by Roger Hayden
“I only know a little bit about it,” Leigh said. “Start at the beginning.”
I spat out the toothpaste, rinsed, and wiped my mouth on a hand towel. “Do you think your death has to do with the town legend?”
Leigh shrugged. “You have to admit, there are some striking similarities. I just want to know if one connects to the other.”
I leaned against the sink, trying to remember the most important details about the legend of Yew Hollow. “Okay. As you know, Yew Hollow was settled in 1693. At that time, colonial America had dissolved into mass hysteria over the whole witchcraft thing. Very rarely did mortals actually find a real witch. They mostly just killed each other. Some people were smarter, though. They started to catch on to the signs that gave away a true witch. Naturally, witch hunting evolved into a legitimate career. Most mortals are terrified of things that they can’t understand.”
I wandered back into my room, Leigh following close behind. As I rooted through my pile of clothing, looking for something to wear, I continued. “The original coven lived in Salem, far too close to the source of the issue to be comfortable. When the witch hunters started executing members of the coven, they decided to escape. They chose to settle in Yew Hollow because of the trees, especially the big one in the center of town. Yew trees have all sorts of magical properties. The witches mostly admired them for protection from evil spirits. They figured the yew trees would prevent them from being discovered.”
“But?” Leigh prompted, as I paused my history lesson to pull on a pair of jeans.
“One particularly nasty witch hunter found them anyway,” I explained, zipping up my pants. “He was apparently quite infamous. He’d killed nearly forty women in less than a year, claiming they were all guilty of witchcraft. He had sons too, all of which he trained in his craft. He marched into Yew Hollow with every intention of burning it to the ground. Unfortunately for him, he’d never taken on an entire coven of witches before. We’re stronger together. The original coven all but obliterated him.”
It was a mark of Leigh’s compassionate personality that she actually seemed distraught over the fate of a long-dead, notoriously brutal witch hunter. “What happened to him?” she asked.
“The coven decided to use him to beef up security in Yew Hollow,” I explained. “They devised a ritual that was meant to protect Yew Hollow from further discovery. It was barbaric, really. They strung up the witch hunter from the yew tree and stoned him. His blood sacrifice strengthened the spell. No mortal would be able to locate Yew Hollow. Every additional year, on the autumn equinox, the coven sacrificed a man from the same bloodline as the witch hunter in order to renew the protection spell.”
Leigh flinched, saying, “Well, that’s certainly different from the version we reenact every Halloween.”
I nodded, attempting to pull a black cashmere sweater over my head at the same time. “That’s one of the reasons I was never a huge fan of the reenactments,” I admitted. “I won’t deny that the original coven did what they needed to do to stay alive. I just would prefer not to relive the violence. Today’s version of the legend is watered down.”
“It always seemed so fun,” Leigh said. “The ritual, I mean.”
“Yes, but what did you expect?” I sat down on the bed, fishing my favorite pair of black boots out from under the bed, where I’d kicked them off the previous night. “Yew Hollow’s main source of revenue comes from tourism. We’ve become a parody of what we once were. The reenactment of the ritual is the town’s biggest draw. Naturally, it evolved. All of the music, the dancing, fireworks, whatever. That was never part of the original sacrifice.”
“When did the witches stop doing the real ritual?”
Shrugging, I said, “I don’t know. Sometime in the 1700s, I think. After the chaos at Salem died down, the colonists more or less forgot about witchcraft. We always assumed the ritual went by the wayside, but no one really knows when.”
“And you don’t suppose someone got paranoid and sacrificed me as part of a new ritual?” Leigh asked.
I shook my head. “After a while, human sacrifices were considered archaic and cruel,” I explained. “You’d have to be absolutely crazy to even think about doing it these days.”
I finished tying up my boots then led Leigh out of the bedroom and down to the second story.
“Wait here,” I said to her as I knocked on Wren’s door. As expected, he didn’t answer. When I attempted to push the door open, I discovered it was locked. “Wren?” I called. “You doing okay?”
