I Put a Spell on You (30 page)

There was a light on in the front room.

“He must be here,” I said. “Phone me.”

Esme dialled my number and I answered, then she put her phone in her pocket and I held mine to my ear. I slid behind Xander’s wheelie bin and crouched down.

“Good luck,” I said.

Esme snorted at me. She still thought I was being ridiculous.

I watched from my hiding place as she climbed the steps to the front door and banged hard.

He opened the door almost straight away, peeking his head round with an enquiring look.

“Esme,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or not. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“Can I come in?” she asked. For a minute I thought he was going to say no, then he obviously changed his mind and opened the door wide enough for her to enter.

I waited for the door to close, then bobbed up and peered through the window.

The house was scruffy with a horrible brown and red swirly carpet. There wasn’t much furniture and what was there was dated and uncared for.

Esme paced across the room and back again.

“Why are you here?” Xander said. I could hear him quite clearly through Esme’s phone. He was being quite rude I thought.

“It’s mad,” Esme said. “Harry’s gone mad.”

A shadow crossed Xander’s face and he grabbed Ez as she passed him.

“Stop it, Esme,” he said. “Is Harry okay? Where is she?”

I felt a brief flash of guilt. He was worried about me. Did that mean I’d got it all wrong? Again?

“Oh she’s fine,” Esme said, carrying on pacing. “She’s just lost her marbles, that’s all.”

She flung herself onto the brown corduroy sofa, then sneezed as a cloud of dust rose up.

“It’s rented,” Xander said, perching next to her. “It’s only temporary. I’m not here very much.”

Esme looked at him.

“Harry thinks you’ve done all this,” she said. Her indignation was very convincing. I didn’t think she was acting. “She thinks you’re her long-lost brother, and you’re a witch, and you’ve been doing all this bad stuff.”

Xander went pale. Then he laughed.

“I know,” Esme said. “It’s clearly ridiculous.” She pulled her coat off and pushed up the sleeves of her jumper. Her arms were gleaming with sparkles.

“Oh and,” she said, waving her glittery arms in front of his face, “I’ve been enchanted to fall for you, and she thinks you did that too…”

Xander barely glanced at Esme’s flailing limbs.

“Slow down, Ez,” he said. “Why does Harry think I’m the one to blame for this?”

“We read some letters her mum wrote from India,” she said. “To see if they threw any light on all this business. It made no sense to me at all, but she came up with this idea.”

“Just from a few letters?” Xander said. He laughed – for real this time. “That’s crazy. They don’t prove anything.”

“I know,” she said. “Just because she thinks her dad looks like you, she’s decided you’re her brother.”

“I look like her dad?” Xander said. He frowned. “She’s never mentioned that before.”

“She didn’t know before,” Esme explained. “She only just saw him – she did more mirror divination to see him.”

Xander looked blank.

“She’s never met him,” she said patiently. “Her mum met him in India, but they’ve not been in touch since the seventies.”

Xander frowned again.

“Really?” he said. “But I thought….” He trailed off.

“So she thinks I’ve been doing all this stuff?” he said. His voice was icy and it made me scared for Esme. I’d never seen him being anything less than charming before and I’d sent her in there with him.

“All this horrible stuff? And she thinks you’re enchanted?”

“Oh I’m definitely enchanted,” she said, waving her arms again. “That’s not in doubt. It’s just Harry thinks you did it.”

Xander went quiet. Even from where I was, I could almost see the cogs whirring in his brain.

“What?” Esme said. “What are you thinking?”

“So you’re enchanted?” he said.

“I’m afraid so,” Esme admitted. She shifted on the horrible brown cord, looking awkward. “Well, you know, I fancied you a bit, but I’d never have done anything.”

He took her hand and pulled her towards him.

Ooh, he was clever, I thought. Clever and manipulative.

“It was fun though,” he said, kissing her gently on the neck.

Esme shivered as her arms sparkled and for a second she relaxed into his arms.

I had to get Xander away from there.

With my phone tucked under my chin so I could still hear, I pulled out my iPad and sent him a message.

On the nasty tiled coffee table, his phone vibrated.

“It’s Harry,” he said, swiping his screen. “She needs me at work.”

