Witch (12 page)

I felt a bit unnerved. My newly magical world was becoming increasingly surreal. The others seemed a bit spooked, too; we all stood there in silence until eventually Bryce plucked up the courage to speak. ‘Brenda, we want to help Vania reverse her spell,' he said.

‘A spell can only be broken by the person who cast it.' Brenda looked at me as she spoke. ‘And just as the spell had to be cast with intention, it must be broken with intention. So, tell me yourself, Vania, do you wish to break your wayward spell?'

‘Yes, I do,' I said earnestly.

‘Why?' Brenda asked.

I felt hot and pressured, as all eyes were on me.

Why did I want to break it? Just to appease my friends and follow the ‘rules' of spell-casting? When Brenda had given me my first lesson she'd said that you could not cast a spell on another without their consent. It was the number one spell-casting rule. But weren't rules made to be broken? Matt had spat on me – surely that was a good enough reason for revenge. Then again, revenge hadn't been that sweet. It had led to a disgusting and embarrassing first kiss. I had always hoped that my first kiss would be romantic and special. Even worse, I hadn't made Bryce jealous, I had just made him disappointed in me. That sucked worse than Matt spitting on me.

‘I want to reverse my spell because I don't want a creep like Matt to be in love with me,' I said. I knew it was a lame reason, but I didn't want to blab everything I was thinking and make more of a fool of myself than I already had.

‘I hope you've learned a valuable lesson here, Vania,' Brenda said sternly. ‘Enchanted love rarely brings rewards, because magic is powered by the energy you put into it.

You were angry and unhappy when you cast the spell on Matt, so even though it was a love spell, it just brought more reasons to be angry and unhappy. So be careful what you wish for and, more importantly, how you are feeling when you wish for it.'

‘So how do we reverse this dodgy spell?' Dean asked enthusiastically. After his initial hesitation when we'd started our club, he was now really embracing his inner shaman.

‘I've made all the preparations,' Brenda said. ‘Thirteen black candles in a circle will banish the negative energy this spell has harnessed and is using to function, and the salt in that bucket will purify Vania and free her from any karmic fallout.'

‘What do I have to do? Tip it over myself?' I joked.

‘Actually, no,' Brenda said, ‘we'll be throwing it at you.' She didn't seem at all amused.

Bryce burst out laughing. ‘Good one!'

I turned and glared at him, while the twins giggled and Dean looked sympathetic. ‘Don't worry, Vania, this will be over and done with before you know it. Right?' he asked, turning to Brenda.

Brenda looked forbidding as she stepped forward and picked up the bucket with both hands. ‘A reversal is no laughing matter. It will take as long as it takes.'

Everyone was silent.

‘Let's do it. I'm ready,' I said.

Brenda carried the bucket outside the circle, nodding reassuringly as she walked past me, her caftan billowing around her body. ‘Vania, take a handful of salt and sit in the centre of the circle,' she ordered. ‘The rest of you can each take two handfuls of salt and then choose one of the compass points to stand on. I will stand on the point of infinity.'

The twins, Dean and Bryce got their salt and stood on the compass points, shifting and shuffling their feet around. Bryce was staring at me with a strange intensity, like he was already zoning out and casting some kind of anti-magic. I sat in the centre, cross-legged on the hard floor.

There was a loud click as Brenda switched off the lights. The room went dark. Only a sliver of light gleamed under the blind that covered the large window at the front of the cafe. I heard Brenda's caftan swishing as she moved past me and stopped on the point with the sideways figure-eight – the point of infinity – and then silence.

After a few moments, Brenda clapped her hands loudly and the wicks of all thirteen candles leapt into flame.

‘Whoa!' I gasped.

‘Vania, sprinkle salt around you on the floor in a circle,' she commanded.

I let the salt trickle from my hand, swooping it in a semicircle in front of me before swinging around and closing the circle behind me.

‘Magic-makers and spell-takers . . .' Brenda's voice was so loud it rang in my ears. ‘Close your eyes and focus on the task at hand, for we must as one undo what's done by the folly of our brethren's hand.'