No answer. He was probably still asleep. I motioned to Leigh to follow me downstairs, promising myself to check on Wren later.
“Are you going to tell everyone that you can see me?” Leigh asked as we descended. Every step of mine sent an echoing creak through the rest of the house. Leigh’s footfalls, naturally, were silent.
“I’d prefer not to,” I whispered, hyper aware of my sisters’ collective aptitude for eavesdropping. “They’ll just ask a ton of questions.”
“Oh. I was just hoping to say hello.”
I could sense the disappointment in her voice. I remembered that my family had enjoyed Leigh’s company and vice versa, but it never occurred to me that Leigh might’ve actually established an honest relationship with various members of the Summers coven.
“It’ll be easier for you to move on if you stay detached,” I said to her as we reached the landing of the first floor.
“Who’s detached?” my mother’s voice said from the dining room, startling me.
“No one,” I said hastily. “Just talking to myself.”
“Mm-hmm,” my mother said. She wore a purple satin robe and reading glasses, the daily paper levitating in midair in front of her nose. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks. Mom, can I ask a question?”
“Certainly.”
I paused, considering my phrasing. “Does anyone in the coven still believe in human sacrifices?”
“Your Aunt Alberta, but everyone knows she’s demented.”
“Mom, I’m serious.”
“As am I,” she said, stirring a sugar cube into a mug of black coffee before taking a sip. “I suppose you’re fishing for information?”
“Just curious,” I said.
Malia’s head appeared in the kitchen doorway. “No one’s performed a human sacrifice in Yew Hollow since the 1700s,” she said.
Leigh trailed behind me as I joined Malia in the kitchen. As I frosted a bagel with cream cheese, I said, “That much I knew. What about with dark magic, though? I mean, it’s not exactly moral, is it? Dark users wouldn’t balk at sacrificing humans, right?”
“These sound like questions for Karma,” Malia said.
“Karma? Why?”
Malia leaned against the countertop, sipping some sort of potent-smelling tea from a ceramic mug. “That guy she was with a few years ago. What was his name again, Mom?”
“Satan,” my mother called from the dining room.
Malia rolled her eyes. “Luke, I think it was. Anyway, when Karma told him that she was a witch, he decided to dabble in the dark arts.”
“Karma never told me that!”
“Really?” Leigh asked. “I knew.”
She’d been so quiet for the past few minutes, I had almost forgotten she was there. A bubble of jealousy rose in my throat. Karma had shared secrets with Leigh, secrets that she hadn’t even bothered to make me aware of. What else did Leigh know about my family?
“I think she was ashamed,” Malia said. “She didn’t want you to think ill of her. Anyway, she ended up doing a whole bunch of research on dark magic in order to stop Luke from doing anything stupid. You could ask her about it.”
“Where is she?”
“She and Laurel went out to the swing set this morning,” my mother said as she swished around the contents of her coffee mug.
I waved a hand in thanks, discreetly motioning for Leigh to follow me. We left the house through the rear screen door. I’d forgotten how vast
the backyard was. It went on for several acres, bordered by a thick forest. In the distance, near the edge of the golden tree line, I spotted Karma and Laurel. Laurel sat in the mulch around the swing set, her palms flattened out on the ground behind her, head tipped back to allow the autumn sunlight as much access to her pores as possible. Karma occupied one of the swings, kicking her legs back and forth in a rhythmic, hypnotizing motion. When the swing reached its full height, Karma leapt off, soaring through the air before landing lightly on her feet near Laurel. I couldn’t help but smile. Yew Hollow had kept them young, whereas New York had robbed me of my childish appreciation for simplicity.
I jogged over to them, Leigh following close behind.
“Don’t you guys have jobs?” I joked, knowing full well that very few women of the coven entertained themselves with mortal careers. I commandeered the swing that Karma had recently vacated, dug my toes in the ground to push myself back, then let gravity do the rest of the work.
