The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — Chapter no 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

he trip up north started uneventfully. By the time Jamie and Mika left Nowhere House in his car, the sky was the kind of blinding white thatT promised snow (but this was Norfolk, so it probably wouldn’t deliver on that promise).

Jamie had been more curious about Mika’s speed spell than he’d let on, especially considering they were taking his car and he was the person behind the wheel who had to somehow cover just under three hundred miles in a little over an hour. When he said this to her, though, she explained that the term was a bit of a misnomer.

“It’s tidy and alliterative, calling it a speed spell,” she said, toying with a chocolate bar (she’d already made a start on the snacks Lucie had stuffed the car with). “But it would probably be more correct to call it a spell that bends the rules of space and time. Which is much more of a mouthful.”

“So it won’t make the car go faster?”

“Not quite,” she said. “It’s more like, at intervals, the car will sort of bend the space between one point and the next. Like this.” She dropped the chocolate bar back into the box of snacks and plucked a piece of luminous gold thread out of the air. He glanced over, keeping one eye on the winding road ahead. “Let’s say this thread is the distance between Norfolk and the Midlands. If I stretch it taut and you run your finger along it, it’ll take you a few seconds to get from one end to the other. But if I fold the thread and put the ends together, like this, your finger will get from one end to the other almost instantaneously.”

“So you’ll have to cast the spell more than once?”

“Probably a few times each way,” Mika replied. “It’s easier to bend fifty miles a few times than it is to bend two hundred miles all at once, if that

makes sense.” She vanished the gold thread and retrieved her chocolate, smiling. “Tiny bites, not one ginormous gobble.”

“Tell Terracotta that,” said Jamie wryly. “You can laugh now, but have you ever seen her eat a cheeseburger? It’s downright terrifying, like watching a python unhinge its jaw.”

He saw the speed spell in action about ten minutes later, and almost didn’t notice. Mika told him that was because he was inside the spelled car, so to him, it felt like he’d just driven down one quiet country lane and turned into another. Only the satnav built into his car, scrambling to recalculate the route, gave away just how much distance they’d covered.

They paused in a thick, brambly wood for twenty minutes so that Mika could gather a few of the potion ingredients she hadn’t been able to forage at Nowhere House like she’d planned. Jamie offered to help, so Mika pointed out what she needed: chestnuts, sloe berries, rosehips, honeysuckle, winter heather, and any winter-blooming flower.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back to the car?” she asked, sitting cross-legged on the mossy forest floor to snip stalks of heather. “You’re not

cold? Or bored?”

“No.”

“See, I actually believe you,” she said merrily. “Because you’re kind, not nice. You’d never say you weren’t bored to be polite.”

“You’re the only person I know who says the word nice like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not a bad thing at all, except when it’s all there is. A lot of nice people stop being nice when they don’t get exactly what they want.” She got back up and walked a couple of steps ahead of him, so he couldn’t see her expression as she added: “When I’m around people like that, I feel like curling up into a little ball, like a hedgehog. I’ve been taught all my life not to draw attention to myself, not to make people angry, not to let anyone notice how peculiar I am. Sometimes, even now, I have to remind myself that I’m stronger than they think. That I have power.” She turned her head and smiled over her shoulder at him. “You can’t see it, but there’s gold dust

curling like smoke all around us. It’s a constant reminder that even when I’m alone and afraid, I always have magic.”

It was such an unexpected confession that Jamie heard himself give her one in return: “I had my father’s journals. After he died, when I was alone and afraid, those pages covered in his handwriting got me to the other side of it.”

Her smile right then was brighter than the fucking sun, and he had to look away, pretending there was nothing on his mind apart from a very pressing need to find honeysuckle.

Back in the car, Mika cast another speed spell, demolished another chocolate bar, and started typing furiously in the Notes app of her phone.

She looked up, rubbed her cheek absently, muttered something under her breath, and then went back to typing.

Jamie was fascinated by this opaque process, and had to remind himself to pay attention to the road. Mika looked up at him after a while and gave him a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I got distracted.”

“You don’t have to be sorry for that. What were you doing?”

“I noticed a pink camellia as we left the woods,” she explained, her eyes lighting up with an infectious excitement he’d noticed before, on those late nights when she’d been collecting pieces of stars or brewing a potion. “You know how some people think flowers have meanings? Well, I’ve heard that a pink camellia means you miss someone. And it got me thinking about whether I could use that. Like maybe if I combined the essence of a pink camellia with white lily petals, moonlight, and something else I haven’t yet figured out, I could create a potion or tea that would soften that feeling of missing someone.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a smile. “You know, I’ve never heard the kids talk about magic the way you do.”

