The Witch's Sacrifice, page 9
Thomas shook his head. ‘Edie’s so lovely. And gentle. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.’
Javi frowned. ‘That’s what we thought, too.’
The crowd behind us fell silent. I turned around to see the wooden casket being carried through the gates towards the church. It was time.
‘We’ll stay with you,’ said Thomas. ‘If that’s what you want.’
I swallowed down the lump that had formed in my throat and just nodded. It was too quiet for me to speak to them, and I wasn’t sure if I could, anyway. My life had been reduced to my only friends being long dead. But at least I had some, right?
The church doors opened, and the crowd began to head inside. I hung back, not wanting to sit near the front.
Was Edie going to come? I hadn’t seen her, but surely she wouldn’t miss the funeral of our friend? Even if she’d caused Mrs Brightman’s death, not going to her funeral felt callous.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could’ve sworn I saw a mop of brown hair tied into a bun. That’s how Maggie always wore her hair for formal occasions. But I doubted she was the only brunette who did that. It was probably just a coincidence.
Maggie didn’t really know Mrs Brightman, but she’d helped me out with a couple of things for her in the past, like making sure she had enough meals to eat.
Oh my god. I’d have to clean out her fridge! I hadn’t even thought of that when I was there the other day! What if the food in there was already going rancid? There was so much to do and I just didn’t have the headspace for it. Could I outsource it?
No, I couldn’t afford to pay a stranger – my inheritance hadn’t gone through yet – and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. It felt wrong, somehow, someone else going through her stuff.
Maybe Fadil would want to help. He didn’t get out of the house much. It would give him a change of scenery.
‘Niamh? You OK? You look a gazillion miles away,’ said Javi.
I clenched my jaw and nodded. It was all I could do. When everyone was so sombre, I couldn’t exactly stand there and talk to fresh air.
If I’d allowed myself to speak – and look like a madwoman – I could’ve asked him to see if it really was Maggie, but I preferred to not know. I wasn’t sure I could handle the disappointment if it turned out it wasn’t really her.
The casket was being placed at the front when I took my seat near the back left. For someone who’d left everything to me, she had a lot more friends than I’d expected. It wasn’t quite full, but there was at least one person sitting on every row.
The brunette I thought might be Maggie had a row to herself, a couple of rows in front of me and on the right hand side. So no one really knew who she was, then. That made it seem even more like it might be Maggie.
I zoned out as the vicar spoke. I couldn’t bring myself to listen. Everyone in that room thought she’d died of old age. They hadn’t done an autopsy for that very reason. Not that they would’ve found anything given that she was murdered by a necromancer, but still.
Being the only living person there who knew that my daughter had murdered her…it was too much.
Javi placed his hand on the pew beside me. I put my hand next to his.
It took me right back to his death. Trying to explain to Edie what had happened. How easily it’d been to lie to her about it being a car accident. She’d believed me, too. She’d been innocent, back then.
She’d never be innocent again.
The brunette turned around and met my eye. It was Maggie.
*
After it was all over, I scurried outside. It felt like the church walls were closing in on me and I couldn’t breathe. Maggie was there. But Edie wasn’t. Maggie was. I couldn’t read her expression, though. Was she there for me, or for Mrs Brightman, a woman she’d barely known? Why would she go? Did it have something to do with Javi’s interference?
I sat on a bench in the far corner of the graveyard. Javi and Thomas left me, going to hover around the other funeral goers and probably eavesdrop on their conversations. They’d picked up on that I needed alone time, which I appreciated.
I rested my elbows on my knees, and my head in my hands. How was I supposed to process all this?
‘May I?’
I looked up to see Maggie, my childhood friend, best friend until a few weeks ago, standing in front of me.
‘Sure,’ I said. I could feel my heart palpitating at her presence. She’d made it pretty clear she didn’t want anything else to do with me. Had Javi’s interference worked?
‘If I ask how you’re doing, is it going to be stupid or annoying?’
I half-laughed, appreciating that she remembered how much I hated being asked how I was. Even more so when it was pretty obvious I felt crappy. ‘Knowing this is what she wanted doesn’t make it any easier.’
‘She wanted to be back with her husband?’
I nodded. ‘She was in a lot of pain. She was bored. She was restless. She was heartbroken. I get it.’ I sighed. It wasn’t far off how I’d felt when Javi had died, minus the physical pain. ‘But none of that makes it any easier to process that she’s gone.’ Especially without Edie or Maggie around as well. It made my life feel even emptier. I still didn’t know what Maggie sitting beside me in the graveyard really meant. Was it just politeness?
‘How are you?’ I asked, needing to change the subject.
‘I haven’t really slept much lately. Every time I close my eyes, I see demons. Demons that look like you and Edie.’
I fiddled with my cuticles, unable to look at her. Was she trying to make me feel better? Or reiterate why she couldn’t be around me? So much had happened that I wasn’t even sure how I felt about her anymore. What if she was only speaking to me because Javi intervened, and she didn’t want to hurt him? What if her talking to me had nothing to do with her wanting to rekindle our friendship? I wouldn’t blame her after everything she’d been through. And I only vaguely knew the details. But the little knowledge that I had was nothing compared to her ten days of torture at the hands of my doppelgänger.
