The Invitation

The skeleton on Morgan’s front door is giving me the finger.

Someone has bent the others into its palm and secured them with a little black hair tie. Its jaw hangs open above a bow tie, and every time the bass thumps through the door, its knees knock against the wood.

Fair enough. I’ve been standing here long enough to deserve it.

I shift the wine into my other hand. The paper bag is going soft where I stood it on the wet pavement to check the address. Again. The label beside the doorbell says MORGAN.

Right flat. Right night. Actual invitation.

I could still go home.

From inside comes a burst of laughter, followed by a woman shouting, “It was one fucking seagull!”

Several people disagree with her at once.

Black jeans, black boots, the top the website described as effortlessly elegant. The effort has involved two bras and twenty minutes of removing a deodorant mark. One of my felt cat ears has bent under my hood.

I straighten it. It leans back.

The invitation presses against my hip through my coat pocket.

Two weeks ago, it had been the only thing in my mailbox that didn’t want money. A black envelope, my name in gold, a crescent moon stamped into dark red wax. I’d carried it upstairs on top of an electricity bill and opened it standing at the kitchen counter, still wearing my work shoes.

Vicky,

Halloween. My place. From nine.

An address. Morgan’s name.

I’ve kept a place for you.

I’d read that last line while the kettle boiled, then again while it cooled. Nobody had sent me a handwritten invitation since a cousin’s wedding.

I knew Morgan through Lea, my former colleague and her former flatmate. Lea had left the office, but we still met for coffee every few weeks, mostly so she could tell me what her new manager had done now. In May, we’d helped her move. Her sofa had got stuck on the top landing, and I’d suggested leaving it there and calling the landing a living room. Morgan had laughed until she had to sit on the stairs. At the housewarming, I’d wanted to make her laugh again. Instead, I’d asked where to put my coat.

That was pretty much our relationship. Furniture and outerwear.

I’d sent Lea a photo of the invitation.

She asked me for your address, she’d replied. You’re coming, right?

Then, before I could answer: Please come.

For once, I’d said yes before I could work out a reason not to.

Now I take my hand out of my pocket and press the bell.

Footsteps approach. The skeleton judders as the door opens.

“There you are!”

Lea has silver stars scattered through her hair and a pair of white wings strapped over a gold dress. One wing has folded against the doorframe. Her white ankle socks have more stars on them, half of which are fraying off. She pulls me into a hug before I can warn her about the wine.

“Careful. I’m carrying a very expensive bottle of whatever was on offer.”

“Good. We’ve nearly finished the first round of whatever was on offer.”

She smells of vanilla and the perfume she used to spray in the staff toilets before going out on Fridays. For a second, I’m back there, holding her bag.

I let myself hug her properly. She doesn’t let go straight away. When she finally draws back, her hands stay on my arms a moment longer, as if she’s checking I’m real.

“You look good,” she says.

“You have a feather in your mouth.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

She pulls it from her lipstick and inspects it with deep personal disgust.

“They’ve been doing this all night.”

Warm air rolls over me: orange peel, buttery pastry, damp wool. Boots and trainers crowd beneath a bench in the narrow hallway. Apparently it’s a shoes-off flat. Someone has put googly eyes on the thermostat.

My shoulders drop a little.

Lea takes the bottle and nudges the door shut with her heel. The skeleton rattles behind me.

I sit on the bench to pull off my boots and tuck them beside the others. The floor is cool through my socks.

“Coat on the bed in there,” Lea says, pointing. “Bathroom’s on the left.”

I leave my coat among a leather jacket, a feathered cape and half a wedding dress. My invitation stays in the pocket. Bringing it suddenly feels ridiculous, as if someone might scan it before letting me near the crisps.

When I return to the hallway, Lea is waiting with two glasses.

“Apple and ginger,” she says. “Rum’s in the kitchen if you want some.”

I take a sip. Cold, sharp, sweeter than I expect. Lea steers me down the hall, one hand light against my back.

The living room opens wide at the end of it. Paper bats trail across one wall, their wings lifting whenever someone passes. Strings of orange lights hang around the windows. Beyond the glass, rain breaks the streetlamps into long, trembling lines.

