by Laura Sibson
A swell slams into me and I’m plunged beneath the water. I kick and swim, ignited by my anger. I reach the surface. The boat is farther away. Jim swims toward me. I catch glimpses of him over the swells. GG stands on the roof of the boat. Her long braid has come undone and her gray hair blows all around her. She holds her hand over the water, a branch sitting on her open palm.
Jim is closer. The water tosses me. My lungs are hungry for oxygen. Jim reaches for me. My body is lifted with another swell. I take in water and I’m under again. My lungs feel tight. I kick again, but weakly. When I break the surface this time, Jim is there. He grabs me in a lifeguard hold and begins to swim back to the boat. GG drops the branch into the water and raises her arms in great sweeping movements. Her lips move, casting some spell. I kick to help Jim along. The swells seem to be calming a bit. There are no longer whitecaps. My lungs still burn. But the squall is moving out. Jim and I make it to the boat.
By the time we reach the ladder at the back, GG is there. Jim climbs up first and then reaches down to pull me up. He holds me and I collapse against him.
“Are you okay?” His eyes, full of concern, inspect me.
“Think so.”
Jim releases me and I go down on my hands and knees on the deck of the boat coughing and spitting river water. The wind has completely stopped, leaving the air oddly still. The river, too, is calm now, its surface a mirror.
I roll over so that I’m staring at the sky. My chest heaves. “GG, what just happened?”
“Nothing good.” GG squints at the horizon, at the clouds rushing away as fast as they rode in.
Jim kneels beside me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m shaken up, but I don’t think I’m hurt.”
“It’s best to leave us now,” GG says.
He shakes his head, like he doesn’t understand what just happened. “This is my daughter. I’m not going to leave until I know she’s okay.”
GG looks from Jim to me and back again. I nod.
“Well, that’s a question answered. Thank you, Jim,” GG says. “I’ll take it from here.”
“Edie, if you need anything, you give me a shout.”
I nod. “I will.”
When he’s out of earshot, I ask, “What just happened?”
“You’re very close and the spirit is fighting back.”
I push myself to standing. “What do I do?”
“You keep going.”
“I almost died.”
“But you didn’t. And you won’t, now that I know we’ve got some of your mother’s blood. Find the last of the items, Edie. This is very nearly over.”
I shiver standing before my grandmother despite the late July heat.
“You can’t say anything more than that? How will we banish the Luctus spirit? What should I expect? I don’t even know where to find the last item.”
GG wraps me in a towel. “I find that in times like these, a good peppermint tea with fortifying honey does wonders. Why don’t you go make yourself some now?”
My eyebrows fly up. “Seriously?”
GG nods at me. “Quite seriously.”
After I’ve dried off and put on fresh clothes, I set the kettle to boil and lean my elbows on the counter. I feel chilled to the bone and sick, like I do every time the Luctus spirit tries to reach me. GG says we are close, but at this moment, I’ve never felt further from the goal.
I reach for the tea tin, and the twirling of the handblown witch ball catches my eye as it casts shades of purple and blue whenever the light hits it. Purple and blue were the colors that came to me when I tried to cast the spell. Something glints inside the ball. I stand up. Holding the fishing line from which it hangs, I lift the ball from its hook. Peering through the colored glass, I see a simple gold band sitting inside the ball.
Chapter Thirty-Five
EDIE
We all get out of the car. I carry the five items. Rhia has her bag of supplies. Tess wears a necklace of garlic along with the spell bag that Rhia made. Rhia and I had tried to tell Tess that there aren’t any vampires involved, but she wouldn’t be moved.
We’ve spent the last week preparing for our next step. I was excited to find the ring, but after my near-drowning, I was weak—as I am after every interaction with the shadow world. Then, when I told GG that we’d found the fifth item, her eyes lit up. But just as quickly, they clouded over. She frowned then and said that she couldn’t remember what she needed to do next. Couldn’t remember an important thing. Knowing what Rhia’s been through with her grandmother, I knew that I should be patient with GG. It wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t remember. I tried to show her patience and compassion.
But inside, I was the opposite of patient. I was in turmoil. I’d been frozen, nearly burned, nearly drowned, and temporarily paralyzed. I have black veins working their way toward my heart. Patient is definitely not what I was.
Rhia hit the books, looking to fill in GG’s missing memories. I paced, wondering if the key was something that GG had shared with me in the past. Tess mostly fretted. We all agreed that we needed to return to the cabin with the five items and perform a powerful ritual spell. We knew that we needed to break the bind of the Luctus spirit to the cabin, to the Mitchell bloodline. So we collected what we needed and here we are on a Saturday morning staring at the overgrown cabin.
“I guess this is the end of the road,” I say.
“Let’s hope for the best,” Rhia adds.
“It’s always darkest before the dawn,” Tess says.
Rhia and I stare are her. “What?” she says, “I couldn’t think of a good cliché that matched.”
That gets a smile out of me. A small one at least. Remembering what happened last time Rhia tried to enter the cabin, we go in with me holding Rhia’s hand on one side and Tess’s on the other. It takes some awkward shuffling, but then we’re in.
