Spellweaver (12 page)

“I told you,” Jamie
said. “Absolutely mental.”

But Felicity had
noticed something else. “Have you... done something with your
hair?”

It was suddenly very
obvious that Hollie had indeed done something with her hair, but
her strangely timed personal grooming routine didn’t end there; she
had had a shower, washed her hair, styled it into long, bouncy
curls and put on so much makeup that it looked as though she was
about to go to a Snap Night at the Talk.

She ran her fingers
innocently through her blonde locks. “Well... yeah. I felt all
disgusting.”

Jamie glanced from
Hollie to the two plates she held in her hands, and it was then
that realisation dawned. “Oh no,” he said, ignoring his hangover
and standing up quickly. “You still fancy him, don’t
you?”

Hollie was momentarily
shocked at the accusation, but her melodramatic pretence was too
easy to see through and it was clear that Jamie was right. She gave
up the charade. “So what if I do?” she asked defiantly.

Jamie smacked his
forehead with his palm. “He tried to kill you!”

“Yes, but he didn’t
kill me, did he?” Hollie said. “Anyway, I thought he might - y’know
- talk to someone if they showed him a little kindness.”

“Not you.” Jamie
snatched the plates from his sister and thrust one of them into the
reluctant hands of Felicity. “Can you do it? I mean, I would, but
this headache... I’ll go down there later, I promise, but can you
just take him his breakfast?”

Felicity’s shoulders
slumped. She didn’t want to. At all. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

Hollie folded her arms
disappointedly. “Fine, fine. Whatever.”

Jamie smiled
gratefully at Felicity, ignoring the death stares his sister was
sending his way, and then he slumped back at the kitchen table and
began considering whether or not to eat the greasy breakfast in
front of him. Plate in hand, Felicity took a breath and headed down
to the cellar.

Oliver was watching
her from the moment she went in. She wished he wouldn’t look at her
like that. It was such a penetrating stare that it made her shudder
and she had to look away. She walked down the steps and placed the
plate on the bench near to the pipe where Oliver was tied up, and
then she hurriedly moved away.

“You won’t be able to
fool them forever, you know,” he said as she started to
leave.

Felicity stopped. The
breath caught in her throat.

Seeing that he had her
attention, Oliver continued: “Don’t get me wrong; they’re stupid.
But they’ll figure it out sooner or later.”

Felicity turned
around. “What are you talking about?”

Oliver shrugged and
sighed. “Alright, alright. Have it your way.” He leaned back in his
chair. “You’ve got much bigger problems than me, anyway. So what’s
for breakfast?”

Still keeping one hand
on the iron banister, as if it were some kind of safety harness,
Felicity took a cautious step towards Oliver. She was afraid of
him, that much was certain, but she also had questions, and she
suspected that he would be able to answer them. She glanced at his
hands, still tied reassuringly tight behind his back. Her fear gave
in to her curiosity, as it had a strange habit of doing these
days.

“You can do magic,”
she stated, though it was more of a question.

“Of course I can,”
Oliver replied, and then his eyes once again met hers. “Untie me
and I’ll show you.”

Felicity ignored that.
“Tell me what you were doing in the alleyway,” she said. “That
night back in September. When it all went dark and there was
this...” She hesitated to even say it, it still felt so
unbelievable and ridiculous. “Ball of light.”

Oliver tilted his head
to one side and regarded her with a slightly confused expression.
“That was a spell of darkness,” he said quietly. “And a Sphere of
Draining.”

“A... Sphere of
Draining,” Felicity said, partly to herself. It meant nothing to
her. It made no sense. “What were you trying to do to
me?”

Oliver frowned as his
confusion mounted. “Is... this some kind of trick?”

She stared at
him.

After a long moment
that seemed to last an age, his confusion disappeared and he leaned
back in his chair. “Alright, I’ll play along,” he said. “The spell
of darkness was meant to obscure your vision so you couldn’t get
away, and the Sphere of Draining was meant to sap you of all your
energy. And it would’ve worked, too, if those two idiots hadn’t
turned up.”

She didn’t know how to
respond to that, for she had no idea what he was talking about.
Just looking at Oliver filled her with a desperate anxiety, let
alone his strange words and threatening, hateful tone. She noticed
the rhythm of her breathing increase and her body grow tense. She
had a strong desire to flee the cellar as quickly as she could, but
as much as she feared what this strange boy could do, she was also
hungry for answers to her many questions. With sweating palms, she
rummaged through her bag and withdrew her mother’s
journal.

This caught Oliver’s
attention. He sat up and his eyes widened in surprise and
recognition. “You’ve got it,” he breathed, and then his brow
furrowed into an expression of anger. “Give it to me,” he
demanded.

Felicity held the book
close to her chest.

Suddenly, Oliver
lurched forwards, knocking his chair over. “Give it to me!” he
shouted, pulling hard and in vain on the ropes that secured him.
They straightened to their longest length - which wasn’t much more
than a few feet - as he threw all of his weight towards
her.

Felicity had staggered
backwards in surprise, but upon seeing how helpless Oliver was, she
was reassured. She held the book towards him, but still far beyond
his reach. “You know what this is?” she asked, her voice
shaking.

“Of course I know what
it is,” Oliver growled. “I’ve been searching for it for all this
time -”

“Then tell me!”
Felicity cried. “Tell me what it is!”

Oliver’s anger left
his face almost instantly, replaced once again by an intense
bewilderment. It seemed like hours had passed before he actually
spoke, and when he did his voice was quiet and his eyes full to the
brim with utter disbelief. “You... you don’t know, do you?” he
breathed. “You don’t know who you are.”

