I ran to them and threw my arms around both their necks at the same time. Like the others, they leaned into my hug but didn’t hug me back.
“Cariña.” Dad turned and kissed my cheek almost cautiously. “Dios mio, are you okay?”
Leaning back to get a good look at them, I nodded. “I am so much more than okay.”
“How did you . . . when did you wake up?” Papi asked.
“I haven’t. Have you seen the vines?”
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Exactly. This all feels so real.”
“Cariña.” Dad’s silver brows slid together. “I think we should talk.”
“Totally. But right now”—I gestured to Roane—“I’m going to tear this man’s clothes off. With my teeth. Then we’ll do breakfast. How’s that?”
My younger and only slightly more fit Papi cast a withering glare in Roane’s direction.
He held up his hands in surrender. “You know I wouldn’t.”
“What?” I turned to him with a pout. “You won’t dip your cookie in my cream?”
Roane pinched the bridge of his nose, but there was a distinct smile behind his hand.
Annette ran up to the landing, crunching the poor vines on her way. She started to put a hand on my arm but stopped herself. “Deph, think about it. You live in a magic house haunted by your dead grandparents.”
A sickly kind of horror threatened to blossom in my chest. I tamped it down. No way. “You don’t get it. I was floating on air when I woke up. Floating. On air. My hair was swirling around me like a leviathan. And then there’s the vine thing. They move when I move.” I held out my hand and willed a vine into my palm.
One rose off the banister and curled around my fingers as soft as silk.
“See?” Although I was starting to doubt the dream theory despite all the evidence supporting it.
“Magic,” she said as though she was sorry she had to. But even she was impressed. I could tell. Her gaze held as much fascination as understanding. “Watch.” She lifted a hand to my arm.
A vine rose up and curled around it, tucking its tip underneath her hand.
She jerked back and held her hand open for me to see. A line of blood plumped along her palm.
I grabbed her hand. “What happened?”
“He’s protecting you. He’s been protecting you this whole time.”
A quick glance at my dads told me she was right. They waited, giving me a moment to let it sink in. The horror I’d tamped down ricocheted with a vengeance. It exploded in my chest and caught fire to my skin. I dared a quick glance at Roane. Heat burst through me, and I could practically see the blush sliding up my neck and over my cheeks. I worried it would be permanent.
“He wouldn’t let us near you while you were . . . resting.” The fact that she spoke softly, as though I was a child, didn’t help.
“Resting? I was floating for fuck’s sake.”
“You were in some kind of suspended state,” Papi said. “Like a stasis.”
“For how long?” Wary to hear the answer, I asked anyway.
“We can talk about that later,” Annette said. “The important thing right now is—”
“How long?” I pushed.
She pursed her lips, glancing at the others as if she didn’t quite know what to do, then said softly, “Almost six months.”
What the ever-loving fuck?
My fingers tightened around the banister, and vines curled around them as if they were comforting me. If not for the support of the railing, my knees would surely have buckled.
“After you brought your grandmother out of the veil, you passed out,” Annette added.
“For six months?” I looked at her through blurred vision. I’d come to the witch game late in life. At forty-four, I’d learned about powers I never knew I had. I’d learned I was a source, a charmling, one of only three in the entire world, and that others wanted to kill me to steal the immense power I had lying just beneath the surface.
When we’d finally coaxed the dormant powers forward, they’d almost killed me. And ever since, whenever I did a spell that required a lot of energy, I passed out. It’d happened more than once in those first few days, but I’d only been out a couple of hours at most.
Then I’d accidentally pulled my deceased grandmother out of the veil and back onto this plane. That took a lot more energy than I was ready to expel. But holy hell, six months? How could anyone sleep for six months? Especially without medical supervision? I had terrific bladder control, but damn.
“Ruthie said it must’ve been too much on your system.” The chief’s voice carried up the stairs. “You needed time to recuperate.”
Dad reached out to me then pulled back.
I took his hand, and the vines that had been holding mine retreated to allow room for his.
“It was too much on your body, cariña.” He squeezed my fingers lightly. “Your grandmother didn’t even know a witch could pull someone out of the veil. That it was even possible.”
Speaking of grandmothers, where was Ruthie?
Before I could ask, Papi said, “You are remarkable.”
“You are,” Annette agreed, looking around. “Percy, may I?”
The vines retreated instantly, and then Annette did something that would’ve proven this a dream if it weren’t—she rushed forward and hugged me.
Still in shock, I hugged her back. “You’ve embraced the darkness?”
“Darkness?” A few inches shorter than my five-five, she pulled back and looked up.
“Hugging.”
She laughed through a soft sob and hugged me again. My dads joined her, and we stood in each other’s embrace for a solid minute. Partly because it felt wonderful and nourishing and reassuring, and partly because I was too humiliated to ever face Roane Wildes again. Mostly because I was too humiliated to ever face Roane Wildes again.
“Let’s get you dressed,” Annette said after we disentangled ourselves.
It was only then that I realized the gauze gown I wore was a tad see-through. Great. My face caught fire as I looked back at Roane, who’s expression was full of sympathy. Humiliation stung the backs of my eyes.
