Spellweaver (14 page)

His words seemed to
have the desired effect. Felicity shook her head helplessly; the
truth was sinking in. In spite of all she had already seen, it was
clearly difficult for her to accept that there were forces in the
world that she didn’t understand, but she had asked for the truth
and he had provided it.

He knew that it was
now time to up his game and take the next step.

“Take your mother, for
example,” he said. “She could do it.”

Watching Felicity
react to his revelations made putting up with her incessant
ignorance completely worth it. He revelled in the power he had over
her; he didn’t even need his magic. He saw her head snap up, her
eyes widen and her expression twist into a look of shock, confusion
and disbelief. Her breath caught in her throat. He could almost
hear her heart skip a beat and then its rhythm begin to quicken.
All of this he absorbed and relished.

“Yes, she could do
it,” Oliver repeated deliberately. “She was one of the most
powerful of us all.”

“No,” Felicity
breathed. “My mother was - she was normal. I would’ve known
-”

“You knew what she
chose to tell you,” Oliver said. “Come on, Felicity. You’re not
stupid. Think about it.”

She didn’t want to
think about it, but she couldn’t help it - and immediately she knew
that Oliver was right. All of the time her mother had spent away
from home, all of the empty conversations the two of them had
had... it seemed so obvious now that her mother had been keeping
secrets from her, and Felicity had always felt that she had never
really known her. Had it not been for her mother’s handwriting in
the strange book of spells, she wouldn’t have believed
it.

But it made perfect
sense.

Oliver wondered where
he could go next. He knew he couldn’t tell her everything, but what
he had revealed so far had shaken her so much that she was hungry
for more. It was possible that she wasn’t even aware of it yet, but
Oliver knew. He could see her beginning to drop her guard as her
desperation for knowledge grew.

She flicked through
the pages of her mother’s journal. “But this...” she said quietly.
“This is all... it’s gibberish. I can’t even read it.”

“I can.”

She looked at
him.

“I can read it,” he
repeated. “I can tell you exactly what it says.”

Felicity withdrew. She
pulled the book close to her chest. “No,” she said.

“Don’t you want to
know?” Oliver asked. “It’s your mother’s handwriting, isn’t it?
They’re her words. Aren’t you curious?”

“I don’t trust
you.”

“You don’t have to
untie me,” Oliver pressed on. “Just show me a page or two. I can
read it to you.” He saw the look of worry flash across Felicity’s
features. “Look, my hands are tied. I can’t cast a spell just by
reading it - not like your mother could.”

There was silence in
the cellar for what seemed like an age as Felicity considered his
request. She was being honest when she said she didn’t trust him,
but she wanted to know more so badly that it hurt. She could feel a
tight tugging sensation at her chest and found herself short of
breath. Everything was so overwhelming, so unbelievable that she
felt insane for even believing it - but she did. She believed every
word that came from the mouth of this untrustworthy boy who had
tried to harm them, even kill them. She needed him to tell her
more.

She walked towards
him, and it was only as she stood directly in front of him that she
realised how tightly she was grasping her mother’s book. Her nails
were digging into the soft, leather cover. Oliver’s gaze had once
again shifted; he was looking at the book with a hunger that was
rather unsettling. It seemed that he had eyes for only two things -
the book, which he regarded with an impatient, frustrated longing,
and Felicity herself, for whenever he wasn’t staring at the
journal, he was watching her with that penetrating
stare.

She took a deep breath
and flicked through the pages, randomly stopping somewhere near the
middle before turning the book around to face Oliver. His eyes
consumed the words as they traced them eagerly. He muttered under
his breath. When he was finished - which was mere seconds after he
had started, so quickly had he read the page - he leaned back in
his chair. Even Felicity could sense his disappointment; it was
very badly concealed.

“That’s a defensive
spell,” he said. “A shield of sorts. A shame... I was hoping to see
something more impressive.”

“But what does it
actually say?” Felicity asked. “You said you’d read it to
me.”

Oliver rolled his eyes
and sighed. “Very well,” he said. “But don’t expect to understand a
word of it; it’s in a language that isn’t spoken in this
world.”

And then he uttered
the words that were meant to produce the magic, and that was the
moment when everything changed. The first thing she noticed was
Oliver’s voice. It wasn’t that it became deeper, it was that its
bass suddenly became more prominent. She could suddenly feel it
vibrating in her chest like music turned up too loud. For a
fleeting second, it made her feel slightly sick.

His voice wasn’t the
only thing that changed. As he spoke, the air around him seemed to
blur as if in a haze of heat above a burning fire. Everything
became distorted. It made Felicity dizzy, and she had to put her
hand out to steady herself.

She had heard and felt
this before. She could recall the exact moment. It was in the
alleyway back in September, when she had first encountered Oliver’s
magic. As soon as he had started speaking those strange words, she
had felt unwell for a moment. It was such a small part of the
unbelievable things she had seen that she had quite forgotten about
it, but now that she remembered, it took her back to the fear she
had felt that night, and the feeling was not pleasant.

It was over. Oliver
had stopped reciting and was looking at her curiously as she stood
unsteadily in front of him. The headache and the feeling of nausea
subsided.

“That can happen when
you haven’t been exposed to a high level of magic before,” Oliver
said as she regained her balance. “It disorients you.”

“That was... magic,”
Felicity said, believing it completely for the first time. She knew
it was magic. It had to be.

“A defensive spell,
like I said,” Oliver replied. “But I can’t cast it with my hands
tied. I need to form the gestures that go with the words. That’s
how magic works - for most of us, at least.” He paused. “I could
show you if you untie me.”

