The Devil’s Paintbox Page 3

  Mike looked at her with concern. Ever since their schooldays, Cassandra had professed to be a witch and dressed accordingly. But lately she hadn’t bothered with her usual elaborate eye make-up and had started wearing baggy T-shirts and stretch leggings instead of the Victorian-style gothic dresses she loved.

  ‘You all right, Cass?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said with a vague shrug.

  ‘Because you’d never normally allow a pumpkin in the shop. You’ve always said you can’t stand the Disneyfication of All Hallows’ Eve. We’ve always had traditional turnip lanterns.’

  ‘No one makes plastic turnip lanterns,’ she answered flatly. ‘And most of our customers couldn’t care less anyway. Don’t think I do any more either. Does it matter? It’s just junk for the tourists. I’m giving in to consumer demand.’

  Mike thought she’d given in to more than that, but he kept quiet and took the box to the storeroom. As he returned to the main shop, a commotion in the street caused him to look out of the window.

  ‘What’s going on out there?’ he wondered. ‘Cass – come look at this. It’s snowing money!’

  Church Street was choked with swarming banknotes. Shoppers and holidaymakers were leaping to catch them, pausing only to stare at the bizarre spectacle that came staggering over the cobbles. It was a churning cloud of money, reeling clumsily from one side of the street to the other.

  A fifty-pound note blew against the shop window and Mike peered closely at it in amazement. A twenty joined it, then another cluster of fifties.

  ‘Them’s genuine!’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s a fortune in jumbo confetti flapping about out there. Has a bank exploded?’

  The light dimmed as more notes papered the glass, and a small hand slapped the pane, right in front of Mike’s nose, making him jump. Then a familiar face thumped against the window and howled for help.

  ‘It’s Verne!’ Mr Wilson cried, wrenching the door open and plunging into the freak windstorm outside.

  The strings of bells and charms that hung around the door frame rang and clattered madly as the tempest burst in, along with Verne. Cassandra hurried from the till to help. It took all their strength to slam the door shut as the screaming wind focused its full fury against it. For long, anxious moments it juddered and quaked, then all was suddenly quiet. The bells stopped jingling and the money that had flown inside with Verne fluttered gently on to the floor. Outside, the wind dropped to a soft breeze and three hundred thousand pounds went dancing down the street.

  Verne sagged in Mike’s arms, gasping and shaking.

  ‘You OK?’ Mr Wilson asked.

  ‘Been better,’ he panted, trying to sound as casual as possible. ‘Having a bit of a peculiar morning.’

  ‘No kidding. Your face and hands are bleeding.’

  ‘Paper cuts.’

  ‘I’ll get the first-aid kit. So what just happened – that wasn’t normal. Was it, er . . . was it . . . umm, you know?’

  Smoothing her storm-lashed hair, his wife moved away from the door. She looked with disdain at the money littering the shop.

  ‘He wants to know if it was supernatural in origin,’ she said tersely. ‘You’d think, owning a witchcraft shop, my husband wouldn’t be so coy about it. Was it something to do with our Lil?’

  Verne shook his head.

  ‘No, but it wasn’t a natural thing.’ He squirmed. ‘I, er, can’t say any more.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, bending down to pick up the notes. ‘More mysteries and intrigue we’re excluded from.’

  ‘Where’s Lil?’ Verne asked. ‘Isn’t she here?’

  Before Mike could respond, his wife snorted.

  ‘Course Lil isn’t here. She’s with her. Where else would our daughter be these days?’

  ‘Go easy, Cass,’ Mike said. ‘So, Verne, how’s your mum and dad?’

  The boy gave an awkward shrug.

  ‘Noreen still behaving like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum?’ asked Mrs Wilson. ‘She always did cut her nose off to spite her face.’

  Verne frowned. She and his mother had fallen out. The Wilsons’ shop had made a large profit from the trouble back in the spring. In a moment of stress, Noreen Thistlewood had made a comment about it and a row had flared up that had not been resolved.

  Mrs Wilson was about to say more when there was a beep from the counter, followed by the sound of the till drawer sliding open on its own.

  Verne winced. The Nimius’s power was still exerting itself.

  ‘Take this,’ Cassandra said in a far-off voice as she pushed the cash she’d collected at him. ‘Mike, get the takings as well.’

