The Curse of Dark Root: Part One (Daughters of Dark Root Book 3)

by April Aasheim

  “Meditation. Spiritual beliefs.”

  “You mean religion?”

  “Something like that. It’s not like I can talk to any of you girls about it. And I sure couldn’t talk to Mama about it. She was tolerant of everyone, except those who didn’t share her beliefs.”

  “You can talk to me.”

  Merry tightened her lips. “No, Maggie, I can’t. No offense, but you have a tendency to roll your eyes or get angry or make jokes about things.”

  “And Michael doesn’t?”

  “No, Michael doesn’t.”

  Of course he didn’t. Michael loved nothing more than discussing religion, cultural beliefs and aliens who might take you away in their little silver UFO just before the shit hit the earth.

  A dimple appeared in Merry’s right cheek. She had been reading my energy and caught my disapproving thoughts.

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “I’m not the easiest person to talk to about subjects like that. We just did it so much at Woodhaven I think I have PTSD. I’ll work on it.”

  “Thanks.” Then, blushing, she added, “As for our plans today, I’m showing him some of the local country while the weather holds. We’re supposed to have a week of pure sunshine.” She held up a basket. “I packed some of Aunt Dora’s famous ham sandwiches. Do you think that’s too forward?”

  “Michael hates ham. Says pigs are unclean.”

  “Oh.” Merry’s smile disappeared. “I didn’t know.”

  I raked my hands through my hair, wishing I had kept my mouth shut. Merry was kind. It was Michael whose intentions I didn’t trust.

  “Auntie also made some chicken salad. Maybe I should bring some of that?”

  “Michael has changed,” I admitted. “He’s driving. He’s listening. For all I know he could be the biggest ham eater in the world now. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Merry glanced out the window and I crawled my fingers under the pillow, searching for the globe. She caught me.

  “I, uh, saw that last night,” she said, her blue eyes shining. “It was on the floor so I put it on the table. I hope that’s okay? What is it?”

  I pursed my lips together, unsure of how much to disclose. “Just something Jillian and Aunt Dora gave me to help with the pregnancy. Magic stuff.”

  “Oh. Secret-secret. Got it.” She winked.

  I wrapped the globe in a dish towel and returned it to my tote bag. Last night’s dream came back to me: my father and his affair with Larinda. I knew that they had been together––Armand was also Leah’s father––but actually seeing the two cavorting gave me the chills. Was his dalliance with Larinda what changed him? Or was it because he discovered Mother’s former lover, Robbie?

  I strummed my fingers on the couch. There was something else to the dream that nagged at me but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then my eyes wandered back to Merry’s picnic basket, filled with Aunt Dora’s ham sandwiches.

  “Merry…?” I began tentatively.

  She opened the front door. The sunlight touched her flaxen hair. It sparkled, as if combed with fairy dust. She looked over her shoulder. “Yes?”

  “Have you ever wondered about Aunt Dora?”

  “Hmm…wondered what?”

  “Well…” I peered at the staircase, at the conglomeration of portraits that graced the wall. Mother was in many of them, in various stages of her life. Stiff black and whites mostly. But there were no signs of Aunt Dora until about the late 1960s.

  “Isn’t it odd that there are no pictures of Aunt Dora when she was young?”

  Merry blinked against the sunlight. “I never thought of it, but yes, I guess. There’s no pictures of cousin Larinda either, except for group photos.”

  “Yeah, but Mother hated Larinda. It’s not surprising that she didn’t have any pictures of her in her house.”

  “True.” Merry left her post at the door and wandered around the living room, inspecting the walls, bookcases, and then up and down the stairwell, studying each photo along the way. “You’re right. Not a single picture of Aunt Dora prior to the sixties. Except for one of her and Mama in 1940’s-style pant suits. And that doesn’t look like it was taken anywhere near here.”

  She returned, handing me a framed black and white picture of Mother and Aunt Dora, dressed in tight sailor suits and hats, smiling warily into the camera. Behind them was a bare field and gentle hills. Not a tree in sight.

