Reluctantly Charmed (44 page)

“It’s the end of your media careers.” The words fell clunky out of my mouth. I felt numb.

Mam threw her head back, laughing. “Sure, we’d a great time while it lasted, but we always knew it would end. And you know
what? It was getting a bit boring. The novelty was wearing off. I tell you, Wanda Simpson is having a bridge night in the Duck and Dog tomorrow, and I can’t wait for a nice glass of sherry and some good intelligent conversation.”

Dad looked at me uncomfortably. “I’ve really hated wearing these leather trousers.”

“Kate.” Hugh threw himself around me, leaning back to brush my hair from my face. “You were amazing. I’m so proud of you.”

“Kate.” Mam grabbed my arm hurriedly. “What about Jim?”

I nodded my head over to where Jim was looking lost at the crowd. “He was never a goer.”

Hugh hung his arm off my shoulder and we started to climb down from the stage. There was no need for bodyguards this time. The place was calm.

A loud beep came from up the road. Seamus MacMurphy hung out the window of a red Ford Cortina, waving at me.

Telling the others I’d be right back, I walked toward him.

“Sorry for the beep,” he apologized. “I’ve got to get on the road. The traffic is going to be terrible, you know.”

“That’s grand.”

“The final Step is published all over the Internet already. You’ve got a couple of thousand hits on YouTube.” Leaning over to the floor of the passenger seat, he awkwardly bundled up a small wooden box and passed it through the open window to me.

“The estate?” I asked.

“It is, yeah.” Then he winked, revved up the engine, and, waving a long arm out the open window, was gone up the Galway road.

I rested the box on my knee. It wasn’t heavy. I ripped open the brown paper packaging around it and looked inside. It was a bottle, like a beer bottle, only blue. A stained blue bottle. I
knew immediately what it was. This was the famous blue Bottle that Biddy Early had used to see the future. This had been a gift to her from the fairies. It was the lost Bottle. The Red Hag must have got her hands on it somehow. Maybe she stole it from Biddy Early on her deathbed. Maybe Biddy Early gave it to her in the hope she would redeem herself. It was meant to have powers of foresight, a type of crystal ball. It made sense that the Red Hag wouldn’t let it disappear—its powers were too valuable. She would have done anything she could to get her hands on it. This might have been how she’d seen me coming.

I covered the box over, unsure what to do. The only person I could speak to, the only person who would understand, was Father O’Brien. He knew the truth. I had to talk to him.

I walked back to my parents and friends and told them there was someone I had to see. Then I headed up the village toward the church, happy, for once, not to draw a crowd or attract pointing fingers.

I banged firmly on the vestry door.

“Father, it’s me, Kate,” I shouted.

“Oh dear Lord, come in.”

He was sitting in the same throne-like seat. He looked smaller than before. His face was in his hands and he was crying, his shoulders shaking. He looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed and fat tears rolled down his cheeks.

I moved over and knelt at his feet. I lifted my arms and hugged him tight, feeling his head rest heavily on the crook of my neck, his body trembling with sobs.

“Thank you, thank you.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

He sat back and wiped the tears from his face. “Thank you.”

“Honestly, Father, I did it because I didn’t know what else to do.”

He took my hands in his and shook them. His skin felt papery and cold. “You’re a good person. You did the right thing.”

Father O’Brien knew the truth. He’d read the real final Step, and he knew that what I’d read out was fake. That I had averted a fairy war.

Father O’Brien held the real final Step in his hand and waved it, heavily. “The fairies will be angry with you. You know that?”

“I know. I’ll suffer repercussions.”

He took a deep breath. “It was too much to ask of you, to let them release their battle cry. To start their war.”

I nodded, agreeing. The Seventh Step, the real Step, asked for me to lead a crowd of true believers of Celtic blood to a fairy fort. To bring gifts of whiskey, milk, and music and to repeat a
beannacht
, the Irish word for blessing, until they appeared. And they
would
appear. I knew with absolute certainty that they would have appeared. They’d have crept out from the rocks, crawled down from the trees, brushed away the shrubbery, and been among us—the mortals living with the immortals. The invisible world visible. And then they would have let loose, they’d have started their fairy war. They’d have hunted down nonbelievers and thrown them under the earth, promising an eternity of damnation in the fires of hell. How could I have let that happen? How could I have shaken the very foundations of our existence? Our reality would no longer be. I couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have lifted the veil.