A woman in a bloodstained wedding veil sits on the arm of the sofa, telling a story nobody is allowed to interrupt. Beside her, someone with silver cheekbones holds a plate under her dripping pizza and keeps reaching past the bride to skip songs on the speaker. The bride keeps reaching back to skip them back. In the adjoining kitchen, a woman leans against the counter, scrolling through her phone with her back to the oven.

“They’re done,” she announces, without looking round.

“They were done ten minutes ago,” someone answers.

“Then they’re very done.”

I didn’t hear a timer. She must have one on her phone.

In the middle of the room stands a long pine table on heavy square legs, the kind that has survived several house moves and at least one person dancing on it. The crossbar between the legs has been worn pale where people rest their feet. Bowls of sweets and crisps crowd around candles in mismatched holders. A green bottle has disappeared beneath layers of wax. Someone has abandoned a plastic spider on the cheese board, halfway up a wedge of cheddar.

Jules, from the move, leans against the table in red horns and a black dress. She looks up as we approach.

“Vicky! Thank Christ. Someone sensible.”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” I say.

“Tell Lea I helped with the sofa.”

“You held the front door open.”

“Essential work.”

“With your foot. While eating a sandwich.”

“Multitasking.”

She moves a bowl to make room for my glass, then offers me a plate. I take it, grateful for something to do with my hands.

The woman from the kitchen emerges with a tray of pastry fingers. Most of the almond fingernails have fallen off.

“Don’t say anything,” she tells us.

Jules examines one. “Was the accident at work?”

“Eat it, bitch.”

“I just think it might be entitled to compensation.”

I laugh, and the woman with the tray joins in as Jules takes a bite. Something unclenches beneath my ribs.

Lea introduces me to the woman with the tray. Anna. By the time I’ve met the bride and the woman with the silver cheekbones, I’ve retained Anna and absolutely nothing else.

“Oh, you’re Vicky,” the bride says.

“Usually.”

She laughs and shifts along the sofa arm, making space. “I love the ears.”

“They’ve had a difficult journey.”

“So have I.” She gathers her dress out of my way.

I settle beside her as the conversation moves to a wedding where the groom’s mother apparently brought her own microphone.

Lea disappears into the kitchen to open the wine. Jules stays close enough to draw me back in whenever I start drifting out of the conversation. She does it easily, asking what I think, waiting for the answer. After a while, I stop checking my phone. There’s nothing on it that needs me.

There’s a photograph on the shelf beside me: Lea, Jules and Morgan on a windswept beach, huddled together with several women I recognise from the room. Lea’s hair is plastered to her face. Morgan has sand on one knee. They’re all laughing.

I’d have liked to be there.

The thought arrives so plainly that I look away from the photograph.

At twenty-six, I have people I can ask for a drink. Most of the time we even mean it when we say we should arrange something. Then somebody works late, somebody gets ill, and a proposed Thursday quietly becomes a vague intention to meet before Christmas.

Here, the bride reaches for a glass and gets the right one handed to her without asking. Jules mentions Sunday, and Lea calls from the kitchen that she’ll bring bread. Nobody asks what’s happening on Sunday.

I wipe a pastry crumb from my thumb and wonder how long it takes to get to that part.

“Vicky, settle something,” Jules says.

I look up.

“A man says he’s coming as a ghost, then doesn’t turn up. Costume or being a prick?”

“Did he tell you before or after?”

“After.”

“Prick. A ghost would have made more effort to haunt you.”

Lea laughs from the doorway. Her eyes find mine across the room and stay there, bright with it, until Jules raises her glass to me.

“Exactly.”

I tell them about a former colleague who lost his vampire fang in the hummus at a work party. Lea remembers the wrong man, then comes over with her phone and proves, infuriatingly, that she’s right. Somehow that turns into my landlord, who has been promising to fix my bathroom window since August and last week sent me a link to a video about draught excluders.

“He can’t do that,” Anna says through a mouthful of pastry. “He has to repair it. I’ll send you the letter.”

“You have a letter?”

“I have several letters.”

