Witch-Child

by Gerilyn Marin

  "So." I prompt, crossing my arms. "What were you doing, then?"

  "What were you doing that you saw me?"

  "I was making a bagel run for my crazy, morning-person mother. And anyway, I asked you first!"

  He mirrors my stance, but rolls his shoulders back so that he's standing as straight as possible, which accentuates our height difference.

  "Fine, I'll tell you, but you have to promise that you will keep it a secret . . . and you have to tell me something first."

  "Sure." I can't possibly imagine what he wants to know; he's the one crawling around graveyards, I'm just the girl who lies to weasel information out of him; I doubt anything I might have to say will be terribly interesting, given that set-up.

  "When I told you where to meet me, you got scared. Why?"

  My eyes widen instantly at this. Ah, crap, he's sharper than I've been giving him credit for. I try to get my big, stupid, telling eyes under control. I can act my butt off from a script or rehearsed lines no problem, which probably explains why I was such a complete dumbass when I first approached him this afternoon; I hadn't thought through what I was going to say beforehand. But when I'm caught off-guard, I have the worst poker face.

  "I'll tell you, but can we, like, walk or something? We keep having this talk in the middle of the sidewalk and someone's bound to overhear."

  "Okay," he replies with a shrug, and starts walking back the way we came, forcing me to fall into step beside him.

  I stuff my fists into the pockets of my jeans as we stroll along, waiting until we're nearer to the pharmacy before finally saying anything. "You saw the crack in the window, right?"

  We exchange a quick look before both facing forward again, so I can't miss that his eyebrow is raised.

  "Did you do that?"

  "Nope," I say with a sigh as we cross the street and simply amble on, as if we've walked this route together a hundred times. "But I was there when it happened yesterday."

  "So, who did it?"

  I pause briefly in my steps and turn toward him, but it's not until he turns to face me that I say quietly, hoping that it's heavy with meaning, "Nobody."

  He nods. "Ah, seems a lot of that happens around here."

  Turning forward, I start walking again. "Yep."

  It occurs to me as I explain that I'm sharing with him something that should probably be private, but I guess in a town of spooky occurrences, a little mysterious forewarning isn't so strange. "We're used to it, but here's the thing. Something . . . warned me that was going to happen."

  "Okay, what?"

  I glance over at him and see that he's watching me out of the corner of his eye. I'm pretty sure that the fact that we're heading toward the cemetery isn't a coincidence, but then there is a lot of stuff in that general direction; maybe he's got a hankering for a frozen yogurt, or needs to stop at the post office to buy stamps, get fitted for orthopedic shoes, who knows.

  "I knew it was going to happen." I say with a small shrug. "Not sure how, and that's never really happened before. When you mentioned meeting at the pizza place, I'd finally managed to put it out of my mind, so I got spooked a bit. There's something I've been wondering, though."

  Grey frowns thoughtfully. "Go ahead. I'm getting the impression this is going to need to be an all-the-cards-on-the-table conversation, anyway."

  "We're used to this weird stuff, so we tend not to really react, but it does still kinda freak us all out a little and, well . . . you didn't react to that thing with the eraser in class the other day—like at all. Why not?"

  He looks around slowly as we halt at the light on the corner, and drops his voice so low that I can barely hear it.

  "That's because I'm used to it, too. You hit the nail on the head with wanting to know about where I've lived before I came here."

  Turning away from the street, I cross my arms again and lean a hip against the traffic light pole. "How so?"

  "It all leads back here." He drops his gaze to the ground, shuffling the toe of one sneaker against the pavement as he hooks his thumbs through his jeans belt loops. "The sort of crap that happens here has been happening to my family for as long as anyone knows. I was trying to figure out what it could be, and that brought me to following my family tree."

  This sparks a small, semi-hopeful notion in my mind. "Was one of your ancestors—the ones who were supposed to have lived here, I mean—psychic?"

