I Put a Spell on You (12 page)

We had such a great night. We drank the best part of both bottles of wine and, giggly and full of good food, told each other horror stories about growing up. I made her laugh telling her about my childhood as a witch in a small Highland town and she entertained me with tales of her and her brothers and the pranks they pulled on their parents.

At about nine o’clock, the front door opened and slammed shut and Esme stormed into the kitchen.

“Bloody hell, Ez,” I said. “Dark cloud, much?”

Esme scowled at me.

“Don’t read my aura,’ she snapped. She pulled a glass out of the cupboard and glugged wine right up to the rim. “I hate that.” She shoved the cork back into the bottle and pushed it back into the fridge. Lou smiled at her.

“Join us,” she said. She looked very beautiful in the dim light, her angular face softened with laughter. Esme hesitated so I stretched out a leg and kicked a chair out from under the table.

“Come on, grumpy,” I said. “Sit down, finish the kung po chicken and tell us why you’re in such a mood.”

I hiccupped softly and I realised I was very drunk.

Esme drained her glass and poured another.

“So,” she said. “I was supposed to be spending the evening with Jamie, talking about the wedding. But then he rang and said he couldn’t make it because he was meeting his rugby mates in the pub to talk about the tour.”

“What tour?” I said.

“A tour,” said Esme, icily, “that has apparently been arranged for ages. A tour that involves three weeks in Italy, in June. A tour that Jamie has completely forgotten to mention.”

I winced. That wasn’t good.

“And then, because I was pissed off with Jamie, I did something stupid.” She dumped the remains of the kung po chicken onto a plate and picked up a fork.

“You rang Xander,” I said.

“I rang Xander,” Ez repeated. “And Xander was in a brothel. A bloody brothel.”

“Ah,” I said.

“What do you mean, ah?” Esme said. “Has this got something to do with you?”

I raised my glass at her.

“It’s to do with my days as a low-rent prostitute,” I said.

Esme spat her wine into her kung po chicken as Lou and I dissolved into giggles once more.

I could sense Esme’s dark mood lifting.

“What’s happened?” she said.

Lou handed her the card and she looked in horrified fascination at a picture of me.

“Blimey,” she said, looking from the page to me. “Your boobs look much bigger in the photo.”

I snatched the picture back.

“It’s not me,” I pointed out. “It’s been Photoshopped. But it’s my phone number.”

Esme suddenly realised what was going on.

“So people – men? – have been phoning you,” she asked. She fished a piece of chicken out of her noodles and dropped it into her mouth.

I nodded. “Lots of men,” I said. “Horrible men. Xander’s trying to get all the cards back.”

“And I’ve diverted the calls to the police station,” Lou said. Esme looked at her with new respect.

“Nice one,” she said.

“Let’s not talk about this any more,” I said. “It’s over now. It’s sorted. How was the rest of your day, Ez?”

“Pretty rubbish,” she said. I sighed, knowing the one thing she would want to talk about was her wedding. I was bored stupid by her chatter about flowers and music, though, so I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask.

“How are the wedding plans coming along?” Louise asked. I cringed.

Ez whinged for a while about how she was getting behind.

“I haven’t even been to look at dresses yet,” she said, shovelling more egg-fried rice into her mouth. I had an idea.

“I’ll come with you,” I said. Esme looked at me suspiciously. “Tomorrow,” I added.

“Why?” Esme knew me too well to assume I was offering just to be nice.

“No reason,” I said, making my eyes wide with fake innocence. “I just really want to be involved in planning your special day.”

Lou stifled a snort. I ignored her. Esme raised an eyebrow at me. I tried to hold her gaze but I was too drunk. I shrugged.

“I want to do some divination,” I admitted. “I need you to help me.”

“Divination?” Esme said. “Like in Harry Potter?”

“No. Well, sort of.” I swirled my wine in the glass. “It was Mum’s idea – she thought I might get some idea about who’s behind all this.”

Esme didn’t sound convinced.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said.

“Nothing to know,” I said. “Mum’s emailed me some instructions. It seems quite straightforward.”

“And not dangerous?”

“It’s not dangerous.”

“And you’ll come to the dress shop afterwards?”

“I’ll come.”

