in on him until his lungs began to constrict. A bolt of panic rose through him as he realised that his chest was tightening. His breathing began to falter.

  Breathe, he instructed himself. Stay calm.

  In that moment, nothing else existed. Not the girls, or the room, or the mansion at all. He was floating outside of the physical world, only existing within the spell as he concentrated on driving each breath in and out of his lungs.

  His hands balled into fists. So this is a Two, he thought vaguely.

  All of a sudden, there was a popping sound and a vision became clear before his eyes. Not merely a single freeze-frame moment, but a scene playing out before him as though he were watching it on a movie screen.

  He began to feel the heat of a stifling summer’s day unravelling before him. He heard the melodic chirp of birds as they fluttered through the trees, and he smelled the scent of freshly mown grass and honeysuckle. And then he saw it: the Blackheath boarding house, its stained-glass windows glinting in the sun. The huge iron door swung open and Maggie marched out of the sprawling stone building. But it wasn’t Maggie as he knew her now; in the vision, she was just a child, no older than eleven years old.

  “It took you long enough!” came a voice.

  It was his own voice he heard, Joel realised—but a childlike version of it. As if hovering above it all, he could suddenly see himself at eleven years old, too. He was so scrawny looking, with scruffy brown hair and a scrape across his cheek.

  “Honest to God, Maggie, you’re always so late.”

  “Sorry,” she replied wearily. Her sandy blonde braids were loose and uneven. “Joyless is on my case. I couldn’t let her see the you-know-what. She’d confiscate it for sure.”

  Eleven-year-old Joel’s expression clouded. “She didn’t catch you, did she?”

  “No,” the younger Maggie said with a roll of her eyes. “Do you think I’d be here right now if she’d caught me, dingus?”

  Joel grinned. “You’d be in lockdown.”

  “I barely got past her,” Maggie said proudly, folding her arms across her chest. “That old bat’s on me like a flipping hawk.”

  “She even looks like a hawk,” Joel mused, “kind of.”

  Maggie nodded. “And her hawky eyes never take a rest.” She sighed. “I hate the summer. Everyone else goes home, so it’s just me and Joyless.” She pulled a face. “But,” she revised, linking her arm through Joel’s, “I’ve got you, so I suppose that’ll do.”

  Joel smiled at her. “You should count yourself lucky that you’ve got me,” he teased. “Who else would do this with you?”

  Maggie cocked an eyebrow. “Duh. Anyone with a brain.” She opened her shoulder bag to reveal a paper-covered cylinder labelled Destructor Ultimate Firework. “I mean, how could anyone resist this?”

  Joel shrugged his shoulders in concurrence, and together they began walking away from the campus towards the forested terrain of rural Blackheath.

  Time in the spell accelerated, and the twosome’s motions sped up until their play was nothing more than a blur.

  When the memory day’s sunshine was replaced by dusk, time in the spell resumed to normal again. Present-day Joel could do nothing but watch helplessly as the two young children buried the firework in the earth in a clearing in the forest, leaving only the wick sticking out from the grassy ground.

  His younger self withdrew a lighter from his jeans pocket. “This is going to be so good,” he said with a wicked smirk. “You know I heard it flies five-hundred feet per second and shows eight different colours on a clear night?”

  Young Maggie clapped her hands excitedly. “Okay, come on. Light it already, Joel!”

  He knelt on the ground and lit the wick. It began to sizzle and spit sparks onto the grass. Joel edged away and grinned deliriously at Maggie.

  “Stand ba—”

  But before the words had left his mouth, the firework began to dislodge itself from the ground, hissing and screaming. The pair jumped backwards, shielding their eyes from the flying embers. The wayward firework began to spin wildly out of control before coming to a stop on the grass just before it was going to explode.

  And it was pointed right in Maggie’s direction.

  After that, everything seemed to happen at once: Joel raised his arms to protect his face from the imminent explosion; Maggie stumbled to the ground; and the flaming firecracker shot forward with an ear-splitting boom.

&nb
sp; All of a sudden, a fierce gold light poured from Joel and gathered around Maggie. The firework, which was headed straight for her, rebounded off the force field that was now surrounding her and rocketed into the undergrowth.

  But this last part of the spell was not really a memory at all, for Joel had had his eyes squeezed shut the whole time—and until now he’d never known how it was that Maggie had been saved from that explosion.

