was partly witchcraft and partly just that I knew her so well – and I knew she was lying.
“I liked her,” I said just so she knew I knew what she thought.
“I’m going to bed,” I added. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
Jamie slapped Esme’s bum gently.
“Come on then, Mrs B-to-be,” he said. Childishly, I made sick faces behind his back. Esme grimaced at me.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she said to Jamie. She waited until he’d gone down the hall to their bedroom, then she took my arm.
“I’m in,” she whispered. “ I’ll come with you to Star’s flat. Jamie’s playing rugby tomorrow anyway.”
I was pretty certain she was only saying it because DI Baxter had told us not to do anything, but I didn’t care.
“We’ll go tomorrow,” I said.
I love Esme. I do. But she’s always been a bit of a goody-goody. When we were younger, she followed me round like a lost lamb and I must admit, I wasn’t always very nice to her. In fact, in the spirit of full disclosure, I will admit I’m still not always that nice to her. She just, you know, rubs me up the wrong way. But, I can’t lie, I was amazed by how she handled all that stuff last year. And, I was really pleased – surprised but pleased – by how quickly she agreed to come with me to Star’s flat, even if she’d only agreed to go because she knew it would annoy Jamie. It didn’t stop her going on about how bloody scared she was though, did it?
“Harry,” she whispered as we walked down Star’s road. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”
The same thought had crossed my mind, but I wasn’t going to tell Ez that.
“I liked Star,” I said to Esme. “She was nice. I feel like I owe it to her to dig a little bit deeper.”
Esme pulled her coat round herself a bit tighter.
“It’s funny, isn’t it, that someone can be here one minute then gone the next?” she said. “I wonder if she had a feeling when she woke up yesterday morning?”
“What, that it would be her last day on earth?” I said. “I don’t expect so.”
“Do you think we’d know?” Esme looked serious.
“Because we’re witches you mean? I’m not sure.” I looked at the map on my phone and guided Esme down a side street. “It’s possible. We do know stuff, I suppose.”
Esme gave a dry laugh.
“You know stuff,” she said. “I’m oblivious most of the time.”
“Probably the best way to be,” I said. But I didn’t really mean it. I wouldn’t swap my witchcraft for anything.
I looked at the numbers on the houses around us. “This is it.”
Star lived in a maisonette, on the outskirts of the city. Her street was neat and quiet, with identical houses evenly spaced. It looked like a model town.
“Come on,” I said. I led the way up the stairs, my heels echoing along the road. Esme followed. I tried the front door. It was locked, of course. But we witches are nothing if not resourceful. I waved my hand over the handle and heard the lock click.
“After you,” I said, standing aside to let Ez past. She gave me a look of contempt and walked into the hall.
“Bloody hell,” she gasped. Magic hung heavily in the air. The flat was alive with it like a gas leak in a sealed building. Now we’d opened the door, the oppressive atmosphere was lightening, but it was still really unpleasant.
“Oh Star,” I murmured as I walked along the hall, my skin prickling with enchantments. “What have you been up to?”
Esme was in the living room. I found her looking at a photo.
“Remind me which one is Star,” she said. I peered over her shoulder and pointed. Star had been in her early forties – about five or six years older than me. She had obviously been very pretty as a youngster and she was still working her good looks – almost. Her hair was, perhaps, a bit too blonde, her skirt a bit too short, but it wasn’t a bad package. In the photo she was drinking champagne with two other smiling women. She looked young and happy and I felt a new wave of guilt.
“What was she like?” Esme said, looking at the photo. “Was she married?”
“She had been,” I said. “Her husband cheated on her. They’d been together since school.”
“Like me and Jamie,” Esme said, conveniently forgetting the ten years when they hadn’t spoken.
“Except Jamie wouldn’t cheat on you,” I said. I had a lot of time for Jamie who was fiercely loyal and had been impressively unfazed when Esme had revealed the truth about our family’s odd behaviour.
“I wouldn’t cheat on him either,” said Esme. “Never.”
I wandered round the flat, finding out more about Star than I’d ever bothered to when she was alive. She read crime novels, watched box sets of US dramas – Mad Men lay open on her DVD shelf – and had good taste in interior decoration. I couldn’t see any evidence of her ex-husband, and I wondered if she’d been lonely.
In her bedroom we found a pile of witchcraft books. Esme picked up the top one and began leafing through it.
“I thought you said she wasn’t a witch,” she said. I rolled my eyes.
“She wasn’t.” I picked up a guide to incantations and flapped through it without interest. “What witch would read a book like this?”
Esme made a face.
“Well, there is a lot of magic in here and what with this and the books it looks like she was trying to learn,” she pointed out. “Can you do that?”
I grinned at her.
“I taught you, didn’t I?” I said. Esme and I were born witches, of course. But while I embraced my witchiness, worked hard at it, embraced it, developed it, even made it my career, she shunned it. It was always one of the things that annoyed me most about Esme over the years. Then, last year, when the family business was in trouble and my mum was ill, she finally realised it was time to get to grips with it. And who was there to help her out? To mould her natural ability and teach her everything she needed to know? Her loving cousin, that’s who (that’s me, by the way). She’s pretty good actually – she should use magic more often. She could do with a bit more sparkle in her life if you ask me.
Now she shot me a barbed look.
“I meant can normal people learn?” she said. “People who aren’t witches.”
“She had a go,” I said, sitting on the bed. “But there’s only so much you can do without natural talent. And it’s always dangerous for anyone to dabble in things they don’t understand.”
Ez nodded and I was grateful that she didn’t mention that out of the two of us, I was the one who’d dabbled dangerously in the past. She wasn’t so bad, really.
I picked up another book and a sheaf of papers fell out. Esme bent down and picked them up.
“Photos,” she said. “Oh god.”
She spread them out on the bed. They were mostly pictures of Star, selfies, obviously taken with her phone, and printed out onto A4 paper. And they were pretty shocking. One was a photo of her hand, covered in blood, with jagged pieces of blue glass sticking out of her palm. In another, she had a nasty bruise and a cut on her browbone. In another she had bruised knees, in another burns on her arm, and in yet another a neck collar.
“Shit,” Esme said.