I closed my eyes in shame. All this trouble because of my stupid spell! But I was also excited by the drama of it all. What was going to happen next?

‘Salt,' bellowed Brenda, ‘squeezed from the womb of our Mother Sea, dissolve all impurities. Reverse the magical deed!'

Uh oh
, I thought, and I squeezed my eyes and lips shut.

I had expected the salt to be dry and sting, but it seemed to fall in slow motion, making it feel more like a shower of snow, cold and damp, swirling around me in a spiralling mist.

I realised I could no longer feel the floor of the cafe beneath me. It was like I was suspended on invisible wires over a bottomless black pit. I suddenly felt really scared and tried to call out, but my throat made no sound. I was being sucked down into a whirlpool, and I couldn't breathe. I clawed at the air around me, my hands brushed against solid objects that were flapping about my head. They felt like bat wings, and I swatted at them frantically. The air was filled with screeching and squealing. I was losing my mind! I had to hold on to something – a thought, a concept, anything other than this nameless terror that was smothering me. What was I doing? Why was I here?

Images from the previous night on the clifftop flooded my mind, and I finally remembered the wayward spell I wanted to reverse. I again experienced the feelings of revenge and frustration and insecurity that had fuelled the spell. They built up into an enormous wave inside me and then rushed out like a tsunami flooding into the cavernous space underneath me, filling the pit until I was no longer suspended. Instead I was floating on top of it all. I felt precariously cradled for a moment, and I breathed a sigh of relief – the first sound I could hear myself make. I took another deep breath, and then I felt . . . safe. The bats' wings were gone and the screeching sounds were replaced by a hum, like bees, far away – it was soothing, and the sound drew me to it until I opened my eyes and saw that I was back in the room, in the centre of the circle, covered in salt.

I shook my head and the salt flew off me like dandruff. Looking around, I tried to make out the faces of my coven and Brenda behind the glow from the candles. They came into view slowly, their faces glistening in the candlelight and their eyes closed. Their hands were stretched towards the circle, towards me, and the buzz was coming from them as they hummed in harmony.

My legs had gone to sleep. I moved to release the pins and needles gathering in my calves. At the rustling of my clothes, Brenda's seeing eye shot open (her other had never closed) and she smiled and clapped her hands once, sharply. Everyone's hands dropped and eyes opened.

‘And so you're back,' Brenda said, sounding pleased. ‘That didn't take as long as I'd thought it might.'

‘How long did it take?' I asked. Dean looked at his wristwatch and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

‘How long?' I asked impatiently.

‘An hour and fifteen minutes,' he said.

‘We were standing here all that time?' Amelia and Alyssa said.

‘No wonder my feet are numb,' said Bryce, shifting from one foot to the other.

‘Oh, you're all babies,' exclaimed Brenda. ‘Trust me, that was a quick reversal. They can take hours. You did very well, Vania. You were fearless and acknowledged your mistake and were willing to learn from it. The energies flowed unimpeded, and you have successfully vanquished your spell. Matt is free and, just as importantly, so are you.'

‘Will Matt remember anything?' I asked. Now that it was over I felt a tinge of regret that there would be no red roses waiting at school for me the next morning.

‘You'll be invisible to him now. He won't seek you out or insult you. And no one else will remember what happened, either.'

I nodded and stood up. I was shaky. Dean put out his hand to steady me.

‘And now it is time for feasting, to ground any excess magic,' Brenda announced. She walked over to the counter and switched on the light.

Alyssa and Amelia started brushing salt off me. ‘Are you okay, Vania? How do you feel?' they asked together.

‘It was intense and kind of scary,' I admitted. ‘I felt like

I went to another place, and it was all weird energy and noise, so it was hard to know what was really going on. What was it like for you?'

‘Well, Brenda told us to start humming and hold our hands out,' Alyssa said.

‘And to think about sending you white light for healing,' finished Amelia.

‘I kept feeling like someone was tapping me on the shoulder,' Bryce added, ‘but I didn't want to turn around and break what we were doing for you.'

