Miss Hawthorne Sits for a Spell

by Katherine Hayton

  The ghost in question sniffed. “It’s by using my energy properly. I’d show you how, but since you can just use witchcraft, there wouldn’t be any point.”

  “That’s not how—”

  Emily held up a hand. “Cynthia, stop sniping at her for a minute.” She turned to Wanda. “I want to understand.”

  “I cast a spell and put my sister in the puzzle for safe-keeping. You’ll need to release her spirit back to the world in order to free her.” Wanda reached for the toy again and hissed when her hand passed straight through it. “I can’t do it like this.”

  “Can you tell us what to do?”

  “You’ll need a book of spells. It’ll probably be back at my flat. You just read out the incantation and the power residing within the book will work its magic and release her. As long as it’s performed within a calendar year of the entrapment, she’ll be perfectly fine.”

  “That should give us plenty of time.” Emily’s eyes blinked, not wanting to reopen. “Will you be okay here, while I head on back to bed? It’s Saturday tomorrow, so we can get started nice and early.”

  “Sure. Whenever you feel up to it.” Wanda bit on the side of her thumbnail, frowning at the table.

  “Yes, you get your rest,” Cynthia said with a slight edge to her smile. “I’ve loads more questions to ask our new ghost pal, here.”

  It was nice to wake up, knowing there was a new ghost in the house, but without its face hanging a centimetre away when Emily opened her eyes. She took a leisurely time getting out of bed, lying back against the pillows while her mind figured out a plan for the day.

  Barring unforeseen eventualities, she should be home again with the spell book in hand by midmorning at the very latest. She couldn’t imagine even the longest ritual would take more than an hour or two to perform. That left her free by midday.

  Maybe Cynthia was right, and she should do something for today to treat herself. While they were out and about this morning, she’d pop in to see if Crystal was free. A spot of lunch in the Honeysuckle Café sounded nice.

  “Morning all. Did you dig up any new goodies overnight that I should know about?”

  Cynthia had a flush to her cheeks that indicated she’d been up to no good, but Wanda was sitting and waiting with equanimity. Whatever trouble Cynthia had tried to stir up mustn’t have eventuated as she’d planned.

  “Wanda, it’s good to see you again. Could you scoot over to the sofa while I have my breakfast? Peanut likes to sit in that chair and stare at my food. He gets lost in happy memories of when he used to eat.”

  “I saw him trying to play outside with a field mouse the other day.” Cynthia stretched her arms up and pointed vaguely at the back yard. “Even without the means to hold it still, he had it pinned with his fiery gaze.”

  Peanut wandered into the kitchen at the sound of the toaster and looked mildly suspicious when they burst into chuckles. He ignored them—mere humans that they were—and padded the cushion of the chair Wanda had vacated until he had it to his liking.

  “I used to have a familiar,” Wanda said, her voice catching. “The cutest wee black cat. One Christmas I brought her a plush mouse as a plaything, and it was the best present ever.”

  “Peanut’s far too sophisticated to be content with a cheap toy.” Cynthia blew a kiss at her cat across the table.

  “So was Dark Spirits. I meant the box the plushy came in. My cat curled up in that thing until the sides gave way from use.”

  Even at the word box, Peanut’s ears perked up, and he turned around to stare at the supposed witch with new interest.

  As Emily sat down with her breakfast, a knock sounded on the door.

  “I thought all your friends were already here?” Cynthia said with a curious stare.

  Emily flapped a hand at her, part of her hoping somebody had sent her a birthday present via courier. If so, that would be a great start to the day.

  Instead, she opened the door to find her brother Harvey on the doorstep, with two boxes and a suitcase.

  “What?” Emily asked in confusion as he waved goodbye to the taxi reversing along her driveway.

  “I’ve come to stay for a few days,” he announced with a cheerful grin, as though this wasn’t the last thing in the world she’d expect. “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  Chapter Four

  “I could’ve sworn you mentioned this place had a second bedroom,” Harvey said as he finished looking around the house. His insistence on checking out her new ‘digs’ seemed on the edge of insinuating she’d told him an untruth.

