Authors: Gabriella Lepore
Yawn. Give me a challenge.
I opened the bedroom door.
Damn...
Maybe I spoke too soon.
If I was looking for a challenge, I got one when I stepped into Rose’s room. This was the first time I’d actually been in the attic, so I was momentarily stunned by the undiluted scent of Rose. Everything from her clothes to her books—it was all
her
.
I recoiled. It was far too potent for my sensitive nose. I liked it a little too much.
Keen to get out of there ASAP, I stepped over to the bed and lifted the mattress. I dug through my pockets and scattered the snapdragons along the frame of the bed. They were a little squashed, but still comparatively snout-shaped.
Eh, that’ll do.
I thought.
Satisfied with my work, I dropped the mattress back down and made for the door.
On my way out, I paused at the dressing table. There was a candle. It smelt sweet, like toffee. This was peculiar to me. In my experience, candles are used as tools, not as scented ornaments.
What does she use this for?
I wondered.
I lifted it up for closer inspection and rotated it with interest. The wick was intact. It had never been lit.
My curiosity was interrupted by the sound of Caicus’s raised voice travelling up from the ground floor.
“Rose!” I heard Caicus shout from downstairs. “Where are you going?”
I froze. She was on her way upstairs.
“To my room,” Rose replied.
“Why?” Caicus demanded.
“Because I want to,” Rose answered with an edge of impertinence. Her gentle footsteps echoed as she crossed the wooden floor towards the main staircase.
Oscar
,
Caicus wailed silently.
Get out! Get out now!
Rose reached the first-floor hallway and headed for her bedroom staircase. However, as she passed the family bathroom, her footsteps stopped.
I listened to Caicus and Rose’s conversation.
“So,” Caicus began prattling away frantically, “this is some cuckoo weather we’re having, eh? Can you believe it? One day it’s raining, the next day it’s—”
Rose cut him off. “Oscar said he was going for a shower, right?”
“Uh, no. No, he didn’t.” Caicus laughed nervously. “No, wait, I mean,
yes
. Of course! Who else would be in the shower? It’s not going to run itself, now is it? That would be ridiculous! Have you ever seen the view from my bedroom? It’s fabulous. Come and have a look,” he urged.
Jeeze, Caicus.
For the record, I would have dealt with the situation so much better.
Thanks to my razor-sharp hearing, I detected the delicate sound of Rose resting her fingertips on the bathroom door handle.
“He’s not in there,” she murmured.
Time to spring in to action. This is how the big boys do it.
Before Rose could make her move, I made mine. I shut off the shower and abruptly flung open the bathroom door.
Oh, did I not mention that I’d made it back to the bathroom? I could be
very
fast when I needed to be.
The best thing about this little stunt was Caicus’s face. It was a picture! He was as white as a ghost. Sure, I could have told him that I was in there, but why waste a perfectly good opportunity to make him look like a jabbering buffoon?
I stood in the open doorway, my hair and body dripping with water and a pale yellow towel wrapped around my waist.
Just to rub it in, I feigned surprise at the sight of my evident company.
Rose blushed and cast her eyes down to the floor.
Behind her back, Caicus’s body language relaxed. He bit his lip in barely suppressed glee.
That was cutting it a bit close,
he remarked to me, silently.
Nope. Easy,
I responded.
No thanks to you! What was with the spiel about the weather? Have you no imagination?
I panicked,
Caicus protested.
You could have told me you were in there!
I grinned wickedly.
“I-I’m sorry,” Rose stammered. “I didn’t mean to… I mean, I wasn’t standing out here to, um, see you. I was just, um… I was just passing.”
Caicus’s face lit up in amusement and Rose hurried off to her bedroom.
Once we were certain that she was safely in the attic, we made our way to our own room.
It was a spacious twin bedroom, decorated to Mary’s taste. There were a few oddly matched pieces of carved furniture and two single beds, both sporting daisy-patterned bedspreads—which incidentally matched the daisy-print curtains. No comment.
“Well?” Caicus pressed as we closed the door behind us.
“I lay the snapdragons under her mattress,” I told him. “That should keep her inconspicuous for the time being.” Sure, the snapdragon trick was a myth, but we’d been brought up to believe in myths. Living the life we’d led, I believed just about everything. Oh, with the exception of Mary’s interior design taste. That was unbelievable.
Caicus flopped back onto his bed while I got changed into clean clothes.
I quickly threw on a black T-shirt and jeans and collapsed onto my own bed. Restless, I pulled the pillow from under my head and frowned at it.
“Urgh.” I grimaced. “Was it really necessary to get the daisy pillowcases too? That woman is seriously unhinged.”
Caicus ignored me.
“Cai, Look at this,” I grumbled. “Doesn’t it make you want to revolt? I’m genuinely concerned. There are daisies
every
where.”
He didn’t respond.
“Caicus,” I snapped. I hated it when he ignored me. “
Caicus
, listen to me.”
“I heard you, Oscar,” he grunted. His eyes were closed.
“It’s degrading. I feel… dirty.” I lobbed my pillow at Caicus, who caught it and tossed it to the side.
“Forget the daisies,” he griped, opening his eyes for the sole purpose of glaring at me. “Let me see the book, would you?” He stretched out his arm but made no attempt to prop himself upright.
“No. Get it yourself.”
Bickering was something we did a lot.
“Come on, Oscar,” he whined. “Just get it for me. I’m really tired.”
I closed my eyes. “So am I.”
That was a lie. I wasn’t tired at all.
