Effie raised an eyebrow that could do with some threading.
‘I, um, recommended some of Oswald’s crystals,’ Bonnie told Effie, hoping that her sister wouldn’t press her any further on this. She was absolutely not about to explain the specifics of the business arrangement. Certainly not with Oswald leaning over her in his trademark slimy, leery fashion.
‘Oh, here’s Sabine,’ said Bonnie, relieved. She waved as Sabinemade her way over, all flowing skirts and dangly earrings – and a new bracelet that gleamed with crystals.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sabine as she joined the group, sounding slightly out of breath. She embraced the sisters in turn, then gave Oswald a quick hug. ‘My head’s just full of fog today. Just a touch of hay fever, I’m sure, but I’m all out of sorts. Shall we get started?’
Chapter 25
THE WITCHING HOUR
Effie
Mom’s memorial had unsettled Effie in a way she hadn’t expected. Both Bonnie and Sabine being late had carried a particular weight, and Effie could feel it hanging from her shoulders for the rest of the day. She’d even pulled out her diary for the first time in a year, preparing to get her feelings out in the only way that made sense to her.Weird, she thought.Had that crease in the spine always been there?
As she wrote, she understood why Theo had such a soft spot for poetry. Words could hold deep, precious meanings in ways the human body wasn’t built to. After jotting away for a half-hour or so, she realized what she’d been trying to convey. That Bonnie’s and Sabine’s late arrivals had made her feel as though she alone was responsible for keeping the memory of Mom alive.
She considered dropping into The Silver Slipper for a glass of wine. Bonnie had invited her, after all. And as much as her sister vexed her, Mom’s memorial had reminded her that the two of them shared a bond that no one else could ever come close to. But the thought of braving the busy bar while Bonnie was working was too daunting. What if she had to make small talk with drunk college kids? Or got drawn into a darts game?
She considered texting Tessa, but her friend was on a craft deadline for an upcoming market. Although she’d still madetime to visit Bonnie, apparently. There was Theo, but was it too early in their...whatever this was to show up at his door in her present fretful state? He’d seen enough of Effie’s neuroses on display already, and she didn’t want to send him racing back to the city with tales of the strange librarians who inhabited the countryside. At least not before their upcoming library date.
No, she’d just do what she had as a kid. Climb into her reading chair and read until her eyelids were heavy and the book ended up draped over her slumbering face.
This was precisely what she did. But a book only offered so much protection against the world and it wasn’t long until her dreams turned sour from the anxiety of the day. Nightmarish images of Mom sinking into the ground, of Uncle Oswald and Bonnie laughing together, of the purple and brown portraits that hung in Bonnie’s bar swirled together into a foul, muddy colour, then coming at her in a stream of magic with a howling face.
Effie jerked awake, her heart pounding so fast that it barely had a rhythm. She tried to grab on to the beat, but it galloped away. Sitting up, she focused on her breathing, calming herself, seeking out those moments of peace that for now lay out of reach. The part where the nearby trail turned off slightly, leading to a trickling waterfall in a basin of ferns and soaring trees. Sitting on the front porch licking the beaters from the bright red KitchenAid after baking with Mom.
A younger Effie might have asked Mom to perform the special nightmare spell that had always worked on Bonnie, the one that had involved them speaking certain memories aloud as a way of erasing the memory of the nightmare. Bonnie’s night terrors were the rare time that Mom allowed magic to be used on another person, and that she’d involved a non-magical person in the spell – Bobby. But this was no longer then, and Effie couldn’t ask that of anyone. She’d have to find her own way through.
Finally, Effie’s body started to relax, her heart slowing as her breathing deepened. She felt human again, rather than a set of screaming electrical impulses. Or, perhaps, a ball of uncontrolled magic. For that was her fear: that her magic would escape and run riot, become unpredictable, just like Bonnie’s.
Effie snuggled up against her pillow, the thick one she turned sideways and spooned when she needed the comfort. Bonnie had always teased her about it –why not make it a real someone?But the pillow didn’t demand anything of Effie and it certainly didn’t judge her for her preferred choice of pyjamas. These consisted of one of the oversized button-down shirts Mom had used as a smock while painting and a pair of ratty sweats that had seen better days. And years.
Trying to will herself back to sleep, Effie played her usual game of picking a letter of the alphabet and trying to run through as many words starting with it as she could. At intervals, when she got stuck, she’d squint at the wall clock, which was at that frustrating in-between time where it was too late to go back to sleep, but too early to get up. Not the witching hour, of course. In Effie’s mind, the witching hour was one of power and strength. This,thiswas a deeply human hour.
