“You’re staying in town all day, aren’t you?” I asked. Her smile just got bigger and before I knew it, I was grinning right back at her. I’d love to have a baby or two around the farm, I just didn’t want to have them myself. “I don’t feel like walking back. Can I drive your car back home?”
“You sure can!”
“You doubled up on the Charisma too, didn’t you?” I laughed as she shrugged and batted her eyelashes at me. “Was there any room left in that drink for actual coffee?”
“Not much after I asked for a drop or two of Humor.”
“Just a drop or two, huh?”
“Maybe a half shot.”
“Geez, Dot. You’re going to OD,” I scolded her.
“You know that’s not actually possible,” she dismissed me, waving her hand.
“Just give me the keys.” I said. She dangled them in front of her, pulling them back three times as I grabbed for them until she finally gave me the keys. “Are you sure you didn’t end up with a shot of Childish?”
“Are you sure you didn’t order a shot of Cranky?”
I rolled my eyes, but I saw her point. “I’ll see you later.”
Dot rose from her seat as I did and threw her arms around me in a big hug. “Happy Hettymoot!”
I squeezed her back, but I was desperate to get out of there. This wasn’t my beloved bashful Peridot, this was her potion-induced alter ego. Judging other witches was another family pastime that I tried my whole life to avoid, yet had recently started doing. I didn’t like watching personalities change to this extent, it seemed akin to substance abuse. But I got it, at least for Dot. Her anxiety could get so bad she barely wanted to leave the house and she had to come home from college in the middle of the first semester of her freshman year, even though I was right down the hall for support.
Dodging the cousins that were the most prone to make needless small talk, I quickly made my way to Dot’s old Volkswagen. I only made it a few blocks away before I slammed on my brakes. The sun was shining brightly on the gallows across from the empty shops. The mourning ghosts were nowhere to be seen, aside from one. The body of whoever was swinging from the noose.
Chapter 4
I flipped the van into reverse and my blood ran cold. I kept waiting for him to fade away, thinking that perhaps the spirit was just extra restless on this particular day and his need to be seen overwhelmed the normal loop he was trapped in. Ghosts didn’t need darkness to be visible, that was just the pattern for this particular haunt.
Backing up until I was well out of the way, I got out of the van and slowly approached the gallows. I’d probably have to call someone about this, one of my cousins that was better equipped to deal with lost and angry spirits. This could easily turn into a poltergeist situation, which was the last thing Dewdrop needed with so many visitors around.
“Um… hi. Err, hello,” I said to the limp man hanging above me. “Uh… You got a raw deal, huh? Or, um… this was a most unfortunate occurrence,” I was trying to use words that would have been common back in his day. ‘Raw deal’ and ‘Hi’ probably weren’t in the nomenclature yet.
“This is unfair. Unjust. You didn’t deserve this.” Crap. Maybe he did. I doubted that he saw it that way. “I feel your pain. Err, I understand your, uh, struggle. Well, not really, but… Do you need to talk about it?”
Truthfully, I had no idea what I was doing. But I had a soft spot for ghosts, more so than a lot of witches here. I decided to pull out my phone and started scrolling through the many contacts, looking for a skilled cousin that also had enough compassion to deal with this on Hettymoot. The twin’s aunt Isla would be ideal, but she was a hermit and hard to get a hold of. I’d probably end up calling Feather for a recommendation.
“So… what’s your name?” I asked him. Honestly, I found this a little rude. He could at least pick up his head. Well, unless he couldn’t because of the whole broken neck thing. Yuck. “I’m Gemma. If you tell me your name, perhaps I’ll be able to help you.”
“Thomas,” a voice said from behind me.
I spun around, so startled that I dropped my phone. The glass cracked as it hit the sidewalk, but that was the least of my concerns. A transparent apparition identical to the young man hanging from the gallows was standing a few feet away from me and I staggered backwards.
“Am I…” The spirit looked down at his hands. “Is that… Me?”
We both stared up at the body swaying in the breeze. It didn’t seem so ethereal to me now. Nope, it was decidedly solid. My mouth went dry and I looked back at the only form that was talking to me, now convinced that the other was his real body. A dead body. Recently dead, too. I took a closer look at his clothes, which were all black, but with modern stitching and zippers that I’d somehow overlooked. The soles of his hiking boots alone should have tipped me off.
“Am I… No, I can’t be.” Thomas smiled and shook his head, his image getting paler. “I need to find my friends.” He turned and started walking toward the town square.
“Wait!” I called after him, but he was fading away more and more with every step until there was nothing.
