“Not a Daughter’s Daughter,” I said it for her.
“Well… That doesn’t matter. If it doesn’t matter to Hetty, it doesn’t matter to us! And don’t think you’re behind. It’s a rare gift, and not something a young witch can do. You’re the perfect age, I’m told, just experienced enough in life. I’m talking in the long term, Gemma.”
“That’s not the reason.”
“You mean to tell me that you can use the cards? Why, that’s remarkable!”
“I’m not sure and even if I can, I know there’s a lot to learn,” I clarified. “But I was told that first I needed to earn it by—”
“Told by who?”
“Told by…” For once, Zinnia didn’t fill the silence so I reluctantly said, “By the cards, I guess. It’s hard to explain.”
“They spoke to you?”
“Well, not with words, but—”
“You can sense them?” she asked, slapping her hand over her heart. I just nodded to avoid being interrupted. “That’s a wonderful sign Gemma. What do you have to do?”
“I have to figure out who killed that boy. That’s why I came here.”
“I suppose that makes sense considering… Hetty’s disapproval,” she whispered. “And I’m not afraid to tell you that I am not surprised about that. All these witches moaning and groaning about every little thing that doesn’t suit their fancy. It never ends.”
“Well, maybe now it will. You know those three girls staying here that keep taking pictures everywhere?”
“I most certainly do.” She rolled her eyes.
“The night Thomas was murdered, you said it sounded like he was having a flirtatious conversation.”
“I did.”
“Do you know if this girl was in her room at the time?” I held out my phone to show her a picture of Kaitlynn that I’d saved off her Instagram.
“It is so amazing that you’re asking me that! Because the investigator, that Captain with the bright blue eyes?” At least I wasn’t the only one who noticed. “He asked me that very same question yesterday after you left. I really think you have a knack for this, Gemma. Amethyst told everyone that you had Thomas’s gum on your show. It’s a sign. Gumshoe. Get it?”
“I— Actually, I hadn’t thought of that.” Huh. “But what did you tell him? Was Kaitlynn in her room?”
“I’m not sure. Two of them were. But they all look so alike, you know?”
“Yeah,” I laughed.
“They’d been coming in and out all day, it was hard to keep track. But if she had called him and wanted to meet out in the woods to… Well. You’d think they’d send their friends out of the room for a bit since they had two perfectly good beds to choose from, but perhaps they wanted to keep it a secret, or it would just be more exciting. Who knows? The things you see at an Inn, let me tell you.”
“I can imagine.”
“But if they were meeting up, it would make sense that I distinctly remember seeing only two girls come back instead of three. I went to bed myself after that, which is why I didn’t notice that the boy didn’t return.”
“And that’s what you told Captain Kavanagh?”
“Yes.”
“Well…” Well what? I didn’t know if this was good or bad. Luckily I didn’t have much time to look like an idiot as I stood there to think about it.
“I think you just got your next clue, Gemma. Is that…”
Juno walked into the lobby with all three of the friends she came here with on her heels, one of them in ghostly form of course. There were dark circles under her eyes and you could see that she was at her wit’s end. Had this poor girl been tortured the whole time?
“You just don’t understand. I can’t leave,” Juno practically growled at her living friends.
“You need to get out of here just as much as we do,” Kyle said.
“My mom’s already waiting for us downstairs. She got a room over in Woodshade. That’s where Tommy is anyway, June Bug. They don’t have a morgue in this place.”
“He’s not in Woodshade,” she replied, her voice cracking.
“What do you mean?” Kyle asked.
“I can’t explain it. I have to stay here. I don’t want to, I have to.”
“But why?”
“Did you not just hear me say that I can’t explain?” Juno stomped over the front desk and slapped down cash. “I need to stay another night.”
“That’s fine.” Zinnia slid the money back across the desk. “No charge.”
Juno pushed it back. “I am not taking any handouts from you people!” She glared at me, then stormed away with Thomas fizzling in and out as he followed her.
“We can’t just leave her here,” Alicia said. “She doesn’t even have a car.”
“Do you want to stay? Because if I don’t get out of here, I’m gonna—”
“Okay, okay. I’ll go get the bags and check on her, you go wait with my mom before your head explodes.”
I waited until Alicia left before I asked Zinnia for Juno’s room number. Unsure exactly how to approach the situation, I forced myself to knock on the door.
“I already told you,” Juno’s voice called from inside the room, getting closer. “I’m not—” Our eyes met and her jaw dropped open. “What do you want?”
“I want to help you.”
She glared at me. “A little late for that, isn’t it?”
“I see him, too. Thomas’s spirit is standing right behind you.”
