Anger flashed inside Delpha. So far, Katybird had done nothing but knock her plans off course, and now Delpha’s dreams were bobbing out of reach. She couldn’t let the zombies run loose around the Hollow. She’d be forced to ask for Mama’s help, and the spellbook would disappear forever once Mama got her hands on it. No more magic. A blob of apple fell from the ceiling onto the book, besmirching the words “watch the curses break.” Delpha hastily wiped it off with her thumb and stalked ahead of Katy to block the doorway.
“Listen!” Delpha wracked her mind for the words to convince Katy. “Can you imagine if we don’t do the Reverse-Curse? Who knows how long that ‘Stayeth Put’ hex lasts. Zombies could get out of that cemetery, Hearn. They might go downtown! Folks’ll get hurt. People will remember about our families being magical. You know the Hollow’s history! Our families feuded until they came after us with pitchforks. You think they’ve really gotten more understanding in the past hundred years? You think they’ll congratulate us for being so special? There’s more at stake here than your trash panda!”
Katy’s chin wobbled and her bright blue eyes blinked back tears, but she took her hand off the door handle. “I think my magic’s probably a waste of time.”
“But?”
“I’ll try.”
THE MOST ANNOYING THING ABOUT STRESS EATING, Katy realized, was that sometimes the room in your stomach ran out, but the stress didn’t. The next most relaxing thing was using a glitter atomizer and lip gloss, which is exactly how Katybird indulged herself for five minutes while blinking back tears in her bedroom. Next, she combed out her hair and changed her muddy socks, until she felt more human, bit by sparkly bit. She winced at the duct tape and cardboard covering her window, reminding her of her epic failure with the forest spirit conjure. Think positive, Katy. She sniffed her shirt. The only smell was the faint remains of her melon-honeysuckle body spray (an upside of being androgen insensitive—Katy didn’t have to fool with deodorant often), but she changed it out for her favorite yellow T-shirt anyway before replacing her hoodie.
Her fingers started lighting up like E.T.’s again a few minutes later, just as Delpha yelled through the bedroom door that they needed to “find a new strategy to fix your magic and do the dad-gummed Reverse-Curse already.” Katy drew a ragged breath and opened the door into the living room, the light creeping up her wrists.
Somehow it made Katy feel a tiny bit better to know Delpha McGill could get rattled. The smear of dried blood on the back of Delpha’s hand reminded Katy that Delpha’s magic wasn’t effortless, either. It made Katy want to try again.
Delpha paced behind the recliner, wand behind her ear, nearly stepping on Fatso the cat as he waddled in from the hallway. Delpha studied Katy, steepling her fingers. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, Hearn, but when you try to do your magic, how do you feel inside?”
The world’s absolute worst magic therapist, thought Katybird. She picked at her cuticles. “I don’t know. Worried it won’t like me? With people, you can tell what they want from you. Then you can kind of, you know, chameleon.”
“Chameleon?”
“Change the way you act. Fit people’s expectations. Butter ’em up a little. Morph.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Work the room. You know, be charming.”
“Huh.”
Katy petted Fatso so hard, he hissed. “But I don’t know what the magic wants! How’m I supposed to figure out how to communicate with something that isn’t people?”
Delpha put a fist to her forehead and growled. “Hearn, the zombies …”
“I know!” Katy snapped. “How do you feel when you’re doing magic? What makes it cooperate?”
“Seems like it’s part of me. I’m part of it. Same way as nature. Just be one with it.”
“Neat. You should start your own yoga channel,” Katy muttered. Despite her family’s nature magic, Katy had always considered sleeping with her windows open the most valid form of camping. She liked the nice bits of creation, like waterfalls and sunsets, but nature in North Carolina was also responsible for nasty things like flying wood roaches big enough to require their own license and registration. Rude.
“I’m just sayin’, s’all. You’re part of magic. Stop treating it as somethin’ separate.”
I don’t know how to be “part” of anything, Katy realized. Not deep down. Not with nature, her family, magic … maybe not even with herself. She’d worn her helpful face for so long, sometimes she even forgot who was holding the mask up. On the outside, she was who people expected her to be: sunny and charming. Inside, she was a swarm of pieces that didn’t go together: a magical dud in a family of accomplished witches, popular among peers who didn’t understand the first thing about her. Delpha’s advice sounded good, but it couldn’t seem to find a place to land inside Katy.
