“I’m working,” Joel reminded her, thumbing towards the empty tracks.
“I’ll pay you double!” Maggie said desperately, fumbling through her shoulder bag and stuffing a handful of notes into Joel’s hands. “Here,” she said. “This is all I have. Take it.”
Joel stared down at the crumpled notes in his hands. “Okay,” he said at last, casting a glance at the tracks. The train was nowhere in sight and the queue was still empty. “But this is just payment for a check-over,” he said, stuffing the cash in his jeans pocket. “I’m going to need more if you want the curse gone. This isn’t a charity case.”
“Fine,” agreed Maggie, once again taking hold of his sleeve and towing him in the direction of the carnival entrance. “But we’ve gotta move it. I’m going to have to sneak you into the dorms before Joyless starts the night shift.”
“I’m not doing this at school!” Joel laughed. “You’ll have to come to my house.”
She stopped in her tracks, causing Joel to bump into her.
“Your house?” she echoed weakly.
“Don’t act so surprised,” Joel replied. “You’re asking me to do a spell, aren’t you? Well, where do you think I do my spells?”
Maggie shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “You want me to hang out at the creepy old hell-pit for witches?”
“Can you stop calling it that?” he grumbled. “It’s okay for me to say it, but when you say it, it’s just offensive.”
“Fine,” Maggie muttered, then began walking cautiously onwards.
“And besides,” Joel added as they weaved through the stalls, “you won’t be hanging out there. You weren’t invited for recreation. This is business.”
They reached the main entrance, where gatherings of carnival goers were milling about. Cars were parked along the street for as far as the eye could see.
Maggie sighed. “Where are you parked?”
“Evan has the car tonight,” Joel told her. “I walked, remember?”
Maggie groaned. “So how are we going to get there?” Her jade eyes paled in the moonlight. “We can’t walk. Your house is miles away!”
“We won’t have to walk,” Joel answered. He scanned the street until his eyes landed on a small cherry red mini parked some ways along the pavement. “There’s one,” he murmured to himself.
“There’s one what?” Maggie asked, following his gaze.
Joel smiled innocently. “There’s one we can borrow,” he said as he started towards the mini.
Maggie trotted along behind him. “What do you mean?” she called, her voice rising an octave. “Does that car belong to someone you know?”
“No. But it’s easy to borrow.”
“Borrow?” Maggie spluttered. “As in, steal?”
“Borrow as in borrow,” Joel corrected, striding ahead of her. “We’ll give it back.”
He reached the car and tried the handle. It opened without a problem.
Maggie drew in her breath. “It wasn’t locked?”
Joel smiled up at her as he slid into the driver’s seat. “I have good instincts,” he told her as he nodded to the seat beside him.
Wringing out her hands, Maggie crept around the car and clambered into the passenger’s seat. She winced as she pulled the door shut behind her.
Inside the cold car, their breath misted the windscreen. Fuzzy dice hung from the rear view mirror and the car smelled of peppermint and perfume.
Sitting rigidly in the passenger seat, Maggie knotted her fingers together. “You should know, I’ve never stolen a car before. Nor do I want to be doing it now,” she added, glaring pointedly at Joel.
He frowned back at her. “Would you please stop insinuating that I’m stealing this car? Because I’m not. I’m giving it back as soon as we’re done.”
“If we get pulled over, I’m telling the police you kidnapped me.”
“Maybe I’ll tell them you kidnapped me,” Joel retorted as he familiarised himself with the dashboard.
Maggie sucked in her breath.
“Relax,” Joel muttered. “We won’t get caught. I have good instincts, remember?”
He found the ignition and touched his fingertip to the key slot. Then he closed his eyes and let out a slow breath.
Maggie twitched restlessly beside him. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
He opened one eye and peered at her. “I’m using my energy to start the car,” he explained. “Shh.” His eyelid dropped again.
Maggie folded her hands in her lap, threading and unthreading her fingers while they sat in silence.