“My only obligation is to Mother Gaia,” Laurel said. Her eyes were closed. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.
As Leigh sat cross-legged in the mulch next to Laurel, I saw Laurel shiver. Leigh’s presence must have been even stronger than I originally thought, especially if other witches could feel the chill she produced.
“Karma, why didn’t you tell me about Luke?” I asked as she sat in the vacant swing.
“Mom told you?”
“Malia.”
“Remind me to stick a pin in her doll,” she said, though there was no malice in her voice. “He was stupid. There’s no other reason for it. You know how men are. They want to prove their strength or whatever.”
“Malia said you did a lot of research on dark magic.”
“I did. I was trying to find a way to stop him,” she explained, as if justifying her reason for studying the dark arts. It was a sensitive subject. Dark magic was a grossly warped version of witchcraft. “It didn’t matter anyway. When we broke up, he moved away.”
I kicked my legs again, leaning way back in the swing to maximize the rush of wind past my ears on the way down. “Did you ever read anything about human sacrifices?”
“This is about Leigh, isn’t it?” Laurel asked.
I had to give it to my sisters. They certainly were perceptive. I kept an eye on Leigh as her name came up, but she only smiled sadly, crossed her arms behind her head, and lay back in the mulch. I nodded.
Karma swung past me. “It isn’t common,” she said. “Even dark users have to draw the line somewhere.”
I didn’t speak, swinging in silence, hoping that more information was forthcoming.
“But…” Karma continued, now rocking from side to side and causing her swing to careen forward in a chaotic arc. “If someone was really desperate, there are a couple of ancient rituals that require human sacrifice in order to harness a massive amount of power.”
“What kind of rituals?”
“The kind that needs more than one sacrifice,” Karma went on. “Rituals like that depend on a lot of blood. A series of three offerings, each body fulfilling a certain necessary element of the spell, sacrificed at three specific times of year.”
“How very detailed,” Laurel said airily.
“Then this could be the first in a series of sacrifices?” I asked.
“Morgan, you forget that this is Yew Hollow,” Karma said. “There’s no way someone would be able to pull off another bizarre murder without the town catching them. The entire police force is on high alert.”
“What, all five of them?” I said in a dry voice.
“I’m just saying—”
“They killed one person. They could do it again,” I cut in. I dragged my heels into the ground, gouging scars into the earth, and forced my swing to come to a stop. “Who would do this?” I asked. “Who in the coven?”
“Morgan, think about it,” Laurel said in a tranquil tone, as if she could sense the deepening frustration in my voice. “Most of the coven are like Mom. They’re old. Powerful, but passive. We’re at peace.”
“Then who in town?” I asked. I was already annoyed with the lack of information on the murder. Yew Hollow was famously tiny. Everyone knew everyone else. That meant that someone had to know something about Leigh’s death.
Laurel and Karma exchanged loaded glances with each other.
“What?” I demanded.
“It’s just—” Karma began. “Yew Hollow barely belongs to us anymore. Most of the townspeople tolerate us because we bring in revenue. If they could do away with us, they would.”
“So it could be anyone,” Laurel concluded.
I glanced at Leigh, still lying on her back beside Laurel. She had been the head of the Historical Preservation Society and a librarian at the local library. She would’ve interacted with the townspeople on a regular basis, and from what I’d gathered, she had been well liked. Maybe Leigh had more information about possible suspects in her death than I had originally assumed. We needed to have a private conversation.
I hopped off the swing.
“I need to think,” I said.
“Before you go,” Karma said, bringing her own swing to a stop. “Tell me, why do you care so much? You didn’t even know Leigh.”
I couldn’t stop myself from making eye contact with Leigh before ripping my gaze away from hers. I hoped that, to my sisters, it looked as if I were staring thoughtfully into space.
“I just know how much she meant to you guys,” I said. I had never been a particularly talented liar. “See you later.”
