I didn’t mean to be obtuse, but I wasn’t certain what she meant. My expression betrayed me.
“Well, for starters, we both have the Gay—with a capital G.” She leaned in, winked at me. “Gay as a rainbow,” she said, gesturing toward the sky. “Is that not a commonality between us, Miss Linden?” she said, affecting a posh British accent, which made me smile.
“Yes,” I laughed. “But I don’t think I ever would have called myself ‘as gay as a rainbow’...”
“As gay as what, then, pray tell?” She sounded like a Shakespearean actress, and I chuckled at her joke, at the way she stayed, arms flung out on either side, eyebrow raised, teasing and awaiting my answer.
“I am as gay as...” I thought about this. I couldn’t think of anything clever, so I settled on the first thing that came to mind: “A unicorn.”
“Would you believe,” she whispered conspiratorily, dropping her voice to an even sexier growl, “that the unicorns around here are not gay at all?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Surely you jest.”
“I do not, madam!” She nodded curtly. “All of the unicorns in Wolf Town are as straight as, hmm—I don’t know—George W. Bush.”
“Wow. That’s shockingly disappointing,” I smiled. I snuck a little glance at her, and my cheeks warmed at the sight of her wide grin. I liked this. Us, laughing together on a brightly colored autumn walk. I cleared my throat, raised an eyebrow. “Okay, so what else do we have in common?”
“Um…” She cast about as she shoved her hands back into her pockets. “Aha! I know for a fact that we both like pumpkins!” she said, nodding toward a large pumpkin adorning the front stoop of a house we were passing.
I nodded, face schooled into seriousness. “I do like a good pumpkin,” I told her, “but you’re stereotyping!” I clicked my tongue and shook my head reproachfully. “You’re using my witchiness for your own ends.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” she smiled, and that was serious. She meant it.
“I mean, it is true,” I said, trailing my hands along a conveniently placed picket fence. “I like pumpkins, and I like black cats. I love to wear purple and black. I have an apron that says ‘Nothing says loving like something from the coven.’”
“That’s so tacky!” Morgan groaned, laughing. “God, I love tacky things.” I raised a brow skeptically, but she protested with a grin. “No, really! So, my cousin, Maddox, has this terrible sense of humor. I mean, terrible as in totally outrageous and ridiculous, not as in bad. Anyway,” she said, spreading her hands, “he made the whole family matching sweatshirts last Christmas that say ‘Never moon a werewolf.’ I’ve worn mine so many times, it has holes in the cuffs.”
“Oh, you’re right—that is tacky, and I love it.”
“Then you, madam, have most excellent taste.” Morgan made a little bow, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she raised a single eyebrow and we continued walking along the street. “So,” she told me, pausing and staring up, “this is a great place to start your all-expenses-paid Wolf Town historical tour.” She smiled as she jerked a thumb toward a tall, steel-tipped fence. “This is Henry's place. He has a lake out back with a lake monster in it.”
The house beyond the pointy fence was in disrepair: an old, broken-down mansion that may have once been painted burgundy, but the paint had now faded to a sickly shade between red and brown. The salt air of the ocean and the sea storms had beaten the house to a pulp, and the roof sagged dangerously to the right. I stood on my tiptoes and tried to see over the hedge but couldn't.
“Henry wouldn’t mind if I showed you Ellie,” said Morgan, smiling with mischief glinting in her green eyes. “I’m not gonna lie—she’s kind of awesome.”
“Um…” I said, which I think she thought meant “yes,” because she was already opening the front gate and ushering me through.
“You will be amazed, shocked and awed,” she assured me, putting her arm about my waist to steer me around a bend in the little path. My skin tingled where she touched me, and I hoped she didn’t hear my quick intake of breath...
It was still light enough out to see the driveway make out the steps leading up to the old, unloved house. The porch was broad and rickety, but Morgan leapt up onto it in a heartbeat and used the large, antique-looking knocker (shaped like an ear of corn) once, twice.
