Witches of The Wood

by Skylar Finn

  In the woods, it is dark and cold.

  Margo felt her heart seize with a peculiar sensation, as if the darkness was inside of her. She stared down at the book, a feeling of horror spreading up her arms, into her heart and mind. She looked up, meaning to close the book, return it to the shelf, and leave the room. Maybe this house was a little too spooky for her liking.

  When she looked up, she was startled to find that she was no longer in the goblin room, or even in the house at all. She was in the woods, in a clearing.

  What was happening? How had she gotten here? Was she asleep in Les’s car, not yet at the house and having a dream? Was this a flashback from her drug days? That was weeks ago. It couldn’t still be affecting her now, could it? Or had Les finally driven her to a psychotic breakdown?

  “Hello.” Margo jumped as a young girl stepped out from behind a tree. She looked around the age of one of Margo’s fans. Where had she come from?

  “Excuse me,” said Margo brusquely. “I think I’m lost? Perhaps you could help me.”

  “Not everyone who comes to the woods is lost,” said the girl, which seemed like an odd thing for a Margo Metal fan living alone in the forest to say. “If you have lost your way, however, I would be happy to help.”

  “Great,” said Margo, checking her watch. “So, listen, one minute I’m in this spooky library-looking place with monsters on the doors, and the next minute I’m here, so if you could just direct me back to that house nearby, I’d be ever so appreciative. Thanks.”

  “Is that what you truly want?” asked the girl.

  Margo was both befuddled and annoyed.

  “What else would I want?” she asked.

  “Perhaps there is something missing in your life right now,” said the girl. “Perhaps I can help you recover what you think you might have lost.”

  She must have been a super fan, if she knew about Margo’s struggles over the last year to maintain her composure in the wake of Les’s constant deception and the string of public humiliations he’d subjected her to.

  “How exactly are you going to give me what I most want?” asked Margo.

  “We could make a deal,” said the girl. “Strike a bargain, so to speak.”

  “What kind of deal?” asked Margo, intrigued. This was one strange middle schooler.

  “Let’s say I can give you what you most want,” said the girl. “Everlasting fame, money, admiration. A voice that could influence a nation. Revenge. Against one that scorned you, perhaps.”

  “How?” asked Margo, amused. “How on earth is one plain little girl in the woods going to give me everything my heart desires?”

  “Maybe not such a plain little girl,” said the child. With a wave of her hand, a funnel of leaves kicked up and swirled around Margo. They burst into a small series of fireworks, shooting colorful sparks into the air. Margo stared at them in wonder.

  “How did you do that?” she asked, awed. “Did you bring me here, too?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said the girl. “So, let’s just say for the sake of argument, I give you everything you desire. What are you willing to do for me?”

  “I’d say there’s very little I’m unwilling to do,” said Margo.

  “Wise. Perhaps I ask you to perform three tasks, three simple demonstrations of your loyalty to me. Would you do them?”

  “What kind of tasks?” asked Margo suspiciously.

  “Simple ones. You bring me some things, you chant a few words. Nothing extreme. Nothing that would cause you to, say, break a sweat. And you’ll have it all. Everything you could ever want. Everything you’ve ever dreamed of having.”

  The clearing was briefly illuminated with Margo’s name in lights, a red carpet blinded by flashbulbs, and Les Rodney. The vision hung suspended before Margo’s eyes, like a high-definition TV screen.

  “What do you want me to bring?” asked Margo.

  “We’ll determine that later. For now, I’ll give you a reminder of my offer: my undying loyalty to you and the possibilities I represent. I think you’ll find that it confirms my word.”

  A silver filigreed locket drifted from around the neck of the girl and settled around Margo’s. She looked down at it, startled. When she looked up, she was back in the study.

  Les leaned against the open door, staring at her.

  “Baby? Are you all right?”

  Margo turned in the chair, slightly dazed.

  “Am I what?” she said finally.

