by Tegan Maher
Seeing Addy in a tizzy was, thankfully, a rare thing. She was typically rock-steady, and had more or less settled into the post-life lifestyle without a fuss. But this Halloween party was her pride and joy; it was her thing. She was there to offer advice—translation: boss me around—but she couldn't be hands-on, which was driving her batty.
The way the party worked was, we’d open up the farm to the public for a few hours, then we’d have a smaller, invite-only costume party afterward. We gave spooky hay rides and handed out candy—
Oh holy crap on a cracker—I forgot to pick up the candy!
While I was having an internal meltdown over what was sure to set off another round of ghostly histrionics, Shelby was trying her best to talk Addy off the cliff. "We've got it covered, Addy. Just look—I've almost got the outside done, and here comes Cody with the bales of hay. He's already got the hay ride route decorated and the scarecrows made, and we have some friends coming over to haunt the route, figuratively and literally. And Noelle has the inside under control and the food covered, right, Noe?"
They both looked expectantly at me.
"Of course I do," I lied, and then the cookie timer went off. Talk about being saved by the bell. "That's the final batch of cookies now." Lying was a skill I've never managed to master, so evade and avoid was my modus operandi. I ducked back into the kitchen, trying to figure out how in the name of all that was holy I was going to sneak into town to get the candy.
While I was thinking, I grabbed an armful of decorations and headed to the salon—a pretentious term for the huge living area in the front of the house. I threw the orange tablecloths over the three long plastic tables Cody had brought up from the barn, then began arranging the plates, napkins, cutlery, and table pop-ups. We'd draped fake spiderwebs in the corners and over the windows, and had strategically placed giant spiders, bats, and lights around the room. There were even a few Styrofoam tombstones and giant animated witches positioned to block little fingers from reaching the curio cabinets and TV.
I was just about to confess to Shelby that I'd forgotten the candy and needed to go to town to get it when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and was relieved to see it was my cousin and business partner, Raeann.
"Thank god, Rae! Please tell me you're closing up early and coming out to help."
"Actually, that was my plan, sugar, but my car won't start. I hate to interrupt, but can you come fetch me?"
"Of course I can come get you, Rae," I said, a little louder than was strictly necessary.
"What on earth are you hollering for?" she asked.
I whispered, "I forgot the candy, and Addy's knickers are already in a serious knot. I need a reason to come to town!"
She burst out laughing. "Girl, I swear you'd forget your head if it wasn't attached."
I scowled and would have argued, except she was right. "I'll be down in twenty."
I ended the call and grabbed my car keys, then looked down to make sure I was moderately presentable in case I broke down or ran into somebody I knew at the store. My sweats were covered in crusty bits of dried dough, and I had a big splotch of orange food coloring on my shirt right over my left boob.
Yeah, maybe I should change first. And put on a ball cap.
It only took me a minute to pull on fresh clothes and rush out the door, calling over my shoulder to Shelby. I waved to her boyfriend Cody, who was hanging ghostie lights in the low-hanging branches of the trees in the yard as I headed toward my salvation.
Rae was ready to go when I pulled up in front of Brew4U, her kitschy little coffee and sandwich shop. The crisp weather was a welcome respite from the hellfire heatwave we'd had only a couple of weeks before, so we decided to walk the couple of blocks to Things Forgotten, a vintage store that offered everything from Victorian hats to flapper dresses. Its owner, Anna Mae, was donating all the candy for tonight.
On the way, we ran into Angus, another of the town's resident ghosts. Calling him the former town drunk is mean, so let’s just say he had a close relationship with cans wrapped in brown paper bags and enjoyed sleeping in the gazebo in the park pre-death.
He was a kind soul though, and part of the fabric of the town; he'd always helped decorate the town for different holidays, and he played Santa for the kids every year. Most of the time, he even showed up sober. He also helped out the elderly or the poor whenever they needed a loose railing fixed or a porch board tacked down.
I’d never understood exactly how he came to be what he was, except I knew he'd experienced some sort of tragedy when he was young. It was sad, but I guess fate has a plan for us all.