With a tiny jerk of my head, I beckoned Leigh to follow me. Left to her own devices, she might have stuck around with Karma and Laurel in an attempt to feel normal again. Spirits did that occasionally. But she rose from the mulch without arguing, wiped her palms against her pants, despite the fact that she was dead and no dirt could cling to them, and followed me back toward the house. Halfway across the yard, I heard Laurel and Karma’s voices carry out to us. They must have assumed I was already out of earshot.
“She must think we’re completely oblivious,” Laurel said.
“Leave it be, Laurel.”
I led Leigh into town. I wanted to visit the yew tree again. I didn’t care if it might be a bad idea to show up at the place where the cops thought I had murdered someone. I hadn’t killed Leigh. There was no blood on my hands, figuratively or literally. If the cops were too stupid to figure that out, the possibility of them discovering the real murderer was beyond unlikely.
Leigh chatted genially as we strolled toward the town square, filling me in on the details of her life. She was born and raised in the suburbs of Virginia. Her parents, it turned out, had died in a house fire, the cause of which had never been identified. Leigh had a theory about that, though.
“When I was a kid, I remember weird stuff happening in that house,” she said. “I’d hear voices when everyone was asleep, or a cat meowing even though we never owned a cat. I used to dream about a little girl, over and over again, but I never understood what it might’ve meant.”
“And your parents probably told you it was just a nightmare?” I guessed. History was littered with mortals’ stories of connecting with the dead. The dead were always more likely to reach out to children. At that age, society hadn’t beaten the thought of the impossible out of you yet.
“Naturally,” Leigh said. “And then the night of the fire, I dreamt of her again. She told me to follow her, and she led me out of the house to a playground a few blocks away. The police found me asleep under a slide, and by that time, the house had burned to the ground.”
The incident had provoked Leigh’s initial interest in the spirit world. She’d gone on to study history and a wide range of folklore at university, trying to get her hands on anything that could’ve been interpreted as paranormal. I had to give her credit. Most humans grew out of their obsession with the metaphysical, dismissing it as myth, but Leigh had been determined to prove her theories right.
“That�
�s why I moved to Yew Hollow,” she explained. “I’d read that the town was home to a real coven of witches. At first, I doubted it. But when I found your family, I could have exploded with joy. They listened to my story and understood. Your mother, and your sisters especially, gave me what I needed. A support system that didn’t balk at my preternatural past.”
My heart felt like an anvil in my chest. Leigh had managed to find everything in my family that I hadn’t, a sense of belonging and the ability to rely on your sorority when life cut you down.
“They’re good people,” Leigh murmured. I stared at the ground as we walked, focusing on the crunch of dead leaves beneath my feet. “Not just your family. Your whole coven.”
My coven. The concept felt alien to me. I hadn’t truly been a part of the coven in years.
“Karma told me you don’t like being a witch,” Leigh said.
“Karma’s got a big mouth.”
“A big heart, too.”
I ignored this, knowing full well that Leigh was right. Karma only wanted the best for me, but her good intentions weren’t enough to stop me from feeling out of place in my own family.
“I’m just trying to understand,” Leigh began slowly, as if choosing her words cautiously, “why you consider your gift a burden.”
We arrived in town. Thankfully, there weren’t many people about. It was a Monday, and most of Yew Hollow’s residents had gone off to work. It made it easier to speak to Leigh without looking like a crazy person. Nevertheless, I kept my voice quiet and my chin down. The last thing I needed was for some townsperson to assume I was talking to myself.
“How would you feel,” I said, “if dead people kept seeking you out? Wherever you are, whatever company you keep, they don’t care. They just want to suck you dry until they pass over.”
Leigh’s face crumpled, and I automatically regretted my words. I’d forgotten whom I was speaking to. Despite this, she said, “I don’t know. I just think that if it were me, I would do my best to help anyone I could. You’re their last hope to be at peace, you know? Mine, too.”