“Let’s try the Reverse-Curse again,” Delpha’s voice cut in.
Katybird swallowed hard, nodding. Delpha recited her half without looking at the page. Katy tried a confident tone this time, but her hands started to sting as the sparks flew, making her stutter through the part she and Delpha said in unison.
Through clenched teeth, she growled out, “… curses b-break!” and the lights in the fixture above dimmed and blinked. At the same time, hot knives of pain cut from Katy’s fingertips to her elbows, making her yelp in pain before falling to her knees on the carpet, nerve endings throbbing. Katy couldn’t speak until the pain slacked off.
“Magic,” Katy said between gasps, “may go … poke a long fork … into an electric socket.”
One corner of Delpha’s mouth slid up at this, but the deep furrow between her dark eyebrows didn’t relax. Her whole body was taut, like she was still waiting to see if Katy’s magic might come through. Katy sagged. “Delpha, the Reverse-Curse isn’t workin’.” She bit her lip. “I hate to say it, but we should ask someone for help.”
“No.”
“Delpha …”
“No. Nope-covered-no, dipped in more no. We made the zombies, so we’re handling it ourselves.”
Katy opened her mouth to explain why her own magic might not ever work, then snapped it shut again. The yellow jacket feeling attacked inside her hands again, and Katy massaged the sting from her fingers. The hand-glowing episodes had gotten closer together since she and Delpha had begun attempting the Reverse-Curse, Katy realized.
Delpha huffed and stalked around the room, shoulders stiff. “Rest a minute,” she muttered. “Then we can try again.”
Katy made a nasty face behind Delpha’s back and leaned back into the soft couch cushions.
Delpha paused in front of the Hearn’s curio cabinet, her face reflected in its mirrored back. Her worried eyes glanced across the shelves, and Katy noticed a strange look slide across Delpha’s features as she studied the contents of the cabinet: fancy old wooden spoons, faded needlepoint on hoops, jewelry boxes, and old family photographs in sepia. Katy’s family treasures, passed down from one Hearn witch to another. As Delpha’s lips shrank into a hard line, Katy thought of the times the McGills had brought antique quilts or hand-turned wooden bowls into the museum shop to be sold. Had they come from a curio like Katy’s? Heat crept into Katy’s ears as Delpha caught her staring.
“Is that what I think it is?” Delpha pointed to the top shelf, where a tight-packed disc of multicolored feathers the size of a pancake rested. All the fuzzy down pointed in the same direction, whorling in a flat spiral.
Katy nodded. “Prob’ly. It’s a death crown.” Death crowns—considered precious mementos in Katy’s family—could be found in feather pillows of magical folks who are about to die. Or had already died, in this case. The one Delpha was pointing at had belonged to Katy’s cousin, Echo, Fatso’s original owner. Katy’s mother had carefully cut apart Echo’s pillow after she’d died, discovering the feathery omen. Since then, the crown had rested in the curio, untouched, to honor Echo’s memory. It and Fatso stayed at Katy’s house instead of Nanny’
s, because their presence made Nanny too sad.
“We burn ours,” Delpha said softly, her breath fogging the glass. “Out of respect for the dead.”
Katy shivered at the word “dead.” She tried not to think about how her family’s departed—her beloved witch ancestors—were now battling it out eternally in the cemetery, desecrated and corpse-y. A chill of nausea swept through her body as she realized this new, horrible layer of what she and Delpha had accidentally done. Surely, her mama and nanny would never forgive her if they found out. Katy’s heart crumbled under the awfulness of it. She found herself agreeing with Delpha, for once. They had to figure out the Reverse-Curse alone, without help.
“Um, Hearn?”
“Hmmm?”
Delpha took a step back from the curio cabinet, letting her fingertips slide off the glass, gulping. “Are death crowns supposed to spin?”
Katy leaped to her feet and squinted. Inside the cabinet, the feather disc was whirling on its glass shelf. Katy blinked hard, thinking it must be an optical illusion. But there it was, spinning and gaining speed. The temperature around the cabinet plunged a dozen degrees. Fatso sprang from the couch and paced back and forth in front of the curio, arching his back. Katy’s heart stuttered beneath her hoodie. What in the world?