All of a sudden, the rumble of the engine exploded to life. The car’s headlamps lit up the street before them and the stereo boomed, blaring a pop song.
Maggie jumped, clutching at her heart as the new ‘it’ band belted out a catchy up-tempo melody.
Joel turned to her and grinned, then settled his hands on the steering wheel.
“You might want to put on your seatbelt,” he advised.
Maggie readily obliged.
With that, Joel swung the car out onto the road and sped off into the night.
THE CAR ROCKETED through the backcountry, tearing along the narrow mountain roads while trees whizzed past on both sides.
Leaving one hand resting lightly on the steering wheel, Joel wound down the driver’s side window. The rush of air whipped across his skin and through his hair.
“Hands on the steering wheel, lunatic!” Maggie cried, covering her eyes with her fingers.
This was fun. He hardly ever got to drive without Maximus or Evan breathing down his neck. Or Ainsley complaining about something. It was nice to drive alone.
“Are you trying to kill us both?”
Okay, so he wasn’t alone, exactly. But it was only Maggie.
He cast a quick glance to the seat beside him and caught a glimpse of Maggie’s sandy coloured hair fluttering in the open window.
“Watch where you’re going!” she squealed, her own eyes still covered by her hands.
Joel swung a hard left and the car juddered over the uneven ground leading up to Really Old Aunt Pearl’s house.
“Slow down!” Maggie exclaimed as they bumped up and down in their seats.
Joel laughed. “Sorry,” he said, but he didn’t take his foot off the accelerator. Not until they’d reached the clearing in front of the ramshackle old mansion.
He slammed his foot on the brake and they jolted forward to an abrupt stop.
Only then did Maggie lower her hands from her eyes. She immediately turned her angry glare on Joel.
He held up his palms and smiled. “Sorry,” he offered again.
Taking a deep breath, Maggie turned her attention to the windscreen, through which she could see the ancient stone mansion. The old hell-pit was bathed in moonlight, making it look particularly imposing.
Joel watched her expression change from fury to fear. The glow of the energy around her shifted too, going from the hazy blue of trepidation to the dull purple of terror.
A tiny knot formed in his stomach, even though her reaction hadn’t come as a surprise. After all, that’s how everyone looked when they were confronted with the Witch House for the first time.
People looked at him that way sometimes, too. And once in a while, he even saw it in the mirror.
She knew what she was getting herself into when she accepted my help, Joel reminded himself. She was the one who sought me out.
He shook off his apprehension and stepped out of the mini. The air was colder here, and the wind howled through the clear night air. The trees shuddered as the breeze raked through them, bowing at his arrival.
Maggie climbed out of the car after him and hurried to his side. Together they paced towards the mansion.
“I hope it’s nicer inside than it is outside,” she muttered as they approached the front porch.
“It isn’t,” Joel replied.
She grimaced as she gingerly negotiated the rickety front steps.
 
; Joel heaved open the front door and stood aside for Maggie to step through. She took her cue and trod carefully across the threshold.
As usual, it was dim in the mansion’s entrance hall. Only one oil lamp had been lit to illuminate the space, and a veil of cobwebs muted its weak light. The misted glow of moonlight leaked in through the tall leaded-glass windows, casting long shadows across the staircase.
Joel took the lead, heading for the stairs. “Watch out for the third step,” he said with a backwards glance. “It’s not there.”
“Oh,” Maggie’s shaky voice returned to him. “Noted.”
Joel listened to the echo of their footsteps as they neared the upper hallway. If he listened carefully, he could hear the quick pounding of her heartbeat and the rasp of her nervous breath.
He wondered what she was more nervous about—the house, the spiders, or him.
Noticing a particularly large spider on the bannister, he subtly brushed it aside, just in case it was the spiders.
