“Is that your boyfriend, honey?” Don Matthews walked to the edge of the lawn, absently jerking himself off with the torn page while black tears dripped from his glowing eyes. He peered through the shattered passenger window. “Does he want to stay for dinner?”
“No, Dad, it’s not like that.” Rachel shot Riley a wink. “Unless you want it to be. Why not join us? I want to show you the Old Ways, Riley. Like your father, and his father before him. It’s your birthright.”
Rachel’s voice changed. Guttural, choked with the black filth inside her, and reminiscent of the awful voice speaking from the radio. He put his hand on the glass, his eyes burning with tears.
“I’m sorry, Rach.” His voice rattled like empty tree branches, their leaves dried and fallen and dead. “Maybe I shouldn’t have kissed you the other night. Maybe it was too soon, and I made things awkward. I’m sorry I didn’t take things slow.” He swallowed back a dry ball of cotton in his throat. “But I’m just—I’ve lost my friend. I’ll miss you.”
He didn’t wait for her to reply. He stepped on the gas and drove until he was out of the neighborhood, back onto the Cumberland Falls Highway, and found a vacant lot near the old Stauford Drive-In.
The tears came fast, his chest heaving so hard his abs ached, his lungs filled with fire. First his mother, then his father, and now Rachel. He sucked in his breath, held it, waited for the sobs to pass, and let it all out in a quick rush of air.
Alone, he thought. I’m all alone now except for—
The phone. How could he have been so stupid? He was so caught up in getting away from his dad and finding Rachel that he’d forgotten about Stephanie. He pulled the phone from his pocket. The battery symbol flashed red. Less than five percent left. He’d had a missed call, and he remembered the vibration in his pocket while driving through his neighborhood.
“So stupid.”
He listened to Stephanie’s message and nodded. Jack’s house—old lady Tremly’s place. The Stauford Witch. His great aunt. Everyone knew where she lived, and if he drove down the Stauford Bypass circling the city, he could be there soon.
Minutes later Riley was back on the road, determined to find a new ending for the movie playing in his head.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1
What does he know about Genie’s passing? I assume you didn’t tell him.”
Jack met Chuck’s eyes across the dining room table as the old man’s words sank in. Stephanie’s face fell in shock. She placed her hand on Jack’s almost instinctively, a comforting gesture he would’ve appreciated under other circumstances.
“Chuck?” Jack stared at his brother, measuring the words he wanted to spit out, and then turned toward the professor. “What do you mean?”
Chuck put his elbows on the table. “Goddammit, Tyler, she didn’t want him to know.”
“We’re past that point, young man.”
“I never should’ve gotten involved with you two. Fuck this, I’m out.” Chuck began to rise from his seat. Jack slammed his fist on the table, startling a sharp cry from Stephanie.
“Sit down. You’re not going anywhere until you explain what the fuck is going on, Chuck. You too, Tyler.” He shot a glance at Stephanie. “Do you have any idea what they’re talking about?”
She shook her head. “I’m as clueless as you are.”
“Great. Would someone please enlighten me?”
“Fine,” Chuck sighed. “But understand this, Jack. Genie didn’t want you to know.”
“Want me to know what?”
“That she was dying.”
A cold silence slipped between them as Jack processed Chuck’s statement. The tick of the hallway clock filled the house, punctuating the dread seeping into the room. In some absurd way, Jack wasn’t at all surprised by the revelation. He’d often suspected she hadn’t been truthful about her health. She was always so quick to change the subject on the phone or to sugarcoat her answers to his emailed questions.
No, what hurt most was his brother’s willingness to keep the information from him. Even if it was Imogene’s wish her poor health be kept from Jack, he still deserved to know.
“Wow. Okay.”
“Look,” Chuck began, “I had a duty to my client—”
Stephanie snorted. “Save it, Chuck. Stop.”
“—to uphold her wishes as she dictated—”
“Steph’s right,” Jack said. “Just stop, Chuck. I need a minute.”