‘I mean, logically, I know it wasn’t either of you. There were things they said and did that didn’t add up. But it was ten days of repeated torture and brainwashing. Returning to reality doesn’t erase that.’
‘Nobody expects it to,’ I mumbled.
‘Don’t they?’ said Maggie. ‘Physically, I’m fine. Work think I’m up to going back in. Abigail wants to play all the time. Harry wants me to run the household again. But it just doesn’t feel the same. It all feels so empty and hollow.’
‘Have you considered speaking to someone?’ I suggested, immediately knowing how stupid I sounded.
She scoffed. ‘I don’t think I’d qualify for counselling if I told them I was put into a coma and my soul was tortured by demons. Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong.’ There was a hint of a joke in the way she said it, but neither of us laughed.
‘I can’t even begin to imagine what you went through. But I might know someone who could help. If you’re interested.’ I looked up at her for the first time since she’d sat down. Her expression brightened at my suggestion.
‘You do?’
‘No guarantees, but I do know she won’t ship you off to a psyche ward.’
‘Good enough for me.’
15
Edie
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?’
‘I want to go alone,’ Dominic snapped.
‘But won’t they insist—’
‘What are they going to do? Hold me hostage until a babysitter comes and picks me up?’ he scoffed.
Before I could say anything else, he was out the door. What could I do, if he didn’t want me to go with him? I felt bad him going to chemotherapy alone, but that was what he wanted. While his cancer was terminal, his doctors had suggested he go for chemotherapy to help with his symptoms. I didn’t know if it’d help or not, but I knew it wouldn’t help as much as necromancy could.
I hated seeing Dominic’s health get worse, but why did it mean someone else had to get hurt to heal him? Doctors got diagnoses wrong all the time. Maybe they were wrong about his diagnosis being terminal and the chemotherapy would heal him as well as reduce his symptoms.
To take my mind off Dominic, I went into town and bought a box of hair dye. I needed to top up my roots as there was an inch or so of ginger showing through, which I hated.
It wasn’t until I saw Mum outside the church, as I walked to the shop, that I realised it was the day of Mrs Brightman’s funeral. Was I so out of touch I hadn’t even noticed the date? It looked like it’d just finished, which meant it was too late to go in. What would Mum think of me? What would Mrs Brightman think?
What did it matter? Mrs Brightman had crossed over and Mum was dead to me.
When I got back to the flat, I read through the instructions on the hair dye box while making myself some tea. I’d never dyed my own hair before. Mum had always done it for me. But it couldn’t be that hard, could it?
I mixed the two things together, then applied the mixture to my roots, trying to keep the layers as thin as possible. Applying it to my own hair turned me into a contortionist. I needed to reach places on my head I’d never tried to see or reach before. That was one way to stretch out my muscles.
The dye itself had a strong, chemical smell. Much stronger than the smell from the one I usually used. Would that affect how it processed? How it looked? It was too late to back out now.
I applied the dye to my ends to refresh the colour, then, after twenty minutes, I rinsed it out. Instead of looking in the mirror to see how it’d processed, I decided to blow dry it first.
Dave came in to see what the noise was, but, after deciding the hair dryer wasn’t a threat, he went back into the living room, probably to sleep on the sofa.
When my hair was mostly dry, I looked in the mirror. And cried.
It hadn’t blended properly. I had a orangey grey stripe around my head. And it was patchy, too. Some parts looked black, others were grey, and others were ginger. There was no second mirror to help me look at the back, so I tried to take a photo using my phone. I twisted and turned at awkward angles to get a better view, but every view I got was worse than the last. My hair was a mess.
I sank on to the bathroom floor and started crying. As if I didn’t feel shitty enough about myself, now I had to walk around with hair that looked even worse than my virgin hair colour? I couldn’t afford to get my messy dye job fixed. I didn’t have any money coming in without Mum to give me some. I hadn’t even thought about that when I’d left. I’d saved some pocket money in the bank, but that wouldn’t last long. It was meant to go towards uni, or a car, or a deposit on a house. And I was going to have to fritter it away on just surviving?
Was it too late to go home? To ask Mum for help?
No. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t admit defeat after less than a week. How would that look? It’d just be another thing in life I’d failed at, along with my grades and my relationship with Josh.
Mum might not even let me home after the way I’d left. I wouldn’t blame her.
Whether I liked it or not, I only had Dominic left for support.
*
Dominic stumbled through the flat door a few hours later. I ran over, putting my arm around his shoulder and helping him towards the bedroom. He looked peaky; like he was ill. Which, obviously, he was. And the chemo was clearly wrecking his system.
Neither of us spoke as I helped him into bed. What was there to say?
He started shivering, so I pulled the covers up over him. He rolled away from me and closed his eyes, as if to dismiss me.
He was probably just drained from chemo. I’d heard it was tiring and often made people feel worse, so I guessed that made sense.
