I snorted. “The Summerses don’t do digital.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Winnie joked. “How am I supposed to help you look for information when I can’t touch the books?”
“Morgan thought of that already.”
I took a vial from my pocket. Inside, a little will-o-the-wisp glimmered with Morgan’s blue craft. When I uncorked the vial, it levitated in front of Winnie for a moment before floating straight into her heart space. Her diaphanous skin glowed blue and became opaque.
“Voilá,” I said as Winnie examined her alien appearance. “Technically, you still aren’t able to touch anything, but it will at least let you help me search the stacks. Try it out.”
Winnie wandered over to a shelf and reached for a book. The volume responded to Morgan’s craft rather than Winnie’s touch, floating out to meet her fingertips. She grinned as she guided the book through the air to rest on the desk.
“I feel like a real magician,” she remarked. She waved her hands around another hovering book. “Look! No strings!”
I rolled my eyes in amusement. “It won’t last very long, so don’t waste it. Let’s get to work.”
Unlike the library above, the archives were poorly organized. The Dewey Decimal System didn’t exist down here. Witch literature was difficult to keep track of. Most of it was written in the form of personal diaries and never edited. The pages preserved the essence of the authors, but when it came to research, search and find was the only method available.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Winnie asked, skimming the titles on the shelf nearest the fireplace. “101 Uses for Toadstools? Come Hell or High Water? Is this a romance novel?”
She held up the book. Sure enough, a cheesy picture of a witch and her human lover set against a background of hellfire graced the front cover.
“Don’t judge me,” I said, “but I’ve read that.”
Winnie whacked my shoulder lightly with the novel. “Got a thing for forbidden romances, huh?”
“Yew Hollow gets pretty boring when there aren’t any demons or dark witches to vanquish,” I explained. I snatched the book from her grasp. “I’m starting to think letting you borrow Morgan’s craft for a little while was a mistake.”
“Fine,” she laughed. “Point me in the right direction, would you?”
“We’re looking for accounts of dark magic.” I drifted toward a shelf full of hand-bound notebooks and chose a random stack to skim through. “Personal diaries or history textbooks are our best bets. If a witch has seen something like this before, she would’ve written it down.” I sat down at the desk with my haul. “Look for anything that seems similar to our situation, like crafted thunderstorms or widespread disease.”
Winnie collected her own handful of notebooks and settled in one of the armchairs. “Morgan said that this was some kind of curse. Is that different from another type of enchantment?”
“Curses are inherently malevolent,” I answered, gingerly turning the front cover of the first journal. It was dated 1878, and the yellowing pages were fragile. “Witches balance power just like any other supernatural entity. Light and dark, so to speak. Everyone starts off neutral. Usually, we’re taught to follow the general rules of morality, but some witches, just like mortals, want something more. It’s the arrogant or the petty ones that usually turn to curses, personalities that need attention and power. They start out small, a pox curse here or a trip hex there. If they continue, it gets worse. Famine, plague, war. Half of this world’s historic disasters were due to some kind of witch’s curse.”
Winnie forgot to skim the books for information. Instead, she stared at me with rapt attention. “So what happens to the witches who continue to cast curses?”
“They go dark,” I answered simply. “Curses morph into dark magic. You start to access something that isn’t of this earth anymore. It’s created by your own faults, stemming from guilt or rage or vengeance. Then every spell you cast, every enchantment you create, is dark. You aura blackens and you lose yourself.”
Winnie rested her chin in her hands. “Why would anyone want that?”
“Power,” I replied. “That’s the biggest reason, but not all witches intentionally turn to black magic. Some of them are merely overwhelmed by their own internal darkness.” I faltered, staring at a page in the journal without reading the words. “I should know. When I was a kid, I did a lot of questionable things to stay alive. I pushed myself to the brink.”
“But you came back,” Winnie reminded me.
“Yeah,” I said, returning my attention to the journal. “I came back.”
