“It’s been five years. That’s nowhere near a decade,” I balked. “And here I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. You are a teacher, after all.”
“A math teacher,” Dallas corrected me. “And five rounds up to ten which means, mathematically speaking, we haven’t seen that spoiled ‘only child’ face of yours in almost a decade.”
I shrugged at my cousin. “Math never was my strong suit.”
“I can tell,” she answered, rushing down the steps. She got to the bottom and wrapped me up into a big hug. Once again, I could feel the rush of emotions that came with coming in contact with another Lockheart witch. Only, where Charlotte was a tsunami of all kinds of things, Dallas was more of a deep, serene stream. Of all us girls, she was the first—and up to this point, the only—one to find a real, lasting love. She married her high school sweetheart, Jasper Nichols, when they were both just eighteen years old. He was a good man, and truly accommodating for a mortal. He didn’t even mind the fact that Dallas had insisted on continuing to live at Lockheart Estates after their marriage, albeit in one of the guesthouses behind the main building. I could feel the love she had for him, steady and true, like one of the streams that snake down the mountain we call home. I could feel the way she missed him now. He must have been on one of his many business trips, and I could feel something else.
“You’re pregnant!” I said, pulling away from her with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.
“What?” Charlotte asked, her head snapping in my direction.
“They don’t know?” I asked, my mouth snapping shut again. “Uh-oh. I’m sorry. I mean, I’m not sorry. I’m thrilled, truly. It’s just–I mean, I’m right, aren’t I?”
Dallas gave me the smallest of smirks. “You’re right,” she conceded. “I knew I shouldn’t have hugged you for so long. That’s what I get for trying to be sweet.”
“Why is this a secret?” I asked, my heart jumping for joy. “Why aren’t you celebrating?”
“Because I literally just found out a day and a half ago, and I haven’t found a way to tell Jasper yet,” she said, smiling slightly.
“Why don’t you try, ‘Hey, dude, you knocked me up again’?” Charlotte asked. “It’s pretty direct and to the point.”
“Oh, hush!” Dallas said, swatting at her sister. “I want it to be special. I mean, we weren’t trying or anything, but it’s always a miracle, right?”
“Of course, it is,” I answered, barely able to contain my excitement. “And he’ll be thrilled about it.”
“I will be, too,” Charlotte said. “Assuming you stop with all this ‘boy’ nonsense and finally give me a niece to spoil.”
It was true. Dallas was the proud mother of two children so far—not counting the one on the way—and they had both been bouncing baby boys. While that was probably normal for most families, boys in the Lockheart clan had always been something of a rarity. I mean, our entire generation was made up exclusively of girls. It was fun, even if trying to get into a bathroom was basically hell on earth.
Still, when Dallas had the first boy, a kid she mercifully named Jake and not her mother’s suggestion of ‘Austin’, we were over the moon. When she had her second son who, because you can’t win ‘em all, especially where family is concerned, was named Austin, we were still happy, though beginning to feel like we might be a little out of our depth.
With Grandpa Jacob and Aunt Minerva’s husband having passed on, and my own deadbeat of a dad running off in the middle of the night before I even had a chance to be born, we were pretty low on male role models. Having Jasper traveling the Southeast most of the year for work didn’t help matters. Still, we got through somehow, and though they’re a little more lax with their magic lessons than us girls were as kids, Jake and Austin were some fine boys.
It would be nice to have a baby girl to pamper, not that I was going to admit that to Dallas. That was the kind of pressure even a witch didn’t need on her shoulders.
“It’ll be a miracle no matter what it is,” I said, shooting Charlotte a look that told her to keep her pie hole shut.
“There are varying levels of miracles,” she muttered, ignoring my warning glance.
“Does Grandma Winnie know?” I asked, turning my attention back to the expectant mother.
“Do you think I’d still be on my feet if she did?” Dallas asked. She had a point. Grandma Winnie was a nervous great-grandmother. Once she found out that Dallas was with child, she’d put her on bedrest until she popped out another kid. No ifs, ands, or buts.
