Page 90 of Rewitched

“Or with me, for that matter?” Artorius added.

Before she could speak any further, the mirror’s picture came into focus. The younger girl from before returned in rippling rainbows. This time, she towered over a boy. Young Artorius again, shuffling backwards on his bottom into a corner as she prowled towards him, a cat relentlessly stalking her prey with hands outstretched, those threatening sparks of magic gathering at her palms.

“It was your idea! This is all your fault!”

“It wasn’t, it wasn’t my idea. It can’t have been. Sav was—”

“You told him to try the spell! You encouraged him to do it!”

“I did, I did! But I didn’t tell him to add more ingredients to the potion, I didn’t tell him to make more fire. We were doing it right, we followed the book by the letter. It can’t be my fault. It can’t be.” He was choking on sobs, spluttering on childlike fear.

“It’s all your fault.” The girl spat fury through tears. “If you’d never suggested the spell in the first place, then she never would have…She wouldn’t be…”

“Please, Morena.”

“No!”

“We have to look after each other now. We have to look after Mother and Alvina and…”

“We do not have to do anything,” she said determinedly. “I’m sorry, Artorius. This is the only way.”

“Please, please, no. Morena, stop!”

“Tenebrae Obscurum.”

Young Morena flipped out a hand, swirling a vortex of magic around the young boy. The spell encircled him completely, rushing his skinny body from every angle with such a force that he was knocked out cold as his head banged against the dirt floor of the barn.

“Artorius is to blame. So it shall be.” Still sobbing, Morena spoke the words into the spell, and the glimmers of magic settled on the ground, sinking into the earth itself.

BELLE SHOT UP from the seat beneath her, backing away slowly from the mirror.

“This cannot be happening.” She couldn’t breathe, pulling at the neck of her dress, cloying and tight.

Artorius looked back at her, bewildered.

“Morena. She’s your sister,” Rune said, his voice awed.

“But that was my nan. Morena hurt her. She did something to her.”

“Tenebrae Obscurum,” Artorius whispered. “The very same memory curse that I tried to inflict upon myself in the depths of Hecate House. No wonder the dark magic didn’t work as I intended. It had already been used upon me years before by Morena. And she used it on your grandmother, too…”

“My grandmother…Your sister?” Belle’s voice was barely audible.

“My brain is running at a faster rate than I can keep up with. But surely this also means that I had, in fact I have…”

“Three sisters,” Rune finished.

“Bronwyn,” Belle breathed.

As though reacting to the name, the mirror morphed again.

BEYOND A SHADOW of a doubt, now that Belle knew it, the teenager was so clearly Morena. The same pinched, pained expression was instantly recognisable. The same sliced, high cheekbones.

And another girl. Small, no older than eleven. A freckled nose. Straw-coloured red hair. Bright green eyes.

As plain as day, the Gowden sisters.

“He deserved it. You said it yourself, Mor. He was far too big for his boots,” young Bronwyn giggled.