Page 77 of Twisted Ties
“Summer is a bitch.”
“And the other kids don’t like smart alecks.”
“Yeah, well, what I’m saying is I know you’re a good witch. Maybe I’m not that–”
“You fought off Renzo Barone and killed that man in the woods. You are strong and brave and incredible, Rhi.”
I laugh. “If that’s the case, then, bestie, between the two of us we must be able to work this out.”
Winnie sits back in her chair, spinning a jar around absent-mindedly in her fingers.
I turn back to the tins and jars, emptying them all until I hit the back of the shelf. I feel along the wall that lies at the back, searching for a loose brick or a hidden hole. There’s nothing so I return the jars and tins and start with the next shelf.
“We could try a summoning spell,” Winnie muses.
“What does it do?” I ask her.
“Exactly what you’d imagine. Summons the object you’re looking for. My mom used to use it all the time when we were kids and we couldn’t find our school shoes or our raincoats or our lost teddies.”
“And it worked?”
“Yeah, but whether it would work through six feet of earth and a wooden casket …”
“It’s worth a try,” I say feeling along the back wall of this shelf.
“We could try enhancing it.” Winnie pulls out her phone and starts typing. “Urgh, no signal.”
I laugh, replacing the jars and crouching down to the final shelf. “Welcome to the backend of nowheres-ville, Winnie.”
“Seriously, how did you live with no signal? Is there Wi-Fi?”
“No, there’s the old laptop upstairs in my bedroom but you have to plug it into the cable if you want to connect to the internet.”
“It’s like living in the middle ages,” Winnie mutters as I show her up to my room, Pip trotting along behind us.
It’s even more trashed than the other rooms in the house. The pictures are all smashed, the pages ripped from all my books, the bed sheets slashed and the stench of urine strong in the room.
Winnie clutches my arm. “Oh Rhi, I’m so sorry.”
I swallow. “It doesn’t matter, Winnie. This isn’t my home anymore.”
Winnie glances at me with concern, then waves her hand through the air, the smell of urine disappearing and replaced by something citrus.
I march to my desk. The drawers have been emptied of course, but the laptop is still there. Probably because they couldn’t get the old thing to turn on and believed it to be dead. I place it on the desktop, switch the on button, then give it a helpful thump. It takes a good second but then it whirls slowly to life, the screen flickering and eventually settling into a grainy picture. I connect the wire and dial up to the internet.
Winnie watches on in disbelief.
“All yours,” I say when the web page finally loads.
Winnie takes the seat, Pip curling up by her feet – obviously having forgiven her for the car journey – and I return downstairs to complete my search of the kitchen.
My foot is on the bottom step of the stair, when I feel it for the first time. That awareness. The tingling of the air. There’s another magical here. Nearby. As I tune into theawareness, a shiver of fear curls down my spine. They are close. Really close. I was so busy chatting to Winnie, I wasn’t paying proper attention to my surroundings.
“Hello, little rabbit,” a voice calls out from the kitchen, low and sinister. A voice that has me freezing on the spot. “I’ve been hoping we’d meet again.”
25
Rhi