  I handed the picture back. Merry held it between her palms and closed her eyes. Her energy sparkled like fizz coming off a can of cold soda pop. She shook her head. “This was definitely not a local region. It feels European to me, though I can’t tell you how I know that. I’ve never been to Europe.”

  “Mother did travel quite a bit. All over the world, I hear. It must have been taken on one of her adventures.”

  I looked at the photo again, noticing how different the two women were from one another, even in their youth. “Do you ever think that…I mean…have you ever considered that she isn’t really our aunt?”

  Merry twisted her ponytail around one of her fingers. “I never thought of it. She’s always just been our Aunt Dora.”

  I scooched closer and we looked at the photo together. Our slim, pretty mother standing next to our broad, matronly Aunt. They shared no physical similarities whatsoever, except for an unusual sparkle in their eyes that could be seen even in a black and white photograph.

  “She doesn’t look like Mama,” Merry agreed. Then, looking at me, she added, “But people say we don’t look much alike, either.”

  That was true. Merry was short, curvy and blond, while I was tall, slender, and a redhead. “What about the way she talks?”

  Merry chewed on her lip as she considered. “She doesn’t speak like anyone else around here. More like some of the people I met from the Deep South, but not quite.” She shrugged. “I always thought it was because she didn’t go to school or something.”

  “But Mother went to school. It doesn’t make sense that Juliana, who was a former Portland society woman, would send Mother to school and not Aunt Dora.”

  “Unless she was adopted, maybe later in life?”

  Merry and I looked up, staring at one another. Finally, Merry stood, tugging down her T-shirt with a defiant gleam in her eye.

  “Even if,” she began, pointing a finger at me. “Even if we discover that she isn’t our aunt, what will it matter? She’s been with us our entire lives. She practically raised us. And she took care of us when Mama had her meltdown. DNA doesn’t mean everything. Or anything.”

  I shouldn’t have told Merry, I realized.

  Eve, yes. Ruth Anne, yes. Merry no. Family and tradition meant everything to her.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve just been thinking a lot lately.”

  “That’s the problem, Maggie. You think too much. Suppose it is true. Suppose Aunt Dora’s not our biological aunt. Then what? Do we stop talking to her just because she doesn’t share our blood?” Merry bent to tie her shoe again, though the lace had not come undone. She stood, staring me in the eyes. “Aunt Dora is family, even if she came from Mars.”

  I inhaled down into my belly, then let it out in one big gust. “We won’t talk about this anymore,” I said.

  “Good.” Merry’s eyes softened. “Sorry to get so cranky. I know I can be a bit of a Mama-Bear sometimes.”

  “That was cranky?” I laughed. “You haven’t seen cranky until you see Eve storming around the house when she’s missing an earring.”

  “Or run out of lip gloss.”

  “Or her phone dies.”

  We traded jokes at Eve’s expense. She was an easy target and wouldn’t mind anyway. In fact, she’d probably be honored we thought her important enough to dedicate an entire conversation to her. Our joking ended with the sound of Michael’s horn. It was good timing. I had run all out of Eve bits.

  Merry tossed a glance out the door, then placed a hand on her hip, giving me a hard stare “We lost Mama a few months ago. I can’t bear to lo
se anyone else.”

  “I understand.”

  “And maybe we shouldn’t tell Ruth Anne or Eve our suspicions. We don’t know for sure.”

  Though they would probably take the news better than Merry had, I agreed.

  Besides, Merry was right––except for my snow globe vision and little physical evidence that Aunt Dora existed in this house prior to 1968, I had nothing to go on. And, as my mother used to say, “A good witch knows when it’s time to stir the cauldron and when it’s time to throw in the pot.”

  Merry gathered her basket. “Family is family, no matter how it’s forged.” She left, but the twinkle in her eye had disappeared. I had brought the clouds, even on this sunny day.

  I looked at the photo of Mother and Aunt Dora once again, trying to tap into whatever residual energy it carried. Nothing. But the dream came back to me, or at least a fragment of it: Robbie, the love of Mother’s life, was Aunt Dora’s brother.

  I had been given the globes so that I would learn things. Maybe this was one of them.