  Emily sat at the kitchen table, her mind still struggling to keep up with the new arrival. She couldn’t remember telling Harvey anything about her new home. The last she recalled speaking to him was at the hospital, a long way from recovery.

  “Never mind,” he announced, planting himself on a seat opposite Emily. The chair where Peanut was seated.

  Or had been. Emily watched the ghost cat sprint to the pantry to hide behind the wooden shutters.

  “I’m happy to use the couch as a bed for a while. My back might grumble for a few days, but it does that often enough as it is.”

  “What’s happening to your place?” Emily placed her palms flat on the table as though she needed to balance. “Don’t you have the final exams coming up?”

  Harvey had been a lecturer at the university the last time she checked but Emily guessed from the expression of shock on his face that had been a long time ago.

  “I’ve been working at a surveyance firm, you know that.” Harvey shrugged. “I decided to take a break from it for a while. Get back to my roots and all that. Every time I look up from my desk, my coworkers are a decade younger.” He ran a hand through his grey and thinning hair. “It gets a bit tiring trying to find some common areas of interest.”

  “How’s Marie doing?”

  Her brother swivelled on his chair to look out into the back yard. “This is quite a neat little set-up you’ve got here. Do you own it outright?”

  Emily frowned. “It’s paid for. It’s quite a downsize from my last house so I was able to get rid of the mortgage. Plus, housing is cheaper here.”

  “Not a bad idea. I’ve been thinking of doing something similar.”

  “If you’ve given up your job, you’ll have to.”

  Harvey waved a hand at her. “That’s just a sabbatical. I wanted a bit of space to sort myself out. Midlife crisis and all that.”

  Cynthia laughed from the lounge. “How long does your brother expect to live? Until he’s a hundred and fifty?”

  Emily did a quick calculation in her head. She turned fifty-three today, which put Harvey at sixty. “Isn’t it a bit late for all that?”

  “Never too late.” Harvey winked at her and Emily pulled a face.

  “It is if you’ve got retirement just around the corner. Unless you’re all set?” She raised her eyebrows.

  But Harvey just flapped his hand at her again. “I’m taking a few months off, not the rest of my life. Work’ll still be there when I sort myself out.”

  “How long have you been at the surveyor's?” Emily stared hard at the table as she tried to remember any conversation about him changing work. The problem was, they spoke so seldom, all their chats were hazy.

  “Coming up on five years but I don’t want to talk about work.”

  Harvey reached across the table and took Emily’s hands in his own. They were rough—more fitting to a manual labourer than a man who’d spent most of his life in various office chairs.

  “Tell me what you’ve been up to. I haven’t seen you since you were in the hospital.”

  Emily withdrew from his grasp and stood up, putting the kettle on to boil. “Oh, you know. I’ve just been getting used to Pinetar again and settling into work at the shop.”

  “An op-shop, I think you said.”

  “Yeah, it’s a charity shop for the local battered woman’s shelter.” She shrugged. “It keeps me occupied.”

  As she walked to the
table, Emily’s numb foot twisted, and she stumbled. Harvey frowned. “I thought you were all better when the hospital let you go.”

  Despite her embarrassment, she burst into laughter. The roving bone fragments, illiteracy, and growing neuropathy were so far from ‘all better’ it was hard to fathom.

  “I’m alive, there’s that,” she said. “But I have trouble with a lot of things still.”

  “But your head’s all sorted, right?”

  Emily frowned down at her shaking fingers. In the corner of her eye, she watched Wanda watching her. “Not really. I still can’t read or write.”

  Harvey sat back, clapping his hands together. “Sounds like me staying here will sort both of us, then. If you need me to read something or write an email, you let me know.”

  “What about Marie?”

  Emily glanced up in time to see a look of sorrow pass in and out of her elder brother’s eyes.

  “She won’t be joining me.” Harvey cleared his throat and stared out the window. “In fact, we called it quits a few years ago. I didn’t like to say with your—” He waved his hand at Emily, presumably referencing her car accident.

