Ruby called out for her sister, dropping to her knees and covering the eyes of her daughter beside her as the child watched the old woman burn. Bewildered deputies were yelling into their radios about fires and explosions as Brian leaned closer to Wesley for an explanation.
The witches of Madison County murmured amongst themselves, some angry with Priscilla for drawing attention to our community, others upset with Eliza for apparently suggesting the spell to her to begin with. It was better than human prison and it’s not as if she didn’t deserve it.
There was nothing left of her when the ritual had burned out, not a single speck of ash. The flowers revived as the bright sun burned the clouds away. More police cars were racing down the road, arriving just in time to stop the onlooking witches from leaving the crime scene.
I sat down on the curb, pulling the cards from my pocket. For whatever reason, I just had to take them with me when I left. The deck was lighter in my hands and it didn’t exactly surprise me when I could fan it open to see the beautiful artwork on the cards that I had no idea how to read.
Priscilla was right about one thing. Nothing would ever be the same.
Chapter 23
“You should come back for Hettymoot next year,” I suggested to Juno as we waited for her cab to arrive.
“Um…”
“I mean, if you want.” Honestly, I wasn’t really sure if it was a good idea. She’d been through so much on her first visit to Dewdrop. Perhaps it would be best if she left it behind.
“Okay, maybe two years from now,” she said. “Because I’m half expecting you to email me after the next Hettymoot to tell me that Hetty cursed half the town.”
“Pragmatic. I can respect that.”
We were sitting on the curb outside the Inn, across from town square. Dot walked by, barefoot and carrying a basket with two equal sized bundles of hyacinth, wearing the white dress of course.
“Isn’t that your job?” Juno asked.
“Dot said she’d try it out for a month.” I cringed when I saw her pace quicken as she passed Twitching Whiskers. Faustine was tapping her foot outside Elements with her hands on her hips. “She doesn’t walk as fast as I do. She needs to leave earlier.”
“Don’t you guys have a spell for that?” Juno laughed.
We did. I didn’t want to explain the limitations, though. “You can’t use magic for everything. Not all the time, anyway.”
Juno had spent an extra day here after Priscilla’s confession, mostly with Isla to learn how to deal with seeing ghosts. It caused some friction between her and her friends until she confessed that she’d seen Thomas’s spirit and wanted to make sure he’d moved on. At that point, the poor kids had seen so much they didn’t even question her.
She really was my fourth cousin. Aunt Clea cast the Cognata spell on her after inviting her over for dinner last night. My aunts even remembered her great great grandmother a little bit from when they were girls. We told her our favorite family stories and ate a two hundred year old roast chicken and root vegetable recipe that we only made on special occasions.
It was nice. There wasn’t much family on our side of the road. In the span of a few days, I actually became grateful for that website and happy those tourists showed up. Who would have ever thought?
“Here’s my ride,” Juno said. The potion bottles in her bag rattled as she stood. Aunt Maudrey had really loaded her up, it was a good thing she wasn’t flying back to Boston.
We hesitated for a moment before hugging goodbye. It wasn’t as awkward as I had anticipated. The car drove away and I wondered if I’d ever see her again.
Across the street, I watched Dot scamper out of Elements and across the square into Spark. She might get used to this and take over hyacinth delivery duty. Eventually. Maybe.
“Isn’t that your job?” a man’s voice startled me. Second time I’d been asked today.
I turned around and saw Gavin stepping out of the forest behind me. “You have to stop stalking me. And quit just appearing out of the woods. It’s weird.”
“That’s occurred to me.” He sat down on the curb beside me like we were old friends.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He laughed a bit, his head bowed and looking at the ground. “You said that I didn’t take the time to get to know this place.”
“You didn’t.”
“I know. Which is… ironic, considering how much time I’ve spent investigating into Dewdrop.” He finally looked at me. “I guess I was watching it through my own lens.”
My heart sputtered uncomfortably in my chest. “That happens.”
