Josh and the Magic Vial by Craig Spence

Author:Craig Spence
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV037000, JUV022000
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Published: 2013-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

37

Endorathlil tossed and turned. She could not sleep. She stared at the ceiling, the walls, the back of her eyelids. Nothing worked. “If I’d known it would affect me like this, I never would have done it,” she muttered. She’d never sent a soul to Syde; now that she had, she cursed herself. Grandfather Blackstone had sent dozens, as Uncle Andrew had often pointed out. “Candidate or no,” he used to say, “your grandfather would send ’em. Anything to increase the population of Syde and his own reputation.” Now she was confirmed in the same evil. She hated herself.

If only the Dempster boy had not walked into her shop that day. If only she had not looked into his eyes and seen what she had seen. If only Ian Lytle hadn’t been such a skillful thief. If only! If only! But all that had happened, and she had recited The Spell of Transmigration. There could be no taking it back. The Dempster child was Vortigen’s.

Endorathlil clenched her teeth. “You can’t blame me,” she complained. “I should be congratulated. Imagine a witch having The Book all those years and not once having sent a soul to Vortigen. Why I’ve been a saint, which is as much as saying I’ve been a fool!”

She was so immersed in these thoughts she did not notice a faint light materializing in the upper corner of her room. This luminescence drifted toward the foot of her bed, glowing more intensely as it approached. It shimmered with the colours of the rainbow, a fragment of Aurora Borealis blossoming in the stuffy atmosphere, too bright to ignore any longer.

Endorathlil shrieked. Gathering the blankets, she retreated to the other end of the bed. Old Lumpkin, who had been snoring contentedly, got knocked off the coverlet, landing on the floor with a thump and a yowl. “What are you?” Endorathlil demanded of the light. “What do you want?”

It had begun to take a human form. Endorathlil could make out a stocky, middle-aged figure, wearing a bowler hat and a tweed jacket. The ghost stroked its grizzled beard thoughtfully and stared at her with large, luminous eyes.

“If you are who I think you are, the boy shall pay,” she threatened. “I will have my revenge on the one who opened my precious vial.”

“Revenge?” Puddifant said. “Strange that you should feel in a vengeful mood when you and your kin are the guilty parties. What did Josh Dempster ever do to deserve your evil? What did Charlie Underwood do to deserve death?”

“Nevertheless I shall get even.”

“With Vortigen’s heir?”

“With the devil himself if he crossed me,” she shouted.

“It’s not your turn for getting even, Lillian,” Puddifant informed her.

She gawked at him, confused. Not since she was a child had she been called by her birth name. She thought for a moment he must be referring to someone else. “Why do you call me that?” she shouted irritably.

“Because Lillian Smythe yet lives.”

“Lillian Smythe is dead,” Endorathlil snapped. “So are her mother, her father, and any other earthly relatives.

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