by Skylar Finn
“Yeah, that’s what I don’t like about all this,” I said. “My life is my life. It might not be ideal, but it’s mine. I don’t wanna move to the woods and become some mystical witch person, speaking to the dead and hearing my grandma’s voice in my head and whatever other weird business comes with the territory. I want to go to Reading Terminal Market on the weekend and eat soft pretzels and watch movies and read books. And choose the wrong men, and drink too much wine, and fall asleep with the TV on. This stuff you guys talk about…I don’t know, it’s just…not for me. I don’t think.”
“I understand,” she said, but the pain in her eyes belied the lightness in her voice. When she looked at me, I could see that she saw my father. But maybe not herself.
“We can still hang out,” I said, eager to amend whatever hurt I caused. Then I felt uncertain. “Can’t we?”
“Of course.” She came around the counter and embraced me. “You’re my daughter. I just want you to be safe and to have a happy life. A good life. A life that you choose.” She held me at arm’s length. “I just worry…” She stopped.
“You worry about what?”
“Sometimes, we don’t choose our magic,” she said. “Sometimes, the magic chooses us.”
I drove the Nova through town with the windows down, smoking Les’s cigarettes. I wished I could have just talked to my mom about dating and horoscopes and how to make the perfect cupcakes or whatever. Normal things. I didn’t want to hear about how magic chose us.
When I pulled the car up to the manor, I was surprised to see a jaunty little white Wrangler in the driveway. I guess the new assistant was here.
The front door was wide open and the foyer smelled like vanilla frosting, but not actual frosting—frosting scent, like you’d find attached to, say, dozens of candles lining the floor of the hallway. The candles led down the hallway to the kitchen where a high female voice sang old school Margo Metal. Temptation Sensation.
I pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen and stared in shock at the girl shimmying around in a ruffled white apron and little else. There was some kind of dress under it, but it was so small it was hard to see beneath her equally minuscule apron, which come to think of it looked like lingerie. Her waist-length platinum hair shimmered in the bright light coming through the kitchen window and everything about her—her body, her voice, her overall menace—was perky, pert, and unbearably toned.
“I’ve got a new temptation, baby, yes I do,” she crooned. “I’m aching for sensation, the sensation of you. You could be my salvation, yes it’s true. I’m so torn by my frustration, I need you.” She stopped when she saw me.
“Sammy!” she squealed. “OMG!”
I stood, helplessly and stupidly paralyzed as Bridget pirouetted across the kitchen and threw her arms around me. She never did anything normally, including walking. She smelled like Bonnie Bell and My Little Ponies: sugary sweet and plastic at the same time, like bubblegum still in the wrapper.
“I’m just like, so happy you’re here!” she squealed.
Bridget had huge Disney eyes and wore excessive amounts of pink. She was like a unicorn who escaped the front of a Lisa Frank folder and became human for a day. She was the perfect girl in a way I could never be: pure Bubbalicious and equally uncomplicated, but never lost her flavor. I could just imagine Les plucking her off the shelf at Toys R Us and sprinting home with her before locking all his doors for three days straight. I got why; I wasn’t stupid. It didn’t make it hurt any less.
“Hello, Bridget,” I said, formal as a butler. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fantastic,” she said, her sparkly blue Barbie eyes glittering. She of course wore glitter, but on Bridget it seemed organic. “I’m so glad to see you! Me and the girls were literally just like, where is Sammy at? I miss her.”
The especially painful part of this was that I was certain Bridget wasn’t lying. All of Les’s girlfriends possessed the same blithe lack of self-awareness required to date a man with three girlfriends. Except for maybe Paulina, who was Russian and usually seemed mad. But that was maybe just her face. Bridget never seemed to get jealous, because her only goal in life truly seemed to be Les’s happiness, and as long as he had it, so did she.
“What are you doing here, Bridget?” I sat down at the table with a hand over my face. I had a terrible feeling I already knew the answer to the question.
“I’m Margo’s new assistant,” she said brightly. “Les asked me. I guess she’s having trouble keeping people around and it’s like, OMG, why? She’s like my childhood hero.”
Bridget was not only the cutest of Les’s girlfriends, but the youngest. I never asked how old she was because I didn’t want to know. It raised questions about Les’s character that I avoided exploring because it would have also seriously called into question my own. She was definitely old enough to drink, I knew that much. So there was that.
Les was nowhere to be seen. Unsurprising. This was how it went: I trusted him, he did whatever Les-type thing he felt like doing, and I hated myself for trusting him. Even for a minute, just the tiniest littlest moment. And here was the result.
I studied her while she bustled around the kitchen, her little apron wiggling suggestively. Could I put a hex on her? I thought of the dark books in the shop. Maybe I had been too quick to dismiss the notion of witchcraft.
“Hey, Bridge?”
She turned, beaming. It was impossible to be mean to Bridget. It would have been like punching a bunny. “I’m gonna go upstairs, okay? I’ll see you later.”
“See ya later, alligator!” She turned back to the stove, brandishing a red-handled spatula decorated with hearts. “Make sure you’re on time for dinner, cause I am gonna make some killer vegan marshmallow wax!”