Jack sipped the coffee, relishing the warmth of the bourbon in its mixture, and downed the rest of his mug. The fire in his gut eased the screaming in his head, his joints, his back. But it didn’t ease the pain in his heart. Booze couldn’t touch that.
“Dying, how? They told me she had a heart attack.” Jack frowned, his gaze burning a hole through Chuck’s face. “He told me she had a heart attack.”
“And she did,” Dr. Booth sighed. He plucked his glasses from his face and absently wiped their lenses with the hem of his shirt. “That part’s true. He didn’t lie, but—look, son, it’s complicated.”
Stephanie shook her head. “It’s time you spit it out. Both of you.”
Jack nodded. “Listen to the lady.”
Chuck opened his mouth, shut it again, and gestured to the old man. Professor Booth had the floor.
2
“There was more to what I told you yesterday, son. I’m guilty of lyin’ by omission. Me and your grandma, we were pretty close.” Dr. Booth wiped his eyes with a shaking hand. “God, she always talked about you, people you’d met, places where you’d shown your work, she was always singing your praises. She loved you more than anything. And I loved her. Asked her to marry me a couple of times, but she turned me down.”
Jack smiled, caught off guard by the man’s show of emotion. There was a tenderness in the old man’s face that hadn’t been there before. Tenderness, and a streak of melancholy. Jack knew that kind of heartbreak, the regret of not saying what you wanted, a thousand nights spent replaying some pivotal moment, wondering what could’ve happened differently, wondering what could’ve been said to change course. He loved her, Jack realized, and he restrained himself from reaching out to take the professor’s hand in comfort.
Instead, Jack cleared his throat and asked, “Why’s that?”
“Because she was married to her quest. All the bad shit that happened at the church when y’all were babies, well, she had this notion your daddy put a curse on her before all was said and done. She died trying to reverse it. All these years later, son, she was still tryin’ to protect all of you.”
Tyler watched her gather the supplies he’d collected for her, still telling himself this was insane, this was dangerous. Still believing he could talk her out of it. But you know better. Once Genie sets her mind to somethin’, there’s no changin’ it.
And she wouldn’t. Not this time. Not when he’d pleaded with her to rethink her decision, or on all those late evening walks through the neighborhood when she recounted her plans, the preparation she would undergo, the agony she would subject herself to.
An assortment of items were spread out on the dining room table: two containers of salt, boxes of candles, a box of matches, white chalk, a quart of red paint, multiple bags of incense, a bottle of cheap tequila, a small coffee can full of earth, and writhing somewhere inside the can, a handful of nightcrawlers. The idol she’d sent him to acquire more than a decade before sat in the middle of the table like an infernal centerpiece, its eyes shimmering even in the afternoon light. He tried not to stare too long at the awful thing.
“Did you remember the sage? I don’t see it here.”
“I did,” Tyler muttered, pushing aside a box of candles. A bundle of sage was underneath, wrapped in a plastic bag. “Right here.”
Imogene looked at him with her good eye. She wasn’t wearing the eye patch this morning, and he reminded himself it was because she was comfortable around him. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that seeing her bad eye set him on edge, gave
him the creeps.
“I guess that’s it, then. Thanks, love.”
She smiled, and he forgot about the dead orb staring back at him. Her smile fixed everything. He put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her to him. When she embraced him, the world sank away, and for a moment, he forgot about her grim plan. There was just the two of them, alone in the universe, alone but for each other. It was all he’d ever wanted. All he’d ever need.
Tyler kissed her forehead. “Genie, please.”
“Honey. We’ve been over this. I’m the last one left, and Dr. Parks gave me less than three months. The cancer’s eating me alive. If I don’t do this now…” Imogene stepped back from him, squeezing his hands in hers. “I’m doin’ this for Jackie. For the babies. He’s going to come back to finish what he started, Tyler. If not me, then who—?”