“Give them time,” Mika said fondly. “They’re only just learning not to be afraid of their power. Of course, they might never feel the same way I do. Witches don’t always fall in love with magic. Like anybody else, we each have our own relationships with our identities and our power.”

“What about the rest of the Very Secret Society of Witches?”

“I don’t know any of the others very well, but based on what they’ve said over the years, it sounds like we’ve all chosen to live our lives in very different ways. One of us just got divorced, and another is about to get married, and another has been happily married for thirty years or so. I know a witch who works as a barrister, and one who has her own patisserie, and another who teaches at a primary school.” Mika winced, as if struck by an unhappy notion: “Honestly, Primrose is the one I’m probably most like.”

Jamie gave her an incredulous look, trying to match warm, merry Mika with the gorgon he assumed Primrose was. “Why?”

“In all the time I’ve known her, she’s been alone,” Mika said. “Like me.

And she likes to say it’s because of the Rules and the Sacrifices We Must Make for the Good of All, but I know it’s more than that. Zuzanna, the witch who has been married for thirty years, says that she almost never does any spellwork at home because her husband doesn’t know the truth about her. She doesn’t seem to mind at all. Or take Sophie, the teacher. She lives alone, but she hardly ever uses her power and she says it’s because she’s just not that interested in it. But Primrose and me, we’re not like that. We need magic the way we need to breathe.”

“I get it,” Jamie said. “That’s kind of how I feel about books. When Lillian said she needed someone to run the library, I jumped at it.”

“I bet. I’m glad you get to work with the thing you love.”

There was a wistful note in her voice. It tugged at his heartstrings, but all he did was nod.

“I think that’s why I’ve never settled down to any one kind of work,”

Mika mused. “Why I’ve cleaned houses and waited tables and served drinks behind bars. It’s not just because they’re temporary jobs I can find and leave easily. It’s because magic is the only work I’ve ever been passionate about.”

“And what would you do if you could?” Jamie asked. “If being a witch were a job, what would it look like?”

Mika gave him a doubtful look. “Do you actually want to know?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t, Mika. I’m not nice, remember?”

That made her smile. As she considered her answer, her forehead creased in a way that was, frankly, adorable. “I’m not sure. I think about it all the time, but I suppose I’ve never really let myself get too attached to any one idea.” Her face softened. “Except for this one: I used to dream about having my very own enchanted tea and potion shop. A small, storybook kind of place, with potions and jars of tea leaves on the shelves, and a mortar and pestle on the counter, and a cauldron bubbling away.”

The instant she said it, he heard how right it was, how her. And he heard something else, too. How, underneath the love of magic and the joy of living without having to hide who she was, what she wanted more than anything was people. Visitors she could befriend, friends she could help, a family she could share the thing she loved with.

“That was the place you created in your videos.” Her alter ego. “I only watched one of them, but I remember the cauldron, and the potions in the background, and you, the wise and mischievous witch.”

She laughed. “I suppose it was the closest I was ever going to get to the

real thing.”

“You could make it happen, you know.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Not here. Not yet.”

Quiet descended over the car. Jamie could tell she had something on her mind, so he waited patiently.

“Sometimes,” Mika said after a moment, “I wonder what it’s like to be a witch in other places in the world. Like in India, where I was born, or in America or Norway or Egypt. Wherever. I sometimes think about the ugly things, like I wonder if witches are still hunted in places with more deeply rooted superstitions, but mostly, I think about families and communities. Is there a place out there where witches live their lives in the open? Are there entire communities where the townspeople know about the friendly local witch, who maybe works with the friendly local doctor so that, together, they can fix pretty much anything?” She smiled a little sheepishly, like she expected him to laugh at her, but it was the furthest thing from his mind. “I suppose that place, if it exists, is where I might be able to have my tea and potion shop.”

“You could go looking for it.”

At that, she shook her head decisively. “I don’t think so. I like learning about other places, and I’d love to find out more about witches in other parts of the world, but . . .”

When she hesitated, Jamie filled in the gaps. “But you’ve spent so much of your life moving around, you just want somewhere you can stay put?”

She nodded, her eyes wide with surprise, like she couldn’t quite believe he’d understood this about her. “More than anything, I just want one place I can be myself. I just want a home.”

“Home is worth finding,” he said quietly. “Even if it takes a while.”

“Did you?”

He’d known that was coming, but still, all the muscles in his body locked up. “Yes. I did.”

She didn’t say anything else for a while, and when she did, her voice was soft. “Why did you leave Belfast?”

There had been a time when the idea of opening up to her had been absurd, but now he found that he wanted to. There were truths he hadn’t told her, and they lived in a hollow space inside his chest that echoed with guilt and regret, but maybe this was one truth he could share.

