by Catie Rhodes
“Are y’all Wiccan?” I asked at one point, almost embarrassed to enjoy something I believed would ultimately rob me of everything I wanted.
“Hodgepodge,” Brad answered. “We’re always learning, always evolving. The woman who taught us said these traditions were ancient and had no name. We’re ready. Come over here and hold hands with me and Mysti. We—uh—may have to hold her up.”
Mysti rose on her own, swaying weakly, and allowed us to prop her up between us.
Brad took a deep, shuddering breath and said, “If any spirits threaten Melissa Denise White, may the spirits of water and fire, earth and air, banish them and remove their powers to the last trace, making them flee and never return to torment her again.”
Melissa Denise White. Is that Mysti’s real name? How very vanilla. No wonder she changed it, even to something cheesy.
The candles hissed, and each flame burned first blue then red, and they leapt higher. A metallic odor filled the room, bringing with it a chill breeze. Brad repeated his speech, nodding at me to join in. At first I only said a few words, but after the fifth time, I had them all. Our voices sounded odd, their rises and falls sharp in the tense atmosphere. I caught movement in the mirror out of the corner of my eye and glanced in its direction. A tiny figure moved, seemingly walking toward us, getting larger as it drew closer.
“Keep saying it,” Brad ordered, never missing a beat. I began chanting again. The black opal heated, feeling as though it might burn a hole through my skin. The vibration I’d thought pleasant at first increased until I felt like a lightning rod in a storm, every muscle drawn taut, waiting to get hit by a force bigger and stronger than me.
Tendrils of black escaped from the mirror and inched toward us, testing the edges of the circle but not crossing into it. The shadowy form reached the surface of the mirror and stared out at us for several seconds, as though listening to us. Then it stepped out of the mirror, crossed to the circle, and tried to enter it. A flash of light flared and a sound boomed inside the barn. The figure backed away.
The candles guttered, trying to stay lit. The black opal heated to a painful point, and I cried out, trying to wrench my hand from Mysti’s. She tightened her grip, taking up the chanting. I tried to ignore the discomfort. The shadowy figure slid into focus, revealing a familiar face. Paul Mace. My daddy. I gasped and swayed on my feet. My knees locked, and I struggled to regain my balance to keep from spilling onto the floor. What was my daddy doing tormenting Mysti like this?
“Help me,” a voice in my head yelled. “Please, Peri Jean, help me stop this.”
I didn’t know how to help him stop. Was this the reason his ghost never came to see me? Because he went around looking for people to torment?
I picked up the chant again, concentrating on the power radiating from the black opal. There was no time to try to figure out what went wrong with my father. The candles burned strong again, bigger than I’d have thought them capable, and things outside our circle began whirling around, tossed by some unseen force. The force sucked my father backward. I could have sworn I saw relief on his face as he flew backward, back into the mirror, which went black the same way the one in Eddie’s trailer had. Smoke began to seep from the mirror, and it vibrated in place. I could see waves of heat baking off it, the intensity growing until it burst into flames. Brad, Mysti, and I huddled together in the circle watching the thing burn white hot, the glass melting. I broke our human chain and went to cover the fire with an old blanket, ignoring Brad’s protests.
“It was my father,” I said. “The spirit tormenting Mysti was my own damn father.”
Mysti raised her head. She had the clearest, softest green eyes I’d ever seen, and they were completely sane. “He doesn’t want to. Someone is imprisoning his spirit and using it to do bad things.”
It all clicked into place then. The ghost who stole the Bruce family journals and Priscilla Herrera’s spell book, the ghost who scared Eddie to death and stole his treasure research had been my father. He never came to see me because some bad person captured his spirit and made him commit awful acts. Had this same person murdered him? I intended to find out.
The burned smell hung in the barn like a noxious fart. Brad bustled around tearing down all our hard work. I left him alone after I folded the black drop cloth wrong and he yelled at me. Afraid to touch anything else, I stood there with my hands on my hips, feeling useless. Mysti sat slumped on her crate, arms around herself, head down, her ribcage rising and falling with hard breaths.
