LITMIR.BIZ

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he was a human being he’d be over a hundred by now!” she would exclaim petulantly. “Roll up and see the world’s first immortal hamster!”

      So they began with Mr Podgery. Kate and Tansy took a clipping of Mr Podgery’s hair and funnelled it into a twist of paper. The flame from Kate’s candle burned green as they lit it, whispering words of power. Inside its little paper coffin the hair crackled. Mr Podgery was belting round his cage as though the very devil were at his heels.

      “I don’t like this, Kate. We shouldn’t have done it.”

      “No one forced you.” Kate’s eyes were shining. Each reflected a small green lick of flame.

      “I know. I feel sick. I know it’s stupid.”

      “It’s only a bit of fun,” said Kate when it was over.

      “I know.”

      Nevertheless, the next morning Mr Podgery was dead. His legs were sticking up like wishbones. They put him in a shoebox and buried him near the compost heap.

      For a good while afterwards neither of them mentioned the Cursing Candle. They pretended nothing had happened and at first pretending was easy. There were plenty of other things to claim their attention and exams were coming up. It was six weeks later that Kate came home livid because of the school play, where Carol Sage’s superior projection had robbed her of the chance to play Juliet opposite Frank Bonetti.

      “You know Mr Finlay’s always had a soft spot for Carol,” Tansy consoled her.

      “Never mind,” said Kate. She was dangling Carol’s choker from one finger. “Let’s see how she does without her voice.”

      “You wouldn’t!” said Tansy in alarm. She understood at once what that smile meant.

      Kate was already arranging the candle in the middle of the table. “Watch me.”

      “Be serious, Kate! Mr Podgery – remember …’

      “It’s all right, I only want to give her a head cold.”

      “Mr Podgery got more than that.”

      But Kate had already made a new funnel of paper and now she was slipping the bead choker into it. She lit the candle and flicked the wax away from the writing on its side. Finally she held the paper funnel over the flame.

      The choker would not easily burn and more than once Kate had to poke it down towards the candle with the end of a pencil. When it finally caught it was with a green-blue flame as the plastic melted and dripped into the wax. It smelt foul.

      All the time Kate was urging infections to take root in Carol Sage’s throat. “Come bronchitis, come halitosis!” Tansy tried to laugh – but Kate shot her an angry look. “This is serious, Tansy! Come tonsillitis, come you spirits of phlegm …”

      It was a good spell. Kate was a natural: it was easy to see why she thought she deserved that part. In the following days, she and Tansy examined Carol closely for signs of encroaching fever. However, Carol and her voice remained unharmed. The play was played, Carol and Frank found true love, and walked around in dreamy smirking bliss. Kate fumed for a while, then forgot about Carol and the Candle too. She had moved on.

      Tansy took up tapestry. She took up sketching. She discovered a talent for caricature and sold sketches to her friends. Planning a career for herself in Montmartre, she began to wear a floppy hat and occasionally a feather boa. Kate, by this time, was a mistress of the Tarot and in the evenings they had begun to collaborate on a special pack of their own. First, Tansy would draw a face, then on the reverse side Kate would inscribe her occult symbols. Friends, teachers and family would all be captured, and – although Kate and Tansy resolved to use their power exclusively for good – all would be brought under their sway. “It’s an experiment,” Kate would insist, “in sympathetic magic.”

      One evening in November, Tansy was working on a sketch of her father’s face. They were in Kate’s bedroom, which had become more Gothic than ever in recent months. Gloria had forbidden matt-black wallpaper, but had been unable to stem the invasion of horned skulls and astrological posters that had transformed the place into a witches’ den. Thirteen candles flickered across the scene.

      “What do you think?” said Tansy, pushing the card across the table. “Have I got him?”

      “Not bad, my friend, not bad. The way his bottom lip hangs down! I hope it’s not genetic.”

      When Kate left the room Tansy had taken Geoff’s card back again. She paused. Something was wrong with it. Turning it over, she realised what. She had already used the reverse side the previous evening, to draw Gloria. Silly – she must have taken it from the wrong pile. Gloria didn’t look much like Gloria any more, for that matter. The sketched face was darker than she’d thought, and rounder-mouthed. Kate had written under it: La Papesse. Briefly, she wondered whether to Tippex Gloria out. But she knew Kate would never stand for it. The hidden image would cause no end of psychic interference.

      With a sigh, she held the card to the nearest candle until it sprang into green flame. It was a moment before Tansy recognised the crimson traces of a cabalistic symbol painted on the candle’s side. She pulled the card out at once, with a yelp of fright. It was too late, of course. The card flapped and writhed in the flame’s heat like a living thing. It curled over on itself, forcing her to drop it on the table. The last thing Tansy saw, before the card lost itself in ashes, was the pair of sketches she had made twining into each other – her own father and Kate’s mother, their faces fracturing and merging in the heat.

      The next day Tansy came upon Frank Bonetti wandering across the school field. He was on his own. His skin had the blotchy complexion of one who has been crying, hard. At the back ofTansy’s mind there was already a note of alarm, a warning to stay silent and walk by. He watched her pass. A little further on, though, a girl from Tansy’s class had noticed her and was waiting.

      “What’s up with him?" Tansy heard herself asking. She looked back at Frank Bonetti. “He been dumped or something?”

       Gossip. Please let it be ordinary, who’s-going-out-with-who gossip.

      “You haven’t heard?” said Tansy’s friend. “Carol’s in hospital.” The concern in her voice couldn’t disguise her eye-bright excitement as she told the story.

      Carol and Frank had been fooling about with Frank’s skateboard, on the footpath down to the park. It had been getting dark and Carol, squatting on the board as it ran downhill, hadn’t seen the horizontal bar of the cycle barrier.

      Tansy stood and listened.

      “It got her in the throat, Tansy. Her windpipe!” Eye-Bright looked at her in awe. “They don’t think she’ll ever be able to talk again!”

       5 The God-Botherers

      “Why did you come now, Dominic? Why did it take you four years to start looking for me? Did you care if I was alive or dead?”

      It had taken only one night to unravel Sophie and Dominic’s truce. Calypso was still in bed – although her open window overlooked the lawn on which Dominic, Sophie and Sal sat, watching the foragers buzz about the hive.

      Dominic glanced quickly at Sal. “I knew you were alive.”

      “Of course, you’ve got a direct line to God! So why didn’t you know how miserable I was?”

      “I knew that too,” Dominic muttered.

      “And you didn’t think to drop me a line, to visit? To phone, even once?”

      Dominic bit back a word. “Where I was there were no phones. And you didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address. Life is not a game of hide and seek. While you were having your teenage rebellion, half the planet was crashing into ruin. You are my sister, Sophie, and I love you. But

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