  “JOEL?” CAME MAGGIE’S voice, reaching him from somewhere distant. “Hel-lo?”

  Feeling himself being slowly drawn out of the spell, Joel forced his eyes open. Just like that, he was back in the mansion, lying on a bed in the girls’ bedroom. Maggie and Isla were standing over him, peering down at his face.

  He sat up woozily. “Hey,” he managed.

  “Hey,” Maggie echoed, smiling carefully. “You fell asleep.”

  “Yeah,” Isla giggled. “And you were talking! You kept saying, ‘Don’t light it, don’t light it’.”

  Joel looked between them, still dazed. “I was dreaming,” he said, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. “Or . . . maybe it was a memory.” He turned to Maggie now. “Do you remember that first summer you were in Blackheath, when we set off the Destructor Ultimate Firework?”

  Maggie frowned for a moment, then broke into an easy laugh. “Oh, yeah! God, Joel, we were nutcases back then. That thing almost hit me!”

  “Yeah.” Joel swallowed. “It was pointed right at you.”

  “I must have had an angel on my shoulder that day,” she breathed. “Or else I probably wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.”

  “Yeah,” Joel said again. He looked down at his hands; they were trembling.

  “Come to think of it, I got really lucky that day,” Maggie added softly.

  Joel looked up, and in that moment he was sure he detected a look of recognition flash across her eyes.

  She knows, he realised.

  He knew it, too. That was the day he started protecting her.

  And he’d never stop.

  LATER THAT EVENING, after Pippin had gone to bed, Joel and Evan stared blankly into the desolate kitchen cupboards. Evan closed the last cupboard door with a slow creak and tapped his chin.

  “We forgot to get food,” he confirmed.

  Joel pursed his lips. “I see that.”

  “We have bread,” said Evan, sounding slightly more positive.

  “We do have bread,” Joel agreed.

  “Do you think they’d want toast for dinner? Do girls like toast?”

  Joel shrugged. “Everyone likes toast, right?”

  “Yeah.” Evan turned to him. “I’ve never met a person who didn’t.”

  The boys’ attention wandered beyond the window. The snow was still falling heavily, twirling and spiralling as the blizzard spun its web.

  “I guess we could try to make it to the store . . .” Evan trailed off, looking to Joel for a response.

  Joel’s nose wrinkled. “I don’t know. It’s miles away, and with this snow . . .”

  Evan laughed under his breath. “A couple of months ago, you were down for dying for this girl. But now, going out in a snow storm is too much?”

  Joel grinned. “That was different,” he said. “No one’s life’s at risk tonight. We won’t starve; we’ve got bread.” He snapped his fingers. “And we’ve got honey.”

  Ainsley padded into the kitchen and plunked down at the table with a low whistle. “That was a tough reading,” he said. “I swear, I know the sordid details of just about everyone’s love life from here to Timbuktu.” He rested his head on the table, blonde curls drooping over his brow. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Toast,” said Evan and Joel in unison.

  “Toast again?” Ainsley groaned. “What happened to the bacon, bros?”

  “We’ll put it on the shopping list for next week,” Evan assured him.

  “We probably should get some fruit and vegetables, too,” Joel added as an afterthought.

  “Yeah, sure,” Ainsley snorted. “And let’s get some freakin’ kale and quinoa while we’re at it.” He lifted his head just enough for his brothers to see him roll his eyes. “Listen, boys,” he went on, eyeballing Evan and Joel as they hovered in front of respective mismatched kitchen appliances, “all I know is this.” He sat up in his chair and looked between them ruefully. “This morning I thought we were coming home with bacon, and instead we came home with two girls. Now, I know that’s some Dear Penthouse kind of material, but I really wanted the bacon.”

  Joel began heaping plates onto the counter. “You wanna walk to the store? Be my guest.”

  Ainsley grunted and dropped his head back down onto the table.

  Evan nudged Joel away from the sink, then turned on the faucet and filled a water jug to the brim. “We should eat in the dining room tonight,” he said. “It’s good to use it when we have guests to entertain.”

  Joel counted the stack of plates. “Yeah, we haven’t been in there since. . .”