A light flicked on in the hallway, and the door opened. A man shuffled out, peering with wide eyes into the gloom. He was probably in his late fifties, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair and bright eyes surrounded by laugh lines. He looked refined, like a college professor. He even wore a tweed jacket.
“Henry!” said Morgan, opening her arms. He ignored the offered hug and peered past her suspiciously.
“And who is this?” he asked. I tried smiling a little in the half-light.
“I'm Amy, sir,” I said and extended my hand.
He didn’t take it, only shook his head, patting his jacket pockets.
“I've brought her here to show off Ellie, if you don't mind,” said Morgan, gesturing around the edge of the house.
“I’ve been having all sorts of damn trouble with her damn kids,” said Henry, finding his glasses in his pants pocket, stepping off the porch, with Morgan following. I supposed this meant that we were going to meet Ellie. We trailed Henry’s footsteps around the side of the house. “They keep getting out, Morgan,” he muttered with a shake of his head. “It’s becoming a real problem!”
There, behind the house, sprawled a wide, flat pond (decidedly not a lake) sporting several overly large lily pads and an ungodly amount of pond scum. In the dying light, the water looked almost flourescent green.
“Ellie!” shouted Henry, making me jump five feet. “C'mon, girl!” And then, he whistled, like he was calling for a particularly energetic puppy.
For a long moment, absolutely nothing happened.
And then the earth began to rumble.
And out of the water, she came.
First, the surface of the pond rippled outward from the center of the scummy body of water. Something broke that surface, like a log bobbing up from the bottom of the pond—but it wasn't a log. The object was shaped like an upside-down rowboat, and it was raised up on a thick neck. The rowboat-type thing was a head, I realized, and the neck was, well, a neck, and when Ellie towered upward, about twenty feet out of the water, and started coming toward us, blinking large, unreasonably cow-like eyes, I took a step backward and almost fell back, and would have fallen back if Morgan's strong arm wasn't there to catch me.
It was a lake monster. I mean, it was a…water-dinosaur-thing. A Loch Ness monster…
It was a Nessie.
But it wasn't a Nessie. It was an Ellie. And when Henry raised up his hand, the monster swam forward and bopped her gigantic nose into his palm as if she were nothing more than a gigantic (really gigantic) dog. Her head was about as tall as he was.
“This is Ellie,” Henry said, peering around her massive bulk to look at the water behind her. He wandered along the edge of the pond, whistling and calling. “C’mon, kids!”
“You can pet her if you want to,” said Morgan with a wide smile, stepping forward to rub the giant’s nose with the palm of her hand. “She's actually quite gentle.”
I reached out my hand, too, tentatively, biting my lip hard. If Morgan hadn't been there, I don't think I would have chanced such bravado. As it was, I kind of quaked when Ellie turned, slowly, methodically, and then bopped her gigantic nose gently against my hand. Her skin felt like the sea turtle I'd touched at the aquarium once: smooth, leathery, and wet.
“She likes you!” said Morgan, grinning. But I wasn’t convinced of myself, because Ellie chose that moment to (very slowly) draw her neck back and pull herself back down, by degrees, into the water. Her head disappeared underneath, leaving ripples on the surface of pond scum.
My hand dangled at my side and dripped onto the grass, the skin slightly slimy because there was algae on my fingers.
A lake monst
er…
I stared at the ripples disbelievingly.
But it had happened; Ellie was real.
“Thanks, Henry. It was so nice of you to show Ellie to Amy,” said Morgan cheerfully as Henry turned to face the both of us.
“Listen—you tell your dad that I need help rounding up Ellie’s kids,” said Henry in a warning, distracted tone. Morgan saluted him, and we both began to walk back toward the gate.
“I promise I will,” she called over her shoulder. Morgan ushered me through the fencing and out back into the night, shutting the iron gate behind us with a soft clang. I searched my jean pockets with my good hand for a tissue, and turning up empty-handed, I grimaced and wiped my palm on a the bark of the closest tree.
“Wow,” I whispered, then stared at Morgan. The streetlights were bright enough to see her face, to see how happy she was—and to see that she was a little smug, too.