My remark clearly took her off guard and she glanced over her shoulder. “That’s a very cruel thing to say to someone who just lost their friend.”
“Not if it’s true,” I said. She didn’t deny it. “He’s not the first ghost you’ve seen, is he?” After a pause, Juno shook her head no. “You’re not crazy.”
“I will be if he doesn’t leave,” she admitted.
“Is that why you didn’t go to Woodshade with your friends?”
“Obviously. Do you have any idea how hard it is to pretend you can’t see them? No. You don’t. Because you live here, where everyone can see spirits and it’s not a big deal.” She went to close the door, but I stopped her.
“I went to college in Boston,” I told her. “The library was really old. There were a few spirits there, lingering. This creepy old man was always poking his head over girls’ shoulders. I couldn’t say anything.”
Her expression softened, just a bit. “That sucks. I hate creepy old men.”
“Me, too.”
With a sigh, she let me in her room and closed the door. “But this is my friend. One of my best friends. He’s dead, he’s scared and confused, and he won’t stop asking questions that I couldn’t answer even if I wanted to. But I could say something to him, anything, just to make it a little easier.” Her eyes began to water. “Instead I just have to ignore him because if I acknowledge him at all in front of them, Kyle will call my stepfather and he’ll have me committed. Again.”
“What’s he asking you?”
“Oh, you know,” she scoffed bitterly. “Why won’t anyone answer me? Why are you all crying? Why can’t I feel my heartbeat? Stuff like that.”
“Oh, my Goddess,” I breathed.
“Goddess.” Juno let out a little laugh. “I like how you all say that around here. Do you really believe in her?”
“Um, sort of. Kind of. Okay, not really. It’s just what I grew up hearing my aunts say.”
“Weird.”
Thomas’s cell phone went off. I recognized the punk rock ringtone from when I’d found his body. “Hey girl, what’s up?” he answered. There was a pause, but you couldn’t hear the person on the other end. “I know, right? How crazy.”
“He does this all the time,” Juno said.
“No, I didn’t follow you here,” he laughed. “I’m not some stalker. Maybe you followed me.” That smile was even friendlier in real life than it was in his pictures. Err afterlife? “Maybe it’s fate, then.” He put his hand in his pocket. “That’s kind of weird,
but alright. Hey!” He turned as if he was talking to someone. “Kyle, hold up.”
He flickered in and out like a television with bad reception, then disappeared. Hmm. That was probably the phone call he got the night he died. ‘I didn’t follow you here.’ Sure sounds like something you’d say to your ex-girlfriend when you accidently ended up in the same place. Maybe Kaitlynn was angry enough to kill him.
“He’ll be back,” Juno whispered. “So what do we need to do?”
“Do?”
“To get him to move on or go to toward the light or whatever.”
“Oh.” Of course she would ask that. And I had no idea how to answer such a complicated question. “He might be there right now.”
“What?”
“You can’t interact with him when he’s like that, can you?” I asked.
“No. Not at all.”
“That’s because he’s repeating the past. He’s not really here. He’s more like a fragment.”
“He’s not a fragment.” Juno’s eyes narrowed. “And he definitely is here.”
“When he’s talking to you, yeah. And even the fragment version, that might be him sending a message, or trying to remember what happened. But he’s not going to ascend to the afterlife and never come back. Well, not necessarily.” Now wasn’t the time to tell her that murdered spirits rarely get the closure you see in movies. “It’s not cut and dry. He’ll leave, he’ll come back. He’ll remember, he’ll forget. There is no light to walk into. At least, not a light to walk into forever.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Nobody really does.”
“So, he can’t just realize he’s dead and come to terms with it? And… move on?”
“Maybe,” I said quietly. I had to be honest though. “But maybe not.”
“Great,” she sighed, then folded her arms around herself and twisted her wrist to chew on her fingernail. It was the same awkward position Dot used. “Then he’ll follow me around forever. Just what I need.”
“He doesn’t have to,” I told her. “If he figures out that he’s dead, really figures it out and accepts it, he’ll get some type of closure. And if he doesn’t… you can…”
“I can what?” Juno’s head cocked to the side just like Clea’s used to when she was younger before her neck got stiff. This was really weirding me out.
“You can block him,” I said. “Well, you can’t. But there’s a spell someone else can cast.” She took a step back. “Not me. This isn’t my area of expertise.”
“I don’t want to block him. Not yet.”
“It would be a last resort so you could get on with your life. And chances are, he wouldn’t leave here anyway. He’ll always be tied to this place. You don’t have to be.”
