Page 19 of Witchlore
“Is it just you and him?”
I nod to the only photo in the flat, stuck on the fridge. The woman, who I assume is his mother, is smiling and looks to be only about twenty. She’s got milky skin with a spattering of freckles and auburn hair and she’s leaning against a much younger version of Eric. His dark hair is thicker and his eyes are livelier than the man I just met. Bastian grimaces and looks away from it.
“I don’t know why he even put it there.” Bastian shakes his head, whipping the photo off the fridge. I almost expect him to throw it in the bin but he just walks over from the kitchen and sits on the sofa beside me with a heavy sigh, holding the photo in his hand.
“They look happy,” I say tentatively. They both look joyful and adventurous and young, the epitome of classy witches in their twenties, with their large rings on their clasped hands. Eric’s is chunky, with symbology carved into it that matches some of the symbols hidden in the art on the walls. Bastian’s mum’s ring is more Celtic, with a knotted band, like Bastian’s ring.
“Yeah, they were then.” Bastian snorts derisively. “They’re witchlore researchers, or they were. They met traveling. Dad’sCanadian, his side of the family are all Jamaican-Canadian and Haitian-Canadian. He grew up in Quebec.”
“He speaks French?”
“Québécois,” Bastian corrects. “Pépé, my dad’s dad, he speaks Haitian Creole, but Dad didn’t learn it.” I want to ask him if he speaks any of these languages, but he goes on. “Mum is Cornish. She wanted to raise her family there, in her coven.” Very briefly, he touches a finger against his mum’s face. His own expression has contorted into something very complicated. “They were both so into ancient witchcraft. Then he changed.”
Bastian’s face darkens. I can tell something happened, something bad, but I absolutely cannot ask about it. I wait for Bastian to go on.
“Everything broke apart. He started working late, changed careers, went into one flashy business venture after another. He stopped coming to coven meetings, stopped practicing the craft. He started saying witchlore was just a quirk of his upbringing, that it had no bearing on our lives. Witchcraft is everything to Mum.” From the way his mouth twists with scorn I can tell this was one of the most painful ways his dad changed. “So she left him. Asked for a divorce. Who could blame her, really?”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s still a researcher for the Boscastle Witchcraft Museum. I think she’s in Cuba or something.”
The way he says it tells me it’s still sore.
“And… do you see the rest of your family?”
“Not since the divorce.” His voice is very clipped. “I call my nan down in Cornwall, but she’s very low tech. She doesn’t always answer. I keep up with my cousins and Pépé and Grandma Olivein Quebec online, but we used to go over every year, sometimes twice a year, and now…” He shakes his head and looks angrily around the flat. “But why shouldn’t they be mad at him? It’s like he’s severed off half of himself! I wouldn’t speak to him, either, but I have to live with him, so…”
Bastian trails off. As I wait, unsure what to say, I realize something. Bastian might have grandparents and cousins and a whole world I don’t know about, but right now, he’s just as isolated as I am. My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a door opening and something clicking toward me. Then a furry face appears by my knee. It’s a gray French bulldog with the most plaintive amber eyes I’ve ever seen.
“Oh my god, you have adog?” I instantly begin ruffling its adorable little ears and it pants happily. “Why didn’t you say?”
“This is René.”
“René?” I laugh, as René jumps up on the sofa next to me, putting his front paws on my thighs.
“My mum likes philosophy,” Bastian says. René trots along the long sofa and climbs up on Bastian’s lap, licking his face. Bastian smiles and it’s the most genuine smile I’ve seen on his face so far.
“So like… René Descartes?” René trots back down the sofa to me, as if he wishes we were sitting closer together so he could lick us both at the same time.
“Yeah.” Bastian smiles fondly. All the tension has gone from the room like air let out of a balloon. “Look, shall we… pretend that my dad isn’t an arse and just look at the book?”
I’m very relieved. I don’t want to sit with this uncomfortable feeling that I’ve misjudged him and made assumptions about what his life must be like. After all, the flat might be gorgeous, butit must be lonely with only René for company and the people he loves halfway around the world. It’s odd to have had him pinned in my mind as one kind of person and now be seeing him differently. I don’t know if I really want to.
“Yes,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
CHAPTERSEVEN
Bastian smiles gratefully, reaches into his satchel, and pulls out the grimoire, setting it on the coffee table, and we both scoot closer together so that René is happily squashed between us. The book is astonishing close up, the cover embossed with what seems like years and years of markings and the leather worn down and soft at the spine. I tentatively open the pages, inhaling that musty, sweet antique scent.
“Wow, this is dated from the 1700s,” Bastian murmurs, on the first page. We flick through it. The handwriting is hard to understand, sometimes faded, sometimes entirely indecipherable, and sometimes it’s just diagrams and reams of numbers that could be astrological information, I’m not sure.
“This is all spells?” I ask.
“No, not just, look—” Bastian points to a part that looks like it’s written in French. “This is a recipe for soap.”
“Why?”
“Lots of witches throughout history used grimoires like journals, you know?” Bastian says, flipping the pages back to the beginning. “Recipes, gramarye, spells, family trees, shopping lists…”
