“I did not steal her sunflower seeds!” said my squirrel familiar, Tansy, as she scampered indignantly at my side. “Your mother needs to get herself a hobby.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Is there a reason there’s a sunflower seed shell stuck to your tail?”
“I was framed!” She flicked her tail to dislodge the shell, which I suspected had once belonged to my mother’s extensive sunflower collection. “Besides, the flowers were dead anyway.”
“I’m not going to argue with that.”
Tansy scaled the wall of my dad’s house while I knocked on the door. Dad answered with a grin on his chubby face and gave me a hug. “I thought you’d be along soon, since your brother’s already here.”
Ramsey had beaten me here? That made a change. When I spied Tansy’s fluffy tail vanish through the open window, I said, “Sorry, Tansy’s a little overexcited.”
“Oh, you’re both welcome here,” he said. “The boys love her. Right, Jessica?”
My dad’s wife welcomed me with a smile. “Glad you’re here, Robin.”
“Me too.” I followed them into the hallway and spied Tansy scurrying around, her tail bouncing in excitement. “Really, Tansy. You can’t climb through people’s windows without permission.”
“I climb through your window,” she pointed out.
“I know, but you’ve got into enough trouble with Mum today already.”
“Trouble?” Dad echoed.
“She’s in disgrace at the moment for stealing my mother’s sunflower seeds,” I explained. “Mum ordered me to teach her to behave.”
“Can you teach a squirrel good behaviour?” Jessica glanced over her shoulder and groaned. “Spike, don’t tread that into the carpet.”
“Hang on.” Dad ran through the door to the living room. “Boys, cut it out!”
“They’re going through a phase of playing with slime,” Jessica told me. “Getting slime out of werewolf fur is no joke.”
“Ah.” I decided to give that one a miss, and Tansy settled herself on my shoulder as we waited for the coast to be clear.
When I entered the living room, I promptly burst into laughter. Ramsey’s hedgehog familiar, Prickles, sat atop the giant Lego throne in the corner of the room, wearing a pink dress and a silver tiara. Ramsey himself glowered at me from the sofa, while I spluttered with helpless giggles.
“Oh my god.” I pulled out my camera from my bag. “I need to commit that image to memory forever.”
“If you dare to take a picture of me in this state of indignity, I shall put bristles on every seat you sit on for the next year,” said Prickles.
“Ooh.” Luckily, nobody but my brother and I could understand the hedgehog’s speech. “I’d like to see you try that.”
“I think it’s very fetching.” Tansy sprang from my shoulder onto the sofa, causing my brother to scowl.
Ramsey had dressed down for the weekend, but even in casual clothes, he exuded authority. His blond hair was combed flat—though it looked slightly damp, as though one of the boys had upended a cup of water on his head, which was entirely possible—and his shirt and jeans were pristine. Ramsey and I both looked nothing like our dad, except I’d probably got my height from him, whereas Ramsey towered over me the way Mum did. Coupled with his scowling expression, it was a wonder the boys had had the nerve to kidnap his familiar and stick the unfortunate hedgehog in an embarrassing costume.
Dad settled between me and Ramsey on the sofa and offered a smile. “Tell us the latest news.”
I shrugged, conscious of the children in the room. “Not much to tell.”
Most of the Head Witch drama I was involved in wasn’t remotely suitable for young ears, and neither were certain recent events like dead bodies showing up in the woods and half my family getting possessed by a demon. Admittedly, those events had played a part in Ramsey’s decision to reconnect with our dad, who he’d scarcely spoken to since he’d split up from Mum when we were kids. The pair of us had spent several days sprinkling sage along the paths in the forest that circled my dad’s cottage so his shifter wife and kids could go for a run in the woods without fearing they’d be jumped by another monster. Nothing like being possessed by a demon to mend old family wounds.
None of that constituted a family-friendly discussion, and since Dad had been witness to most of it anyway, there wasn’t any recent news to share. Unless he wanted to hear the intricacies of learning how to cast tricky spells using the sceptre, the giant ceremonial wand that I was theoretically supposed to carry with me everywhere but had left at home today. No doubt my mother would be waiting to lecture me on the dangers of leaving the house without the sceptre when I returned, but I drew the line at bringing a volatile magical instrument into a house with small children. Demons or no demons.
I steered the subject over to Dad’s job in magical construction instead. I’d much rather hear about wizards’ house extension projects gone wrong than discuss the least fun parts of dealing with the coven’s council of witches, and between that and watching Tansy’s amusing antics, the morning raced by. Before I knew it, the clocks were striking noon, and Ramsey got to his feet.
“I have to go,” he announced. “Come on, Prickles.”
I stifled a grin as Prickles waddled over to him, shedding his undignified costume in the process. “Where do you have to go on a Saturday? Work, by any chance?”
Ramsey grunted, helping his familiar remove the silver tiara. “Something like that. Don’t you have work to be getting on with too?”
“Not on the weekend.” I turned to Dad. “I have somewhere I need to be this afternoon as well, but I can stay another hour or so.”
“Where, exactly?” Ramsey’s attention sharpened. “A date with that Harvey?”
