Chapter Text
Mae pulled Rebecca’s small frame into her arms as they stared up at the night sky overhead. “For more than 200 years,” she said coolly into the darkness, “we Welton women have been blamed for everything that's ever gone wrong in this city.”
“Is that why people hate us so much, Aunt Mae?” Rebecca asked in her tiny voice.
The older woman chuckled. “They don't hate us, sweetheart. We just make them a little nervous.”
Cheryl scoffed from the other end of the porch, taking a sip of her tea. “Let's face it, Mae, Weltons have always created a stir. It all began with your ancestor, Maria. The first witch in our family.” She booped Flo on the nose. “You two are the most recent in a long and distinguished line.”
“Is that why they wanted to hang her?” Flo asked. “Because she was a witch?”
“The fact that she was a bit of a heartbreaker didn't help,” Mae said ruefully. “Nor did it help that most of her lovers had wives on the hanging committee.”
“But no,” Cheryl said, “I didn't think it was either of those reasons. They feared her because she had a gift of power that has been passed on to you children. She had the gift of magic, and it was this very gift that saved her life. She was imprisoned in this very neighborhood, only a few blocks from us now.”
Mae nodded sadly. “With her unborn child growing inside her belly, she waited for her lover to rescue her, but he never came. No one came. So, in a moment of despair, she cast a spell upon herself that she would never again feel the agony of love. But as her bitterness grew the spell turned into a curse. A curse on any Welton, that anyone who loved them would turn on them and betray them. That they would never recover from it when they did.”
“That’s how mummy died, isn’t it?” Rebecca asked softly, her eyes fixed on the glimmering Thames.
Mae squeezed her tighter and nodded. “Your mother had a choice between revenge and heartbreak.”
Cheryl nodded sadly. “She was always soft-hearted.”
“Rather than let anger and bitterness corrupt her,” Mae sighed, “she was consumed by the sadness.”
“She died of a broken heart,” Cheryl said finally.
Rebecca exhaled a harrowed breath. “I won’t ever fall in love,” she said solemnly.
Her Aunt Mae hummed and combed her fingers through the girl’s hair. “Poor dear,” she said gently, “it’s not always up to you.”
The next night Rebecca pored over her aunts’ books, Flo trailing her curiously. She grabbed shears twice the size of her head and clipped a blush pink rose from the towering plant in the garden, then gathered herbs from around the chaotic system of the greenhouse.
“He can make the best biscuits in the whole world,” she murmured deliberately, picking petals off her rose. “He’ll be marvelously kind. He’ll have a silly voice and a funny name and a mustache.”
Flo giggled. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Summoning up a true love spell. Amas Veritas,” she replied stoically, still focused on her task. “He’ll play football with his hands,” she continued, “and he’ll hate tea.”
“I thought you never wanted to fall in love,” Flo teased, sidling up to her sister. She followed her gaze out over the river, and Rebecca threw the last of her castings out on the rippling water with intent.
“That’s the point,” Rebecca said firmly. “The man I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist, I'll never die of a broken heart.”
-
thirty-six years later
“Mrs. Mannion… Mrs. Mannion?” Rebecca stared at the city drenched in rain from the picture window of her solicitor’s high rise office, his voice shattering the stillness that had settled in her mind.
“Welton, please,” she said calmly, turning to face him. “Ms. Welton.”
“Yes, of course,” he said apologetically, standing to meet her in the middle of the room, at the conference table. He laid a thick stack of papers down on the mahogany. “It’s all drawn up here as you requested. In terms of assets, Rupert will get, well, almost everything, and you’ll get—”
“The club,” she finished.
“Yes,” the man agreed with a nod. “It is rather uneven, Mrs—Ms. Welton. Are you sure you don’t want to go over it again?”
“Quite sure.” Rebecca pulled a pen from her purse and leaned over the table. “And do you know why?”
“Ah—no, ma’am, I do not.”
She traced her finger over the ridges of the printed text until she reached the dotted line at the bottom of the page. “Because,” she said lightly, scratching out a quick signature before looking up to flash him a wicked smirk, “this will hurt the most.”
