Chapter 10 A Sweet Surprise
A Sweet Surprise
Sage awoke to a rattling tea tray being placed on her bedside table accompanied by a cheery sing-song of “Wakey wakey!” Maggie was gliding between the curtains, throwing them open and fluttering a feather duster over the rail as she went.
Sage shielded her bleary eyes from the light that poured in and said something muffled and grumpy into the top of her duvet.
“What was that, Treasure?”
“I said, ‘Five more minutes.’ ”
“Certainly! Although it’s not like you to slumber so late, Sage. There’s breakfast waiting for you. I can pop it in the warmer, should you desire.”
“Late? What time is it?” Sage said, her sleepy brain slowly registering Maggie’s confusion. The housekeeper’s pale figure rippled in the daylight by the doorframe. Daylight? Already?
“A quarter past nine, madam. I did presume you’d enjoyed rather a tipple too many at the public house with your brother and sister. And that’s to say naught of the dreadful influence exerted by our dear Mr. Everald.”
“Nine?” Sage threw her legs out of bed and rushed to grab her dressing gown to throw over her pyjamas but stumbled.
She clutched at her head. A hangover? It certainly felt like one, but she could hardly blame that when she’d only had coffee at the pub.
Maybe her blood sugar was low. Maybe she was dehydrated.
Maybe she’d been reading without the right glasses again.
Or maybe it was the after-effects of whatever it was that she’d invoked last night at the museum.
Sage could recall only one other time in her life when she’d felt quite so under the weather: when her magic had first come in at age fifteen.
The after-effects of her first sloppy but delightful experiments with magic back then had been exhausting, completely draining.
Of course, what happened to her parents so soon afterwards had meant that annoying headaches and magical exhaustion were quickly the least of her problems when she found…
When she discovered them. Her current headache was suddenly compounded by grim memories.
Laurel’s quiet, confused mumbling. The weight of her own legs and the strangle of her school tie.
A shove of her brother to stay in the living room, to turn up the television.
Sage shook away the blurry memories. There wasn’t time to dwell on them.
A bolt of magic crackled at her fingertips to win back her attention with an important, taunting message: It had not gone anywhere. It had not been banished.
Sage’s heart sank. She had really dared to think that she had found the answer.
“Can you grab me some painkillers, please, Maggs? And thank you for breakfast, but I’m late. I’ll have to wrap up some toast and be on my way.”
“As you wish.” Maggie gave Sage a polite, confused nod and closed the door behind her. “Oh!” She returned, slinking her ghostly form straight back through the closed door. “And you have a guest waiting in the living room, madam— Sage.”
Sage sighed. “When did he get here?”
“A quarter of an hour ago.”
Sage nodded reluctantly. She normally beat Casimir to the museum by at least a couple of hours. He lived on the outskirts of Port Sylvan, while Sage’s cottage was only a few rows from the town centre.
She dressed quickly, fumbling with her favourite pair of wide-leg brown trousers and shoving a cream floppy-collared blouse into the waistband.
She twirled her hair up into a claw clip, or as closely as her curls would permit, and pinched her freckled cheeks to try to coax some colour into them.
She certainly looked a little peaky. An alarming vitamin D deficiency was one of the perils of spending the majority of her life in libraries, to be sure, but this was pale even for her.
She studiously ignored the faint tremor that was lingering in her hands.
Last night, she had hastily shut the book away in the archive, burying it underneath a bundle of old town deeds before they left.
Her intrigue to explore it further felt bright, but it burned side by side with the visceral dread that the vague incantation had left behind.
Casimir hadn’t noticed any kind of disturbance, red-wine-snoring his way through the whole affair.
She had yet to decide whether she should tell him that she had even managed to open the book or leave the whole thing alone until October was well and truly over.
At least then her own magic would be less unpredictable, the coven less likely to seek her out, and she would be safe to investigate thoroughly and accurately without threats of their intervention.
Then again, the answers had to be within it.
Her curiosity was desperate to uncover more, the book that potentially held the truth around Lilara’s banished magic.
But the possibility that she had inadvertently spoken a proper spell last night and invited magic into her life so boldly for the first time in almost fifteen years filled Sage with a dreadful, queasy anxiety.