‘There were spirits in the room,' Brenda said. ‘I felt them, too. You are definitely a ghost magnet, Bryce. I sensed that they wanted to help, but I'm glad you stayed focused. The depth of your caring was one of the strongest forces in our energy spiral.'

The depth of his caring? What did that mean exactly? I snuck a look at Bryce, but he'd sat down in a chair with his back to me.

Brenda placed a large plate of cookies on the counter, followed by a big jug of iced tea. We tucked into the food hungrily. I was glad to be eating – it made everything seem solid and normal again as we chatted about other things.

‘You know, I feel stupid for making us spend so much time on this stuff with Matt when we've got so many other things to focus on, like solving the woman of Queen's Cross mystery,' I said.

‘How are you all doing with that?' Brenda looked around the table.

‘In our next class we're going to hit the school library and see if we can find anything on the web,' said Bryce.

‘You're not tempted to contact her ghost?' Brenda asked.

‘We've agreed not to use our magical powers just yet to solve this,' Amelia said.

I sat there chewing and thinking about the other mystery I wanted to solve – Mr Barrow's relentless persecution of me. But I definitely didn't want to bring any more of my personal problems to the table tonight.

After a while I looked over to the star painted on the floor. The candles had burned down, and there was salt everywhere – it was a mess.

I looked to the rest of the coven. ‘We're going to have to go home soon, guys – maybe we'd better start cleaning this place up,' I said.

‘Actually, you will clean up alone, Vania,' Brenda said. ‘One must always clean up their own mess.'

I rose out of my chair, resigned. ‘All right, have you got a broom?' I asked.

‘Brooms are not for cleaning!' exclaimed Brenda.

I looked at her, confused. ‘What do you use to clean, then?'

‘A vacuum cleaner, of course. And don't forget to snuff the candles, don't blow them out. Otherwise you'll blow away the magic.'

The twins, Bryce and Dean said goodnight and headed out as I plugged in the vacuum cleaner. My skin felt itchy from the granules of salt that had crept under my clothes. I hurried to finish so I could go home and have a shower.

Finally the salt was sucked up, the candle remains stacked neatly on the side bench and the rugs straightened. Brenda helped me with the tables and chairs. We worked together in silence, and it wasn't until everything was back in its normal place that she spoke.

‘You have powerful magic in you, Vania,' she said, ‘and I think you've only begun to scratch the surface.'

I thought for a moment about the black feeling that lurked inside me, especially when I was angry. I knew that was dark magic, and I wanted to understand it, but I didn't want it to control me.

I wanted to know what light there was inside me, too. I knew I still had a lot to learn before I understood it all.

Nine

The next morning I hesitated before getting on the bus. I was dreading the idea of facing Matt Rock. It occurred to me, too late, that I could've caught my old bus and avoided him.

The previous night at the Purple Raven seemed like a bizarre dream now. In fact, every time I experienced something magical it felt like an attack of my imagination afterwards. Had all of that really happened?

‘Hurry up, missy. I haven't got all day,' the bus driver snapped. He was always grumpy and I missed the cute young driver from my old bus, who always smiled at me. Then again, he also looked like a total stoner so I couldn't take the smile personally.

I figured I might as well get on with it – if I was going down, at least it would be in a blaze of glory – so I lifted my chin and walked proudly up the stairs. Matt was sitting in the second row from the back on the right, gazing out the window with a bored look on his face. He didn't even glance at me.

I slid into a row towards the front. I pulled out my new favourite book, a giant tome called
Crystallography Made
Clear
, and perched it on my knee, but despite my best intentions I barely read a word, because I was too busy surreptitiously looking over at Matt. He didn't so much as look at me during the whole trip.

By the time we pulled up to Summerland High I was convinced the reversal spell had worked. But there was one final test.

I waited in my seat until Matt walked down the aisle, and at the last possible moment I stuck out my foot. His leg caught it and he stumbled. But he still didn't acknowledge my presence, not even to yell some expletive at me. It was like he didn't even know I existed.

Oh well, I was just going to have to get red roses from someone else one day.