Free Dark Spell by Gill Arbuthnott

this big… She hoped her parents weren’t going to come home to a house that was missing one wall.
    She had never concentrated so hard on anything in her life. She wove filament after shimmering filament together, felt, rather than saw the net grow larger.
    Ready
.
    Callie cast the net of lights and watched it settle over the house, leaving all the walls intact. She gave a jump of triumph as she watched it flicker and disappear.
    She’d done it. The house was protected. Nothing malevolent would be able to get past the net.
    Perhaps she would have a shower after all. There was plenty of time. Josh wouldn’t be round before ten.
    After she’d showered and collected together the stuff she’d want on the beach she still had plenty of time, so she raided the fridge and made a huge picnic for them to take. She had just finished when the bell rang.
    “You were right about the weather again,” Josh said.
    Callie looked smug. “What can I say? It’s a gift. Do you want Dad’s wetsuit again?”
    “Yeah, please.”
    Callie fetched it and they packed the picnic.
    “Back in a minute – I left my sunnies upstairs,” she called to Josh, running up to get them.
    Callie opened her bedroom door and let out a scream.
    The room was littered with fragments of rock, some as big as a clenched fist. Water oozed through one wall and trickled into a grey-brown pool on the floor.
    She heard footsteps running up the stairs behind her.
    “Callie – what’s wrong?” Josh looked over her shoulder into her devastated bedroom. “Jeez, Callie, what happened? It looks as though a bomb went off.”
    Callie had a hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming again.
    “Callie,” Josh went on. “Should we call your parents? George and Rose?”
    “No!” she said sharply. “Mum and Dad mustn’t find out.” She looked absolutely terrified.
    “Why not? Your parents have to be told what’s happened.” He looked at the room again. “What
has
happened? I don’t understand.”
    “It’s my fault,” Callie whispered almost inaudibly.
    “Your
fault? How can it be
your
fault?” Josh took a step into the room.
    “No, Josh, don’t go in! It might be dangerous.” Callie slid down the wall into a heap in the doorway, put her face in her hands, and began to sob. “Please come out.”
    Josh picked his way over the rubble-strewn floor, crouched down and put an arm round Callie’s shoulders.
    “Callie, what is it? What’s going on? How can this be your fault? You’re not making sense.”
    “It
is
my fault. And I thought I’d protected the house, but I can’t stop it getting in, because it’s already here. It’s
me.”
    Josh had absolutely no idea what Callie meant.
    “Come on, Callie. Get up. Let’s go downstairs and get some stuff to clean this up. Whatever’s happened here, it’s not because of you.”
    She grabbed his wrist so tightly it hurt, and looked him in the eye.
    “You’re wrong. This is all because of me.” She swallowed and blurted it out. “I’m a witch.”
    Half of him wanted to burst out laughing, but Callie was looking at him so fiercely that he didn’t dare.
    “What do you mean?” he asked lamely, playing for time.
    “What do you think I mean?” she yelled at him. “I’m a witch. Somehow I’m making these things happen and I don’t know how to stop them.”
    “A witch? Don’t be daft, Callie. There’s no such thing – not nowadays, anyway.”
    “Really? You don’t think so?” Callie got to her feet, angry now instead of frightened, marched into her wrecked room and pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of the waste bin.
    “Watch,” she said, and the paper burst into flames in the palm of her hand.
    “What? How did you do that?” Mesmerised, Josh watched the blazing paper. “Callie, stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”
    She closed her hand on the flames then opened her fingers to a trickle of grey ash and held up her hand, unburned, for him to see.
    “I did it,” she said slowly,