“Brian told me about your little ceremony in that forest preserve outside Woodshade.”
What the heck? Awkward. “Um… It wasn’t really a ceremony, per se. We have this statue that amplifies spiritual activity. It has to stay in a lead box.” That was an unnecessary detail. The last thing I wanted to do was start babbling, but that’s exactly what I did.
Gavin held up a hand to stop me. “You saw me.”
“Yeah.”
“But I’m not dead.”
“You don’t have to be. It was sort of like a film centering around Emmett.”
“And you talked to him?”
“For a few seconds, yes.”
Not-So-Secret Agent man swallowed and scratched the back of his neck. “He’s alright? Not ghost or anything?”
“Well, everybody becomes a ghost eventually. He’s not the tortured kind of ghost, if that’s what you mean.”
“You’re sure?”
“He’s doing better than you are,” I blurted out. Gavin’s eyebrows raised at my bluntness. “But that’s usually the way it goes. The living are always carrying around more baggage than the dead.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.” I stood up and took a step in the direction I’d soon be walking. Away from him. “It is so. From my experience, and I have a lot of it.”
“You’re a little young to have a lot of experience.”
Was he crazy? I lived in probably the most haunted not-technically-a-town in the country. My eyes narrowed as I turned back around to tell Gavin off. But when I saw him still sitting there staring at the ground, still wondering about his friend and how all this works, still grappling with his loss and what he’d seen… Yelling at him just didn’t seem right.
“I won’t tell you to let it go, Gavin,” I said quietly. “That would be pointless. But if it makes you feel better, we’ve looked into it. Extensively. There’s nothing to be done.”
“Why would that make me feel better?” he sighed.
“Because there’s not a community full of ritualistic pagan feminist killers next door to yours?” I offered.
“It would have been a lot easier if there had been.” He picked up a pebble and tossed it across the street.
I sat back down. “I guess it was your life’s work to expose us all.”
“I wouldn’t call it my life’s work,” he grumbled. “But in retrospect, it was a really poor choice in hobbies. I could probably be a half decent welder by now.”
We chuckled at the same time and the breeze picked up around us. “It’s not too late,” I said.
Gavin nodded, the faint lines between his eyebrows growing deeper. “I keep seeing her.”
“Who?”
“That witch. The one that killed him.”
“Priscilla? Yeah, me too.”
“The way she just set herself on fire like that,” he said, shaking his head. “In front of a kid. In front of the whole flabbergasted town.”
“It was a penance spell.”
“Does that mean she was sorry?”
“I think so. Maybe she really did think she was doing him a favor, in a sense. She lost three boys, one was pretty gruesome.” I shuddered. “And… Goddess, I don’t know how many grandsons and great grandsons. Nephews, too. She was so old, she’d seen a lot of it.”
“How do you live like this, Gemma?”
I pau
sed for a moment before saying, “I grow flowers.” I grinned at him. “And try not to think about it.”
“Flowers,” he laughed.
“See? Even the word makes you smile.” I reached into the grass and plucked a tiny purple violet to give him. Dot stomped out of the square with an empty basket and a look of dismay on her face. This takeover wasn’t going to last long. She spotted us and her grimace turned to her jaw dropping open in shock. “Need a ride?” I shouted at her.
“Um…” Dot bit her lip.
“That’s a yes,” I said to Gavin. He nodded and got up, offering me a hand to help me do the same. “So… if you have any questions, you know where to find me. Just knock on the door instead of stumbling out of the trees next time, alright?”
He laughed again and shook his head yes. “I don’t think I’m the one you have to worry about keeping tabs on this place anymore,” he said.
An unmarked SUV slowly drove down the road between us and town square. Captain Brian Kavanagh nodded at me and shot Gavin a glare before putting on his dark sunglasses and parking next to the gallows.
It looked like Dewdrop would have to get used to seeing him around.
The End
********
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-Hazel Hendrix
Resting Witch Face Page 24