Page 33 of Uncharmed

Maeve gave her an unimpressed look. ‘Come and sit down. You need a rest, too. You’re always flapping.’

Maybe the cleaning up could wait an hour or two. It was a grubby task, beginning to get to grips with Alchemy, but for one reason or another, it felt unusually fine to leave the chaos just as it was, something to revisit later. Maybe the mess could stick around – for a little while at least. Annie sat herself on the floor next to Maeve and handed over a mug.

‘That’s what my mother always used to say to me. I thought she was being dramatic, but it must be true if you think so, too.’

Sipping her coffee, Annie rubbed a finger gently down Karma’s nose and was surprised to realize, in the rare moment of relaxation, that the distant feeling of the city wasn’t something that she longed for. In fact, she rather liked thinking of it being so far way, like something in a memory. Precious pauses like this never made themselves known in her London life.

‘What’s she like?’

‘Who? My mother?’

Maeve nodded, running her thumbs up and down the handle of the cup as she clasped it between both hands and savoured the warmth. Annie sighed and wondered where to even begin with describing Cressida Wildwood to someone who had never encountered her.

‘Well, she was . . . complicated,’ she said, settling safely on the facts.

‘Was? Is she dead?’

‘No, I don’t think so, but I haven’t heard from her in a long time,’ Annie said quietly with a soft smile. It was always a strange line to walk whenever anyone asked her about her family – it unravelled conversations at rapid speed. ‘It’s a confusing kind of thing.’

‘You can say that again,’ Maeve said with her eyebrows raised.

Annie sighed. Griffin’s betrayal had set Cressida on a path that left her almost unrecognizable. She seemed to fade before Annie’s eyes, growing more translucent, obsessed with the Sorciety that pushed her out and, more importantly, how she might get back in. The idea of her fellow witches discussing her, picking apart the details of her personal life and how her pride had crumbled, proved impossible to ignore. As time went on, her pretence at interest in anything else – even her own daughter – vanished entirely, along with her grip on reality, but Annie had done her best to ignore that. Annie was skilled at ignoring all the right things when it was required of her.

Her mother’s fall had not been through any fault of Cressida’s own, her magic caught up in the mess that Griffin left behind, so Annie practised sympathy for the bitterness and animosity that her mother had harboured. When Griffin Wildwood abandoned not only his morals, his senses and his decency, but his family, too, Cressida and Annie were left bound in a kind of poisonous rope: a bind that held them together while causing more damage as it tightened; a woven confusion and wonder at where he’d gone and how they had been so oblivious to it coming.

These feelings weren’t fair of her, after everything Cressida had been through. Her mother only wanted what was best for her. She meant well. And she owed her so much. Everything she’d lost had been a step in Annie’s gain.

Fortunately, the spell was the one thing that her mother had left behind for her daughter. It dulled anger down to keep her reactions in check. Anger was not a pretty feeling.

Annie dragged her mind back to the here and now.

‘So where’d she go?’ Maeve asked. Annie was strangely touched to notice a fraction of tactful softness in her tone.

One day on her usual errands for her mother, Annie had arrived home to find a cigarette still burning and a note scrawled in haste. The words were so brief and thoughtless, yet managed to confirm everything that Annie had already begun to believe. At some point, everybody left her sooner or later. She wasn’t worth staying for.

Gone to find your father. You understand x

‘Your guess is as good as mine, sweetheart. The Christmas cards stopped a long time ago and my communication spells have always bounced back. She’s a complicated woman who’s been through a lot,’ Annie said sadly, shyly treading her way around memories of the people that she tried not to think about. ‘But, before all of that, she appreciated beautiful, exquisite things. She needed looking after and loved to feel special. She enjoyed spending her fortune on nothing in particular . . .’

Maeve inhaled a sharp breath. ‘Fortune? Wait, you’re telling me this whole time we’ve been cooped up in this place but you’re rich? Why aren’t we on an all-powerful witch yacht right now?’

‘Wrong. I was rich,’ Annie laughed. ‘Growing up, yes, my father was an important warlock who mixed with other, even more important warlocks. My mother had a huge inheritance, our family moved in the right circles . . . Our circumstances changed.’

‘More complications,’ Maeve said with raised eyebrows. ‘For someone who seems so perfect, you sure come with a bit of baggage, don’t you?’

At that, Annie laughed again. ‘That’s one word for it. But I don’t think any family relationships are straightforward, do you?’

‘I wouldn’t know much about them.’

Annie stiffened. Why had she asked that?

‘Do you remember your mother?’ she asked tentatively. They were growing closer now that they were coming to somewhat understand one another, but the subject of Maeve’s family was one that neither witch had dared to broach until this unfortunate mutual ground had revealed itself. She wasn’t sure how the question, burrowing a little deeper than they had done so far, would be received. Annie prepared for a blast of sorcery fire to make its way somewhere between her eyebrows.

Instead, Maeve swilled the black coffee around in her cup, determinedly focused on the inky contents. ‘Mine left me behind, too. I don’t remember much about her. Hardly anything at all actually.’

Annie let Maeve sit with her words for a moment. Outside, a beat of rain had started to strike against the window frames, the sound like a smattering of pebbles on the glass and the cushioned thatched roof. Inside, the heart of the cottage felt warm and safe.

‘She was young, so it’s not all that surprising that she left me,’ Maeve ventured. ‘I used to be so angry at her for it. But I don’t hold it against her any more. You have to be pretty desperate and clueless to abandon a kid, don’t you? I figure she must have been having a hard time.’