Reluctantly Charmed (32 page)

I didn’t want to publish it. It would open the floodgates—I knew the power of these things. This would put Knocknamee on the map. Knocknamee, a place that shouldn’t be on any map, that should remain a hushed, idyllic secret.

I felt sick—I couldn’t be responsible for this. It could destroy the village. I couldn’t publish this.

I dug deep into my pocket, plucked out my phone, and rang Seamus MacMurphy.

“Seamus, I don’t want to publish this one. I’m nervous.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? What do you mean, ‘okay’?”

“I can’t influence your decision.”

“But can you give me legal advice?”

“That I can do.”

“What happens if I rip this up now? If I never publish this?”

“Well, nothing. You won’t inherit the estate.”

“I don’t care about the estate.” At least, I didn’t think I cared about the estate. I was so confused. That’s why I’d started all this, and now everything just felt so out of control, and all I wanted was to have my old life back, my old simple life, and no estate was going to give that back to me.

“Well, then.”

“So that’s it. I can just rip it up and all this will be over.”

“You can rip it up.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

And I knew what I had to do. I just had to tear it up. My hand hovered over the paper.

But I didn’t. I didn’t rip it up. I called the one person who I knew would give me good advice, the one person who had been involved in this since the beginning.

“Kate, thank God you called. I’ve been so worried about you. I’m so, so sorry about everything.”

“Look, Matthew. I don’t want to talk about that now. I really don’t.”

“Okay, but you should know that I’m so sorry. I’ve just been beating myself up over it. I’m so stu—”

“Stupid. Yeah, you are. But that’s not why I need to talk to you.”

“Is it the shoot? Is that it? It went so well, Kate! You wouldn’t have believed what happened. The Hoff—”

I cut him off. I was dying to hear about the shoot, but I had to figure out what to do about the sixth Step first. “Just listen for a minute.”

I read out the Step and explained to Matthew about the beautiful little hideaway of Knocknamee.

“You know what these Steps’ll do to a place like this.”

Matthew was silent for a long time, thinking. “You have to publish it.” I wasn’t expecting that answer. “If you don’t publish this, if these Steps end now, there’ll always be a mystery about them. People will always wonder: What were the last two? What was the final message? You’ll just make them even more popular.”

“Like a cliffhanger.” I could see his point, even though I didn’t like it.

“And you know what else? They’re going to find Knocknamee eventually. They won’t even have to dig that hard. How many towns boast a Red Hag? I think Knocknamee was put on the map when the first Step was published. We just didn’t know it at the time.”

“I suppose.” I felt defeated. “It’s pretty amazing that Simon and the Anoraks haven’t figured it out yet.”

“They’ll find it eventually.”

I sighed heavily.

“I’m sorry. You sound like you’ve really fallen in love with the place.”

“I have, and I’m so scared I’m going to ruin it.”

“Kate, I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“Really, really sorry.”

“I’ve gotta go.” I hung up—I wasn’t ready for the apologies.

Martin had mentioned a town mayor. I felt like I should warn him before I pinpointed Knocknamee to the world.

Johnny Logan was a third-generation mayor. His grandfather had created the position, his father walked straight on into it,
and Johnny was dismantling it. When I knocked on the door of his office, a small prefab building with wobbly walls that was attached to the side of a house, Johnny opened up absentmindedly and waved me in. A small radio attached to his ear was blaring out the tinny sound of the racetrack. Johnny’s back was huddled over and his left hand was clenched into a tight fist. He had a long, crooked nose, a tight mouth, and a full head of shiny blond hair speckled with gray. His shirt was rolled up to his elbows, and his tie was hanging loose at his neck. As the buzzing on the radio reached a crescendo his knuckles turned white and his back stooped more.

“Feck it, anyway,” he spat, slamming the radio on the table. He flicked it off and started to pace the area behind his desk. “Feck, feck, feck!”

I coughed in that annoying way people do to try to get someone else’s attention. The fake cough.

