Dead Like Ned, page 8
part #1 of The Infernal Artefacts Trilogy Series
Well, now I really needed more wine. ‘The anniversary? Of when we first met? I … I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t know you ten years ago, Shane.’
He let out a long exhale, giving me a strange, upset expression. ‘Are you actually telling me you don’t remember the time we spent together when we studied Channelling at Wentforth’s? Because that would be almost as bad as the night you stood me up.’
‘Stood you up? Shane, if I didn’t know you ten years ago, then how could I have stood you up?’
‘You … Ned, come on. This isn’t funny anymore. I mean, you’ve only just acknowledged, only a few seconds ago, that you remember all of the things I told you about my search for my sister, about growing up unempowered.’
‘Oh. Oh, so you … you didn’t tell me those things yesterday? I thought maybe I’d blacked out a significant portion of our conversation in your office or something. But … this is worse.’ Panic set in. ‘Because you seem to be absolutely serious when you say that we met at Wentforth’s, which maybe means … I don’t know what it means.’
‘You’re being weird, Ned,’ he said. ‘I already told you I don’t think this is funny. It’s … it’s cruel and messed up is what it is. I can’t believe I once thought so well of you.’
‘Shane, I don’t think this is funny, and I’m certainly not trying to be cruel. So you either have to be pulling my leg, or, or …’ As I struggled to form new words, Cleo’s eyes met mine.
‘He’s obviously not pulling your leg, Ned,’ she whispered, moving close to my ear. ‘You know that.’
‘Well, yeah, but I don’t understand any of it,’ I whispered back. ‘Do you know what he’s talking about?’
‘No. But I don’t think he’s lying, and neither do you.’ She gave me a pointed look.
I sat back against the backrest of my stool. No, I didn’t think he was lying. If we’d both been in the same Channelling class ten years ago, then I really ought to remember him. The class hadn’t been huge. We would have at least seen each other, and yet I had no memory of it. There were a couple of things that could have caused this gaping hole in my recollection, and neither of them were pleasant. It could be a memory spell, or a vampire invading my mind and rearranging things.
But why would anyone want to do such a thing?
‘Look, I can’t really hang around here waiting for you to talk to your cat some more or have deep and meaningful thoughts,’ said Shane. ‘I have to get back to work.’
He zipped up his jacket, standing up. I put my hand on his arm to stop him leaving. ‘Please, Shane,’ I said, feeling a little bit nauseous. ‘I know you won’t believe this, but I really don’t remember, and it … it’s kind of scaring me, to be honest.’
He looked me in the eye for a minute, studying me. ‘You almost look like you’re telling the truth.’
‘That’s because she is, dumb-dumb!’ Cleo cried. ‘She’s telling the truth, you’re telling the truth, you’re both very, very honest and forthright people. Congratulate yourselves later on though, please, because right now I need you to tell my witch what happened back then. Every little bit.’
Still looking a tad sceptical, Shane sat back down. ‘All right then, I’ll play along. Because you know what? If you are messing around with me, I don’t even care. That’s on your conscience, not mine.’
‘She’s not messing!’ Cleo exclaimed with an adorable growl-like meow. ‘You’re a Wayfarer, aren’t you? So you know perfectly well that memory meddling happens way more often than it should.’
‘Whatever.’ Shane sighed. ‘Like I said, we first met back when you studied Channelling for a while at Wentforth’s, after you got your Healing degree. I had this massive crush on you immediately but I thought …’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind what I thought. Anyway, one day we collided, and after that we got to talking.’
‘Collided?’ I questioned. ‘What does that mean?’
He reddened a little. ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, we talked a lot after that. We … we shared some really big stuff with each other. We got really close in a pretty short time. Eventually I worked up the courage to ask you out. You said yes. You said we could go out on Halloween, for your birthday.’
‘My birthday?’ I gazed at him. I hated that my birthday was on Halloween. I did my best to avoid mentioning it, even to my friends. I was already a witch who talked to ghosts and worked in a necromancy shop by day and as a Cackler by night; I didn’t need to add being born on Halloween to the creepy list. ‘I told you when my birthday was? We … we really must have been close.’