  “I’m so sorry.” She fumbled for the right words to say, feeling aghast. “I had no idea.”

  “It’s fine. What’s done is done, hey? No use dwelling in the past or thinking about what might have been.”

  Harvey leapt to his feet and moved to the bench as the kettle whistled it was done. He opened cupboards and pulled out drawers, making both him and Emily a cup of coffee.

  “I’m sorry to turn up here, unannounced,” he said, coming back to the table with the full mugs. “Only, it just occurred to me on the spur of the moment, then I didn’t want to ring in case you told me to stay away.” He took a sip and grimaced, then took another. “I miss my little sister.”

  Emily flushed, knowing what he said was right. She warmed her hands on the mug, staring at the swirl of bubbles from where he’d stirred in two sugars. “Did you want to do anything while you were here? It must be an age since you visited Pinetar.”

  He nodded in agreement. “I haven’t been back since I left the first time. Thought I might just wander about this afternoon and reacclimate myself, maybe catch up with a few old friends. Is the old tavern still going?”

  “It’d survive the apocalypse. I’ll grab you a set of house keys.” She walked past Wanda and ignored Cynthia’s cynical smile. Peanut was curled up in a patch of sun on her bed. Her unmade bed.

  The spare keys were in the top drawer of an old chest stored inside the wardrobe. As Emily pulled them out, she closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of her brother moving about in the kitchen.

  “He can’t stay here,” Cynthia said, so close to Emily that she made her hairs stand on end. “You won’t be able to last more than a few days before you talk back to one of us in his presence, then he’ll think you’re mad and lock you up.”

  With her ear attuned to make sure her brother remained in the other room, Emily whispered, “Your family believes me, along with Crystal and Sergeant Winchester. None of them locked me up.”

  “Mainly due to my performance. If it’d just been you, spouting nonsense about ghosts, it wouldn’t have been that easy.”

  Emily coloured as she remembered her first trip into the police station. Despite a new level of respect being afforded by the officers there, the memory of their original scornful laughter hadn’t lost its potency. “I’m sure he won’t stay too long.”

  “Will you still be able to release my sister?”

  With a sigh, Emily turned to face Wanda. Again, she listened to ensure her brother was a safe distance away before answering, “Yes. I’ll just get Harvey settled and then we’ll go.” She pointed a finger at Cynthia. “And I’d appreciate if you could all keep your mouths buttoned until then.”

  Without awaiting a response, she jingled the spare set of keys in her hand and walked back to the kitchen. “Here you go. I’ve got a few errands to run this morning, so I’ll leave you alone for a few hours.”

  Harvey was standing at the sink, so Emily couldn’t read his expression, but she could see the slump in his shoulders.

  “It’s my birthday, today, so I’ll pick up a nice cake while I’m in town and we can celebrate together tonight unless you have other plans.”

  “I’m a dolt.” Harvey turned and gave her a bearhug that went on far too long in Emily’s estimation. “I completely forgot today was the day. Fifty-four, isn’t it? I’ll shout you somewhere to celebrate.”

  “Fifty-three and I’m good just spending it at home for exactly that reason. Don’t let the c—” Emily broke off and blushed, aware she’d been about to warn him not to let the cat he couldn’t see out of the house. As though doors would stop Peanut, anyway.

  Harvey raised an eyebrow, but Emily hurried along the hall and out the front door before he could ask.

  “Thank goodness, that’s done,” Cynthia said. “Watching you and your brother interact is painful, to say the least.”

  “I’m sorry if I’m a nuisance.” Wanda wrung her hands together as she hovered by the car.

  “You’re fine,” Emily reassured her. “Now, let’s go and fetch this spell book and get your sister sorted out.”

  “I don’t know anyone of that name,” the woman who answered the door said, shaking her head to remove any doubt. She cast an anxious glance at Emily, then shuffled back half a step.

  “Lionel?” The shout could have penetrated through steel. “You know anyone of the name Hawthorne?”