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. Sit yourself down there.” He looked angrily at his desk. “How can I help you? Can I get you a cup of tea? Sure, you’ll have tea.” He pottered into a tiny room at the back and I heard him flick on a kettle.

He was looking a bit more relaxed as he put a cup of strong tea in my hand. “If you want sugar, just shout. There’s some in the back. I don’t take it myself. Keep it for visitors.” He hugged his own cup, nodding to himself and to whatever conversation was going on in his head. He seemed very distracted.

“Thanks for seeing me. My name is Kate McDaid.”

“Right, yeah. You’re a Dublin girl, staying in Martin’s place?”

You can’t hide in a small town. “That’s right. I don’t know if you’ve heard of me at all?” I wasn’t really sure how to explain myself. He looked at me blankly. “Have you heard of the Seven Steps?”

“I’ve been a bit preoccupied with business the last couple of weeks, so if it’s a recent thing I probably wouldn’t have. Is it a business you’re in?”

There was a laptop on his desk. I pointed to it. “Do you have the Internet on that?” He nodded. “Put my name in and see what you get.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “Are you famous?”

“Just see what you get.”

He pried open the laptop and tapped into Google. Then his mouth hung open and his eyes were on stalks. “That’s you!” He pointed at the screen. “And you’re here. That is very funny.” He stared at me. “What is it you are? A spiritual guru? What’s that?”

“Well, I’m really not. It’s all been a bit of a misunderstanding.” I proceeded to tell him about the past six weeks, top-line details only—he didn’t need to know about David Hasselhoff or Red Horizon.

“Well, I never!” He looked dumbfounded. “Never, ever. And here you are.”

“Here I am.”

As he leaned forward across his desk, his eyes narrowed and his crooked nose twitched. “Why?”

“Well . . .” I felt a flutter of butterflies in my stomach. I had a feeling that this wasn’t going to go down well, that I was about to launch a rocket into this man’s perfect little life. I already felt guilty.

“This is the sixth Step,” I said, my eyes downcast as I handed him the slip of paper.

He slid back on his chair and studied it intensely. “What does it mean?”

“I dunno.”

“Right, right.”

He seemed so relaxed I wondered if he’d read it right. “Did you see the part about Knocknamee?”

“I did, yeah.”

“The thing is . . .” I took a deep breath. “When this gets published, it puts Knocknamee on the map.”

Like a Jack Russell, he cocked his head keenly to one side, listening hard.

“Once this is out there the floodgates will open, I’m guessing. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I’d imagine you’ll have people from all over the place falling in on you here. You see, there’s an interest in it all. People think they’re like the steps of the universe or something. They’re not.” I looked at him intently.

He nodded, gauging it as the correct response.

“They’ll see Knocknamee as a clue, as a piece in the puzzle.” I had a flash of the Anoraks almost crying when they read this last lesson. It would be the best day of their lives, and judging by the blogs multiplying in cyberspace, there were other Anoraks out there who would feel the same. “They’ll come here in their droves. They’ll ask questions.”

“Droves, you say.” He started drumming his fingers on his upper lip.

“They’ll ruin it. There’ll be paparazzi, journalists, TV cameras. Knocknamee will be a hot spot.”

“Droves.”

“And they’ll ask questions.” Well, really, I had a question I wanted to ask, and I wondered if Johnny Logan, the town mayor, might have a few answers.

“What’ll they be asking?”

“They’ll be asking about the Red Hag. The Steps are her legacy.”

“That auld witch. This is her doing?” A smile unexpectedly broke across his face. “Strange how things work out. She was almost the ruination of the town, and now she’s going to be the makings of it.”

I sat forward, hungry for information. “What do you mean, ruination?”

“Ah, I dunno, that’s what they say.” He stood up and started to pace the room again, rubbing his hands together.

I waited patiently for the big reveal, the story of the Red Hag.