8
Day after day, Winnie and I descended into the archives to comb through the coven’s collection of literature. We scoured crumbling textbooks, read moth-eaten journals cover to cover, and even decoded a few scrolls written in French and Latin. I extinguished the fireplace most days, wiping sweat from my brow. The temperature was regulated by witchcraft to accommodate the weather outside, but the room seemed to grow smaller and warmer with the passing time. I grew weary of the alcove beneath the library. As the weeks passed, it began to feel like Morgan had banished me to the sub basement as some kind of punishment.
The ward was finished. It was invisible to the naked eye, but everyone knew it was there. The air in Yew Hollow didn’t move. There was no wind or sun, just the gray gloom that coated the entire town like a thick layer of ash. Our self-imposed quarantine was complete, but it did nothing to ease my mind. On the contrary, I felt trapped in the desolate prison of small town charm. The upside was that the witches’ illness had plateaued. No one’s condition had improved or deteriorated. We kept everyone except Alana—who was still unconscious—semi-healthy and functioning by sharing energy with each other. Morgan and the strongest witches cast high-level healing spells across the coven, but I knew time was running out. No matter how effortlessly Morgan disguised her stress, she and the others were growing weaker.
So I held my pride and my tongue and returned to the library every morning with Winnie. Most days, we were there until late in the evening. Every so often, we came across a tidbit of information that appeared helpful but had no luck in discovering an actual solution to the coven’s problem.
“A witch in 1918 fought off the flu pandemic in her coven with an enchantment she created with healing crystals. I guess that doesn’t apply here though, since the pandemic didn’t stem from a curse. Or did it?”
“Here’s something. A witch cursed her own coven because they elected her subordinate coven leader over her. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Oh, wow. The coven killed the witch to get rid of the curse. I guess that’s one way to solve the problem.”
During yet another fruitless session of hunting through the archives for any hint of a similar curse, I groaned in frustration and pushed away from the desk. My eyes watered from squinting at the tiny lines of text, trying to decipher the cramped handwriting of some eighteenth century witch doctor’s journal. I rubbed them furiously. “This is useless. It’s been weeks and we’ve only made it through an eighth of the books in here. We need a better system.”
Winnie tossed a textbook to a pile of volumes on the floor that she had already read. “Like what? Got a spell to read faster?”
“I wish,” I grumbled. “I don’t know what Morgan was thinking. I’d be of better use elsewhere. I could help with the healing spells or maintaining the ward.”
“She assigned this task to you for a reason,” Winnie reminded me. “Morgan respects you. She wouldn’t make you do something without good reason.”
“Really?” I reorganized a stack of journals according to date and returned them to the proper shelf. “Because it feels like she just wants me out of the way.”
“She’s worried about you.”
“I get that, but I’m fine.” I scratched the bag of my leg. My jeans hid the dark spiderwebs of black craft on my skin, but I felt its unwanted presence at every second. “The mark isn’t spreading anymore. I’m the only witc
h that isn’t sick. I should be doing something that actually matters.”
Winnie blew a sigh through her nose. “Maybe our search is too broad. We’ve been looking for a way to beat this curse, but what if we just find something to subdue it first? To stop it from getting any worse? Something that would take place of all those healing spells Morgan’s been casting. That can’t be healthy for her.”
I flicked a speck of dust off the desk and watched it float lazily to the rug below. “How are we supposed to do that? I’m not a healer.”
“I am,” Winnie countered. “Or at least I was. I might not have practiced traditional healing witchcraft, but my family took a specific interest in holistic measures. There might not be a magical cure for cancer, but I bet we can find something that at least slows down the symptoms of the coven’s illness that doesn’t nuke Morgan. That might buy us some time until we figure out how to shut this curse down for good. Why are you looking at me like that?”
I glanced away, unaware that I was staring until she called it out. “Nothing. It’s just—you keep saying ‘we’ and ‘us.’ I’ve never had that before. Not with a blood relative anyway.”
