Hex Appeal, page 7
The fire crackled in the grate, and Maude’s needles flew.
‘Hard to say,’ she said eventually, which was truer than she knew. Maude spoke a dialect that might have been in use in Essex a century ago, or might have been of her own making. Even Prudence looked at her sideways sometimes.
To Essie, the mass of yarn just looked like knitting. She could make out patterns in it, of course, but they were just that, patterns. It was rare to see an actual shape or recognisable form in it. It would be nice, she thought wistfully, if just once she could look at the knitting, see the shape of a plane or a boat and understand it meant they were going on a trip. But texeomancy was an inexact art, especially to someone who couldn’t even read tea leaves.
‘There was a bit,’ Maude muttered. ‘Us did mean to tell you about… hmm.’ She tugged on the long rope of knitting, and her frown increased. ‘It’s stucken.’
‘Stuck?’ This was alarming.
‘Mmm.’ Maude ran her tongue over her teeth, which were sparse and brown. She still never took her rheumy gaze from the wall. ‘It’s heated.’
‘The future is… hot?’ Oh god, just like in her dream.
‘And.’ Maude’s fingers skimmed over the knitting as if she was reading Braille. ‘It’s… squashed.’
‘Squashed?’
‘And gromelling.’
‘Grom—’ Essie broke off, and rolled her eyes. She knew that word. She’d been laughed at in the playground for using that word. ‘You mean it’s purring? Maude, is it the bit Tomkin is sitting on?’
Maude tugged on the knitting, and then her mouth split in a wide grin and she cackled. She had a proper witchy cackle, did Maude. She pulled again on the knitting, and Essie leaned down and picked up Tomkin. He dug his claws in, probably altering the future in some crucial way, and Essie untangled him, holding him safely away in her arms.
‘It is warm,’ Maude conceded.
‘Is that because of the cat, or…?’
Maude’s fingers flew over it. ‘No,’ she said.
‘No?’
‘Shh and let us see.’
Whether Maude could actually see, with her actual eyes, was something Essie had never been entirely sure about. She never bumped into anything or tripped over, but she also never really seemed to look at anything. For her, texture was all that mattered. The balls of yarn in the huge basket beside her were of varying colours, some completely undyed, but all had a texture that mattered to Maude in the moment.
Currently she seemed to be knitting with hot-pink acrylic. Essie had no idea if this was significant.
‘You been dreamering?’ she asked Essie.
‘I always have dreams.’
‘You knows the kind I mean.’
Essie sighed, and sat down on the other chair in the room. ‘Yes. But I want to see if you can shed any light on it.’
‘Hmm. Well, there do be a man.’
Essie ignored the leap in her heart, and asked as neutrally as she could, ‘What kind of man?’
‘Young, but also old. Older than I, and younger than thee.’
‘Thanks, that’s very helpful.’
Essie tried to ignore the question in her head about how old Josh was. Mid-thirties, probably. But did that matter with a prediction as gnomic as Maude’s?
On her lap, Tomkin settled down to purr and knead at her knees with his claws. Maude grunted, and pulled more knitting towards her. She touched a bit of blue chenille, shook her head and moved on to some thick yellow wool.
‘This I knitten double,’ she said. ‘Fate intertwined, that is.’
Essie ignored her foolish heart. ‘Whose? Mine and this man’s? Maude, is this one of those “You will meet a tall dark stranger” things because I’m really not interest—’
Maude’s gnarled fingers had reached some rough, undyed wool. ‘Ah. There’s being a door. You got to go through it.’
‘A door,’ said Essie. Maude’s predictions seemed to be about as useful as her own right now.
‘And… still it be warmen, Essabett. ’Tis not the cat. Thou shalt not see snow this winter, unless…’
‘No snow?’ said Essie, sitting up straighter. ‘But – there’s always snow! We do the ritual. Does something interfere with it?’
Maude kept feeling at the knitting. ‘Maybe,’ she said.
‘Is it the man?’
‘Maybe. Or could be… a woman.’