  Her husband went to the till, but Verne made a dash out of the shop.

  Church Street was a lot emptier than it had been five minutes ago. Verne pelted over the cobbles, nervously hoping the supernatural gale wouldn’t return. He knew where Lil was now. There was only one ‘her’ who was that important to his best friend these days – Cherry Cerise.

  Racing to a narrow entry that led to one of the yards behind Church Street, the boy rushed up to a cottage with a brightly painted yellow door and a letter box framed by garish red lips.

  Verne rang the bell with one hand and knocked with the other.

  ‘Hey!’ a brash voice called from inside. ‘Get your sticky digit offa my ding-a-ling! What is this, a raid? I’m warnin’ you, I go from nought to riot real quick.’

  The door was opened by a slender woman in her sixties, wearing a neon-blue wig and a minidress covered in large orange circles. She stared at him through yellow sunglasses.

  ‘For a puny stick insect,’ Cherry Cerise said, ‘you sure got a heck of a knock, kid. Say, you been messin’ with your dad’s razor? What gives with the face?’

  She was about to usher him inside when the door of the adjoining cottage opened and a frail lady in her seventies hobbled out with a stick.

  ‘Wait!’ the neighbour called. ‘Don’t disappear just yet.’

  Cherry braced herself. Mrs Gregson was not the most agreeable of neighbours.

  ‘What is it this time, Joan?’ she began. ‘My breathing keepin’ you awake at night again? And I can’t help it if I yelp when I wax my particulars. You’d know what that felt like if you let me take care of that moustache for you.’

  The woman ignored her and jabbed a finger at Verne.

  ‘Saw this lad go by,’ she said, ‘and I have to give him something.’

  She pulled out a purse. ‘Here’s what’s left of my pension this week,’ she said, tipping out a paltry seven pounds. ‘This was supposed to last me another five days.’

  She thrust it at Verne, but he stepped away.

  ‘Stand still!’ she demanded. ‘I can’t catch you with this dodgy hip. If I fall and end up in hospital, it’ll be your fault.’

  Verne could tell she was deadly earnest, so he took the money, intending to post it back through her letter box later.

  Mrs Gregson hadn’t finished. The pensioner leaned heavily on her stick and twisted her wedding ring off.

  ‘Worn this over fifty year,’ she said. ‘But here, have it. You want me to get on me knees and grovel?’

  Verne shook his head and took the proffered ring without resistance.

  ‘What’s goin’ on?’ Cherry demanded.

  ‘Witchery!’ Mrs Gregson spat back, and tears were coursing down her face. ‘What else would it be, with the likes of you next door – and her what lived there before you? Always been a witch’s cottage that one. When will you leave us ordinary Whitby folk in peace? When?’

  Kissing her naked finger, she returned to her own home.

  ‘You got an Everest of explainin’ to do,’ Cherry told Verne. ‘Get inside.’

  Clutching the wedding ring and the seven pounds, the boy obeyed.

  The hallway of Cherry Cerise’s cottage was a delicate pink and smelled of roses and berries until she closed the door behind them. Then the walls dipped into a shade of violet.

  Verne had grown accus
tomed to the interior changing colour to match the witch’s mood. What he wasn’t expecting was to find his best friend Lil sitting cross-legged and perfectly still on a chaise longue, with filaments of faint amber-coloured light threading and tangling around her raised hands. A stream of the same glimmering energy flowed from the centre of her forehead, slowly forming a halo around her.

  ‘Whoa!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s all that?’

  Lil grinned at him and the shifting lattice of light flickered.

  ‘Quick, take a photo with my phone!’ she urged, directing him with her eyes to a nearby cushion, where her mobile lay. ‘Mum’ll choke when she sees this.’

  Verne did as he was told, but repeated his question.

  ‘It’s Lil’s aura,’ Cherry answered, following him into the parlour. ‘As a rule, they’re invisible, even if you’ve got the sight, but I gave it some zizz and lit it up so we could see how she’s progressin’ and maybe get a clue as to what kind of witch she might be. Her own powers are kinda weak and trembly right now, but they’ll get stronger the more she uses them and grows in confidence. Witches’ auras express themselves in different ways. Mine looks like my own personal disco – like a huge psychedelic Afro.’