Esme looked very put out and once more I wasn’t sure if she was acting or not. I feared not.

Xander got up and took his coat from the old-fashioned wooden stand. “Stay here,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

“Don’t you think I should come with you?” Esme said. “She thinks you’re the bad guy. Who knows what she’s going to do.”

Xander laughed.

“I know Harry inside out,” he said. “I just need to talk to her and make her realise she’s made a mistake. You stay here and I’ll ring you when we’re done.”

Xander slid his phone into his pocket, pulled on his coat and his stolen green scarf and leaned over to kiss Esme. Awkwardly she moved her head and he dropped his lips onto her ear instead.

“Back in five minutes,” he said.

“It’ll take more than five minutes to sort this out,” she said.

“So I’ll see you in ten,” he said. And he went. He skipped down the steps past me, and along the road towards the spa.

Esme appeared at the front door.

“Harry,” she hissed. “Harry?”

I crawled out of my hidey-hole and brushed off my jeans.

“Come on,” I said. “We don’t have much time.”

Chapter 44

Esme was antsy.

“I’m just not sure,” she said as I followed her into Xander’s house. “I still think you’re jumping to conclusions.”

“And I think we need to break this enchantment to get you thinking straight,” I said. “If you still think it’s nothing to do with him when we’ve done that, then fine.”

I started wandering round the little house. There wasn’t much there. What few possessions Xander had were neatly stacked, but the house was so run-down and peeling round the edges. It looked very temporary and that made me feel uneasy.

Esme was peering at her sparkly arms, which were still glowing with the after-effects of being near Xander.

“I’ve got my spell book,” she said. “Mum said everything I needed to know to break the enchantment was in there.”

She dug around in her bag, produced her battered book then sat down on the nasty sofa and leafed through the pages.

“Anything?” I said. She ignored me and carried on scanning the pages.

“Anything?” I said again. Esme sighed and read some more.

“Oh come on,” I exclaimed. “You’re so slow.”

Esme threw the book at me and I caught it just before it whacked into my head.

I laid it on her lap.

“Do it with magic,” I said.

She rolled her eyes at me, but she waggled her fingers and the pages turned fast in a shower of pink sparks. Finally the book flopped open with something that sounded very much like a sigh. Ah ha. I picked it up. In small, neat handwriting was written:
How to break an emotional enchantment
… Bingo.

I scanned the spell – it didn’t look very difficult though it did say, as Esme had said, that we needed either the subject of the spell – Xander – or something precious belonging to him. Well, we didn’t have Xander, but we were in his house. I was sure there was something we could find.

I laid the book gently face down on the coffee table and wandered over to the kitchen.

“You look in here,” I said to Esme. “I’ll have a root through his bedroom.”

“Harry,” she said in a warning tone. “I’m not comfortable with this.”

“Just do it,” I snapped. I was losing my patience.

I went to the door that I assumed led to Xander’s bedroom. It was closed. I tried the handle. Locked. Unusual, I thought, but not completely odd. Maybe he had something valuable in there. Feeling slightly criminal, I darted back to the front window and peeked out. Xander was nowhere to be seen, of course.

Heading back to the bedroom door, I waggled my fingers. Unlocking doors was basic witchcraft and I’d been doing it almost since I’d learned to walk. But this time nothing happened. At least, nothing happened to the lock. But my magic rebounded violently off the door and showered me in vibrant blue shimmers.

“What the…?” I said aloud.

I ran my hand over the doorframe and it crackled under my fingertips.

“Magic,” I whispered. The door – Xander’s door – was sealed shut with magic. I had a very bad feeling about this.

“Esme,” I said. “Can you come and help me?”

She trailed out of the kitchen, shoulders slumped like a grumpy teenager.

“What?” she said.

“Watch.”

I tried to open the door again, and once again the magic rebounded and this time covered Esme in shimmers too.

“Oh shit,” she said.

Grim-faced, I nodded.

“Shit,” I said.

Suddenly I didn’t just want to get into the room to help us break the enchantment, I was determined to find whatever Xander was keeping locked up in there.

“Together?” I said.

Esme was pale and shaky, but she agreed.

