“But why me? How?”
She shrugs. “Why brown eyes? Why birthmarks? Accident of fate, I suppose.”
“And are they … we – are we powerful?”
The incense stick to her right burns down, the long string of ash falling to the wooden slat beneath it. She takes a new one from a cardboard box, lighting it with a match.
“Mmm, do you smell that?” she says, closing her eyes. “Night-blooming jasmine.”
“It’s very nice,” I reply, still reeling from this new information. A sensitive. I am a sensitive. I ponder it for a few seconds, inhaling the thick sweet scent that I will for ever associate with this moment.
“In answer to your question, they can become extremely powerful. Not all great sensitives are witches, but all great witches are sensitives. And you, Maeve Chambers –” she gazes at me, her bright blonde hair doing nothing to hide her steely grey eyes – “you could be a very good witch.”
She turns to a selection of pale wooden drawers behind the till, opening and closing them to reveal that they are filled with freshly cut herbs. She smiles when she sees my surprised face.
“From the garden,” she laughs. “You should try growing your own herbs. So satisfying to make it all yourself.”
“Thanks,” I murmur, watching her move through the drawers with a tiny silver pail. “Maybe I’ll try that.”
She shovels little bits of ingredients into a leather pouch, moving between her fresh herbs and pots of spices that she pinches from. She quickly ties it closed with a drawstring.
“There we are, pet,” she says, placing it on the counter. “Dandelion seeds, rosemary, aniseed and a pinch of chilli for intensity. Help you focus your energy. Hang it over your bed for a full menstrual cycle.”
I must be blushing, because she smiles at me. “Oh, sweetheart, you mustn’t be embarrassed. Our menses is a big part of our casting energy, you know.”
I stuff it into my pocket. “Thanks,” I say, still red. “Any tips on how I can be a good sensitive?”
“The only advice for being a good sensitive is not to be a bad one.”
“What do you mean?”
“A bad sensitive,” she says, “can see where people are at their weakest, and they exploit them for it. They crowbar their way into people’s hearts and minds, put all kinds of ideas in there.”
I immediately think of Aaron. And how from the moment I first met him, I knew he could see the holes in people. Were we alike in some way? Both sensitives?
Roe himself had said it, on the bus home from that CoB meeting: “you guys are two sides of the same coin”.
“Who’s your sister?” I ask. “You said she’s a sensitive, too?”
“Was,” she says.
I nod. I don’t ask any follow-up questions. This woman might feel like my friend, but she is, after all, just trying to run a business.
“I’m sorry. About your sister.”
“That will be three euro fifty, if you don’t mind, pet.”
The air in the room has suddenly shifted, and I feel as though I should probably go.
I pay her, thank her and turn to leave. Then, a brainwave. “Do you remember the snow back in 1990?”
A silence. The shopkeeper starts cutting some sprigs of herbs, as though she hasn’t heard me.
“The snow,” I venture again. “The only other time there was snow in Kilbeg, and no other part of the country.”
More cutting. She opens a drawer and distils plant shards into them. She’s trying to hide her face from me, but I can see her lips moving. “Out, out, out.”
She’s trying to cast me out of the shop. A wave of profound stubbornness comes over me. I clutch the silken bracelet made out of my dressing-gown cord, and start whispering, too.
“Help me, help me, help me.
You told me what I am. Now help me.”
She lifts her eyes, grey and muted, and fixes her stare on me. The shopkeeper doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move a muscle. She slowly closes her eyes, and as she does, mine start to close, too.
An image starts to form in my head. One of her, by the river, standing next to me and watching a milk crate float downstream.
“Not yet,” she says. “Not yet.”
“When?”
“When I’m sure you won’t do something reckless with the information.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
She is in my head, in the same way that I can be in Roe’s or he can be in mine. The only difference is that she is in complete control. She doesn’t need the cards to form a gateway. She can do this at will.
Just as I’m sure she’s about to dismiss me, she says one last message. Sends it without even moving her lips.
One more tip for being a good sensitive, Maeve. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
And then all of a sudden, it’s over. We’re back in the shop, all four eyes open. The bell on the door rings, and a woman starts asking about essential oils.
“Goodbye, Maeve,” the shopkeeper says.
I go.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO WEAR TO THE GIG AT THE CYPRESS. All Roe said was that it was an LGBTQ all-ages thing, which means … what? I can’t wear the blue dress I wore to Fiona’s barbecue, it’s way too “meet the parents” for that. But I don’t have anything cool to wear, either. Being a sensitive has not, evidently, made me sensitive to dress codes.
I should be thankful that I’m even allowed to go. Parents, en masse, are still holding the reins very tightly. Mum and Dad weren’t going to let me go to the gig at first, but Joanne stuck up for me. She said it was important that I support the charity. I was amazed at how hard she went for it.
“I’ll drop her off and pick her up. You guys know what’s happening in the world right now,” she said. “We need all the allies we can get.”
I go through Joanne’s wardrobe,