“Ulterior motive on that one,” Morgan told me, one brow up, head tilted to the side as she held my gaze. “I knew she’d impress you.”
“Impress might be the wrong word,” I told her, burying my hands (that definitely needed washing) into my pockets, peering back over the top of the fence at Henry, who stalked along the edge of his pond, still whistling for water-dinosaur babies that were stubbornly refusing to materialize.
Then I stopped. “Wait,” I said, drawing out the word thoughtfully. “You wanted to impress me?”
“Yeah,” she admitted easily, shrugging her shoulders.
“Why?”
“Because,” she said, drawing out her word, too, and stepping just a little bit closer. Her spicy scent flowed over me, and my heartbeat rose in a crescendo as I stared up at her. Morgan smiled her beautiful, crooked smile and cocked her head. “There’s this new witch who came to town,” she murmured, voice a low growl, “and I really like her.”
My heart beat so hard, I thought it was going to pound itself out of my chest. “A new witch? Really?” I managed, finding it very difficult to breathe as I licked my lips. “Wait…” I said, blinking as I suddenly realized exactly what this meant. “You're not… I mean, you're not in a relationship?”
She looked surprised, shook her head. “No...” And then she chuckled a little. “No, I’m not—”
“It’s just...” And I pointed to my ring finger, and she took her hands out of her pockets, stared down at them as if she'd never seen them before.
“Oh! Oh, that. It's my werewolf clan ring. See? It says 'MacRue' on it.” She held up her hand for my inspection. I felt inordinately silly—and more than a little awkward—as I looked at it and remembered her father’s ring, which was probably engraved with the same word.
“I like you, too,” I said quietly, smiling just a little. “So...now what do we do?”
“Huh,” she grinned. And then, cocking her head, we both looked up at the first star coming out from behind the clouds in the dark purple sky. (That was a pretty auspicious sign, if you ask me.)
“Now…let’s see what happens,” she said in her low growl, and a thrill of possibility moved through the night, as bright as stars.
We shared a warm, expectant glance, and—unspeaking—we began to move down the sidewalk together. She reached across the space between us and took my hand in her warm palm. My heart skipped about a dozen beats as I breathed out a shaky, happy sigh.
Things were looking up—way up. As high as a heaven full of stars.
Chapter 6: The Fairy
“Hi, Mom!” I said, kicking my heels against the bedroom wall as I lay pillowed on my stomach on Aunt Bette’s bed. “How are you?”
“Oh, Amy, honey, I'm wonderful! How are you? How’s Wolf Town?”
Winnie sat next to me on the bed, primly reading some kind of see-through ghost book. I'd asked her what the book was about, and she quickly hid it from me. So I guessed it must be a “tawdry” novel from her era—a period romance that was actually…period. It likely involved literal bodice ripping, since the women in it likely wore actual bodices.
“Oh, things are, you know, great!” I said brightly. “But how’s the coven? Do you have tonight's new moon ritual planned?” I'd been gone for less than a week, but one of our favorite shared activities was ritual planning, and I missed it.
“Well, I was thinking the ritual would be mostly meditation,” she said, after some thought. I could hear the whistle of the tea kettle in the background. “But, seriously, honey. What's been happening? Give me details!”
“Well, Bette left the minute I arrived,” I told her, with a shake of my head and a small smile. “I’m planning on reopening the café pretty soon. I just wanted to finish up painting it first.”
“That’s nice of you, dear,” Mom said distractedly. I could hear the hot water being poured into a mug now. Then her voice turned coy: “And how are…other things?”
I sighed happily, acutely aware of the stupid smile spread over my face. Beside me, Winnie paused in her reading to roll her eyes. “Well…other things are…pretty great.”
“Spill!” said my mother triumphantly. “I must know all!”
“I mean, I don’t have a lot to tell you yet, but things are totally progressing toward…things,” I told her, turning over onto my back. “But we can talk about that later.” I cleared my throat, determined. “Mom…do you remember how you made that slightly ominous announcement about knowing the stories of Wolf Town?” I hadn't forgotten she'd said it, and it now made sense, considering the pond monsters, the vampire, the werewolves...
