Page 47 of Uncharmed

They worked together in a comfortable, caffeine-accompanied silence, the scent of coffee and vanilla sponge stitching together sweetly. Maeve occasionally piped up with an undiplomatic question out of the blue. How would it feel to walk into Hecate House? Scary, but spellbinding. What were Annie’s friends really like? Funny. High maintenance. Unpredictable. Did she miss her parents? Every day. Was she going to go back to the bakery? Of course. She loved working with Faye and Pari, though she was constantly chasing her tail. Why did she keep working there, then? Because she couldn’t just start all over again. Of course she could, Maeve reasoned. Annie didn’t have a comeback for that.

‘Come on, enough of the interrogation for today,’ Annie said, giving Maeve a gentle shoulder shove. ‘Let’s take these out to the resident lumberjack pirate cowboy. He likes you better than he likes me.’

Maeve raised a sceptical eyebrow, as though Annie had said something entirely obtuse. ‘Oh, you’re serious? You’re even more oblivious than I thought, then.’

‘Oblivious to what?’

Maeve blew her lips together in a scoff, then shoved a whole friendship fancy into her mouth whole. She held her hands up, as though she couldn’t possibly answer with a mouthful of cake, and wandered off back to her artwork with a grin.

Balancing a tiny pink saucer of tiny pink cakes on a tiny pink doily, Annie carefully made her way out to the stables, after Maeve helpfully pointed out their location as somewhere between the stream and . . . well, trees. Annie picked her way through the long grass, squealing every few moments when her ballet pumps encountered a muddy puddle, until she gave up and used a quick dash of magic to switch to her pink wellies instead. After a small run-in with an army of toads at the stream, which almost sent her running straight back to London, Annie discovered that Maeve was right.

The small, rickety stables of Arden Place were tucked well away and woven into the woods. Nestled within the trunks of two impossibly large, hollowed-out oak trees, the stables were surrounded by thick, knotted roots, which formed a fence that opened up onto the back of the meadow as strings of flame-like will-o’-the-wisps cast a calming, supernatural glow between the surrounding silver birches. Drinking contentedly from a crystal-clear thread of stream that looped around the stables was a beautiful, dappled red-brown horse, the colour of conkers and identical to Hal’s hair.

She soon found the warlock, too. Hal was slumped back in a camping chair, one leg slung over the other, Stetson pulled low over his face. Annie watched as he chewed on a mouthful of apple while he read a book, then held out the same apple for the horse to snaffle the rest of it. It seemed to be a finely tuned routine that they’d repeat every few minutes. When the stallion returned for the next snack, Hal gave him an absent-minded stroke on his muzzle. It was such a contented scene that Annie felt reluctant to disturb it. She let it hold for a precious moment, appreciating it, capturing it for herself, before she cleared her throat.

Hal immediately threw the book away and leapt to his feet so suddenly that the horse reared back onto its hind legs with a startled whinny. Realizing it was Annie, Hal dropped his defences and gave a gruff throat-clear. He turned to soothe the horse.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt Boys’ Club,’ she said. ‘I come bearing gifts.’

‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s a bad idea to creep up on a warlock and his familiar? You’re asking for trouble.’

Annie didn’t know what she’d anticipated Hal’s familiar to be (an ill-tempered honey badger, maybe, or a slightly cantankerous ass), but a majestic, noble stallion was not it. ‘This is your familiar?’ She took a few uncertain steps closer.

‘Not sure what cursed, past-life adventure I fell into to earn such a big dope, but yes. This is Mage. He might be bloody handsome and a show-off, but he’s also a big chicken. Aren’t you, pal?’

Hal took another apple from the pocket of the scuffed leather waistcoat he was wearing over his shirt and tossed it into the air just high enough for the horse to give a small jump to catch it. Pleased with his skill, Mage shook out his burgundy mane, obviously boasting in front of Annie.

‘Why don’t you bring him closer to the cottage?’ she asked, admiring how Mage’s coat caught the shine of sunlight through the trees. ‘He’s all alone out here, aren’t you, Mage?’ His tail flicked out dramatically.

‘Normally you’d see him out in the meadow all of the time. He has the run of the place if he wants it. And he has been known to come in through the back door once or twice when he smells gravy. But I think he’s a bit put out that there’re so many other creatures flooding his meadow to see Maeve,’ Hal said, stroking his thumb across the bridge of Mage’s nose. ‘Sulking, aren’t you, Mage? Plus he’s scared of cats, so he will have spotted Karma from a mile off.’

‘Can I?’ Annie asked, feeling shyer than usual as she extended a careful hand out towards Mage’s huge shoulder. Hal gestured to go ahead, taking a step back so that she could give the horse a pat on his velvety coat. Mage gave a contented, relaxed blow of approval at her touch.

‘Mage, you are quite the beauty. What are you doing hanging around with this guy and his silly hat?’

Hal smirked. ‘Now that introductions are out of the way, to what do I owe the pleasure?’ he asked gruffly, throwing his hat onto the low wooden stable post and pushing back his hair.

It was only then that Annie realized Mage had swiped two of the three friendship fancies straight from the plate. That explained why he’d taken to her so quickly.

‘I thought you might like a treat,’ Annie said with a sigh, holding out the singular, miniature cake towards Hal. It looked like an exceptionally pathetic offering all on its own.

‘Sure you can spare it?’ he laughed, picking it up between two fingers and eating it in one go. He and Maeve were two sides of the same coin. ‘Thank you,’ he said with a grin through a mouthful of cake that made a dimple pop on one side of his face.

Annie laughed, too. ‘Any time. Besides, you said a little ominously that we should talk.’

‘Right, that I did,’ Hal said. His forearms were bare again, the sleeves of his shirt pushed up to his elbows. Annie tore her eyes back to Mage, who was giving her an attention-seeking nuzzle on the shoulder, keen for more fuss or possibly more apples.

‘I wanted to know what you thought of Maeve’s revelations. You were keen to get to bed before we had much chance to discuss it. It all but confirmed our suspicions that she’s attracting magic, pulling supernatural energy to herself. It’s extraordinary. No wonder the kid has had trouble keeping it to herself,’ he continued, picking up the book from the floor that he’d discarded and shoving it back into his satchel. Annie recognized the title, Elixirs Most Eldritch, as one she’d borrowed herself a few times from Hecate House library to aid with amending the hex.

‘She’s a very special girl,’ Annie said, hiding her face from Hal’s curious eyes by staying turned in towards Mage.

‘I know it. But you have to admit, all that spooky spirit stuff is a strange one. Never known a glimmer of trouble at Arden Place in all my years.’ Hal leaned his back against the stable door with his arms folded, a bent leg scooched up the wide tree trunk. ‘And it got me thinking.’

‘Don’t pull a muscle,’ Annie said. She’d stolen that one from Maeve.

‘Have you noticed anything like that yourself around here?’ Hal went on, bending a little to try to steer her gaze back to him. ‘Is there anything that you’d like to tell the class? You know, while we’re all getting things off our chests.’

Annie, purposefully avoiding eye contact, made an extra effort to keep her face blank and her laugh bemused. ‘Me? What secrets would I have to share? If you hadn’t already noticed, I’m a very uncomplicated person.’