"Hey, Angus," Rae said.
"Hey, girls! What's doin'?"
"Just getting ready for the Halloween party tonight," I said. "You're still going to be there to haunt the hay ride route, right?"
He took off his battered fedora and scratched his whiskered, transparent jaw as he floated along ahead of us. "Oh yeah! I'm glad you reminded me. Time gets away from me worse now than it did after I'd had a few too many nips of George Wilson's home brew. I'll head that way now."
"Good deal. See you in a bit. Oh, and can you remind Belle, too?" Belle was the former owner—and current resident ghost—of Clip N Curl, the town's go-to beauty parlor and the hub of Keyhole Lake gossip. If you forgot what you did the night before, you could just go ask the girls.
"Sure thing, Noelle."
We waved at him and continued on up the street to Anna Mae's. I admired an old lace wedding dress hanging in the window of the shop, which she'd opened with the insurance money she got when her husband was murdered a few months before. Don't feel sorry for her, though; keeling over dead in his coleslaw was the nicest thing Hank ever did for her—or for the rest of the town, for that matter.
When the tinkle of the little brass bell above the door announced our arrival, she popped her head out from the room behind the register.
"Hey Anna Mae," I said. "How goes it?"
"Hey, y'all," she replied, her words muffled by the straight pins between her lips. "Come on in. I'm mending and altering this poodle skirt. It's sold, but I need to finish it up so she'll have it for a 50s-themed party tonight. It's been a little challenging because she's quite a bit ... girthier than the original owner.” She nodded toward a couple of large boxes sitting on the counter. “The candy's right over there."
When we went to fetch them, the sun glinted off a pendant nestled in the jewelry case—a large turquoise crystal wrapped in gold filigree. I paused to take a closer look.
"Hey, Anna Mae,” I said, “What's up with this turquoise pendant? It would be perfect for my fortune-teller costume for tonight."
She looked at me over the rims of her glasses and took the pins out of her mouth. "A fortune teller," she said flatly. "You're kidding, right?" She knew about my gifts, so the irony wasn't lost on her. “You know that beach down by the boat launch? I bought it from a girl who said she found it down there after the last storm."
Keyhole Lake covers about ninety square miles. As the name implies, it’s shaped like a keyhole, with the town wrapping around the circular end of it. We attract tourists from as far as a hundred miles away, so it's not uncommon to find jewelry and other trinkets on the shores.
"How much do you want for it?"
"I paid twenty bucks, so cover that and it's yours."
Since the baked goods I sold in Raeann’s shop didn't make enough to cover my bills, I still had to make up the difference by waitressing at Bobbie Sue's BBQ. Twenty bucks was more than I should spend on a piece of costume jewelry, but I was drawn to it.
"I'll take it."
"Okay,” she said. “Just be a peach and grab it yourself. If I let go of this fabric now, I'll lose my measurements."
I slid the glass door at the back of the case open and pulled out the pendant. As soon as I did, it seemed to warm against my palm. When I held it up by its long herringbone chain, the sun gleamed through the semi-translucent stone, bouncing off the gold filigree so
the whole crystal seemed to glow.
Rae stepped to my side to get a closer look at it and raised her brows. "That's really weird. Pretty, but weird."
I shrugged and slipped it around my neck so I wouldn't lose it, then slipped a twenty through the crack in the register drawer.
Rae slid one of the boxes of candy off the counter and I picked up the other, nearly dropping it when it turned out to be twice as heavy as I expected. Never let it be said that Anna Mae doesn't do everything in spades. Rae's lips moved, and my box lightened up considerably. She smiled and winked at me.
Sometimes it was really nice being witches.
"Thanks a ton, Anna," I called as we pushed out the door. "We gotta get back; Addy's probably fit to be tied because I've been gone this long."
"No problem, sugar. I'll see you tonight."
We crossed the street, admiring all the Halloween decorations in the storefronts. As we passed the front of Rae's shop, I glanced in to look for the telltale green light on the espresso machine; she was bad about leaving it on.
