Witch - By Fiona Horne Page 0,32

. safe. The bats’ wings were gone and the screeching sounds were replaced by a hum, like bees, far away – it was soothing, and the sound drew me to it until I opened my eyes and saw that I was back in the room, in the centre of the circle, covered in salt.

I shook my head and the salt flew off me like dandruff. Looking around, I tried to make out the faces of my coven and Brenda behind the glow from the candles. They came into view slowly, their faces glistening in the candlelight and their eyes closed. Their hands were stretched towards the circle, towards me, and the buzz was coming from them as they hummed in harmony.

My legs had gone to sleep. I moved to release the pins and needles gathering in my calves. At the rustling of my clothes, Brenda’s seeing eye shot open (her other had never closed) and she smiled and clapped her hands once, sharply. Everyone’s hands dropped and eyes opened.

‘And so you’re back,’ Brenda said, sounding pleased. ‘That didn’t take as long as I’d thought it might.’

‘How long did it take?’ I asked. Dean looked at his wristwatch and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

‘How long?’ I asked impatiently.

‘An hour and fifteen minutes,’ he said.

‘We were standing here all that time?’ Amelia and Alyssa said.

‘No wonder my feet are numb,’ said Bryce, shifting from one foot to the other.

‘Oh, you’re all babies,’ exclaimed Brenda. ‘Trust me, that was a quick reversal. They can take hours. You did very well, Vania. You were fearless and acknowledged your mistake and were willing to learn from it. The energies flowed unimpeded, and you have successfully vanquished your spell. Matt is free and, just as importantly, so are you.’

‘Will Matt remember anything?’ I asked. Now that it was over I felt a tinge of regret that there would be no red roses waiting at school for me the next morning.

‘You’ll be invisible to him now. He won’t seek you out or insult you. And no one else will remember what happened, either.’

I nodded and stood up. I was shaky. Dean put out his hand to steady me.

‘And now it is time for feasting, to ground any excess magic,’ Brenda announced. She walked over to the counter and switched on the light.

Alyssa and Amelia started brushing salt off me. ‘Are you okay, Vania? How do you feel?’ they asked together.

‘It was intense and kind of scary,’ I admitted. ‘I felt like

I went to another place, and it was all weird energy and noise, so it was hard to know what was really going on. What was it like for you?’

‘Well, Brenda told us to start humming and hold our hands out,’ Alyssa said.

‘And to think about sending you white light for healing,’ finished Amelia.

‘I kept feeling like someone was tapping me on the shoulder,’ Bryce added, ‘but I didn’t want to turn around and break what we were doing for you.’

‘There were spirits in the room,’ Brenda said. ‘I felt them, too. You are definitely a ghost magnet, Bryce. I sensed that they wanted to help, but I’m glad you stayed focused. The depth of your caring was one of the strongest forces in our energy spiral.’

The depth of his caring? What did that mean exactly? I snuck a look at Bryce, but he’d sat down in a chair with his back to me.

Brenda placed a large plate of cookies on the counter, followed by a big jug of iced tea. We tucked into the food hungrily. I was glad to be eating – it made everything seem solid and normal again as we chatted about other things.

‘You know, I feel stupid for making us spend so much time on this stuff with Matt when we’ve got so many other things to focus on, like solving the woman of Queen’s Cross mystery,’ I said.

‘How are you all doing with that?’ Brenda looked around the table.

‘In our next class we’re going to hit the school library and see if we can find anything on the web,’ said Bryce.

‘You’re not tempted to contact her ghost?’ Brenda asked.

‘We’ve agreed not to use our magical powers just yet to solve this,’ Amelia said.

I sat there chewing and thinking about the other mystery I wanted to solve – Mr Barrow’s relentless persecution of me. But I definitely didn’t want to bring any more of my personal problems to the table tonight.

After a while I looked over to the star painted on the