Page 6 of Uncharmed

Right on cue, there were the goosebumps. They chased one another across her skin, her heartbeat quickening as each of her senses began to ignite at what was to come. The taste of a coppery sweetness spread between her teeth from the stale, shadowy air. The earthy, musty scent mixed with burnt embers, probably damage somewhere by vandals – but a sweetness of toffee apple too that still lingered from the past. The Tempest Theatre always gave her the shivers.

Although, of course, that could just be the witches.

She reached the main concert stage. The piano sat plump and sprawling at the centre, the stage bowing under its vast weight. She lay her right hand across the keys, pink nails stark against the yellowing ivory, and tinkled them in the correct order. It was a melancholy sequence that she’d been taught years ago by her mother and father and would never forget, the combination always sounding so powerful. Magical.

With the final note, a sprinkling of magic sprayed from Annie’s fingertips as though her powers were called forth from her body to the piano. The pink stars tumbled into the spaces between the keys, slipping through the cracks. For one exquisite moment following the music, it felt as though time stopped still, slowing even the dust that danced across her vision on the stagnant air, moths pirouetting in tiny movements.

Then, like clockwork, the painted stars in the ceiling fresco caught a glint of light that hadn’t been there before. Each one twinkled in the blue darkness, one after the other, and carried the musical notes that Annie had just played through the room. Starry shapes cascaded across the seats below as the mirrorball began to spin. It sent new light across the theatre, illuminating every part of the music hall from the galleries to the foggy panes of glass in each door. The contrast from dark to light was almost blinding as it built. Squinting, a hand up against the glare, Annie saw the golds become gold again, extra dazzling. The crimson velvet returned to rich red. The stage was restored, piano polished to its former glory.

Then the seats across the stalls began to rearrange themselves, the neat rows spinning into separate, seated groups. Elegant tables shot up from the floor and were topped with emerald green glass lamps, ornate crystal drinkware, tiny bowls of plump olives, sparkling sugared nuts.

And in the final flashes of mirrorball light, the seats began to fill. Ghostly figures, each one changing from translucent, iridescent outlines that caught in the light, to fully formed people . . . Witches, warlocks and wicchefolk revealed.

Annie smiled, relieved as she was each time the magic of the theatre generously accepted her back into its arms. There it was, just as she left it. The Sorciety.

Chapter Four

GIRL TALK

The Sorciety was absolutely never to be confused with anything as common as a coven.

Selcouth, the coven of the United Kingdom to which Annie had been welcomed, was accepting and open to any and all witches, warlocks or wicchefolk. It was true that Selcouth had its own contentious methods of acceptance that it went to great pains to uphold for the purposes of tradition, namely a fifteen-year-long process of endarkenment that came to an end either successfully or unsuccessfully on a witch’s thirtieth birthday. But the Sorciety was altogether a more underground, secretive affair. In fact, the average witch (riff-raff, as Sorciety members kindly referred to them) would look back with a blank expression if she were to ever be asked about its existence. Only a select few would know the signal; to simply call it ‘fairy stories’ and hum the opening notes of the Tempest Theatre under their breath.

Strictly reserved for those deemed worthy, wicchefolk within the Sorciety’s closed club circle had long ago declared themselves the ‘spellborn’. It was a title that, as far as Annie could tell, seemed to be dictated mostly by inherited magical influence, which, more often than not, came alongside inherited magical wealth. Prospective members were nominated and vetted only by existing members, before facing the long and magically taxing process of initiation – elaborate ceremonies, demanding interviews and considerable donations.

With its supernatural accumulation of magic and money, the club had centuries ago become a source of influence over the innermost fabric of the magic system. The fully fledged spellborn held knowledge and insight that was not to be shared openly among a standard coven and its undignified general-entry policy. Decisions were made at each full moon symposium that would eventually filter down to the lives of average wicchefolk. Wealth begets wealth, even within magical realms, and among the Sorciety’s most prized secrets was the ability to invest their powers and create private, snowballing funds of magic to be distributed among their select few – and never shared elsewhere. From an accumulation of power only comes a need for more, so the snake had continued to consume its own tail for centuries.

‘Annie, darling! How did it go with Cedric?’

Romily peered over her coupe glass as Annie finished making her way through the busy auditorium. Romily Whitlock was not a witch to waste time on small talk or pleasantries when there was fresh gossip to be harvested.