The death crown became a gray blur, and Delpha staggered backward as the cabinet door rattled, causing the lids of the teapots inside to jar and clatter. The glass panes of the cabinet spidered, then cracked. Delpha clutched Katybird’s arm, snatching a blanket from the sofa and covering them both. Seconds later, shards rained against the fabric as the curio’s glass exploded outward. Katybird shrieked, and Delpha curled into Katy’s side, head tucked as they landed on the couch.
Wind from nowhere whipped through the living room, and the blanket was torn from the girls’ grasp. Fatso, heavy for a cat but still quite light compared to a human, clung to the carpet with all four paws, hanging on for dear life.
The death crown rose slowly from the shelf and floated out of the cabinet, breaking apart in the center of the room. The wind died to a soft, circular breeze, creating a whirlwind of downy feathers. The down arranged itself into the vague form of a woman. A soft groan escaped its lips. Fatso purred, trying in vain to lean against the thing’s insubstantial legs and falling instead into an ungentlemanly sprawl.
“Lord ’a’ mercy,” breathed Delpha. “Impossible.”
“Now that’s a real haint,” Katybird whispered, voice quavering. She rose from the couch and held out her hand toward the mesmerizing feather ghost, then took a trembling step. Delpha gasped as Katy edged toward the haint, but Katy couldn’t stop herself. Was it friendly? How could you tell, when the thing’s face was made of feathers? Delpha grabbed Katybird’s sleeve and growled from the corner of her mouth.
“Hearn! You can’t go touchin’ every haint you meet. Stranger danger.”
But Katybird’s heart melted and her eyes widened. “This ain’t no stranger, Delpha. I—I think I know exactly who this is.”
The feather-formed haint floated toward Katybird. Its head quirked to the side in a jerking movement—one, two, three twitches to the left side, followed by a wild toss back and forth. Its shoulders were slight and its long mane of feather hair floated in a cloud. “Echo?” whispered Katybird.
Jerk, jerk, jerk, shake, shake, shake. The haint reached and brushed its feathery fingertips across Katybird’s cheek, sending a shudder down Katy’s sides. The haint spoke, but only one word was loud enough to understand. “Katybird.” It was barely an echo.
“This is my cousin. She don’t mean any harm,” Katybird whispered. “Maybe she needs help crossing to the … the beyond.”
“Fine.” Delpha let go of Katy and snatched her spellbook from the coffee table. She flipped through it, eyes zooming across lines of text. “Let’s help it, so it’ll leave.”
“What’s the book say?” Katybird asked after a few seconds, gaze locked on the floating form. Friendly or not, the idea of letting it out of her sight gave her the willies.
“Not much. The McGills don’t believe in ghosts,” Delpha spat testily. “Chicken pox cures, wealth spells, baldness hexes … Not a word about haints.”
“Help,” the haint pleaded. Fatso tried again to lean against the spirit’s legs, and Echo’s hand reached to stroke the cat’s side. Without warning, every bit of orange fur flew from the cat’s skin and into the air, joining the feathers in creating a tangible form for the ghost. Katy yelped in horror, and Fatso, surprised to find himself suddenly naked, retreated behind the couch. The haint stood more solid now, her features distinguishable. When she spoke, her voice rung hollow and distant, like a person hollering down a long hallway.
“Poor Fatso. It’s pure torture, being away from him.”
“Why are you here, Echo?”
“Katybird, I’ve come to help you.”
Delpha’s book thumped shut. Katy stepped closer, and a painful lump gathered in her throat. “I’ve missed you so much, Echo, ever since your funeral. Can you … can you stay?”
“I can’t. I ain’t got much time—I’m breakin’ the laws of nature, see. The pillow feathers and Fatso’s hair—they still have a touch of my mem’ry in ’em. It’s why you can see me.”
Katy nodded and reached out to touch Echo’s hand. Her own hand passed right through, the feathers and fur parting and regathering around Katy’s touch. A cool tear slipped down to Katy’s chin. “How can you help me?”