He sank to his knees, gripping Imogene’s hands so tightly in his own that she gasped. Tears flooded his eyes, something that would’ve embarrassed him in his younger years, but now was different. Now was a time of desperation. He needed her to hear him, and if his humility could break through the wall of resolve she’d built for herself, if he could delay this awful plan for one more day, he might find a way to save her life.
“Genie, darlin’, please listen to me. Please. There’s treatment for what you’ve got—”
“Chemo ain’t about quality of life—”
“—and I can’t watch you throw your life away.”
Imogene yanked her hands from his, the emotion bled from her pale face. She clenched her teeth and wiped a tear from her good eye.
“Foolish. Is that what you think I am? After all this time, Tyler Booth, you think I’m crazy like the rest of that godawful town?”
Tyler sank back, taking the weight off his aching knees. “No, darlin’, that’s not what I mean. You know that’s not what I mean. I just…I can’t abide you throwing your life away like this. How do you know this will even work?”
“I don’t.” She gathered the containers of salt and turned toward the basement door. “But I have to believe it will. For Jackie.”
“And what if it doesn’t?”
“Then my pancreas will rot, and I’ll rot with it.”
Jack frowned. “Pancreatic cancer?”
Dr. Booth nodded. “Advanced. She’d been losing weight and I finally got her to go to the doctor. After some tests, her doctor gave her less than three months to live.”
The professor’s words sank in, and Jack replayed the last time they’d spoken on the phone. He’d offered to fly her to New York. She’d never been, and he wanted to show her the sights—Rockefeller Center, the Statue of Liberty, the gallery where some of his work was featured—but she’d passed on the opportunity, something which seemed odd at the time, but now made perfect sense. A hole opened in his gut, threatening to swallow him up from the inside.
“Did she kill herself?”
The words seemed so odd on his tongue, but aloud, they were nasty things that offended his ears. Mamaw Genie wouldn’t. Never. Life was precious to her. She’d spent years trying to teach him that. You only get one, she’d told him on so many occasions, so you make the most of it. He’d taken that edict to heart and tried to live by it as best he could. The thought of his grandmother giving up on her life so easily left him unsettled.
“Well,” Chuck said, “the coroner report was accurate: she did die of a heart attack, despite the advanced stage of her cancer and…the predicament in which she was found.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, Chuck.” He looked at the professor. “What was she doing in the basement, Tyler?” He turned back to Chuck. “What did she do? What ‘curse’ was she trying to break?”
Chuck crossed his arms and locked eyes with the professor. “This is your area, not mine.”
“It’s more appropriate,” Tyler said, “if we consider the intent. We already know the outcome.”
Tyler wished he’d not relented to his curiosity that day she appeared in his classroom. Until then, Tyler Milford Booth was blissfully happy with his ignorant place in the world.
He had a decent job, was well-respected in his field, had contributed to the greater understanding of the cultures that came before our day. Tyler had everything he wanted, or so he thought—until the day this beautiful silver-haired queen walked into his life. She’d opened a door to something greater and far more mysterious than any ancient culture he’d studied in his career, and he’d followed her with wide-eyed curiosity into the dark places beyond.
He grew up believing the occult was a farce, a word ascribed to fortune tellers and so-called psychics, another way to part a fool from his money. In the brief years they’d known one another, Imogene Tremly showed him the occult was more than a shell-game of faith, but another method of understanding this reality and the next, whatever it may be.
After what he’d witnessed down in the temple below Calvary Hill, his curiosity finally overcame the fear inherent in his bones, blood, and soul. Witnessing the darkness wasn’t enough; Tyler needed to understand, or at the very least, grasp the concepts with which he might correlate all he’d seen.
So began his partnership with the one-eyed witch of Stauford, a connection that blossomed from friendship to love, forever teetering on the brink of obsession for both: he in his yearning for her devotion, and she in her damned quest to protect her grandson from his father.