-
Rebecca ran down the wet pavement, her high heels splattering through ever-growing puddles. She held the leather-bound folder her solicitor had handed her over her head as a practically pointless shield. On this, her day of victory, being taunted by nature in such a manner, she felt properly cursed. Of course she had felt it on the morning the Sun ran the exposé on Rupert’s extracurricular activities. She felt it in the chill of ice encapsulating her heart on the night she walked out the door of their home. But more than anything she felt it in moments like this. Moments of absolute mockery from the whole universe.
She felt the thrill of an impulse, long dormant, to make the problem simply go away . Easy spell, a mere flick of the wrist, to keep the rain off her body. But that would go against the deal she had made (one-sided, she knew now). She remembered it like it was yesterday, standing in the garden of her aunts’ house after her fourth date with Rupert, in a storm rather like this one. Please, she had whispered, under the hum of rainfall. Please let him love me. Just let me have him and keep him, and I promise I will never cast again. She had held up her end.
So why not go back on it now, it all having played out the way it did? She was certainly out of practice, but she had always been especially gifted. Maybe it was like riding a bike. A skill you could never forget, and a brand of freedom that would never stop tempting you.
She stilled in the middle of the pavement, getting jostled once, twice, by fellow pedestrians charging through the rain, numb to the insults tossed at her as she blocked their way. She lifted her hand, gazing at it, half-sure of its power, half doubting. A flick of the wrist.
The rain stopped, or so it seemed. She looked up at the sky to see the clouds were still overhead, the torrents still streamed down, but they dissolved before they could reach her. She looked around, and the people were still running, twisted umbrellas and soaked newspapers held over heads. But it didn’t touch her.
“Magic,” she said softly, smiling, as if greeting an old friend. It was a sense of power she hadn’t known for almost fifteen years. Fifteen years of restraint, of locking whole parts of herself away in the attic of her memory. She knew it wasn’t just magic that she’d given up for Rupert. Part of her wondered if it was indeed the curse that had turned him, or if he’d always been a little bit damned. If the curse had just helped him along.
Rebecca thought of the empty hotel room awaiting her. The loneliness. Her estate agent had had no luck yet finding her a suitable home. Whatever home they did find would be almost as cold and lonely as the frigid one she’d left.
Her feet were moving again before her mind recognized a decision made, and before she knew it, she was standing in front of that warped old house by the river, in a corner of town she’d long avoided. Her eyes followed up weathered siding, taking in the warm glow of the windows and the smoke wafting out the chimney into the rain. To a passerby it would probably look creepy and intimidating, but it beckoned Rebecca inside, promised tea and biscuits for breakfast and midnight mojitos. Again, with hardly any thought, she was pushing open the front gate.
The inside of the house hadn’t changed in the years that Rebecca’d been avoiding it. It still held centuries worth of collected knickknacks and chotchkies. The total commitment to nothing matching tricked the eye into finding inexplicable cohesion. Rebecca felt herself soften at the familiarity of it all.
“I told you she’d pop up.”
Appearing in the entry to the kitchen like an apparition was her Aunt Cheryl, looking chuffed.
“Last week you said Julie Andrews would come for tea,” Mae called as she descended the creaky stairs. “Forgive me for questioning your eye.”
“I stand by that premonition,” Cheryl said defiantly.
“It’s just timing you struggle with, isn’t it?” Rebecca offered as if no time had passed, as if she had been participating in this daily reprise of banter for the last fifteen years.
Mae reached the foyer to stand before Rebecca.
She paused, looked her up and down, and then squinted. “Have you grown taller?”
“I might have,” Rebecca said, considering the stilettos she’d taken to over the years, maybe in some desperate grasp at power. “One way or another.”
Cheryl nodded, joining Mae in front of her. “Suits you.”
The aunts weren’t ones to hold grudges or make things harder than they needed to be. Their souls were far too old for all of that, well-weathered by losses and curses. So they brewed some tea and scared up some spiced cakes, and they sat Rebecca down at the kitchen island to hear her retell the events from the past years, some they’d already heard about in the press, others that they had sensed without fine detail—shadows that had startled them awake in the middle of the night with a sickly feeling in the pit of their souls.
