I Put A Spell On You. Kerry Barrett
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the weekend with her best friend because of it. The burns on her arm were from the accident, too. Air bags burn apparently. Her husband’s not been around for ages as far as I know.”
I looked at the photo and shook my head.
“She said it was an accident,” I said. “Why would she take photos if she believed that?”
I picked up the book again.
“There’s some more,” I said, pulling them out. There were two more. Both of the outside of the spa. One showed a broken window with a board nailed over it. I remembered that happening a couple of months before. Just kids Xander, my deputy manager, had said at the time. The other, more shockingly, showed the front door of the spa scrawled with graffiti reading WITCH.
I felt sick.
“Look,” I said to Esme. She put her hand over her mouth in horror.
“Who would do that?” she said. “That’s awful. Did you know about that?”
“Didn’t have a clue,” I said. “Not about the graffiti anyway. “Star must have scrubbed it off before I saw it. She was protecting me, Ez. Do you think that’s why she died?”
Esme looked terrified.
“No,” she said firmly. “That can’t possibly be it. She was ill, Harry. She had a weak heart. Her bathroom cabinet’s full of medicine. No one would have hurt her deliberately.”
I gathered up the print-outs.
“But what about all these injuries?” I said, waving them in her face. “And Star wasn’t a witch – this abuse wasn’t aimed at her – what if she got hurt trying to stop whoever it was hurting me?”
“Right, well there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Esme said, all business-like. “Let’s go home and think about what we should do from here.”
She was right. I got up off the bed, and Esme did the same. After a moment’s consideration, I put the printed photos into my bag, and we left, putting everything back the way we’d found it with a quick wiggle of our fingers.
As we walked down the stairs a voice called out.
“Who are you?” A woman stood at the bottom of the steps, arms folded in front of her.
“Star’s not here,” she said.
I nudged Esme out of the way and held my hand out to the woman.
“I’m Harmony,” I said, shaking her hand and keeping hold of it. “I was Star’s boss – and friend.” My eyes filled with tears. They were genuine, but behind me, Esme harrumphed. The neighbour tried to take her hand away, and I held on.
“Were you in Star’s house?” she said. “I heard the door go.”
Gently, I squeezed a pressure point on her palm.
“We weren’t in her house,” I said. Around her the air began to shimmer. “We just came to see if we could help.”
“To help,” the neighbour repeated. “You weren’t in her house.”
Smiling at her, I let go of her hand and pulled Esme past her.
“Bye then!” I called. The neighbour raised a hand to wave, a confused look on her face.
“Well done, Obi Wan,” said Esme as we rushed along the road towards home. “But that was a bit too close for comfort.”
I ignored her. I was too busy wondering what we should do next. I thought perhaps I should phone DI Baxter. It would be tricky though, explaining what had happened without explaining exactly what had happened. I wondered if we could tell her the whole truth. She’d seemed very nice, but that didn’t mean she’d understand when I told her what we were. I really needed to meet her again to check her out.
We talked about everything on the way home, except Star. I asked Esme all about how Jamie had proposed – in the kitchen while she was washing up, apparently. “How romantic,” I said, dryly. I would never understand why she washed up when she could simply do the dishes with a wave of her hand. But she claimed she liked it.
She talked a bit about how she wanted to get married back home in the Highlands, and I offered some suggestions about dresses she might suit. But we didn’t mention Star, or the horrible photos.
Wearily we made our way through the heavy door at the bottom of our tenement block and up the worn-away stone steps. As we reached our flat, a tall, lean figure uncurled himself from where he’d been sitting leaning against our door.
“Xander!” I called. I flung my arms around him and leaned against his chest. He kissed the top of my head.
“I got your message,” he said in his soft Dublin accent. “I couldn’t let you deal with all this by yourself.”
Beside me, Esme stood up a bit straighter. I wasn’t surprised. Xander was gorgeous, and very charming. He had quite a staggering effect on most women. He even had me wrapped round his little finger.
I hadn’t known Xander that long, but he’d made himself indispensible to me at a time when my business plans had been about to derail.
I’d launched my website alone, but when I’d come up with the idea of the spa, my girlfriend Natalie had been right behind me. I’d met her when I was studying business in the States and she was a high-flyer for a management consultancy. When I’d decided the time was right to expand, she’d offered to invest. I was thrilled. Not surprisingly, it was quite hard to find investors in a witchcraft-led business. You can’t just go to the bank or approach a venture capitalist and tell them you’re selling spells. Anyway, Nat seemed the perfect business partner and for a while things were really exciting. Then she went home to Connecticut for a few weeks – and she never came back. Suddenly I was single, heartbroken, and my career had taken a battering too.
I wallowed in self-pity for a while, then I brushed myself off and set about raising the money I needed to buy the surprisingly spacious mews house that would become the spa by selling my flat. Once my flat was sold, the house was signed and sealed, and the builders had started work, I knew I had to make some contacts, so I forced myself to a networking event.
I saw Xander as soon as I walked into the West End hotel where the event was being held. He wandered over to me in the casual way I now knew so well, handed me a glass of Buck’s Fizz and said: “Thank god you’re here.”
“Have we met?” I said in surprise.
“We have now,” he said with a grin. “You look a lot more fun than the rest of these stuffed shirts.”
I glanced round me at the many middle-aged men chatting and laughing in a self-congratulatory way and drained my glass.
“Let’s go?” I said. So we escaped to a little deli, treated ourselves to brunch, and chatted for hours. He didn’t so much as try to flirt with me, which was refreshing if a little unusual. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet but I know I’m what you might call good-looking. I’ve got long dark hair and good skin, and I really love clothes so I make an effort with my appearance. And though I’m gay and have no interest in men in that way, they seem to like me. Well, they like the way I look at least – I can’t imagine I win them over with my sweet personality and happy demeanour, because frankly that’s not me at all. Anyway, Xander seemed oblivious to my charms, which I loved. And he was very easy to talk to. I told him all about my plans for the spa and he revealed he had a head for business himself. He worked for a big international hotel chain.
“I’m bored,” he confided, tearing a croissant in half. “I thought I’d enjoy working a hotel but I’ve had enough of people telling me what to do. And I like Edinburgh. I don’t want to have to move again whenever they decide it’s time.”
I sipped at my latte