The door to the cellar
opened and Hollie and Jamie clambered noisily down the stone steps.
Jamie positioned himself between Oliver and Felicity.

“Get away from her,”
he said intently.

It was a moment before
any of them moved or made a sound. Oliver’s eyes were locked on
Felicity as if her two friends were invisible. Slowly, he moved
away. It seemed as though he wanted desperately to say something
but had been shocked into silence. Felicity stared back, confused
and deeply disturbed.

Hollie appeared beside
her and tugged on her hand. “Come on, Fliss.”

As the two of them
began to leave the cellar, Oliver finally found the words he had
been searching for. “You can’t stay here forever,” he called to
Felicity. “Sooner or later you’ll have to go back. The others are
coming - they’ll find you!”

“What was all that
about?” Hollie asked quizzically as the two of them left the
cellar.

But Felicity wasn’t
listening. She didn’t reply, and upon her face there hung a
troubled expression that twisted her features into a frown. Her
hands were shaking. Her heart knocked almost violently against her
ribs. She had to get out of there.

She ignored Hollie’s
protests as she left her side, running down the hallway and
practically falling through the front door of the house. The
freezing cold air was like a stinging slap but she relished it; she
gulped at it hungrily like a starving animal. The cellar had
suddenly become un underground prison and she felt trapped between
those four immovable, concrete walls. But even out in the freedom
of the snowy streets, she still felt too close to Oliver and his
strange words.

Once she had taken
enough deep breaths to feel calmer, she glanced about the almost
deserted streets, unsure of what to do and where to go. On the
other side of the road was a park surrounded by tall, leafless
trees so she headed for it, instantly comforted by every step that
nourished the distance between her and Oliver. She still clung to
her mother’s journal but kept it tucked under her arm, and she kept
flicking nervous, uneasy glances in all directions as if she
expected someone to come and snatch the precious thing from her. It
was special. She knew that now. It had to be protected.

The park was quite
idyllic, even in the winter. Brick woven paths led between shrubs
and gardens that were covered in snow. She could hear the sound of
children playing and soon caught sight of them wearing their
brightly coloured coats, scarves and hats. They ran to and from
each other, throwing snowballs, pulling sledges and building
snowmen, all of them blissfully ignorant of the strange things that
existed in the world. Felicity had been like that once. She always
knew that there was a great deal she didn’t know and hadn’t
experienced, but she could never have guessed that it involved
magic spells and mysterious books. That kind of the thing only
existed in the imagination, and she had never placed much
importance upon dreams and fantasy.

Felicity turned her
back on the playing children and brushed some snow from a nearby
bench before sitting down. A beautiful stone fountain stood in
front of her, featuring a cherub tipping water from a vase.
Felicity shivered. In her haste to leave the house and put as much
distance between her and Oliver as possible, she had neglected to
bring a coat.

But that wasn’t a
problem for long, for suddenly Hollie was sitting beside her and
had draped her coat around her hunched shoulders. She didn’t speak,
which was unusual. Felicity expected a barrage of questions and
exposure to Hollie’s endless theories and observations, but they
didn’t come. Recent events had changed the both of them.

“I think I’m
involved.”

Felicity was shocked
at how the words had left her mouth without her even realising it,
but once it began, it couldn’t be stopped. The flood gates were
open.

“Oliver talks about
things, strange things to do with magic and stuff, and he talks
about them as if I should know about them, too. He came after me
that night in September and then he came after me
again.”

“You mean when we
found you in the alleyway?” Hollie asked. She had almost forgotten
about that night.

Felicity nodded. “He -
he tried to do - I think he tried to cast a spell on me or
something.”

Hollie was surprised.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked.

“Because I wasn’t sure
it had even happened. I just - I doubted myself.”

After her near-miss
with a flaming hand, Hollie understood perfectly.

“I think it has
something to do with my mum,” Felicity continued.

Hollie looked at her.
“Why do you think that?” she asked softly, and her voice had not a
single trace of confusion in it; it was open and
accepting.

Felicity had been
hugging her mother’s precious journal close to her chest, guarding
it and protecting it. Anyone around her could be an Oliver, someone
who looked like everyone else but who could conjure flames at their
fingertips. Being used to seclusion, Felicity had wanted to find
somewhere small, dark and secret to retreat, but the park, complete
with its noisy fountain and the sound of laughing children seemed
oddly safe.

She showed the book to
Hollie, and the sense of relief that followed was like a massive
weight lifting from her burdened shoulders.

“What’s this?” Hollie said as she flicked through the
pages.

“I don’t know,”
Felicity replied. “It was my mum’s.”

A frown creased the
perfect complexion of Hollie’s brow. “It doesn’t make any sense,”
she observed.

“Oliver knows what it
is.”

“What?” Hollie was
surprised. “Have you asked him?”

“Not yet.”

Hollie passed the book
back to her friend. “Then that’s what you have to do.”

Felicity’s reply was
instant. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Felicity opened her
mouth to respond but found herself snapping it shut again. This
time the response was not so clear. Just why couldn’t she ask
Oliver? Could she trust him to tell the truth? What if the truth
was something she didn’t want to hear? Would he even answer her
questions at all? She shook her head helplessly.

“Fliss.” Hollie tilted
her head to one side. When she spoke, she had the demeanour of a
teacher giving a pep talk to a student. “If Oliver knows something
about you and your mum, then you need to find out what it is. Yeah,
he might lie to you, but if you don’t go down there and at least
try, then you’ll probably spend a really long time thinking about
it, and then you’ll get really miserable and you’ll be no fun to be
around and then we won’t be BFFs any more.” She paused
deliberately. “I don’t hang around with boring, miserable people,
Fliss. It would do terrible things to my complexion.”