“Oh, I already am,” she said firmly. “This place, these people. You people. This is why I am the way I am. Why I can see what I see.”
I shifted uncomfortably on my feet under her unyielding stare. Thomas reappeared and looked at me saying, “Hey, I’ve seen you before…” His face filled with horror and he faded away.
“I know you don’t want us here,” Juno snapped. “But you don’t know what’s it’s like. My great great grandmother might have walked out of this stupid town and never came back, but she took something with her and gave it to me.”
The lights in the room flickered and browned out as Thomas appeared again. “You were there. I saw you there.”
I shivered as the temperature dropped and he disappeared.
“What’s he talking about?” Juno asked.
“I don’t—”
“Yes, you do know! Why would he have seen you? He was already dead that morning you waltzed into town carrying flowers in that stupid dress.”
“Hey!” Nobody called that dress stupid but me.
“You killed him didn’t you? That’s why you came here. That’s why you want me to block him! So when he remembers, he can’t tell me!”
“No!” I cried out, exactly at the same time Thomas’s spirit reappeared and screeched the very same word.
It started both of us as he wailed again. “No! It isn’t true. It can’t be true. It’s not fair!”
Juno yelped and I involuntarily threw my arm in front of her as a crack ran across the mirror on the dresser like a lightning strike. She slapped my arm away, but jumped behind me as Thomas clenched his fists.
“I know you can see me!” he bellowed.
“I’m sorry,” Juno squealed.
This was not good. Dim lights. Cold room. Cracked mirror. That was getting into poltergeist territory. “Don’t talk to him,” I whispered.
“Don’t tell her what to do!”
I fumbled around in my satchel. I wasn’t the type of witch to carry my wand around because I wasn’t all that good at using it, and boy was I regretting that. It never really felt like the right wand for me, but that’s another story for another day. Thankfully, I did have a variety of stones carved with sigils and runes that I kept on me in case I ever got into a dangerous situation.
My thumb dragged a useful symbol and I clenched it in my fist. “Regredior!” I cried, tossing it at Thomas’s feet.
Engulfed in blue-green flames, the stone shattered into sparks and fragments, then dissipated into a cloud that smelled like lavender and rain. I breathed a sigh of relief when the room became warmer. The punk rock ringtone pierced through the smoke and we saw Thomas grin as he pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Hey girl, what’s up?” he answered. “I know, right? How crazy.”
“What did you do?” Juno whispered as we watched the scene repeat.
“I made him forget. Turn back.” I stepped away from her and felt safe enough to turn my back on him. If he saw my face again, he might lose it.
“You made him forget? I thought he needed to remember.”
“Not like that. I don’t want him to…”
“Poltergeist out?” she finished my sentence. “Yeah, me neither. He keeps trying to grab my arm, and yesterday I sort of felt it.” That was less than ideal. “Who do you think he’s talking to?”
“Kaitlynn Emerson,” I answered without thinking.
“What?”
“His ex-girlfriend. She’s here, too.”
“Yeah, I know. We saw that we were all going to Hettymoot on Facebook so we all got breakfast together in Woodshade the first morning,” Juno said as Thomas flickered out.
“Was she angry?” I asked. “Was there tension between them?”
“No.”
“But they dated.”
“Yeah, like a million years ago in high school. She broke up with him, why would she be angry?”
“Oh.”
“And how do you know any of this, anyway?” she asked me suspiciously.
“Well, Kaitlynn is the primary suspect, and um… I’m sort of being called from beyond to solve your friend’s murder, so I did a little snooping,” I admitted.
“The cops think Kaitlynn killed him? Oh, geez.” She rolled her eyes. “They are never going to solve this if they’re going after her.”
“Why?”
“Well, for starters, she’s like four and a half feet tall,” Juno said. She probably wasn’t that tiny, but I had noticed her petite frame. “There is no way that she could… string him up like that. And why would she? She has a really nice boyfriend, she’s about to graduate and has a great internship at an interior design firm. And she’s not…”
“What?” I asked.
“Okay, I mean this in the best way possible, but she is way too self-absorbed to kill anyone. She wouldn’t even risk ruining her manicure, let alone her life.”
“Kaitlynn would never hurt anyone,” Thomas said, suddenly appearing right beside us like he’d been a part of the conversation all along. “She’s a sweetheart. But, uh, kind of self-absorbed, yeah.” His gaze fixed on me. “Hey, do I know you?”
Crud. “Nope,” I said hastily, then scampered over to the cracked mirror and started rifling around in my bag.
“Where are Kyle and Alicia?” Thomas asked Juno.
“Um, they went to get some coffee,” she mumbled
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