I was surprised they’d let him go home on his own, but he’d probably charmed them into it somehow, convincing them someone was waiting outside or something.
I contemplated walking Dave, but I didn’t want to leave Dominic alone just in case something happened. So instead, I settled in front of the TV.
*
‘What did you do to your hair?’ said Dominic as he walked into the living room a few hours later.
‘Huh?’ I rose from my nap feeling groggy. How long had I been asleep for?
It looked dark outside. Not that that meant anything in November.
‘Your hair.’
‘Oh.’ I put my hands to it self-consciously. ‘I tried to fix my roots…’
Dominic shook his head and walked into the kitchen. So it was as bad as I thought it was. Wasn’t that just great?
Did I have a hat I could wear for college? I didn’t really want to risk trying to fix things and making them even worse. I’d have to find a hair salon that could squeeze me in. And the money to pay for what would be an expensive appointment.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked, joining him in the kitchen.
He stopped raiding the fridge and glared at me. ‘How do you think I’m feeling? I’ve just had poison pumped into my blood for three hours. It’s not exactly fun.’
‘I offered to come with you!’
‘It’s not moral support I need, Edie! It’s you! You’re the only one who can save me from this hellish existence!’
‘No, no I’m not. There are lots of things the doctors can—’
‘Don’t you think they’ve tried? They don’t diagnose you as terminal unless they know you’re screwed!’ he said.
I hadn’t thought about it like that. Was it really that bad? How had he been fine for so long?
‘When did you get the diagnosis?’ I asked.
‘A few weeks ago,’ he said. He lowered himself into a plastic chair by the small table, resting his head in his hands. ‘That’s why I was crying in the hospital that day we ran into each other.’
‘I thought you said your grandmother had just died?’
‘I wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened. It would’ve made it feel too real. And it wasn’t like the doctor didn’t sign my death certificate that day, anyway.’
‘You don’t have to see it like that. You could—’
‘I really don’t need your optimism, Edie. I need solutions. If you don’t have those, you know where the door is.’
I flapped my arms in frustration. ‘That’s not fair!’
‘Neither is someone being able to help you and refusing to because they’re too selfish!’
‘I’m not selfish. Am I?’
‘You tell me,’ he said.
Was I selfish? Was that why I wouldn’t heal him? Why I couldn’t see his point of view? Or understand why Mum had lied to me?
‘Let’s say I did do it. How would it even work?’
Dominic started to smile, but then seemed to suppress it. ‘You don’t have to completely drain someone. Just take a little of their essence and pass it on to me.’
‘Will it give them cancer?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You can make it so that it only flows one way.’
‘Will it shorten their lifespan?’
He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘It might leave them feeling tired, but it’s nothing they won’t be able to sleep off.’
‘Do you have someone in mind?’
He smiled.
*
The person Dominic had in mind wasn’t who I’d expected. It was someone I had wanted to keep avoiding after the last few weeks, but Dominic felt like this would be the ultimate revenge. What better way to get back at someone who’d hurt me than taking some of their life essence?
We found Josh hanging around on the steps outside college the next morning. Everyone carried on as if nothing had changed, but for me, everything had. I’d never see the world the same again. College felt so trivial in comparison. I imagined Josh felt the same.
‘Are you sure we shouldn’t just go with a stranger?’ I asked.
Dominic shook his head. ‘What better way to get back at Josh for everything he’s done to you?’
A part of me wasn’t sure about the plan. Josh had done so much for me and been my only friend for so long.
But he’d also made it pretty clear we’d never be friends again. And he’d betrayed me in so many ways in just a few weeks. He’d broken my heart into a million pieces and I wasn’t sure anyone would ever be able to fully repair it.
‘Revenge isn’t really my thing,’ I said. Mum had taught me that it just caused more pain.
‘So, what? You get punished by other people, over and over, for things that aren’t even your fault? Don’t you deserve better than that?’
I scuffed my boot against the pavement. He was right. I did. I was constantly being ousted and punished by other people for things I hadn’t done or couldn’t control. I only ever tried to help people. But I was the villain? How was that fair?
‘Will it fully heal you?’ I asked. I still didn’t really get how it worked. I’d never used my powers to heal anyone before. When I’d freed Mrs Brightman, her life essence had been so weak that it had barely had an impact on my back pain. So I really had no idea how taking just a little from Josh would heal someone.
Dominic stuffed his hands into the pockets of his grey jeans. ‘No. But it will lessen the symptoms and stop it from getting worse. It really depends on how powerful he is. The stronger someone’s life essence is, and the more you take, the bigger the difference it’ll make.’
‘What do I do?’ I said. We were across the road from the college. Close enough to absorb Josh’s energy, but far enough away that nobody would notice what we were doing. Not that anyone ever cared what others were doing on the street anyway. People were always more interested in themselves and what they wanted to do.
‘Concentrate on how his life essence feels, then pull it towards you. Once you’ve absorbed some of it, imagine it flowing from you and into me.’
I adjusted my beanie hat to make sure it was covering all of my dodgy dye job. ‘That’s it?’