“I guess that’s true,” I acknowledged.
“That’s probably the reason you’ve been keeping it a secret,” Charlotte said.
“It’s part of it. I can’t lie,” Dallas said, sighing. “But the truth is, I want Jasper to know first. He comes home in two days and this doesn’t feel like the kind of news you should give someone over the phone.”
“I could whip up a spell to get him here sooner,” Charlotte suggested.
“You’ll do no such thing. He has important work to do,” Dallas said, sounding more like Grandma Winnie than any of us ever could.
“He sells vacuums, Dallas,” Charlotte said.
“And it’s important!” her sister shot back.
“Enough of this,” I said. “It’s settled. If Dallas doesn’t want anyone to know until she has a chance to tell Jasper herself, then we’ll support that.” I glared at my other cousin. “Right, Charlotte?”
“Guess so,” she muttered.
“Thank you,” Dallas said. “Now, what about you? I sensed a little heaviness when we were hugging. What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing. Just that Fallon Fulcrum dropped dead right in front of us at The Lunch Pale!” Charlotte said with all the tact and subtlety of a steamroller.
“What?” Dallas asked, her hand moving to her throat in the ‘clutch the pearls’ position. A true Southern classic.
“You haven’t even heard the worst part,” Charlotte continued. “Her voice got all weird and she said, ‘You shouldn’t have come back here, Izzy Lockheart. You were as stupid as a cat in a kennel to do it, and so help me, you’ll pay for coming back here!’ ” She shook her head. “Then she just fell down dead.”
Dallas looked at me in shock. “Is this true?”
“I mean, part of it is,” I answered. “Charlotte went a little overboard on the warning, but Fallon is dead and she did say I never should have come here.” I sighed. “I think it has something to do with magic. There were signs, signs that said—”
“That two more people are going to die.” The voice coming from the top of the stairs now was the same one that had rocked me to sleep when I was a kid. It was the same one that had taught me to control the elements, to use stardust to heal scraped knees, and to stand up for myself when the world seemed intent on knocking me down.
Looking up, I saw Grandma Winnie, and suddenly, none of it seemed so bad.
“I honestly didn’t think I’d live to see the day you stepped back into this house,” she said, smiling down at me like my own personal guardian angel.
“You’re like a hundred,” Charlotte muttered. “I doubt there’s much you haven’t lived to see.”
I gave my cousin another elbow to the rib. She took it like a champ.
“The explosion?” I asked, looking up at the old woman.
“Savannah’s trying to learn how to magically light a candle,” she answered. “It didn’t go well.”
“Still?” I asked, my brow furrowing worriedly. The youngest Lockheart girl was almost twenty-three years old now. She was working on lighting candles when I left. It seemed like at least that much was the same. “Maybe I can help.”
“You’re going to be much busier than that,” Grandma Winnie said. “Drag your backside up here and look at these cards. I think I might have found a clue about what’s going on here.”
8
Following Grandma Winnie up to her room at the top of the stairs, I found that-unlike the lob
by of the B&B, her room had been untouched by time or progress. It was just as it was when I left here, right down to the handstitched quilt and woven throws on the accent tables. It made me feel better to know that in a world where Riley Davis was a police officer, my cat was flying around with birds, and the desk in the lobby was on the other side of the room, my grandma was still as I’d left her, stalwart and dependable.
The tarot cards spread across one of the tables didn’t give me as fuzzy a feeling, though. Card reading had never been Grandma Winnie’s thing. It had never been Aunt Minerva’s or any of her kids’ either. Knowing too much about the future made them nervous, and for good reason. The cards almost never meant exactly what they said, and on the rare occasion that they did, it always came to pass in strange and unexpected ways.
In fact, of all the witches who had passed through Lockheart Estates, the only one I knew of who could read the cards with any sort of accuracy had been my mother, and it was partly that gift that had led to her death.