  A muffled response came back, so low Emily couldn’t catch the words and Wanda appeared nonplussed.

  “When was that?” the woman asked, then disappeared into the house. A few seconds later, she returned, dragging a man by the sleeve of his cardigan. “He’ll tell you, love. I’m getting back to my breakfast. My eggs’ll be stone cold.”

  Emily tried to apologise, but the woman had gone. The man—presumably the husband—squinted through thick lenses. The prescription was so extreme his eyes overflowed the frames, close to cartoonish. With a diamond-check fair isle vest topped with the thick texture of a cable knit orange cardigan, he looked like a throwback to the seventies. The leather elbow patches made Emily smile.

  “They lived here before us, but I never met either of them,” he said, pushing his glasses up by the nosepiece. He squinted harder, and the frames slid down before catching in the wrinkles on his nose. “Both young girls, in their twenties, I think. We got loads of mail through before I managed to convince the post office we weren’t them.”

  “Do you know what happened to them?” Emily shifted her weight from foot to foot, a slow dance to keep the feeling in her toes alive. “What made them move away from here?”

  “Oh, it was terrible.” The man risked a quick glance over his shoulder, then pulled the door closed, with him standing on the outside. “A car accident out on the main highway. One of them drove into a pole or something and was killed outright. The other girl, she’s still in the hospital.”

  “In hospital?”

  Emily’s voice contained more surprise than it should, and the man jerked backwards as though she’d accused him of something. “Yes, that’s right. Ask at the main desk of the place if you don’t believe me.”

  “Sorry, I just wasn’t…” Emily trailed off and shook her head, frowning down at her feet.

  “Okay, I get a bit sensitive about the subject. It’s an awful business but there’s nothing worrying will do to restore her to health. As far as I’ve heard, she’s on life support but there’s nothing going on.” The man leaned further out, the scent of bacon wafting on the gentle wave of his exhalations. “Up here, like.” He tapped the side of his head.

  “Oh, no. That’s truly sad, especially at her age.”

  “Car accidents are nasty, that’s for sure.” He drew back a step, his hand fumbling for the door. “If you don’t need anything else…?”

  “Thanks for your time.” Emily nodded and turne
d her back, avoiding Wanda’s distraught gaze. She kept her eyes fixed on the cracked concrete of the driveway all the way back to the car and concentrated more attention than was needed on fastening her seatbelt.

  “It’s not what you think. My sister is still in the box, it’s just her body needs to be somewhere while her mind is gone. Even the Supreme can’t turn something into nothing just because it’s inconvenient.”

  Emily shrugged. “I wasn’t doubting you, but we might as well pay a visit to the hospital before we go any further.”

  Wanda nodded, twiddling her thumbs together in her lap. “Do you think those people put my stuff into storage? If I can’t locate that book, then it won’t matter what’s happening to my sister’s body.”

  Before her common sense kicked in, Emily reached out to give Wanda a reassuring pat. When her hand sank into the ghost’s insubstantial form instead, she cast a pleading glance at Cynthia.

  “There, there,” Mrs Pettigrew said, leaning forward to stroke the ghost’s shoulder. “The man camped out in your old house is right. There’s no use worrying about the things you can’t change. If we can find out where your stuff is now, we will.”

  It didn’t sound very reassuring to Emily, but Wanda grabbed onto the words like a lifeline. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. Let’s get to the hospital and then work on a plant to get my sister restored and out of there.”

  Chapter Five

  Emily suppressed a shiver as the lift rose, the steel ropes groaning. Cynthia had pointed to the button to press, though with only three floors she could have hazarded a guess. Her recuperation in hospital was now eight months behind her, but the three-month-long stay had left an impression in her mind, drafted with indelible ink.

  The smells brought back the hardest memories. The squeak of rubber-soled shoes on linoleum floated others to the surface. As her chest tightened and breathing became a luxury, it took all Emily’s resolve to stay in place.

  If Wanda and Cynthia hadn’t been there with her, she would have wrenched the elevator doors open, and fled.