Rhia creates a circle of salt and we all sit. She pulls a bowl and the rest of the ingredients from her bag. Wearing Tess’s oven mitts, I take each item out one by one. The watch that my grandfather wore every day. The photo of him and my mom finishing a big project. The key to the place where he did all of his work. The dog tags that showed Mom and GG the most vulnerable side of him. And the gold wedding band that represented the love between him and GG.
Into the bowl I place soil from the perpetual woods along with some hawthorn bark that I harvested. Rhia adds a piece of black amber. Tess contributes the feather of a red hawk. I add three strands of my hair as well as GG’s, for good measure. I add a drop of Mom’s blood from the vial in the acorn charm. Rhia drips oil over all of it.
I look at my hands and take in a deep breath to calm my mind. I envision a tiny flame, nothing big. Nothing dangerous. Tiny sparks dance from my fingers. A spasm of fear zips through me. I greet it as an old, annoying friend. Then, I send my sparks into the concoction. The blaze is quick and hot. Our faces are illuminated in the flames.
“You did it,” Rhia says.
I nod. “Me and fear, besties now.”
All those weeks ago enclosed in the weeping arms of the beech tree, Rhia encouraged me to conjure fire. I had been so afraid. This time I was afraid again, but I didn’t give fear my power. I held on.
We chant the spell that we’d written based around one found in Mom’s journal:
“With these items we have found,
Through their power you’ve been bound.
With my words I set you free.
Depart from here; leave us be.
Dirt of earth and feather of sky,
With bark and crystal here do lie.
Hairs of witches in my line,
Hear my words and break this bind.”
We look at each other across the circle. Nothing has happened. No banging doors, no creeping vines, no shadows. We try two more times. Still not
hing.
“Did we do something wrong?” Tess asks.
I drop my head. All of the danger I faced since June was for this moment. I believed that we would dispel the dark magic connected to the Luctus spirit when we completed this ritual. I’d been willing to place myself in harm’s way knowing that I would be able to restore order and balance. That I would cure myself of this infection. I hadn’t allowed myself to dwell on any other outcome.
We wait a few moments longer, hoping. But the veins that had worked their way across my collarbone after the near-drowning have not receded at all. I say nothing as Rhia gathers her things and holds them awkwardly under one arm while grasping my hand with the other. Tess grabs my other hand and we make it to the door. We all step outside. Rhia drops her bowl and all its contents.
“Whoa,” Tess says.
“That’s unexpected,” I say. “Do you think our spell actually worked?”
Inside the cabin, there had been no clue that the ritual made any difference. No shadows. No fire. No unexpected squall. No flickering of my vision. But behind the cabin, where there had been nothing, now stood a large workshop.
“Something obviously worked,” Rhia says.
“We did it!” Tess jumps up and down. Then she looks at me. “Why aren’t you excited?”
“I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t for a workshop to magically appear. And I don’t know what’s in there, but I’m pretty sure it’s not unicorns and rainbows.” I steady my breath and walk toward the building. Rhia and Tess follow close behind. I turn to them.
“I think I should go in alone,” I say. “You two have done so much already. I don’t want to put you at more risk. But if something goes wrong, will you get my grandmother?”
Rhia nods. Tess squeezes my hand. “Just don’t die, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
The workshop is unlocked. No need to lock it when it’s a hidden building. I push open the door and step into the dimness.
There’s a simple altar on a wooden stand and candles in various stages of use, a few photographs, and some other items I can’t yet make out. I walk closer. The photographs are of my grandfather. One of him alone, smiling from the deck down by the water. One of him and GG. He smiles at the camera while she kisses him on the cheek. The third photo is of him and my mom when she was a little kid. She digs in the sand while he sits nearby, smiling at her.
In front of the photos and interspersed with candles are various items. I reach out to pick up a pocketknife and it cuts me. A drop of my blood lands on the cloth of the altar.
The candles flicker to life one by one. The entire cloth is riddled with spots of blood. I step back.
I bump into something. I turn to see what I’ve run into. And I scream.
* * *
* * *
An older man looks at me with confusion. A glow emanates from him and ripples out, altering the environment in its path. What had been a dark, dusty space with a few grimy windows morphs into the living room of the Baltimore house. Not as it is now, but maybe as it was before I was born.
“Who might you be?” the man asks.
I don’t need to ask who he is. I’ve seen him in photos and memories. I’ve seen him floating around GG on our houseboat. He’s my dead grandfather, not aged a day since the photos were taken. And he appears real. He’s talking to me.
“I’m—I’m Edie,” I stutter. “Your . . . granddaughter.”
He frowns, inspecting me. “But that’s impossible. My daughter is graduating from high school today. I have a gift for her. See?” He dips his hand into his jacket pocket. “Where is it? I just had it.”
My breath chokes in my chest. “Do you know where you are?” I ask.