October was specifically not to involve any major magic; there was no greater risk of attracting the coven’s attention.
If she had accidentally triggered some kind of unknown spell, a fairly impactful one, judging by its display, then no good could come of it.
It was everything she had worked so determinedly to avoid. If the coven were to—
“Specs? What exactly are you doing up there? Don’t make me come and fireman-lift you out of that bed, because I won’t be gentle about it.” Casimir’s shout from the bottom of the stairs pulled Sage back to the present.
She tugged down the sleeves of her shirt, pushed up her glasses and headed downstairs. He would want answers, but she wasn’t sure which version to give him just yet.
Sage was greeted by a familiar sight between the dark wooden banisters.
Casimir lolled back, eyes closed, in the striped armchair by the fireside, feet up on the crimson velvet footstool while Mal was curled up on his lap.
Sage was struck by a ripple of calmness at the sight of her best friend and familiar together.
She had long ago come to terms with the fact that Cas and Mal were the soulmates and she was the third wheel, but when everything else felt strange and unnerving, that sight alone was enough to ease her.
“About time too,” Casimir called, golden wavy curls sprawled over the top of the armchair. “I was worried about you, recent events in mind. Thought you may appreciate a handsome protector for your walk to work.”
“Let me know if you see one,” Sage said, rolling her eyes. “I…Well, I overslept, believe it or not.” She noted the confusion in her own voice.
Casimir opened one eye. “Not like you, Specs. Feeling okay?”
Sage only replied with a sort of “hmm.” She gathered up her satchel from the foot of the stairs and reached for a few dusty volumes that were stacked on the telephone table.
Meridian’s Principia Arcanica: Certainty of the Hidden Arts would be a good start to refresh the basics.
Essays on the Lore of Incantation, certainly.
A Believer’s Guide to Impossible Things…
All potentially useful in understanding what exactly had happened last night.
Maggie floated through from the kitchen with two neat bundles of toast wrapped in embroidered handkerchiefs. “Butter for you, Sage. Marmalade for you, Mr. Everald. Eat it before it goes cold. I do believe that hot toast can cure all ailments.”
“Are you saying I look worse for wear, Maggs?” Casimir winked at her.
Maggie, despite being a translucent shade of desaturated grey, blushed furiously. “Never, Mr. Everald.”
“Whatever you’re baking back there smells fantastic, Maggs. What is that? Sticky toffee? Count me in for later?” Casimir asked, rising to his feet and taking an immediate chomp of toast.
“Yes, that smells extraordinary,” Sage said as she slipped on a brown velvet blazer, tugging wisps of hair out from underneath the collar. “New recipe?”
“I cannot take credit, madam,” Maggie said, offering out Sage’s boots and Casimir’s pea coat. “I’d planned a rhubarb crumble for this evening, but I could easily switch if you’d prefer. Although I’ll need you to fetch a few things from the vendor on your journey home.”
“No, no, a crumble sounds wonderful,” Sage said distractedly, her attention caught, “but if it’s not coming from your oven, what exactly is that lovely smell?”
“I assumed that one of the neighbours was enjoying a spot of baking,” Maggie said.
Sage and Casimir exchanged a look. “First thing in the morning?”
Mal was intrigued too, perched on the arm of the couch where Casimir had rudely interrupted his sleep by standing up.
His whiskers twitched at the sweet, spiced scent that filled the air, following its trail from the direction of the window.
Butter and treacle and caramel now clung to every breath that each of them took, undeniably delicious but a little overwhelming, to say the least. Sage and Casimir bolted out of the front door in unison.
Sage tripped over her own boots as she jolted down the front steps. “What in all the blue blazes…?”
She spun back around to face the house and stumbled backwards over the kerb. Her home looked…different.
The end-of-terrace cottage was normally a rich red brick, with a criss-cross pattern of darker bricks beneath the top windows.
There was a steeply pitched roof and navy-blue gables, the front door a bright cornflower blue.
There was even a small heart-shaped windowpane above it.
She had fallen in love with it immediately all those years ago—even before she had found an unexpected friend and confidante in its permanent ghostly resident.
“Specs? What have you done to the place?” Casimir asked, hands on his hips.
