by Leanne Leeds
“Weren’t you the one that didn’t tell her Karen was her mother?” I asked quietly. “Terry?” I added sarcastically for good measure.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Chris murmured, but he could barely suppress a smirk.
“Don’t we have other things we need to do right now?” Clutterbuck asked haughtily. The big man crossed his arms. “Why don’t y’all quit yapping and uncork that damn bottle so we can get on with this?”
“We are not done talking about this,” Angie told me fiercely as she stepped away with one last glare.
I swallowed and held out the bottle toward Chris. Like all the others, the bottle uncorked, and mist poured from the mouth in a dreamy waterfall. It spread out on the asphalt. Those that could see it stepped back and watched.
Slowly, undoubtedly, a woman’s form rose up and then solidified.
Or, well, solidified as much as mist to a ghost would solidify.
She smiled a friendly smile at me. “Thank you,” the freed specter said in a quiet voice with a nod. “I knew you would get to me eventually, but I must admit the wait was a bit longer than I would’ve preferred.” The woman, dressed in reasonably modern clothing, turned and gazed at Angie. Her face grew sad even though she smiled. “What a beautiful woman you grew up to be.”
Angie watched, unseeing, and waited.
“And you.” The ghost turned and stepped in front of Chief Clutterbuck.
I couldn’t help but notice they were so mismatched. He was a tall, thick man. Muscled and big-boned, like a fighter. The woman was short and slight, her head only reaching his chest. “I heard you speak to me. Every time. I heard you through the marigolds you planted on my grave.” She smiled up at the gruff lawman. “I so looked forward to Sundays. I don’t think you ever missed one.”
Dalida and I stared at each other.
“Who is it?” Angie asked. She looked back and forth between our gobsmacked expressions.
“It’s your mother,” Chris informed Angie. He glanced toward Chief Clutterbuck, who remained expressionless, unaware of what was happening in front of him.
“Wait, I thought Fortuna turned her into a dog—”
“Not Karen,” Chris explained gently as Angie’s bewildered expression froze on her face. “The last bottle? The last ghost, I believe, is Tara Clutterbuck. The mother that raised you. The wife of your father.”
Chief Clutterbuck’s face turned ashen. Then he pushed Detective Beau Conroe aside and raced toward the grass.
Where he threw up.
Nineteen
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” Pepper asked, an uncommonly serious look of concern on her face. Dalida, Pepper, and I stood off to the side as Angie and her father talked privately with one another. Hovering behind them both, unseen? Tara Clutterbuck, newly freed from her bottle. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so freaked out. I know I’ve never seen him throw up.” She tilted her head and looked up. “Well, there was that one Fourth of July picnic, but I think that was food poisoning.”
“He’ll be fine. You, on the other hand, have some explaining to do,” I told Pepper with an accusatory glare. “What on earth were you thinking, telling Angie about the dog in the middle of all this? Do you honestly not think before you open your mouth? I swear, I sometimes think you just—”
“I thought that by the time this night is over, that her dog used to be human is going to be the least of her issues. It seemed the best time to slip it in.” Pepper ran her hands through her hair and then firmly placed her hands on her hips. “Look, I know you all think I just bumble through life spewing out whatever thought flips through my brain, but I don’t. I went into journalism because secrets are toxic,” she said, pointing toward the church. “Those people are about to find out they’ve been imprisoning Grandma for decades. Should we not tell them just because it’s going to be tough for them to handle?”
“I didn’t say that. And you’re changing the subject,” I argued.
“I’m not. I know everyone thinks I have boundary issues, that I don’t think before I speak. You’re wrong.” Pepper glanced at Dalida, her face animated. “The two of you are twins, and you didn’t even know it until you were well in your thirties. I open my mouth, and I say things people should know because people should know them. That’s it. Because secrets are toxic. I didn’t blurt it out because I wasn’t thinking. I blurted it out because you should have told her two months ago.” Pepper tossed her head. “The three of you are living together. You’re supposed to be sisters.”