Ugh. Effie turned on her night light to read for a few minutes before sleep beckoned again, but the words simply weren’t going in. Every sentence was punctuated with visions of Theo’s charming smile, or of the discomfort she’d felt learning that Bonnie had sent Sabine over to Oswald’s. Or, worst of all, of the ever-fading image of Mom. Effie’s greatest fear was forgetting Mom, and it was happening, day by day. She still had countless photos and videos on her phone, but they never captured the whole person. There was less tethering Mom’s memory to the world. The letters and junk mail had stopped coming, and the family friends came by less often,talking for shorter durations and with less passion and care. If Effie called Mom’s phone, the familiar voicemail greeting no longer warmed the line. Instead, a robotic voice told her the number was no longer available. One day, it would be recycled, and a whole new person would take it on, and Effie’s calls would be sent to spam.
Effie was hot now, and panicky.
First the nightmare, then the heart palpitations, and now that prickly feeling of anxiety. This is how nights like this always went. She’d be frantic and out of sorts until she gave up and climbed into Mom’s bed. But Mom’s bed was cold, and the only other option was Bonnie. Who was probably sleeping at the bar, anyway. And if she wasn’t, she’d hardly appreciate being woken up. She was famously like a bear that way.
But Effie had to get up and moving before anxiety devoured her. Cool air. That always helped.
It was dark out, although the moon sailed high amid the pointed stars, guiding the way. Effie hesitated, then laced up her roller skates and buckled her helmet. There’d be few souls around to see her slithering around off balance. And anyone who did was probably in a particular state that meant they’d barely register it anyway.
Mindful of the areas of the path that angled up from the aged, sprawling tree roots of the enormous oaks that knitted the street together, Effie skated off the narrow pavement and onto the wide, empty road. The breeze cut at her skin, sloughing away her nightmare and scrubbing her of the anxiety that had been prickling under her skin since she’d woken. She cruised down the street, ducking through the yellow hugs of the street lamps, counting the porch lights that remained on and the interior lights here and there that signalled either someone was up, or they wanted the world to think as much. Theo’s house was dark, she noticed, with a pang of regret. Although even if his lightwereon, she’dhardly go banging on his door to see what he was up to. At least, probably not.
So distracted was she by what Theo was up to that she almost tripped on a divot in the road. She righted herself with a quick burst of magic that fought the good fight against gravity. Effie had never broken a bone, and she didn’t plan to start now. Not with the health insurance plan the library offered, anyway. She’d be better off buying some trinkets from Uncle Oswald’s and crossing her fingers.
As Effie found her footing, she could’ve sworn she saw a curtain in Theo’s house twitch. Surely not. That was just her anxiety talking. Or perhaps a ghost. A ghost was better than the alternative, which was that Theo had climbed out of bed for a glass of water just in time to see the green sparks of her magic lighting up the night. She’d have to put in a call to the local paper complaining about kids lighting off fireworks, the way Bonnie did on the occasions where her wayward magic had caused fires, electrical blackouts, and worse, bad hair.
Effie skated on, drinking in the picturesque town and the way it slumbered under the spell of night. She loved Yellowbrick Grove, mostly. It was home, and all her memories of Mom were here. All right, so the townsfolk could be a tad closed-minded, and the way everyone followed Bonnie as though she were the Pied Piper of Popularity certainly landed a particular way. But there was the library, the coffee shop, the tiny college, the beautiful parks with their rose gardens and hedges and verdigris-tinted sculptures. And the people: sweet Tessa, bossy Bowow, tough-guy Bruce, generous Sabine, and the always cheerful Bobby. And Theo. If the tiny town was good enough for someone from the city, then it was enough for Effie. She just had to find her way through, even if Mom wasn’t there to guide her.
Effie made a slow loop around the town, trying to take in the quietude and draw the stillness of the night into herself to quell the anxiety that wouldn’t settle after her nightmare.She skated past the local landmarks: the belltower was all that stood of the church that had burned down a decade before after votive candles and pigeon nests had come together to cause a terrible (but memorable) conflagration. The Wall of Moss by the old theatre. The huge oak that soared over the garden park not far from the library, which all three of the Chalmers women had chalked their initials on over and over with every visit – Mom had made them promise never to etch their initials into a tree, for doing so caused a rift between you and its spirit.
They’d stuck with chalk, although Bonnie had famously made her mark on various bits of wet cement over the years, and there was a patch of graffiti on one of the underpasses that Effie had her suspicions about as well.
The night remained quiet. It was just Effie and the nocturnal animal denizens out and about now. A possum’s eyes glowed, regarding her from the safety of an azalea bush as she skated past; a thatch of raccoons paused their looting of a dumpster; an owl gave a staccato serenade to the moon. It was hard not to be mesmerized by it all, by the spell that the dark cast over the town, like they were all Sleeping Beauty under the magic of the stars.