All she’d told him about Jacob Masters played back in his mind as he followed her downstairs to the basement, trailing at her heels like a scolded puppy.
He cursed me that day, Tyler. I betrayed him. We all did, and he bound his death to our lives. Don’t you see? Death for life, and life for death. When we’re gone, he will return, and no one in this awful town will be able to stop him. Now I’m the last one left. I have to find a way to beat him at his own game.
Imogene flipped a switch and lit up the room. Old boxes and storage totes were pulled away from the far wall, the floor swept free of dust. She set down her bags and turned to him.
“Tyler…if you’re going to stand there and judge me, I’d rather you not be here at all. I’ve spent most of my life bein’ judged by this awful place. I won’t suffer it from you.”
“You’re runnin’ from a dead man. He’s gone. Thirty years, he’s gone, and you’re still lettin’ yourself be haunted by his ghost. Now you’re going to…” He motioned to the bags with a trembling hand. He’d left his flask at home, and his nerves cried for it now more than ever. “…look, Genie, he’s already taken so many lives. Why are you going to let him have one more?”
She knelt, wincing at the sudden pop in her knees, and rummaged through the plastic bags until she found the chalk. “All those smarts and you still haven’t listened to a damn thing I’ve said.” She pulled a stick of chalk from the box and drew a circle on the floor. When she was finished, Imogene met his eyes. “Even after what you saw down there, you still won’t believe me.”
“Oh, for God’s sake…” He trailed off, watching as she traced the next circle along the floor. It’s not that I don’t believe you, he wanted to say. It’s that I’m fucking terrified of facing it. His sojourn into the pit below Calvary Hill opened his eyes to things no one, least of all himself, was ever meant to see. Like lifting a stone to discover all the squirming insects underneath, he could not displace the knowledge of their existence; they were there, always were, and would be long after his approaching expiration date. Acknowledging what he’d seen that day meant acknowledging everything Imogene confided in him was not only a possibility, but a reality.
Imogene finished the second circle, climbed to her feet, and traced the third on the wall.
“I wish I’d met you sooner,” he mumbled.
“Me too, old man. Me too.”
He smiled, feeling at once flush and weak, his heart full but flawed with cracks. There was no talking her out of this. He’d always known it, but rebelled against the notion, clinging to the hope his love would be enough to cha
nge her mind.
Selfish old bastard, he thought. If she was right about everything, then Stauford would need its witch. And somewhere else in the world, a fortunate young man would need his grandma. For all the chaos in the universe, nothing remained more constant than the resolve of a grandmother to protect her young’uns. He couldn’t argue with her, knew it wasn’t even worth trying.
“Your circles are off.” He crossed the room, rummaged through the bags, and produced a spool of string. “I thought you might need this. Tie it to one end of the chalk. Here, I’ll show you…”
“We spent an hour drawing the configuration. Circles for body and mind on the floor, one circle for soul on the wall. Tenets of what she called a ‘right hand’ path, to counteract the ‘left hand’ nature of Masters’s curse.”
Jack nodded, the pieces finally coming together. “So those symbols on her gravestone, the ones marked ‘cleansing runes’ in her notebook…”
“Right,” the professor went on, “those were used in the ritual to cleanse herself of the binding Masters placed on her.”
“In theory,” Chuck said, and was about to say more when Stephanie shot him a scowl that told him to shut the fuck up.
“She’d studied the different disciplines of magic, researching Crowley and the Golden Dawn, the tenets of Hermeticism and the nature of balance in a chaotic universe. I did my best to keep up with her, but she was always a step ahead of me. She was always talking about scans of old grimoires she’d found online, some barely legible, some dating back to the early days of the printing press, but I trusted she knew what she was doing.” Tyler took a sip from his flask, craned back his neck, and drained the final drops of the bourbon. “That was a mistake, of course. To be honest, I don’t know if she knew what would happen. Not really.”
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