I walked past her and rolled open the barn’s huge door to diffuse some of the burned smell. Humidity and heat rolled over me, stale and stifling. Damn August heat. It was never-ending. I grabbed an old folding camp chair from the mess inside the barn, opened it, and went back to Mysti.
“Got a chair for you outside. Might smell a little better.” I had to speak to her hunched back. She held out her arm and allowed me to help her to it.
“Talk about a crash course in magic, huh?” The strength had faded from Mysti’s voice, leaving it soft and weak.
No shit. Unwanted too. I said nothing. My emotions twisted until they were a tangled mess, bad enough to compete with the worst of my crochet disasters. Weird stuff—magic—had seeped into every part of my existence like a water leak. Had it been water, I’d have gotten down on my hands and knees and wiped it up. I couldn’t wipe up this mess, and I couldn’t walk away either. I had responsibilities to fulfill, to my friends, to this town, to my long-dead daddy. How did everything end up falling on my shoulders?
Memaw was sick and dying. Barbie had shown up in town. The theft of the Bruce’s family heirlooms escalated to Eddie’s death. Priscilla Herrera putting the fate of Gaslight City in my hands. Learning some pathetic loser had turned my daddy into some sort of spiritual mercenary put a nice, creamy feces icing on the cake. No wonder Eddie mouthed “Paul” at me when I found his spirit in the mirror in his trailer.
“Peri Jean? You all right?” Mysti touched my arm.
“Fine,” I said. “Just worrying.”
Tree frogs squealed their nightly opera. Usually, I found the sound soothing, something I could hide behind and think. After the events of the night, though, their singing scratched on my nerves, finding sore edges and worrying them. A fingernail sliver of moon hung in the inky sky, hovering over Memaw’s house. Was it an omen? If so, it seemed one of hopelessness.
“Worry about tomorrow robs you of your energy to deal with today.” Mysti raised her head to stare me in the face. For the first time I took note of the dark half-moons under her eyes and the way she clutched herself. This woman had run a marathon through hell. She needed rest more than she needed to play nursemaid to me.
“I’ll clean this up. Let your brother take you home.” I turned back to tell Brad to leave it, but Mysti caught my arm, her icy fingers digging in to the soft flesh around my wrist. I barely resisted the urge to pull away.
“No. I want us girls to talk for a minute here. Get yourself a chair and sit down.”
I didn’t want to have a heart-to-heart with her but couldn’t refuse someone so pathetic and broken. Taking the smallest steps I could, putting off the inevitable, I did as she asked.
“Brad says you’re a medium in denial.” She had a sweet smile, the kind used to getting people to open up, to spill their secrets. I was too tired to fight the invitation I saw there.
“My early experiences with what I am weren’t so great. I was put in a mental hospital and diagnosed with schizophrenia.”
“I grew up a ward of the state, so I know where you’re coming from.” Mysti’s confession shocked me, and I turned to stare at her. She carried herself like someone who’d always been loved, always felt confident in who she was. How did she get there? “There’s nothing I can say to take away the trauma of your early years, but I want you to think about something. Letting those old experiences keep you from finding your true self will never make you happy.”
I crossed my arms over my chest
. She was sick, and I didn’t want to argue with her. I changed the subject.
“Were you hired to find the Mace Treasure?”
“No.” She sat back in her chair, frowning. “I want to help you, but I feel uncomfortable giving you too much information. One of the services I provide is confidentiality.”
I sat in silence, stumped on how to proceed.
“But you saved my life and, in doing so, put yourself in danger. Whoever’s behind all this will be coming for you.” She folded her battered hands in her lap. “Convince me to break my rules.”
“There’s more to it than the bad guy coming to take me out.” I slumped in my chair, the weight of it crushing me. “If the bad guy gets the curse off the treasure, the whole world goes boom.”
