The Language Of Spells - Sarah Painter

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Perhaps it was her imagination, but the house seemed just as cold as the van. Trying not to think about Cam or the business or Marilyn or anything at all, Gwen retreated to bed. She pulled up all of the blankets and quilts and, within moments, fell asleep.

      Gwen snapped awake. The room was freezing, but she knew a noise had woken her up. She listened, ears straining. There was a muffled thump and her heart damn near jumped out of her mouth. She pushed down the fear and forced herself to switch on the lamp. The cat stalked out from the end of the bed and picked his way to the door. Relief flooded her system. ‘Bloody cat!’ He paused at the door but didn’t turn around. Gwen took a deep breath and willed her hammering heart to slow. She knew she wasn’t going to fall back asleep any time soon, so she swung her legs out of bed. Her Sudoku book was downstairs. A few minutes struggling with the ‘super-hard’ level puzzles was usually enough to cure any insomnia. It was cold and she pulled on her dressing-gown and slippers. ‘I’m on my way,’ she said to the impatient cat, who stood by the door. She readied herself for him to squeeze past her, but instead he wound around her legs, like he was trying to imitate clothing. ‘Not now, Cat.’

      He kept up the furry ankle-socks impression all the way down the stairs until she said, ‘You win. I’ll feed you.’ The words died in her throat as she saw a detail that was all wrong. The back door was ajar. She went cold all over and then liquid with fear as the door clicked shut. Someone had just left her house. At two o’clock in the morning.

      Chapter 5

      Gwen slipped back into the hallway, heart thudding, and dialled 999. An oddly rational part of her brain observed her doing this. You’ve never rung the emergency services before, the calm part of her brain said. Apart from that one time, an unhelpful section piped up. Down by the river. A bloated white face. Black water weeds tangled around his neck. Gwen squashed the memory back down, ignoring the sickness that came with it as best she could. Don’t think about that. No time. Look, now you’re giving your address. Aren’t you doing well?

      The woman on the line said that someone would be there very soon. Gwen went back upstairs and locked herself and Cat in the bathroom, her ear pressed to the door to listen and her mobile phone gripped in one hand. Six minutes later, the doorbell rang and she went back downstairs. Blue lights were strobing through the glass panel at the top of the door and she opened the door to a six-foot tall policewoman, her male partner dwarfed beside her.

      Gwen gave a swift recap, showing the now-completely-shut back door and waiting while both PCs checked the garden, the gates, and down the road. She was proud of how calm she was being until the policeman – PC Davies – suggested that she sit down and put her head between her knees for a moment and she realised that her peripheral vision had entirely disappeared.

      ‘Quiet up here,’ PC Green said, tactfully ignoring the fact that Gwen had her head at floor level and was taking deep breaths.

      Gwen sat up slowly and the kitchen tilted. She swallowed. ‘Yes.’

      ‘Nice.’ Green looked around. She had brown hair in a high ponytail and discreetly chic make-up. She looked capable and grown up and, even if she hadn’t been wearing a uniform, Gwen would’ve trusted her.

      ‘Have you lived here long?’

      Gwen explained about her aunt and the inheritance. ‘It’s all been quite strange.’

      ‘So, you’ve been a bit disorientated?’

      ‘Well…’ Gwen said.

      ‘And what are the neighbours like? This is usually a pretty friendly place.’

      ‘Oh, very nice.’ Gwen said quickly. ‘Very friendly.’

      ‘Do they pop by?’

      ‘All the time.’

      PC Green nodded. ‘You lived in a city before, right?’

      ‘Yes. Leeds.’

      ‘Different place, I bet.’

      ‘Well, obviously, but—’

      Green called to PC Davies, not even attempting to hide her impatience. ‘False alarm.’

      Gwen decided she wasn’t so trustworthy after all. What self-respecting police person wore a scrunchie, anyway?

      ‘You probably left the door open and the wind blew it shut,’ she said to Gwen.

      ‘I definitely locked the door before I went to bed,’ Gwen said, stamping down on her anger. ‘City girl, remember? Paranoid.’

      ‘Well, maybe someone popped by for a visit. One of your neighbours.’

      ‘At two o’clock in the morning?’ Gwen said tightly.

      PC Green shrugged and walked to the front door. PC Davies was already there, holding it wide open and letting a wall of freezing air into the hall.

      Gwen hugged herself to keep from shouting at an officer of the law. ‘If a neighbour decided to visit, why didn’t they speak to me? Call upstairs?’ As she spoke, Gwen remembered Lily’s stealth casserole.

      PC Davies looked apologetic. ‘We’ll file a report. Let us know if you have any more problems.’

      ‘I definitely locked that door,’ Gwen said again, trying not to sound shaky and pathetic.

      Green was already halfway to the panda car.

      ‘I’m not crazy,’ Gwen called to her. Green raised a hand without turning round.

      Gwen shut the door and locked it. There was something tugging at her memory, too. A feeling. When she’d gone downstairs and seen the door closing, she’d had the strong sense it was a man on the other side of it. Gwen had been brought up to pay attention to her intuition, to believe in it. She closed her eyes and concentrated. A strong smell of aftershave filled her nostrils. She opened her eyes and it dissipated. Definitely a man then. She couldn’t exactly call Green back and explain how she knew that and it seemed that the house was magnifying the Harper family intuition. Either that or she was going crazy. Cat wound around her ankles, purring like a jet engine. ‘Bloody marvellous,’ Gwen said, and went to find him some tuna fish.

      The next morning, Gwen was reading in bed after a fitful night. She told herself that she was completely calm and fine, but for some irritating reason she still hadn’t been able to sleep for more than half an hour at a time. Iris’s notebook wasn’t exactly comforting, either. Amongst the unknown initials of Iris’s customers and acquaintances, her own name kept leaping out.

      Gloria was here with her girls today. She didn’t tell me, of course, but I could see it straight away: Gwen has the Finding. Poor child. There’s a reason Finding Lost Things was banned by the charter of 1539. Some things aren’t meant to be found.

      Gwen closed her eyes. Iris wasn’t wrong about that. Before Gwen had started to refuse to do her party piece on demand, Gloria was always pimping her out. Lost car keys, wallets, pets, wedding rings. When she was eleven, she’d had to tell a woman that her lost engagement ring was at an address that turned out to be a pawn shop. Rather than believe that her husband (who everyone knew had a teeny-tiny problem with gambling) had hawked it, she accused Gwen of nicking it and then trying to squeeze some more cash out of her by finding it. Being screamed at by a member of the school PTA wasn’t the worst Gwen had experienced, but she still remembered the feeling of betrayal. Why had Gloria made her do it? She was supposed to be the grown-up, the protector. Sure, she’d hauled Gwen out of the woman’s kitchen, taken her home and passed her tissues to wipe her face, but the experience didn’t stop her asking Gwen to find something for a client later that same day. Gloria didn’t let a little thing like her daughter’s feelings get in the way of increasing revenue.

      At half past eight, Cat stalked into the room and jumped onto the bed. He landed with a thud that made the bed springs creak. ‘How are you so heavy?’ she asked him. ‘You defy the laws of physics.’ Unless the cat was a black hole. That would

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