Winnie grinned. “You getting soft on me, Gwenlyn?”
I scoffed. “Don’t push it.”
Winnie raised her hands in defeat. “Whatever. We’re in this together, and nothing you do or say is going to change that.”
“Good to know.”
She made to put her books away, but they fell through her hands, landing on the floor in an uneven heap. The textbook on top fell open, displaying a side-by-side comparison of two different family trees and several confusing graphs.
“Looks like Morgan’s spell is wearing off for the day,” I said, kneeling to collect the fallen volumes. “I guess we’re done.”
“Wait!” Winnie tried to grab my wrist, her fingers sinking through my skin. She ignored my resulting shudder and pointed to the textbook. “That’s it.”
I checked the title. “This is a study on genealogy. We already know everything about the Summers’ bloodline. I don’t think this is going to help us much.”
Winnie motioned frantically with her hands. “I’m not talking about the Summerses. Open it back to that page!”
I flipped through the book until I caught side of the family trees again. “Here. What are you going on about?”
Winnie leaned over the desk to examine the diagrams. “Look. The one on the left shows general power levels for witches who had only one magical parent. The one on the right makes the argument that witches with two magical parents have significantly higher ability levels.”
I squinted at the page, trying to make sense of the scribbled figures. “I don’t understand. How can a witch have two magical parents?”
“Men may not be able to wield witchcraft, but some are still born into covens,” Winnie said. She gestured impatiently for me to flip the page. I obliged. “Genetically, boys born into a witch family are classified as magical mortals. Kind of an oxymoron, I know, but when a coven-born man has a daughter with a witch, the child’s ability has the potential to be ten times stronger than that of a normal witch. Gwen, this is it!”
I lifted an eyebrow at Winnie’s enthusiasm, leaned over the textbook, and read a line of the next paragraph out loud. “Witches born of two magical parents are incredibly rare. Studies reveal that coven-born men are less willing to procreate with witches, and if they do, the resulting child is almost always male.”
“So?”
“So this doesn’t sound like ‘it’ to me, Winnie,” I said, closing the textbook and carrying it back to the shelves. “It sounds like we would have to leave Yew Hollow in search of a witch with incredible healing powers. There are two problems with that. Number one: the ward is complete. It would take an arm and a leg to open a portal through it. And number two: who’s to say we could even find one super-powered witch, let alone one with the healing ability that we need? It’s impossible.”
“But that’s the thing.” Winnie jumped into my path to catch my attention, and I dodged quickly to avoid walking straight through her. “I already know one.”
“One what?”
“A witch born of two magical parents with a healing ability.”
I stared at Winnie. “You’re kidding. It can’t be that easy.”
Winnie caved, wringing her hands as she paced in a circle around the room’s circumference. “Okay, fine. I don’t exactly know her, but I know of her.”
“How?” I demanded. “Who is she? And why didn’t you tell me all of this before we spent weeks down here with our noses an inch from these smelly old books?”
“I just remembered,” Winnie replied. She cradled her head in her hands, as if wracking her memory for more information. “I’d totally forgotten about it until now.”
“That’s normal.” I finished putting away the books and collapsed in one of the armchairs. “Ghosts have shoddy memories. Is anything else coming back to you?”
Winnie took the chair across from mine. “While I was dying, my mother and aunt did everything in their power to try and save me.”
I swallowed hard. This wasn’t the direction I thought this conversation was going to go.
“Don’t look so morose,” Winnie ordered, playfully kicking my shin. For a ghost, she often forgot that her touch did nothing but chill me to the bone. If she were anyone other than my twin sister, I would’ve long since given her a firm lecture about it. “I don’t want you to pity me. This is informational. The point is that my mother looked far and wide for a cure. She figured there had to be something out there to stave off the cancer cells. She found out about super-powered witches and set her mind to locating one with a healing ability.”