“It’s all my fault really,” Rebecca said, voice hushed and small. “I swore I would never leave room for the curse by never falling in love in the first place, and now…”
Cheryl tutted. “I never believed in that curse.”
“This from a woman who turned Madge McGovern into a toad for a weekend when she gave everyone a flower but you,” Mae scoffed.
“That was no curse, that was youth. Young women are dark and mysterious. Add witchcraft to puberty and you’re lucky if the whole class isn’t transformed into a menagerie.”
“How do you explain Rupert, then?” Rebecca said. “How do you explain this—this poisonous bitterness I feel?”
Cheryl and Mae exchanged a sorry glance, Cheryl pursing her lips thoughtfully. “He’s an awful man. He hurt you in a most evil way, my child.”
Mae took Rebecca’s hand. “Curse or no curse, that’s the truth.”
Rebecca nodded, not looking at them. “If it’s alright,” she said hesitantly after a moment, “I wondered if I might be able to stay here. Just until I find somewhere of my own.”
Mae smiled. “You are always welcome here, love. You’ll find we’ve hardly moved a thing in your bedroom.”
“Just added the Pilates machine,” Cheryl admitted. “It makes a smashing hat rack.”
Rebecca chuckled softly. “Thank you,” she said, and they fell into a silence, Rebecca worrying her thumb over the chipped mouth of her teacup.
“I always marveled at what a clever curse it was...” Mae said suddenly, with grave curiosity. “Soul-stealing misery for the tender-hearted, but a lifetime eaten away by bitterness—that is its own brand of damnation.” She paused, a slight frown wrinkling her features. “What do you have planned, Rebecca?”
Rebecca cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t plan to die broken-hearted like my mother. If that’s what you’re asking.” She huffed out a breath and stood up from her seat. “I think I’ll go to my room now if that’s alright.” Her voice had turned icy in a quick swing of mood, like she was a teenager again.
“Of course, dear,” Cheryl said, concern shadowing her voice.
When Rebeca disappeared from the kitchen, Cheryl turned to Mae with a shake of her head. “Is there nothing we can do?”
“No,” Mae said with certainty. “She’s on a path now.”
-
Rebecca reached the door of her old childhood bedroom, the one she had shared with Flo for over a decade. The familiar shape of the ancient brass doorknob stilled her hand for a moment, cool to the touch. It was like walking into a former life, a former self. With a bit of effort, she pushed the sticking door open.
“Hello, Stinky,” rang out a voice from inside the room. Rebecca’s head whipped up to see Flo sitting there on her old single bed. “Miss me?”
Rebecca blinked for a moment. “Oh my god,” she said, letting out a startled laugh. “How did you get in here?”
Flo slid to the edge of the bed. “You know the old tricks. Quick broom ride up to the window. Trap door in the cellar. Remember the time we shrunk down and snuck in through the doorbell? ’Course today I just took the front door.”
“The aunts know you’re here?”
“They know everything, don’t they?”
“That might be overstating it a bit,” Rebecca said with a roll of her eyes. She pulled off her coat and tossed it on her own bed across the room from Flo’s. “So why are you here?”
“Saw the papers.”
“That was months ago.”
Flo shrugged, smiling sadly. “Suppose I knew you'd come here. Felt it.”
Rebecca nodded solemnly. “It’s been a while since we…”
“Listened to the call,” Flo offered teasingly. She was always joking. “I know. Six years, is it?”
Six years ago—Nora’s sixth birthday party. Rebecca tried not to remember it. How she had begged Flo to keep things mundane, begged the aunts to wear outfits less conspicuous. How she’d prohibited magic at a child’s birthday party, her own niece’s. Rupert watching her impatiently, scowling at any show of maternal instinct. She had decided that night, alone in their bed after Rupert had disappeared to god knew where (though she had a better idea now), that it would be easier to retreat. Easier for everyone, if she simply removed herself from the equation.
“I’m so sorry, Sass,” she said, falling onto the bed beside her, the old nickname falling easily off her tongue.
“’Salright,” Flo said with a shrug. “Ancient history. You know it got me too?”
“What?”
Flo narrowed her eyes in jest. “The curse.” She smirked skeptically. “Derren and I got divorced.”
