Witch - By Fiona Horne Page 0,23

since the reading.

Later, Bryce and I walked out of the Purple Raven together. It had been a long and intense afternoon.

‘That was mind-blowing, I can’t believe you did that,’ Bryce said.

I felt the familiar heart flutters. To distract myself I fingered the piece of amethyst in my pocket that Brenda had given me to take home and practise with.

‘It was no big deal, really,’ I said, trying to brush off his compliment.

‘Vania it is. Your powers are amazing,’ he said.

I took a deep breath – it was so hard to concentrate around him. ‘You know what’s weird?’ I said. ‘It only started happening when you walked into the cafe. I’d been sitting there for ages with Brenda and nothing had happened. Maybe you had something to do with it.’ I allowed myself to look directly at him and his clear green gaze bore into mine.

‘Maybe that why I feel we should be together,’ he murmured.

‘What?’ I was shaking. Hope soared in my chest. He felt the connection, too?

‘Magic,’ he said. ‘We’re better at it together than by ourselves. And that’s good to know; we should keep practising. It’s why we’re friends after all, isn’t it?’

My breath caught in my throat and I misstepped – he’d said the F-word again.

Recovering, I turned and raced off down the street. ‘Gotta go!’ I called out over my shoulder. ‘See you at school tomorrow.’

I didn’t wait to hear his reply.

The twins were waiting for me at the bus stop the next morning.

‘Vania, are you upset with Bryce?’ Alyssa asked as soon as I walked over to them.

‘No, not at all. Why are you asking?’

I kept my eyes averted. I often felt that when the twins looked at me in the eyes they were reading my mind, and I wanted to keep my thoughts to myself right now. We walked into school.

‘Bryce called us and asked if you were,’ Amelia said. ‘He’s worried he said something to offend you at the cafe yesterday.’

‘We heard about the feather. It’s so cool you could do that!’ Alyssa said.

‘I was starting to wonder if it was all in my imagination,’ I said. I was still trying to get my head around what had happened. Rationally I couldn’t believe it. But then again, in the last week I had seen a pen move by itself across a table, and apparently my eyes had changed colour that night we’d formed our coven. And now, the most unbelievable thing of all – Bryce had called the twins to ask about me. What guy did that? It seemed like anything was possible now, and I was just going to have to get used to crazy stuff happening.

‘Vania, you know, I think you’re too hard on Bryce. I mean, he broke up with Cassidy and started hanging out with us – you could give him some credit,’ Amelia said in her serious voice.

Even though the twins were identical in almost every way, Amelia could be bossy sometimes, and I resented her tone.

‘Just because you’re psychic doesn’t mean you know everything,’ I snapped at her – and immediately regretted it when I saw the hurt look on her face.

‘I’m sorry, Amelia,’ I said. ‘I’m not upset with Bryce, just confused. I like him, but I know we can never be anything more than friends. He’s from a different world to me – he’s from a prominent family so his parents are old-money rich, he’s hot, he’s popular . . .’

‘Well, he ditched all his old friends for us, so he must like you a lot.’ Alyssa smiled.

‘I don’t think he did that just because of me – I think he was fed up with their crap, just like we are.’

Alyssa nodded. ‘And that’s why we love him – and here he comes now.’ She did an about-turn and waved at Bryce, who was at the end of the corridor behind her. There was no way she could have seen him. Once again I was in awe of their psychic prowess.

‘Be nice,’ Amelia whispered to me as Bryce walked up to us.

‘Hi, Amelia. Alyssa.’ He nodded to them and then, looking at me, he added a little more cautiously, ‘Vania.’

‘Bryce.’

We all stood there in silence for an awkward moment, and I realised I was going to have to bridge this gap before it turned into an uncrossable chasm.

‘I’m sorry I raced off like that yesterday. I was stressing that my parents would ground me if I came in too late. You know I had to