Free Nearly Almost Somebody by Caroline Batten Page B

police said it was okay. I just had a tidy up. Hyssop had made a bit of a mess, knocking things off the dresser and I didn’t want just anybody to come across her book and whatnot. Maggie wouldn’t have liked that.’
    ‘Her book? What, like a spell book?’ Libby couldn’t help grinning, imagining some ornate leather-bound tome.
    Sheila nodded and delved into the cupboard under the stairs, pulling out a large plastic storage box. ‘It’s her book and a few herbs. They’re... well, I didn’t think just anyone should come across them. No matter what you believe in, they can be dangerous.’
    Libby lifted the lid, frowning with disappointment at the royal blue lever arch file. That was Maggie’s spell book? A little bottle marked Belladonna peeked from under the folder.
    ‘Do you want to take it?’ Sheila asked quietly. ‘I meant to throw it away but I just couldn’t. And it gives me the creeps having it in the house.’
    After two small glasses of wine, Libby left Sheila’s armed with a box of witchcraft and a half-empty bottle of Shiraz. She devoured the Moroccan salad as she studied the multitude of jars, vials and bottles lining the bottom of the box. Each had a neat label: Coltsfoot, Hibiscus flower, White Willow bark. Several of the names she recognised as deadly, the rest she’d never heard of. All she needed now was a cauldron.
    Utterly absorbed, she flicked through the pages in the folder. Some of the A4 sheets were handwritten in an elaborate cursive style, others digitally printed, but many were photocopies of photocopies of ancient books. They detailed tinctures for headaches and prayers to goddesses but most enticing were the spells: love, prosperity, luck.
    A Good Luck Spell? She could totally do with a healthy dose of that.
    Libby poured the last of the red wine and picked four candles from the box – white to represent her, plus grey, black and orange. The spell ought to be performed when the moon was waxing. Well it was crescent-shaped, but waxing or waning, who knew?
    She lit the white candle.
    ‘This is me.’
    She lit the black candle.
    ‘This is the bad luck that has haunted my footsteps. Trouble, disappointment and tears are here. This bad luck now leaves me forever.’
    She lit the grey candle.
    ‘All that was bad is neutralized. All my bad luck is dissolved.’
    She lit the orange candle.
    ‘This is the energy coming my way, to invigorate my life and speed up change.’
    Closing her eyes, she sat, as instructed and visualised the negative energies being whisked into the grey candle and dissolving into nothingness. She tried to imagine the orange candle drawing good energy towards her and the air around her stir with opportunity.
    As the stubs of candles finally fluttered out, Libby smiled at Hyssop. ‘You believe in this?’ She rubbed under his chin. ‘Me neither. But the way things are going, I need all the luck I can get.’

Chapter Seven
     
    The next day, Libby headed down the same track she’d run on her first morning, determined to discover where she’d got lost. For fifteen minutes, she pounded along the track, regretting the previous evening’s four glasses of wine, but smiling at her daft little dabble with witchcraft.
    Or was it daft? She’d thought Jack was cute and then he’d started flirting. Any girl who slept there would become irresistible to the man she desired.
    Up ahead, the roofs of several houses and barns came into view and Libby slowed. That had to be Gosthwaite Mills, the hamlet to the north-west of the village. She shouldn’t be here. How had she missed the bridleway that went off to the north-east, taking her to the common? And where the hell did this track go?
    She had to be the biggest failure in the world. She couldn’t even navigate the bridleways around the village. She slumped against a dry-stone wall. Obviously, the good luck spell hadn’t worked.
    But with impeccable timing, a small dog came bounding towards her, a blur of black, brown and