“I know what’s happenin’ to ya, Katybird. Why your hands are sheddin’ sparks. Because it was happenin’ to me.”
“You couldn’t work your magic, either?”
“I could. But I didn’t want to. Nanny tried to teach me, but I didn’t want no part of it. I hated having my future laid out for me like church clothes. Besides, the idea of talkin’ to nature spirits scared me silly. But the more I refused to use the magic, the more my hands glowed when I didn’t want ’em to.”
“Is that why you ran away?”
Echo shook her head. “Naw. A guy at work saw my hands light up blue while I was ringing up groceries. I ran, but he followed me outside, trying to record it with his phone. I ran to my truck, but he and his friends chased me down the highway, whoopin’ and hollerin’. ‘Dirty witch!’ they kept yellin’. I was so upset, and my truck started to fishtail.” Echo’s voice trailed off, and she shook her head. “And I slammed into their car. That’s all I remember.”
Katy’s mouth formed a quiet, “Oh.” What else could you say to a person who had died in such an awful way? Down and fur began drifting to the floor. Katy’s chance to ask questions was slipping away with each passing second.
“So, your hands glowed at weird times, too. Because you held your power in?” she pressed.
Echo nodded, shedding feathers. “It got worse and worse. I think if I’d let it dam up any more, it might’ve killed me anyway. I had nightmares about exploding from the inside out.”
It might’ve killed her? The words clobbered Katy’s heart with a fresh fear she hadn’t considered. She’d been scared of failure, sure. But death? As if on cue, her fingers began to tingle, then throb, and Katy slipped her hands into her pockets.
“Let me help you, Katybird. ’Fore it’s too late,” Echo’s ghost pleaded. “I think it’s how the Hearn magic goes. Use it or die.”
“It ain’t like I’m unwilling! I want to be a witch, no offense. What can I do?”
“I reckon,” Echo sighed after a thoughtful pause, “you could drink some of the water from the old Hearn well. Great-Granny used to say it had power to strengthen magic. Nanny called it fiddlesticks, but Great-Granny swore by it.”
Katy’s heart leaped. That sounded easy enough. “Is that all? Just find the old Hearn well?”
Feathers and cat hair formed a small pile on the carpet now, and Echo’s voice weakened as she hurried to finish: “You’ll need a bond, too. It’s the only thing that helped my hands. My fur—”
Before Echo’s ghost c
ould finish, the kitchen door swung wide. A gust of warm morning air scattered fur and feathers around the room, swirling the haint’s form into oblivion. Frantic, Katybird wailed, “Echo, wait!” She tried to snatch the downy pieces, but she knew there was no point. Her cousin was gone. Someone wheezed loudly.
Both girls turned toward the open doorway, feathers and fur settling around them. Tyler Nimble scrambled inside without being invited, slamming the door behind him and collapsing against it. His sweaty hair was matted to his face above wild hazel eyes, like he’d been running from the devil himself.
“Hey, y’all,” he wheezed, clutching his ribs. “I got bad news.”
DELPHA’S ANGER SPUN LIKE A TOP. SHE COUNTED back from ten, trying to keep her mind straight. “What in the name of creepin’ black mold are you doing here, Nimble?”
Tyler coughed and grimaced at the disaster that was Katybird Hearn’s kitchen. Fair enough. It was a mess. Feathers still floated through Delpha’s vision, and in the corner a naked Fatso mewled with a traumatized glow in his yellow eyes. Slivers of glass crunched and squished together with bits of exploded fruit under Delpha’s boots. Tyler frowned and righted himself.
“Cows,” he croaked between panting breaths. “And stone, and, and—”
“Do what now? Start at the start.”
Tyler wrestled an inhaler from his pocket and took two long puffs. “I thought y’all might change your mind about needing help. And on my way over, I heard somethin’ out in the field between my woods an’ Katy’s. A real loud screech. I went out to see what it was, an’ I saw these … people. They were cacklin’ and walkin’ funny, which seemed weird, so I hid. An’ then”—Tyler paused to remove his glasses and dry his swollen eyes—“an’ then, one of ’em pulled out a wand like yours. It put a hex on this poor mama cow. They turned it to stone, Delpha. It’s just standin’ out there like a cement lawn ornament. It’s … dead, I think.”
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