  “Are you all right? I said your name like fifteen times, but you were just staring at the wall like you were catatonic or something. Do you need a mineral water?”

  “Yes, that would be nice.” She gazed up at the painting over the fireplace. It was of a girl, the same girl from the woods. She looked directly out of the painting at Margo, a complicit smirk on her berry red lips. As Margo watched, the girl in the painting raised a finger to her lips. Margo turned to Les, who was still watching her, concerned. Apparently, he’d seen nothing.

  “Can we maybe get a painting in here, of me?” said Margo. “I’m thinking something with a high neck, lots of ruffles. Maybe a raven in the background.”

  “Whatever you say, Margs.”

  Margo glared at him.

  “I mean, Margo,” he said hastily. “Are you ready to get going? The room at the bed and breakfast is supposed to be ready by three.”

  “That’s fine,” said Margo with a dismissive little shrug. “How soon can we have this place fully furnished?”

  Les looked pleased. “So, you like it?”

  Margo gazed around the room, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror across the room. The locket glinted brightly around her neck.

  “I think I’m going to be very much at home here,” she said.

  34

  Desperately Seeking Tamsin

  I jumped out of Peter’s bed in one fluid movement, my mother’s voice still in my mind.

  “What is it?” asked Peter. “Where are you going?”

  “I had a nightmare,” I said, crawling around on the floor as I looked for my socks. “I think something happened to Tamsin.”

  “What makes you think that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know how to explain that to you,” I said, frustrated. “I just do.”

  “Did you try calling her?” he asked.

  “She won’t answer the phone,” I said. “I need to go over there right now.”

  “I’ll drive you,” he said, sitting up and switching on a light. “Why don’t you call your mom or your aunt?”

  “Why don’t you shut up,” I mumbled under my breath in annoyance from under the sofa as I unearthed my shoes, barely audibly so that he couldn’t hear me.

  I knew how it looked to Peter: I woke up out of nowhere, insisted that my cousin Tamsin was missing, with no apparent reason for believing it, and now wanted to rush over to my family’s house without even calling first. How was I supposed to explain to him that I was telepathically connected to my family, a coven of witches, and phones were extraneous? Was I supposed to waste extra energy putting on a show of doing things logically and externally when Tamsin was potentially in danger?

  My family had sworn me to secrecy, my grandmother Aurora explaining that she hadn’t even told her husband of forty years about their craft. Peter was the first person in a long time I could foresee being in a long-term relationship with, but the thought of having to engage in that level of subterfuge over an extended period of time was frankly more than I could stand. It was more than I could stand right now, and only after five questions about what I was doing and why I felt the way I did.

  I bolted down the stairs, not even bothering to check if Peter was behind me. I felt like I could have grown wings and flown to my family’s house. If Peter wasn’t keeping up, I was perfectly willing to run.

  But he was keeping up with me. In the time since I found my shoes and sprinted from his house, Peter had gotten a scarf, hat, and jacket in addition to his car keys.

&nb
sp; “Aren’t you freezing?” he asked me as we got into his truck.

  “No,” I said. I couldn’t even feel the cold.

  Peter turned the heat all the way up and put his hat and scarf in my lap. In the midst of my panic, I was moved by the gesture and felt bad for my earlier irritation.

  “Sam,” he said. “I get that you’re worried about Tamsin, and I want to help you figure out what’s going on. I’m just a little confused as to why you think she’s missing.”

  “Listen, Peter,” I said. “I get that it’s in your nature to be inquisitive, but if you need to understand every little thing that’s going on with me, this isn’t going to work.”

  Peter was silent a moment, considering this. He sped down the winding back road that led to my family’s house, and I appreciated his speed, even not knowing why we were doing what we were doing.

  “Why does it have to be that way?” he asked.

  I wanted to scream in frustration. I hadn’t even spent a full night with Peter and I already had to deal with the question of revealing my secret identity. Couldn’t this wait till all the usual more serious questions came up, six months down the line when we were discussing moving in together?