The light was off, but when I did the requisite skinny check of my reflection, the person staring back at me wasn't ... well, wasn’t me.
CHAPTER TWO
I jumped sideways and dropped the box, but the girl staring back at me stood still, her eyes wide with surprise. She was probably about my age, with long, wavy blond hair—the kind most of us would kill for—and she was rocking a bathing suit that looked like something from the 70s.
"What the hell, Noe?"
I'd slammed into Rae when I jumped back, and she'd barely managed to hold onto her box. I glanced at her, then pointed to the window. "Look—" I began, but the girl was gone; the only people in the reflection were an uber-pale me and a scowling Rae.
"Yeah, yeah. Those jeans make your butt look great. Will you please unlock the truck now? This box is awkward, and my hands are going numb."
I shook my head, but snapped my mouth shut. I'd only caught a quick glimpse of the girl, and since she was gone, Rae would probably accuse me of smoking some of her medicinal herbs anyway.
We slid the boxes onto the back seat of the truck and headed back to the farm. She was firing questions at me about what-all still needed to be done for the party. By the time I'd listed the score of tasks still on the list, I was about to have an anxiety attack.
By the time we pulled up in front of the house, I had shoved the hallucination-in-the-window incident to the back of my mind.
Addy was on us like white on rice as soon as we stepped from the truck, barking orders like a drill sergeant.
I was pleasantly surprised by how great the porch looked. Jack-o-lanterns sat on either side of each stair and on hay bales around the yard, and lights were strewn around the railings. Spider webs and the little cloth ghosts we'd made by tying scraps of sheet around Styrofoam balls hung from the trees and porch, and Halloween crepe paper hung from the fans and rafters. Shelby was putting the finishing touches on the scarecrow that sat in a chair by the front door.
"Wow, Shel! You've outdone yourself!"
She grinned broadly. "I'm not a complete slacker, sister." She narrowed her eyes when she saw the boxes of candy. "I knew there was a reason you lit out of here like your tail was on fire. You're lucky she's torturing Cody instead of me right now, because I'd totally throw you under the bus to Aunt Addy to get her off my back. She's a hot mess!"
I looked over to where Addy was barking orders at Cody. When he offered to help, the poor beleaguered boy probably hadn't known he was volunteering to be verbally flogged by a tyrannical, seventy-year-old ghost. "Be grateful for him," I said, motioning discreetly toward them with my chin to avoid drawing her attention to us. "Nothing says I love you more than that."
She got that stupid, sappy, puppy-love grin on her face, then actually sighed. For real. All she needed was little hearts coming out of her eyes. If that happened, I'd probably throw up.
"Speaking of good men," Rae asked as I balanced the candy on my hip and pulled the screen door open, "where's Hunter?" She was referring to my boyfriend, the sheriff of our fine little burg.
"He's been working on something, but I'm not sure what. I think maybe he's still tying up some loose ends from the Katherine thing last month."
"Ah. Yeah, I can see where that would be an issue. Poor guy." She shook her head.
We'd had an incident involving cursed items that wrought havoc over several non-magical folks in public settings, and we were having a tough time finding a logical, mortal explanation. There are just some details you can't put in a police report if you expect to stay on this side of the asylum bars.
"Yeah. But he promised to be here early to help harness the horses and finish things up." Though we have a tractor, everybody looked forward to our horse-drawn hay rides at Halloween and Christmas; it was one of those little details that made us unique.
Hunter had been learning to drive the team for weeks in preparation for this, and he was as excited as the kids were. When I had taken him on a horseback ride on one of our first dates, he was hooked. The horses loved him and, to be truthful, it was nice to have somebody who considered mucking stalls an acceptable precursor to dinner plans.
Rae and I slid the boxes of candy onto the long oak kitchen table, and I pulled out another box that held two hundred little Halloween treat bags Shelby and I had filled with party favors a few days ago. All they needed was the candy.