“Together.”

She closed her eyes, and I closed mine and concentrated on the door, waggling my fingers in the direction of the lock. It took a lot of effort, and a lot of pink and silver sparks but eventually it popped open.

Relieved, I slumped against the doorframe, breathing heavily. I was nervous about what I would find inside, but strangely Esme urged me on.

“Go in,” she said. “I’m right behind you.”

I crept into the room, clutching Esme’s hand. It looked like a hotel room – smooth duvet cover on an old-fashioned double bed. One wardrobe, one chest of drawers and one bedside table with nothing on it. It was disconcertingly impersonal. Esme let go of my hand, and prowled round the room, looking under the bed.

I pulled open the drawers, but they were just full of clothes. Inside the wardrobe, though, I found a cardboard box filled with books. Not sure what I was looking for, I pulled it out.

“Help me?” I asked Ez, She sat down on the floor next to me and we started looking through the books. Under a pile of Harry Potter hardbacks (“Seriously?” I muttered to Esme, showing her what I’d found. She chuckled.) I caught a glimpse of a familiar chintzy cover. It was Star’s diary. I pulled it out and leafed through it. There was no question it was the same diary Esme had found in Xander’s office, the one I’d read, and the one that had disappeared without a trace.

“Oh god,” Esme said, looking queasy. “Xander took the diary.”

I pressed my lips together, not trusting myself to speak. I couldn’t decide if I was angry or upset. This was so much worse than I’d thought it would be.

Esme took a pile of books out of the box and put them on the thin carpet and we dug through the remaining hardbacks in the box. There, on top of an old almanac I found the spell book Xander had shown me – the one with the thick black scribbles.

I took it out of the box and flicked through it. There were no scribbles anywhere to be seen – had they just been there for a short while?

“This was ruined,” I told Esme. “Xander showed me this book and he said he’d got it from Lisa’s shop, on Cockburn Street. But when I looked inside it was covered in marker pen.”

With shaking hands I showed her the pristine pages.

“It’s all gone?” she gasped.

I flicked the book open at the front cover – where I’d checked for a name or inscription and found nothing – and gasped myself as I saw writing there.

Dhani Fergus
it said in a flamboyant scrawl. My heart lurched. Below that, in a different, neater, script, was written:
Darling Xander. Once, long ago, I took this book from your father. That was wrong of me, but I hope it can now make sense of the world you find yourself in. Be happy, my darling boy. Mum xxx

“Shit,” I said out loud. “Shit, shit, shit.”

I felt sick. I passed the book to Esme and she read the inscription.

“Oh Harry,” she said. “Oh H.”

So it seemed Dhani was Xander’s dad too. But did that mean he was responsible for all the things that had happened?

“I’ve got a brother,” I said. “A brother who wants to ruin my life.”

“It might not be him,” Esme said. “Think about how loving Xander is. How he looks out for you and me, how his smile lights up a room…”

Esme’s arms began to glow.

“Oh. My. God,” she said. “I have to break this spell. Until we do that I can’t think clearly.”

“Right,” I said, pushing all thoughts of having a brother to one side. “We need something, something precious that belongs to Xander and now we have his spell book. What else?”

Esme frowned.

“I have to use my own magic to take my power back – I have to reclaim myself,” she said. “Mum said it can be quite difficult. But she said if you pass the precious item over running water it can help break the spell.”

“Brilliant,” I said. Witches used running water a lot – it was full of energy that we could harness.

Knowing we didn’t have long before Xander twigged that I wasn’t coming to the spa to meet him, we span around the little house, grabbing Xander’s spell book, Esme’s spell book, and our coats. Then we ran out of the front door – leaving it on the latch so we could get back in without risking a magical lockdown again – and down to the end of the street.

The roads that make up the Colonies all run at a right angle to the Water of Leith, a small, fast-flowing river that winds its way through the centre of Edinburgh – that’s where we were headed. We trotted down to the end of the street, skirted a parked car and clambered over a small hedge until we were standing on the path that ran beside the river.

Esme and I stood facing the river.

“You have to do this yourself,” I warned her. I held her spell book in one hand, and gripped her fingers in my other. She held Xander’s book.