I drifted up the stairs in a pained daze, only vaguely wondering what vegan marshmallow wax was. Whatever it was, I was certain I didn’t want to find out.
I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, when I felt a slight indentation at the edge, as if someone sat down next to me. I lay perfectly still. I was too depressed to be frightened and felt only mildly curious.
I felt the bed shift as if there was a person lying next to me, and the light, cool sensation of someone’s fingertips lightly grazing mine. I decided not to look over, in case I started screaming and was unable to ever stop.
Can you hear me?
I heard the thought as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud. I turned my head slowly to the left.
Martha Hope was so beautiful it was impossible to feel afraid of her. The voice of an angel, they had said. She also had the round, cherubic face of an angel, with impossibly full lips and an upturned nose. Her dark hair spread across the pillow like spilled ink. Her eyes were filled with sorrow.
Can you hear me?
“I can hear you,” I said aloud. There was something too strange and intimate about communicating telepathically with a dead girl in my bed. I could only take so much.
No one else can. She sat up and looked at me. Why can you?
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m still trying to figure that out myself.”
Can you help me? Her gaze was so earnest and imploring, it was impossible to turn away.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “But I can try.”
I was walking through the woods, and singing. I was walking home from school. I thought I heard something behind me, but it was daylight and I’d taken that shortcut a hundred times before. So I kept going. Then someone put something over my head, and everything got dark. When I woke up, I was outside of myself, looking in. I tried to go back, but I couldn’t. I’ve been there ever since. There and here. I don’t know how to go anywhere else. I just want to go home.
The temperature in the room had dropped twenty degrees. Goose bumps covered my arms and I could see my breath. Martha, oblivious to the cold, studied me imploringly.
Can you help? she asked again.
I guess there was really no getting out of it this time.<
br />
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll help you.”
13
Fire With Fire
I was still frozen in place, staring at the bed where Martha had been, when my door swung open.
“Dinner’s ready!” sang Bridget. She pranced into my room and flung herself on the bed next to me. She immediately sat up, shivering, rubbing her exposed skin—which was most of it—as she broke out into goose bumps. “OMG, it’s cold in here! Do you have the window open or something?”
“No.” I sat up. I took the afghan from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around Bridget. “Cameron says that capes are very in this season, Bridge.”
She clutched the blanket to her. “I love his style,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it unbelievable? I’ll have to get one in cashmere, like this one! Where did you find it?”
“Pier One.” I got up and went down the stairs. Bridget followed me.
“What do you want to listen to at dinner? Ferrari Xmas? I feel like I’m in a Ferrari mood. Or should we listen to Margo? Do you think she’d get mad if I played Ferrari? Or do you think she’d be annoyed if we listened to her? I can’t decide.”
I listened to Bridget’s largely interrogatory stream of consciousness without answering as I descended the stairs and went into the kitchen.
Les leaned against the counter, drinking a tumbler of scotch. He glanced up and saw me with Bridget, his expression sheepish. I ignored it, and him, as I brushed past him on my way to the espresso machine.
Bridget squealed at the sight of Les and threw her arms around him. I left the kitchen immediately. I could hear voices somewhere down the hall. Margo and Cameron. Their voices emanated from the parlor, and I followed the sound to get away from Les.
The goblin doors were slightly ajar. I paused. It sounded like they were arguing about something.
“—security risk,” said Cameron. “I just don’t think we can afford—”
“What security risk?” Margo interrupted. “Everyone is completely oblivious to what we’re doing here, Cameron. We’re just recording a happy little album in the happy little woods. Nothing to see here.”
“But if someone does find out—”
“No one will find out unless we tell them,” said Margo. “Which we are obviously not going to do. Are you? Because I’m not.”
“I’m not,” said Cameron. “Obviously. I just think that people have a way of finding out things you’d rather they didn’t, in my experience.”
“Well, in my experience,” said Margo. “There’s only one way to keep a secret. Do you know what it is?”
“How?”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
The floor creaked as one of them got up and walked towards the door. I backed away from it slowly, then turned and ran down the hallway, slipping and sliding across the waxed wood floor in my socked feet. I ducked into the foyer, where I caught my breath and thought about what I’d just heard.
I remembered the robed figures vanishing into the woods. The woods, where Martha Hope had disappeared. The woods, where her body was recovered. This house, which she was currently haunting.
What were Margo and Cameron up to? Were they being their usual strange and secretive selves?
Or was there something much darker going on at the manor?
I would have gone to the bar regardless of whether or not Peter was working. I would have gone to a different bar, but there was only one. I hadn’t gotten any work done that morning and with the arrival of Bridget, I hadn’t gotten any work done that afternoon. I had let myself be distracted, first by Les, then by one of his many girlfriends. On top of the distraction of my estranged family who happened to have magical powers, as far as my job went, I was failing. And after discovering I’d be working with Bridget, I needed a drink.
Peter’s back was to me when I sat down at the bar.
“You were right,” I said.
He turned, raising his eyebrows. He seemed unsurprised to see me.
“Right about what?” he asked.
“Pinot noir,” I said.
He smiled. “We only have one kind,” he said.
“That’s fine,” I said. He set a glass in front of me. I looked at it and shook my head.
