by Jill Nojack
Dinner was pleasant. Marcus’s cooking was more than acceptable, and Natalie felt a mentor’s pride during Twink’s show-off moment of lighting the dinner candles with a magical spark from the tip of an index finger. Fortunately, that went fine; nothing unexpected lit itself in sympathy as had happened with some of Twink’s earlier efforts. The girl was developing control just like they’d assured her she would. If she applied the same control to the eye-rolling, she’d really be on to something.
William offered to help with the dishes, but Natalie hustled him out to drive Twink home. They were going the same way, after all, now that William had moved in to the apartment downtown above the art gallery and Twink lived with her cousin in the living quarters of the old Victorian that housed Cat’s Magical Shoppe.
She had however, perhaps not reluctantly, allowed him a quick peck on the mouth at the door. It didn’t have the electrical charge of youth, but it was…nice. Certainly it had a different effect than a handshake.
And anyway, if he had some kind of small victory in their still-under-assessment relationship to obsess over, it might keep him out of the way while she got down business.
She set her larger-on-the-inside red purse on the counter in her office and scanned the room for the supplies she would likely need. A jelly jar full of grave dirt went in, as did a rope of fresh ivy grown from grave cuttings. She didn’t have any bay laurel on hand, but she had some oil prepared from the leaves. That would have to suffice. She’d grab basil from the kitchen on her way out. She made a mental note.
What else? Fortunately, Marcus’s pasta sauce had been loaded with garlic. That should offer adequate protection against the power of even the most deranged new spirit.
Mugwort might be useful, although it would have helped more if Maureen had imbibed an infusion of it before death. She opened the jar and looked in. Only a few crumbled leaves, not enough to bother with. She’d have to pick up a bag of it at the shop now that she was working with the dead again. She realized she hadn’t looked in that jar since she’d inherited it from her mother.
She loaded it all into the purse. It would have to do. She stopped in the kitchen to see if there was anything in the cooking spices collection she should claim, and then at the linen closet for an old sheet. She didn’t need to leave evidence of her visit where Denton could find it.
She called up the stairs, “I’m going out. Don’t wait up. You have school tomorrow.”
Marcus appeared at the top of the stairs. He’d already changed into sweatpants and an oversize t-shirt for bedtime. “You’re not going to go messing around that crime scene are you?”
“Of course not. I don’t know where you get these ideas.”
“Mostly just by getting to know you, Gram. So don’t get into trouble, okay?”
“You worry about yourself, young man. I’ll be fine.” she said, tsking at him. But she could feel a smile trying to settle on her face as she walked to her car.
Gram. She tried it on for size. Although “Grandmother Taylor” had sounded stilted and unnatural and didn’t quite fit, she found she didn’t mind this new name in the least.
***
Natalie probed the lock with her magic, taking longer to accomplish the break-in than Gillian—who would have made an excellent burglar—would have. But after one false start, she pushed the door open, going to her hands and knees beneath the yellow police tape that still covered the entry.
Her left kneecap sent a spike of pain up through her thigh to register its displeasure. Crawling around crime scenes at her age? Absurd. What was she thinking? Let the police handle it and be done with it.
But she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that her old nemesis Anat’s magic was involved in this somewhere. She knew that her friends thought she’d been jumping at that shadow for too long now. But if her suspicion bore fruit, neither Jenny nor her other children were entirely safe until it was sorted out. And who was going to keep them safe against dark magic if she didn’t? Chief Pipsqueak Denton who couldn’t see a magical event if it kissed him on the lips and waltzed him around the room backwards?
She didn’t think so.
But she’d shared William’s surprise when he’d told her during dinner that Denton had missed the changeling in the nest because of the body on the floor. That wasn’t like him; he generally latched on to every clue like a pit bull in the ring. Obviously, it was going to be up to her to solve this one if Denton really was losing his edge. Not that he would thank her for it.