‘Who?’ Annie called, taking the spare seat in their ring of plush chairs. The five girls exchanged neat air kisses, one on each cheek, without actually touching. Never one to turn up empty-handed, Annie placed a box of immaculately iced biscuits, all decorated like autumn flowers, on the table and encouraged them to dive in.

‘Last night? Constance’s friend’s cousin’s associate? I know he’s a non-wicche,’ Romily continued, wrinkling her nose up at the last part. ‘But, despite that blot against his record, she was confident that you two would make a gorgeous pair. He’s in hedge funds – loaded apparently.’

‘Annie, I knew things were dire for you, but do not tell me you dated a hedge witch,’ Vivienne scoffed to Harmony, who shrieked a laugh at the idea. ‘Frightful practice. Can you imagine choosing plants and actual dirt as the means to express your magic? Constant soil underneath your nails? So unchic.’

‘No, it’s magical investment and trading strategies, but, like, for non-wicche,’ Romily explained, giving them a deeply judgemental side-eye as she swirled the dregs of her drink.

‘Of course, Cedric.’ Annie felt a guilty, jarring flashback from last night. She’d forgotten her time at the restaurant with him, what with everything else that was constantly fighting for her headspace. ‘Right, right . . . He was lovely.’

Harmony prompted her, eyebrows high. ‘But?’

Annie sighed. ‘But . . .’

‘There it is,’ Romily huffed, chastising but at least entertained as she accepted one of the fresh cocktails promptly delivered by a waiter. Annie leapt to her feet to hand them out from the silver tray, making sure they each received their signature choice.

Annie had spent her childhood years with Romily as her very best, most precious friend, the pair of them growing up inside each other’s velvet-lined pockets. They had made muddy pondwater potions at the bottom of their gardens together. Dressed up dolls in tiny witch hats, begged their fathers to enchant brooms on Sunday afternoons for them to fly about the attic. They had worn matching pyjamas and identical dressing gowns, waited on the landing and gawped together in secret at their beautiful parents gliding through life with matching cigarette holders and amber glassware. Their years of shared girlhood had been powerful enough to entwine them for a very long time. Annie still held the memories fondly, precious and delicate.

But something had altered in Romily’s deepest chemistry when her teenage years reared their head and, with them, the arrival of real magic – and secondary school – to complicate things further. The hallways of Aconite Academy led her towards Vivienne Cinder and Harmony Morningstar, who had been altogether rather indifferent about Annie, but fawned over Romily’s calm confidence, golden aura and familial reputation of wealth and importance. Her mother’s supreme position at the Sorciety spoke for itself and earned untouchable status for her daughter. It had given Romily a new kind of poise and unwavering assurance, her youth and fragility vanishing in a moment. Next to Romily, Annie was simply someone ready to be moulded, happy to provide useful hair-related spell secrets that they could call upon. Even then, she was already eager to please. In return, the girls had tucked away their talons and swept her up under their silken wings. Through equal parts bitterness and reverence, their classmates had coined them the ‘Fortune Four’ and Romily in particular had revelled in the idea. The tag had stuck ever since.

They were her closest friends in the wicche realm and, after Annie’s home life fell apart so unexpectedly a few years later, she remained endlessly grateful that they had not turned their backs on her.

Fortune Four nights had recently expanded to include a fresh member of the Sorciety: Ruby Wrathshade, whose family had moved from America and had been accepted thanks to their newly accumulated wealth in the modernized broomstick trade. They had deftly spotted a broom-shaped sales space in the freshly emerging so-called ‘internet’. Ruby eyed her slushy, bright-blue, floral creation suspiciously, then promptly stuck her fingers in to fish out the floating thistle garnish and flick it from her fingertips. ‘Do you guys have any coffee?’ Ruby asked the waiter, but he simply twitched his skinny moustache and left with a haughty spin. Harmony, lifting a bubbling champagne flute, seemed repulsed by Ruby’s every move and was doing a terrible job at hiding it. Her own drink was a loud neon yellow and fizzed with an over-enthusiastic ferocity as though it had got a little carried away with itself.

‘I’m sorry. I know . . . I can’t help it,’ Annie said, batting her hand apologetically.

‘Annie, we line up bachelor after bachelor for you, each more handsome than the last, and they’re never good enough,’ Romily continued.