I Put A Spell On You

I knocked my drink back in one mouthful and wiped my eyes carefully to avoid smudging my make-up.

“What’s happened, Harry?” Esme said.

I shuddered.

“God it was awful,” I said, reaching for the brandy bottle.

“I’d been with clients all day – I hadn’t had more than five minutes to myself all afternoon,” I explained glugging brandy into my glass. “Star wanted to speak to me though, and she said she’d wait for me to finish. So when I was done, I went into reception. And that’s when I found her.” I took a long jagged breath and stared into my glass.

“Who?” Esme said. “Who did you find?”

“Star.”

“But you wanted to see her, surely?” Esme looked confused and I rolled my eyes.

“Not like that,” I said.

“Why, what was she doing?” asked Jamie.

“She was dead.”

Esme gasped.

“I’ve been with the police for hours,” I continued, rubbing my forehead as I thought about how to explain it all. “The paramedics said it was a heart attack and the police aren’t suspicious. And yet…”

“And yet…” repeated Jamie.

I leaned forward so they knew how important this was.

“I saw her face,” I whispered. “She was terrified.”

“Really?” Esme said doubtfully. “Can you tell?”

“Oh you can tell,” I said, with all the wisdom of a woman who’d seen her first corpse just a few hours earlier.

Jamie nodded.

“You can, actually,” he said. “I’ve seen all sorts of strange facial expressions on bodies.”

Esme shivered and I scowled at her.

“That’s not all though,” I said, perhaps slightly over-dramatically. “There was magic there. Dark magic. Hanging – you know how it does – like a heat haze. Over Star’s desk.”

“Oh that’s not good,” Esme said with a shiver. “Do you think something sinister has happened? Something that could have hurt Star?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said. “I just don’t understand why anyone would want to hurt her.”

“Is Star, erm, was she, you know?” Esme began.

“A witch?”

She nodded.

I shook my head.

“She was interested,” I said. “Actually she was really interested. She was always asking me stuff and I’d helped her out a few times with advice and explanations about spells and things. I know that was why she took the job in the first place. She dabbled in a bit of aura cleansing and she did a lot of our yoga classes. But she wasn’t a witch – not by birth. It’s not in the terms and conditions of our contracts, you know.”

I call my spa a holistic life centre. We offer things like yoga, acupuncture and Pilates, slightly more off-the-wall things like Reiki and aura cleansing and, what I like to call, spiritual counselling. That’s spells to you and me. People come to see me, they tell me their problems and I give them a spell to help. My mum, Suky, and Esme’s mum, Tess, do a really similar thing in their café up in the Highlands – it’s where I got the idea from, if I’m honest. They sit people down with a cup of tea, have a chat, find out what the problem is and cast a spell to help. Sometimes they don’t even wait to be asked. I took it bigger, giving people the chance to ask for help online. But I found I was missing the personal touch, so now I’ve gone back to basics – meeting clients at the spa and offering them one-to-one counselling. We’ve not been going that long, but it’s all working out brilliantly – or at least it was. Until our receptionist turned up dead.

I pulled Star’s HR file out of my bag.

“She wanted to tell me something,” I said. “Maybe she was worried about something – or scared even – so I’ve had an idea. This is her address. I thought we’d go round and…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Jamie. “You’re not going anywhere. You can’t break into a dead woman’s flat.”

“I agree,” Esme said firmly. “Even I know Star had health problems and she didn’t always look after herself. If the police don’t think there’s anything to worry about, then we should listen to them.”

I got up from the table.

“You didn’t see her face, Ez,” I said. “I can’t get it out of my mind. And I can’t help thinking that it must have had something to do with me. It’s my business, after all. What if she was just in the way? What if I was the real target?”

We all stared at each other for a moment and I could see I’d struck a chord with Esme. It had been awful when we’d been targeted before – one of the worst times of our lives.

I saw Jamie catch Esme’s eye and shake his head ever so slightly. She looked at me and I could tell she was wavering. So she was a lawyer and I was asking her to break into a house. We wouldn’t get into trouble – we had ways round that and she knew it.

The ring of the doorbell made us all jump. Esme gave me a glance that said ‘we’ll talk about this later when Jamie’s not around’ and went to answer it. Jamie and I looked at each other awkwardly. I thought Jamie was lovely and, like I said, I’d always be grateful for how caring he was with Mum, but he could be a bit risk-averse sometimes.

Esme poked her head round the kitchen door.

“Harry,” she hissed. “The police are here.”

Alarmed, I followed her back out into the hall. The tall detective I’d seen at the spa stood there.

“Harmony McLeod?” she asked, showing me a warrant card.

I nodded.

“DI Louise Baxter,” she said. “I just have a couple more questions about what happened today.”

“Let’s go into the living room,” I said, directing her. She walked into the room, looking round her – I could tell she was taking everything in. Then she turned round and smiled at me. She was very pretty.

“Call me Harry,” I said. “Please sit.” She sat on the sofa and I sat opposite her. Esme, who’d followed us into the room, perched on the arm of my chair nervously. She was one of those people who always got stopped on her way through customs because she looked guilty even when she hadn’t done anything and she was very twitchy now.

“I’m Harry’s cousin,” she said in a rush. “My name’s Esme. McLeod. Esme McLeod. I’ll help you as much as I can.”

“This isn’t really an official visit,” DI Baxter said, giving a quick, amused glance at Esme then turning her attention back to me. “I just thought you looked a bit odd back there. I wanted to see if there was anything else you wanted to say.”

I shrugged, wondering how much I should say.