Caicus laughed like a naughty child—which always made me laugh, too. Perhaps because it reminded me of when we actually
were
naughty children.
“Please? Just do it!” he shouted, kicking his legs on the mattress.
This was how we had our fun, by the way—winding each other up, usually until it came to blows. Oh, then we were sorry. Or, he was, anyhow. At least that’s the way I’d tell it.
Anyway, I decided to let him win one, so, with a very deliberate sigh, I reached under my bed and heaved out a worn brown trunk. Hanging precariously over the edge of my mattress, I coded in the lock combination and opened the lid.
It took a bit of rummaging, but buried beneath a mound of clothes was a heavy, leather-bound book. The antique cover was faded gold, and the yellowed pages were thicker and coarser than ordinary paper. Midway through, a page had been marked with a piece of string.
I flipped the book open to the marked page and handed it to Caicus.
For a moment he stared intently at the words imprinted on the aged paper. He didn’t need to read them out to me—I knew them off by heart. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he did, too.
THE PROPHECY OF LATHIAUS
It is foretold, on the day of his end,
so doth life begin
At the stroke of the eleventh hour,
he shall awaken
All will bow before him
All will perish at his mercy
Only one can end the blood spill
She, the girl with the heart of a witch
Before the hour turns to twelfth,
she must grant him her death
Two will take her to him, and all will be spared
Two will turn away, and all will be slaughtered
Our fate awaits.
“Lathiaus,” Caicus spoke the name aloud.
“Lathiaus,” I repeated. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I bow to him,” I scoffed.
Yes, that was resentment in my voice. What could I say? I don’t bow.
Caicus snorted. “I’m banking on it not coming to that.”
I said nothing.
He carried on, “Let’s just make sure this goes smoothly, okay? I have no intention of going head to head with Lathiaus. I don’t want to be turned into kibble and bits.”
“‘Perish at his mercy’?” I jeered. “I bet he’s all talk.”
Caicus guffawed. “Wanna bet your life on that? People have been talking about this prophecy for centuries. ‘Lathiaus’s resurrection from the dead’,” he mimicked our elders. “‘The end to all witches, blah blah blah’. I think they were taking it pretty seriously, Oscar.”
“Yeah, well…”
“And they’re counting on
us
to pull this off,” he added.
Pull this off?
He meant hand Rose over. She was the girl in the prophecy, after all. The girl with the heart of a witch. And when it was time for old Lathiaus’s big comeback, it was going to boil down to this: us or her. If we handed her over to Lathiaus, we’d spare the lives of an entire race of witches. If we let her go, it’d be nuclear bye-bye for our kind. That’s why everyone had been searching for the prophecy girl—she was our ticket out of extinction. And all Caicus and I had to do was take away her life force at exactly the right time.
Yep, that was the plan. No doubts at all. None whatsoever.
I rolled back onto my bed and gazed up at the white ceiling.
“Caicus, what if we…”
How shall I put it?
“What if we, say, don’t do it?”
“We will do it.”
“But what if we don’t?”
“Then Lathiaus will end the line of witches. Everybody goes kaput. You, me, everybody.”
“Right.”
“But you already knew that,” Caicus pointed out astutely. “You needed a bit of a reminder, eh?”
He wasn’t stupid. He knew where my thoughts were heading.
“Would you really sacrifice all of our lives for some girl?” he asked bluntly.
I sighed. “No, of course not.”
He was right. I shouldn’t even have entertained such ludicrous thoughts.
Argh! She’s ruining everything. I need to focus. Focus, focus, focus.
“Anyway, I wasn’t talking about
her
,” I backtracked. “I’m not some sort of renegade. I was merely expressing a momentary concern. What I meant was, what if something goes wrong?”
Caicus clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “It’s all doom and gloom with you sometimes. Look, we’ve found the girl. We’re guarding her until the day of reckoning. When it’s time for Lathiaus’s return, all we have to do is hand her over. Even a prize fool like you can’t mess this one up.”
I fanned my arms out across the ugly bedspread. “All the same, I’d rather that it wasn’t our responsibility. It’s such a drag. And you know how I get under pressure.” I yawned apathetically.
“It’s not all bad,” Caicus said as he stared beyond the window. “Just think of the aftermath… I don’t know about you, but I’m already choreographing the steps to my victory dance. We’ll be legends, Oscar!”
He had a point.
“I wouldn’t mind being a legend,” I muttered.
“It makes the endurance of our overt manners that much more bearable.”
“I suppose. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up for.”
“Well, you’d better pace yourself, because it could be weeks to go yet.”
The truth was, no one could be sure of exactly when Lathiaus would return. We knew it would be on the anniversary of his death. But that wasn’t much help, because he’d been vanquished hundreds of years ago, and the precise calendar date remained unclear. We’d taken a vague stab at guessing and decided that it would be some time in August
.
All we could do was wait and hope that Lathiaus didn’t somehow get to her first. Or, in my case, hope that I didn’t have too much time to talk myself out of it.
Oh hell, I was the wrong person for this job.
I punched my fist into the mattress. “Curse my dreams!” After all, my dreams were what had landed us there in the first place. More specifically, I’d been having
visions
. Visions of Rose.
“No. The dreams were fine,” Caicus piped up. “The dreams were the key to unveiling the prophecy girl. What I curse is our friendship. And the damn fact that you requested me as your companion. Swine!”
I sat upright and grinned broadly. “Who else would I choose? You’re my best friend, not to mention the only Valero witch that I can tolerate being in the company of for more than five minutes.”