by Laura Sibson
Chapter Fourteen
EDIE
RETRIEVAL CHARMS
There are two main ways to search for a person or a thing.
FINDING A PERSON:
This is essentially scrying, using something from the person’s body (hair, nails, something that has touched their skin) to direct a crystal.
1. Attach the item to a clear quartz crystal.
2. Suspend the crystal from a chain or cord.
3. Spread out a map.
4. Place four additional clear quartz crystals at the corners of the map.
5. Hold the crystal suspended from the chain just above the map’s surface.
6. Slowly swing the crystal counterclockwise, while saying the following:
With this crystal and the items I bind,
Reveal to me the one I wish to find.
After a few turns, the crystal will pull toward a particular location as though it were a magnet. When this happens, you’ve located your person.
FINDING AN ITEM:
If you are searching for a lost item and you know what it is, but you don’t know where it is, that’s much simpler. For the strongest result, light a candle and burn some rosemary.
Say these words:
As I hold this image in my mind,
Help me see what I hope to find.
It’s the last day of June, which means a full week has passed since I went to the cabin. The decoction that GG and I made from the beech bark seems to be helping. At least those black lines aren’t progressing, and I don’t feel nauseous or dizzy. I still feel cold sometimes though, and—even more peculiar—I sometimes think I see shadows just in my periphery. But when I look, they disappear. I continue to seek comfort in Mom’s journal.
“I remember this second one!” I say to Temperance. “Mom was always losing her car keys.” I laugh a little when I remember her repeating the words while rushing around, rummaging under couch cushions and in the kitchen drawers. When she left a room, it was like a hurricane had come through. A friendly hurricane with a good sense of humor.
“And how about Mom meeting a boy and telling him to come help her with the boat? Bold move, Mom.”
It doesn’t surprise me; she always had an easy connection with people. I consider trying the latest spell that’s been revealed to me. Mom hovers at the foot of my bed, which feels encouraging. Maybe I can start with finding something small, something that I know the location of. Like a pair of earbuds I left in Baltimore.
My time with Rhia the day before at the beech comes to mind. If I want this spell to work, then I need to give it the same respect that I gave the beech. I grab some rosemary from GG’s herb stash, light a candle, and say the charm with intention.
As I finish the charm, there’s the sensation of warmth on my skin and that brief shimmer of light that comes with the magic, and behind my closed eyes, a bright image flares: a ceramic dish sitting on my dresser in my bedroom in Baltimore. And in the dish are the earbuds.
“Huh,” I say to Temperance. “It works!”
Temperance looks at me like she’s known the whole time that the charm works.
“Guess I’ll hang on to that one.”
* * *
* * *
After our run on Thursday morning, Tess and I stop at the diner for coffees for Tess and me, tea for Rhia, and donuts for all. Arguably, the coffee shop has better coffee. But Jorge, who Tess is now officially seeing, doesn’t work at the coffee shop. So the diner it is.
“Nectar from the goddesses,” Rhia says when she sees our goodies. “And you two are the goddesses, obviously.” It’s the first time I’ve seen her since our moment at the beech. After she gives us each a peck on the cheek, my hand goes to the spot she kissed. Rhia’s lips on my cheek.
“Are you blushing?” Tess asks.
“What? No,” I say, dropping my hand.
Over donuts, Rhia lays out a favor she needs. “I could use some help with something. Bachelorette weekend. I got a last-minute order and I need to make twenty aromatherapy spell bottles. Will you two help?” She presses her hands together. “Please?”
“Count me in,” Tess says, dusting powdered sugar from her hands.
“Sure,” I say.
Under Rhia’s direction, Tess and I gather bath salts, crushed herbs, and dried flowers while Rhia organizes the glass bottles.
“What spell are we casting on these?” I ask, as we start our assembly line.
“Oh!” Rhia laughs. “These aren’t real spell bottles. They’re just pretty bottles full of items that smells good.”
“That makes this easy, then.” I fill the bottom of a bottle with bath salts and hand it off to Tess.
“What’s up with your hand?” she asks. “I noticed that bandage before but forgot to ask.”
“I cut it,” I start to say, but I am the world’s worst liar. “On something. And GG thought it looked infected, so she’s got one of her remedies on it.”
“With your grandma on the case, I’m sure you’ll be better soon,” Rhia says.
“Yeah,” I say, “I hope so.” And truer words have never been spoken.
Tess says, “Hey, so I’m hoping we can all get together for Fourth of July.”
“You know I’m in. Wouldn’t miss it,” Rhia says, as she funnels crushed sage into a bottle.
Tess presses a cork stopper into the mouth of a filled bottle and sets it aside. “You don’t have plans, do you, Edie?”
“I take offense at your suggestion that I have no other social life,” I say. I’m measuring out portions of bath salts.
“So you do have plans?” Tess wrinkles her brow.
“I’m joking.” I’m glad to have Tess’s invite, but can’t help feeling a twinge. This will be my first Fourth of July without Mom.
