Eve White: Literary Agent

from A WITCH IN WINTER

“Come on, let's do it!” Prue urged. Her face was shiny and scarlet with wine. I wondered if she had someone particular in mind. “We'll all do it together.” “Oooh... go on then!” Liz took another slosh of cava. “I'll do it if it'll make Philip ask me out!” June giggled, and then gave an almighty burp. “Anna?” I didn't want to. I really, really didn't want to. There was something sinister about the burnt up book with its scratchy, spidery writing. I kept wondering who had last held it, and why they'd sealed it in the bread oven. Had they been trying to conceal it – or destroy it? Either way, someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to keep it away from prying eyes. And now we'd unburied it, opened its blackened pages, and read the words hidden and silent for so long. I had the strong feeling of meddling with something we shouldn't. “I don't know,” I said. The fire flared up, casting tall wavering shadows on the walls and ceiling, and the flames reflected back at me from the windowpanes and the polished surface of the furniture, until it seemed as if Wicker House itself were burning. “Oh come oooooooooon,” begged June in an exaggerated tone of pleading. “I thought you said you weren't superstitious?” I had said that. And it did seem stupid to be afraid of a few words on a bit of charred paper. It wasn't like I was being asked to drink eye of newt. I looked around the ring of faces, their glittering eyes all urging me on, and that strange, tense feeling welled up inside me again. It felt like some creature inside me trying to get out, trying to escape. “Scared?” Prue said, and her voice was taunting. I didn't want to, but I didn't want to be the prissy crybaby from London either. The trapped thing rose inside me, suffocating me. There was no way out. “Oh... ok,” I said. My voice sounded strange and hard in my ears and my face was hot. “Hooray!” said June, “I think we should join hands; circle of power and all that, you know.” We knelt on the hearth and joined hands in the flickering light of the fire. I was opposite Prue, her hair sticking up and tousled around her face. In the dim, shifting light she looked positively witchy, and I wouldn't have been surprised to hear a crack of thunder or the screech of an owl break across the quiet night. “Ok, can everyone see the page?” June asked. They all nodded. “We're to hold in our minds the image of our beloved, and say the incantation. Ready?” I wasn't intending to think of anyone in particular. But as the strange, rolling words bubbled from my mouth an image came into my mind involuntarily. It was the face of Seth Waters.