Page 5 of Secrets of the Forgotten Heir

‘Other reason?’

‘You said there were a couple of reasons you’d come. He’s one. What’s the other?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Her emotions flickered again, changing as if she were deliberately trying to quash them so I couldn’t get a proper hold of them. ‘Tomorrow’s the village’s autumn fayre, and you know what that means.’

Her eyes twinkled and I couldn’t help grinning. ‘You’re serious? They still do it?’ I asked.

‘Of course. The fastest person to eat twenty-five Cornish pasties wins five hundred quid and a year’s supply from Chunkies!’ It had been one of our favourite things as kids, laughing as adults gorged themselves on a tonne of pasties.

Maddie went on, ‘We’ll need to leave first thing in the morning so we can get back in time. After the competition, I’m running a stall. A load of mermaids said they’d be coming by to get their tattoos renewed.’

‘You’re tattooing mermaids now?’ I asked with genuine interest. When I’d been living in Witchlight Cove, Maddie had been learning how her tattoos worked. There had been a couple of werewolves like Ezra that she’d practised on, giving them special tattoos to stop the transformation being forced on them at full moon, but mermaids? That sounded like serious business expansion. I wondered what the mermaids wanted? Stopping their fins from forming?

‘Yeah,’she said proudly and beamed at me. ‘I tattoo anyone who needs it these days.’

‘Vampires?’ I asked. Tattoos to protect them against the sun was big business, but she’d always been too nervous to approach them.

‘Yep. I’ve got more than a dozen on the books – high-profile ones, too.’

‘Wow.’ I sat down next to her and realised how desperate I was to learn everything I had missed in our decade apart. Absurd as it sounds, I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a conversation that lit me up inside. Sure, I had conversations with my students or the people I was doing PI jobs for, but they weren’t like this. They weren’t with Maddie.

Having her with me again made me wonder how I’d ever found the strength to leave her, but I hadn’t seen it that way back then. I’d been hurting so badly; all I’d known was that I had to get away, away from everything including Mads.

‘Hot chocolate?’ I asked tentatively.

‘Sure.’

I busied myself in the kitchen before bustling out with two hot chocolates. I didn’t have squirty cream or marshmallows so it felt like a paltry offering but it would have to do. I handed her a mug and she wrapped bothhands around it like she needed the warmth. Concern niggled at my insides. Something was wrong with Maddie; I was sure of it.

We sipped our drinks and made stilted small talk until Maddie decided to address the elephant in the room. ‘You never rang,’ she said finally. ‘You never came home. I knew you needed space, Bea, but I didn’t expect a whole decade of it.’ The hurt radiating out from her cut me to my core.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said weakly.

‘That all you got?’ she spat, her tone harsh.

I swallowed, hard. I’d been working through some of my issues with a psychologist – removing anything magical from the narrative, of course – and I had a better grip on some of my behaviour now than I’d had at the time.

I swilled the cold remains of my drink and stared into their murky depths – anything not to meet her accusing eyes. ‘I moved to London, I did my PI training, and if I didn’t talk to you, Yanni or Ezra, I could imagine that Mum and Dad were still living in Witchlight Cove. Dad puttering around in his library, Mum fussing over the garden.’

My voice broke. ‘If I spoke to any of you, I’d have had to face up to them being gone. It was denial at its best – or worst. For the longest time, I couldn’t deal with the fact that they were dead, that they were truly gone. Andafter I finally did, avoiding Witchlight and all of you, was ingrained in me too deeply. I thought you were better off without me.’

‘Better off without you?’ she shot back, straightening her spine in outrage. ‘I’m an outcast to the covens, Bea. I’m alone. I have Ezra and Nana and that’s it.Youwere my person, and then … you weren’t.’

‘I’m still your person,’ I whispered, my eyes filling with tears.

‘Are you? Because I need you to come to Witchlight. But if you’re going to cut me off again afterwards, I need to know now for my own self-preservation.’

‘I won’t,’ I promised fiercely, ‘I swear I won’t. When I return to London, I’ll keep in touch.’

She slumped. ‘But you will return to London?’

‘My life is here.’

She gestured at my shitty apartment. ‘There’s nothing of you here, Bea!’ she said fiercely. ‘Some books and some ferns. Where are the photos? Where are the friends? Where is the evidence you’velivedthis last decade?’

I wish she’d pull her punches, because I was battered and sore. ‘You’re right, but I…’ I shook my head. The thought of going back to Witchlight scared me, and that sense of fear pissed me right off.

I’d spent the last decade teaching women to face their fears, and now it was time for me to face mine. ‘I’ll come with you to Witchlight, okay? Baby steps. That has to be enough for now.’

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