Page 54 of Secrets of the Eternal Flame

‘Do you think she could have stolen the grimoire in Gwen’s shop? Do you think it’s my grandmother?’

‘I don’t know. After what happened that day when she caused so much destruction I know the village wards were tightened, but you’d have to ask Yanni for the details. The changes in the wards were specifically aimed at keeping her out.’

‘Yanni let me believe Dahlia died that day.’

‘She disappeared – you always knew that.’

‘No, Yanni said her body wasn’t found.’

‘Well, that was true. Yanni thought you deserved to live without fearing your grandmother’s return, but she never lied to you – you just drew your own conclusions. I’d like to hear the story of what happened from you one day, butI know it will be incredibly hard to talk about. Even so, perhaps it would help to know what methods she used to better prepare for a return visit.’

It was the day I never wanted to talk about, the day I’d tried to push from my mind, but perhaps if I told Ernie the full details he would see something that could help us catch Dahlia before she could use the cup and the grimoire to become the worst version of herself. The current version was scary enough.

I tapped the seat next to me and Eva jumped up, not only to listen but also to comfort me as well. Lord knows, I needed it.

‘I was seventeen and a half, and I was feeling a bit down. My magic still hadn’t manifested, and time was running out – everyone knows you get your full powers by the time you’re eighteen, and I still couldn’t do much more than the feeblest of wards.’

I drew in a long breath. ‘Mum and Dad tried to cheer me up and we went out for pizza. Mum had made me some colour-changing hair potions that I’d liked when I was little. They even invited Maddie over and tried to have a kitchen disco with spelled lighting and everything.’ I closed my eyes. ‘It was lovely, but I was upset and I wanted to be treated as an adult. It felt like they were clinging to my childhood, treating me like a kid.’

A tear slipped down my cheek. My parents had tried so hard to lift my spirits. ‘Soon,’ Mum had promised, as she’d held my face in her hands. ‘Soon everything will change. Your powers will come.’ Her voice had been socertain.At the time it had made me rage – but now?

My God, had they been planning to lift the binding?

Fraser took my hand in his, a wordless comfort that I was so grateful for.

‘Maddie had stayed with me for a couple of nights already and finally my parents’ molly-coddling got too much and I snapped. I said I was going to stay at Yanni’s with Maddie because I needed some space.’ I could still see the way Mum had tried to keep her smile in place as if my words hadn’t hurt her. That damned smile haunted me.

‘We were halfway to Maddie’s place when she approached us,’ I continued.

‘Your grandmother?’ Ernie asked.

‘Yes. Obviously I didn’t recognise her. I know you said we look alike, but she was dark haired to my fiery red, and she wasold.She was walking along the high street and she asked us if we knew where to find the Stonehaven Cottage. She said she was a friend of Dad’s. I asked how she knew him and she smiled and said, “We used to do witchy stuff together.” And she winked at me.

‘I knew she was being deliberately vague, but people were often secretive about why they wanted to talk to my parents. I told Maddie I’d show her the way and she could go on to Yanni’s. I planned to walk the woman to the end of our lane and point to the right cottage.

‘“I didn’t realise Greg had a little girl,” she said and that comment annoyed me even more, given how much I hated being thought of as little. I grunted a reply, but then she changed the subject and asked the quickest way to leave town. I told her there were a couple of different paths through the woods but you couldn’t get cars down them. Unless you were on a mountain bike, the main road was quicker.

‘“The road it is, then,” she said. Then she flicked her wrist, the doors of a car nearby flew open and before I realised what was happening, I was thrown inside.’

I wanted to stop the story there, wished the story ended there.

‘The seatbelts bound me in place all by themselves. I tried to get out but I couldn’t move.’

Fraser gave a low moan of distress and put an arm around me. I wasn’t sure if he was comforting me or himself,

‘You don’t have to go on if you don’t want to,’ Ernie said gently.

‘I do,’ I said. ‘I need to get it off my chest and you deserve to hear what happened to your son. Closure for us both.’ I hoped it was true.

I took a deep breath and continued. ‘Dahlia was so smiley, so calm. I remember her saying how she’d always wanted a daughter, but granddaughters were supposed to be even better. She said she was going to show me things I could never have imagined, all the things my father would have shown me if he’d had any backbone.’

I swallowed hard, aware of the tears trickling down my cheeks, unable to wipe them away.

‘I thought she was going to take me away but then the car hit the barrier. The ward on it sensed her ill intent, and anyway teenagers can’t go through it without parental consent. That safety measure had been in place for over a decade – Ezra, Maddie and I used to mess around with it. We thought it was outdated and stupid, especially when we wereseventeen.We would walk into the barrier just so we’d rebound off. But this time, it didn’t simply push us back, it set off the alarms too. The sky lit up and a wailing siren rang out.

‘My grandmother didn’t stop, though. She dragged me out of the wrecked car, bound my hands with purple vines and started shooting charms at the air, determined to break the ward. She was still firing them when the villagersstarted arriving – Yanni, Chief Inspector Magill, Mrs D, Mr Bentley, Mrs Siracuse, witches, shifters, vampires. Anyone who was close by. And my parents came, too.’

The tears were coming thick and fast now and I could hardly breathe. Fraser bundled me into his arms, rocking me back and forth, his own distress painfully evident, and I realised that he could feel my agony down our bond, feel my guilt and regret. I still wished that alarm hadn’t sounded and that the barrier had failed because then I would have been the only one who had died that night.

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