“The answer is yes.” His voice, smooth and deep, sent a ripple of heat straight to my core.
“Yes?”
He graced me with a lopsided grin. “The cherry stem.”
And my mortification was complete.
“I’ll demonstrate whenever you’re ready.” To the warning glares he received from my dads in response, he added, “On an actual cherry stem. Naturally.”
Two
Q: How many witches does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Into what?
I sat on my bed with Annette, our legs tucked under us as we discussed my recent sabbatical. “How is this even possible?”
“Deph, it was like you were trapped in a fairy tale.” Excitement brimmed not just in her face but across her whole body, turning her into the proverbial kid in the candy store. “I tried to convince Roane to kiss you to wake you up, but he didn’t want his throat slit.”
I gasped. “Percy would really do that?” He’d make a killing as bodyguard. If he could leave the house.
She lifted a noncommittal shoulder. “He wouldn’t let us near you. I don’t know what he would’ve done.”
I dropped my face in my hands and mumbled into my palms. “How am I ever going to ever face him again?”
“Percy?”
Shaking my head, I lowered my hands to my knees.
Nette grinned like she’d just eaten every morsel in said candy store. “Do you honestly think Roane wasn’t flattered?”
“Which time?” The words dripped with sarcasm. “When I suggested he bury his bone or when I proposed he butter his biscuit?”
“Well, I’m no Roane—”
“Thank God.”
“But I rather liked the cookies and cream thing.”
I dropped my face into my hands again, and she hes
itantly patted my head just in time for me to realize I hadn’t washed my hair in six months. I winced.
“Oh,” she said, oblivious. “One other thing. You turned forty-five a few days ago.” She threw in a quick “Happy birthday” as if that would soften the blow.
“What?” Lifting my head, I screeched at the unfairness of it all, figuring theatrics might help. “I missed the one day I gave myself permission to hide under the blankets and eat copious amounts of popcorn and chocolate while watching old Humphry Bogart movies?”
“Sorry.”
“I was just getting used to forty-four.”
“Well, now you don’t have to.”
She had a point. “Okay, take me back. What happened? How did I end up in here? And what the bloody hell am I wearing?”
With a wiggle of her butt, she settled further into the blankets and leaned forward, her expression full of adventure. “It’s crazy. The whole thing is crazy.”
“Which is why I’m asking,” I said, feeling a tad less adventurous than my cohort.
“When you, I don’t know, pulled Ruthie out of the veil . . . Is that what you did?”
I lifted my shoulders, just as clueless.
“We’ll go with that. Afterward, you were like, ‘Is it true?’ And she was like, ‘How did you do that?’ And you were like, ‘Is it true?’ And she was like, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’” Annette’s hands moved as fast as her mouth. “And you were like, ‘How many people have you killed?’ And she was like, ‘I told you. I’ve killed three men.” And you were like, ‘Not men. People. How many people have you killed?’ And she got all ashamed and was like, ‘Four.’ And, stunned off your rocker, you were like, ‘Ruthie, did you kill my mother?’ And she kind of freaked out, went white as a ghost—which, since she is one, looked really good on her—and then, soft as silk, she said, ‘Yes.’” My bestie feverishly took a breath.
I opened my mouth to interrupt—
—but she wasn’t finished yet. “And then, Deph . . . I don’t know. It was like it hit you. The spell or something. Or maybe her words. Either way, you stumbled back, tried to grab the cabinet for balance, then you just crumpled to the ground. You would’ve faceplanted if not for a certain startlingly handsome, kilt-wearing journeyman.”
Who I’d just propositioned publicly about twenty-seven times.
But back to Ruthie. In my grandmother’s defense, she’d had a really good reason to kill all three of those men. The jury was still out, however, when it came to her killing my mother.
I’d read about the mother I’d never gotten to know in Ruthie’s diary—after using my Energy to reveal the black words hidden on what had seemed a blank page. She’s gone. I had no choice. May the great Goddess embrace her soul.
I let the emotions wash over me again, just as I had six months ago, only this time I kept them under some semblance of control. At least outwardly.
There had to be a reason for what Ruthie had done. But at the time, I couldn’t think straight. Maybe I still couldn’t. I was running on pure instinct. Or pure magic. Was that even a thing? I was so new to all of this.
Apparently, as a kid, I’d been so powerful that my grandmother sent me into hiding. She’d suppressed the magics inside me to keep me concealed from those who would steal them—as the only way to steal my magics was to kill me.
But what else had happened then, when I was three years old, that caused not only my banishment but also my mother’s death? Why would my grandmother kill her own daughter? I needed those answers PDQ, but right now, I had to get my head wrapped around more recent events. Like the floating thing. “And then?” I asked Annette.
“And then what?” She was staring at me intensely.
It was my hair. It had to be my hair. I fluffed the flatness as best as I could. “How did I get here? Into these clothes? Onto this bed in my room?” Well, really Ruthie’s room. And where was she sleeping?
“Oh, right.” Annette snapped out of it. “At first, we had Roane bring you upstairs.”
