Page 32 of Uncharmed

‘Well, cheers, fairies, witches, gnomes, pixies, whoever else happens to be hanging out around here . . .’ Maeve said, saluting the circle of mushrooms. ‘Thanks for looking after the cat and for not dancing us to death. That would be a really embarrassing way for me to go.’

‘Come on, if I don’t have a bubbling foot spa within the next three minutes, I think reality will set in and I’ll never stop screaming. And, while I handle the fire aftermath, you’ve got the washing-up to do that painting distracted me from,’ Annie said brightly as they turned to head back to the cottage, an arm around Maeve’s shoulder where Karma was balanced like a parrot.

Maeve’s mouth fell open.

‘Are you joking? There’s enough washing-up to keep me at the sink until I’m ready for an old people’s home. You practically opened up a pancake cafe, I’m not . . .’

‘Oh, I think you’ll find you are . . .’

Their gentle bickering and laughter caught and carried along on the wind. The sound, a soft and distinctly precious one, something new and special to Arden Place, whipped into a swirl of crackling leaves like caramel through cake and folded itself around the witches’ ring to mingle with the rest of the whispers that wound through the woods.

Chapter Thirteen

AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL

Although small, it felt like there had been a breakthrough. Maeve seemed more relaxed or at least less immediately bristling each time Annie opened her mouth to speak, while Annie was coming to discover that the girl only really seemed to need a gentle kind of encouragement – small boosts of reassurance that she was doing okay. Perhaps there had just been no one else to provide that until now.

In fact, she didn’t want to push her luck or get carried away as she usually did, but Annie was fairly confident that Maeve even seemed to be . . . warming to her. The girl had to be practically forced to go to bed at night. She would shuffle grumpily to her room, in the fluffy socks that Annie had finally convinced her to wear, and was reluctant to spend much time by herself in there, constantly asking instead whether they could stay up to talk about magic lore or dabble with a new enchantment she’d read about. A few days after their walk through the woods and things were a world away from their initial night at Arden Place. They ended their first week at the cottage as friends.

‘Will you put that thing away?’ Annie called as she gathered together stacks of equipment in her arms from various cupboards around the cottage. She was referring to the copy of Dynamic Draughting: Experimental Alchemy for the Spirited Warlock that Maeve had found lurking on the shelves. She had then temporarily imposed a mute spell on Maeve’s voice until she stopped insisting that she could definitely make a competent invisibility brew on first try, no problem. Her peace didn’t last long, Maeve quickly figured out how to flip the spell onto Annie instead.

Late in the night, while the hex and its ghosts kept Annie awake long enough to see the sun coming up over the meadow, an idea had come to her that she couldn’t resist bringing to life. Thankfully, Maeve seemed to have accepted that, when Annie had an idea, she committed to the delivery wholeheartedly, so she was becoming less and less surprised each morning by whatever scene greeted her when she groggily opened her bedroom door. This time, it was a row of identical ice-cream sundae glasses lined up next to the cauldron, complete with stripy straws.

‘We’re making ice-cream floats! Magical ones. Isn’t that fun?’ Annie beamed with a round of applause so enthusiastic that a spurt of rogue pink sparks tumbled from her fingertips. Maeve, still in a sleepy stupor, scowled as Annie shoved a paper busboy’s hat on top of her head. ‘Look at my shoes!’ Annie spun on the spot and her fluffy slippers transformed in a pink haze into a pair of roller skates to match her diner girl attire.

‘I hate this.’

‘No, you don’t. No one hates ice-cream floats.’

‘I do, especially at this time in the morning. Where’s the coffee?’

‘Coming up, sweet cheeks.’ Annie wielded the giant coffee pot at great height over a huge diner mug and skated towards Maeve (with a slight stumble) to hand it over with an exaggerated wink.

‘I thought we were trying potions today, not bringing all of my worst nightmares to life. That’s for the Necromancy spells, isn’t it?’

‘Wrong, my cantankerous friend,’ Annie said, waggling a finger. ‘I came to the important realization last night, after being awake for almost twenty-four hours – which is when you know it’s an inspired idea – that ice-cream floats are kind of like very basic potions, aren’t they? One of my more genius moments, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Maeve said, clutching onto her coffee as though it needed to bring a miracle with its first sip. ‘You should consider more early nights.’

They began with fun, silly recipes: basic, joyful enchantments that Annie remembered mixing chaotically in her dormitory at school. There was the cackle brew, with layers of peppermint dust (suitably peppy), cornflower petals (to banish the blues), a handful of pistachios (to make the drinker feel a little nuts). She reached for the jar of pumpkin flowers to pluck the stamens and sprinkle them on top like sugar, then encouraged Maeve to use her magic to stir while thinking of the funniest thing she could remember.

‘Watching you singing into the wooden spoon over breakfast the other day,’ Maeve decided, much to Annie’s mortification. A swirl of red sparks ran through the ice-cream glass like strawberry sauce and, with a vortex spin, the glass rattled to a standstill.

‘Et voilà. One potion float,’ she said proudly, handing the glass over to Maeve, who dove in with a tablespoon. The moment the sweetness touched her lips, she spluttered out a loud laugh that was equal parts pitchy and iconically witchy, sending a spray of melted pink milk flying everywhere. She couldn’t stop cackling and Annie soon joined her, the pair of them bent double and clutching onto the countertop, sounding like Hollywood witches.

‘This is so stupid,’ Maeve wheezed between cackles. ‘But very fun.’ The words were a sugar boost to Annie’s soul.

Before long, melted ice cream coated the kitchen. Maeve was a particularly big fan of the combination of double cream and liquid shadows – not only impossibly rich and chocolatey, but also successful in temporarily bestowing her a pair of sleek black cat ears. Annie favoured the extremely fizzy ginger-beer float, covered in popping candy, which had let them both levitate about a foot above the ground for bursts of a few seconds. The two witches agreed that the blend of dried dragon scale and crispy kale, which left them speaking in rhyme, was the absolute worst of the bunch, in both taste and result.

‘Have you had enough for now? Perhaps one more if you’ll allow? I mean . . . Ugh, do you want to make another one?’ Annie asked, shaking her head to try to ditch the last of the terrible rhyming couplets stuck in her throat.

‘I need a break,’ Maeve said. She flexed the fingers of her right hand, stretching out the muscles that had been firing up magic and draining it dry for hours. ‘Not to mention I feel like I might vom. Turns out there is such a thing as too much ice cream after all.’

‘Right, sorry. Cup of sugary tea incoming,’ Annie called out as she bustled around. It looked as though there’d been a minor explosion in the kitchen, puddles of overflowing melted ice cream and effervescent ingredients spilled everywhere.

‘No more sugar. And make it a coffee, please. I hate tea,’ Maeve said as she collapsed in an undignified heap onto the rug in front of the fire. Karma promptly moved from rocking chair to teenage lap, beginning her hard work of making biscuits on Maeve’s stomach as she slumped.

‘You’re a witch, you can’t hate tea,’ Annie called, enchanting a cloth to mop at a pool of potion that dripped down the cupboard. ‘Your coffee habit is concerning. You’re too young to have so much caffeine flooding your veins. That’s to carry you through your thirties.’