The room would have been dark for anyone but Natalie. The only oasis of real-world light shone through a sliver of space between the closed curtains from the streetlight in front of the house. But Maureen’s portal to the afterlife still shone hopefully in the corner despite having grown smaller. For Natalie, the room was brightly lit. But at the rate the portal was shrinking, another twenty-four hours or so was the most she could expect it to continue flaring without encouragement; if she didn’t help Maureen pass tonight, it would be more difficult to accomplish later.
But first things first. She walked the perimeter of the room, careful not to bump into anything and move it from its position. She also left a wide berth around Maureen’s muttering specter; the cold coming off a new spirit could strike to the bone. She didn’t need to blunder into that kind of chill.
Her circuit around the room revealed nothing new. The entire space was a mish-mash of magical traces from multiple contributors, not an uncommon situation in a witch’s house. The strongest concentration, despite having decayed slightly from the morning, still focused on the cradle. Maybe there’d been a spell on the stuffed frog. That could explain why the normally observant Denton hadn’t noticed the thing under the blanket wasn’t a child.
In any case, if it had been a spell, it hadn’t lasted long, so it wouldn’t take much of a witch to have done it. She needed to talk to Maureen’s spirit and get a closer look at the missing child’s cradle.
She held her hand up to her mouth and blew out to get a whiff of her own breath. Good. It still smelled strongly of garlic. Even if Maureen was bent on revenge, possession shouldn’t be an option.
***
Natalie set her red handbag on the ground in the center of the living room, near the moaning specter that had once been a friendly and optimistic new grandmother of three. The shiny vinyl looked out of place with the room’s rustic decor. She pulled the sheet out of the bag the way a clown pulls a string of handkerchiefs from his mouth to amuse small children. A clown uses an illusion, but the capacity of Natalie’s handbag was real; it relinquished the rest of her supplies before she squeezed the clasp shut again with a click.
The once bright, white bed sheet had seen better days, but it still contrasted sharply with the small triple spiral she composed like a sand painting, carefully sprinkling the grainy handfuls of grave dirt from the side of her fist. If she completed it correctly, it would draw Maureen’s need for revenge away and into the coil, allowing more of who she had been to emerge from the traumatic moment she was stuck in. When that happened, she felt sure Maureen would choose the portal on her own and pass peacefully through to whatever awaited her in the Summerlands.
Natalie had never been convinced that the afterlife was all that it was cut out to be. Few returned from the other side, and the ones who did didn’t talk about it. Couldn’t, most likely. Even for her, death was still a mystery. But whatever lay beyond the veil, the living world was not the place for the dead.
The specter’s incessant moaning was on her nerves now. She had to focus intently to remember the order of the candles that formed the pentacle around the spiral: white to clear negativity and bring balance, blue to open the path for communication, purple to make a bridge on the path between her and the spirit, yellow to engage the memories that were being overwritten by trauma. And finally, the black candle, to allow the spirit to release its hold on this world and choose the portal to peace.
She was ready.
She drew a large circle
around the sheet and the specter with the athame and extended it to encompass the three cradles the specter guarded. It wasn’t perfectly round because of this—she would have had to move furniture to accomplish that. She didn’t want to interfere with the crime scene any more than necessary, but the intent of the circle was there; the universe knew what she meant. It should still protect her from any evil that lurked beyond the boundary and was attracted by the ritual’s magic.
First things first. She stood an arm’s length from Maureen’s afterimage, closed her eyes, and focused on the living Maureen she had known. The pictures that pried themselves loose from her memory spanned years. They’d been coveners together for a long time, although they had never really been friends. Natalie’s strident opposition to the previous head priestess had frightened some of the softer members of the coven. She took a deep breath. Even though she had skimmed the edges of dark magic in her early attempts to expose Eunice, it had been worth it in the end; the demon’s hold on Giles was gone.
She’d never gloated about it, even though she’d been right and the others had been wrong. For many years, there had been something terrible inside Eunice Granby.