I came in checking every sentence for ways it might make me sound like a complete dickhead. Somewhere around the hummus, I stopped.

For several minutes, I forget about the invitation in my coat pocket.

Then the bride leans towards me to see Lea’s photo, and I catch her looking past my shoulder. Her smile settles into something smaller. She gives a slight nod.

I turn. Someone moves out of sight towards the kitchen.

“Sorry,” I say, though nobody has asked me anything.

“What for?” Lea looks up from her phone.

“Nothing. Thought I was in the way.”

She bumps her shoulder against mine and returns to the photograph.

People are allowed to look at each other. I’ve been doing it all evening. Still, I wipe my palm against my jeans.

Lea gets called away to help find a bottle opener. Her fingers brush my shoulder as she goes. The bride follows her, explaining loudly that she can do it with a lighter, which inspires very little confidence. Jules goes to watch.

I stay beside the table, finishing my drink.

I want to stay until people start sitting on the floor. Be here when someone says something stupid enough to become a story next Sunday. The wanting makes me feel exposed.

Behind me, paper rustles.

The bats on the wall are lifting their wings, all of them at once, the way they do whenever someone walks past. Nobody is walking past. The nearest person is Anna, in the kitchen, with her back to me.

I glance at the window. It’s shut. Rain runs down the outside of the glass.

Draught, I decide, the way you decide a noise in the night is the fridge.

The bats settle. On the table, every candle flame leans in the same direction, as if a door has opened somewhere behind me.

In the dark window, a small silver crescent catches the light beside my reflection.

I turn.

Morgan is standing next to me, close enough for the loose sleeve of her black dress to brush my wrist.

She’s the only person here not wearing a costume. Long black dress, rings on three fingers, the crescent at her throat. Dark hair pinned up loosely, a few strands escaping at the nape of her neck. On anyone else, it would look like effort. On Morgan, it looks as though she’s dressed this way for a few hundred years and the rest of us are catching up.

Her eyes are very dark. They don’t wander round the room the way everyone else’s do. They stay on me.

“I’m glad you came.”

“Me too,” I say. “Everyone’s been lovely.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I usually need at least a week’s notice before enjoying myself.”

Morgan smiles, and I recognise the woman laughing on Lea’s stairs while we held the sofa. I smile back.

“Can I borrow you for a few minutes?”

“Does anything need carrying?”

“You’ve done enough of that for Lea.”

She glances towards the hall. “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about. Somewhere we can hear ourselves think.”

My mind immediately begins reviewing everything I’ve said since arriving.

“Sure.”

I set down my glass and follow her. In the kitchen, Lea is working the recovered bottle opener into a cork. She looks up. Her gaze moves from me to Morgan and stays there a beat too long. Then she smiles at me, quick and bright, and the corkscrew slips sideways.

Morgan leads me past the bedroom where I left my coat. At the end of the hallway, she opens a door. Two small flames stir in the movement of air.

I stop behind her.

A small table stands in the middle of the room. Two candles burn in low brass holders. Two chairs face each other across it; beyond them, the room disappears into darkness. I can just make out a curtain and a pale strip of wall.

On the table, between the candles, lies a deck of cards.

“Oh,” I say. “You’ve gone all out.”

The floorboards creak beneath my socks. Behind me, the latch clicks, reducing the music to a dull pulse. Morgan walks past me to the far chair.

“I had a dream about you,” she says.

I look from her to the candles.

“Please tell me I was wearing clothes.”

She laughs softly, drawing out her chair.

“I couldn’t see you.”

“Right. Excellent start.”

She sits. Candlelight catches the silver crescent against the black dress.

“It was three nights ago. We were all here, around the table in the other room. I remember counting us. Every time I reached the end, I felt I’d missed someone.”

I stay behind the empty chair, resting my fingers on its back.

“Then I heard you laugh. You were close, but I couldn’t see where you were. Nobody else seemed surprised.”

“Maybe they’d found somewhere better to hide me.”

Morgan looks at me for a moment.

“You were part of the gathering. I was certain of that. When I tried to find you, I woke up.”

I glance at the deck. “And the cards?”

“I read them the next morning. Since then, I’ve asked in different ways, at different times. They keep bringing me back to you.”