Once they’d reached the top of the stairs, he made for his bedroom. There were plenty of other rooms leading off the corridor, but in the weeks that the Tomlins family had been at the house, Joel had hardly explored them at all. What would have been the point? This wasn’t his home; it was Evan’s. For him, it was just a stop gap until he could bail.
Something better will come along, Joel told himself as he shouldered open his stiff bedroom door.
As Maggie followed along behind him, Joel noticed that her heartbeat began to slow, as though the room was calming her a little. Although he couldn’t think of why that might be; his room was hardly a safe haven.
“So this one’s yours?” she asked, standing unusually close to him as she surveyed his bedroom.
Joel nodded. He couldn’t help but notice the faint aroma of her sweet scented shampoo clinging to the air.
Bubble gum, he thought, momentarily indulging in the scent before reminding himself that this was Maggie—and that, as a rule, he really shouldn’t breathe her in.
He stepped away from her, putting some distance between them.
There, he thought defiantly. Much better. He inhaled a deep breath of his moth ball smelling bedroom instead.
Maggie shuffled closer to him again.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, nudging her away. “Stop standing so close to me.”
She crinkled her nose and took a generous sidestep away. “Sorry, but your house is creepy.”
Joel sighed. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”
“Please,” Maggie said with a shudder.
There was a pause.
“So, what exactly is it that we’re doing?” she asked, wrapping her arms about herself as she continued to peer curiously around Joel’s bedroom.
The bed on the left was untouched and its old-fashioned floral bedspread was gathering dust. The bed on the right remained unmade in a tangle of sheets.
Joel crossed the room to a set of antique French doors and drew open the thin white drapes. He pushed out the doors and stepped onto a small rusty balcony that overlooked the surrounding forest. The full moon shone high above in the starlit sky, somehow seeming larger and brighter than it had been in town.
“Come here,” Joel instructed, gesturing to the open doorway. “You need to face the moon.”
Maggie pursed her lips. “Why?”
Joel met her gaze. “I don’t know. Just. . . because.”
She eyed him cagily as she edged forward to stand in the open doorway. The evening breeze whistled through the balcony railings, catching stray strands of Maggie’s hair and carrying the scent to Joel.
He shivered.
“Now what?” Maggie asked, turning back to face him.
He gathered himself. “Now we begin.”
Stepping up behind her, he looked out over her head into the night.
“Stay still,” he said. “I need to check the—” He stopped himself before the word spell escaped his lips. He knew it was no secret that he was a witch, but he’d never actually performed a spell on a person before—not a girl person, anyway. “Just stay still,” he finished.
He left her alone on the balcony for a moment while he retrieved his book from under the unmade bed. It was a tatty leather-bound journal, crammed with mostly hand-me-down spells and trial-and-error incantations. Every witch worth his salt had one of these. Joel had been adding to his for years, jotting down whatever spells he found useful. His wasn’t as jam-packed as Maximus’s or even Evan’s, but it blew Ainsley’s out of the water—which was good enough for Joel.
“Um, Joel?” Maggie called from the balcony doorway.
Preoccupied, he made a mumbling noise in response and continued flipping through the worn pages of his journal.
“How long do I have to stand here for?”
Joel glanced up at her. She was facing away from him, her eyes trained on the moon like he’d instructed. Her arms were at her side and she was flexing her fingers, tugging anxiously at some frayed threads on the stitching of her jeans. Her hair moved gently in the wind, tumbling down the back of her white jumper.
Joel’s heart gave a strange tug.
He cleared his throat. “Not much longer,” he said. He continued to leaf through the journal until he landed on a page with the handwritten heading See Things Better.
He smiled sentimentally at the childlike handwriting and his nine-year-old self’s description of the spell.
“Okay,” he called to Maggie. “I’ve got it.”
Carrying the open book, he walked back over to where she stood. Positioning himself behind her, he carefully moved her hair aside and placed his left hand between her shoulder blades.
This feels weird, he thought. But at least she was turned away from him so she wouldn’t be able to see the colour that was undoubtedly rising to his cheeks.
