Page 7 of Under Your Spell

‘No. Apps,’ I say.

‘It’s fine,’ Lil interrupts soothingly. ‘The spell will bring Clemmie someone to have hot sex with. She doesn’t need an app. Now, Clemmie, do your wish.’

I look down at the paper. ‘I wish for a job doing what I love,’ I read. ‘Wow. Thanks for that, past me. Looks like I’m no further on now than I was at seventeen.’

‘That is unfortunate timing,’ Serena grimaces.

‘But the wish will help get you back on track,’ Lil says firmly. ‘That’s the whole point.’

I feel a kick of pain as I remember I’ve only got a couple of months left in the job I love. I grab a candle and throw it in the pan.

With that, Lil turns and picks up the final candle in the pizza. She reads the words written in her own looping hand with a soft smile: ‘I wish for big love – the unconditional, whole-hearted, soulmate kind. Just what Clemmie deserves.’

‘Booooooo!’ Serena jeers. ‘I forgot how rubbish your wishes were.’

Ignoring her, Lil throws her candle in the pan. ‘The three of us say the last line together.’ She shows us the words.

‘Into the darkness we offer light, from the ashes may we rise,’ the three of us intone. Wow, we were really bringing the drama back in the day.

Then Lil looks at us both, and when we nod she drops the spell into the frying pan as well. The paper catches and smoulders around the edges. There’s a sudden hiss, then a cloud of smoke as some of the dry leaves catch alight.

‘Wait, Lil… are there sticks in there?’ I ask.

‘Maybe?’ Lil says it like a question.

The tiny flames flicker to life, gobbling up the sheet of paper and licking higher, taking over the pan as all three of us watch in stupefied silence. A plume of thick smoke rises. Then the smoke alarm begins to wail above our heads. Seconds later, all the lights go off.

‘WHAT IS HAPPENING?’ Serena yells, her hands clamped over her ears.

‘You’ve plugged your phone in the dodgy socket!’ I shout back, tripping over things in the dark. ‘The fuse has blown. There’s a torch in the cupboard under the sink.’

Lil is on her feet waving a tea towel ineffectually at the smoke detector. Serena grabs the wine bottle and upends it on the fire, which puts out the flames but does little to decrease the smoke.

‘My wine!’ I yelp forlornly.

‘WHERE THE FUCK IS THE FUCKING TORCH?’ Serena growls from the shadows. There’s more clattering, several loud bangs, and Lil manages to wrestle the back door open. Serena finally locates the torch and sends a bright arc of light around the room.

The smoke alarm abruptly stops its wailing but is replaced by a shrill ringing.

The three of us stand blinking in confusion over the steaming wreckage of the frying pan.

‘It’s my phone,’ Serena says finally, grabbing her mobile and glancing down at the screen.

‘Hi, Mum,’ she says, picking up. ‘It’s not actually a great time…’ She pauses here and whatever Ava says has her eyes widening. ‘Wait, slow down,’ Serena breaks in. ‘Who died?’

‘Oh my God, Clemmie,’ Lil whispers, the tea towel still clutched in her hands. ‘We are some seriously powerful witches.’

Chapter Three

Despite what Lil might think, we haven’t killed anyone with our witchy powers. It eventually transpires that the person who died is Uncle Carl, and it was after his third heart attack, which took place hours before we were drunkenly setting light to a bunch of twigs. I am pretty sure that means we are in the clear.

Uncle Carl was not actually related to any of us, but was my mum’s ex-music manager as well as still being Ripp’s manager. Despite my mum giving up on her singing career, she and Carl had managed to stay friends over the years – largely, I think, because he acted as a sort of intermediary for Ripp, organizing everything from visitation days to extra money for school trips. Nothing was too much trouble for Uncle Carl, up to and including standing in for our dad when he inevitably forgot or slept through the days he was supposed to be looking after us – something that happened with predictable regularity.

Carl was a rake-thin man who smoked like a chimney and had a mobile phone permanently clamped to his ear. I can roughly date every remembered encounter with him by the size of the phone. He talked out the side of his mouth and always had cherry cough drops in his pocket, which he doled out liberally in between telling us that he’d never had a filling and that the war against sugar was ‘a communist plot’.

Now it’s two weeks after the spell casting, and I am driving to his funeral. For some reason best understood by my mother, Carl’s wake is being held at our house, after a service at a nearby church. I’m chugging down the M40 in my dilapidated old Ford Fiesta, cursing and running spectacularly late thanks to a mandatory staff meeting at the university that sacked me.

I only hope the car doesn’t simply fall apart before I get there. At my last MOT the mechanic told me that if it was a horse he’d have shot it, a comment which I found unnecessary as I handed over an exorbitant fee for four new tyres and a lengthy list of ‘amber warnings that should really be looked at’.