Anyone would think Harvey and I hadn’t been romantic partners for going on two months. “Actually, I’m going to the local Sky Hopper match this afternoon. I’ve volunteered as a photographer.”
“You did what?” Ramsey asked in tones that would have been more appropriate if I’d said I’d volunteered to become a stripper. “That’s not your job.”
Since when did he care? “Bit late now, since I already said yes.”
Ramsey gave no further argument until we’d said our goodbyes and departed the cottage for home. Then I addressed the manticore in the room. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “You bought me the camera. Would you rather I used it to take photos of your familiar in silly costumes?”
“Yes,” he said tersely. “Why did you feel the need to involve yourself in matters that aren’t part of your Head Witch duties?”
I should have figured we were long overdue for an argument. “I thought we established that I’m allowed hobbies.”
“Hobbies that involve going to high-profile events?” he said. “You do realise the press will be there, don’t you?”
“Not inside the town.” I hadn’t thought of that, actually, but a Sky Hopper game was a world away from a press conference. “I sent those two reporters packing the last time we spoke, didn’t I? We haven’t seen them since.”
“Yes, you did,” he said grudgingly.
“See, it’s not hard to admit that I sometimes have good ideas,” I added. “Like bringing you to visit Jessica and the kids.”
“They put slime in my hair.”
“Did they?” I’d wondered why his hair had been wet when I’d shown up. “They’re kids, Ramsey. You’d be more used to them if you spent more time outside of the office.”
“She’s right, you know.” Tansy jumped onto his shoulder. “You know you’ll have to deal with worse if you ever end up having kids, right?”
“What?” He jerked his head away from her fluffy tail. “No. I don’t.”
“Don’t know, or don’t want kids?” I queried, more out of surprise than anything else. I didn’t think we’d ever discussed the subject since we’d been kids ourselves. Some things were too weird to contemplate, and my brother settling down and having a family of his own was one of them.
“Do you want kids?” he retaliated.
“Sure, someday,” I replied. “Not my priority at the moment.”
“Good” was his reply.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Did he think Harvey and I had been intimate? I wish. We barely got time to sneak in a weekly date when I wasn’t at work or dealing with other responsibilities, with the added complication that I was stuck living in my old bedroom in my mother’s house. Hardly a romantic setting.
Ramsey glanced sideways at me. “Any children we have are likely to be in the running to become the next coven leader.”
My heart sank into a familiar plunge. “I’m not the next coven leader, Ramsey. There’s no reason the title has to stay in our family forever.”
His eyes narrowed. “Haven’t we talked about this?”
“About me, yes, and I said I’m not interested,” I said frostily. “And you can keep my hypothetical children out of this too.”
“It’s not me you have to worry about,” he said. “Our family has a reputation far beyond our own circle.”
My shoulders stiffened. “Isn’t it enough that I’m Head Witch when I never intended to get involved in this crap? Most of the coven wouldn’t vote me in as leader if it was between me and Aunt Shannon. Hell, even Mum wouldn’t vote for me.”
“That’s untrue,” Ramsey said, though his voice didn’t hold its usual ring of confidence. “Our mother believes you’re perfectly capable of the role, though you aren’t currently living up to your potential.”
I’d heard that one before, from pretty much every single teacher I’d had at the academy. “Maybe my potential doesn’t involve presiding over coven meetings, Ramsey.”
This was precisely why I’d left town the instant I’d been legally allowed to and had kept a firm distance between myself and the Wildwood Coven throughout my entire adult life, but when I’d accidentally claimed the sceptre, it was as though all the years I’d spent trying to escape had ceased to matter. I hadn’t quite figured out what I planned to do when I threw off the burden of being Head Witch and fulfilled my mission, but it had never involved staying in Wildwood Heath, and I certainly didn’t want to take over leadership of the coven when my mother retired. Unlike the position of Head Witch, coven leadership was subject to a vote, and my brother was lying to himself if he thought anyone in the coven would pick me to steer them into the future.
He was also deluded if he thought for a minute that I’d willingly subject myself to the humiliation.
“You’re perfectly capable of fulfilling the role,” he persisted. “You’ve done it for weeks.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to.” I reached down to pick up Tansy, who climbed onto my shoulder and wrapped her fluffy tail around the back of my neck. “You got to decide your own future. Why not me? No, don’t tell me I’m allowed to choose. You know that isn’t true.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s not about you. It’s about the coven’s own future. Do you really want to throw away a legacy that’s been in our family for hundreds of years?”
This guilt trip had officially gone too far. “What legacy? For that matter, why is it acceptable that Grandma managed to make enemies of demons but not that I left town to make something of my own life?”
“You’re still set on leaving?” He exhaled in a sigh. “You know, I really thought you’d matured.”
“Being mature doesn’t mean letting my family members make my decisions for me. Pretty sure it’s the opposite, in fact.”
Rustling in the treetops warned that my magic was responding to my anger, drawing in any nearby wildlife. I’d never quite mastered the tight control most of my family members had over their abilities, and when emotions ran high, magic pretty much leaked out of my pores. The birds circling overhead didn’t do my argument any favours but further underlined why I was utterly unsuited for the role of coven leader.