“Hang on. Three nights ago? Your letter came two weeks ago.”

“Yours was the first invitation I wrote. Your name, the address, that last line.” Her fingers rest beside the deck. “I remember writing it. I don’t remember choosing the words. I hadn’t decided to invite you yet.”

“So you skipped the part where you thought about it.”

“Sometimes the calling reaches the hand before it reaches the mind. We answer before we understand what’s asking.” She glances at the cards. “The dream was the first glimpse of why.”

“Right. I have absolutely no idea what any of that means.”

I’d liked imagining Morgan pausing over the page, choosing words to make me feel welcome. Now I picture her hand moving before she knows what it’s going to write.

“So these aren’t Halloween decorations?”

She laughs under her breath. Then, slowly, she shakes her head.

My fingers tighten around the chair back.

“Everyone in the other room belongs to the Blackthorn Coven,” she says.

I grin. The name sounds like it should be carved over a haunted boarding school. It’s a lot of commitment to a Halloween bit.

Morgan stays serious. I look at the door. No delighted shriek from Lea. No phone held up to record my face.

“Please sit down, Vicky.”

One chair leg catches against a floorboard as I sit. The table is small enough for me to reach her hands. I leave mine in my lap.

“Everyone?” I ask. “Jules, the woman in the wedding dress—all of them are witches?”

“Yes. Every woman you met out there belongs to Blackthorn.”

“And Lea knows about this?”

“Lea is one of us, Vicky.”

“No, I mean—” I stop, because I know exactly what she means. “She’s actually a witch?”

“Yes,” Morgan says gently. “She has been the whole time you’ve known her.”

Lea once called me from a changing room because she couldn’t get a dress over her head. I’d had to go in and rescue her while she threatened to cut herself out with the scissors from her handbag.

And that woman thinks she’s a witch.

“She’s never said anything.”

“We keep it to ourselves.”

“Well, she’s fucking good at that. And you run it?”

“For the last five years. My grandmother led Blackthorn before me. It was already old when her grandmother joined.”

“She left it to you?”

“The cards chose me after she died.”

“Oh.” My eyes drop to the deck. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

I think of Lea’s smile as we passed the kitchen. The corkscrew slipping. The bride’s glance over my shoulder. How easily they’d all made room for me.

“Did they know you were going to bring me in here?”

“They knew I wanted to speak to you.”

“About this.”

“Yes.”

I’d been pleased with myself for managing a conversation. They’d all known there was another one waiting behind this door.

“The dream showed me you belonged with us,” Morgan says. “Every reading since has confirmed it. There’s a place for you here.”

I hate how much I still want her to say it again.

“Morgan, I don’t even believe in witchcraft.”

One corner of her mouth lifts.

“You wouldn’t join us as a witch.”

“Right. Sorry. What?”

“You have to be born a witch. There’s no way to become one.”

“Of course. Entry requirements.”

Even in this ridiculous conversation, I’ve found the part I don’t qualify for.

“You can belong to us without being one.”

“Then what would I be?”

“The cards have shown me another path for you. I’d like to lay them one last time, with you here, to see whether what they’ve been showing me holds true.”

I could get up. Ask Lea what the hell is going on. Find my coat and spend the journey home composing a message I probably wouldn’t send.

Part of me wants Morgan to laugh and tell me they do this to everyone. I’m afraid the part about wanting me here would turn out to be a joke too.

“What would I have to do?”

“Let me read for you. We’ll look at what comes up together.”

I still think this is bullshit. I also want to be invited back. All she’s asking me to do is watch her turn over a few cards.

“Okay,” I say. “You can read the cards.” She looks a little too pleased, so I add, “Just the cards. We haven’t got as far as membership fees.”

Her mouth curves. She begins to shuffle, her rings flashing between the candles. Then her lips move.

At first I lean forward, ready to ask her to repeat herself. But the words keep coming, low and unfamiliar. She doesn’t look up. The cards whisper beneath her voice.

I sit back slowly.

On the tabletop, the shadow of her hands opens and closes between the two flames.

Morgan falls silent halfway through a shuffle.