"Why don't I do this, and you can go wrap things up in the salon," Rae said. “That way we're accomplishing two things at once.”
She was right. "Okay, but we need to wrap the candy apples before they start to get sticky. They're kind of a pain to get in the bags."
She raised a brow at me. "Honey, that's why the good lord gave me wrists." She no sooner flicked a hand toward the shiny red globes than they were all wrapped and twist-tied. For the most part, I enjoy cooking and doing things with my hands—and so does Rae—but there's definitely a time when magic comes in handy.
I hefted the steam pans and the box of Sterno cans out of the pantry and hauled them to the tables I'd covered in the salon earlier. The public activities would take place outside, but the private party would be in here.
In addition to several different Halloween-themed finger foods, I'd made spiced peach crisp. My boss, Bobbie Sue, was bringing pulled pork and coleslaw for sliders. Rae, who's an amazing mixologist, made mulled cider for us big kids to enjoy after the little kids crashed from their sugar highs.
I finished wrapping lights around the banister and looked around at my handiwork. Even if I did say so myself, it looked pretty darned good except for the hearth; it was still way too cheery. I didn't want to cover the front of it in case we decided to build a fire later, but I had to do something with it.
I was draping crepe paper off the corner of the mantle when a picture caught my eye. I did a double-take. It was a photograph of the reopening of the courthouse after a fire gutted the building in 1975. Pretty much the whole town had attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
I'd looked at that snapshot a thousand times—it had been on the mantle since before I was born—and I'd never noticed the woman standing beside Uncle Calvin. Of course, I’d never paid much attention to it, except to marvel at how young some of the local old-timers were in it.
I didn't recognize her though. I snatched the picture up to get a closer look, squinting to try to make out her features. She was wearing a tie-dyed bohemian skirt and a white peasant blouse, and had a daisy chain in her hair. And she wasn't just a woman—she was the woman, the one I’d seen in the window of Rae’s shop, and she was wearing my turquoise crystal.
I flipped the picture over and clawed the cardboard back off; Addy was a stickler for labeling and dating pictures, and this one was no exception. She'd scrawled the date—September 15, 1976—and a list of the people in the photo. In addition to her and Uncle Calvin, the mayor was there, along with Belle, Angus, Rae's mama and daddy, and a man apparently named Robert Kingsley, wh
om I'd never met. But there was no name for the girl.
"Aunt Addy!" I bellowed, grasping the picture so tight it was almost cutting my hand. "Where are you? Come to the front salon right now!"
She appeared before me with a loud pop. "What? Did you burn the crisp? Please tell me you didn't forget to buy the Sterno cans. It's just not the same cold, and Bobbie Sue is counting on us!"
I rolled my eyes. I could seriously have been standing there with blood gushing from an artery, and she wouldn't have noticed. "No," I snapped. "The crisp is fine. I haven't even put it in the oven yet, but it's made and in the fridge. And I didn't forget the stupid Sterno."
"Then why on earth are you standing in here screeching for me? Those boys are making a mess of everything. Angus is out there trying to help, but those teenagers are running amok with their phony face gashes and fake chainsaws."
I ran my tongue along the front of my teeth, reining in my irritation. Every year, I forgot what a basket case she became over this party. For the fall equinox and the winter solstice, we hosted fifty or so temperamental witches, and she didn’t skip a beat. But this innocent little get-together, the sole purpose of which was to show people—mostly little kids—a good time, completely unhinged her. I didn't get it.
"I'm sure the boys are doing just fine." I held the picture out so she could see it. "I need to know who the girl is in this picture. The one standing beside Uncle Calvin."
She looked utterly befuddled. "Why, that's me, Noelle." She lowered her eyebrows. "Have you already been in the cider?"
"No, of course not! And I'm not talking about you; I mean the girl standing on the end, on Cal's other side."
Raeann, who had come running when I had yelled for Addy, peered at the picture I was still holding up, then back at me, concern etched on her face. "Honey, nobody's standing beside Uncle Cal. He's at the end of the row, like he has been since the first time I laid eyes on that picture."