Chapter 1
JUST SAY THE MAGIC WORD
Effie
Bong.
The ornate clock tower on Yellowbrick Grove’s town hall tolled six, jerking Effie Chalmers out of a quaint imaginary world in which alarming electric bills and dead mothers did not exist.
Alas, back in reality, such things were omnipresent. Even Effie’s book-lined bedroom, with its cosy striped reading chair and magnificent pothos plant, was haunted with memories of her mother’s quick smile, her careful way with a watering can, and the bedtime stories that had kept a young Effie and her younger sister Bonnie bespelled for weeks at a time. So too was the household to-do list, written on a starry notepad that readFrom the Escritoire (and Heart) of Lyra Chalmers.Effie knew it was silly, but using her mother’s stationery made her feel like Mom was still there: that when Effie jotted out a note or a particularly captivating passage from a book, it was actually her mother doing the transcribing. And after the year she’d had navigating wills and funeral arrangements and pitying, prying conversations from the townsfolk, Effie needed that presence. Even if it was one that shimmered, just out of sight, at the corner of her bespectacled eye.
A leaf-blower, courtesy of three-time Yellowbrick Grove Garden of Perfection winner Freddie Noonan five doorsdown, revved in time with the clock tower. Effie’s book, a marble-edged edition she’d snuck from the rare books room of the library where she worked, slipped from her hand. Its pages flapped in consternation – and in warning of a book restoration bill that was about to join the electric one.
No. Unexpected expenses (exhibit A: the aforementioned electric bill) were Bonnie’s remit, not Effie’s. Effie did not abide the unplanned, the spontaneous, the ill-considered. Certainly not since the weight of the entire household had come to rest upon her shoulders like a leaden cloak of responsibility. She knew she could never replace their mother. But she did have to walk in her shoes if the sisters were to keep their childhood home safe from opportunistic property developers – and if Bonnie were to make it to thirty without a divorce, a bankruptcy or a flirtation with cult membership (it was not looking good).
A snap of her fingers, and an emerald stream of magic righted the book, setting it back on the side table and tucking in Effie’s favourite bookmark, a faded photo collage of her mother that a younger, more carefree Effie had carefully printed and laminated.
Mom’s smile – oh, how Effie missed that kind, generous smile – poked out from the top of the book, watching with love as Effie gathered her outfit for her evening library shift, one of the many extras she’d taken on to avoid being at home alone with Bonnie. Not that her wardrobe required much gathering. Effie’s habitual attire consisted of a rotating series of cardigans, high-waisted pants, and T-shirts with literary quotes on them that drew approving nods from the library patrons and exasperated sighs from her sister, a perfectly put-together blonde who had tried numerous times to turn the drably brunette Effie into someone more photogenic and outgoing. Effie, whodidhave an appreciation for fashion, albeit one mostly shaped by her favourite books – Anne of Green Gables’ puffed sleeves, Miss Marple’s knitwear – had pushedback. None of it had felt right. And now, as the polite face of the family’s grief, Effie simply wanted to go through life without being perceived. The less you stood out, the fewer questions you got about how you were doing or how long it had been or whether you had anything planned for the upcoming anniversary of your mother’s constantly whispered-about demise.
In the bathroom, Effie spun the faucet and stepped beneath the temperamental flow of water – then stepped straight back out again, muttering every expletive that came to mind. (Given that a young Effie had read the dictionary cover to cover for fun, this was quite a few.)
The water was positively arctic, as it so often was after Bonnie yelled those three fateful words:getting ready, Eff!Bonnie’s magic wasn’t as strong as Effie’s, but she was certainly able to inflict the curse of a freezing cold shower upon her sister with a regularity that suggested that if she actually put her mind to spellcasting instead of reality TV bingeing, she might be a force to be reckoned with.
But for now, Effie – freezing cold Effie who was aghast thinking about just how much electricity was used to heat a whole boiler of water – was the one to be reckoned with.
Grumbling, Effie pulled Mom’s embroidered dressing gown from the hook on the back of the bathroom door and grabbed an armful of clothes. Then she stalked, shivering, down the photo-lined hallway to Bonnie’s bedroom, a profusion of pink that the two sisters had mutually dubbed ‘the Flamingo Room’ back when they were teens and their completely different interests hadn’t yet caused the rift between them to widen into a gulf. There’d been a time when Effie had been the aspirational sister simply by virtue of being older – and therefore trusted with things like choosing which chocolates to buy from the corner store or being the de facto adult supervision when their mother had volunteered to cover yet another shift at the Toto Hotel. (She’d never mentioned the bills, although looking back, Effie could see that Mom’s shouldershad drooped under the same existential cloak that she now found herself draped in.) But that had promptly faded when, at fourteen, Bonnie had made a rapid transition from freckly, gangly kid intothe pretty one, and had quickly distanced herself from her sister’s introversion and embarrassing glasses-and-braces aesthetic.