Felicity squinted and
rubbed her forehead; the pain had completely gone. “Those words,”
she said, ignoring Oliver’s last statement. “What do they
mean?”

“They’re the
incantations necessary for creating magic,” Oliver explained.
“Words are powerful. You can hurt someone with a lie. You can heal
them with encouragement and positivity. But where I come from,
words have a new meaning altogether. Words can hurt you physically,
tear your flesh apart like a sword - and they can knit the wound
back together afterwards with just as much ease. That’s their
power. Without words, we’d just be animals.” He paused and looked
her directly in the eye. “Did your mother teach you nothing at
all?”

It was a fine example
of how words could be used to damage feelings, for that last
statement stung. But Felicity had noticed something else; something
that he had said. As her brow furrowed in concentration, she
realised he had said it more than once. “Where you... come from?”
she ventured hesitantly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Oliver didn’t respond.
Had he been able to, he would have folded his arms defiantly. The
next moment of silence informed Felicity that she was not going to
get anything else out of him, for now at least. With a final glance
behind her, she picked up her mother’s journal and hurried up the
steps of the cellar as fast as she could.

10.

Jamie was waiting for
Felicity when she emerged from the cellar.

“Hey,” he said to her.
“Are you okay?”

She thought about
this. Her heart was still racing. Her head almost ached with the
new and confusing information that it was still attempting to
absorb. Her hands were shaking with nerves. She didn’t know whether
to simply accept everything that she had just been told or to hide
and hope that it would all go away. In short, she wasn’t
okay.

But that wasn’t what
she said. Instead, she settled for: “I’m fine.”

The two of them headed
into the lounge. “You were down there for a while,” Jamie
continued. “Hollie told me that you had things to speak to Oliver
about.”

“Where is Hollie?”
Felicity asked.

“She went to back to
Mum’s,” Jamie replied. “She can’t stay away for too long. I’m
slightly more fortunate; mum isn’t exactly bothered if I disappear.
Not as long as I do my homework, anyway.” He paused, clearly
waiting for Felicity to say something. When she didn’t, he asked
her: “So what was it?”

“Hm?”

“What did you need to
speak to Oliver about?”

Felicity sat on the
sofa and shook her head somewhat helplessly. “It’s all so messed
up,” she said. “He told me things that just... couldn’t be
true.”

“Like
what?”

She looked at Jamie.
His face was a picture of concern. She wondered briefly whether or
not she wanted to trust him, but this time the answer came easily,
much more easily than it had in the past. She wanted to tell him
everything.

So she did, and she
felt so much better afterwards. The tension in her body seemed to
fade. For Jamie’s part, he listened attentively and in silence,
nodding every now and again as if he understood everything she told
him. It was a very different experience to talking to his
twin.

“Do you believe him?”
he asked her once she had finished.

Felicity shrugged. “I
don’t know,” she sighed. “But we’ve seen him do magic, haven’t we?
And some of the things he said... they just - they made sense, you
know?”

“And you said that
he’s from some kind of... other world?”

She nodded.

“Magic,” Jamie
muttered under his breath. “I just can’t believe it exists. And he
said that your mum could do it?”

“More than that,”
Felicity replied, holding up her mother’s book. “She had this spell
book, which Oliver seems to want more than anything.”

“Can you read
it?”

“No.”

“But your mum... she
could read it.”

“She could read it,”
Felicity confirmed. “But she also wrote in it. She created these
spells that Oliver wants so badly.” She paused, reflecting. “He
says that she was really powerful.”

“And she never told
you?”

Felicity’s eyes
dropped. That was the part that bothered her the most. Everything
else mystified and confused her to the point of exhaustion, but the
fact that her mother had been able to conjure spells and
enchantments and had neglected to tell her own daughter - it hurt
Felicity more than she was prepared to admit.

“She never told me,”
she said weakly.

Jamie rubbed his face.
“This is crazy,” he said. “What are we going to do? I can’t leave
him locked up in my cellar forever. My dad is coming back after new
year and he’s bound to notice.”

That wasn’t what
worried Felicity. “I don’t know,” she replied quietly.

He looked at her. “Oh,
Fliss, I’m sorry,” he said, and then he scooted across the sofa
until he was next to her and placed a comforting arm around her
shoulders. “Did Oliver say anything about the people who are
looking for you?”

She shook her
head.

“Look. You can stay
here again tonight if you want. I’ll look after you.”

Felicity smiled
unconvincingly. “Thanks. But I really should get back to the
flat.”

“Then let me walk you
there.”

“No, no, really. I’m
fine.”

“Fliss.” Jamie moved
off the sofa and knelt down in front of her, forcing her to look at
him. “After all you’ve just told me, you really think I’m going to
let you out there on your own?”

Felicity
shrugged.

“Of course I’m not,”
Jamie continued. “You’re my best friend - and you’re a lady. It
would be very ungentlemanly of me.”

Felicity had never
been as close to Jamie as she was to his twin sister. Hollie was in
all of Felicity’s lessons and had always insisted on being her
friend, even at the beginning when she had been so desperate to be
by herself. But Jamie had always been there, too. He might have
been out of sight, in different lessons or off with his own group
of friends, and Felicity’s encounters with him were more often than
not accidental, since Hollie still preferred not to be seen with
him in public, but there was something about the last few days that
had drawn the three of them even closer together. Hollie had
started to treat Jamie differently; she still made jibes at him and
joked at his expense, but the teasing seemed somehow nicer than it
used to be, if that were even possible. Felicity supposed that it
had something to do with the things that Jamie had done for her,
such as the significant act of saving her life. That kind of thing
tended to renew your respect for someone.