He picked up a beer mat and began to twist it in his hands. ‘So anyway, I turned up with flowers and chocolates and your sister answered the door and told me that you’d had a better offer.’
‘My sister?’ Angelica?’
‘You don’t have any other sisters, do you?’ he said.
‘Well, no, but … she wasn’t even in the country when I was at Wentforth’s. That’s the only reason I managed to make any friends that year. Because she wasn’t there to turn people against me and mess things up.’
‘Look, if it wasn’t her then it was her double who answered the door to me,’ Shane went on. ‘After she told me you were out with someone better than me, she then told me she’d go out with me instead, but I went home and ate the chocolate myself.’ He gave me a small, tight smile. ‘It was good chocolate. From Dolly’s. Because you said it was your favourite.’
I didn’t gasp at the latest part of his revelation. Even though I couldn’t understand the how or the why, his description of events sounded entirely likely. I meant it when I told Shane that my sister had a habit of messing up my friendships. It had been that way all of our lives. She’d done it over and over again. When she’d moved back to Ireland shortly before her arrest, I’d been terrified that I’d lose Hamish and Katy. All the while, there was someone she’d already taken away from me: Shane.
And there were other gaps in my memory – the memory of my father wearing Hamish’s brown hat; the memory of those Infernal Artefacts. My mother had been so evasive today, suggesting I ask Angelica about the leather bag and its contents. She hadn’t seemed remotely surprised that I’d forgotten things, either. Why would she have acted that way if she didn’t suspect what I suspected right now? Angelica hadn’t just messed with my memories of Shane. She’d messed with my memories of my father and the Infernal Artefacts, too.
‘Shane, I’m so sorry,’ I began.
He remained focused on the beer mat. ‘No big deal. I was punching above my weight and I knew it.’
‘No, but it’s not like that. I really think that my sister might have … well, I think … I think she messed with my memory of you, Shane.’
‘Seriously?’ he asked.
‘Yes, seriously. I mean, I can’t be sure but … it’s the only thing that makes sense right now. Because I’m not lying, Shane. My memories of this time when we both supposedly knew each other before … they’re non-existent. I mean, I could see that you had a problem with me for a while, but I never understood why until right this moment. Why … why didn’t you confront me? Tell me off for standing you up?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe I was proud. Maybe I didn’t really care that much.’ His voice sounded a little raspy. ‘Does it really matter?’
‘Well does it?’ I challenged. ‘It sounds like it does. It … it sounds like it was a big deal to me, anyway, if I told you when my birthday was, if we were going to go out for a date, if we had all of these deep and meaningful conversations. Did I … what did I say about Samhain Street? About necromancy?’
‘You said you hated it.’ He met my eyes. ‘You said you were never going to take over the shop, no matter how much your mother wanted you to. You pictured yourself living in a different enclave, maybe Warren Lane for a while, then maybe a cottage in Riddler’s Cove when you wanted to settle down. Fresh, sea air and a big garden so you could grow lots of veggies and herbs.’
‘Oh.’ No wonder he’d always been so scornful of my shop. I’d told him all of my hopes and dreams, and then … then I’d stood him up, ignored him, and done the opposite of everything we’d ever talked about. ‘Shane, will you … will you stay and have another drink with me, and we can talk about it a bit more?’
For a second or two, he kept his eyes on mine, but then he averted his gaze and said, ‘You know what? I think I’m going to head off. I just … my head is wrecked, and I’ve got work to do, so I’ve really got to go.’ Before I could do anything to convince him to stay, the man who hated travelling spells pulled out his wand, twirled it three quick times, and vanished.
14. Ever So Angelic
Those of you with an incarcerated sibling will probably understand that my feelings towards my sister were … complicated. Angelica had done terrible things her whole life long. As well as turning people against me, stealing my friends and boyfriends and anything that wasn’t nailed down, there was also a suspicion that she may have murdered her cat. But no matter what Angelica did, she always managed to get away with it, because she was pretty, charming, and incredibly clever.