I stared.
“Why didn’t you just talk to Fortuna before saying something?” Dalida asked her.
“I’ve said multiple times you all needed to tell her. Both of you. I’ve said it to both of you. Multiple times.”
“Me?” Dalida asked, surprised.
“You’re her sister, too. You knew the secret, too. You kept it from Angie the same as Fortuna.”
Dalida looked like she would argue, but then she sighed. “You’re right. I can’t argue with you. But I also feel I have a point, as well. You should have taken us aside and had a serious talk with us if you were that concerned.”
“I know we don’t know each other very well, Dalida, but I don’t really waste serious heart to heart talks trying to explain to people things I know they know already. If you get my drift.” Pepper glanced over her shoulder to check on Angie and the chief and then turned back. “You both knew it wasn’t right to keep it from her. What was I supposed to say to you? You knew.”
Although I was the person who would free the town from a multi-century curse, my nearest and dearest were calling me on my stuff this evening. Shouldn’t the town savior get a break on the minor stuff?
“No,” Pepper said as if she read my mind.
“Are you a telepath now?”
“I don’t have to be telepathic to read your expression. By the way,” Pepper asked, changing her tone to change the subject. “Since you opened that bottle up, does that mean the ghosts can get out of Mystic’s End now?”
“Hopefully,” I said, turning my head and searching for Spike. I waved at him, and he left the other ghosts on the other side of the parking lot and made his way toward me. “Hey. Can I ask you to check something for me?”
“Sure, what do you need?”
“Pepper just brought up the fact that the barrier keeping you in Mystic’s End should be down. Since you know where it is—or was, can you go check? See if you can cross it?”
Spike nodded. “Sure, Plum and I can go check it out. The edge is just a mile north of here.”
Without waiting, he turned and grabbed what I assumed was his new girlfriend. The two made for the tree line.
“Hey, I have another question,” Pepper said slowly, gazing after them.
I raised my eyebrow.
“Why was he not sucked into the crystal ball prison with the rest of the town?”
Her question gave me a start. There were only two ghosts—well, three— that didn’t wind up in a witch bottle or the crystal ball prison. At least as far as I could tell. Miss Bessie, the mailman Tom, and Spike.
Miss Bessie was the mystic before me, the heir to the power the coven had spun up to counter whoever cast the curse. Though she and I had never talked about it in-depth, we assumed the residual mystic power she possessed kept her from going wherever the rest of the town had gone.
Someone had smashed Tom on the head with a crystal and accidentally trapped him within it. I suspected his murder actually saved him from the curse, held him there when he should have been deposited in another crystal somewhere else.
But they killed Spike. Just plain old killed.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Maybe once we know more about what’s going on in that church, I’ll be able to figure it out.”
“It’s down, baby!” Spike hollered as he and Plum raced toward me. “There’s a lake on the other side of the boundary? And I could never get to the other side of the boundary to get to the lake? A
nd I just went across, and I could get to the lake!” Spike panted breathlessly—which always amazed me. How do paranormals without lungs gasp?
The other ghosts stared at him, their eyes wide with excitement. “You’re sure?” Miss Bessie called.
“Didn’t you just hear what I said about the lake?” Spike’s head cocked to one side.
Dalida and I exchanged a long, speculative look. “That means there’s another step to free the ghosts in prison. It’s not as simple as removing the magical boundary surrounding Mystic’s End or breaking that part of the curse.”
“What about Anna?” Pepper asked. “Could she be powering their prison? Or, like, the reason the door is locked?”
“We have two magical imprisonments left. The human ghosts in the crystal ball and a witch encased in selenite. It’s basically a chicken or egg situation, now, I would think,” Dalida suggested. “Is Anna keeping the ghosts locked in the crystal ball, or are the ghosts keeping Anna imprisoned? Or are they both tied together somehow?”
“Maybe she’s free already,” I said absently.
