“Of course not,” Opal spat, looking the other girl up and down with pointed scorn. “Who are you to be telling me what to do? Telling me to sit like a dog, you look more like a dog than me with your poodle hair.”
The girl’s eyes glinted with hunger. “I’m Portia. Who are you? What are you?”
Perhaps it was the events of the day that made Opal do it. Exclusion and banishment from education. Whatever the reason, she harnessed the Edinburgh wind and charged it towards the strange girl. She staggered backwards, shocked by the force of the breeze. Then Opal opened her palms to reveal spitting and crackling sparks of electricity.
“I’m a witch,” Opal said quietly. “So, don’t tell me what to do. Not ever.”
The other girl’s eyes were glued to the embers and, where Opal expected to see fear, all she saw
was delight.
“Fascinating,” she finally breathed. “But witches aren’t immune to us…”
Opal frowned. “What?”
Before they could continue their strange face-off, a group of tourists rounded the bend and began to pile into the garden. They gushed and cooed at the castle overhead and their cameras clicked endearingly. Opal was jarred out of the moment and began to make her way back up to Princes Street. Then—
“Destroy your camera.”
The words were spoken sweetly, from the mouth of the strange girl. Opal turned around in surprise, before her eyes widened in horror as she watched one of the tourists obey. Instantly. Without question. She watched the short man stomp on his own digital camera with intense animosity, as if he loathed the little device he’d been so fond of merely seconds earlier.
Opal felt suddenly afraid. This person was more than she appeared.
“Now get into the fountain.”
Portia. She said her name was Portia. Opal watched in dismay as the tourists all obeyed this time. They walked serenely into the hefty water fountain, seemingly unbothered by their shoes, socks and hems growing cold and damp.
“How are you doing that?” Opal asked, rewarding this strange creature with the attention she so obviously craved.
“It’s my own kind of magic,” she replied, not looking away from the entranced tourists. “People always do what I tell them to.”
Except me, Opal thought, as the two of them stared at each other. Everyone except me.
*
Portia was very popular with the rest of the family, Opal observed. Her new acquaintance quickly became a friend of her sisters through charm and gentle compulsion. Leanna always wanted to be adored by everyone, though. She would giggle nervously at Portia’s occasionally more cutting remarks. She would try to dress like her. She would hang onto every word she said, and Opal had often caught her retelling some of Portia’s jokes to other people.
Cass was fascinated by her, as well. She would show off her drive and ambition, treating Portia like an equal and a consultant. Portia would smile indulgently while Opal’s older sisters peacocked and simpered. Opal’s father was warm and welcoming towards her, but he always looked a little disturbed by her remarks. He was cautious around her, Opal noticed. At first it made her defensive; Portia was her new friend, after all. Then it made her curious.
Her father’s wariness of Portia prompted Opal to remember their first meeting beneath the shadow of the castle. The flicker of delight in her eyes when she’d told the tourist to smash up his property.
There was a name for whatever kind of magic Portia had, but Opal couldn’t say it yet. She had her suspicions.
“Opal?”
Her father stood in the living room doorway of their house. Laughter and loud conversation could still be heard from the dining room. Opal nodded at him in acknowledgement, and he took this as an invitation to come in and sit down on the sofa. They were in silence for a moment, staring at the fire in the hearth and letting the laughter in the other room echo around
the house.
“There’s something different about your new friend.”
He said the words with care and deference, but Opal still bristled. “Since when did this family care about difference? We’re not exactly the girls next door.”
“She’s not a witch, like the three of you,” James pointed out. “And this is why getting a glossary is so important because—”
“Dad,” Opal snapped, and she hated to do it. The two of them were very close and they never raised their voices to each other, but the youngest witch in the family had grown tired of his obsessive need to categorise all the Hidden Folk. “Enough about your book. I don’t know what she is.”
Siren. The word was perched on a high up shelf in her mind, waiting until she was ready to use it. Portia was a Siren.
*
When Cass was getting married, Opal sat by Loch Ness.
The wedding was back at the old house and Opal had made an appearance, smiled during the toasts, and stayed for a few photographs. She was settled by the glassy frozen lake in her fitted tuxedo, her long hair falling to brush against the stones by the water’s edge.
“Winter weddings are harder to sneak away from.”
Opal did not turn to look at Portia. It had been years since their first meeting in Edinburgh and, while she and Opal had grown closer, the latter’s family had become even more detached from her. They were an ‘us’ and she was a ‘her’. As the years had unfolded, Opal found that she could see Portia more clearly.
It didn’t change how she felt, it merely framed everything differently. It was completely possible to love someone while knowing that almost every inch of them was just no good at all.
Opal was not in the business of trying to change people. No magic in the world was strong enough to
do that.
“I’ve brought you some of the catering on offer,” Portia said, falling down next to Opal in a childlike manner and offering her a plate of salmon and salad. Opal shook her head softly. Portia’s hand hovered in the air, still holding the food out like a present.
“What’s wrong?” she finally asked quietly.
