Page 76 of Uncharmed

‘Just . . . move slowly. Hal knows every inch of Arden Place and every last creature within it. Spirits like these are the guardians of the woods and he’s certain that they’ll want to help him – and us by association, just as they did with Karma.’

Hearing her name, Karma leapt gracefully out of Maeve’s bag and landed with her front paws directly inside the fairy ring. Annie and Maeve both let out a simultaneous gasp, uncertain of what it could trigger this time around, but the cat simply shook out her fur with a tinkle of her bell and promptly began batting around an acorn.

‘We shouldn’t be standing unprotected; they’ll be here any moment. Let me go first,’ Annie said quietly, pressing a hand against Maeve’s shoulder to hold her back.

‘We’ll step together,’ Maeve said firmly. ‘If you’re about to burst into the merengue of death, then I’ll try a Charleston, alright? On the count of three.’

With matching deep breaths, a glasses nudge from Maeve and a determined hair flick from Annie, they took one first step in unison and then another to join Karma in the witches’ ring. A furious gust of wind picked up from nowhere, tangling their hair in a frenzied whip. Then it promptly dropped, like the woods had judged the outcome of their bravery and then sighed with relief. The finest, most iridescent of glitters blossomed at their fingertips and travelled up towards the tops of their arms, along their shoulders, down their backs. A subtle but mighty protective magic had been activated, courtesy of Arden Place.

Time ticked by, but there was still no sign of Hal. Annie had expected that Mage would canter back to the cottage the moment he safely delivered them to the circle, but the horse placed himself behind them, reversing his rear into the trees so that he could keep watch across the clearing. Hal must have instructed his familiar to remain close by.

Maeve gave a shiver, a spray of goosebumps prickling sharply on the bare inches of skin at her neck. Annie could feel them springing up across her own shoulders, too. She was about to make a dig at the girl, how she’d specifically told her to put on another jumper. But then a toffee-sweet scent carried on the wind, with a rich, earthy combination like embers and apples that was so distinctly familiar and autumnal, it took Annie a moment to notice it overpower the air. Her tongue was flooded with the taste to match, tangy and coppery, the faintest, sweetest hint of animal blood. Maeve began to pick at the skin around her nails and scratched at her fingertips absent-mindedly as though they were itchy.

‘Do you hear something?’ Annie asked, freezing to the spot the very same moment that Maeve suddenly held her position.

A brittle, crunching brush across the crackling carpet of leaves, somewhere not so deep into the woods. The murmur of voices.

‘Something wicked this way comes,’ Maeve muttered with a wayward smirk.

Annie flicked up her conjuring hand defensively and strained to tune in, to try to at least pick up on which direction they would show themselves. But the whisperings, growing louder and louder, were flooding in from every direction. Like they were falling from the sky, pulling up from the earth below them, laying in wait at the edge of the universe. They were using their magic to hunt Maeve and it could only be a matter of moments before they found where to aim their sails. They didn’t have much time. Annie knew she had to seize the moment this time, and Maeve, too. She spun around to the girl and held her shoulders tightly.

‘Before this all goes to complete chaos and revelry . . .’ Annie began.

‘My two favourite things,’ Maeve said, eyes glinting excitedly behind her glasses. The voices were growing louder, more agitated. Annie could sense their angry desperation. Eager to play their ace, eager to arrive. They had found them.

‘. . . I need you to know that meeting you has been the greatest happiness of my life, Maeve. I have been counting my lucky stars every night since we found one another. You have taught me so much about living authentically. About joy. About life. About myself. About what the point of anything and everything is.’

‘Not too much, then?’

‘And I know you think I’m cringey and bonkers and utterly hopeless,’ Annie went on. ‘And you’re right, I would absolutely be the first one to die in a horror film. So, just in case that’s where we find ourselves tonight, I need you to know how special you are, that you can take on the world. I need to make sure you hear that, because it wasn’t something I ever heard myself. Maeve, you are capable of shining brighter than every star in the sky. And don’t ever forget it, okay?’

Maeve pulled her bottom lip underneath her teeth.

‘Okay?’ Annie repeated, giving Maeve’s shoulders a gentle shake.

‘Okay,’ Maeve said with an uncharacteristically serious nod. She opened her mouth to inevitably fire back something dagger-sharp, as always. But instead, she said quietly, ‘Thanks for looking after me, Annie.’

Annie reached out to smooth her hair reassuringly. ‘We’ve looked after each other.’

Maeve placed her own hands on Annie’s shoulders to mirror her stance and give her a shake in return. ‘And, Annie, we are not dying tonight, just so you know.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘They don’t know who they’re messing with.’

They grinned at each other, sharing a camaraderie that had inadvertently rooted itself deeper than oak trees. Whatever was about to unfold, whichever tarot cards had been flipped by a greater force, whatever unworldly powers were about to erupt and crack open the atmosphere on Halloween night, Annie had learned that some things were deeply unshakeable. This girl was hers to protect.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

THE GLITCH

A whirl of thick, grey fog blew in through the woods and Annie knew that the sudden wind, tunnelling between the trees in smoky plumes, wasn’t what it seemed. In a sickly, unnatural mist, it rolled in and unfurled itself, coiling around the trunks and whipping up piles of fallen leaves. She clung to Maeve as the path of the fog surrounded them, pulling the girl back as it brushed close to the edge of the witches’ ring, but never quite crossing it.

Annie had known that the Heralds would find a loophole in their protection spells. Glory had promised that they had methods of finding anybody they needed to. But Annie hadn’t expected such an unnatural, unsettling trick. Her and Hal’s incantations may have forbidden transference, but the Sorciety had been carried here by other means. Efficiently delivered by elemental magic that had been twisted to their whim, to wrap them within the very winds of All Hallows’ Eve. As the stormy tendrils of mist began to dissipate, they revealed themselves, stepping from the shadows.

Nine of them, Annie quickly counted up as she and Maeve spun on their heels; unwelcome arrivals surrounding the witches’ ring in a whip-crack of scintillating magic. Mage reared up onto his hind legs and snorted furiously. Annie recognized every one of the wicchefolk who had taken it upon themselves to see to it that Maeve would no longer be the extraordinary threat that they perceived her to be.

Directly in front of them was Glory Whitlock herself. And . . . Annie’s stomach fell to her feet at the sight. Romily. Another unthinkable betrayal from the girl she had once thought a firm friend, a kick to the gut so incomprehensible that Annie felt herself turn incandescent with rage. As though she hadn’t caused enough pain already.

The potency of Whitlock magic landing so abruptly was overwhelming to the senses, like inhaling too-strong perfume over and over. Annie’s head throbbed and she felt Maeve waver beside her, but she wouldn’t be intimidated. She would not buckle to them any more.

To the Whitlocks’ left, Vivienne and Harmony were arm in arm, already bickering, even mid-spell. Vivienne attempted to shake her friend off as though she were some kind of unpleasant octopus suctioned to her fur jacket. Harmony spotted Annie and gave her a happy wave, before Vivienne shoved her with a reminder that they were in fact on opposing sides.