Kerry Barrett - I Put A Spell On You

The bruised knees could have belonged to anyone, and the burned arms and bloody hand. But why would she have photos of injuries someone else had suffered?

A knock on my office door made me look up. Fallon, one of the yoga instructors, stood there.

“I’ve found my diary,” she said. “I’ve got all my classes written in there – thought it might be helpful.”

“Brilliant,” I said. “Give it here and I’ll pass it to Nancy on reception.”

She came to hand it over and as she did so she glanced at the photo on top of the pile.

“Oh god,” she said. “Was that Star’s hand?”

I looked at her in surprise.

“Yes,” I said. “I think so. Did she cut it?”

Fallon picked up the photo and shuddered.

“She did it on one of the baubles from the Christmas tree,” she said. “She said it had happened when she was decorating it. But she was sitting at her desk when I found her. It was really strange.”

“It’s a nasty cut,” I said. “It’s deep.”

“I know,” Fallon said. “Like she’d fallen on it, not just that it had shattered in her hand. I bandaged it up for her and it took ages to pick out all the bits of glass. Poor girl. It must have really hurt.”

“Why would she lie, though?” I said.

Fallon shrugged.

“Why would she take a photo?” she pointed out. “I wondered…”

“What?”

“Just that she was so cagey about it, I wondered if she’d done it herself.”

“Really?” I said in surprise.

“You never know what’s going on in people’s heads,” she said, darkly. She tapped the diary on my desk.

“I’ve got a class,” she said. “Leave this in my pigeon hole when you’re done.”

I stared at the door as she left. She was right, in a way, I thought. You couldn’t really know what was going on in people’s heads. Except I did. Some of the time, at least. It was one of the witchy skills that I had that I enjoyed the most. Had I missed something terrible going on in Star’s?

On a whim, I pulled Louise’s business card out of my bag for the hundredth time and typed out an email.

“I know you’re busy,” I wrote. “And I don’t want to be in the way. But I found these photos in Star’s house and I wondered what you thought?”

I snapped photos of the photos with my phone – they weren’t brilliant quality but they’d do – attached them to the email and pressed send before I could change my mind.

Really what I wanted, I thought, was DI Baxter to come back to me and say I had nothing to worry about. The graffiti on the spa’s front door, and the broken windows, and Star’s injuries, and her death, were all just coincidences. A run of terrible, awful, horrific bad luck.

Feeling sick again, I stuffed the photos into my bag, and wandered off to find Xander. He’d told me he’d arranged to meet Esme again the next day and I’d pretended to be pleased.

“You’re so stressed, H,” he said, using the nickname my family used. I quite liked it when he called me H. “I can help you if I learn more about magic.”

He’d wrapped me in a hug and I’d let myself snuggle into his chest. I’d never had many close male friends, and I’d never known my dad so when I first met Xander with his tactile nature and habit of draping his arms round my neck or my shoulders, I was thrown for a while by his sheer maleness. But now I enjoyed how he was never afraid to give me a hug when he thought I needed one.

He kissed the top of my head.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “With my brains and your beauty we’ll have things back to normal in no time.”

I patted his chest and ducked out of his embrace.

“My brains,” I said. “You’re just the wallpaper.”

He stuck his tongue out at me.

“Go home,” he said. “I’ll close up.”

I suddenly realised how tired I was.

“Thank you,” I said. “What would I do without you?”

“You’d be bored,” he said with a grin.

I doubted that, but I grinned back as I put on my coat. The weather was getting worse and outside it was sleeting. Dirty grey freezing sleet covered car windscreens. Everywhere looked dark and gloomy because Twelfth Night was gone and now the Christmas decorations had been taken down. I felt uncharacteristically sorry for myself.

Chapter 9

Esme and Jamie, however, had obviously not received the misery memo, because I arrived home straight into wedding planning central.

They were in the living room, surrounded by magazines, Esme’s laptop open, foolish grins on both their faces and an enormous sparkler on Ez’s finger.

“Look!” she shrieked as I walked in. She waved her finger in my face and I caught her hand. It was a beautiful ring – a traditional solitaire with a square diamond set in a platinum band.

“It’s gorgeous,” I said truthfully. “Well done, guys.”

My bone-aching weariness was actually beginning to wear off in the face of such happiness, so I flopped down beside Esme.

“Are you making plans?” I said.

“We are,” she said. “You can help. Jamie, give Harry some fizz.”

Jamie went off to the kitchen and came back with a champagne glass and a bottle of Prosecco.

“There’s another bottle in the fridge,” he said, handing me the glass and filling it to the brim.

We chinked glasses.

“So what are you thinking?” I asked.

“We looked at some fancy Edinburgh venues,” Jamie said. “But they weren’t really us. And then Esme had an idea.”

“I want to go home,” she said with a smile. “I want to get married at the café.”

My mum, Suky, Esme’s mum, Tess and their friend Eva, ran a café on the banks of Loch Claddach, where we’d grown up. It was a thriving little business with amazing views. They’d had a difficult time a couple of years ago, when my mum had been diagnosed with breast cancer and the vultures started circling their business. But things were on the up again. In fact, they were expanding. Eva’s husband, Allan, who was a landscape artist whose paintings adorned birthday cards, posters, prints and teacups across Britain, had come up with a plan. He’d persuaded Mum and Suky to clear the top floor of the café – a little-used attic space with incredible light – whitewash the walls, sand the floorboards and turn it into a gallery. Claddach was brimming with artists, writers, poets, musicians – it was that sort of place – so there was no shortage of interest.

He started with an exhibition of his own work, had quickly found other artists to feature and now ran poetry readings, concerts and all sorts in the room upstairs. In fact, that’s what he’d called it – The Room Upstairs. Cute, huh? He was in the process of drawing up plans for an extension out the back, which would allow the gallery and the café to grow. I’d helped him out with business plans and accounts and the like and been pleasantly surprised by his financial acumen. He was a dark horse, Allan, I’d decided. But he was making a massive success of the gallery and it was, without a doubt, the most perfect place for Esme and Jamie’s wedding. I clapped my hands in a very girly way – apparently talk of brides and flowers can do that even to a cynic like me.

“What an amazing idea,” I said. “Have you asked your mum?”

“I have,” she said. “She was thrilled. Your mum was in the background shouting out ideas. We’ll have to go up and have a look and make some lists.”

“Oh that’ll be nice,” I said. “You guys can tell me what the gallery’s like.”

“Not Jamie,” Esme said. “He’s too busy to come up. I meant you and me.” She looked shifty for a second. “Actually, H, I’ve got something to ask you.”

“What?” I said warily.

“I rang Chloe,” she said. “I asked her to be bridesmaid.”