  ‘Cherry thinks the way it’s forming knots around my fingers shows that it’s connected to my knitting,’ Lil told him. ‘Might be where my gift is strongest, which isn’t exactly the most fearsome or ostentatious deal ever.’

  ‘Knot and cord magic is an ancient form of the craft,’ Cherry chided. ‘Goes way back to the earliest practitioners. If done right, a charm created by a knot witch can store a crazy amount of force and be stronger than most of the later flashy spells and complicated hexes. Trouble is, I don’t know much about that kind of hoodoo so Lil’s gonna need a better guru than me.’

  A bright blue star sparkled from Lil’s forehead and swiftly travelled the path of the halo before shooting into one of her ears.

  ‘What was that?’ Verne asked in surprise.

  ‘We think it might be psychic energy Scaur Annie left behind,’ Lil told him.

  ‘I s’pose being possessed by a seventeenth-century witch must leave its mark,’ the boy said.

  ‘Either that or it’s puberty kickin’ its heels,’ Cherry cackled. ‘But that’s all, folks. The light show is over. This old broad needs her twinkles back. Feelin’ kinda angsty already; a colour witch requires every drop of her spectrum inside of her.’

  Moving her hands as if winding in a kite, Cherry drew the amber glow away from Lil’s aura and absorbed the light back into herself. She breathed in deeply as if refreshed, then turned to Verne.

  ‘Now then, kid, fess up. What’ve you been up to? Why’d old grumpy Gregson throw her dough and wedding band at you?’

  The boy shifted unhappily and stared about the parlour, ashamed to meet the witch’s severe gaze. He noticed that since he was here last week, decorations of bright, crocheted flowers had been sprinkled around the seventies-themed room. They were Lil’s handiwork and demonstrated just how close she and Cherry had become.

  ‘I’ve done something really stupid,’ he blurted. ‘I just didn’t think!’

  He pulled the rucksack from his shoulders and unzipped it with trembling fingers.

  ‘The Nimius!’ Lil exclaimed. ‘You got it working again? Brilliant! I told you it was just tired, not broken.’

  ‘You make it sound like it takes batteries,’ Verne said. ‘It’s not a phone that needs recharging. And no, it’s not brilliant actually, not at all.’

  ‘Lots of things need recharging,’ Cherry interrupted, easing herself into the egg-shaped wicker chair suspended from the ceiling. ‘What else do you think you’re doing when you’re in the land of snooze? Even magic can get exhausted – seizing control of half a town would drain anything. Or did it occur to you that your pimped-out gizmo might’ve just been waiting?”

  ‘Waiting for what?’ Lil asked.

  ‘Hey, I’m not the one who had Melchior Pyke’s avenging spirit squatting inside my wig stand,’ Cherry answered. ‘If anyone knows the answer to that, it’s the Twiglet Kid here. If a witch can leave her mark in your noodle, so can a magician.’

  Verne shook his head. ‘You know, as soon as everything got back to normal, I forgot how to work it.’

  ‘Normal, he says,’ Cherry scoffed. ‘Kid, this town weren’t never what you call normal. Hate that word anyways. But that glittery little doodad should’ve been gotten rid of months ago, somehow. I keep tellin’ you – it’s way too powerful and we don’t know what it’s really capable of. Pyke didn’t write a user manual, or if he did it got burned up with his workshop.’

  Verne’s brows creased. ‘But I’m sure I was meant to be its guardian.’

  ‘Oh brother, why has everybody got to be the chosen one these days? You seriously think you can keep that thing safe in your apartment, nestling in your skivvies? I’m surprised your mom’s not found it already, hawked it on eBay and jetted off to Vegas. Flattered though I am that you told me about it, you really should’ve clued in your folks as well. Secrets in families only do harm.’

  Cherry stopped abruptly and stared at her own hand. Without realising, she had removed a bracelet studded with three ammonites from her wrist and was holding it out to him.

  ‘As the Whitby witch in residence,’ she began, ‘this is my symbol of office and is pretty darn priceless to me. So why am I giving it to you right now? Just what did you do, kid?’

  ‘I clicked the symbol for wealth,’ he confessed.

  The violet-coloured walls shifted through different hues of red and the carpet turned tangerine.

  ‘Were you always this dumb?’ Cherry asked. ‘Everything you get through this mysterious force we call magic has to come from someplace, ’specially if it’s the in-your-face, heavy-handed macho kind like what’s in the Nimius. Masculine forces follow two basic principles – control and grab.’

