Chapter 40
FORTY
Morana’s mouth gaped open. How did she know? The woman’s grey eyes looked iridescent in the sunlight, drawing her in so much that Morana nodded and took her up to her apartment without saying another word.
‘Excuse me,’ Morana gushed at the woman and tried to walk around her, but she reached out and clasped her arm.
‘I’ve been searching for you.’
Morana looked at her. ‘Why? I don’t know you.’
‘You have something that belongs to me and I would like it back.’
‘I don’t think so, I’ve never seen you before, lady.’
‘Clara. Please don’t address me as lady, it’s very uncouth.’
‘Well then, Clara, I still don’t know you.’
Clara tilted her head. ‘Let’s go inside and take this off the street. I don’t want to discuss your body count in public.’
Once they were inside the apartment, Morana switched on every light as it was so dark inside. Clara wrinkled her nose, and her gaze fell to the coffee table where The Book of Black Magic sat as if it belonged there. Morana noticed how the woman’s eyes narrowed as she stared at it.
‘It’s not my fault, my friend just died and I didn’t know that was going to happen. Why is it happening?’
Clara sat down in the seat nearest to the book, and reaching out a hand, she trailed her fingers across the spine then snapped her hand back as tiny bolts of fire shot out of it.
‘My, you are powerful,’ she almost purred to the book, then she looked up at Morana. ‘How did you get this?’
‘A woman brought it to the shop where I work. She said it had my name in it, and I was the rightful owner.’
Clara nodded. ‘Name?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask her.’
‘Did she say where she procured the book?’
Morana shook her head.
‘No matter, it’s here now. That is a not a book for a beginner witch, though I am assuming you have figured that out by now.’
‘I know.’
‘Neither are you the rightful owner. Just because it has your name inside it doesn’t mean that it belongs to you or that you should keep it.
Tell me, have you used it? No, I know that you have, but how many times?
How many spells have you worked in blind stupidity?
I know of one serious accident and one death, but are there more? ’
Morana didn’t like her attitude, it was worse than her own, but there was something about her that made her compelled to answer. ‘Two spells that I had to finish myself as they were incomplete.’
‘That’s very interesting and for what purpose?’
The sigh Morana released was deep and fraught with distress. ‘To stop a neighbour coveting what is mine and a money spell.’
‘How did that first one work out for you?’
‘She got hit by a truck not long after.’
Clara, who was sitting straight, managed to sit up even straighter. ‘Where? Did she die?’
‘Outside on the front street and no, at least I don’t think she did, but she was seriously injured. She lay bleeding out on the street, just like my friend.’ Morana sobbed, then sucked in a deep breath to stop herself.
‘Your friend, did you work the same spell on her?’
‘No, I loved her. I was sitting on my own when I heard her thoughts. I was awful to her earlier today and she wished I’d get hit by a bus, so I turned it around and said to myself I wish she would be hit by a bus. Seconds later she was.’
‘Is she dead?’
Morana nodded.
‘This is a mess, but we can put a stop to it.’
‘You can, how? Can you bring Addi back?’
‘No, that is not something that can be done except for through that book on your table, but trust me, you would not want to do that. Resurrection spells are the work of highly trained necromancers and even then, they are questionable and extremely unreliable. It is likely that if you worked the spell, if she did come back, you would be summoning an empty vessel that resembled your friend. Her soul would not be inside of her, and that empty vessel would be there for the taking; it is only the demons and the restless that would want to inhabit her. You would not be bringing your friend back; it would be an evil entity that would make the problems you have now seem minor in comparison and they are incredibly hard to remove.’
‘What am I going to do?’
‘You are going to gift that book to me, give it to me and I will remove it. Then you will cleanse this space and yourself, using a mixture of white sage, Palo Santo, rosemary and lavender; you will burn a huge pot until the entire apartment is filled with the smoke, open the windows and let all that negative energy blow away. It may take a couple of days for you to start to feel lighter, but the darkness will lift and your life will go back to whatever it was before.’
‘That simple?’
Clara nodded.
‘Take the book, you can have it, I don’t want it in here. Can I not go back in time and reset my life? I’ll put up with Mrs Danby making my life a misery, I don’t care about being broke and I will give anything to not see Addi crushed to death under the wheels of that bus.’
Clara reached out and picked up the book that was sparking frantically. She took off her scarf and wrapped it around the book then dropped it into her purse.
‘That is the stuff of movies, it’s make-believe, if we could reset our lives so easily we would.
I am afraid you are going to have to live with the consequences of your meddling in spells and black magic that you had no concept of.
That is on you. I will put this book where it belongs, where it can hurt no other. ’
Clara stood up, reached out her hand to Morana and shook hers. ‘We have a deal; the book is mine?’
Morana nodded. ‘Yes, it’s yours.’
Clara smiled at her, and Morana’s skin crawled. She should be relieved to have that awful book out of her apartment, but she wasn’t because she didn’t trust the woman staring back at her one little bit.