She sets the deck between us.

“Cut them for me.”

The edges feel almost furry where the layers have begun to separate. I lift a section and put it beside the rest. Morgan gathers them, then lays three face down.

She turns over the first card.

A woman stands outside a doorway in a stone wall. Something gold glows beyond it. Her hand reaches towards the empty space where a door ought to be.

The Threshold.

“Someone outside the circle,” Morgan says. “Someone who can be invited in.”

“You’ve just told me I’m the only person here who isn’t in your club. That one feels fairly easy.”

“It’s appeared in every reading I’ve done about you.”

Which would be more impressive if I’d been here for any of them.

Morgan turns over the second card.

This woman is standing beneath a tree. Its branches curl over her shoulders and down her arms, black thorns scattered with tiny silver stars. At first I think she’s holding it up. Then I notice the curve of her back.

The Burden.

“Using the old powers leaves something behind,” Morgan says. “Even when the work is finished.”

“Like a hangover.”

“Sometimes.” She studies the card. “Sometimes I sleep all night and wake still hearing a voice I called three days earlier.”

“That sounds like a voice you should stop calling.”

Her eyes lift to mine.

“There are things worth hearing.”

She takes a brown leather book from a shallow drawer and opens it at a faded red ribbon. Slanting characters crowd the page, which ends mid-line where the lower edge has been torn away. Tucked beside it is a sheet of notes in her own handwriting. One line near the bottom has been underlined twice. I read it upside down before I can stop myself.

The hands reach beyond the world. The feet remember the way home.

“I found this while studying some of the older writings.”

“What the gifted cannot lay aside, the unmarked may receive,” she reads. “Let the burden pass beneath their feet, that those who bear the Art may rise renewed.”

“Is there a version of that for people who didn’t take Advanced Witch?” I ask.

“A person without magic might give us a way to recover. More completely than we can on our own.”

“And you think that person is me.”

“I think that’s why you’ve kept appearing.”

She turns over the third.

Pale roots twist against dark earth, rising into a trunk that disappears beyond the card’s edge. I lean closer. A person lies among them, knees drawn up, one hand against a root. The face is turned away.

The Root.

Morgan’s fingers stop. She studies the card until I start watching her instead.

“Is that a good one?” I ask.

“Yes.” The word is barely louder than a breath. Her thumb presses into the wood beside the card. “Very.”

Something about her expression makes me wish I hadn’t asked.

“The text describes a living ground,” she says. “Someone untouched by the powers we carry. Through contact with that person, the weight of them can begin to lift.”

“Contact.”

“Yes.”

I glance at her hands, then at mine.

“So I sit with you? Hold hands? What?”

Morgan moves the book closer to the candle.

“Through the feet.”

I look at her.

“What?”

“You would lie beneath the table, where we could rest our feet on you.”

For a few seconds, I’m convinced I’ve missed a word.

“The table in the living room?”

“Yes.”

I think of the pizza, the glasses round the crisps. The pale crossbar.

“You want me underneath it.”

“That would put you within reach of the whole circle.”

“Convenient.”

She closes the book over the ribbon.

“You wouldn’t have to perform anything. There are no words to learn.”

“Because I’d be occupied being furniture?”

“Because the contact itself is what matters.”

I sit back. The chair gives a small creak beneath me.

“And you’d all be doing spells or whatever?”

“We wouldn’t need to. The effects of the powers stay with us after we’ve finished working. We could spend the evening talking, as we are now. The contact should allow us to rest.”

“While I lie on the floor.”

She hesitates.

“Yes.”

At least she says it.

A chair scrapes beyond the door. They’re probably opening another bottle. I’m being offered a position beneath the dining table by a woman with a leather-bound justification for it.

“Who did this before me?”

“No one.”

I turn back.

“You mean no one’s ever tried?”

“I haven’t found an account of it.”

“So you don’t know if it works.”

“I know what the text describes. And every time I’ve asked the cards about it, they’ve brought me back to you.” She touches the edge of the third card. “Now this, with you here.”

“They’re pictures, Morgan.”

Her hand stays beside the card.

“I understand how it sounds.”

I’m not sure she does.