  “Because that’s the way it is,” I said. “I wouldn’t needle you about things you want to keep to yourself for right now. Okay? So don’t give me a hard time about this, Peter. Please.”

  “Okay.” He fell silent. I knew he thought I didn’t trust him, and I felt badly about it. It had been hard for me to trust him at all based on my last relationship, a veritable buffet of deception. Not to mention the fact that he’d been secretly tailing me and sleuthing around in my family’s business.

  I hadn’t known my family from the age of six until my thirtieth birthday, when an assignment at work brought me to Mount Hazel to represent pop star Margo Metal, making a comeback after a lengthy period of radio silence. Mount Hazel was coincidentally the hometown of my mother, whom my dad divorced and sued for sole custody due to what he referred to as her “blatant and dangerous delusions.” As it transpired, my mother’s delusion was that she was part of a very powerful coven of witches. Only it wasn’t a delusion, and I had inherited her powers.

  Ever since I came to Mount Hazel and discovered the truth about my heritage, things had quickly spiraled out of my control. Which, as a controlling person, made me feel fairly insane. My family informed me that I’d not only inherited their craft, but a particularly distilled form of it that made me incredibly powerful. I’d had terrifying visions of two recently murdered people who asked me to solve the mystery of their untimely demises. The more I looked into it, the more that it appeared that none other than my own client, Margo Metal, was involved.

  To make matters worse, which I hadn’t thought possible, my ex Les also represented Margo. I discovered that he’d been involved with her before we started dating—or, more to the point, before he started dating me and three other women simultaneously behind my back, two of whom he proceeded to hire to Margo’s entourage. The whole thing was starting to feel like a vast and interwoven conspiracy to make my life as difficult and complicated as humanly imaginable.

  There were several silver linings to all of this: I forged a relationship with my mother, who I’d never known. I met my grandmother and aunt I didn’t even know I had for the first time. I also became close to my younger cousin Tamsin, so much so that I felt protective over her. And now I felt like I had failed her. I had been so certain that my vision of Margo’s plan to sacrifice a powerful witch in exchange for everlasting fame and immortality meant me, I hadn’t bothered to consider the possibility that my family was in danger.

  And then there was Peter. I met Peter my first night in Mount Hazel, and initially I couldn’t stand him: arrogant, handsome, and knew it. He was filled with an easy confidence that I didn’t understand was the result of his own hard work and discipline. At the time I automatically associated it with Les Rodney, destroyer of women.

  But Peter had quickly proved that he had my back and was on my side. When I first found out he was keeping an eye on me and my family in the process of investigating the local murders in town, I thought that maybe he was out to get me, too. But I was wrong. And now I had to lie to him about practically everything.

  Peter pulled to a stop in the driveway, in front of the house that resembled a cuckoo clock. Built by my grandfather, it was a powerful depository of magic. My family had cautioned me against spending too much time there lest it unleash my powers full strength before I was ready.

  Lights blazed from inside the gabled house like a beacon. I jumped out of the truck while it was still running and ran for the door, which was already opening.

  “Sam!” My mother embraced me, and I could feel her relief flowing from her mind into mine. “I was so worried about you. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Where’s Tamsin?”

  “We don’t know,” she said. “We asked her not to leave at night until we resolved what was going on and she agreed. Not in the way she normally agrees, meaning she pretends to and then does exactly as she pleases, but sincerely. Minerva checked on her before she went to bed, and she was gone.” She glanced over my shoulder and saw Peter. “Hello, Peter,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  “Hello, Isadora,” he said, smiling warmly. “I’m well. How are you?” Peter knew everyone in town. His dad owned a local bar which Peter had inherited, and as an investigative journalist for the Mount Hazel Gazette, he made it a point to maintain at least an informal connection with everyone he could in order to multiply his sources. I was glad I was spared the awkward introduction between my until-recently estranged mother and a man I’d just started seeing yesterday.