“In that case, I’ll do it.” Esme got up from the table. “But any funny business and I’m off.”

I smiled as Esme kissed me goodnight.

“There’s bound to be funny business,” I said. “There always is.”

Chapter 17

Boy did I feel rough the next morning. Jamie and I met in the kitchen, drooping over the kettle. He looked as bad as I felt.

“Big night?” I muttered. Our easy friendship had been awkward since I’d told him to be nice to Esme.

“Big,” he muttered back, putting two slices of bread in the toaster. “You?”

“Wine,” I said. “A lot of wine.”

But I couldn’t help smiling as I thought about last night, hungover as I was. I’d had such a good time with Louise and even the horror of my photo being on sleazy cards all over the city hadn’t seemed so bad.

Jamie’s toast popped up. It smelled delicious.

“It’s for Esme,” he said. “Peace offering.”

He picked up the plate and a mug of tea and wandered off in the direction of his bedroom. I heard him and Esme chatting, and laughing, and I was pleased. Maybe it was going to be okay.

When Jamie left – he had a rugby match again – I slunk into Esme’s room. She was sitting up in bed, munching her toast.

“Budge up,” I said, climbing in beside her and taking her last piece.

“Get your own,” she said.

“Can’t,” I said cheerfully. “I feel terrible. I might puke.”

“You’re a disgrace.”

“I know,” I said. “Are things okay with Jamie?”

“He wants us to write our guest list later,” she said.

“Great,” I said. “That’s good.”

She grinned at me.

“I’ve done it already.” She leaned over and picked up a ring binder from the floor beside her bed. “It’s in here. So are the sample invitations, menu ideas and the receipt for Jamie’s kilt hire. That he doesn’t know about yet.”

I chuckled.

“Nice,” I said. But I was bored of wedding talk.

‘So, are you up for some divination, then?’

Esme nodded.

“If that’s what I have to do to get you to come wedding-dress shopping, then I suppose so,” she said. “What do we need to do?”

Mum had emailed me some instructions after we’d talked on the phone yesterday. I took my phone out of my dressing gown pocket and found her message.

“We need something,” I said. “You know, as an instrument.”

Esme made a face at me.

“It sounds like hocus-pocus to me,” she said.

“It all sounds like hocus-pocus,” I pointed out.

“Is this in your spell book?” she asked, suspiciously. “I’ve never seen it in mine.”

“It is now,” I said. I’d read it this morning, and discovered pages on divination that I’d never seen before. I hadn’t been too surprised; spell books were a bit like that.

“We need some tarot cards,” I said. “That seems to be the easiest way of doing it.”

“Have you got any?” Esme looked around her vaguely.

I held out my left hand, waggled the fingers on my right over my palm and in a shower of sparks a small pack of cards appeared, wrapped in a piece of black silk.

“Oooh,” I said, pleased.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Esme said. “I’m going to need another cup of tea if we’re venturing into tea leaves and crystal ball territory.”

I kicked her under the duvet.

“Go and make a pot,” I said. “If you’re going to be grumpy.”

Esme sighed, threw back the duvet and slid out of bed.

“Work out what we’re supposed to be doing,” she said. “I’ll be back in a mo.”

I sat up and opened the packet, spreading the cards across the bed covers. There were loads of them – about forty I guessed. Each one was slightly bigger than a normal playing card and decorated with brightly-coloured drawings. I picked out a sun, a moon, a pentacle – that was familiar – and the grim reaper.

“Blimey,” said Esme, coming back into the room and looking at the cards on the duvet. She put a tray down on the bedside table and got back into bed. She’d made a pot of tea and lots more toast. I grabbed a slice.

“What do we do now?” she said as she poured the tea.

I peered at my phone again.

“According to Mum, we have to lay the cards out in a special way.”

I scanned the instructions – it seemed easy enough. I gathered the cards together and shuffled them. Then I smoothed out the duvet and put one card, face down, in the middle of the bed and four others around it in the shape of a cross.

I pointed to the middle card.

“This one is the general theme of the reading,” I read from the email. I turned the card over. It was a woman petting a small lion. Esme looked at me expectantly but I had no idea what it meant. I shrugged and turned over the card to the left.