I wouldn’t lie: it was also a relief. When the forest had been infested by monsters from the afterworld, they’d driven away the majority of the local animals, and while that left me with fewer targets to respond to my erratic magic, I’d missed the chirping birds and scampering rodents who’d usually inhabited the forest. I liked the Wildwood. The trees and animals didn’t judge me. Unlike some people.
My brother and I walked the rest of the way to the house in silence, our brief truce having thoroughly evaporated. What had he expected me to say, that I’d given up every belief I’d held since I’d been old enough to grasp my family’s expectations of my life? The notion of surrendering my freedom was almost intolerable enough for me to act on the escape plans that had lurked in the back of my mind for the past few months—but there was no escape, not as long as I held the sceptre.
That won’t be forever, I told myself. Don’t think about that. Think about Harvey and the Sky Hopper match.
My mother waited outside the house, where she greeted me with the ominous words “Robin, I’ve been looking for you.”
“Why?” Oh no. I hadn’t told her about my upcoming stint as a photographer, hoping that she’d stick to her word and keep out of what I did with my weekends. Apparently not. “You knew I was going to Dad’s.”
“The coven’s received some sad news,” she said. “The leader of the flower club is dead.”
“Who… Araminta?” Had she forgotten the flower club’s former leader and I hadn’t been remotely friendly with one another? “What do you mean, ‘the coven’? She’s not—she wasn’t—an active member.”
“She was your grandmother’s friend and well respected within the coven,” Mum said. “It’s your job as Head Witch to offer your condolences to everyone affected.”
She had to be joking. “I already have a commitment today. How’d she die, anyway?”
It might be a callous question, but Araminta—with her blond wig, caustic temper, and fanatical commitment to the annual flower contest—hadn’t seemed the sort to just keel over.
“I don’t know the details,” she said. “Only that the neighbour found her lying in her back garden among the flowers.”
“Sorry to hear that.” I wasn’t. She’d been downright rude to me and had caused no end of trouble in the recent flower contest, which had ended in someone dead. Araminta hadn’t turned out to be the instigator, but she’d shown no qualms about turning her back on the underhanded tactics her fellow flower club members used. I wasn’t about to go out of my way to visit the presumably small number of people who were sorry at her passing.
I walked past Mum into the house and found Kimberly had left lunch out on the table. One of the perks of living at home was our family’s chef, but the delicious bacon sandwich was somewhat overshadowed by my mother’s judgemental stare while I was eating. I didn’t think Araminta’s few mourners would be that bothered if I waited until Monday morning to send them a condolence letter, but Mum was adamant. When I went upstairs to fetch my camera, I returned to find her hovering at the foot of the stairs like a statue.
“Look, I have to go.” I stepped around her and made for the front door. “I promised I’d take photos at the Sky Hopper match. I did tell you I had plans, didn’t I?”
“The Sky Hopper match?” she asked. “Absolutely not. Didn’t I tell you to avoid public events?”
“The match is inside the town, Mum,” I said. “The demon would have a hard time getting past the circle of sage Ramsey put around the forest.”
Grandma’s demonic enemies might have me on their hit list, but we’d been thorough when we’d placed our protections, and the entire town was circled by an unbroken barrier of sage. A smaller circle encased the part of the forest encompassing Dad’s cottage and the road where my mother’s house and the coven headquarters were located. The Sky Hopper field might be outside that smaller circle, but it wasn’t like I was taking a broomstick ride across the country. The odds of me being attacked by one of Grandma’s demonic enemies were incredibly low, but since Mum was one of the people who’d been possessed by the demons in question, her view of the matter was slightly biased.
“Take the sceptre,” she ordered.
“That won’t make a difference.” Demons were effectively ghosts with nastier personalities, and even my sceptre had its limitations when it came to dealing with disembodied monsters. Besides, carrying a giant stick with a glowing purple gem did not help me avoid drawing unnecessary attention.
“All the more reason for you to stay at home.”
I should have expected this. Everyone had reacted in different ways to the demons’ attack, and Mum was no exception. She hated losing control, and the demon’s possession had struck at the heart of her deepest fear, with the result that she’d become even more of a micromanager than she had been previously. My work schedule had been abruptly adjusted to make room for extra magic lessons and focusing on preparation for the next attack, and while I might have rejoiced in having less paperwork to deal with, the constant lectures were starting to wear on me.
Luckily, at that moment, Tansy ran past the window with an entire sunflower head in her mouth.
“That squirrel!” Mum ran for the back door. “If you must go, then take the sceptre, Robin. That’s an order.”
I hid a smile, certain that Tansy had manufactured a distraction on purpose but equally certain that Mum would follow me all the way to the Sky Hopper field if I didn’t let her win this part of the argument. I ran back upstairs to grab the sceptre and then left the house before Mum changed her mind.
With the sceptre in one hand and my camera in the other, I followed the forest path, this time bypassing Dad’s cottage towards the sound of a cheering crowd. While I’d never been as big a Sky Hopper fan as some, the fact that Harvey was team captain had increased my interest manifold, and the match was a welcome chance to forget both my family’s arguments and the demons hunting me down. Who could ask for more?