“This feels weird,” Maggie said.
“Just hold still,” he managed in reply.
With his left hand still on her back and his right hand cradling the open journal, Joel concentrated on listening to the whir of the wind outside. To the ever quickening pulse in Maggie’s veins. To the distant rustle of leaves in the forest. He listened to it all.
After a few moments, he began to read aloud the words he had penned many years ago.
“Granted sight,
We seek in light,
Reveal, and see,
Show secrets unto me.”
All of a sudden, a gold radiance surrounded Maggie like a layer of gilded armour cocooning her. Joel felt it tingle through his fingertips where he was touching her. He heard it pulsating through her, as though it had a heartbeat of its own.
It was powerful, he realised. Impenetrable. As the gold light swam around his fingertips, it made his blood rush and his eyes sting. Then Joel was thrown backwards, as if he’d been struck by lightning—lightning that emanated from Maggie herself.
The jolt sent him hurtling backwards across the room until he collided into the wall. His head clipped against the plasterboard and he dropped to the floor, dazed.
The gold glow faded and Maggie spun around in shock.
“Joel!” she cried, rushing across the room and crouching on the floor beside him. “What happened?” Her eyes widened, searching his for an explanation.
With speckled vision, he looked up at her. “Maggie,” he whispered, running his hand through his hair. “You’ve got something on you, that’s for sure.”
Both her hands flew to her mouth. “A curse?” she choked out.
Joel’s gaze strayed to the moon beyond the balcony. Whatever it was that was surrounding Maggie, it had enough force behind it to throw him across the room. More precisely, whatever it was didn’t want him touching her. Didn’t want anything touching her, probably.
She was private property.
Maggie grabbed hold of Joel’s arm and urged his attention to return to her. “What is it?” she demanded.
He swallowed. Something akin to fear rose in his chest. H
ow was he supposed to answer that?
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But it was definitely something.”
MAGGIE AND JOEL hadn’t said much else to each other on Friday night after the incident on his bedroom balcony. Joel had just mumbled a few non-committal comments, before silently driving Maggie and the borrowed car back to the carnival, where they’d immediately gone their separate ways.
Now it was Sunday evening, and Blonde Lauren and Hilary were on their way to Maggie and Isla’s dorm room for their customary Sunday night movie marathon. And Maggie was determined to push all thoughts of curses—and Tomlinses—to the back of her mind.
While Isla waited at the room for the others to arrive, Maggie busied herself microwaving popcorn in the boarding house kitchen. Of course Joyless would undoubtedly be patrolling the halls to enforce her strict eleven o’clock p.m. visitors curfew on the two non-residents, but the sun had only just set so they still had hours of movie time left.
Maggie hadn’t told her friends about what had happened with Joel on Friday night. It wasn’t that she wanted to keep it a secret—but how was she supposed to tell them that she was cursed? They’d think she was crazy. Besides, Isla had been there when the Incredible Psycho Madam Emerald had delivered the unfortunate news, and Isla had just laughed it off. And now Maggie was beginning to feel like she should laugh it off, too.
So why couldn’t she?
The memory of Joel being thrown across his bedroom, and the harrowed look on his face that followed, had been playing on a loop in her mind ever since.
The microwave pinged and Maggie was jolted back to the present. She took out the jumbo-sized bag of popcorn and emptied the steaming contents into a plastic bowl, nibbling on a few pieces before leaving the kitchen.
Cradling the overflowing bowl in her arms, Maggie raced up the boarding house’s spiral staircase until she reached the third floor. She nudged open her dorm room door with her foot and ducked inside. Isla had drawn the purple drapes across the leaded-glass windows and had heaped a mountain of cushions and blankets on the floor between their two beds.
Isla and Blonde Lauren were already planted in the centre of the comfy arrangement while Hilary, dressed in a plaid shirt and black skinny jeans, hovered in front of the small TV, sifting through the stack of DVDs.