“The world isn’t the way we’ve always thought it is,” I said.

“I know, I know.” Father O’Brien sniffed back another tear and attempted to straighten himself.

I felt my own shoulders crumble with the weight of the responsibility I’d been given. “I need to sit down.” I moved over to the other side of the room and sank into a chair.

Neither of us spoke for a while as the enormity of the situation sank in.

“You will destroy the final Step,” Father O’Brien said very clearly, breaking the silence.

I sighed. “Even if I destroy it, it doesn’t change anything. I have the power to reveal an invisible world.” Saying these words out loud gave me shivers. Goose bumps raced up my arm. “The seventh Step gives me absolute proof that the fairy realm runs parallel to our world, and Father, I . . .” I heard my voice crack. I took a breath. “I can flip the switch. I can make their world visible to ours.”

“I know.”

I knew that. I just had to say it out loud. I had to see his reaction. I had to know that I hadn’t gone mad. That this was real.

“This would be the biggest event in human civilization—are we ready for it? We have no idea what this would mean for the human race. We have no idea what we might be unleashing if we took this Step. How is all this possible?”

Father O’Brien shook his head heavily. “Your aunt had an insight. She understood the fairies, listened to them, and unraveled their mysteries. It was as if she knocked on the door. But you, you can open it, you can unleash them.” He took a deep breath.

I nodded. “I wonder, though, Father. Do people have a right to know? Why should I keep this to myself? This is bigger than us, than just two people.”

“No, Kate. This is an unknown world. Humanity has enough struggles. We don’t need to introduce fairies to the world.”

And suddenly I started to laugh. I couldn’t help myself. I had a vision of fairies in our day-to-day lives: a leprechaun as a bank teller, an impish fairy working in the local coffee shop making a mean mocha. Would we interdate? Imagine the online dating
profiles: “I like long walks on the beach, basic spells, evil tricks, and my favorite singer is the banshee.” It’s all too absurd. It would never work.

“Let’s just try and put this behind us now,” Father O’Brien said. “Leave the fairies in the shadows. I’m just happy it’s over.”

I knew what he said made sense. I knew I’d done the right thing by not starting a fairy war.

“I’m here, Kate. If you need someone to talk to. I’m here.”

I smiled. I think that was the nicest thing anyone had said to me in a long time. “Thanks.”

I stood up and straightened my back. “I should go. Look after yourself, Father.”

“Kate.” He stopped me. “What about you and who you are? What will happen now?”

I shrugged, thinking of what Hugh had said to me:
You are who you are.
“I’ll have to figure it out. I can’t hide away, I can’t waste my magic, but I can’t do this again, this circus. I’ll have to figure something out. Maybe I’ll read that
Witchcraft for Dummies
book, get myself trained up. Invest in a cauldron and some stick-on warts for my nose.”

I ran my hand through my hair. A cobweb of red hairs came free at the root and tangled around my fingers.
That’s unusual
, I thought. That had never happened before. Could my hair be falling out? Would I be investing in more cheap wigs?

I knew the fairies would try and seek revenge because they didn’t get their way. I had to be prepared for payback. Maybe that was going to be my hair. Could I get comfortable with headscarves and hats?

In all of it, in the madness where I saw reality bend, the fairies had lurked in the background, their world untouched. They were willing to disrupt ours, to bring evil with them, to lift the
veil. But I’d stood in the way of the mighty fairies and stopped them. Somehow, they only had themselves to blame.

I had to trust that I’d made the right decision, and I had to trust that I could battle through whatever revenge they had planned for me.

Father O’Brien smiled and looked exhausted as we said good-bye. “Remember, Kate, I’m here. You may need me.”

I smiled, thinking that if I did need him in the future, if I was to battle against the other world again, it would be on my terms, and I might need an ally.

39

Twelve months later

“A
nd the winner is . . .” The MC swept the room with a smile as he reached into the gold envelope. “F & P! For Starshoot!”

Matthew jumped out of his seat and punched the air with his fist. Beaming, he spun back and threw out his hand for me to take. I shook my head and mouthed “You go.”