“We’ll have to call a town meeting, let everyone know. Martin only has the five rooms. We’ll have to get an exterminator in to get rid of the mice in Miles O’Brien’s guesthouse and open that up. We’ll erect some type of a platform, a stage, at the foot of the town. We’ll stop the traffic on the main street.” He swept the room with his arms, his eyes wide with excitement. “I’ll make speeches. I’ll have to polish the mayor’s chain. Knocknamee will be on the map. Oh, the money we’ll make out of this!”

“Well . . . I mean . . .” Oh, this wasn’t going according to plan at all. “Surely you don’t want crowds down here?”

He looked at me, wide-eyed. “Crowds? With money? This will be the making of us.” He pumped his fist in the air with great determination.

“They’ll wreck the place.” This was all backfiring on me. By trying to protect Knocknamee, I could accidentally become its ruination. “They’ll ruin this quiet little spot.”

“Nonsense. Quiet never made money. It’s great news.”

“Okay . . . I guess,” I said, somewhat defeated. It was his town. He was the mayor, after all. He must have known what he was doing.

“So you haven’t published this yet? It’s not out there?” And he rolled his eyes from side to side, indicating “out there.”

I shook my head.

“Would you mind holding off until I tell everyone?” He puffed his chest out with importance, like a canary. “When you’re going into battle, it’s best to be prepared.”

It was all over—my cover was about to be blown. I wondered if Martin and Mavis would look at me in the same way. If I’d become a freak, a witch, a whatever, in their eyes, too. I sighed. There was no backing out now. “So long as it goes out before midnight, it’s okay.”

He smacked the wooden paneling on his desk with great gusto and, grinning from ear to ear, proclaimed: “Let’s gather the troops.”

27

J
ohnny Logan ran up and down the village like a hare out of the traps. He knocked on every door and announced with a statesmanlike tone that there was a matter of grave importance that the people of the village needed to discuss. As town mayor, he declared that all businesses were to shut for one hour and all villagers were to attend a meeting at the town hall.

Martin and Mavis were surprised: in all their years they’d never heard of an impromptu town meeting. While they knew Johnny Logan was an excitable fellow (they agreed it was normally around the horses), they were curious to see what all the fuss was about.

By four o’clock the town hall was filling up nicely. Inside, the air was dusty—the place was usually only used for Christmas pageants and basketball matches for the local school when the rain was too heavy to play outdoors. Blue plastic chairs had been set out in perfect lines, and as villagers filed in and took their seats, their footsteps on the wooden floor echoed long and hard.

Everyone was straining their necks and whispering among themselves, trying to guess what it could possibly be about. Sitting in the second row, I heard Annie from O’Donahue’s, who was behind me, tell Mavis that she had a bad feeling. When she’d
woken up that morning her joints were sore, she said, which she knew meant rain. But she’d also had the strangest dream about her father that night, who’d been dead for forty years, and he didn’t look one bit happy. “Leave ’em be,” he kept saying, and then there was Johnny Logan leapin’ around like a headless chicken. No, she didn’t have a good feeling about this at all.

I whipped around several times waiting for Maura to make an appearance, but there was no sign of her. She must have gone back to Dublin, I thought, relieved.

Johnny had sworn on his dead mother’s grave, God rest her, and assured me 100 percent that I wouldn’t have to say a word, that he’d carry the meeting and give the villagers the news. He’d changed into his weddings and funerals suit, dark gray with a thin blue pinstripe running up it, and his cheeks were flushed as he took to the stage. Up there, his back poker straight, he looked about five inches taller. I sat stooped over, chewing on my fingernails.

Johnny cleared his throat dramatically and took a sip of water. “Thank you all for coming,” he said in the lilting accent of Knocknamee that I’d grown so fond of. “Many of you will be aware that we’ve had some Dublin visitors over the last few days.” I assumed he was referring to Maura and me.
“
And they’ve been very welcome indeed. Very welcome.” He nodded in my direction. “One of those visitors came to see me today. Kate. Stand up, Kate. Let them have a look at you.”