Last July Fourth, we decided to decorate our front yard for the annual parade that passed by our house. Mom took it to a whole other level with a ten-foot-tall Statue of Liberty made of papier-mâché she’d found. We dressed her in the Maryland flag. Then we bought all of the American flag motif pinwheels that we could find and planted them all around her. One hundred and eighty-seven pinwheels. It seemed there was no end to the quirky plans she came up with. How could I have known that I’d only have her for six more weeks? What would I have done differently if I’d known? For one, I would have been ready to learn the magic.
“Edie, you have to party with us. July Fourth in Cedar Branch is amazing,” Tess says. “First, there’s the town crab fest, and then at night there’s a band and fireworks. The band sucks. It’s totally for old people. But we are going out on Jorge’s boat to watch the fireworks from the water.”
“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” I say. The fact that Rhia will be there is a highly motivating factor. “And thanks.”
“For what?”
“For including me. Even though I can be a pain in the butt.”
Tess puts a hand over her heart. “As a member of one of the founding families of Cedar Branch, it’s my birthright to welcome all newcomers into our amazing traditions,” she says with mock solemnity. “Even the ones who are a pain in the butt.”
* * *
* * *
“I haven’t had crabs this good in so long.” I tap my wooden hammer lightly on the knife I’ve positioned just so on the claw. I crack the claw open, and a beautiful intact piece of meat waits for me.
“That’s because Al’s does the best steamed crabs, and also, you’re a landlubber,” Tess says. She’s opened her crab and is cracking the body in half.
“Excuse me, Baltimore is a port city,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter how close to water Baltimore is. It’s about how you’re so clueless about boats and life on the water.”
She’s not wrong. Mom’s journal shows how much she knew about boats, but it’s not kn
owledge that she passed on. The missing of her washes over me. My body goes still for a moment while I wait for the wave to recede.
“E, you okay?” Tess asks.
“Yeah, fine.”
“I never did like the look of their beady little eyes,” Rhia says, pulling me from my thoughts. Rhia stares down her crab.
“You like to eat that lump crabmeat though,” Tess says.
I smile. It feels good to be with friends tonight.
“That’s right, I do. The one exception that I make to my dedication to not eating living creatures.”
“Could you pass the pitcher of lemonade?” I ask Tess.
“I’ve never seen you drink a beer or anything,” Tess observes as she hands me the pitcher, now covered in steamed crab spices.
“Yeah, me and alcohol do not mix.”
“Same,” Rhia says.
A happy little spark flares inside me, knowing that Rhia and I have this in common. Though I doubt that Rhia’s reason for not drinking is the same as mine. Alcohol affects witches in unexpected ways. One time, Mom started to levitate after drinking a glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve. And when I drank just one beer at a party freshman year, I burped iridescent bubbles. Then—to play it off—I tried to conjure a bottle of bubbles, but I hadn’t done magic in a while and I ended up with a stuffed Powerpuff Girls doll. It was a whole thing.
Tess has tried to introduce me to the people gathered at this crab fest, but they all sort of blend together. Jorge sits at the next picnic table over with a couple of his buddies. They seem all right, but I’m happy to be sitting at this table with Rhia and Tess. We all continue to pick crabs until there’s a pile of carcasses before us and the flies are starting to become bold.
After we get cleaned up and twilight falls, we board Jorge’s boat. Tess hands Rhia and me life jackets.
“Seriously, Tess?” Rhia says.
“Safety rules are safety rules.”
“I guess I can’t argue with that,” Rhia says.
I secretly don’t mind wearing the life jacket—I’ve never been as at home in the water as Tess and Rhia seem to be. And definitely not like Mom, who was practically a mermaid. But then it was her element, after all.
As we motor up the wide river, Tess points out huge osprey nests sitting on channel markers. We pass by boats anchored together in pods with music blaring. Perched along the shore are all kinds of houses from modest cedar cabins like ours to enormous multifamily vacation homes with their windows looking out over the water. Jorge maneuvers his boat to what he assures us is the best viewing spot and then he kills the engine and drops an anchor. Tess sits with him at the helm while Rhia and I take seats side by side in the back of the boat, or stern, as our captain keeps calling it.
“Jorge, is that Eagles Cove?” Tess points off the port side of the boat.
“Sure is.”
“Hey, Edie, your family’s cabin is over there,” Tess says.
Night is falling fast, and the cabin is little more than a black shape amid tall trees. “I see it.” I hadn’t missed the fact that GG had skirted my question about why people say the cabin is haunted.
Rhia leans in close to me, a welcome distraction from my thoughts. “I love fireworks,” she says, “don’t you?”
I nod. “Mom and I never missed them.” I’m quiet, remembering times when Mom and I would jump in the car in search of the most impressive displays.
Rhia grabs my hand. “This must be hard for you. Tonight. Not being with her.”
“It is. But it’s also good to be out. With you,” I say, enjoying the feel of my hand in Rhia’s. “And Tess,” I add quickly.
Rhia leaves her hand holding mine for a little while, and even though I’ve obviously had physical contact with girls—on the cross-country team the girls were always hugging or high-fiving or braiding each other’s hair—this feels different in a delicious tumbling Wheel of Fortune way.
“How are things with your grandmother?” I ask, not sure if it’s the wrong time or not.