I had inherited the gift as well, though I knew better than to think I was even a tenth of the witch my mother had been. My mom was a wonder. To steal a line from Sting and his horribly underrated 80s band, The Police, every little thing she did was magic. Me, I was a little less than mesmerizing. Still, I was the best shot the family had at deciphering this mess, and we all knew it. It was the reason I was here, the reason Grandma Winnie had sent for me to come home. She’d felt the evil in the air. She saw the deaths coming, and she knew that we were going to have to act fast if we were going to stop it all from coming to fruition. Looks like we hadn’t moved quickly enough.
“Hey, Izzy,” Savannah said, waving sheepishly at me from the corner. Of all the people I’d seen since coming back home, it was Savannah who had physically changed the most. When I left, the youngest of my Aunt Minerva’s daughters was a freckle-faced, snot-nosed kid of fourteen. She had stringy brown hair and the cursed big forehead that seemed to fix itself on every fourth or fifth member of our family. In the time I had been gone, though, she had grown into both her style and her forehead. She was an auburn-haired knockout, even if it was clear from the look on her face and scorch marks on Grandma Winnie’s blanket—sitting right next to a tragically unlit candle—that magic might never be her forte.
“Hey, Savannah,” I said, trying to keep my tone upbeat and optimistic. Though she smiled back at me, it didn’t look like the gesture helped, which broke my heart. She was officially the most beautiful woman I’d ever felt sorry for. Though she looked like a supermodel standing in front of me, barely made up in a ponytail and what looked to be absolutely no makeup, I could tell how torn up she was about the whole ‘candle lighting’ thing. No hugs needed to sense that.
I couldn’t blame her. By our early twenties, Charlotte and I were practically masters of a few different kinds of magic, and Dallas was a full-blown prodigy, if I remembered correctly. But it didn’t come the same for everyone. Some witches really had to work at it, while others seemed to just get the knack of hocus pocus without even trying.
“It’s good to see you,” I said, giving what was supposed to be a comforting ‘it’ll get better’ smile.
“You too,” was all she said, but she was sniffling, obviously trying to hold back tears. So, I wasn’t sure how much it helped. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, motioning for her to come join us in the center of the room.
“No. It’s okay,” she answered. “The boys will be back from school soon, and someone needs to be downstairs to meet them. Besides, this seems serious. I’d probably just mess everything up anyway.”
“Come on, Savannah,” I sighed. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t, but it is. It just is.” She shrugged and headed toward the door. “It’s okay. Really, it is. I’m good at other things. I’m just not sure what any of those are right yet.” She looked up at me again, shooting me the smallest of closed-mouth smiles. “It really is amazing to have you back, Izzy.”
When she closed the door, I turned toward the others. “How could y’all let this happen?” My words were pointed, and so were my elbows, seeing as how I had planted my hands firmly on my hips—another Southern staple.
“Didn’t take you long to throw out your first ‘y’all’,” Charlotte muttered.
“I’m serious,” I said, indignation welling up inside me. “That girl is hurting, and she’s way behind where she ought to be for a witch her age.”
“And you think we just stopped trying?” Grandma Winnie asked, arching an accusing eyebrow at me. “I practice with that girl every day, sometimes for most of the day. Why do you think we had that explosion today anyhow? It’s because I was trying to whip her into shape.”
“And she hasn’t progressed at all?” I asked, looking from one of them to the other.
“She’s okay at some trivial things,” Dallas said, her tone stable and quiet. “But there’s no doubt that she’s struggling. I’ve worked with her too, and it’s not an issue of focus. I thought it might be at first, but she really wants to learn.”
“Good thing she’s as pretty as apple pie on a windowsill,” Charlotte said.
“Charlotte,” I said.