I shift my feet away from hers, although they weren’t touching.

“What would happen to me?”

“That’s part of what I want to understand.”

“Comforting.”

She takes a breath.

“I think you could have a place in Blackthorn that none of us can fill.”

There it is again. A place for me.

I’d like one of the chairs. A chance to complain about my week while someone passes the crisps. Somehow we’re discussing whether I could improve everyone’s evening by lying under their feet.

“And what would you get out of it? Apart from a very accommodating guest.”

“If we could recover properly, we could go further. Work with things we’ve had to leave alone.”

She leans towards me as she says it. For the first time since she opened the book, she looks almost eager.

“We spend so much of ourselves enduring what comes afterwards. Imagine what we could do if we didn’t have to.”

Her eyes have gone somewhere past me, somewhere I can’t follow. It takes her a second to come back.

I stare at her.

“So you’re telling me I should become everyone’s doormat so your weird little cult feels powerful?”

Morgan goes still.

“I can show you something,” she says.

She moves the book away from the candles and sets both hands flat on the table.

“Watch.”

The candle nearest her shifts.

I look at the table leg, expecting to find her foot against it. Then the brass holder lifts clear of the wood. The candle comes with it.

I stop breathing. There’s a gap underneath, widening until I can see the scratched tabletop through it.

The other holder rises.

Both candles hang above the table, flames trembling at the tips. The light moves up Morgan’s face. Her hands lie where she put them, fingers spread against the wood.

“Okay,” I say.

I look up at the dark ceiling. Threads. Something attached to the holders. Some expensive Halloween bullshit I’ve never heard of.

The nearer candle moves towards me.

I push back so hard that one chair leg catches in the same uneven board as before.

“Don’t bring it closer.”

It stops. Morgan’s hands haven’t moved.

“There’s nothing under it,” she says.

“That I can see.”

I lean sideways.

The holder is beyond the edge of the table now. Beneath it there’s only darkness and my knee. A bead of wax works its way down the candle and gathers on the brass rim.

I pass my hand underneath. Empty air. I turn my palm upwards, keeping clear of the metal, then draw it back.

“Above it too,” Morgan says.

I brace one hand on my knee and pass the other above the flame. Heat brushes my palm. Nothing catches against my fingers.

The wax bead drops from the rim and lands on the back of my other hand.

“Shit.”

I wipe it away. It leaves a small, hot patch on my skin.

The candle keeps floating.

Morgan watches my face with terrible patience, waiting for me to run out of explanations.

“Put them down.”

Both candles drift back, their holders meeting the wood with soft clicks. Morgan folds her hands beside the book.

I stay pressed against the back of my chair.

Lea laughs through the wall. I want her to explain the trick. I’m afraid she’d only ask why I’m making such a fuss.

“How did you do that?”

“I wanted them to.”

I rub the wax burn. I’ve watched people on television make cars disappear. Two candles shouldn’t knock a hole in the world.

But I can still feel the empty space beneath that holder.

My gaze moves to the three cards, then back to her hands.

“Even if that was what you say it was,” I manage, “it doesn’t mean the thing in your book works.”

“No,” Morgan says. “That’s what I’d like to find out.”

I look at the book beside her hands.

Earlier tonight, my biggest concern was whether anyone would notice if I ate a third piece of pizza. I would like to return to that stage of the evening. I had the qualifications for it.

“I need a minute.”

“Of course.”

Morgan glances towards the door.

“Open it.”

The handle catches a stripe of candlelight. Bass pulses beyond the wall.

“Why?”

“There’s something I’d like you to see.”

I turn back to her. “If this is another candle, I’m going to be really fucking annoyed.”

“It isn’t.”

I ease my chair free of the floorboard. My knees feel unreliable, and I steady myself against the table before crossing to the door.

The handle is solid and cool. Ordinary metal, slightly loose in its fitting. I press it down and pull.

Cold air slips across my ankles.

I stop. Wet earth, something green and bitter: the smell of woods after rain.

I pull a little further.

The hallway is gone.

