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‘Nothing.’

‘Good.’

She should have left it there. Temperance knew she should. But talking to Abel Gulliver was like scratching a scab. It wouldn’t help things heal over, it wouldn’t make anything better, and ultimately it would only mean a pitted, unpleasant scar left behind, but she just had to know if the fresh, shiny version of Abel from her memories was hiding under this crusty, unpleasant exterior.

‘Yes, God forbid you let anyone help you save an hour of your time and fifty quid, just to get you back to our sad little village.’

He blew out through his nose, his lips forced together tightly. ‘I have never said . . . Ah, look,’ he grunted and Temperance could almost see the countdown of numbers rolling through his head as he forced himself to stay civil. That’s how much her world had shifted on its axis since the day he left: just a few feet away from where they stood, she had had some of her best teenage memories hanging out with Abel, and yet, right now, on this neighbouring spot, she was being given every sign that she was the last person he wanted to be in proximity of. ‘Don’t assume you know what I need, Temperance,’ he said cooly.

The sharp jab of his words actually made her eyes water a little bit. She rapidly blinked it away. ‘Why would I? I hardly know you.’

‘Ooooooh.’ Mark breathed sambuca fumes across them all. ‘Trouble in paradise, is it?’

Abel turned away to catch Mark as he lurched worryingly close to the harbour wall. ‘Definitely need to get you home, buddy.’

Mark’s eyes, glassy and hooded, did their best to focus on the scene at hand. ‘I think we’ve got one more drink in us, eh? Suse – let’s not end the night here.’ His arm swung out across the nighttime vista of bobbing boats in the sea, the tiny lights of East Portlemouth visible over the estuary.

Susie wasn’t even bothering to make eye contact with him now. Her patience had well and truly worn out. ‘I don’t think the RNLI boat serves drinks,’ she muttered.

‘But on such a beautiful night,’ Mark sing-songed, ‘we should drink, we should dance, we should talk about our passions in life. Tell me about your village, Suse; tell me about the people, the pub, the gorgeous rolling fields down to the sea . . .’

Everything in Susie’s body went rigid and for a moment Temperance was worried she was going to have to hold her sister back from doing some actual bodily harm.

‘We’ve got to get that taxi, remember, Suse?’ she nudged.

‘Yes. GoodNIGHT,’ Susie snapped, clutching Temperance’s hand and marching off to the moorings, the jacket held tightly around her.

Chapter 17

‘Do you think this is how serial killers start out?’ Temperance asked, poking Mark’s jacket down again as it tried rising to the surface, like it was trying to climb out of its poisoned bath and run for help. A tin bucket in the back garden might not have been as legitimate as their old-school witches’ cauldron, but both sisters were a bit nervous about leaving anything noxious behind on the ancient cast iron pot.

‘You’re not meditating, Tee,’ Susie growled quietly. ‘F said meditating on what we want Mark to be was important. You can’t just wait to read what’s already there, like we usually do. So stick to the mantra: meek, mild, as ambitious as a child. That’s what I’m doing. That’s how we take this sod down several hundred pegs.’ She straightened her posture, sitting on a beaten-up beanbag out in the small garden behind their house.

Susie went back to her mediation, looping the mantra over and over in her head. Meek, mild, as ambitious as a child. Meek, mild, as ambitious as a child. She imagined the leaves of the belladonna plant reaching out under the water, twisting tightly around the sleeves of Mark’s jacket, like a kraken about to drown a wooden ship. F seemed mighty sure that this plant had extreme powers, so Susie was going to trust that it would leech the confidence out of Mark, if she encouraged it in just the right way. She screwed her eyes even more tightly shut, feeling a muscle twitch along her jaw as she played out imaginary scenes in her mind, like a twisted Geppetto setting his puppets up to fail.

Mark would be nervously stuttering and stammering through a business pitch, the PowerPoint fails to load, his fly is undone. Eventually, he is laughed out of the room in disgrace. He’s carrying a box of office supplies out of a building in a cardboard box, dejected and despairing. No one will return his calls. He sends off email after email but they fall into a void of nothing. He’s finished, and he knows it.

Susie stuck her tongue into her cheek. She didn’t want him to starve, just stay the hell away from ambitious property development.

Mark is retraining as an estate agent. He takes a job in London, driving a Mini and wearing a cheap suit. He can pay his bills. But loses all his friends. And self-worth. And dies single.

OK, that last bit is too much. But the suits are definitely shiny and itchy.

But a hero can’t just take out the bad guy, Susie knew, they had to shore their castle up from any other attacks. Taking deep breaths from the centre of her being, Susie dropped her head onto her chest, sitting deeper into her subconscious and the images she was casting out into the universe.

She imagined good luck raining down on East Prawle, like a glittering summer shower. It touched the buildings, the locals, the beaches. The people there are happy and unchanged. Their lives will go on as they always have, undisturbed by developers. A precious pearl still in its oyster shell.

Usually when Susie read an emotion in something, the pictures she saw would be exactly as real life, if slightly cloudy or grainy like a badly-preserved family video. But as she was concocting all these visions from scratch, they took on big, bold cartoonish colours. Everything in her mind’s eye was clear and vibrant as she willed it into being. There was a tingle in her fingertips, just like she had when reading other people’s clothes, but it was hotter and more spikey than usual. More like a static shock than a warm bath, but Susie chose to see that as a good sign that the belladonna was really working.

‘The Fairy Princess!’ a sweet little voice gasped from behind them, breaking Susie from her trance. Temperance turned to see one of her fairy minions from the festival looking though an upstairs window of the holiday cottage next door.

‘Hello again, Martha!’

‘Where is your fairy dress today?’

Temperance looked down at her striped jersey skirt and strappy vest. ‘I only wear it for very special fairy occasions, with my special apprentices. Otherwise, I keep it secret, hidden behind a rainbow.’ She tapped the side of her nose and the little girl gave a thumbs up.

‘Is that a fairy potion in your bucket?’