  The color drains from his face instantly, but his voice rumbles out, small and controlled. "Why would you ask that?"

  I hunch my shoulders, holding my hands palms up. "I don't know. I was figuring that if they were, then maybe what I felt yesterday would make sense. You being here could have kicked up, I don't know, something, and it really wasn't reaching out to me, per se, but to anyone who might be able to pick up on it, which just . . . happened to be me." Instantly, I drop my hands, feeling my brow furrow. "Huh."

  I force out the word in a short, mystified-sounding breath; somehow I had thought that would have made sense, but now that I've talked it through, I'm not so sure anymore.

  "And you're able to pick up on stuff like that because . . . ?" he asks, his eyes narrowed—not in suspicion, at least it doesn't appear that way, but like someone trying to figure something out when they don't have all the information.

  Again, my eyes give away everything; I don't think I'd realized when I brought this up that it would be a natural question for him to have. Crap.

  "Well, no one outside of my family—except Wendi, of course—really knows this. But it's because I'm sort of . . . uh, at least, a little bit . . . psychic."

  Grey's entire expression changes, becoming completely serious. "Maybe you can help me, then."

  I search his face, looking for anything that might tell me what he's actually thinking, but he's a blank slate, giving nothing away. "You mean, with your family tree?"

  He only offers a quick, stiff nod.

  "I could help you anyway, don't need to be psychic for that," I respond with an uneasy laugh. "What's your family name?"

  "Addison, you know that," he says with a sudden lift to his brow, like I've gone and sprouted a second head right before his eyes.

  "N-no, no." I pause and take a breath, then let it out slowly before elaborating. "Not your name, the name of the branch of your family that lived here."

  His eyes narrow as he explains in slow, deliberate words. "The branch of my family that lived here was named Addison."

  I feel my bottom lip pull into a confused pout as I blink up at him. "Well, that can't be right."

  "Really?" he asks in a very low tone, once more crossing his arms as he lifts his eyebrows at me. "And how do you happen to just know—off the top of your head—that it's not right?"

  He's riled up for some reason, and it's not just his tensed posture or his lowered voice that gives that away, so much as a feeling of irritated frustration that ebbs off him. Maybe he thinks I'm lying? But why would I bother?

  "My mom's associate publisher of the Drake's Cove Herald." I admit with a shrug. Pretty much everyone in town knows this, so I forgot it wasn't common knowledge for a newcomer.

  He returns the gesture, but with a face that says he doesn't get what one thing has to do with the other.

  "Last summer, I interned for her, and one of my assignments was transferring the hand-written town registers to their computer files. See, I'm good with names—not like I'd be able to list every name from the registers at a moment's notice, but if you give me a name, I know if it is or isn't there. I saw no birth or death records under the name Addison."

  At this point, I decide I should sidetrack a little to explain why I'd been tasked with something that probably seems worthless over a century and a half later.

  "See, the editor had this cool but sorta morbid idea for the Halloween editions—to run a 'period' section that would have obits based on the death records, on pages treated and printed to look antique-like. So I had to go to Town Hall myself and sign out all these giant ol
d books, because my mom didn't want any errors that might be on the Town Hall's computer files."

  My words drop off sharply when Grey grabs my wrist and starts across the street, tugging me along behind him.

  "Wh-what are you doing?" Maybe I should be digging my heels in and giving him a hard time, but I'm a little too curious about where we're going to fight him.

  He lifts his chin in the direction of the cemetery as we near it. "Proving your history wrong."

  I let him lead me through the cemetery gates and stay quiet as we wind along the main path until we reach Old Part.

  "This is where I saw you this morning," I say, almost without realizing I've spoken aloud, squinting and peering through the fence to confirm that the bagel shop is across the street.

  He relinquishes his hold on my wrist. It doesn't occur to me to find anything odd in the way he keeps hold of me until we get here; does he think I'll run away or something?

