The women in the Harper family often had a gift. Iris’s mother spat out discarded jewellery at the breakfast table, Gloria had an uncanny knack for fortune telling and her daughter Gwen found lost things. Iris, like a distant relative of mother’s, had The Giving. Not all of the time, but more often than was convenient, a horrible itching feeling would creep across her body and, with it, a terrible compulsion to give a certain thing to a certain person. When it started, at aged fourteen, Iris often had no idea what she was doing or why she was giving certain things, but her knowledge grew quickly. Soon she knew far more than was ladylike.
‘Giving things to people is nice,’ her mother had said, holding a white lacy handkerchief in front of her mouth. ‘I just wish you could be a little more discreet about it.’ She coughed and moved the handkerchief to her pocket, hiding whatever item had appeared.
The problem was, Iris didn’t give people conventional gifts; she gave them what they needed. If it had been a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates, perhaps all would be well. Instead, Iris was forced to take baby clothes to a woman who did not wish to be pregnant or a purging potion to someone who had been poisoned. Once, she had felt compelled to give an iron nail to a man, with absolutely no idea why. He was as mystified as she was. Three days later, he killed a man in a bar fight, jamming that iron nail into his attacker’s neck.
It was the day before her wedding and the winter solstice when Iris had woken with the pricking sensation that heralded a Giving. She knew that she had to take something warm to Roberta, her future sister-in-law. Already warm from the imagined embarrassment of arriving at the Farriers’ house with a blanket, wary of looking unbalanced and strange in front of her new family, Iris tramped through the snow and ice to deliver her gift. There was no possibility of not doing so, Iris already knew. Over the previous three years, she had tried every way to resist, to ignore her affliction, but the pricking and itching soon turned to burning pain, her mind clouded with the need to deliver the gift. That was something Iris had discovered; how need could very quickly overcome your senses, making a fog of reality and stopping your rational thought processes as surely as a sleeping draught.
When she’d arrived, she’d seen Roberta instantly, huddled on the snowy ground to the right of the front door. She was insensible from the cold and, even as Iris pulled the blanket around her shoulders and hugged the girl close, trying to impart her own warmth, she thought that she was too late, that Roberta had perished.
At that moment, her beloved had thrown open the door. He had not noticed that Iris was there, not immediately, and was already speaking. Iris heard him tell Roberta that he hoped she had learned her lesson and, in that instant, Iris grasped that he had locked her out of the house to punish her. Whatever slight Roberta had been guilty of (and Iris found it hard to imagine such a thing, Roberta was so quiet and cowed), she had been dealt a cruel punishment. The sort of punishment that could only be devised by a cold and disturbed mind.
Iris could never hear the word revelation without a twinge of pain. Her revelation that day had been swift as a knife. James Farrier, the man she loved and had promised to join with in matrimony, was a monster. Or, if not a monster yet, had all the makings of one. Iris had seen enough of human nature in her short life to know one thing: no matter how powerful your magic, you could not change the essential nature of a person.
She’d broken the engagement, horrifying her parents and, it seemed, the entire town. And then she’d buried herself in her calling. If she was a witch then she would be one straight from a storybook. Alone. Austere. Powerful. And, while she had no urge to grow warts or become ugly, she welcomed the notion that girlish prettiness was no longer of consequence. If it was no longer the most important thing about her – her passport to marriage and children – then it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t have it, or that it would decay over time.
She’d never truly intended to become mean, though. Or ‘harsh’, as the child, Rebecca, had said. Iris wiped at her eyes. Damn things were watering again.
Chapter Six
Bex was working on her CV when her phone buzzed. It was a text from Jon.
Film night?
She pressed the call button to speak to him. ‘Didn’t we do that on Tuesday?’
‘You think we’re in a rut?’ Bex could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I’m still taking your mind off your troubles.’
It was a bad idea, Bex knew, but her mouth overruled her brain. ‘What time?’
All the way to Jon’s house, Bex rationalised her bad decision. They were friends. More than that; Jon was her best friend. It wasn’t late, which meant his housemate, Ben, would be around and he could sit in-between them on the sofa. Make it seem less like a date.
Bex knew that spending the evening with Jon was flying in the face of operation ‘get over him and get a new life’, but she shoved that knowledge down and paused in front of a shop window to take her hair out of its ponytail and brush it over her shoulders. In defiance of the sensible voice which was telling her, quite insistently, that she ought to turn around and go home, Bex added a slick of tinted lip balm to her lips before knocking on Jon’s door.
‘I’ve been cooking,’ Jon