“Wait a minute. Back up.” Mysti’s voice smoothed out some of my raw edges. She was good at this.
I started by telling Mysti about my father’s ghost stealing the Bruce family journals and the spell book and went from there. Mysti listened without interrupting, squinting her eyes at times, nodding at others. I first noticed the lack of judgment on her face when I explained about the way Priscilla cursed the treasure and how the spirit she tied the curse to would level Gaslight City if released. Mysti’s open expression kept me talking until I reached the part where I went to see Julie and got Mysti’s name from her. I finished my recitation, and the frogs’ screaming filled the silence.
Mysti took a deep breath and let it out. I figured she was gearing up to tell me I’d failed to convince her to do anything but leave and prepared to take the rebuke politely. Much as I wanted to kick little brother Brad’s ass the first time I met him, Mysti hit me a different way altogether. I almost wanted her to like me. Almost.
“My employer hired me to contact the ghosts of both Paul Mace and Priscilla Herrera. The purpose was to find the spelling stones and the box you saw in your vision.”
Brad already told me that much, but it was a start. “Why?”
“Asking those kinds of questions would put me out of business fast. If I want to make money, I have to keep my lips zipped and do the job.” She licked her lips and stopped to think, probably choosing her words carefully. “I contacted Priscilla Herrera at the gallows where she was murdered. I saw her speak the curse you mentioned. I saw her hang.” Mysti shook her head.
“The box and the stones?”
“She swallowed the stones while the man was tying her ankles together before they hanged her.” She turned to stare at me in the dark, her gaze burning at me. “Her spirit told me the man who buried her stole the box.”
“And you thought it might be on the antique circuit so you went to Julie at Silver Dreams.” Things were starting to come together, but not in a helpful way. This was all one big, revolving circle.
“That falls under confidentiality to my client.” She put her hands up.
Another dead end. I bit my lip in frustration.
“Before we move on, I want to say something that’s simply one weird chick talking to another.” Mysti’s soft voice lulled me into listening. “I can see you feel overwhelmed, even frustrated, by all this, but Priscilla Herrera has some reason she chose you, some reason she thinks only you can do it. She was a powerful witch, and she’s still got power as a spirit. When I contacted her, I could feel her controlling what I saw of her last moments alive.”
My stomach did a clumsy cartwheel. I remembered trying to contact the ghost who stole the journals—my daddy’s ghost. Priscilla kept me from it. Mysti herself got into a nasty mess contacting my father’s ghost. Had Priscilla Herrera been trying to protect me? Why?
Help me stop this evil and find peace. The voice came from inside my head, but Mysti jumped and glanced around. Did she hear it, too? She put her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes, her whole body rising and falling with her breaths. My body went into overdrive, preparing for unpleasantness. I crouched on the edge of my flimsy chair.
“She’s gone.” Mysti dropped her hands and raised her head.
Relief surged through me. “That was her?”
“You know it was.” Mysti smiled and touched a finger to her split lip. “And you heard what she said just as well as I did.”
Help me stop this evil and find peace.
“The law of doing magic is ‘whatever you put out comes back times three.’ But a lot of belief systems use the same concept. Christianity, for one. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you.’” Mysti waited a beat for me absorb it. “Priscilla Herrera created some rotten karma when she put the curse on the treasure.”
“It was justified.” My voice raised, and I cut it off immediately. When I spoke again, it was in a near whisper. “Those sorry bastards murdered her.”
“I’ll go for the cliché bonus round.” Mysti gave me her gentle smile. “Two wrongs don’t make a right. Priscilla went to her death with a wrong riding on her, and it compounded as time passed. She is at odds with the universe until it’s fixed.”
“But why me? You’re better at this stuff.”
Mysti stared out into the darkness as she thought about it. “The blood,” she murmured. “You’re a Mace. The treasure was intended for one of your ancestors. Maybe when she said ‘None of you, save one who has the blood, will have the treasure,” she meant only someone from the Mace family could get at it.”