Essie couldn’t help the sigh that escaped her.
‘’Tis the vine now, and all will be well until ’tis the reed,’ she said. ‘Which may mean no holly.’
There were vines growing all over the house, and holly bushes outside. Reeds grew in the village pond. None of this was very helpful.
‘The night, it is icumen in,’ said Maude.
‘You mean the daily night or the night of the year?’ said Essie, leaning forward. The cross-quarter day, what some called Samhain, was when she did the winter ritual, because it was when the world turned from light to dark. It was the sunset of the year. ‘Do you mean winter?’
‘I can’t be sayin’. Just night. It will come. And—’
Suddenly, Maude threw the knitting away from her, and it hit the wall and fell into a jumble like a snake.
‘Maude?’
Her milky-blue gaze fell on Essie. Her eyes were wide, frightened and still unseeing. ‘It comes, child. It is icumen.’
‘What comes? What’s wrong?’
Maude pointed a shaking, knotted finger at the knitting, and Essie peered at it –
– and recoiled.
For the first time, she saw a shape in the knitting. And it was a monster.
Chapter Six
Josh had bought a couple of electric heaters when it became apparent the house was an ice box without them, and now he moved them both into the kitchen as Siena sat at the kitchen table and shivered theatrically. He’d also bought a hot water bottle, which he filled and handed to her, then hesitated.
‘Uh, should you be using, um, heat?’
‘It’s better than being cold,’ said Siena, huddling into the blankets he’d brought down from his own bed. Where the hell he was going to sleep tonight he had no idea. ‘Do you know, in Finland, women give birth in saunas?’
‘Why would I know that?’ said Josh, sitting down opposite her. He had some chamomile tea, which was about the only hot drink he felt comfortable offering Siena.
‘I’ve been looking these things up. I didn’t know if the rules in France were going to be insane, but it turns out they just tell you to avoid cheese that’s unpasteurised.’
‘It’s a pretty good rule in life anyway,’ Josh said. ‘Why, and I realise this could be a very loaded question, why were you in France?’
Siena shrugged. She had an incredibly pretty way of shrugging, he’d noticed years ago. It was sort of self-deprecating and giggly, her face turned to the side while her eyes glanced back shyly. ‘Who, me?’ it seemed to be saying. ‘Silly little old girlie me? I’m sure I don’t know, but it’s a good job I’m adorable!’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘do you remember Carmel? She was dating that tennis player? There was the tournament in Monaco in April and I flew over with her to see it, and then I remembered the yacht in Cap Ferrat, and I guess I hung out there for a while, but then I started to show and, like, I didn’t really know what to do about that, so I just… kind of… hid.’
‘Hid,’ said Josh.
‘I guess. In a villa in Provence. It’s so pretty there.’
‘For five months?’
‘Well, four and a half, I guess. I’ve been practising my French,’ she said. ‘The locals there were very sweet.’
Josh ran a hand through his hair. He suddenly felt horribly sober, and had a nasty feeling he was about to hurtle straight into a hangover without even going to sleep first.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘And then you decided to come here because…?’
She gave him a sunny smile, or at least attempted to. At best, it was a scattered showers sort of smile.
‘Because I missed my big brother?’ she said.
‘Nope,’ he said.
‘I wanted to see the house Daddy left you,’ she tried.
‘Closer,’ Josh allowed. Siena had always been fascinated with how Josh lived, the tiny apartment he’d had in Seattle and the marginally larger one he’d grown up in. It was as if she couldn’t even remotely understand how a person could live on less than seven figures a month.
He gestured around the shabby, crumbling kitchen. Even the bulb hanging from the ceiling was bare.
‘Well, now you’ve seen it,’ he said. ‘Why are you really here?’
Siena gave a very teenage flail, which by rights she should have grown out of years ago. It was easy to think of her as the teenage brat she’d been when they first met, but that had been a decade ago. She was an adult brat now.
‘I didn’t want to be alone,’ she admitted quietly.