She shakes her head. “Really hard. She didn’t know what day it was today, even though she’s always loved Fourth of July. When we were little, her barbeque was legendary.” Rhia smiles to herself. “You should have seen her. This little old lady working the grill like a boss.”
“She sounds awesome.”
Rhia nods. “Thanks for asking.” She squeezes my hand and lets go.
My hand feels emptier now than it ever felt before Rhia’s hand was in it. Like Rhia’s hand was meant to be in mine. I absently rub my palm with my thumb.
When darkness falls completely, the first fireworks soar into the sky. Rhia and I lean our heads back to watch them burst overhead and then shower down, reflecting in the water where our boat bobs. I slide my leg closer to Rhia’s until our bare thighs touch. I keep my face turned toward the sky. More fireworks explode over our heads. We ooh and aah. Rhia’s leg, warm and smooth against mine, kindles sensations in my body that I’ve never felt before.
“What are you smiling at?” she says into my ear.
“This,” I say. And maybe she thinks I mean this night and these fireworks, but what I really mean is sitting here with her, like we are in our own private world.
She scoots even closer to rest her head on my shoulder, and—even though she’s really just resting her head on the shoulder of my life jacket—I can barely breathe. I want to grab her hand again, but this is all new to me. So instead, I sit as still as possible, relishing the nearness of Rhia. The fireworks build toward the finale, booming faster and faster.
When Rhia grips my arm, I think it’s the next step in our dance. But she points. “Does something look odd over there?” she says.
I follow the line of her finger toward Eagles Cove and sit forward in my seat. At first, I don’t see anything. Then, when a huge display of white fireworks goes off overhead, I see them. A swirl of shadows seeps from the cabin. I glance at Tess and Jorge, but they are staring at the sky. Looking back in the direction of the cabin, the shadows drift toward the river and appear to dissolve into the water. The magic of the moment with Rhia is eclipsed by worry.
As the finale of fireworks blast their staccato overhead, my eyes remain trained on the cabin, but nothing more occurs. After the display is finished, during our ride back to shore, Tess invites us back to her house, but I decline. After what I just saw, I need to talk to GG.
* * *
* * *
“Geege,” I say, tapping her awake when I return to the boat.
“What? What is it?” She comes awake in her sitting chair, raising her arms as if to fend off someone—or something.
“Tonight on the boat, we were anchored across from Eagles Cove.”
“Yes?” GG looks up at me standing over her.
I squat next to her. “I saw these shadows coming from the cabin. They didn’t look natural.”
GG sits forward, blinking away sleep. “This is not good.” She turns her sharp eyes on me. “It sounds as if the protections have been breached.” She frowns, her mind working through a puzzle. “When you were there, did you touch anything? Remove anything?”
I think about everything I touched in the cabin and of the photo I removed. My stomach sinks. “Yes.”
“I see.” GG pushes herself up and goes to the kitchen area to make tea.
I follow her, hoping for more information than she’d shared so far. “What does that mean, though?”
GG pulls down a tin of tea leaves and she selects one of her honeys. “Something’s been disrupted and whatever is meant to be kept in could be getting out.”
“What is meant to be kept in?”
The water begins to boil. GG turns off the burner and lifts the kettle using an old oven mitt. She begins to pour water over the tea leaves in a slow, steady stream. Her brow wrinkles.
“A terrible
mistake.”
I’d like a more direct answer, but I’ve already learned that GG will not answer when she doesn’t want to. I try a different question. “Shouldn’t we banish whatever it is rather than renew the protections?”
GG sets the kettle down firmly. “You have learned some of our craft. Do not presume that you know more than I do.”
In reaction to a rise in her magic, all of the canisters on the counter jump; the prisms and witch balls shudder. The bones stacked on a string clack. Just as quickly, she contains herself and everything goes still once more.
“I’m sorry, Edie,” she says. Then, more to herself than me, she mutters, “I had hoped that this would never happen.”
I’m rattled, but I do what I do best. I focus on the outcome. “What do we need to do?”
GG pours a cup of tea and adds two teaspoons of honey. “We need to make a protection spell, and because there’s no full moon, it will need to sit for twenty-four hours.” She pushes the cup toward me. “But first we need our wits about us. Drink up.”
* * *
* * *
“You weren’t exactly the Ice Cream Alchemist tonight. What’s going on?” Tess asks.
She, Rhia, and I are sitting cross-legged in a circle, enveloped beneath the arms of the old beech tree. Rhia has lit the tea candles and some incense. We’ve met up here because I’d been so distracted at work that Tess had to save me from making career-ending mistakes, which, in an ice cream shop, boils down to wrong orders and incorrect change.
“Last night, Rhia and I saw strange shadows coming from the cabin. When I told GG, she said that we need to create a protection spell, so I was up most of the night doing that with her.”
“Whoa, sounds intense,” Rhia says.
I take in a breath and blow it out. “That’s not all.” I unwrap the gauze covering my hand and hold out my palm so that they can see the tiny lines there. “GG says it’s an infection from corrupted magic. From the cabin. And her cures aren’t helping.” I drop my hand back into my lap.