“And she actually found one?”
“My aunt did,” Winnie replied. “She searched from here to California for two years. Then, right before we realized that the cancer had spread pretty much everywhere, she found her in some place called Windsor Falls.”
“Windsor Falls? Hold on a second.” I conjured a state map of Massachusetts, tracing the tiny titles of the neighboring towns with my finger. “That’s what I thought. Windsor Falls is only two hundred miles from here. We could find this witch today!”
“Uh, I don’t know about that,” Winnie said skeptically.
“Why not?”
“We never made contact with her,” she answered. “There was no point. I was beyond help. No spell in the world could’ve saved me.”
My heart sank. I didn’t want to think about how much Winnie had suffered in the end. It didn’t mesh with the image of the light-hearted woman who had spent the better half of her day looking for a solution to a problem that wasn’t hers. I couldn’t imagine Winnie sick and dying. I couldn’t imagine her without her infallible energy or sweet disposition. If I was being honest, I didn’t want to.
“If we asked, do you think she would help us?”
Winnie grit her teeth. “That’s the thing, Gwen. I hate to disappoint you, but the only thing I know is that this woman exists. Near the end, I was in and out of consciousness. My mother and aunt didn’t bother to keep me informed. I don’t know her name or where she lives or if she would even be willing to talk to you.”
“But she’s out there,” I insisted, leaning forward in my chair. “She’s a two-hour’s drive from here. That’s better than the absolute lack of leads we had a few hours ago.”
“What are you going to do?” Winnie asked. “How are you supposed to find her? Drive out to some town you don’t know and start asking around for the local super-powered healer?”
I stood up, grabbed my raincoat, and pushed my arms through the sleeves. “It’s easier than that. Morgan has a scrying mirror. Let’s go.”
Winnie followed me up the set of book stairs. “Morgan has a scrying mirror? How? They’re supposed to be really hard to get your hands on.”
“It’s an heirloom,” I explained. “It was passed down from a previous coven leader. It’s a bit of a myster
y as to who acquired it. The general consensus is not to ask, so I imagine the story isn’t pleasant.”
I sealed the entryway to the archives room with a lazy wave of my hand. Arianna—who spent most of her free time studying in the library—was gone for the day. Outside, it was hard to tell what time it was. The overcast sky tampered with my internal time clock, but I guessed it was late afternoon. Usually, Morgan spent the evenings fortifying the ward with a few other witches, but there was a distinct lack of auras in the sky today. Winnie side-eyed me when I broke into a light jog.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Let’s go find out.”
The closer we got to the Summers house, the more I felt like something had gone wrong. The witch’s mark on my leg pulsed as we crested the hill, but I ignored it, favoring my other foot. In the front yard, I located the source of my anxiety. Morgan tended to a group of witches that had been helping with the ward. From the looks of things, the witches had collapsed simultaneously. They lay in the grass at odd angles in various states of consciousness. I sprinted over.
“What happened?” I asked, kneeling next to Morgan as she worked a healing spell on one of the motionless witches. I joined hands and auras with her. The combined colors flowed over the witch’s skin, and her eyes fluttered open as the spell took effect.
“They all dropped,” Morgan said, her voice hard and bitter. “All at once. I felt it too. My knees went completely weak for a second, but I didn’t pass out. It’s getting worse, Gwen. We can’t keep this up for long. Did you find anything in the library today?”
I helped the witch to sit up. “Yes, we have a lead, but I need your scrying mirror. Winnie knows of a healer—”
The crunch of footsteps through the dry grass interrupted me. I moved my fingers just in time to prevent a pair of fashionable leather boots from crushing them. I followed the furry leg warmers and designer coat upwards and found myself staring at Camryn’s voluptuous figure.
“Well, well,” she said, sneering down at me and Morgan. “What do we have here? Morgan and Morgan Junior wreaking havoc as usual.”
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