I noticed that Martin, a few feet away from Gabe and Chris, held still. He was listening intently.
“Nothing in this endeavor happens spontaneously, Fortuna,” Pepper told me. “That would be too easy for something as protected as that hole.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I admitted.
Martin’s head dropped.
I covered my eyes with one hand, trying to collect my thoughts.
Though I knew the crystal ball was probably in the church—and I was sure it would be challenging to convince the churchgoers of what they’d been doing—I hadn’t figured out the next steps I needed to take.
To be honest, I was secretly hoping the uncorking of the last witch bottle would magically set everything right, at least from the curse’s perspective.
And if that didn’t work, I hoped that Karen becoming a dog coupled with uncorking the witch bottle might also do the trick.
No such luck.
Pepper’s voice was puzzled. “Remind me again, how did you free Tom from the rock he was locked in?”
“Weren’t you with her?” Dalida asked.
“I was actually kidnapped at the time,” Pepper told Dalida with a wave of her hand. “You should’ve seen Fortuna and the guys. They came in guns blazing and fingers fidgeting to rescue me.” Pepper smiled. “It was awesome.”
“He just needed to know why he died, why he was killed,” I told Dalida. “It was almost like a haunting, you know? Once the ghost understood why his death happened, he popped right out. I don’t think that’s going to work here. Tom imprisoned in the crystal rock was an accident. These people?” I waved toward the church. “These people were deliberately shoved in that rock. There has to be a barrier around it that we’re going to have to take down.”
A barrier we have to take down…
I turned and looked at Angie.
Then my eyes narrowed.
“What?” Pepper asked. “I know that look. What’s that look?”
“It can’t be that simple,” I murmured.
“What? What can’t be that simple?”
“Fortuna, what are you thinking?” Dalida asked, looking back and forth between Angie and me.
What I was thinking was Spike never made it into the town crystal ball. But more than that—when I bought the building, Spike hadn’t left it for almost twenty years. He’d tried to escape and bounced off the walls like he had his own personal Mystic’s End cursed boundary. The ghost had even gone to the roof and attempted to jump off. No dice.
I thought it was his own psychological barrier, something he had put up.
But because my sister, Angie, had accidentally pushed him down the stairs?
I wondered.
“Angie!” I called, breaking away from the group and heading toward my sister and her father. “When you pushed Spike down the stairs, do you remember anything specific happening to you? Feeling anything, seeing anything?”
“Fortuna, we just found my mother in a witch bottle.” There were tear stains on Angie’s face, and her complexion was pale. “You just told me my dog is a murderer. Now you want to bring up a painful moment from my past?” She stared at me. “Are you mad at me, and I don’t know it?”
“Far from it, Angie. I am sorry I have to bring this up. But it could be important.”
“It was years ago, and Spike forgave me!”
“I promise you, I’m not doing this to cause you any more pain, but I need to know. You know a bit of what magic feels like now. I need you to think really hard and remember that moment.” I stared into her eyes. “Remember that panic you felt when you saw Spike? When you pushed into him?” Angie’s face churned with emotion. “Did you feel any magic, any energy? Think hard.”
My sister mopped at her face with one hand, smearing the tears from her cheeks. Pepper and Dalida joined us. “I was freaked out, Fortuna. I was scared that he would call the police and my father would find out; I was terrified that I would go to jail. I was scared I would never get out of town, never get away from my mother.” Tara Clutterbuck winced behind her. “And when I pushed him, I only meant to get him out of my way.” Her eyes watered again, tears escaping. “When I saw him falling backward, everything went white. There was this kind of rushing in my ears—”
“That’s it! Angie was the one that cast the protection over that building,” I told Dalida, cutting Angie off. “That white that you saw, the roaring in your ears? That was magic. You didn’t know what you were doing, and when you tried instinctively to protect Spike as he fell? You threw out way too much energy. So much you basically sealed the building.”