A tree stands where the bedroom door should be. Its trunk is wider than my body, furrowed bark silver along one side. Beyond it, more trunks crowd together, then separate around a stretch of low ground filled with ferns. Pale mist rests among them. Higher up, branches cross a sky so clear I can see stars through the gaps.

I open the door all the way. A wooded slope rises until I can no longer tell where the forest ends and the night begins.

“What the actual fuck.”

Nothing about the view changes when I say it.

A drop ticks against a leaf. Further off, water moves over stones. Further still, so low I feel it in my back teeth more than I hear it, something hums. Three times, each note lower than the last.

Then there’s only the water.

My hand tightens on the handle.

“Morgan.”

“I’m here.”

“Where’s your hallway?”

“Still there.”

I stare at the nearest tree.

“That’s a fairly significant decorating choice, then.”

I’m talking because the alternative is standing here with my mouth open.

There has to be a screen, fans somewhere I can’t see. Rich people hire entire fucking orchestras to propose to each other. Someone must hire this.

I let go of the handle and reach through.

Nothing meets my fingers.

A breeze turns a leaf, exposing its pale underside. The trees remain exactly where they are.

The screen must be further back.

I put one foot over the threshold.

The ground yields.

Cold water presses through my sock. I catch the frame and look down. Brown leaves lie crushed beneath my foot. The fabric is turning dark.

For a second I just watch the wet patch spread.

Then I step through with the other foot.

Something narrow digs into my sole. A twig. I shift away from it, and mud works cold between my toes through the weave. The air reaches under my sleeves. I can feel each breath against the back of my throat.

I’ve stopped thinking about the screen.

I take three careful steps to the nearest tree. A root rises from the ground beneath a skin of moss.

I lay my palm against the trunk.

The bark is rough enough to catch my skin. Water sits in its grooves. A small piece breaks beneath my thumb, leaving a dark crumb stuck to me.

I rub it between my fingers.

Above my head, the canopy stirs with a sound like a long breath. I look up. Branches spread far beyond the light coming through the door, their smallest twigs black against the stars. There is too much space above them. Too much cold air between me and the sky.

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

I turn towards Morgan.

She has followed me as far as the doorway. One shoulder rests against the frame; her arms hang loose at her sides. Behind her, the candles burn on the little table. I can see the back of my empty chair and the three cards beyond it.

To her left stands a cluster of pale trees.

To her right, a fallen trunk lies half-buried in ferns.

There is no wall between them.

I move sideways. A candle disappears behind Morgan; the curtain comes into view. Outside the frame, moonlight catches a shrub. I can see straight through its branches.

No house.

Just that rectangle of warm light, standing among the trees.

I press my hand harder against the trunk behind me.

“You…” My voice catches. I swallow. “You were serious?”

“Yes, Vicky. We’re witches.”

Her gaze moves past me, into the forest.

“We stand between your world and this one.”

I look where she’s looking. Only the leaves move. I’ve been speaking very loudly in a place where I don’t know who might be listening.

“What is this place?”

“One I know.”

It isn’t much of an answer. A few minutes ago, I would have told her so.

Now I look at the lit doorway and try to remember how many steps I’ve taken away from it.

Morgan straightens.

“Come back in. You’re cold.”

I hadn’t noticed the shivering until she said it. I walk carefully through the leaves. She steps aside.

My foot lands on a floorboard.

The sudden hardness nearly makes me stumble. I catch the back of my chair. Warm air closes around my face, smelling of candle wax and food.

I turn quickly.

The forest is still there.

Morgan puts her hand on the door and draws it shut. The tree narrows to a strip of silver bark, then disappears. The latch clicks.

Someone on the other side laughs.

I stare at the door.

“Open it again.”

Morgan does.

The hallway stretches away from us. Coats hang from a hook near the far end. A pair of abandoned trainers sits crookedly beside the bench. From the kitchen comes the clink of glass and Lea saying, “No, the other one.”

I can’t make myself move.

Morgan closes the door gently.

“Sit down.”

This time I do.

There are damp marks on the floor between my chair and the door. One is almost a complete footprint. A brown leaf clings to the side of my right sock, folded around the curve of my ankle.

I bend to pull it off, then stop.

Water shines along its central vein.