Rebecca’s mouth fell open. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
“Please, Stinky, you never liked him.”
“Are you—?”
“Feeling vengeful? Or particularly devastated?” She shrugged again. “Not really. You know, I’m not sure I ever really liked him either.” She paused, eyeing her sister. “What about you and old gray balls?”
Rebecca sighed and then pursed her lips as she considered what to say. “I did love him, I’m afraid,” she said softly. “Maybe I still do.”
Flo nodded stoically. “Fascinating.”
Rebecca gave her a playful smack on the arm. “You know how charming he could be.”
“The devil’s always charming,” Flo said instantly, her opinion of Rupert having solidified many years before. “So you’re…”
“Yes,” Rebecca said with a nod. “He’ll suffer.”
-
When the time finally came, Rebecca took her throne at the club with a flourish. It was clear to all that a new order had been imposed. With the help of burly movers, Rupert’s old shrines to masculinity were disassembled and sent away from the owner’s office, piece by piece. She brought in small pots of herbs from the aunts’ garden, shadow boxes for the walls showcasing butterflies and shiny beetles, hand-poured candles to light the room in the evenings. She accessorized her desk with precious stones and petrified wood to remind anyone who sat across from her that if nature would march on with or without them, so would she. When all was done, she gazed down upon her subjects from the grand windows of her perch. It would give her the perfect vantage to mind the chaos she planned on sowing.
After firing the team’s misogynistic manager, she had given Rupert’s leftover right-hand, Higgins, clear instructions: get the most inept human being you can find. She’d even given him a shortlist. A pair of bored actors who were looking to get into the world of professional football. Some teenaged gaming champion that she’d read about in the papers who was looking to burn some cash and goodwill. A wanker American football coach who did an embarrassing dance in his team locker room that she’d glimpsed on the telly one night.
On a morning a few weeks into her reign, Higgins poked his head in through her office door, the kit man at his tail. “Mrs. Ma—Ms. Welton?” he said, with his increasingly tedious diffidence. “The new gaffers have arrived.”
Rebecca stood from her desk, rounding it as two men leaned into her view through the door frame.
“Well,” she said, manufacturing a friendly smile for them, “bring them in.”
The mustachioed man extended his hand instantly, and she recoiled slightly at the warmth in his eyes. “Ted Lasso,” he said happily, and the twang of it crackled through her chest like a lightning bolt. “You must be Ms. Welton.”
“Please,” Rebecca mustered after a beat, taking his hand to shake, “call me Rebecca. Ms. Welton's my father.”
His eyes widened, the corner of his mouth lifting a bit more. “If that's a joke, I love it. If not, I cannot wait to unpack that with you.”
She flinched again at his sincerity, but he moved along, gesturing to his companion. “This here is Coach Beard.”
“It is so good to finally meet you both face-to-face.” She turned to Higgins. “Why don’t you take Coach Beard to get him their IDs, housing information… Anything they need.”
Once the other men had scurried off, Rebecca turned her attention to Ted. “How do you take your tea?”
He smiled charmingly. “Well, usually I take it right back to the counter 'cause someone's made a horrible mistake.”
Rebecca’s breath caught. “You don’t—like tea?”
She must have looked horrifically offended because his eyebrows lifted and he started waving his hands apologetically. “Oh no, I’m sorry,” he said. “That is not polite of me at all. I’ll take some tea—when in Rome, right?”
“No—please.” She waved him off, but even she could hear the anxiety in her own voice. “It’s just that—you have a funny voice and a silly name and—and you don’t like tea.”
The grin was returning slowly to his face as he watched her flounder. “Well, I’m from Kansas, Rebecca.”
There it was again, the bolt right through her body, this time at the sound of his voice caressing the consonants of her name. “Of course,” she said softly, slowly. Then—“American football is played with hands.”
“Yeah,” he said, a playful glint in his eye, properly beaming now. “Is this how ya’ll make small talk over here? Just pointin’ things out? I like that.”
“No, I’m sorry—don’t make a habit of it,” she said quickly. Her eyes narrowed on him. “You’re… reminding of someone, that’s all.”
“Oh.” His smile had already turned fond, his gaze curious and warm. “I hope it's someone you like.”