“Me? I haven’t done anything!”
He stepped towards the front of the house and stretched up to chip off a little corner of the porch’s slate roof into his hand. He held it up to the morning sun and then promptly tossed it into his mouth.
Sage gawped. “Is that…?”
“Gingerbread.” He finished the sentence for her, scratching at the back of his neck in confusion.
The walls of the house were covered in a perfectly baked, richly scented gingerbread, the aroma of cinnamon and brown sugar making Sage’s mouth water despite her turmoil.
The patterned tiles had changed to thick loops of what appeared to be icing, although surely couldn’t be.
Her blue drainpipes looked alarmingly like some kind of sticky liquorice, and each of the paned windows glinted in the morning sunlight with a tint of stained glass, as though made of boiled sweets.
“Why the bloody hell is my house covered in gingerbread?” Sage said, truly the most obscure question that she ever remembered asking. She threw her hands up, incredulous. “Who did this?”
“Don’t panic, Specs. It’s good stuff, really high quality.” Casimir snapped off another fragment, this time from the flower box in front of the living-room window. “Chewy yet firm.”
“Stop chomping on my house, you arse. What is going on?”
“I wouldn’t worry. It’s just the latest ludicrous idea for the Halloween celebrations, isn’t it? You know what this town is like with its endless fêtes and decorations and spectacularly overdone seasonal theatrics. Doubtless another stroke of genius from the Celebration Committee.”
Sage crossed her arms with a huff. He was absolutely right; the whole ridiculous sight smacked of the Celebration Committee of Port Sylvan.
They took their seasonal décor very seriously.
Thanks to her role at the museum, Sage had been forced to get involved with one too many jolly harvest festivals over the years and more unnecessary town meetings at the Lyceum than she could possibly remember.
“Would have been nice of them to ask, although they never do.”
Casimir shrugged. “Shirley could have whipped this up in an afternoon, no problem, and the committee are forever taking matters into their own hands without asking.” Shirley, who worked at the local bakery, Wheat and Walnut, was frankly a force to be reckoned with when it came to any kind of sugary construction.
“You have to hand it to her: It’s impressive. ”
“Why haven’t they bothered with anyone else’s place?” Sage scowled.
“They’re probably planning to cover the whole town eventually.
I suppose they thought it was a nice surprise, to celebrate all of our work on the new exhibition.
The tourists will go wild for it; that’ll work in our favour.
You’ll be thrilled to see them all crowding around your place each day, won’t you? ”
Sage gave a disgruntled “hmm.” After all their years of living there, both of them had come to accept that general frivolity and organized fun was part of the deal in Port Sylvan.
Casimir faltered, a new thought occurring to him. “Unless, of course, you think it might be—”
“No.”
Could it be her magic up to mischief again? Surely not. It was bigger. Much bigger. Worryingly bigger than her regular, relatively small-scale mishaps. A light sheen of sweat beaded across the back of her neck at the thought of what she might have accidentally conjured the previous night.
But no, Sage would never, ever allow it. Absolutely not. There was no magic here. Last night had been a simple accident, and she looked forward to the moment that it could be explained away. Earthquakes were uncommon in Northern England, but they certainly weren’t impossible…
Casimir leaned against the gingerbread wall with his arms folded and one eyebrow cocked.
He knew full well that she had more to say, but Sage only returned his gaze with an extra defiant one.
A sensation in her chest tapped disapprovingly at her; it was rare that they ever kept anything from each other.
She should really tell him precisely what had happened.
But while she wrestled with the reasoning, he gave a bracing exhale and relaxed.
Casimir dusted the crumbs from his hands after one final mouthful of gingerbread snapped from the doorframe.
“Come on, we’re appallingly late. And it’s official opening day!
Can’t imagine there’s a rabid queue, all foaming at the mouth to get inside the place, but still.
Tell you what, I’ll even treat you to a healing coffee on the way.
” He threw an arm over her shoulder to start guiding her towards the centre of town.
Sage glanced back over her shoulder for one last look at the disconcerting sight of her altered home and spotted Mal sitting in the window of the living room, paused mid-grooming his right ear with his white boots.
She gave a double take. Sage could have sworn the cat had just shot a wink in her direction.