He let out a slow breath, and looked for the least thorny path through his past. It helped that she wasn’t looking at him, that she’d turned her eyes to the window. “My dad was a rough, burly man,” he said. “Rough like he was scruffy and salt of the earth-ish, not rough like he was mean. He was the gentlest, sweetest man you’ll ever meet. And you’ve met Ken.” She smiled.

He rolled his shoulders, trying to unknot the tension in them. “I have two older brothers, but I was his favourite of the three of us. I’m not sure why, because Ryan and Matt were burly, boisterous copies of him, but they didn’t have his heart. They were a fair bit older than me. They never liked me. It was partly because I came along late, and partly because I was small, skinny, and preferred to stay indoors with a book rather than go outside and play football or rugby with the other boys. More than anything, though, it was because Dad liked me best. He preferred playing football and rugby, but he’d stay in with me, let me ramble on about my favourite books.”

“It sounds like he loved you very much.”

“When Dad was alive, Ryan and Matt pretty much just pretended I didn’t exist. Then, when I was twelve, Dad died. It was an accident at work. He was a builder.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure losing him just about killed you.”

“Well, it didn’t,” said Jamie, with dark humour. “So my brothers did

their best to finish the job.”

Dark, long-lashed eyes grew wide.

His voice was wooden. “It was the usual kind of stuff. They’d rip up my books. They’d fuck up my room because they knew how much the mess bothered me. They’d hide Dad’s journals from me.” He took a deep breath.

“They’d use Dad’s old belts and take it in turns to hit me with them. They’d laugh the whole time because they were his belts and they’d say it was the same as if he’d done it.”

“That’s not what anyone would call the usual kind of stuff,” Mika said passionately. The sheen of unshed tears in her eyes had turned into a fearsome rage. “And you lived like this for four whole years before you

left?”

He shrugged.

“Where was your mother while all this was going on?”

“Dad was the light of her life,” Jamie said. His teeth were clenched so hard, they ached. “My brothers had always been her favourites because they looked just like him. After he died, she fell apart. She was a ghost. She barely got out of bed, barely ate, barely spoke. She couldn’t do anything for me.” He smiled mirthlessly. “The day I came here, Lucie insisted on calling Mum to tell her I was safe. When she got off the phone, she told me Mum sounded relieved that I was gone. I think she knew I was better off.”

“You know that’s massively messed up, right?” Mika said.

He switched lanes, jerking the wheel a little too aggressively. “It wasn’t her fault. She was in pain.”

“So were you. She should have protected you.”

Jamie’s teeth snapped together. He wished he hadn’t said anything. He was too raw for her unrelenting honesty. “She was—”

“Grieving,” Mika finished for him, and the gentleness of her voice was almost worse than her anger. “Heartbroken. Depressed. I do understand

that. But—”

“Mika, just stop, okay?”

“You were her family. She had a responsibility to all of you.”

“Remind me,” Jamie heard himself say as if from very far away, his voice low and icy and alien. “What exactly do you know about families?”

It was a knife that went right between her ribs, a thrust that drew blood.

And hadn’t he meant it to? Hadn’t he wanted her to bleed the way he was bleeding?

So why, then, did he wish he could take it back?

Mika’s face was very pale, but she looked him straight in the eye. “It’s true that I have never had a family,” she said, and the tremor in her otherwise tight, even voice almost undid him. “I don’t think I have ever been loved by anybody. But I would argue that, despite what you think, that makes me uniquely qualified to know what it is to be treated poorly, and it means I know what I’m talking about when I say you deserved better. You deserve better.”

His voice cracked. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said quietly. Her arms were tightly folded across her chest, but some of the colour came back into her face as she gave him a faint smile. “I’m sorry, too. You asked me to stop, and I didn’t. I should have.”

“It doesn’t excuse what I said.”

“Can I just ask one thing?”

“You want to know why we’re going today,” Jamie guessed.

She nodded.

“I haven’t seen any of them since I left Belfast. I’ve talked to my mother a few times over the years, but she’s never asked me to meet her before. She said she wanted to, but she always chickened out. Until now, with the whole sixtieth birthday thing giving her a push. I think she thought I’d refuse to go, but I didn’t. She’s my mother, and I left her at a time when she was in pieces. I owe her this.”

The expression on Mika’s face told him she had some choice words for him in response to that, but she didn’t say them. Instead, with heroic effort, she only said, “And your brothers? They’ll be there, too, won’t they?”

“I don’t think about them much these days, but when I do, they always seem so large.” He shrugged. “You know how when we’re little, we’re afraid of monsters under our beds? We think they’re huge and terrifying, but then we turn on the light and look and all we see are a few cobwebs.”

“And you’re hoping that’s what today will be like?”

“Pretty much,” Jamie said. “It feels like the least I can do for the boy who was afraid of what was under his bed. I’m hoping that when I see the monsters today, they’ll just be cobwebs.”

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