“Yeah?” she said, and I could almost hear her forehead wrinkling.
“It's kind of a strange place,” I said quietly.
“Is it?”
I sighed and grinned, shaking my head. “Mom—”
“All right. The truth is…I lived there once. For a summer, to help your Aunt Bette with the café. Just like you’re doing. I'll tell you about it, sometime. There's a reason you're there, sweetheart—”
“You don’t say…” I smiled, tucked my thumb into my jeans' belt loop.
Ordinarily, I might have been a little put out over the fact that my mother had purposely failed to mention the small but very significant detail that she, too, had lived in Wolf Town.
But I wasn’t put out. Because I liked it here. And, for whatever reason, I believed Mom when she said I was supposed to be here now.
“Sadly, I have to run,” Mom began, which I knew was her way of suggesting that she didn’t want me to try to pry anything else out of her. But what the heck was there to pry out? “We’ll talk soon, sweetheart,” she promised.
And then my mother suddenly ended the call.
“Huh,” I muttered, staring down at the cell phone in my hand.
Weird.
It was a beautiful new moon evening, but the air had the scent of rain to it. As I stared at my aunt’s bedroom ceiling, I sighed for a moment. I missed my mother. I missed the coven. I actually missed the sight of Tammie sprawled on the living room floor, trying to talk to her ancestors. I hadn’t been homesick much since I’d arrived here—there had been too much to do, too much to take in—but in the almost-dark of the setting sun and no moon rising, I felt the prick of loneliness sting my heart.
I could have gone to the Ninth Order. I could have gone to the grocery store or the library. But I didn’t. I pushed myself out of bed and grabbed my hoodie from the hook by the stove.
And I went out the back door of the café.
Behind the café and behind the main drag of the town, tall pine sentinels rose, stately and old. An entire ancient-looking forest bordered Wolf Town, which I thought to be quite intentional. Wolf Town seemed the kind of place where primordial forests were bound to thrive.
Now, witch ladies in autumn woods are a surefire recipe for mischief. Knowing this, I still didn't have any inclination to walk through town; it would be so nice, so enchanting, to take a quick starlit walk amonst the trees...
That's the stuff of magic, right? Of fairy tales?
I had
never had any fear of the forest when I was a kid, and when I grew up, that feeling of safety beneath the trees remained obstinately with me. I was a witch: I knew the nature of, well, nature, like the back of my hand, could feel if something negative was close to me, could protect myself against it. There was nothing in the woods that could harm me if I regarded it with respect. I knew that fact deeply. I didn't fear the woods at night; I didn't fear the woods at all. So I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my hoodie, just to warm them (it was chillier than I’d anticipated), and diverted off onto a wide path that entered the woods.
I’d been craving the time to explore these paths since I’d arrived. It was, admittedly, foolish to enter the woods for the first time at night, but under the trees, it felt warmer to me, like an embrace. As I walked along, I felt the encompassing gentleness of the trees around me, felt my energy mingle with theirs. I was safe, and I was held here, and, even though it was an October night, the favorite time of wandering spirits, I didn't feel any spirits close by. That was always a concern, in October. It was well known that, around the time of Samhain (otherwise known as Halloween), the door between the worlds thinned, the veil that separated the living and the dead became transparent, and ghosts or spirits could travel through easily and communicate with the other side. That's why there were so many séances around this time of year; we could communicate with the spirits just as readily as they could communicate with us.
So the basis of many horror or ghost stories actually stemmed from a very old and true fact: things that went bump in the night usually bumped most often around Halloween.
The path I’d found was wide and well kept, a packed-dirt path that wound its way through the stately trees. It was probably a bike or walking path for the inhabitants of Wolf Town. What was strange, however, is that unlike most bike paths, this one did not go forever in one direction, or loop back around to town (not that I’d seen yet). There was actually, before me now, an intersection of paths. A crossroads. I stared at that crossroads as I felt the hairs prick up along the back of my neck.
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