‘Siena, you have hundreds of friends.’
She snorted. ‘None of whom have tried for more than a second to hang out with me over the last six months. If it’s that easy to hide this,’ she gestured to her midsection, currently hidden by the blanket, ‘from your closest friends then they’re probably not your closest friends, you know?’
Josh nodded. She had a point. Siena had the sort of friends you went shopping with and tagged in Instagram posts. Not the kind of friends you turned to when you were about to have a baby and you were scared.
‘What about…’ He tried to think of a delicate way to say it. ‘You know. The baby’s father.’
Siena turned away. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
Great. Josh mentally braced himself for some angry boyfriend turning up at his door.
‘Or your mom?’ he said.
Siena shrugged again, but this was a much sadder, much more childish shrug. ‘She’s seeing this new guy,’ was all she said, and she didn’t need to say any more. Siena’s mother had been on the lookout for her second husband long before the first one died.
‘So,’ said Josh. He looked at the sister he’d only met ten years ago, the sister he hadn’t even known existed until he was twenty-five, the sister he’d believed was happily yacht-hopping her way across the world without any cares at all. ‘So I’m all you’ve got?’
Siena looked him over in return. His freezing, shabby house, his ancient plaid shirt, his slightly drunken dishevelment. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It is, like, garbage.’
However garbage it was, it didn’t match the day Essie woke up to.
Hungover, because she’d come home and raided Avery’s stillroom, and that was always a terrible idea. Most of what Avery distilled there was for medicinal use, and very little was drinkable.
Essie drank it.
Now the house sounded like a haunted zoo, and it really wasn’t helping matters that she had a vague feeling some of this might be her fault. She sat up, discovering that she appeared to have got bored halfway through undressing last night, and dragged the rest of her clothes back on to go see what the fuss was about.
Her mother’s portrait at the top of the stairs had changed. Now she wore a full-skirted red dress with a large collar edged in lace. In one hand she held a broad-brimmed hat trimmed with a plumy feather, and behind her the sky was full of smoke. The red hair and the challenging, direct gaze remained.
‘I don’t even want to know,’ muttered Essie. But she did know, all the same. She knew exactly when and where that dress was from.
Two steps down she was assaulted by a flying glass parrot, which screamed, ‘Men! Men! Fucking men!’ at her. The sound its glass wings made as they flapped was excruciating.
‘Fun,’ she remarked flatly. Her head felt dreadful. ‘Avery, your parrots have got loose!’
‘Oh, you think?’ Avery snapped, from somewhere in the recesses of the house.
By the turn of the stairs Essie heard the clash of what sounded like swords, and braced herself as she made it down the final steps to see Marley the dog and Bob the cat on their hind legs, fencing.
‘What the actual fuck?’ Essie said. ‘Stop it, you two! How are you even – you don’t have opposable thumbs!’ Bile rose in her throat. Would they stop if I was sick on them? She took a deep breath, and said in the best voice of command she could summon, ‘Stop it. Right now.’
The swords clattered to the floor, and both animals dropped to all fours. Marley looked puzzled. Bob flicked his tail and sauntered off as if he’d totally meant all that to happen.
Essie picked up the swords and put them in the umbrella stand. She concentrated, and found Avery in the kitchen.
Surrounded by saucepans of bright-blue liquid.
‘Um?’ said Essie.
‘Don’t ask me,’ Avery said tartly. ‘I was trying to make jam and it turned into this. Gravy, this. Jambalaya, this.’
Essie sniffed at a pan. It smelled sickly sweet and vaguely alcoholic. ‘It smells like,’ she said, and scrunched up her face, trying to remember. It was not a smell that helped her hangover. ‘Just, gimme a minute,’ she said, and staggered to the stillroom.
The kitchen at Beldam House was large, maybe even cavernous. It had pantries and larders and little side rooms partitioned with frosted glass, where the witches made herbal remedies and mixed medicines. One of the larger rooms was used by Avery as a still, and Essie guiltily realised there was much less inventory than there had been last night.