My heart was pounding as I dipped down to pick up my phone. The screen was broken and it wouldn’t turn on. I looked up to see a more tourists walking toward me. It was the group that was looking for someone named Thomas this morning.
I pulled up the back door to the VW bus. Dot had to have something in here that would help me fix my phone. I would have ran over to Priscilla’s if those kids weren’t slowly making their way here. I didn’t want them to find the body of their friend alone.
For once, I was glad that Dot was such a packrat. There was an old wire milk crate filled with all sorts of helpful spells, including a vial of sparkling powder labeled Undo. I poured a pinch into my fingers and drew in a shaky breath. It was hard to center myself with a fresh body hanging so close. I was more accustomed to seeing the spiritual remnants of those long since passed.
I managed to clear my mind as I sprinkled the powder onto my phone and whispered, “Reparare.” The crystal screen melded back together and turned on as if nothing had ever happened. Too bad this stuff only worked on inanimate objects or I would dump the whole thing on poor Thomas up there.
I dialed the number to Wicked Brew. That place was full of witches, I was sure someone would be able to help.
“Wicked Brew,” one of my chipper cousins answered.
“Luna, something—”
“This is Soleil.” Their voices were annoyingly identical. “I can get her if you want.”
“No, I don’t care. It’s Gemma.” The tourists were less than a block away. “I need help. Get someone down to the gallows. Like, now.”
“Why?”
“There’s a body hanging up there.”
“Gemma, I know it’s freaky, but my aunt Isla has tried to help him before.”
“No, Soleil, not a ghost. A body. A genuine dead body. In fact, I just saw his ghost. He’s one of the tourists.”
“What?”
“And that group of his friends, the ones in your shop when I came in this morning. They’re about to find him in five seconds.”
“What?”
“Get your aunt, Soleil!”
“Okay, okay! I’ll send someone right over.”
“Hurry!”
I hung up the phone and started dialing a number that I really didn’t want to be calling. Eliza. She was the oldest great granddaughter of Hetty’s oldest daughter Essence, which put her in charge of Dewdrop to an extent. If I didn’t tell her right away, I knew she’d make me regret it.
The phone rang and rang, then went to voicemail. I simply left a message saying there was an emergency in town, that one of the tourists had died and she’d better get down here immediately.
“Well, I think that was it,” Kyle said, pointing across the street at the empty shops.
The group stopped and looked at me, but I kept my phone glued to my ear as every number I dialed went unans
wered. My presence was enough to keep them from walking any further.
“No, it can’t be,” Alicia replied, looking both ways down the road. “This place is really small.”
“You think?” Kyle laughed. “What are we supposed to do all weekend?”
“It’s a beautiful area,” Juno replied. “We’ll be able to find somewhere to hike.” She was already scrolling through options on her phone. “Yeah, there’s a trail not too far away. It has a nice waterfall at the end, too.”
Alicia pouted. “I don’t like hiking.”
“Too bad, we all do,” Kyle said. “I’ll call Thomas.”
“Let’s just go back to the hotel and try to make potions instead,” Alicia suggested, rifling through a shopping bag from Spark.
“Maybe tonight,” Juno answered, obviously skeptical.
Behind them, there was a crowd of witches flowing out of town square. Word had clearly gotten out, which wasn’t all that surprising.
A muffled punk rock guitar riff started playing above my head. It was a ringtone. Thomas’s ringtone. The tourists appeared confused as they looked around trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. I cringed and stared up at the body.
Kyle’s brow was furrowed as he approached. He glanced at me, then walked past the van with his two friends trailing behind him. I didn’t know what to say. Should I warn them?
“I—”
Alicia’s blood curdling scream said it all. Any witch within hearing distance started running down the road, and those in the back of the crowd quickened their pace to keep up. Kyle let out a curse and started crawling up the ladder of the rickety gallows.
“You can’t!” Juno pulled at his shoulder.
“What if he’s still alive?”
Her lips started trembling. “I don’t think he is.”
“Oh, my God!” Kyle bellowed, backing away. He swore a few more times as Alicia started sobbing. Then he turned to me. “What the hell did you do to him?” His fists were clenched at his sides.
“I… I… Nothing,” I stammered. “I found him like this. Just now.”
“You just found him,” Kyle repeated skeptically, stepping closer as I retreated until my back was against the van. “Yeah, right.”
“I did. I called someone.”
“What else did you see?” He reached out and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me.
“Hey!” one of the witches called out as my head bounced off the side of the bus.
“Let her go!”
I turned to see my caffeinated, overly confident cousin Dot pulling her wand from her sweater. Soleil grabbed her arm, clearly thinking what I was thinking. Using magic in front of the tourists would be a disaster. Unfortunately, Dot had already cast and the blast clipped Kyle on the shoulder and sent him flying into his friends.