  This realization only inflamed my anger with my aunt and Jillian. Neither were true family, yet they were making deals with my life and that of my unborn child. Maybe that was the reason for the globes. So I could know who to trust.

  I unwrapped last night’s globe, shaking it to see if it would replay for me. But the snow swirled, then floated to the ground. Its magic was spent.

  There were still several more globes. And that meant more secrets. What else was I meant to discover before giving birth to my son?

  TWENTY-SIX

  Incense and Peppermint

  “Ruth Anne, for the love of Jupiter, will you please lock that door?” Eve leaned over the register counter of Miss Sasha’s Magick Shoppe, speaking loud enough that the last-minute customer left the store as quickly as she had entered.

  Ruth Anne wiped the crumbs from one hand onto the other, then schlepped over to the door and turned the lock. “There.”

  “Don’t look as though you’re worn out. You haven’t worked at all. You’ve done nothing but read books all day.”

  “Reading is work.” Ruth Anne adjusted her glasses, then noticed that Eve was adding vanilla into a silver bowl. “Whatcha making?”

  I was curious, too. I picked up one of the packages that Eve had gathered for her concoction and read it aloud. “Eye of owl? What the hell, Eve? We can’t use an owl’s eyes.”

  Eve pointed her ladle at me. “You never cared when it was eye of newt.”

  “Yeah, but owls are cute.”

  “So are newts,” Ruth Anne argued. “I had one in college. Or maybe it was a salamander. Wait, it could have been a chameleon.”

  “You sure it wasn’t a horny toad?” I teased as my eyes wandered down to the paperback poking out from her jeans pocket. On the cover, a shirtless, masked man kissed a busty female in front of a crumbling castle.

  “Hmm… maybe. And I think they are called horned toads. Anyways…”

  Eve shook her head, cutting Ruth Anne off. “You know we don’t use real eyes anymore, right? Mom said that once the animal rights people got involved, witchery was never the same.”

  “I think she was kidding,” I said. “At least, I hope she was.” It was hard to fathom Sasha Shantay, who had devoted her life to saving the world, using real animal parts in her spells. “Rat’s tails and bats wings.” I shivered. “That’s archaic and barbaric.”

  Ruth Anne elbowed me in the ribs. “Look at my little sister, throwing around the big words. Maybe I’ve rubbed off on you? You could take a lesson from me too, Eve.”

  “The only lesson I’d take from you is never to let Merry perm my hair.” Eve clanked the ladle firmly against the rim of the metal pot.

  Ruth Anne marched back to the reading area and retrieved her baseball cap. Putting it on, she asked Eve, “What crawled up your panties and bit you?”

  “Obviously not a man,” I said. “Or she’d be smiling.”

  Our youngest sister stood for a moment, her body stiff as a soldier’s. She tapped the ladle three times on the pot, draining off the last of the liquid before setting it down. Finally, she said, “Follow me.”

  Eve led us into the back room where we kept supplies and the merchandise that only “special customers” were privy to: tarot cards, love potions, Ouija boards, dragon’s blood, and real parchment. She pointed to a tall, blanketed object in the far right corner. “Maggie, pull the sheet off please.”

  “Do I have to?” I asked. Whatever was under there couldn’t be good or Eve wouldn’t be wearing a scowl.

  “Yes, you have to.”

  “Okay, but if you give a pregnant woman a heart attack, it’s your karma.” I pulled at the bottom corner of the sheet and it fell away in a smooth swoosh, revealing a sculpture of a naked man carved from white polished stone, maybe even marble.

  “Awesome!” Ruth Anne’s mouth dropped open as she beheld the piece. Circling the statue, she looked him up and down before her eyes settled on a leaf, which narrowly missed covering up his anatomically correct parts. “This is Adam, right? Who’s the artist?”

  Eve shrugged. “The only thing I can tell you is that he needs to get a tan and put on some pants. And maybe some shoes.”

  “Where did this come from?” I asked, running my fingers along his well-chiseled biceps.

  Eve narrowed her dark eyes. “Care to guess?”

  “Oh, no. Michael?”

  “Oh, yes. It came this morning. Took three men to unload him off the truck. We also got twenty hardback editions of ‘How to Talk to Your Kids about the Afterlife,’ in case anyone’s interested...”