Roane. I groaned.
“Since the longest you’d been out up to that point was only a couple of hours, we just waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.”
I gestured for her to get to the point.
“We took turns watching over you, but nothing changed. Your dads wanted you comfortable, so Ruthie and I put you into one of her gowns.”
I looked down at the gown I’d been wearing for six months. It smelled like wet grass and roses. I took a handful of the gauze and pressed it against my face, breathing deep.
“You smell good,” Annette said. “You do not want to know what I smell like when I haven’t showered for six months.”
“And you’d know that how?”
“Based purely on what I smell like when I don’t shower for a day.”
A smile tugged at my mouth then gave up. “And the floating thing?”
“Oh.” She waved a dismissive hand. “That happened when your dads wanted to take you to the hospital. Ruthie argued that you weren’t in a normal sleep but a magical one, even though it was new for her too. She reminded them that you were special. A charmling. And that the rules simply didn’t apply to you.”
“But they were insistent.” Did I know my dads, or did I know my dads.
“They were insistent. They came upstairs to gather you up, and there you were, floating a foot off the bed.”
“And no one thought to summon a priest?”
“Well, your head was on straight, and you weren’t spewing pea soup.”
“Small blessings.”
“But that’s not all.”
“Of course not.” It wasn’t anything close to all. A sudden tightness gripped my chest. There were things I wanted to tell her—things I’d seen while I’d been sleeping, things that scared the shitake right out of me—but I couldn’t. I just . . . couldn’t. So, I shoved them away.
“There were the vines. Percy wanted to protect you. I think he was mad at your dads for even considering taking you to a mundane hospital.”
“Mundane?” I asked. “Et tu, Annettus?”
“Hey.” She lifted a shoulder. “I embraced the life long before you did. I just don’t have any magic in me like you do.”
I took her hand. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
She squeezed. “The roses were incredible. Every time someone tried to get near you, vines with thorns sprung up.” She splayed her hands in the air to demonstrate. “We tried to keep them under control. But eventually, they covered the whole house. They moved aside for no one until you woke up.”
I reached out, and a vine sprang from the side of the bed, curled over the bedspread, and wrapped around my fingers. “Thanks for keeping me safe, Percy.”
The house hummed around us.
“That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” Her expression turned dreamy.
“So, you had to leave me here all these months?”
“Yes. We couldn’t get in the door. And here’s the strange part.”
“Like all of this isn’t strange?”
“True.” She laughed. “But get this. Percy can’t get into the secret passageways.”
Okay, that really was strange. “I forgot all about those.” One of those doors was in the bathroom connected to this very room. Surprisingly well lit, the passages were narrow halls with walls painted lighter than the rest of the house. But we’d never gotten around to exploring where they led. “What do you mean he can’t get in?”
“The vines. They can’t go past the threshold of any of the doors to the passageways. Roane told your dads about them, and they were able to drill through a wall and set up a camera so we could at least keep an eye on you.”
Now we were coasting past odd and sliding right into disturbing.
“I think Percy knew,” Annette said. “He never covered up the lens. He didn’t seem to mind we were keeping an eye on you, as long as we didn’t get too close. And that’s what we’ve been doing. Taking turns for the la
st six months.”
“Even my dads?” They had vineyards in Arizona, an entire hillside of paradise with a series of gorgeous Spanish casitas around a pool. They’d been looking at land near Salem in Ipswich before I’d pulled a Rip Van Winkle.
“They bought that farm in Ipswich, but they’ve hardly left your side.” She thought about it. “Well, the monitor’s side. It’s set up in the adjoining room.”
I left the bed and walked to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined a wall of the massive bedroom. “And here I thought my first few days in Salem were surreal. All of this is just so much.” Too much. I couldn’t seem to let go of the aftertaste those horrible dreams had left. It lingered like a foul breath that hung in stale air.
Suspended animation? One star. Would not recommend.
Annette came up behind me. “I’ve had time to absorb it all. I’ve read a ton of stuff about the craft and the religion. And I’ve practiced every day. But I can’t find a thing written about the charmlings. They really are a well-kept secret, even in the witch world. Also, I don’t mean to rush you, but we need to get this thing going.”
I turned to her. “What thing?”
“The biz. Our business. Our livelihood. Oh! And I’ve come up with the perfect name.” Before I could stop her, because the biz wouldn’t be happening, she grabbed a stack of index cards off the nightstand and resettled herself on the bed. After working to cross her legs like a pretzel, she shuffled like we were practicing for Vegas. “Are you ready?”
Absolutely not. Wondering if she’d be able to unpretzel her legs when the time came, I set my hands on my hips. “I’m not sure.” How could I tell her about what was coming? What might be coming? Hell, who knew how real those dreams had been or what they’d meant. Certainly not me.
Oblivious to the thoughts churning in my head—some psychic she was—she giggled. “Imagine this on our business cards.” She turned over a card. Bibbidi Bobbidi Sleuths was written in thick black Sharpie.
“No.” I fought a grin because it did fit her to a tee.
“Okay, no worries. There’s more where that came from.”
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