  ‘Female energies are the healing and nurturing ones,’ Lil added.

  ‘And the smuggest,’ Verne said. ‘Look, I’m really sorry, honest. It’s just that everything’s so bad at home. Mum and Dad are at each other’s throats the whole time. Since they fell out with your folks it’s got so much worse.’

  ‘Wait,’ Cherry interrupted. ‘Your moms and dads have had a row?’

  ‘They’re not speaking to each other,’ Lil said, embarrassed.

  ‘My mum doesn’t even like me hanging out with Lil now,’ Verne continued miserably. ‘But she knows she couldn’t stop me. When the Nimius woke up earlier, I thought it was answering my wishes. I just wanted to make everything better.’

  Cherry let her annoyance out with a long breath and the parlour dipped into softer tints of pale green, accompanied by a refreshing waft of peppermint and freshly mown grass.

  ‘Hey, I was gonna fix Lil and me a shake when you knocked,’ she said, nipping to the kitchen and returning with three tall glasses of milk, topped with creamy froth and impaled with straws. ‘What’s your favourite flavour?’

  ‘Chocolate,’ Verne said without hesitation.

  ‘And I know Lil’s is butterscotch, so here we go.’

  Setting the tray down, she waved a hand over it. There was a pulse of pale light. The milk in one glass turned a rich velvety brown and the other a pale caramel.

  ‘It’s how I first realised I weren’t quite like everyone else,’ Cherry said, passing the glasses round.

  Verne took an experimental sip. It was the most delicious milkshake he’d ever tasted.

  ‘On my sixth birthday,’ Cherry continued, ‘my daddy took me to a diner for a treat. I’d put on my prettiest new dress, candy pink with a white sash, pearl buttons, bobby socks and the dinkiest red shoes you ever saw. I was so proud to be out with him. He was shame-the-devil handsome, with his Sunday church suit and pomade in his hair. But even back then I was a contrary gal and, by the time the banana malt that I’d asked for arrived, I’d changed my mind and wanted strawberry instead. My daddy, who was just as stubborn
as me, wouldn’t get it switched. So I held that glass in my hot little hands and glared at it like it was the worst calamity that ever befell a human being. Didn’t take long for that evil yellow malt to turn pink and start bubbling like a tar pit. I couldn’t stop it and I screamed. Then the glass exploded and there was strawberry gloop all over the diner. Ruined the dress and my daddy’s best suit. Never touched a banana since – but strawberries I forgave.’

  She had taken up her own glass. It was now shot through with deep pink swirls and she applied her fuchsia-painted lips to the straw.

  ‘My daddy never took me no place again,’ she said presently. ‘He vamoosed soon after and it was just me and Mom and our daily war of wills till I ran away at thirteen.’

  ‘That’s so sad,’ Lil said.

  ‘It’s part of being a witch,’ Cherry warned her. ‘It’ll turn your life inside out and sometimes you lose those dearest to you. They can’t handle what you really are, but if you try to stifle it, pretend you’re somethin’ you’re not, you’ll make yourself miserable.’

  ‘We’re OK here though,’ Lil argued. ‘Everyone in Whitby knows you’re a witch now, and how we ended the curse.’

  ‘Oh sure, they know,’ Cherry agreed. ‘And they was real grateful at first, but folks don’t like being beholden. Gratitude wears thin real fast.’

  ‘I haven’t noticed anything like that,’ Lil said.

  ‘That’s the way it goes. You’d better get ready for the backlash.’

  ‘They can say what they like,’ Lil declared. ‘I’ve been laughed at all my life because of Mum and Dad. A bit more won’t hurt.’

  ‘I’ll always be Lil’s friend,’ Verne said. ‘I think it’s fantastic she’s a witch now!’

  ‘You’ve got a chocolate moustache,’ Lil told him.

  Cherry smiled. The bond between those two was beautiful and strong.

  ‘Real friends are the truest treasure,’ she said. ‘They’re the family you choose and will be there when the real thing lets you down.’

  ‘I’m lucky with my parents,’ Lil countered. ‘They’ve been playing at being witches since they were kids themselves. Their idea of a date night was getting in the car, finding some remote spot and dancing round a bonfire in the nuddy.’