Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
Morana stared after the woman who had a high ponytail of the most beautiful platinum hair she’d ever seen.
Amazingly, it didn’t look bleached; it was completely natural.
She tried to figure out how old she was, late twenties maybe.
However old it wasn’t old enough to be that colour already with not one bit of patchiness that most grey-haired women have.
The bird had declined to follow this Dora, and it was still hopping around on the lowest branch of the tree.
She ignored it for a little while then turned to it.
‘I can’t believe you told tales about me. What did you say to her?’
Hades ignored her and began to preen his feathers.
‘Why are you following me around?’
Still totally blanking her.
She thought about Addison and saw her sitting in the back room of a shop talking to a beautiful older woman.
Addison’s hand was all burned and they were sipping tea.
Was this a vision or actually happening?
She couldn’t figure it out and then she heard Addison’s thought as clear as if she was standing beside her, had leaned down and whispered it inside her ear.
Morana can step in front of a bus; I never want to see her again.
Those words caused a sharp pain inside of her chest. They were thought with so much venom, and it shocked her that Addison would ever think like that about her.
She felt a blackness inside her chest rising, making it so hard to breathe, her lungs felt as if they were being suffocated.
How dare she think like that about her? It was Addison who could go step in front of a bus.
Morana didn’t want to see her ever again either.
Morana stood up, it was time to go home.
She hadn’t spent a single dollar of her little windfall and didn’t want too either.
Her argument with Addison had taken away the desire to do anything other than go home and read the book of spells some more.
The crow watched her slip under the fence and walk along the gravel paths that led back out onto Essex Street, and this time he didn’t follow her.
There was a loud pop, followed by screeching tyres coming from the junction of Essex and North where she was heading.
Screams filled the air and she hurried to see what had happened.
A bus was skewed across the middle of the road, one tyre was in shreds, rubber all over – but it was the screaming that she couldn’t stand.
People were screaming. She saw the woman from her vision running out of a pink shop a little further up towards the front of the bus, and then Morana was running towards it too.
Mangled across the front of the bus, crushed beneath one of its huge tyres was Addison.
Her eyes glazed wide open in shock, a pool of blood spreading around her faded pink hair that Morana had so cruelly commented on a couple of hours ago.
Morana fell to her knees, not realising she was screaming her friend’s name over and over until a gentle hand touched her shoulder. She looked up to see the silver-haired woman from her vision moments ago, clearly distressed but wanting to help her.
Morana shook her off, stood up and took off running.
She didn’t need her help, she didn’t need anyone’s help.
She had just caused her only friend in the world to die a horrible death, just like she had caused Mrs Danby’s terrible accident.
She had to get rid of that book. It was turning her into a wicked woman.
‘Wait, we don’t know who she is, what her surname is?
’ The silver-haired woman called after her but still Morana ignored her and ran because she was scared and she didn’t know what else to do.
The police would surely arrest her this time, they wouldn’t not.
In the space of two days, she had hurt one person and killed her best friend in cold blood, both run over.
Because of her. As she reached Charter Street Cemetery, she threw up into the long grass poking out between the black iron fencing that bordered the graves, much to the disgust of a tour group that were listening to tales about the haunted Pickman house.
Morana dry heaved again and again, the group of tourists moving away from her.
Straightening up she carried on running until she reached the corner of her street and there she collided with a tall, thin woman with cropped grey hair and matching eyes of cold hard steel.
The woman’s slender, bony fingers gripped her shoulders tightly.
‘I think we need to talk.’
‘I don’t know you.’
‘No, you don’t and I don’t know you, but yet you have come to my attention because of the consequences of your actions, so here we are.’
Morana shook her head. ‘Did the crazy woman send you? I have her money, but I don’t want the book either. You have to take it back.’
The woman tilted her head. ‘Interesting, you best take me to wherever it is you are going in such haste and tell me exactly what crazy woman and what book you are referring to.’
This woman was cold, she was nothing like the kindly woman who had minutes ago tried to help her up and for a moment she wished she had let her, sure that she could have helped her the way she had helped Addison before the bus hit her. Her eyes began to blur.
‘I don’t want to do this out in public. Let’s go inside before you make a scene. I trust you live around here?’
The woman’s voice was clipped, cold with a hardness to it that far outweighed the darkness Morana had been feeling inside of herself. She nodded, speechless, and led her to her apartment.