“I don’t know, Fortuna. It seems like one heck of a reach,” Dalida responded, her tone doubtful.
“It’s not. Look at her natural powers. She can take away pain. Now, how would you do that if you don’t actually heal the thing that’s hurting?” I asked my twin, eyebrow raised again. “What does a painkiller do? It numbs nerves, right? It doesn’t really make the thing that hurts stop hurting by fixing it. It just blocks it so you can’t feel it.”
“You think she puts a barrier around whatever the painful thing is?”
“I do. For her, the painful thing that night was happening in that building. And so she blocked it. Instinctively.”
“I don’t understand,” Pepper said, her face confused. “What does that have to do with the people in the crystal ball?”
“It’s a boundary,” Dalida explained. “It’s a similar type of magic. If Angie can put them up, she can also take them down.”
I nodded. “We each seem to have particular strengths in one area of magic. I think Angie’s—”
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Angie said, turning pale. “You don’t think I’m the one that has to release all those people from the crystal ball? I didn’t even know I was a witch three months ago! I don’t know how to do any of this! I just touch people, and something happens. I can’t control it!”
“But Fortuna can,” Dalida said, nodding toward me. “She’s a telepath.”
“Well, that’s would be fine and dandy if she had…” Angie trailed off, looking back and forth between us. “Hold up. You want to come in my head and unlock the crystal ball through me?” Angie asked. Her expression was both fascinated and appalled. “Can you even do that?”
“Look, we just came up with this idea. I haven’t thought it through.” I wasn’t even sure Dalida’s idea would work. Even though I was the only one out of the three of us that had been turned into a full witch, I’d never worked with any boundary magic before. Not the boundary magic that could imprison a multi-generational town of ghosts in a ball.
“Well, start thinking,” Angie’s mother said as she walked up. “You’ve got me out of the bottle. Angie and Terrance have had some time to adjust to the shock.” The small woman looked at me sternly. “We’ve been milling about here for twenty minutes. It’s time to bring this to
an end. For everyone.”
“And that’s all I know,” Ollie finished.
He hadn’t gotten as much information as I’d hoped.
When Ollie and Pepper had showed up at the church, Reverend Kane was surprised—and suspicious. Ollie had left the church and moved out of his father’s house on the very day his father declared it was time for him to join the men’s group.
Since Ollie refused—and left—he’d never been told precisely the purpose of the men’s group.
It was clear now the church existed as if it were a typical congregation—albeit one with an irrational fear of paranormal and mythological creatures. Many people attended the church not understanding that it was funded by Karen White or that the men’s group passed a magical crystal ball around. Many men, nearly all women, and all children were kept in the dark.
“They know we’re coming?” I asked him.
Ollie nodded. “I tried to talk to my father, come clean with some of what I knew. He accused me of being bewitched, controlled by paranormal forces.” The assistant coroner shrugged. “He was pretty nice about it, though. No one grabbed me and tried to burn me at the stake, so I don’t think anyone’s going to get violent. But no, he didn’t want to believe me that Karen was evil. He’s convinced what the men’s group has been doing was right.” He tilted his head. “I didn’t know about the crystal ball thing to tell him about that, so he doesn’t know.”
“It’s too bad they can’t talk to the people in the crystal ball,” Pepper said to the group. “Maybe those folks could convince them it’s not a great place to spend eternity.”
Light bulb.
“Well, why can’t they?” I said, a sly smile spreading across my face. I looked at Dalida, and she half-smiled. “Dalida can do it. Maybe. If she can’t, she can at least make the ghosts we have with us visible.”
“Are we sure the ball is even in that building?” Gabe asked.
“Beau’s mother is in there talking to Prunella and Bond Noble,” Pepper told Gabe. “There’s a bowling ball bag next to him on the floor, and he won’t let it out of his sight. I tried to get close to it, but he’s really twitchy.” Pepper shrugged. “This church doesn’t have a bowling alley, so I think it’s in there.”