His laugh is big and confident. “Why would you ask such a question?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m—” He looks around. “I’m in our house. In Baltimore.” He looks at me then, confusion clouding his eyes. “Aren’t I?” He looks around some more. “But it doesn’t, something isn’t quite . . .” He clears his throat and offers a polite smile. “Forgive me. Are you a friend of Maura’s? Going to graduation with us?” He frowns, then the polite smile is once again pasted onto his face.
“I’m so sorry to be rude, but I must be going. We’re in a hurry. To get to the graduation.” Then to himself. “That’s where we’re going, right? To Maura’s graduation?” He shakes his head. “I can’t seem to . . .”
He begins to fade away and the scene fades with him. Then he appears again. This time he believes that he’s on his way to build furniture. Once again, he gets confused and disappears. He appears three more times. Each manifestation seems to be a different memory. I’m overwhelmed with seeing him relive old memories that I’ve heard about or read about in Mom’s journal. My heart aches as he becomes confused at the end of each moment.
I begin to whisper the words that we said in the cabin. My grandfather looks baffled as I begin to speak.
“With these items we have found.”
His image flickers like Mom spoke about in her journal entry that day that she spoke to her father’s ashes with her whole heart.
“Through their power you’ve been bound.”
The words lodge themselves in my throat. Here is the grandfather I’ve only known as a ghost. How is he also here? I focus so that I can continue.
“With my words I set you free.”
His image strobes through all of the memories that have held him captive.
“Depart from here; leave us be. I release you, Grandfather Edward,” I say through tears. “I release you to go where you belong.”
His figure ripples and brightens before bursting into a thousand tiny balls of light. A whisper of wind caresses my cheek and the lights fly out into the afternoon sky.
I’m once again staring at the altar in a workshop that had been hidden for years. The candles have gone out and the space is dim with afternoon light trying to break through the dirt on the window. Deep in the corner of the workshop, I make out the shape of something dark and hulking. I hear a scratch and a rasp. I don’t wait to find out what it is, I race out as fast as I can.
“I saw my grandfather,” I say. “Not like the ghosts I usually see. He had a physical presence.” I try to catch my breath. “He talked to me. He was solid. But he was so confused. Like he was reliving moments from the past. I think I released him from whatever was holding him here.”
“That sounds like what we hoped we were doing,” Rhia says. “But I have some bad news.”
“I do too,” I say. “You first.”
“We’re not finished.” Rhia points. “Do you see those stones? One at the corner there and then another over this way?”
“I never noticed them before,” I say. “Are those crystals?”
Rhia nods. “There are three buried around the property as I’d expect for a containment spell, halfway out and halfway in,” she says. “But this one”—she toes the area—“seems like it’s been messed with.”
My stomach drops. “Oh my gods, Tess.”
“What?”
“Remember the first day we came here? That morning on our run?”
“Yeah!” Her face goes white and her hands fly to her mouth. “That stone. I said it was pretty.”
I nod. “I found it right here.” I look at Rhia. “I had no idea what it was. I barely knew anything about how magic worked then.”
“So you removed a crystal from here?” Rhia asks, pointing at the spot.
I nod. “But it had bad energy. I knew that much at least. And I came back and buried it again. That must be how everything started. And all this time, I thought it was because I’d taken a photo of my mom from the cabin.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Tess says. “You said you released your grandfather’s spirit. Maybe we’re done!”
“We’re not done,” I say, looking at the cabin. “My grandfather disappeared, but something else was in there. Something I didn’t wait to see.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
EDIE
“GG, Mom magically hid Grandfather’s workshop,” I blurt out to GG when I return to the boat just before noon. “And she trapped Grandfather’s spirit there.”
“Nonsense,” GG says from behind the book she’s reading. “Your mother couldn’t have done that sort of magic. Besides, Edward’s spirit is here.”
GG drops the book into her lap, as if she’s realized what she’s said and what it means. I feel as though the floor has been pulled out from under me. All this summer as I’ve read about Mom’s grief and her memories associated with her father’s belongings, I assumed it was she who had invoked the Luctus spirit so that she could see her father again. And when GG said that she was limited in how she could help or that she couldn’t remember, I thought it was because it was Mom who had created this terrible situation.
I never guessed that it could have been my grandmother.
“It was you?” I ask. “You hid those items and invoked the Luctus spirit?”
GG looks down at her hands.
“I did, yes. A very long time ago and I’ve been paying for it ever since.”
“You’ve been paying for it? Look at this!” I say, I say, yanking the collar of my T-shirt over to reveal the black veins. “How exactly have you been paying? I’m the one in danger. And you allowed me to think that my mother—my dead mother—was to blame.”
“Edie, don’t—”
“No! You withheld the truth. You don’t get to tell me what to do now.”
I walk over to GG’s workspace and I pick up her recipe box. I start to look through all of the recipes, reading them and tossing them to the floor as I dismiss them. “Calming Nerves, Quieting Nausea, Ceasing Cough. None of these actually help, GG. These are useless. Just like you! You’re the witch who created this; you need to end it.”