Iris put a dish of water on the floor and some lettuce leaves. ‘You sleep here,’ Iris said. ‘And you can earn your keep by frightening the snails.’
Pride appeased – the tortoise wasn’t a companion or a familiar, it was a snail repellant – Iris retired upstairs. She brushed her teeth, avoiding her own eyes in the mirror.
She had to admit that she might have crossed a line that evening. You had to do the job that was in front of you, but you didn’t meddle. Sometimes, her gift meant that she had no choice, but tonight she’d acted from some other impulse. She’d wanted revenge and it hadn’t even mattered that they were the wrong people. James Farrier was long dead. His son didn’t deserve to suffer for his sins. Especially since he already bore the burden of being raised by the man.
And she’d given them all a truth draught without their knowledge. Iris would never claim to be entirely on the side of the angels, but she had a firm moral code. You could dose people or de-hex them if it was clearly in their best interests, but feeding them spiked wine to extract a confession as piffling and petty as tonight’s was possibly overstepping her mark. That was the problem with witching. You were alone. You had to draw your own lines, make your own marks. And, after a while, it could get more and more difficult to tell if you were drawing them in the right places.
Iris looked at the china dishes she’d inherited from her mother. She no longer saw the jewellery as treasure, the way she had when she’d been a girl, and there was no one left to suffer the consequences if she got rid of them. She could tip the whole lot into the bin. Although that felt wasteful. Wasn’t she supposed to pass it all on, the way her mother had passed it on to her? Of course, she didn’t have a daughter. The closest thing she had lived on the other side of the world and held on to a ball of hate that Iris could neither comprehend nor forgive.
The silver birch outside her bedroom scraped its branches on the window, as if adding its voice to the ones in her mind. ‘All right, all right,’ Iris snapped. She dressed in her cotton night gown and got into bed.
The branch screeched across the window one last time and the bedclothes felt cold and slightly sticky. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d washed them and the mere thought of stripping the bed made her back scream.
It was official. She had lost control over her environment and she was too weak to wrestle it back. Her bones hurt and she was a meddling old woman. She couldn’t do it all alone.
Not for ever.
Iris opened her journal and started a new page. She began writing, ‘My dearest Gwen …’
If you loved The Garden of Magic turn the page for an exclusive extract from
The Language of Spells
the bestselling novel from Sarah Painter
Prologue
The voices in the living room were getting louder. Suddenly the man’s voice wasn’t just loud, it was shouting. A big, frightening sound that sent Gwen out from under her quilt and into her sister’s bed. Ruby was awake. Her eyes were shining in the light that came in under the door. ‘It’ll be over soon,’ Ruby whispered.
‘Who is it?’ Gloria had at least two boyfriends at any time and an endless stream of people came to have their cards read. Gwen felt Ruby shrug.
Gloria’s voice had risen. She sounded really angry. Gwen shrank down until the duvet covered most of her face.
There was a burst of noise as the shouting people moved into the hallway. ‘Tell me a story,’ Ruby said.
Gwen stretched her legs. She shut the angry voices out and thought for a moment. ‘Once upon a time, there were two sisters, Rose Red and Snow White, and they were walking through a thick forest –’
‘Not that one,’ Ruby said. ‘One with a prince. A really handsome prince. With loads of money.’
The front door slammed. ‘My story does have a prince.’ Annoyance broke through Gwen’s fear. Ruby was always complaining.
‘It has a bear,’ Ruby said.
‘That turns into a prince.’
The bedroom door opened. ‘Girls?’
Gloria was framed in the doorway, her face hidden in shadow. ‘You have to get up.’
‘I’m tired,’ Ruby said.
‘I know, I’m sorry.’ Gloria didn’t sound sorry. She never did. ‘We’re moving on. Get your things together. Don’t leave anything –’
‘Because we don’t look back,’ Gwen and Ruby joined in. ‘We know.’
Chapter One
Gwen Harper had been brought up in the sure knowledge that everything in life came as a pair. Every coin had two sides, every person had an angel and a devil lurking inside, and every living thing was busy dying. Gwen couldn’t imagine a good side to returning to Pendleford but, since she had no choice in the matter, she hoped that Gloria had been right about all that ‘light and dark’ business. She crested the hill and Pendleford spread out beneath her. The town was caught in a basin of land as if cupped by giant green hands, and the yellow stonework glowed softly in the winter sunshine. The dark river cutting through the centre was like a worm in an apple.
Gwen passed a sign that had ‘Pendleford: Historic Market Town’ in smart black lettering and then a smaller yellow one that said ‘Britain in Bloom’. Slung in front of this was a collection of broken-looking dolls, their long hair tied together in a big knot. Gwen slowed down to take a closer look at the creepy faces with their dead eyes and pink Cupid’s bow mouths.
She shuddered, trying not to think about broken things, dead things, or the icy water of