Well, she almost always got away with it. After her most recent crime spree, she’d wound up in Witchfield Prison. She’d been working with a gang who were plotting to bring about the return of those terrifying demons I told you about earlier on. There was some evidence to suggest that she’d originally gone into it with the best of intentions, and she’d undoubtedly helped the good guys out in the end; it was everything she’d done in the middle that was the problem.
Angelica was serving fifteen years for her part in the plot. She could hardly be let off too lightly when there’d been so much murder and mayhem involved – but I’d been told that, if she behaved herself, she could possibly be out in ten.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about her punishment, but she was my big sister and, despite everything she’d done, I did love her.
Like all supernatural enclaves, Witchfield Prison existed within a sub-dimensional region, inaccessible to most. But unlike the other enclaves, Witchfield was constantly shifting its position, and had new travelling coordinates at least once an hour. The intention was to make it difficult to plan a break-in, or perform any other magical malarkey that might endanger the prison, and it seemed to work perfectly well in that regard. Some people found travelling there made them extremely queasy, and it had been that way for me the first time I’d visited Angelica. These days, I readied myself with a potion.
One thing I could never prepare for was the loss of power I had to endure in order to visit my sister. For prisoners, their magic was removed for the entirety of their term. For visitors, it was temporary. I had the choice of wearing shackles while I was there – in which case my power would return the moment I took them off – or being disempowered by one of the Wayfarers’ magical devices. It was fairly accurate, time-wise, but there was usually about ten minutes afterwards where I had to sit in the waiting room until I was fully juiced up once more.
Today, though, I chose the disempowerment device. Facing Angelica with shackles on my wrists made me feel vulnerable. It made no sense, seeing as she was one hundred percent without magic for years to come, but it was the way I felt, nonetheless.
She’d been in a high-security wing when she was first incarcerated, and I’d had to visit her in a locked room, facing her through thickened glass. Thanks to her good behaviour (or her uncanny ability to trick people into liking her) she was now part of the general population, so this afternoon’s visit took place in a large room filled with tables, chairs, and dozens of other people visiting their loved ones. There were Halloween decorations on the walls, and some refreshments had been laid out.
As a guard led Angelica and some other prisoners into the room, I took some watered-down orange squash across to our allotted table.
My sister sat across from me, tossing her shiny hair and giving me a beatific smile. She looked perfect, as usual. Her prison jumpsuit seemed somehow brighter and better fitting than anyone else’s. She was two years older than me but, once we hit our mid-twenties, she somehow managed to look younger. When she was on the outside, I’d convinced myself she used glamour spells. But now she was in here and still looking younger and prettier than me, I no longer wanted to know how she did it. I had the uncomfortable suspicion that it might have been something to do with all of those deals she made with demons – either that, or I was jealous.
‘Look, you’re going to have to make this quick,’ she said. ‘Because I’m teaching a cookery class in a while. Although it’s kind of hard to teach, under the circumstances. They actually have a guard supervising me, can you believe it? They won’t let me so much as handle a knife by myself.’
I looked at her in wonder. ‘When I phoned up yesterday, I said that I needed to bring our visit forward because of a family emergency. You’re not even going to ask me what the emergency is?’
‘Why, when I know there isn’t one? Our parents are dead, and there’s no one but you and I, sister. So come on. Chop chop, Neddy. Get to the point and tell me why you’re here.’
Normally when I visited her, I was somewhere around an eighty on the temper thermometer. Today, I was quickly surpassing that. If I didn't make an effort to breathe deeply and simmer down, I was afraid I’d boil over.
‘That’s the thing, Angelica. I don’t really know where to start, do I? See, if I’d gotten to visit you yesterday, like I wanted to, I would have been asking you if you knew anything about the Infernal Artefacts, and how I happened to forget that they ever existed. But then today, at lunchtime, I learned that there’s something else mysteriously missing from my memories. Does the name Shane Moore ring a bell?’