Something about Mysti’s concept didn’t ring quite true to me, but my exhaustion wouldn’t let me get at it.
“This connection Priscilla’s ghost feels with you might work to your advantage in figuring out who is behind all this.” She gave me her soft smile again. “But you don’t like contacting ghosts.”
No, I didn’t.
“Moving on,” Mysti said to my silence.
“Will you tell me why your employer had you contact my daddy’s ghost?”
She hesitated. “My employer thought your father might have a line on where the stones and the box ended up.” I started to speak, but she shook her head. “Now, don’t ask me why. We’ve reached the end of what I can tell you about the job I was hired to do.” She glanced at her brother, who’d finished packing up and sat on a sawhorse watching us. “Do you have my cellphone?”
Without answering, he took it from his pocket and brought it to her. Mysti took the phone and tapped out a message. The tension seemed to go out of her body.
“Okay. When I was hired for this job, my client told me specifically not to reach out to you for one of your father’s personal items to use in contacting his ghost.”
My jaw dropped. I wanted to know how Mysti’s employer got my father’s keychain before this conversation. I was determined to have a sit down with whoever hired Mysti. Find out who they thought they were skulking around behind the scenes like this.
Her cellphone dinged, and she tapped out a quick response and turned to Brad. “Pack up the car quickly. We have a stop to make before we leave town.”
“Car’s ready.” Brad came back into the barn and stood next to Mysti’s chair. She stood, using her brother’s hand to help her gain her feet.
“Do you have it?” she spoke to Brad. He handed her what looked like a business card and a pen. She turned it over, scribbled on the back, and handed it to me. “This is my personal number. I want to repay you for your help today by teaching you how to be what you’re meant to be.”
I took the card and tried to give her a polite smile. She actually laughed at me.
“I understand your reluctance. Really, I do. Had I not met Tunia, it would have taken me a lot longer to accept what I was, let alone learn how to make it work for me.”
“Tunia?” I didn’t want to address anything else she’d said because it might mean committing to something permanent.
“It was short for Petunia. She said her mother liked cartoons.” Mysti’s words broke the tension, and we both laughed.
“How about you tell me who hired you?”
“He said you wouldn’t quit until you found out, and he was right. Tubby Tubman.
I’m on my way to see him, and he wants you to come, too. He said you’d know where to find him.”
I wanted to scream and puke at the same time. Tubby Tubman was the last name I expected to come out of her mouth. I wanted to go see him the same way I wanted food poisoning, but I knew better than to refuse. Tubby Tubman gave the Six Gun Revolutionaries a run for their money in terms of ruthlessness and willingness to break the law. Great end to a rotten day.
“I’ll take my own car,” I said. “You can follow me.”
10
I drove with the window down and the air conditioner turned off. After ten in the evening, the day’s heat had broken, replaced with a velvety coolness I wanted to enjoy while it lasted. Driving below the speed limit and checking often for Brad and Mysti’s headlights in my rearview mirror, the trip to downtown Gaslight City took longer than my usual ten minutes. It took even longer to find a parking place where I could convince myself nobody would notice my car.
“We’re going to Bullfrog’s Billiards,” I told Brad and Mysti as they got out of their Toyota sedan. “It’s right through these alleys. Dark in there, so stay close.”
“How you do know where to find him?” Mysti hovered near me while Brad trailed a few feet behind.
“Let’s say I know some things about Tubby the average citizen of Gaslight City might not know.” I hurried down the alley, taking small steps to avoid tripping on debris. We ended up in a courtyard piled with beer boxes and wooden pallets. I walked straight to the iron bar covered back door.
“This doesn’t look like a business,” Brad said. “What is it? Some kind of secret club?”
“There’s a street entrance,” I said. “I’m hoping not to be seen by any of Bullfrog’s patrons.” Whether my plan worked depended on how much of an ass Tubby felt like acting.