Fionnuala Evans, Divination, 56 Peter’s Street, Kilbeg.
Evans. The shopkeeper’s last name is Evans. Harriet’s sister? No, that can’t be. She’s told me her sister’s name before. It was something witchy. What was it? Willow?
Fionnuala Evans. Evans.
Maybe not a sister. A cousin? A coincidence?
What was her sister’s damn name? She mentioned it again when we had that conversation about sensitives. Yes. I was standing right here, beside the crystals. What was it? And where is she?
My hands start to sweat, soaking the receipt in my hands. Finally, I put the box on the counter and lay the delivery receipt on top of it. That’s when everything clicks.
F. EVANS. F. EVANS.
I line it up in my head like an algebra equation.
H. EVANS.
Heaven. The shopkeeper called her sister Heaven.
All this time, I’ve assumed that the shopkeeper was keeping her own name a secret because of some kind of business-like privacy. Her way of saying: Hey, I like you, kid, but don’t get too close. I remember the last thing she said to me when we were stuck in that psychic vision together, right after she tried to cast me out of her shop.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Clearly, Heaven, or Harriet, had done this and lost her life in the process.
“Maeve.”
She’s back. The library of freshly cut herbs, I realize, is also a hidden door. Fionnuala is standing next to it as it hangs ajar, and a dark stairwell is just about visible behind it. She must live upstairs. She might even own the whole building.
“I signed for your package,” I say, my voice quavering. “Fionnuala.”
She sits down at the stool perched behind the till and looks bleakly at the box.
“Thank you,” she says limply. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days. I’m beginning to suspect she went upstairs for a quick power nap, or possibly to take some kind of medication.
“Why…?” I don’t know where to begin. Why anything, at this point? I stop. Recalibrate.
“You knew I summoned the Housekeeper. From the day we came in.”
“Asking about that silly school project. Yes.”
There’s so much pain, so much exhaustion in her voice. I can’t even summon the good sense to be angry with her.
“What’s wrong with you?” I finally ask in frustration.
She laughs a little then. Not a cruel laugh, by any means. More the laugh a heart surgeon might give if you asked her what, exactly, she got up to all day.
“I’ve got nothing left, Maeve. I’m out.”
“Out of what?”
“Of everything. Of magic. Of power. Of energy. Of my mind. I’ve spent the last three weeks using everything I have to protect you, and I’ve got nothing left. As I said before …”
She drifts a little, as if she’s about to fall asleep right there on the stool.
“… I’m just a kitchen witch. Not a sensitive. Not a sorceress. Just a garden-variety middle-aged Wiccan with a little stolen magic trying to help a girl who can’t help herself.”
“What do you mean? What … what have you been doing?”
“Haven’t you noticed that the nightmares have begged off? That you seem to be able to slip out of dangerous situations a little too easily? Jaysus, the sweet arrogance of youth. What I wouldn’t do to get it back.”
I think for a moment. The nightmares … they have stopped. There was the one I shared with Roe, where we both saw the shoe floating down the Beg, but I hadn’t had any nightmares about the Housekeeper by myself in ages. Even the shoe dream wasn’t a nightmare as such. It was a warning, a clue, a poster on the great cosmic bulletin board. I had assumed that I had just gotten stronger by myself, but no, Fionnuala has been shielding me.
“You’ve been casting protection spells on me?”
She nods. “Every night. I only know when I see you whether they’ve worked or not.”
I think for a moment, carefully sifting through the last few weeks. “There was a riot at the Cypress. People were hurt. Badly hurt. But I walked out of there without even giving the police a statement.”
A brief smile, a slight roll of her eyes. “Well, isn’t that nice?”
“Why? Why were you doing this? You barely even know me.”
“Because, Maeve, I’m old enough to know when history is repeating itself. Every day of my life I have to live with what happened to Heaven. Do you know what that’s like? To have failed your own sister, and then to see another sensitive come waltzing in thirty years later? It rattles you, pet. It rattles you.”
“And … you knew about the Housekeeper? Straight away?”
“I had my suspicions. Especially when the weather started to turn, and all this craziness with those fundamentalists started kicking off. You’re right, by the way. That boy, that blond boy…”
“Aaron.”
“Aaron. Aryan. Jaysus. It’s like his parents knew he was going to be Hitler Youth.”
I laugh a little, despite everything. She smiles back, pleased to have found the energy to make a small joke.
“He smelled the weakness. The imbalance. Like a shark smells blood in the water. Children of Brigid was a tiny, hateful little speck, based way up the country. They had about five followers. And suddenly, this boy and his American money shows up here, just as the weather turns. I knew something was happening. And I didn’t want another teenage girl to be at the centre of it.”
“When I first met Aaron,” I say, puzzling out the memory, “he would barely interact with me. Even when I was at his gross meeting, playing his emotional blackmail games … it was like I smelled of bad milk.”
Roe. Roe was the one he had wanted. And I thought that my strength and self-confidence were the reasons he wouldn’t come close. God, she’s right. I really am that arrogant.
“He could smell the protection spell. Or sense it, anyway. If he knows what he is, you can bet your life he knows what you are. He’s probably been waiting for weeks for whatever is protecting you to run out