She sat back, slowly sipping her watery orange squash as she regarded me. ‘You know,’ she said eventually, ‘you might not like to spread it around, but it’s no secret to me that you and your little friends help out the Wayfarers from time to time.’
Oh, Holy Hecate – I was about to hit one hundred. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘It’s got everything to do with everything, Ned. You know these people. You know Shane Moore. So how is it that it’s taken you so long to figure out that you forgot you ever met him? I have to tell you, I was getting kind of impatient waiting for this day.’
One hundred and ten. Deep breaths Ned, deep breaths.
‘I mean, hasn’t he said something before now?’ she went on. ‘Told you off for standing him up? Told you that you broke his trust, his heart, and made him bitter towards every woman he’s met since then?’
I almost wished I’d chosen the shackles. If I had those on when I hit her, I could really make her feel it. I crumpled up my empty cup and imagined it was my sister’s smug face before saying, ‘Just tell me, Angelica. What happened? Why did you mess with my head?’
She nodded to my cup. ‘You’ve gotten a dribble of orange squash on the table. Very unlike you to be so messy. As for Shane, I wouldn’t bother. He’s not worth it.’
I balled my fists. ‘You know nothing about him. Actually, maybe you do. Do you? Just cut the crap and tell me, Angelica, or I swear to the goddess, I’ll … I’ll …’
‘You’ll what? What exactly will you do?’
Narrowing my eyes, I said, ‘I’ll make our mother haunt you in the most annoying of ways. As a matter of fact, I’ll have hundreds of ghosts haunt you. I’ll have creepy ghosts, clown-faced ghosts, ghosts who go around with their skin rotting off just to freak people out. I’ll have every kind of spirit you can imagine. They’ll be with you in every waking moment. They’ll wake you from your sleep with scary noises. I’ll channel just enough extra power their way so that they can really make your life difficult. I’ll have them mess up your yoga classes, and your cookery classes. And your hair.’
She gasped and touched her hair. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘You know that saying, about how you should beware the wrath of the witch who just wanted to be left alone? Well, I’m that witch, Angelica. All I wanted was to be left alone, to live my life in peace. But you, and your criminal friends, and your shenanigans, and your lies … it’s got me at the end of my tether. I love you, I do, but don’t mess with me anymore, Angelica. Because I’ll fight you. And I’ll win.’
‘You know,’ she said with an uncertain smile, ‘I can command ghosts just as well as you can.’
‘Can you, though? Can you really? Let’s forget about the fact that I’ve been out in the world, keeping my magic fresh while you’ve been stuck in here going stale and out of practice. Because aside from that, I really am feeling angry enough to go at you both barrels.’
She tossed her head, her shiny ponytail swishing from side to side. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I think you are. Well done, Neddy! I like to see this side of you, I really do.’ She set her cup aside. ‘All right then. We’ll start with Shane. I did take away your memory of him. My reasons were simple. You were deliriously happy and loved up, and I was jealous.’
‘How? How did you see enough of us to get jealous? You were away when I was at Wentforth’s.’
‘Clearly not the whole time you were at Wentforth’s. I’d popped back for a harmless criminal caper with some friends of mine when I spotted you and Shane together, very much in … well, maybe it was too early for love. But it was something special, and I didn’t like it. I used a spell from the Book of Balance – that’s part of the Infernal Artefacts – so you’ll easily be able to undo it.’
She looked thoughtful for a minute. ‘It’s on page nine hundred, if memory serves. Luckily it worked on familiars, too, because you wouldn’t be able to forget Shane for long with that little madam to remind you, would you? Like I said a minute ago, though, I don’t think you should bother reversing the spell. You’ll only blame me when it all goes wrong. You have interminably terrible taste in men, and yet somehow you make it my fault. You went out with a Púca right after Kieran, and you’re dating a vampire at the moment who dated your best friend and her grandmother.’
