‘The cake?’
‘The magic ritual.’
‘Depends. Tell me about this girl of yours.’
‘She’s not really what you’d describe as a girl. She’s very strong. Very powerful. Beautiful in her way. Pitiless.’
‘A panther.’
‘Exactly.’
Pyewacket jumps into Philippa’s lap. ‘Yes, my love, you’re a panther too… So why do you want to be free of her?’
Eve frowns. ‘She hurts me.’
‘Isn’t that what panthers do? Isn’t that the point of them?’
‘If it is, I can’t take it any more.’
‘So why did you invite a panther into your life in the first place?’
‘I was fascinated by her. By her cruelty.’
‘And then you found that cruelty turned against you?’
Eve shrugs and nods.
‘So, before you met her. What was your life like?’
‘Safe.’
‘And you want to feel that way again?’
Eve frowns. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions?’
‘Because intention matters. I’m trying to find out if what you want and what you think you want are the same thing. There’s nothing vague about ritual magic. It obeys natural laws, just as baking does. What you take out of the oven depends on what you put in.’
Philippa and I have established a wary friendship in the five days that I’ve been in Cranborne. We’ve cooked together, watched our dating shows on TV, and taken the bus into Shaftesbury to go to Lidl, and to fix me up with a new phone. Philippa knows now that I grew up here, that we have several acquaintances in common, and that I have no wish, for thetime being at least, to renew those acquaintanceships. I told her about running into Jack Demerell. Not because I particularly wanted to, but because I was pretty sure that she’d find out anyway; she seems to have a nose for that sort of thing. She’s certainly the kind of person people tell things to. She draws stuff out. It took her less than forty-eight hours to figure out that I’m on the run from a failing relationship, and that I’ve come to Cranborne for, as she puts it, a hard reset. I haven’t told her the details, or even Oxana’s name, but she seems to have the measure of the situation. It was me, not her, that suggested Philippa apply her witchcraft to my situation. Jokily at first, before I realised that I was actually begging for her help. I can’t carry this thing alone.
‘That intention we were talking about,’ Philippa says, as she gathers her bits and pieces. ‘I need you to set it. I need you to ask yourself, in the words of the sainted Spice Girls, what you really, really want. You don’t have to say it out loud. Just know it.’
In front of them is the side table with the dagger, the stag-headed god, and the skull-helmeted Barbie. To these, Philippa adds a Harry Potter-ish wand, two scarlet candles, a copper dish of black powder, a square of paper torn out of a notebook, a fountain pen, a small glass bowl of pink Himalayan salt, and a Bic lighter.
With the Bic, Philippa lights the dish of black powder. It smoulders for a moment, sending up tiny sparks, then bursts into a small whoomph of smoke which lingers for a moment, filling the room with the musky smell Eve noticed when she first came into the house. ‘I want you to ground yourself,’ Philippa orders. ‘I want you to imagine that you and I are surrounded bya ring of pure, clear light. Within that light we are safe. No ill can come to us, no malign energy can penetrate.’
She arranges the two candles with the salt dish forming the apex of a triangle, then hands Eve the paper and the fountain pen. ‘Now, I want you to write down your name, and the name of your person.’
Eve does so. The fountain pen is a vintage Osmiroid from the sixties, and the ink is blood-red.
‘Now light the candles. They represent your two hearts. Yours and hers. Imagine that the flames are burning away the hurt between you. Forgive her. Forgive her lies and the pain she’s caused you, and ask her, in her turn, to forgive you. See the smoke from the candles rising and joining. Now take the wand and repeat after me: May the arms of the Earth hold us. May our breath be the Air. May the Fire purify us. In Water let us be reborn.’
As Eve repeats the incantation, wand in hand, she feels her inner self twisting with embarrassment at the hokey nature of it all. She’s also aware that warm tears are running down her cheeks, and splashing onto her kimono, Oxana’s kimono, and that she doesn’t care in the least.
‘Fold the paper towards you,’ Philippa continues. ‘Light each end from one of the candle flames. As it burns, envision all the anger and resentment between you turning to ash, becoming weightless, becoming nothing. Now blow out the candles.’
13
It’s ten in the morning, and Oxana and her trainer Maxim are sitting on a mattress in the corner of a gym in Beauchamp Market, near Chancery Lane underground station. Both are wearing sweaty T-shirts and track pants, and drinking tea. Oxana’s right cheekbone is swollen, she’s bleeding from one nostril, and her knuckles are raw. She shakes out her hands and Maxim grins. ‘You asked me not to go easy with you. What do you expect?’