Chapter 23
Sasha Kayode hasn’t slept all night. She hasn’t dared.
She knew what dreams would pursue her – no way were Isobel and Eliza going to let her have a good night’s rest before she came into court and destroyed their lives.
She’s drunk so many energy drinks to keep herself awake that her hands are shaking, her right eyelid twitching a frenetic beat.
She knows what they’ll have done last night.
They’ll have taken a cow’s tongue, split it down the middle and put a photograph of her inside.
Sprinkled it with death oil (a quick glimpse at her own bottle, nestled on her altar).
Then they’ll have sewn it up with black thread. Her words rendered worthless.
But Sasha was ready for that. At five o’clock this morning she drank the dandelion tea, said the incantations. Pissed out all their venom. Her tongue is free.
‘You nearly ready?’
At least her mum’s coming into court with her. She’ll sit at the front and smile, unlike everyone else.
‘I don’t want to go.’
‘I know you don’t, sweetheart. It’ll be over soon, though.’
She rubs the last of the moisturiser into her face, checks that the twists of her hair are secure. Black top, black skirt, solemn as an executioner.
‘Is your back feeling all right?’
‘It’s fine.’ This isn’t true, but there’s no point worrying her mum with it. She doesn’t want to take any painkillers, not this morning. She needs to feel it all, everything that they’ve done to her – they’ve made her do. It’s the only way she’ll bring herself to get through this.
Slowly she pushes herself to her feet, picks up her cane. Progress, the doctor said, looking at the silver-headed griffin on top of the fine oak stick, a legacy from her grandfather. Better than crutches. Sasha wishes she could agree.
She paces downstairs, drinks a coffee that her mum has left out in the kitchen for her.
The caffeine perks her up, but she knows as soon as this is done she’ll collapse.
Not yet. Her mum is still upstairs getting ready, so Sasha has a minute to go to the fridge and take out what she needs – a sprig of rosemary, a clove of garlic.
She tucks them into her pocket along with the blue glass evil-eye charm she brought back from Greece the year before.
With the mirrors she’s visualising placed all around her, she’ll be protected from anything those girls can throw at her.
‘Let’s go.’
They sit next to each other in the taxi on the way to the court, holding hands.
Sasha looks at their interwoven fingers, brown against white.
She remembers her mum’s face, the first thing she saw when she came round in hospital, the desperate hope and sadness combined, the cry that sprang out from her mum.
She’s alive. She knows me. Sasha is not the only victim here.
She’s all her mum has left after her dad died when she was a baby.
‘Are you going to be OK?’
Sasha nods. She’s got this.
Into the court building. Sasha keeps her head down in case she sees anyone she knows who’s stickybeaking at the trial, but she gets through to the witness room undisturbed.
She knows what to expect – Victim Support has talked her through it, shown her a video of a High Court so she knows where everyone will be sitting, what it’ll be like.
The prosecution said she could ask for a screen if she was too scared to look at Isobel and Eliza, but she’s not that much of a wet wipe.
Besides, a screen wouldn’t stop them if they wanted to get at her. But Sasha’s prepared for that. She clasps her protections close to her.
When she first went to St Jude’s it was a long few weeks waiting for someone to befriend her.
Sure, going to boarding school was her choice – she’d been pushing for it for years, really, her mum only agreeing once she was well into her teens.
But everyone was in cliques already, factions formed through the years.
Sasha wasn’t sure where she could fit in.
Not sporty enough, not clever enough either.
She looked at the girls in her dormitory, so cool, so together, and quailed at the idea of trying to get them to talk to her.
It didn’t help that the two coolest – Isobel and Eliza – were best friends, inseparable since they both joined the school years ago.
At last they started to bond. It started with The Craft.
Sasha was up for watching it that October night long ago when Eliza asked her to join them.
She’d have said yes to anything, flattered to be asked.
The other new girl, Christian, she was there too, but she didn’t say anything. She never really did.
They cleared everyone else out of the common room and watched it in silence.
Even the popcorn went uneaten. Sasha knew perfectly well even then that aspects of the film were deeply problematic.
The way that Rochelle’s character was so underdeveloped, the lack of backstory given to the only Black character.
But at least she was there. Sasha could see herself on screen, felt the moment of empowerment as the curse Rochelle cast started to come true. All those fucking blondes . . .
Isobel drove it. Every step of the way. But Eliza and Sasha were right behind her, at least for the first couple of weeks.
They did their research, read the books they were able to find in the library, the Tumblr posts written by magick practitioners (Sasha always has the ‘K’ – this isn’t some stage rubbish.
They have other uses for rabbits than pulling them out of hats).
Blood sisters, the drops their fingers squeezed mixed into one, however reluctant Eliza was becoming.
It might have started with The Craft, but it was a couple of weeks later that it began to go dark.
Isobel and Christian were keen to bring the coven together that Saturday night, Eliza less so.
She’d seemed to be getting bored with it all, ready to move on to a new interest. She was a lot less keen on being friends with Sasha and Christian, had thrown a massive strop when Isobel went off shopping with Christian that afternoon to an occult shop they’d located in the city centre.
But Sasha knew she was all in, the world of it making more sense to her than any reality she’d previously known.
Under protest, Eliza joined them, giving in to the demand that all four of them were needed for the ritual to be fully effective.
Again, they cleared the common room. Some of the younger girls objected but Isobel snarled at them and they ran off, shrill giggles fading into the night.
Sasha went round and shut all the curtains, sealing out the night.
That’s when they turned off the lights, lit some candles they pulled out of the shopping bag from their earlier expedition.
With an air of excitement, Isobel took a box out and brandished it at the others in triumph.
Look what Christian bought me, she said, and set up a wooden Ouija board – Sasha remembers it as clearly as if it were yesterday.
They put their fingers together on the planchette, Eliza’s face full of disgust at the proximity she was forced to keep with Christian.
With Sasha too, for all she knew. The candle flames flickered, Sasha’s heartbeat so loud she was sure the others would hear it, laugh at her for her fear.
But when she looked round, they were all afraid.
Even Eliza, though she tried to sneer. Isobel the least scared though, her voice clear and loud as she invited in the spirits.
The planchette was still, a piece of plastic, nothing more, then suddenly off it went, a force stronger than anything Sasha had ever felt. Stuttering, jerking.
EDIEDIECHRISTDIEDIEDIE. The pull on their fingers so strong it was impossible to resist. The candles went out.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Sasha said.
‘I don’t know,’ Isobel said. White as a sheet.
‘Did you do that?’ Eliza says.
Christian just sobbed.
Christ. Christian. On whom was that death wished?