The Magpie Effect - The Magpie Chronicles Book 1 (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 10.2

It was nearing four o' clock by the time I reached the front door - which, by no stroke of coincidence, was the same time I usually arrived home from school. My mother would never know I'd cut the whole day and spent it elsewhere; I felt like a master of artifice. When I reached to push the front door open, however, it swung towards me.

I jumped back with a yelp and felt the entirety of my wellbeing deflate at the sight of Edith Vespin. A faint look of disgust passed over her face at the sight of me, one that probably echoed my own.

"Oh, Sapphire," she said, and forced a smile that looked entirely unnatural beneath those pointed, waspy eyes. "What are you doing here?"

Edith Vespin. This woman had brought into the world the one person that I could truly confess to hating. The one person in town that I wanted bad things to happen to. And the worst part was that Carmen looked exactly like her. They'd crawled out of the same rotten hive. They were the same, right down to the toxic stripes and the barbed stingers.

"I live here," I said. I made no move to conceal the bluntness from my voice.

Edith passed a tongue over her teeth, as though testing their sharpness. "How funny," she said. "Tell me, how was school today?"

My blood turned to ice in my veins. She knew. Somehow - although the mystery was doubtlessly alleviated by the existence of her daughter -the head magpie had got her talons on the one scrap of information that I wanted to keep away from my mother.

As though she'd heard her name spoken in my thoughts, Vivian appeared in the background, a full two heads shorter than Edith. Her face was bright with fury that, when Edith glanced at her, turned into a well-composed - albeit violently purple - smile.

"Vivian, I'll see you at the next meeting," she said. "I hope you're taking notes on Austen's Jane Eyre."

"That's Charlotte Bronte," I blurted out.

Edith blinked at me. "Pardon?"

"Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, not Jane Austen, ma'am." I'd never used the term 'ma'am' before, but decorum seemed an appropriate way to chide her.

I could see the contempt bubbling up behind Edith's countenance like lava. "Oh, yes, how careless of me. Well, after all the profound insights you brought up last week, Vivian, we're expecting nothing short of brilliance at the next meeting. Chow for now!"

And with a gloved wave of her hand, she brushed passed me and vanished. I looked back at my mother. "Chow for now? Who says 'chow for now'?"

I forced a meek laugh, which was immediately obliterated by the return of my mother's rage. Her head looked like the swollen glazed cherry on top of the cake.

"Who says 'chow for now'? I'll tell you who says 'chow for now'!" Vivian boomed, grabbing me by the arm and yanking me inside with a single last glance at the street outside. "You. You will be saying chow to your social life when I ban you from leaving your bedroom until Christmas!"

She shoved me on the shoulder, and I landed with thud on the sofa. The pillows released a puff of air, as though Vivian had spent the whole afternoon fluffing them up with a balloon-pump. "You know, your idea of punishment sounds like my idea of heaven."

"Well then I'll make you join a club or something! A drama club, or a debate team or something else that requires copious amount of human interaction!" Vivian's voice reached a piercing crescendo, and I instinctively narrowed my eyes as though that would somehow lessen the blow to my ears. "Skipping a whole day of school, Sapphire? What's gotten into you? Where have you been all day?"