“I don’t want a glass,” I said. “I want the bottle.”
If Peter registered this information with surprise, he didn’t show it. He expertly opened the bottle in a few lithe movements and popped the cork, pouring a little into the glass and setting the bottle next to it.
I took out my computer and transferred the notes I’d made earlier during my conversation with Margo. Then I stared at the screen. Do you know how to keep a secret? Don’t tell anyone. I closed the laptop.
“Peter,” I said, topping off my glass. “What do you know about ‘the music people,’ as you call them?”
Peter was polishing glasses next to the dishwasher. He paused briefly while he thought, then resumed polishing as he spoke.
“Well, the only ones I’ve met have been you and the previous assistant,” he said. “I also met a guy who said he was a DJ, but I’m guessing that’s not what he did up there.”
“DJ Swann,” I said. “The producer.”
“Yeah, him. He came in here one night, babbling about haunted houses, and ordered a double Jack on the rocks. Then he ordered another. I was getting concerned I’d have to cut him off, which I don’t enjoy doing, because anyone drunk enough to get caught off is usually drunk enough to get belligerent about it. Then he started talking.”
“What did he tell you?” I meant to only take a sip of my wine, but it turned into a much larger gulp.
“Shadows in the kitchen, demons in the ceiling. Crazy stuff. I assumed they were all doing drugs up there.”
“What about the assistant? What was she like?”
“He. He was a young guy, about Tamsin’s age. Nervous-looking. Quiet. Antsy. He came in to the coffee shop every day.”
“Huh,” I said. I opened my computer again. I started a second set of notes in addition to my work-related ones: DJ Swann. Former assistant. Shadows/demons?
“Quid pro quo,” said Peter. “Why the curiosity about the people you’re working with? Don’t you know them already?”
“I’ve never met Margo Metal,” I said without looking up. “This is the first time I’ve worked for her.”
“Well, she doesn’t exactly have a high retention rate,” said Peter.
I shrugged, returning to my first set of notes. An enigma wrapped in a question mark.
“You’re feeling cagey tonight, I see,” observed Peter. “Well, that’s fine. Although I’d like to highlight the fact that I was right this morning. It looks like the vocal coach did it.”
I glanced up from my screen. “Martha Hope’s vocal coach?”
“He was unavailable for questioning in the days after her disappearance. No one knew where he was. He wasn’t answering his phone or the door of his house. They picked him up about an hour ago, wandering around in the woods near where she was found.”
“Wandering? What do you mean, wandering?”
“In a total daze. Catatonic. He’s still not talking or acknowledging the outside world, according to my sources.”
I closed my laptop again, disturbed. “So the guy’s like, what? A total vegetable?”
“I doubt it,” said Peter, looking grim. “I think it’s a ploy. Trying to get off on insanity, probably.”
The door swung inward. I glanced up expecting to see either flannel-clad men or Peter’s groupies and was surprised to see Tamsin.
“There you are!” she said when she saw me. “I knew you’d be here.”
“What, you don’t have a phone?” said Peter.
Tamsin ignored him and came over to the bar.
“I was thinking that tonight would be an excellent night for me to visit you at work,” she said brightly. “Seeing as how I’m such a big Margo Metal fan and all.”
Peter narrowed his eyes at her. “You hate Margo Metal.”
/> Tamsin ignored him, helping herself to a sip of my wine. “What do you think?” she asked.
I thought of Les and sighed. “Maybe not tonight. It’s kind of awkward.” I could practically see Peter’s radar activate and felt a flash of annoyance. Wasn’t there some kind of witch Pig Latin we could speak in around normal people?
“How come?” asked Tamsin curiously.
I didn’t want to talk about Bridget in front of Peter. It was too personal and too humiliating.
“Should we discuss this in the bathroom?” said Tamsin knowingly.
Now Peter looked annoyed. I could see no amount of investigative skills could overcome the power of the women’s bathroom.
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I could use a fresh coat of lip gloss.”
“Watch our things, will ya, Peter?” Tamsin dropped her purse on the bar.
Peter glanced around the empty room. “I’ll guard them with my life.”
In the bathroom, Tamsin hopped up on the sink and lit a cigarette.
“Should you be smoking?” I glanced at her. I wasn’t certain of my responsibility to her as an adult relative. I’d always been the youngest person in my family until now.
She shrugged. “Should anyone be smoking?” She gave a little wave of her hand and the smoke turned into a dragon, also exhaling puffs of smoke. “It’s exceptionally easy for a witch to quit smoking. There’s like a ton of spells for it. I just like to, sometimes.”
I shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat.” I rummaged through my bag and pulled out my lip gloss. “Just out of curiosity, how do you learn anything if everything is as easy as casting a spell? And what’s to prevent you from doing bad things if you can just magic yourself out of it later on?”
“Ah, an existential question.” Tamsin ran the cigarette under the tap and tossed it into the trashcan. “I guess I would highlight the fact that it requires even more judgement to know when not to use it. And it requires even more self-control not to go to the dark side, which results in much worse things than it would for someone doing bad things without magic. Like the loss of your soul. So. Why don’t you want to go back?”