The Lighthouse Witches(85)

“Me?” Rowan says, affronted. “I didn’t do anything. I came to warn you. Brodie made copies.”

Saffy covers her mouth, utterly horrified. “Brodie? Why would he make copies?”

Rowan gives a little smile. “They’re everywhere. He said he even sent them to your old school back home.”

Saffy bursts into tears, letting the papers fall from her hands to the ground. She has never felt such crippling shame, and now it comes to rest in her, like a weight on all her organs.

“You poor thing,” Rowan says, stooping to gather up the papers before they blew into the trees. “Brodie told you he’d broken up with me, isn’t that right?”

Saffy nods, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Rowan gives a coy smile as she curls the papers into a thick scroll, removing a hair band from her wrist and sliding it down the tube. “Well, he didn’t. He thinks I don’t know about you, but I do.” She glances behind her. “You want to go for a walk?”


III

Saffy isn’t sure what Rowan is up to, whether she has really come to warn her or if she is just wanting to gloat. She offers Saffy weed. Hell yes, she wants weed. And she wants to scream into the air and punch Brodie’s stupid face and erase everything that’s happened.

They head toward the moonlight that streams through the trees, and when they reach the road, she can see lights from the village in the distance, a low thrum of music.

“They’re celebrating Samhain,” Rowan says. “It’s the biggest event of the year on the island.”

“I thought you’d be celebrating,” Saffy says.

Rowan smiles. “I am. But obviously I needed to tell you about this.” She holds up the scroll, and Saffy takes it, holding her spliff to one end until it catches alight. She stands for a moment, holding the sheaf of photocopies alight like a torch. She feels daring as it blazes, letting it move down close to her hand before dropping it to the ground and stamping it out.

“I hate him,” Saffy says, punctuating the words with a fresh stamp on the photocopies.

Rowan takes a long drag of her joint and exhales in Saffy’s direction. “What you have to understand about Brodie is that he likes to control people.”

“Is that why he made the photocopies?” Saffy asks, looking at the ashes on the ground. She could burn twelve more sheafs and it wouldn’t stop the pictures spreading. He has the Polaroids. She was stupid to have done that.

“I think it comes from a deep-seated fear of not being good enough,” Rowan says wisely. “The control impulse. Like he has to force people to do things that they’d probably do anyway if he was just kind to them.” She gives a little shrug of her shoulders and a smile, as though this is acceptable.

“Why did you spend three years with him, then?” Saffy says.

“Because I love him,” Rowan says, blowing a ring of smoke.

Saffy wants to say something to that but her thoughts have become soggy, a big sopping mess of anger and confusion. She hadn’t felt ready to have sex with him, but at the time she’d felt like she was just being stupid. He’d coaxed and made a little joke about payment, and her confusion over her own feelings had blindsided her into acquiescing. She wanted to be wanted, and at the same time she didn’t want to sleep with him. At least, not so early. Not in a way that felt like she was paying him.

But she did it anyway, because it felt like too hard a thing to explain.

They make their way slowly to the Longing, the conversation spinning off into music, TV shows, and they have a long conversation about how Quentin Tarantino glorifies violence against women in his films but manages to get away with it because of his talent (“You have to admit Pulp Fiction is crazy-brilliant,” Saffy offers), and also because Hollywood was basically the patriarchy. Saffy still isn’t clear on the purpose of this chat. Maybe Rowan just wants to get to know her. She’s been Brodie’s girlfriend for a long, long time. Maybe she’s just trying to clear the air so that there’s no bad feeling between them.

“So, are you really a witch?” Saffy asks. “Like, can you cast spells and stuff?”

“Can you?”

“Well, no, but I never said I was a . . .”

“I call myself a witch primarily as a form of protest,” Rowan says. “In defiance of centuries of genocide in Europe against women. To say I’m a witch is to recognize my ancestors who were tortured to death.”

“Oh,” Saffy says, surprised. “So . . . it’s a performance, then?”

Rowan turns to her and frowns. “Just as much as your grunge-girl, Courtney Love–wannabe look is a performance.”

Courtney Love wannabe? Saffy pulls at her blonde hair. Grunge? She feels a stab of disappointment in Rowan. She’d almost figured her for the real thing, an actual witch, capable of conjuring darkness.

They are at the Longing now, the tall, menacing shape of it looming over them. Rowan tugs the door open and gestures at Saffy to follow her inside.

“My mum painted this,” she tells Rowan, flicking on a work lamp to reveal the half-finished mural in all its multicolored glory. They stand for a moment in dreamy, drug-infused silence. “I suppose you’ll recognize the runes, being a witch and all.”

Rowan looks up at the mural. “Oh, yes. It’s the sign for love.”