Now, ten years later, Bonnie was still the pretty one, and Effie, well, she wasthe other one.
The distance between the sisters had broadened over the past year, with Effie trying so hard to fill the gap that their mother had left, and Bonnie bristling at her every attempt. Effie knew that she could never replace Mom, that she couldn’t come close to her warmth and generosity. But someone had to be the adult in the room, the one who kept up with the Jeep’s oil changes, who replaced the smoke detector batteries, who did the taxes. Even if sometimes after work Effie drove to the outlook at the top of the tallest hill in town and screamed,Not me! Can it for once not be me!
Tonight, Effie suspected, was going to be such a night.
‘Hey, babe. You’re dripping water on my rug.’ Bonnie was perched on a fluffy pink chair, clad in a sequinned minidress that involved about as much fabric as a dish towel. The long blonde hair draped over her shoulders was the only thing that kept her from looking utterly indecent. She was midway through painting her toenails, something she always seemed to be midway through. Especially when Effie needed her help taking out the trash or returning Pickles, the wayward French bulldog who apparently wished he lived on their side of the street.
Effie pulled on her pants, scowling as she caught her reflection in Bonnie’s full-length mirror: with her wet hair slicked back around her cat’s-eye glasses, she looked like a drowned rat. ‘How do you manage to use up an entire boiler of hot water every time?’
‘Want me to warm it up again?’ Shrugging, Bonnie rubbedher thumb and finger together as though about to cast one of her disastrous spells. Her hand glowed faintly purple beneath the swirl of floral tattoos she’d splurged on for her eighteenth birthday. Effie was not a tattoo hater by any means, having a few secret bookish tattoos of her own, but she’d never understood that decision. Bonnie’s magic was weak, but it still made her special. It made her a Chalmers sister. It was one of the few things that the two of them shared, and seeing it blotted over with meaningless irises and lilies had hurt Effie in a way she hadn’t been able to articulate.
‘Withyourmagic? Only if you plan on shelling out for the insurance deductible,’ said Effie drily as she pulled on her favourite Booktrovert T-shirt.
Bonnie dropped her hand, now rubbing at a spot on her toe where she’d overshot with her sparkly nail polish. Effie knew the jab about her sister’s magic had landed, and she felt a twinge of guilt. But Bonnie had everything else going for her. The effervescent personality, the ability to worm her way out of speeding tickets, the constant job offers for things she was clearly unqualified for, and the sheerfreedomof being the younger, carefree sister. Effie, who, at twenty-eight had a white streak in her dark hair and some alarming frown lines appearing between her brows, deserved to havesomething.Even if she had to keep that something under wraps to avoid the attention of the town, which exhibited a deep and annoying interest in the comings and goings of the Chalmers sisters.
Bonnie had social charms. Effie had magical ones. It was only fair.
‘I figured you weren’t going out, so the hot water was fair game.’ Bonnie returned her nail polish to an overflowing drawer, then picked up her hair curler – which Effie demanded she keep on a ceramic plate after the time she’d almost burned down their sprawling Queen Anne home. Times, plural.
‘Your reading chair isn’t going to judge you if your hair’sa bit oily,’ Bonnie added as she admired her own gleaming golden hair. ‘Or you’ve got a case of BO.’
Now fully cardiganed and therefore imbued with her librarian superpowers – which mostly involved doing excellent story-time voices and resetting wi-fi connections – Effie grabbed a fluffy, googly-eyed pillow and flung it at her sister. Half-heartedly, but the kind of half that Bonnie would give herself when slicing up a pizza to share.
Bonnie caught it easily, hence why she’d been basketball captain and Effie had been, well, a familiar face in the Yellowbrick Grove High School library.
‘Not Mr Fluffles!’ exclaimed Bonnie, giving the pillow a hug. She sighed, then held up a pinkie finger stacked with tiny chevron-shaped rings. ‘I promise to warn you next time I need all the hot water. Which will probably be when I get home from my shift. We’re hosting a welcome party for that new guy in town tonight.’ She waggled a perfectly shaped eyebrow with practised sultriness. ‘Maybe I’ll need a cold shower instead.’
Effie lifted her glasses to rub at the bridge of her nose. Fabulous. She couldn’t wait to help pick up the pieces when the inexorable love affair inevitably went awry. ‘Well, I for one have a date with the circulation desk.’
‘Sounds dusty.’ Bonnie grimaced, then extended an olive branch the only way she knew how: with a pout and a finger waggle that served as an alternative to a hug. Effie, of course, did not do hugs, unless the warm embrace of a book counted. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realize you were leaving the house.’
