Witch - By Fiona Horne Page 0,30

revenge, to be honest. The other day he was really mean to me, and I got so mad – I wanted to get him back, so I did a spell that Dean helped me find on the internet.’

‘You found a spell on the internet?’ Amelia said. ‘That’s stupid – there are all sorts of freaks out there, and you can’t just trust anything someone puts online.’

‘I did warn her – but then I helped her find it,’ Dean said in a guilty tone.

‘I want to break it now. I’m glad to know it worked, but I don’t want Matt bugging me anymore. It was a mistake. I’m sorry,’ I said sincerely. I looked at them all, but my eyes settled the longest on Bryce.

‘Let’s go and ask Brenda what to do to sort this out,’ he said decisively and strode off up the street towards the Purple Raven.

‘But Bryce, don’t you have to ask Brenda about your ghost first?’ I called out after him.

‘Don’t worry about me – I have my magic under control,’ he retorted over his shoulder.

I looked at the twins and they shrugged.

Brenda was waiting at the door of the cafe as we came down the alley. She was wearing a voluminous black caftan and a solemn expression.

‘This is a serious matter,’ she said, giving me a cold look.

‘What?’ I gulped. Was she psychic, too?

‘I sensed a shift in energies last night during my full-moon meditation,’ she began. She beckoned us with a long, bejewelled finger and then continuing in an odd singsong tone: ‘A wayward spell shall not go unnoticed. Come inside, all of you.’

The furniture inside the cafe had been pushed to the sides of the room. The rugs had been rolled back. There was a star painted on the floor. Four of the five points were the directions of the compass – north (painted white), south (red), east (green) and west (blue). A symbol that looked like a figure-eight lying on its side was painted in gold at the top of the fifth point. A large circle of black candles surrounded the star, and in the centre of it all, somewhat incongruously, there was a yellow bucket, filled with white powder.

I felt a bit unnerved. My newly magical world was becoming increasingly surreal. The others seemed a bit spooked, too; we all stood there in silence until eventually Bryce plucked up the courage to speak. ‘Brenda, we want to help Vania reverse her spell,’ he said.

‘A spell can only be broken by the person who cast it.’ Brenda looked at me as she spoke. ‘And just as the spell had to be cast with intention, it must be broken with intention. So, tell me yourself, Vania, do you wish to break your wayward spell?’

‘Yes, I do,’ I said earnestly.

‘Why?’ Brenda asked.

I felt hot and pressured, as all eyes were on me.

Why did I want to break it? Just to appease my friends and follow the ‘rules’ of spell-casting? When Brenda had given me my first lesson she’d said that you could not cast a spell on another without their consent. It was the number one spell-casting rule. But weren’t rules made to be broken? Matt had spat on me – surely that was a good enough reason for revenge. Then again, revenge hadn’t been that sweet. It had led to a disgusting and embarrassing first kiss. I had always hoped that my first kiss would be romantic and special. Even worse, I hadn’t made Bryce jealous, I had just made him disappointed in me. That sucked worse than Matt spitting on me.

‘I want to reverse my spell because I don’t want a creep like Matt to be in love with me,’ I said. I knew it was a lame reason, but I didn’t want to blab everything I was thinking and make more of a fool of myself than I already had.

‘I hope you’ve learned a valuable lesson here, Vania,’ Brenda said sternly. ‘Enchanted love rarely brings rewards, because magic is powered by the energy you put into it.

You were angry and unhappy when you cast the spell on Matt, so even though it was a love spell, it just brought more reasons to be angry and unhappy. So be careful what you wish for and, more importantly, how you are feeling when you wish for it.’

‘So how do we reverse this dodgy spell?’ Dean asked enthusiastically. After his initial hesitation when we’d started our club, he was now really embracing his inner shaman.

‘I’ve