Page 11 of Secrets of the Forgotten Heir

I needed Eva’s support as I walked through the home I’d once known so well. I dreaded seeing how it had changed, yet as I explored each room I was surprised how little Maddie had done. I’d half-expected the place to have been taken over by tattoo ink and questionable spell ingredients.

The piano remained in the drawing room, though it was covered with a thick layer of dust; my dad had been the musical one, and without him there’d been no one to play it. I was grateful Maddie had kept it, though. Thebookshelf housed all the same books, though unlike the piano these were clearly still being used.

There was now a slim dishwasher in the kitchen and the light fittings were new, but the cupboards were the same dark wood, and the heavy oak dining table in the centre of the room where I’d eaten hundreds of meals was unchanged.

I stepped outside to take a look at the garden, which was surprisingly well-ordered with its rows of herbs and flowers. There were almost no weeds; it was clear that Maddie had worked hard to keep everything in great shape. As I was about to go inside, I stopped when I spotted something that shouldn’t be there. Nestled into the tree was a small patch of honey fungus.

I went cold.

Honey fungus is an invasive plant that grows beneath the soil as well as on top of it, and it devastates everything in its path. The yellow-hued growth appears in the non-magical community as well; it’s a parasite that feeds on dying trees and hastens their decline. However, in the magical community its presence is strongly linked to black magic.

I shuddered to see it in my garden and Iknewthat it was my fault; I’d bet that the presence of the Eternal Flame had kept such things at bay but in its absence the honey fungushad flourished. No doubt the dark magic it grew from was an echo of my grandmothers’ deadly sorcery.

Brilliant. I’d been back less than a day and my garden was already staging a rebellion.

I put the bad memories aside with an effort and returned to the cottage. Seizing my courage, I decided to explore upstairs. With every step, I felt my pulse rising but I tried to keep my breath steady. There was nothing here that could hurt me, and apart from that one – admittedly horrific – memory, my life here had been good. That was what I needed to focus on: the good. I wouldn’t letherruin this for me.

Maddie had taken over what was once the spare bedroom, which was no real surprise because she’d already been living there before I left. Now it was very much her space. Unlike me, Maddie preferred her clothes hung up neatly rather than scattered across the floor for easy access, but makeup was strewn across the dresser and bottles of coloured ink sat on the window ledges and mantlepiece. I couldn’t decide whether the amount of tattoo ink she’d stockpiled was impressive or concerning. Possibly both.

As I stood outside my parents’ room, I hesitated. I used to go in there a lot after they died, searching for something – clues, signs – anything that suggested I should have anticipated my grandmother’s arrival. Ormaybe something to reveal that they weren’t dead at all, that it had all been some elaborate plan and I just had to find the right relic or spell to bring them back to me.

It had never happened.

As I stood there with my hand pressed against the wooden door, Eva nudged her nose into my leg and whined softly.

‘I’m alright, girl,’ I said. It was humbling when your one meagre empathic magical skill was outshone a hundred times by your totally untrained dog. If she ever figured out how to talk, I’d be out of a job.

It felt strange to push open the door to my parents’ bedroom and switch on the lights. The room smelled of dust and old memories, possibly also of guilt, but I wasn’t about to psychoanalyse myself just then.

When I was young, I’d loved to crawl into bed with them. When I was five, they’d become resigned to me still climbing into their bed in the middle of the night, so they got rid of the standard double and put in a super-king size instead. It dominated the room, nestled in the centre of an array of built-in wardrobes that wrapped around it.

At the other end of the room was my mum’s dressing table for her makeup and moisturiser, complete with a mirror. She’d been fastidious about moisturising becauseshe didn’t want to look like a crone before her time. Truthfully, she’d barely had a chance to age at all.

The room felt incredibly empty and my heart ached all over again. Despite the musty smell, it was surprisingly clean, which meant that Maddie had made the effort to look after it. I was incredibly grateful; her kindness and compassion put mine to shame.

I took a deep breath and looked around. There were reminders of my parents everywhere: photos on the walls, Dad’s books stacked on Mum’s dresser. She’d always bitched about him taking upherspace, but she’d never moved the ever-changing pile. A spare pair of Dad’s glasses sat atop the books.

My eyes were hot, stinging. I wasn’t sure whether I was grateful to Maddie and Yanni for leaving the room exactly as it was or if I wanted to curse them. It was more than a decade since Mum and Dad had died and it still cut me to the core. So much so that I’d run away to London, abandoned my post. Guilt swamped me.

‘You’re righting it now,’ I whispered, wiping at tears I hadn’t noticed were falling.

I took a shaky breath, left their room and went to my own room down the hall.

It was pretty much exactly as I had left it, with the same soft toys on the bed and pictures stuck to the wall. I pickedup a teddy bear, whose gold fur was almost the exact same colour as Eva’s, and pressed it against my nose, inhaling deeply before setting it gently back down.

Moving to my dresser, I found myself face-to-face with more memories I’d almost forgotten in the form of a pile of half-faded photos. With trembling fingers, I started to look through them all, reliving the moments as if they were only yesterday.

There was a photo of me on the beach with Maddie. I didn’t know who’d done the spell, but purple waves were climbing up around us, sparkling like magic. Which they probably were.

Another photo was of Mum, Dad and me in the house, curled up on the floor in matching Christmas pyjamas, hot chocolate in our hands. Even in the photo, I could see that there were only pink marshmallows on top of mine; Mum must have picked them out especially to make sure I didn’t have any of the white ones. I’d never liked white marshmallows because they always got mixed up with the cream and I couldn’t see them, so she would have them instead.

Suddenly my throat felt thick. It was strange – I hadn’t thought about that in so long.

As I stared at the wall, hit by the sudden urge for hot chocolate with pink marshmallows, Eva barked. I’d pickedup some food for us at a service station en route, but she’d not had a proper meal since we’d left London. Given all the pasty aromas her dog nose must have picked up from the fayre, she was likely starving.

‘Sorry,’ I apologised, rubbing my eyes. ‘I’m the worst puppy-mama ever, aren’t I? Come on, girl, let’s get you something to eat.’

She followed me downstairs and happily wolfed down some food. When she was done, she stopped and barked pointedly. A heartbeat later, there was a knock at the door.

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