Page 6 of Secrets of the Eternal Flame

‘There is no need to stand on ceremony. Call me Adele.’

‘Thank you, Adele. It’s abit ... complicated.’

‘Anything to do with the Flames usually is,’ she said wryly.

It was difficult to know where to start. I would have started with my grandmother’s appearance and how I had abandoned the Flame in my home, but now I had far more information about my power and my grandfather’s role in the story, and I felt that Adele needed to hear it all.

I started at the very beginning, a beginning that even I hadn’t known about. Maddie reached out and took my hand, silently offering her support. I sent her a tight smile.

‘My father was the son of a very powerful sorceress and a very powerful witch. I didn’t know anything about his heritage until after he died – and I only found the identity of his father very recently. But I suppose I learned about my grandmother when she tried to kidnap me. When I was seventeen, she came to Witchlight Cove.’

‘Do you know why she wished to take you?’ Adele asked gently. ‘Did she wish to make you an acolyte or steal your powers from you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘I always thought it was to train me to become a sorceress like she was, but I made that assumption because I always believed I was powerless.’

‘Powerless?’

‘Not completely. I grew up with very weak empathetic powers. I could sense some key emotions from magical people – more clearly if I loved them – but that was it. If the emotions were nuanced, I couldn’t untangle them. For the longest time, I thought I was a magical dud.’ I closed my eyes, experiencing again those teenage feelings of inadequacy that I’d battled but never truly overcome. Maddie squeezed my hand again.

I opened my eyes. ‘I recently discovered that my parents placed a bind on my magic when I was a child. I can only assume it was to protect me from my grandmother.’

Adele paled. ‘Iris and I spoke of binding once.’ She paused. ‘I thought our conversation was hypothetical, but evidently not. Let me look at you for a moment.’ Her eyes blazed, flickering with the light of the Eternal Flame as she drew on it to look at me magically.

She nodded. ‘Yes, I see... The bind is failing now – it is dying, curling around the edges and falling away. In the coming months you will gain full access to all of your natural-born powers.’ The light left her and she looked at me with human eyes. There was no accusation in the words that followed. ‘You caused the rockslide.’

I swallowed and nodded. Immediately my best friend, Guilt, wrapped her arms around me as she so often did. ‘Yes, I think so. I’m so sorry. I was desperate to see you and it was burning me. Ipushed it outwards… I didn’t know what would happen.’ I looked at her entreatingly, begging her to understand and accept that I would never do something like that on purpose. I wasn’t my grandmother.

‘I believe you, child. What you used was telekinesis,’ Adele told me calmly. ‘I can see it in your magic. You have a range of psychic magics, Beatrix. Telekinesis, telepathy, telempathy.’

Telempathy? That waswaymore than I could do. Telempathy wasn’t simply feeling other’s feelings, it was the ability to manipulate them – and it was often considered a darker power. No wonder my grandmother had wanted to get her evil hands on me. Would she have tried to siphon my powers from me?

There was no judgement in Adele’s soulful eyes. ‘You are a powerful witch, Beatrix Stonehaven, and it is essential that you harness your powers as soon as you can.’ Her tone was factual; I was grateful she didn’t say ‘lest you accidentally bring down whole mountain ranges’, but I heard it all the same.

‘Can you teach me?’ I asked desperately. I couldn’t –wouldn’t– be responsible for something so terrible happening again. I could have caused the deaths of scores of people.

Adeleshook her head. ‘Your powers are rare. I’m sorry, but they are not in my arsenal.’

‘Ernie,’ Maddie said firmly.

She was right. Ernie had said his emotions could be volatile – he’d once sent Fraser flying across Sonny’s café. When my emotions had been volatile I’d nearly caused a tsunami. I was beginning to understand a little of the restraint my grandfather had exerted; if he hadn’t, Fraser would have been blasted through the café wall.

Adele studied me. ‘It seems likely that your grandmother wanted to take your extraordinary powers for herself. Iris and I spoke of her occasionally. Dahlia Bleakman scared her.’

I winced. Mum had been right to be afraid; my grandmother had killed her. ‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling sick. ‘The thing is, I only found out I had powerful magic a few weeks ago. Before then the binding had me wrapped up tighter than a mummy.’

‘What changed?’

‘A selkie... He broke the bind on me.’

Adele’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘The selkie who is with you?’ I nodded. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Their magic is bound to their pelts.’

‘It is.’

‘And do you know what that means?’ she asked delicately.

‘It means I’m his one and only.’ I shook my head; the whole concept still seemed bizarre.

A smile flickered across Adele’s lips. ‘Exactly so. You are lucky to have a selkie mate. They are very loyal, very loving. He will protect you with all that he is.’

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