  “This must have cost a fortune,” I said, unable to stop groping the statue.

  “Try two fortunes. That man makes me so mad! What gives him the right to order stuff without consulting us? And what the hell are we supposed to do with it, anyway?”

  I studied the statue. “Doorstop?”

  “Temporary boyfriend till Paul comes back?” Ruth Anne added.

  “No, wait!” I pointed at a large hole in Adam’s leaf. “Umbrella holder!”

  Ruth Anne and I high-fived, but Eve did not think any of it amusing. She ran her fingers through her sleek black hair, then marched back into the main shop, resuming her frantic stirring.

  “I’m getting rid of that man once and for all.”

  “I hope you mean Adam,” I said, growing suddenly alarmed.

  “Oh no! I mean Captain Crazy.” Eve’s spoon furiously clicked against the side of the silver bowl. “We should have dealt with him when he first got here.”

  Ruth Anne handed her a box of faux frog’s legs. “Again, you don’t mean Adam, do you?”

  “No.” Click. Click. Click. “I have no idea how Michael wriggled his way into our family, but I’m taking him out.” She snatched up a cellophane package of yarrow and poured it in without measuring.

  “Now Evie,” I said gently. “Remember the last concoction you made?”

  A shadow fell over her face. She had created a perfume several months ago that was guaranteed to attract men. Unfortunately it worked too well, leading to a disastrous result that we were still cleaning up. She shook me away. “I’m not making Man-Catcher, Mags,” she said. “I’m making Man-Banisher. There’s a difference. A big difference.”

  Ruth Anne scratched her ear, dislodging the pencil she had tucked behind it. Catching the pencil before it hit the ground, she said, “Didn’t you send Michael away once before? Seems he came right back.”

  Eve sighed and her stirring hand went limp. “That was with tea, and I didn’t have time to prepare. This will be much more effective. I’ve been practicing on field mice.”

  “You’re a regular Pied Piper,” Ruth Anne said.

  “I can send Michael to China if I want. And with a little more practice, to the moon.”

  “Banishment is dark magick,” I reminded her. “Mother forbade it.”

  “Well, Mom’s not here. And if she was, she would have sent him away herself
.”

  “Ah, come on, Evie,” I said, my eyes resting on a painting of five dogs praying around a poker table. “He’s the father of my baby. We can’t exile him.”

  “Watch me!”

  “At least he hasn’t gotten to you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  As Eve continued to add to her recipe––nutmeg, dried rose petals, and salt––Michael and Merry appeared in the front window. Merry smiled and waved to us while Michael nodded. They continued strolling down the street, passing a Styrofoam coffee cup between them.

  “Where do you think they’re going?” I asked, making my way to the window.

  Eve wiped her hands with a paper towel and joined me. “I don’t know, but I’m not happy about it. Merry said she was too busy to help with the store today. Now I know why. Another reason to send him packing...it will cut down on employee absences.”

  “It is a nice day for shopping,” Ruth Anne remarked. “The book store is still open, and the pie shop.”

  “Great.” I folded my arms and leaned against the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the two as they faded from view.

  Eve removed her apron and threw it into the bin beneath the counter. “Honestly, I don’t know how you can deal with Merry hanging on to Michael like that. It’s disgraceful.”

  “They’re just friends,” I said.

  “So were Paul and I. So were you and Shane.”

  Ruth Anne plunged a finger into Eve’s spell bowl, then licked it clean. She made a face and added more salt. “Maybe Merry is right and we’re wrong,” she said. “She can read people’s intentions. If she thought Michael was bad, she’d steer clear of him.”

  Eve gave her a long, hard stare. “I’m not sure Merry’s skill applies to men. It sure didn’t help with Frank.”

  “Or maybe she knows his intentions and doesn’t care,” Ruth Anne suggested. “When you have a crush, you tend to ignore all of the flags, no matter how red they are.”

  A crush.

  Those two words almost knocked the wind out of me. But Merry was a grown woman and it wasn’t my place to intervene. Plus, I wasn’t even sure if my concern was for Merry or myself.