  “Come inside the house and get warm,” she said. “You’re not even wearing a coat.”

  She stepped aside to let Peter and me in, and I saw him immediately look up to the towering ceiling, floors above our heads, to the skylight. His gaze traveled back down to the sundial in the middle of the foyer. I could see then how badly it would have embarrassed me to bring a boy home in high school. I felt bad, but it made me secretly relieved I hadn’t grown up here.

  These petty thoughts raced through my mind in passing as my mother led us to the kitchen. The wood stove was lit and it was warm. Minerva and Aurora were at the table, clutching mugs of tea. Minerva looked devastated. Aurora was calm, but her mouth was in a thin line and her eyes were downcast.

  She raised an eyebrow at our entrance. Who’s Prince Charming?

  Quiet, Grandma, I thought. The only thing worse than living in a weird, embarrassing house as a teenager would have been living in it with my grandmother who could read minds.

  “Peter, can I get you some tea? Do you take honey? Sugar? Milk?”

  “No, thank you,” he said politely. “Did you say Tamsin was missing?”

  “We think so,” said my mother, taking two mugs from the cabinet and placing them on the table next to Aurora and Minerva. She busied herself getting loose tea and extra lemon from the fridge, avoiding Peter’s gaze, which had immediately cut to me when she said Tamsin was missing. I avoided looking at him as my mother did, sitting at the table in front of one of the empty mugs. Aurora reached for the kettle and poured hot water into it.

  “It’s not like her,” said Minerva hoarsely. Her eyes were red-rimmed and I felt so guilty I could barely look at her. “Not at a time like this.”

  “You mean with what happened to Martha Hope?” asked Peter sympathetically, sitting down across from her. Aurora’s eyes locked on him.

  “Obviously, young man,” she said. “My daughter is devastated that her daughter has gone missing after the recent murder of another young girl.”

  If Peter was taken aback, he didn’t show it. I guess he was used to dealing with tough customers, but I had to admire him for his fortitude in the face of Aurora’s death glare.

  “Did you call the police?” he asked.

  My mother and I exchanged glances. There
seemed to be little point in involving the police in matters of witchcraft. First of all, we wouldn’t be believed, and I was certain there was nothing they could—or would—do without some kind of hard evidence against Margo, which almost certainly didn’t exist. I felt certain she’d taken pains to eradicate her trail with magic.

  “It hasn’t been twenty-four hours, and Tamsin is eighteen,” said my mother sitting at the table without meeting Peter’s eye.

  “I could call in a favor,” said Peter. “A buddy of mine—”

  “No police,” said Aurora.

  He looked at her, incredulous.

  “But the police are the ones who will help you get her back,” he said.

  “Like they got that girl back?” said Minerva darkly. Peter fell silent.

  “No police,” Aurora said again. “And I’ll tell you this once and once only, young man: this is a family matter, and you’re to keep out of it. If Sam wants you here, fine. But only if you’re silent. This isn’t for you to solve.”

  “But—”

  I shot him a look and he fell silent, looking appalled. But then, everyone at the table was silent. Peter watched us, mystified, as we sat with our heads bowed. He couldn’t hear us, but our conversation continued without him.

  Do you think Margo has her? I asked.

  It must be them, said my grandmother. Or more likely, it’s Gwyneth. That book you found is a book of handwritten spells designed to control the reader. It’s how she gained control of Margo. It instructs the reader to perform three tasks, and she will grant them whatever they desire. The tasks tend to be based on virgin sacrifices and things of that nature.

  I thought of Martha and Colin. Martha had been killed for her voice, and Colin I wasn’t quite sure about.

  Has she done something to Tamsin? I asked in total fear. I was glad that Minerva, whose magic dealt with healing and not clairvoyance or telepathy, couldn’t hear me.