“Well, she is,” Charlotte answered, nodding furiously. “I’m sorry, but that girl would give Megan Fox a reason to feel insecure. She says she has no talents, but that’s a load of horse dung. She can sing like an angel, her paintings would put the masters to shame, she plays piano, writes poetry, speaks six languages, and can eat whatever she wants and still fit into a pair of size ‘not even on your best day, Charlotte’ jeans. So, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to feel bad because Ms. ‘Everything Comes Easy to Me’ happens to struggle in a single aspect of her life.”
“That’s enough of that,” Grandma Winnie said, shutting us all up. “Or have you forgotten why I brought you here in the first place?”
“No, we got it,” Dallas said. “Magic murders and tarot cards.”
“That sounds like the title of a rejected Hallmark movie.” Charlotte chuckled.
“What’d you find, Grandma?” I asked, cutting Charlotte off before she diverted us down another conversational rabbit hole.
“Nothing good,” Grandma Winnie said. “But I want you to shuffle the cards yourself. You had a touch of your mother’s gift, and I want to make sure I’m right before we continue.”
I looked at the cards, feeling more than a little uneasy about all of this. I hadn’t touched those cards since I left Spell Creek Mountain. I hadn’t so much as looked at them since my mother’s death. I couldn’t. They represented too much of what she was about. I couldn’t see those things and not think of her. I couldn’t back then, and it turned out that I couldn’t now either. As I stared at those painted squares of paper splayed across the table, memories of the woman who gave me life danced through my head like reminders of a life I would never, ever have again.
“Izzy?” Grandma Winnie asked, noticing my hesitation. “I know it’s hard, but I’m going to have to ask you to put on your big girl pants for this one.”
That was something Grandma Winnie always told us too. Whenever we faced something that was hard or that we didn’t want to do or think we could do, she’d tell us to put on our big girl pants. It meant we needed to grow up and do what was necessary. I knew that, but it still felt nice to hear her tell it to me.
“Big witch pants,” Charlotte cut in, still chuckling.
I lifted my right hand, palm up, and called on the magic inside me. It was rusty, seeing as how I hadn’t really used it in a while, but I found it hadn’t atrophied. Like riding a bike, casting a spell was still second-nature to me.
The cards lifted from the table, shuffling around in midair and moving toward me. When they settled near my face, still dancing around in the air, they formed a traditional deck.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” I said, adding a Don’t fail me now, Mom in my
head for good measure.
The cards did as I asked, shuffling once more, and then three of them separated from the deck and hovered in my line of sight, the backs of the cards facing my eyes.
I wiggled my fingers, and one by one, the cards turned to me. I took each of them in, along with the dark X that covered each one.
“What do they mean?” Grandma Winnie asked.
“Probably what you think they do,” I answered, swallowing hard. “The Xs mean an unnatural death, and the forms on the cards indicate whom those deaths are meant for.” I pointed to the first card, a woman with a serving platter in her hand. “This is the Handmaiden. She represents service and probably stands for the fact that Fallon, the first victim, was a waitress, a servant.”
“Freaky,” Charlotte muttered.
“It gets freakier,” I said. “The second is the Ace of Cups. It represents a new relationship. Well, it could also represent a rekindled old relationship. It just means that the person it represents gives you feelings of giddiness and happiness, kinda like you’re a teenager or something.”
“And the third?” Dallas asked, pointing to a card depicting a man and woman standing with a child under a rainbow made of ten cups. It was, by far, the most troubling card of all three.
“It’s the Ten of Cups,” I said, my voice shaking. “It represents a strong family.”
I snapped my fingers and the cards returned to their place on the table, settling normally as though magic had never touched them.
“I know what I think this means, but what do you think about it?” Grandma Winnie asked, glaring at me.
“The first one is simple. That was Fallon,” I said. “The other two are more complicated, but I think the cards depict a certain order. The handmaiden was pulled first because Fallon died first. I think the second one, the Ace of Cups, represents who the next victim will be, and we should focus on that before dealing with the card that symbolizes a family.”
Mountains, Mystery, and Magic Page 4