However, one important bottle was always within reach, and it was labelled in large, clear letters Avery’s Nasty Hangover Cure. Essie reached for it with one hand, and a bucket with the other. Nasty was an appropriate label. It worked by removing the offending alcohol from your system, usually forcibly, the way it had gone in.
Anyway, it eventually made her feel better, and once she’d rinsed the taste out of her mouth with the last of the gin, she made her way back out into the kitchen, which was still full of saucepans of blue stuff.
‘It’s a bloody madhouse this morning,’ Avery said. She was femme today, dressed like an angry 1950s housewife with a scowl to match. ‘The parrots have gone insane. I’m letting them fly it out, but they’re usually done by now.’
‘Bob and Marley were fighting like…’ Essie said, and trailed off.
‘Like cats and dogs do not traditionally fight,’ said Avery. ‘I know. Blessing escaped early to do her rounds.’
‘Blessing has rounds?’
‘She does when the house is insane. Maude,’ she added with a penetrating look at Essie, ‘said all would become clear in the forenoon.’
Essie yawned. The hangover cure was good, but not quite good enough. ‘Forenoon?’
‘Right about now. I thought I’d let you sleep it off,’ Avery added. ‘I take it things didn’t go quite so well with Captain America last night?’
At that, Essie groaned and sank into a chair. ‘Urrgh,’ she managed. She dragged a pan towards her and took a slurp of the horrible blue stuff. It tasted like artificial sweetener and regret. ‘Ugh.’
‘I know. What happened? It’s got to have some bearing on,’ Avery waved an expressive hand, ‘this.’
Essie sighed. There was no point pretending it was all fine. ‘Josh Henderson,’ she said, ‘has a girlfriend.’
Avery’s fake-lashed eyes flew open. ‘No! He was definitely flirting with you.’
‘He was more than flirting,’ Essie muttered, but maybe Avery didn’t need to know about the kissing. ‘It gets worse.’
‘How? Was she there? Did she come to the pub? Why didn’t I hear about this! Did she storm in, all “How dare you steal my man, you slaaaag?” and slap you?’
Essie blinked slowly at her. ‘This is Good Winter, not Eastenders,’ she said. ‘And no, she didn’t come to the pub. She was at his house.’
‘His – wait a minute. You went back to his place?’ Avery said, waggling her eyebrows. She picked up a pan and began to empty it down the sink. The contents fizzed alarmingly.
‘I walked him home. It was dark,’ said Essie defensively. ‘And there she was, waiting on the doorstep – eight months’ pregnant.’
The pan clattered in the sink. Avery spun around, lipsticked mouth wide open. ‘No!’
‘Oh yes. I mean, you’d need Blessing to tell exactly how far along, but – wait a sec. Where’s that doll she made?’
Avery picked up a gravy jug of blue stuff. ‘Which one?’
Essie got up, marched into the hall, and found it sitting on the mantelpiece along with the poppets of Blessing’s current patients. Red dress. Leather jacket. Stylish boots.
‘His girlfriend is Blessing’s poppet?’ Avery said, behind her.
Essie stared down at the little figure in her hand. It even had that mane of blonde hair that had silvered so prettily in the moonlight.
Essie hadn’t been lying about having excellent night vision. She’d seen the wide-eyed prettiness of the American girl, her full lips and glossy hair and golden tan. The red dress that clung to the roundness of her belly. She’d even had the boots and leather jacket.
‘It’s her,’ she said, carefully placing the doll back on the mantelpiece and taking care to seat her comfortably. Beside her sat a little doll with a white face and violet hair. Essie made a mental note to bathe it in one of Avery’s analgesics later. ‘It’s exactly her. Avery, why did Blessing make a doll of Josh’s girlfriend?’
Avery looked as lost as Essie felt, but it was nothing compared to her expression when a sonorous clang reverberated around the hallway. Dust fell from the ceiling light. The parrots struck up a fresh squawking.
‘What the hell was that?’