“What the…” Kyle looked up at me from the ground, dumbfounded.
Dot almost crashed into me with Luna and Soleil on her heels. None of the tourists looked at them, so I was hoping that they didn’t see her wand.
“Oh, no!” Dot cried out when she saw the body. “We have to get him down from there.”
Before I could stop her, she was halfway up the latter. Luna grabbed her around the knees and held her still as the other witches clamored for her to get down. I grabbed one of her feet and the much taller Soleil reached up and pulled at her arm. It took all three of us to pry her down.
“Did you give her a shot of Strength or something?” I whispered to the twins. Luna giggled and they both shook their heads in perfect harmony.
“How can you laugh like that?” Alicia accused them, sniffling. “How can you just laugh at our friend hanging up there dead? One of you probably killed him.”
“It was just nerves,” Soleil defended her sister.
Dot started to say something, but Luna elbowed her in the ribs. “Get a hold of yourself.”
“I was trying to help him!”
“He’s already gone,” one of watching witches said, and the group hummed in agreement.
“Poor thing,” a voice murmured from the middle of the crowd.
“I knew this would happen,” another added. “All these outsiders milling about. One of those boys was bound to meet his end here.”
“Oh, I never thought of that!”
“Do you think it was a poltergeist?”
“Probably pixies.”
“Or just a foolish game gone awry. Remember when Ursula’s son strangled himself in her vineyard? And his feet could still touch the ground.”
I cringed as the group started speculating about what could have killed him, talking of all the untimely deaths brought on by brownies and werewolves and a hundred other things that we definitely shouldn’t be saying in front of the human tourists.
“What is wrong with all of you?” Alicia said tearfully.
“You’re all crazy!” Kyle yelled at the crowd. “You killed our friend!”
“No, no, my dear,” a witch with quintessentially wild red hair answered him. “These things just happen. You see, the male descendent in Hetty’s line are prone to an early demise. We’ve tried to—”
“Hush up, Belinda!”
“Well, they have a right to know…”
This was a disaster. Few of the Daughter’s Daughters knew how to deal with humans, especially the older ones whose college days were far behind them. They were more or less completely insulated from the outside world here in Dewdrop.
Every witch on the other side of the road, my side of the road, was either visibly panicking or rolling her eyes. Those of us descended from Hetty’s sons had much more contact with the human world. The fences of our properties backed up to human neighbors. Unfortunately, we were far outnumbered and also knew better than to publically start telling our cousins to keep quiet. That would just make us look guilty.
“Where the heck are the cops?” Kyle asked, exasperated.
“I called the Madison County Sheriff’s department,” his friend Juno replied. “They’re on their way.”
That sent a ripple of concern through the crowd. The witches here absolutely despised humans meddling in our affairs, especially law enforcement.
“I knew we should have incorporated into a proper town,” one of my distant relations remarked. “Then we’d have our own police department.”
“But who would run it?”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
All I could think was that I probably should have been the one to dial that number. There was a murder here and it fell under human jurisdiction. I was the first person to find the body and all I did was call the coffee shop and that old witch Eliza. She qualified as ‘the authorities’ to us, but not to the outside world.
“I can’t just stand around and leave Tom hanging up there,” Kyle said, pulling out his pocket knife. “I’m cutting him down.”
“You can’t!” multiple voices answered.
“Try to stop me.”
Juno grabbed his wrist. “Do you want to explain to the police why you contaminated the crime scene, or do you want them to solve his murder?”
“Murder?” Eliza’s voice called out from over the murmuring witches, silencing them. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. This was obviously an accident.”
I kept my face rigid to avoid showing my annoyance. She couldn’t even see the body from where she was standing. Two crows landed on the gallows and let out a series of loud caws. I’d noticed them before in the trees, but didn’t pay them any attention. I should have realized that Eliza would send out scouts before she showed her face.
“An accident?” Juno stood in front of Kyle before he could unleash his wrath. “Our friend is hanging up there dead. How is that an accident?”
Eliza towered over most people at six foot one, or 5’13” as she sometimes put it. Her mouth tightened as she studied the tourists, spending the longest time looking at Juno. Her gaze shifted to me and I did my best not to shudder.
With a fake smile she said, “All I meant was that
no one here would have done him any harm.”
“Sorry, lady.” Juno glared at her. “I’m not so sure about that and I doubt the police will be, either.”
“Speaking of the Sheriff’s impending visit,” Eliza said, turning to the residents of Dewdrop. “There’s no reason for all of us to be here, but we can’t leave now.”
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