Read Online Something Wicked by Kerry Wilkinson - Free Book Online Page B

photograph. Nicholas looked exactly the same as he had in the picture Richard had given them in the first place but the girl he
was with was a walking advert for emo chic: long black hair, a month’s supply of eye-liner, some sort of black corset with a matching tutu and long stripy socks up to her thighs.
    ‘Lara?’ Jenny said.
    Andrew shrugged. ‘I guess so.’
    ‘She’s quite pretty under all of that.’
    Jenny pushed the photo back into the tub and continued rummaging.
    Andrew could sort of understand it; the room was now a shrine to their ideal of a perfect son. Everything was tidy and his taste in dodgy B-movies, his goth girlfriend and everything else was
shunted to one side as if it didn’t exist. If he somehow did come knocking on their front door one day, all of his things would still be here.
    Jenny plucked out a hardback book with binding held together with sticky tape. The cover was cyan fake leather, with a faded gold imprint on the front. She started flicking through the pages,
sucking on her bottom lip.
    ‘What is it?’ Andrew asked.
    ‘I’m not sure. Some sort of spell book.’
    Jenny passed it across and Andrew started to look through the pages. The paper was heavy, almost parchment, with a faint aroma that reminded Andrew of trees and leaves, although he wasn’t
sure why. He tried to read it but the contents were largely incomprehensible: a history of magic, mentioning various witch trials, interspersed with apparent recipes for potions and various chants.
There were two pages about the healing potential of bones, plus lists of useful herbs and plants. Aside from the quality of the actual book, the passages seemed a little juvenile.
    Andrew glanced up to see that Jenny was flipping through a second, similar book.
    ‘What do you reckon?’ he asked.
    ‘Dunno. It’s all the rage nowadays, isn’t it? Vampires, zombies, witches, wizards . . . probably more of a girl thing than a boy thing, though, plus this seems a bit more real
than you might expect. It’s not all teenage girls fawning over boys, it’s actually “real” magic. Well, if that exists.’ Jenny turned the book around for Andrew to see.
‘Look, it’s some sort of recovery spell to reignite your karma, whatever that means. There was a hex in here too for getting back at your enemies.’
    Andrew pulled out an A4 pad which looked and felt a lot thicker than a simple few pages of paper. Stapled throughout were pages printed from the Internet with various spells, hexes, curses and
symbols. The words were largely Latin-sounding, with instructions above and below about how dangerous the words could be if you misused them. To Andrew, it was all nonsense – but you could
apply that to any creed or religion. If you decided you believed in something and chose to live according to that, then it became your own truth.
    ‘Was he into magic?’ Andrew asked.
    Jenny held up the photo of Nicholas and Lara again, pointing at the upside-down metal cross hanging around Lara’s neck. ‘Or she was?’
    ‘Perhaps they both were?’
    Jenny shrugged, sliding the book back into the tub and crossing to sit at the computer desk. ‘Am I okay to go through his laptop?’
    ‘If you can get in. It sounds like the police already had a good go.’
    ‘They couldn’t find porn on a top shelf.’
    Andrew wriggled uncomfortably on the floor. His back wasn’t what it used to be, though that applied to most of his body parts. He wondered what the exact age was where you crossed over
from being naturally young, fit and athletic to being a creaky old sod with joints that objected to anything other than the tamest of workouts. It was definitely somewhere around thirty.
    Jenny tap-tap-tapped her way around the keyboard, la-la-laaing under her breath. ‘No password,’ she interrupted herself to say, before continuing with ferocious speed.
    Andrew pulled out the magic books and the photo of Nicholas with Lara from the tub and placed them on the bed.