  Suddenly the atmosphere in the kitchen shifted, and the three brothers swapped uneasy glances. They hadn’t used the dining room since they’d hosted the Erridox dinner party for The Fallows a few months earlier. Of course, they hadn’t known at the time that the head of the coven, Jefferson Fallows, had any connection to their mother. Nor had they known that Jefferson’s golden boy and most promising recruit, Kaden, was their half-brother.

  Did Dad know? Joel found himself wondering for what felt like the thousandth time.

  How much had Maximus known when he’d opened his home to Jefferson Fallows that evening? And if he had known something, how could he have allowed that man and his strange aberration of humans-turned-witch hybrids into his house at all? The notion of hybrids was bad enough, but knowing that their own mother—Maximus’s estranged wife—had created one?

  Joel shuddered.

  Turning a human into a witch through the Erridox ritual was unnatural and twisted, as far as most covens were concerned. It was wrong, and the Tomlinses knew that. So much so that, as Evan had pointed out, Joel had been willing to sacrifice himself when he’d thought the Fallows family intended to perform the ritual on Maggie.

  The toaster popped and the scent of burned bread wafted through the kitchen. While Evan crammed another few slices of bread into the toaster and reset the timer, Joel and Ainsley ferried plates, cutlery, and finally a tower of toast into the dining room.

  They switched on the chandelier and piled everything on the long mahogany dining table in the centre of the chamber. This was by far the grandest room in the mansion, with its dark wood floorboards and huge floor-to-ceiling beams.

  Joel began pouring water into a set of crystal wine glasses he’d brought in from the kitchen, while Evan arranged the table and Ainsley yelled for the girls.

  A minute later, Maggie’s and Isla’s footsteps echoed throughout the mansion. The girls peeked curiously around the dining room door to where they’d traced the voices.

  “Wow,” Maggie breathed, twisting the end of her braid between her fingers. “Nice.”

  The Tomlins brothers emulated matching proud smiles.

  “This is nice,” Isla agreed as she delicately slipped into one of the high-backed dining chairs. “It’s so different from the rest of your house.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Ainsley snorted.

  Evan cleared his throat. “Anyway, we forgot to go food shopping today.” His gaze darted between the two girls. “But, uh, we’ve got toast. We toasted it and everything.”

  Ainsley dropped into a seat and immediately set to work isolating the least burned pieces of bread from the serving dish. He splayed two slices across his plate and began clumsily buttering them, then took a huge bite whilst whistling a tune to himself.

  “Eat it quick,” he said to the girls, spraying crumbs as he spoke. “It’s getting cold.” More crumbs showered onto the polished mahogany table.

  Joel and Evan shot him searing looks as they took their seats.

  “What?�
�� Ainsley garbled, frowning at his brothers’ expressions.

  Evan turned his attention back to the girls. “Anyway,” he said again, summoning a strained smile. “Please, start.”

  One by one, everyone around the table chose their pieces of toast and began buttering them on their plates. The mood in the dining room relaxed, and soon Joel found his shoulders loosening as he listened to the other four laughing about Coach Andrew’s drill sergeant ways and Ms Joy’s shrill manner.

  “Layyy-deees,” Maggie said in an exaggerated impression of the haughty teacher. “Lights out at eleven o’clock, sharp.”

  Isla erupted into giggles, and Evan and Ainsley laughed along with them.

  This is okay, Joel thought, smiling to himself.

  Actually, it was better than okay. It was fun. Which was something the Tomlins boys had been lacking lately. They never sat down to dinner together, and all of their conversation seemed dark these days. They were always worrying about something, be it Maximus, or The Fallows, or their mother.

  In fact, Joel realised, he’d been so preoccupied with worrying lately that things between him and Maggie had taken a back seat. Before Maximus left, Joel and Maggie had been getting so close. Joel cared about her, and he wanted to stay close with her. But with everything else going on, how could he?

  Why not, though? he wondered now, finding himself watching her from across the table. There’s no reason why I can’t still get close to her.

  Maggie was special; he’d known it way back when they were eleven years old, and he knew it now. So why did he keep letting her slip away from him? Until recently, there had been huge chunks of time—years, even—when they hadn’t even spoken. How had he let that happen? What if it happened again?

  And how much longer would she stick around waiting?

  His stomach knotted at the thought.

  All of a sudden, there was a buzzing sound and a phone began vibrating on the table.