Bouncing up to the stage, Matthew bear-hugged the MC and said “Woop woop!” into the mic. This was F & P’s fifth award of the night, and the third for the Starshoot David Hasselhof ad. It was the most we’d ever won at the Irish Advertising Awards. The whole table was drunk, swaying and singing. We’d toasted and drunk to everything we could think of. Colin had proposed the last one—“To all the people who load the photocopier at F & P. Thank you, we couldn’t have done it without you”—which was greeted with huge applause and another round of champagne.

Matthew plonked himself back onto his seat and leaned in to give Marjorie a kiss. Those two were going strong. “Three awards for Starshoot! Can you believe it?”

My phone buzzed with a picture message. Laughing, I showed it to Matthew—Dad on a camel, looking very uncomfortable. Despite Mam’s outrageous spending, they’d managed to save some money from their celebrity days and were now traveling
everywhere and anywhere. They kept me updated on Facebook and sent through photos, including some I didn’t need to see of them half naked in a Jacuzzi in North Africa. Mam referred to herself and Dad as the “Born Again Flashpackers.”

Matthew has lost most of the weight he put on during the campaign, but it’s going to be short-lived. Three days ago, the Little Prince marched into the office with a new brief: Dinojellies. Matthew’s eyes lit up and he absentmindedly patted his belly as he told me how he’d requested a box of free samples.

Colin asked me back for the awards. I’d left F & P eight months ago. I couldn’t get back into the rhythm of working, and besides, I have a new calling that I need to explore.

My friends are doing great. Lily is on the hunt for a husband. She’s taken on the ten commandments of a new dating book and is sticking to them religiously. They’re pretty quirky. The fourth commandment is to always wear high heels, and the first is “If you want him to marry you, don’t sleep with him.” She’s struggling with the celibacy part but loving all her new shoes.

Fiona and Simon (I’m not allowed to call him Simon the Anorak anymore, just Simon) are completely smitten with each other. She loves his conspiracy theories on just about everything, and melts into smiles when he’s around. He still has his anorak, but in a strange way it’s grown on me a bit—he looks well in it. The Anoraks themselves have disbanded and gone back to normal life, but I’m sure they’re just waiting in the wings to jump on the next fad—I’ve heard that aliens are going to be big next year. Fiona is weighing up job offers. She says she’s ready to go back into the workforce, but with a better life balance and probably a smaller paycheck.

No doubt you saw Jim on the cover of
Rolling Stone
magazine, twice in six months. Red Horizon’s album went to number one
in twenty-seven countries. Last I heard, Jim had moved to L.A. He’s still single.

I never heard from Maura again. Her articles still appear in
The Times
, and she’s still as connected as she ever was. I assume that the Hellfire Club is still raging and that they’re still looking for a way into Tír na nÓg. In a way, as mad as they are, I admire them. At least they haven’t given in to old age. They won’t be found walking up and down beachfront promenades sucking on sticks of rock candy or pouring their pensions into support stockings and blue rinses. They’re still raving on, filling in the wrinkles with Botox and squeezing bunioned feet into stiletto heels. Good luck to them.

I became yesterday’s news very quickly. Some celebrity got caught having an affair with a footballer, and within hours I was forgotten.

For me, the last twelve months have been all about accepting who I am. Kate McDaid, sometime spell maker, sometime copywriter, full-time girlfriend, part-time gym member.

My hair did fall out. All of it. I’m as bald as an egg. It was a shock, at first, but I’m used to it now. I have drawers of fancy wigs—I’ve upgraded from my acrylic number from last year—and I experiment with different styles: pixie cuts, romantic curls, blond, brunette, afro. I go all out. Hugh doesn’t know who he’s going to come home to from one day to the next.

I know that was a trick played by the fairies. The other trick, if you could call it that, is harder to live with. I couldn’t definitively say it was their doing, but a month after the final Step, I started to get terrible stomach pains, like knives shooting through me. The doctors ran a million tests, and while they couldn’t find anything that could explain the stomach cramps, they did find that my ovaries were gone, that there was an empty space where
they should have been. No ovaries. No children. The fairies have made sure that I’m the end of the line. I knew there would be repercussions—I’d stopped a fairy war—but this really did feel harsh.