I leave it where it is.

Morgan goes back to her chair. For a while neither of us speaks. I rub my fingers together, dislodging the bit of bark. It falls onto my jeans.

Lea had listened to me complain about a broken coffee machine while knowing there were doors that opened into another world.

“How does she do it?”

Morgan follows my glance towards the door.

“Lea?”

I nod. “Go to work. Sit next to me. Ask if I want a coffee.” I press my palms together. They’re still cold. “How does she know all this is here and just…”

I can’t find the rest.

“She’s had a long time to get used to it,” Morgan says.

Someone laughs on the other side of the wall. I listen until it stops.

A bead of water gathers at the tip of the leaf. I watch it fall onto the floorboard.

I’ve always known the difference between things that happen and things people make up. A door opens into the room behind it. Lea goes home to a flat I could find on a map.

The water has left a dark spot on the wood.

What else have I been wrong about?

I look into the corners of the room, as if something might be standing in them. Curtain. Scratched table. A song I recognise through the wall. Ordinary things, and none of them feel ordinary any more.

I try to start with what I know. Every time, I get as far as that can’t happen, and the mud between my toes disagrees.

Morgan waits on the other side of the table. She knew what would be behind that door. She watched me walk through it.

I look at her hands, resting beside the book, and realise I’m waiting for her to tell me what happens next.

“Okay,” I say. “What should I do now?”

“If you feel ready, kneel here.” She indicates the floor beside her chair. “Next to me.”

I follow the movement of her hand. A patch of floor beside a chair.

All evening, I’ve wanted one of the chairs.

But I can understand a patch of floor. It’s the first thing in ten minutes that makes sense.

I take a deep breath and stand.

The walk around the table is awkward. There isn’t quite enough room between my chair and the wall, and I have to turn sideways to get past. Morgan moves her own chair back a little, then turns towards me as I lower myself onto the floor.

The boards press hard against my knees. Up close, I notice a loose thread hanging from the hem of her dress.

Her foot is small, covered by a plain black trainer sock. It rests beside the chair leg. I look at it, then up at her.

She lifts her foot. I hold still as it touches my cheek.

The fabric is warm. Warmer than the room. The ball of her foot settles first, then she shifts, a small, deliberate adjustment, until the toes rest exactly across the bridge of my nose. I can feel the seam of the sock against my skin and, underneath it, the slight give of each toe. The smell reaches me a second later: not sharp, just the low, lived-in warmth of cotton that has been worn all day. A little sour, like the inside of a trainer. I breathe in without meaning to, and it fills the space between us.

My first thought is that it smells like a week of PE.

My second thought never quite forms.

I try to turn my head, just enough to clear my nose. The pressure increases by a fraction. Not hard. Just enough that the toes stay where they are. Heat spreads across my face anyway, sudden enough to make me flinch. It travels down the side of my neck and reaches my chest before I can decide whether to say something. I draw breath. The warmth goes with it, deep beneath my ribs, then out through my arms to the fingers resting on my thighs. The smell stays. Every inhale pulls it in again.

It feels like coming indoors after being cold for hours. For a second, I think that’s all it is. Then it reaches my legs, and the chill in my wet socks disappears.

I can still feel the floor beneath my knees. The tightness between my shoulders is fading. My jaw loosens. The toes don’t move. Each breath seems to take longer than the last.

The candlelight blurs at the edge of my vision. The music through the wall goes soft and far away, like a party in someone else’s flat.

I blink slowly. Somewhere nearby, a chair creaks. I try to turn towards the sound and forget, halfway through, what I meant to look at. The toes stay exactly where she put them.

Then the contact breaks.

Cold catches my cheek. I draw a sharp breath, and the room comes back all at once: the hard floor, the edge of the table above me, music beating faintly through the wall. The smell is still in my nose.

My hands have gone slack on my thighs. I lift one, looking at it as if I’ve only just remembered it’s mine.

“Morgan?”

She has pulled her foot back beneath the chair. One hand grips the seat; the other is pressed flat against her chest. Her eyes are wide and fixed on me. She’s looking at me the way I looked at the forest.

Her lips part.

“It works…”