  "No Addisons in Drake's Cove before me and my parents, right?"

  I can't help that a tiny gulp goes down my throat at the way his tone has suddenly become calculating, but I stay on point, giving a nod.

  "Then explain that," he says coolly, pointing at one aged, worn headstone.

  Frowning and heaving a sigh—there's no call for being so dramatic—I pick my way carefully between the old grave plots. I'm kind of superstitious about things like stepping on graves. I kneel down in front of the weather-beaten, gray stone and run the tips of my fingers over the old, now only faintly raised letters. All my thoughts screech to a halt as the spelling finally becomes legible to me.

  My stomach ices over a little, though I'm not entirely sure why, as I read aloud the name, "Gabriel Addison."

  When I look up over my shoulder at him, Grey's face is unreadable. His eyes shift from the headstone my hand is lingering on to meet my gaze.

  "I don't understand," I mumble.

  "That makes two of us," he says, the thinnest edge of anger in his voice.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Cemetery Song

  It's quiet for a very long time, the two of us just staring at each other, before Grey picks his way around the opposite side of the grave plot to lean against the headstone. He watches me with his head tipped down in that way that makes his hair fall into his eyes.

  It isn't until I stand, holding his gaze and dusting my hands off on my jeans, that the silence is broken.

  "At first, I actually thought that whatever information Drake's Cove might have about my family was being kept from me on purpose, but I can see it in your face—you really had no clue."

  I furrow my brow at this and I can only shake my head, unsure if I'm more confused or surprised by what I think he's saying. "You thought we were all, like, what? Conspiring to keep stuff from you? How . . . very prime time drama."

  His expression sours. "I have my reasons. Listen, all I know is that everywhere else I've gone, they've been able to tell me whatever there was to know. And then I come here and," he shrugs and gestures in an outward circle with both hands, "the whole lot of you have this . . . creepy collective amnesia. What would you have thought?"

  I tick off on my fingers the first sensible options that come to mind—the ones more likely than town-wide conspiracy. "The records were lost, or your family never filled out a register in the first place; or possibly they took the ledger with their information in it with them when they left."

  Grey shakes his head, looking at me like I'm either brainwashed or a simpleton—doesn't matter which, since both are insulting.

  "Cadence!" He says sharply, but then appears to think better of this small outburst and continues on with a forced calm. "Listen, my family kept their own records, like a backup. Everything else matches up with public record—from a man named Jack Addison boarding a ship in England right up to the present, except for Drake's Cove. And I did check—they filled out all the proper documentation for the other towns they've lived in—why would this place be the exception?"

  Huh, okay, so that cancels out both the idea of them not filling out the registers and the idea of taking the book themselves. What would be the point if they had gone to the trouble of duplicating everything, anyway? I shift my shoulders, glancing around the cemetery. It's so quiet and peaceful here—if not for the headstones and crumbling mausoleums, it would be easy to forget where I actually am. I know I'm trying to distract myself, I want to keep from noticing that I can't be sure where he's going with all of this. I don't like this type of uncertainty.

  "Okay, then it could have always gotten lost."

  "Do you know," he says in a low tone, "that every family in Drake's Cove can be traced from the moment they came into town to wherever their descendants are now?"

  I blink up at him dumbly for a second to see a sad little smile playing across his lips. "Uh, what?"

  He nods toward the center of the cemetery and waves a hand toward some random graves in the distance. "Everyone that has lived here is from a family that filled out those registers. And if you run checks on their family names, you'll be able to locate those families—who married who, what names they took on, whether they're here, or moved on and living somewhere else. Or—and this is the one I can’t wrap my head around—moved away and came back. You can all be found based on public records online through the God damned local library. All of you . . . but not me."

  "It's just one name, Grey. How do you even know it connects to you, or any of this?"

  "Because I know the name Gabriel Addison. He was buried here by his family—whom he lived with in that house where the pharmacy is now. You think they just strolled through, buried a body and left?"

