Page 18 of Uncharmed

Annie nodded back in unison, a perfectly serene smile slowly appearing across her face – her default reaction in a crisis. ‘Okay. This is fine. This is absolutely fine. You bring your little friend there . . . and I will fix all of this. Somehow.’ Her smile twitched ever so slightly.

‘But . . . I just turned Jessica into an orange,’ Maeve replied, a little too loudly. Annie counted her lucky stars that the room was still raucous. Nobody seemed to have noticed in the darkness that Jessica had suddenly vanished with a distinct scent of smoke and citrus fruit.

‘Shhh. Yes, it would appear that you have indeed managed that. But that’s okay. That’s fine,’ Annie said calmly, placing a hand on Maeve’s shoulder to steer her. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’

Fortunately, in her stupor, Maeve blindly followed.

In the dark canteen, Annie was thankful that nobody seemed to notice the woman in the hot-pink power suit and the teenage girl clutching an orange striding towards the exit. Annie didn’t pay any of them much mind any more, focused only on making sure that Maeve was safely away.

Still, Annie couldn’t help but notice the boy who’d muttered the deplorable nicknames for Maeve. He was busy shoving another poor boy into a headlock, taking full advantage of the chance to get away with whatever he wanted. He earned a very sharp scowl, along with an almost imperceptible turn of a wrist. Without Splendidus Infernum to quiet her emotions, to take the sting out of something as imperfect as anger, for instance, the decision was made before Annie could talk herself out of it.

It was unfortunate that the poor boy would find himself with uncontrollable itching in the most unideal of orifices for the next couple of weeks, but it simply couldn’t be helped. Magic worked in such unpredictable ways.

Chapter Eight

CHANGE OF PLAN

‘I can fix all of this.’

Annie sounded a little shriller than she’d intended as she walked the same twenty paces over and over. She had herded Maeve sharply away from the school and guided her by the shoulders down a quiet residential road. Removing evidently-more-out-of-control-than-realized teenage powers from a busy scene seemed like the first priority. Annie knew exactly what came next, but was avoiding it for as long as celestially possible. Selcouth needed to know about this. Maeve, meanwhile, was still unable to look away from the orange in her hand and had been babbling away frantically ever since.

‘I can’t believe I did that . . . Did you see it?’ Maeve said, stumbling over her words.

‘Which part?’ Annie replied, still pacing. ‘The accidental transfigurative magic on a non-wicche? The spontaneous sorcery fire? The low-level earthquake in a sleepy village in northern England?’

‘This magic stuff . . . It’s crazy! Or am I crazy? Is this really happening?’ Maeve removed her glasses and rubbed at her eyes.

‘You’re not crazy, sweetheart,’ Annie said, softening slightly. ‘But you are a little out of control, to say the least.’

‘That was . . . that was . . .’ Maeve looked as though she were about to profusely vomit at any moment, so Annie rubbed her back gently to try to bring her back down to earth.

‘I don’t mean that in a bad way,’ Annie carried on. ‘No need to worry. It’s all easily fixed and I can fix anything, trust me. It’s kind of my specialist subject. You haven’t done anything wrong. We can just . . .’

‘That was the coolest thing that has ever happened in the entire history of the universe.’

Annie stumbled back as Maeve burst into overjoyed laughter and leapt into the air, brandishing the orange as though it was a victory trophy.

‘I knew magic was going to have its upsides, but oh, wow, this is unbelievable. Can I turn the whole lot of them into fruit? In fact, fruit is too good. Why did I go for an orange when I could have turned Jessica into anything?’ Maeve was talking at superhuman speed, laughing frantically in between sentences as the adrenaline coursed through her. ‘Can we try it again? A newt? How about I turn her into a scabby pigeon or a bin?’

Annie sighed and threw her hands onto her hips. ‘No bins. No pigeons, rats, raccoons or whatever else you might be inclined to conjure,’ she said, listing the options off on her fingers. ‘Setting fire to the curtains at home we can handle, but accidental transfigurative incantation and almost wiping out a canteen full of kids was not what I had in mind for us on this mild October afternoon.’

‘You’re being dramatic,’ Maeve said, sagging a little and mirroring Annie’s unimpressed body language. ‘I didn’t hurt anyone. I just . . . orange-ified her a bit.’

‘A bit?’ Annie said, eyes pointedly fixed on the very fully formed orange. ‘Maeve, you threw fire. Actual sorcery fire, from the palm of your hand no less.’

‘Sounds pretty impressive when you put it like that,’ Maeve said, unable to hide a proud smirk.

‘Oh, it would be extremely impressive – if you were intentional in your magic use. But there’s nothing impressive about chucking it around willy-nilly. You’re supposed to control your magic, not the other way around.’

Maeve shrugged indignantly. ‘Maybe I don’t actually need any help with magic at all. Seems like it’s working pretty well to me.’

Annie scoffed, remembering how this feisty girl had seemed like such a gentle wallflower on first impressions. ‘Don’t go getting too big for your boots, young lady.’ She immediately hated how adult she sounded, using the phrase ‘young lady’. She was the young lady, wasn’t she? When did this happen? She shook back her curls to clear her head. ‘Uncontrolled magic is not cool.’

‘Yes, you seem like someone with her finger on the pulse of “cool”,’ Maeve said acidly. ‘They deserved it,’ she added as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

Annie, having witnessed the way they’d treated Maeve, found she couldn’t exactly argue with that. ‘Maybe they did . . . But it’s not just about a one-off dabble in Incantation on your school bully. There’s the small matter of risking the exposure of wicchekind, Maeve. Do you know how tricky it’s going to be to wipe so many memories of your escapades back there?’

Maeve chewed at her bottom lip, then huffed. ‘Okay, maybe I didn’t think about that part. Luckily, that lot would never even consider the possible existence of magic. They’re all far too boring to think big. Don’t stress about it. They’ll just see it as more proof of how weird I am.’