“This is past influences,” I said. It was a picture of a globe. I frowned. I’d hoped it would be a bit more obvious than this.

“How do we know what they mean?” Esme asked.

“Where’s your spell book?” I said.

Esme leaned over and pulled it out of the bedside cabinet. Last time I’d seen Esme’s spell book it had been covered in dust and huddled, forgotten and neglected, in a corner of her wardrobe. Now it was shiny and looked well-read. I looked at her in surprise.

“I’ve been teaching Xander, haven’t I?” she said, a bit defensively.

Laughing to myself, I leafed through it until I found pages showing pictures of all the tarot cards. The pictures were all beautifully hand-drawn. I held the book up so Esme could see.

“It’s all here,” I said.

She looked amazed.

“I have, without a doubt, never seen those pictures before,” she said, shaking her head in wonderment. “These books are mental.”

I smirked at her.

“They’re magic,” I said. I picked up another piece of toast and scanned the pages, looking for the cards we’d turned over.

“Ah ha,” I said, pointing to the first one. “The woman and the lion,” I read. “It means strength.”

Esme looked pleased.

“That’s good,” she said. “You are strong. What about the globe?”

“It means the world,” I said. “Obviously.” I chewed thoughtfully. “But I don’t understand how that can be past influences though. Surely everyone’s past influences is the world?”

Esme shook her head.

“It means nothing to me,” she said. “What’s next? This one?”

She pointed to the card on the right.

I nodded, scanning the email again.

“That’s the future,” I said. “This might give us some clues, I suppose.”

I turned it over. It was the grim reaper. My stomach lurched.

“Is that death?” Esme said, peering at the spell book. “Does it mean death? Or is it new beginnings or something?”

I felt a bit sick.

“I don’t know,” I said in a shaky voice. “This is hopeless. It’s not teaching us anything we don’t know.”

Esme squeezed my hand.

“No, let’s keep going,” she said, trying to sound upbeat but failing. “We might come up with something useful.” She took the phone from me and read my mum’s email.

“This is the reason behind the reading,” she said. “I’m not sure what that means.” She turned over the card and gasped. It was the devil.

“Oh Esme, let’s stop,” I said.

“Does it matter that it’s upside down?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”

I was reluctant to turn over another card in case it was something else horrible. This had been a very bad idea.

“There’s one more,” Esme said.

“You do it.”

“You do it.”

We stared at each other.

“This card stands for potential,” she said, reading from the email again. “Does that mean your potential?”

I closed my eyes.

“I don’t know,” I said again. “Just turn it over.”

She did as I said. I couldn’t look. Instead, I turned away and started leafing through Esme’s spell book.

“It’s a star,” she said, sounding relieved. “That’s got to be good, surely.”

I didn’t reply. I was staring at a piece of paper that had fallen out of the book. It was covered in neat handwriting, with some words underlined, and I couldn’t quite believe my eyes.

“What’s that?” Esme asked.

I held it out to her.

“It’s a description of what each card means,” I said.

“Was that there a minute ago?” Esme asked. “I can’t believe I’ve never come across it before.”

I gave her a wry smile.

“Might have been,” I said. “But who knows?”

Quickly, I scanned the narrow lines of neat writing.

“Strength means exactly that,” I said.

Esme nodded.

“You’ve got many faults,” she said with a grin. “But weakness isn’t one of them.”

I stuck my tongue out at her and carried on.

“And because it’s a woman with the lion, it’s specifically to do with mothers, or it can mean pregnancy.”

Esme raised an eyebrow at me.

“I am not pregnant,” I said. A thought occurred to me.

“Star was though,” I said. “At least, she had been. She and her husband tried to have a baby but they couldn’t. I wonder if this card is referring to her?”

I read more. “Death means changes or new beginnings, like you thought. And the star means hope and healing of wounds.”

I sensed Esme was losing interest.

“None of this is really very helpful,” she said. “I’m going to get in the shower.”

But I had more to say.

“Wait,’ I said. “The devil means money or material desires.”

“Boring,” she said, pushing back the duvet.

I read on, a chill running through me.

“But when it’s reversed,” I continued in a quiet voice, “when it’s upside down, like it is here, it can mean greed, the abuse of authority or trust, and pure evil.”