  I sigh. I want to tell him he's being difficult and stubborn, but I guess I'd have the same suspicions, were I in his shoes.

  "Hey, well, there was a fire in our old Town Hall back in the 1800's!" I say, snapping my fingers before I can stop myself, but I've completely forgotten about the incident until just now. "I mean, all the records were supposed to have been moved to the new building already, but—"

  "But only one book was left behind? That doesn't strike you as unusual?"

  That is strange, and something makes me suddenly feel uneasy . . . and very unsafe.

  "Oh," I force out slowly, taking a deep, stuttering breath before I can continue, trying to keep my focus. "Well, maybe they were just moving the books and it fell, or something."

  He narrows his eyes, but just stares at me without a word.

  Okay, the fire seemed like a pretty good bet, but even without him making such a fuss, I have to admit this scenario doesn't sit right with me. "Maybe yours being the only family register to get lost in the fire would be weird." I wish I had more to say, more options to offer, but aside from the fire and the usual-unusual bits, we've got a long history of not much going on here.

  "It would be," he agrees, before clearly taking note of the rattled look on my face. "Now do you get why I felt like I had to sneak in here in the middle of the night? I wasn't sure anyone wanted me snooping around and I wanted to know why, but now it just seems genuinely like none of you know a damned thing."

  The boy has clearly misunderstood my reason for alarm.

  I hear it now—behind me—the low sound of someone humming a tune. I turn slowly, and of course, there's no one there. No matter how often I go through this stuff, I can't immediately believe that I'm hearing something I can't see. My gaze roves around, raking over the graves as I backpedal a few steps, one shaky footfall at a time.

  "What is that?" Grey asks in a voice so low that I can just barely hear it over the humming.

  "I don't know," I respond in a faint murmur, "I don't come here very often. It's probably nothing." I feel something solid very close to my back now, so I stop. "Well, nothing malicious, anyway."

  "So why do you seem terrified?" His voice is in my ear, making me realize—with dreadful embarrassment washing up to mingle with my fear—that he is the something solid I've backed into.

  I fro
wn and shake my head stiffly, trying to ignore that I feel comfort—and even maybe a bit like I'm protected—being so near him in a nerve-jangling moment like this. The melodic sound would otherwise be pleasant, and even lulling. Like something a mother might murmur to a sleepy child. The observation adds to the chill crawling along my skin, forcing any comfort away.

  "I don't know." The voice seems to be getting louder, and it takes me a second to realize that it's not getting louder—it's getting closer.

  Grey steps back, away from the grave, and for a few seconds, I just can't move. I'm too spooked already to even give a tiny start when I feel his hand curving around my elbow and pulling me back with him. Snapped out of my anxiety by the contact and motion, I'm free to move on my own now, and gently tug my arm out of his grasp.

  "Thanks," I say over my shoulder.

  "Any time," he replies, with a trace of amusement in his voice. "Who do you think it is?"

  "I don't . . . ." My voice trails off as I realize that the humming is stationary now—hovering over the Addison grave, and that clicks with my observation from a moment ago. "Who's Gabriel Addison?"

  "Huh? One of my ancestors, hello?"

  I don't really have the presence of mind right now to so much as give him a bitchy look over my shoulder. "No, I mean according to your family records, who was he?"

  As Grey replies, the humming gets softer and softer, and I know that in a moment we won't hear the voice at all, "He . . . never really had the chance to be anyone. He would have been like my great, great uncle or something like that, but he died when he was two."

  "That's what I thought," I say hollowly, as the lilting sound finally ceases. "A song from a mother to her child." In fact, it reminds me of something my Gran used to hum to me when I couldn't sleep.

  A snapshot of climbing into my grandmother's lap as she sat in her favorite creaky old rocking chair flits through my mind, but I push it aside for now. This is about Grey, it won't be fair to make this moment about me, even by accident.