She took another deep breath. Happy thoughts, she reminded herself. She tried again. There: Maureen as a young wife over tea at Gillian’s on a Saturday afternoon. She was asking for advice on how to explain to her out-of-towner husband where she went on the nights of the full moon.
Another: Maureen smiling down into the face of a day old infant when Natalie looked in on her in the maternity ward. She hadn’t stopped to visit. She didn’t want to interrupt the moment, and there’d been the emergency room to get back to. There was always someone there who’d needed nursing. Maureen, clearly, had not.
The memories would be enough to anchor her. She opened her eyes and reached toward Maureen’s spirit, blue magic glowing at her fingertips to spark the communication.
“Maureen,” she said, “it’s time to wake up.” The specter’s moans still rolled through the small room.
“You’ve been asleep, dear. It’s a bad dream, and to help your grandchild, you must wake up. Dahlia, wasn’t it? Named for the flower? She needs you.”
The moaning ceased, but the spirit’s eyes were still empty of the spark that had animated them when Maureen was alive. Natalie was sure she’d had an impact, but she hadn’t brought the spirit to full mindfulness. She could have sent her to the portal now, she had enough of her attention for that, but she needed information first. Information from the only witness to her own murder.
“You rocked her and held her and soothed her, didn’t you? Made sure there was nothing she needed and didn’t get. Just like you protected your own child, her mother. You’d never let any harm come to either one of them, would you?”
The spirit’s eyes shifted to Natalie’s face. Natalie didn’t know if they were seeing her or looking through her. She continued, “Dahlia needs your help, dear. Talk to me. Let me help you help Dahlia.”
Maureen’s eyes lit suddenly with recognition. “Nat? Where’s Jenny? Where are the babies?”
“Jenny’s safe. But Dahlia’s missing, and I’m going to find her. Can you help me?”
“Help you? How? I…” Maureen’s ghost looked around the room. “I don’t know where they went…I…”
Natalie grimaced. Of course she couldn’t simply offer an immediate identification of the culprit. No, it would require wheedling and probing and begging. The dead were exasperating.
“Maureen, I have something unpleasant to tell you. You’ve died. Can’t put it plainer than that. And you’ll need to pass to the Summerlands soon. But I can help Dahlia if you answer my questions.”
“I’ve died?”
“Yes. I just said so, didn’t I? Now, about the girl…”
“She’s different, but she’s not dangerous. Please don’t hurt her.”
“Don’t hurt who?”
“Dahlia. She’s a sweet little girl.”
“Why would I want to hurt her? I’m trying to find her. So tell me what happened. Who attacked you?”
“I…don’t remember.”
Blast these ghosts and their inconvenient amnesia! They’ll wallow in the moments of their deaths for hundreds of years, but the minute you ask how it happened, they haven’t got a clue. She sighed heavily. “Just tell me the last thing you do remember.”
“Before you arrived? All of the little ones were having a quiet time. They were safe in their cradles: fed and freshly diapered. Jenny was still asleep—I’d looked in on her, like I used to do when she was just a baby herself.” The specter paused, looking thoughtful. “I asked Butch to come in and watch them for a while when I ran out for formula so Jenny could sleep longer, but he wouldn’t—never helps, ever. He said he was going for gas, and the rig was gone when I got back, so that’s what he must have done.”
“And what happened when you went into the house?”
“I…I had to come back before getting the formula because I forgot my wallet…” Maureen’s face twisted into confusion, then fear, then pain, before it settled again into her normal, pleasant, daily expression. She said, “Then, after that, you were here. Telling me to wake up. I guess I must have gotten a nap in, too.”
Maureen looked around then and turned back quickly to Natalie when she saw the empty cradles, panic in her voice. “Where are the children?” She looked into the corner, where the portal stood, waiting, and she smiled. “Are they there?”
“No! You just keep your mind off of that for a while. Two of the girls are safe. But I need your help finding Dahlia. She’s missing. Try to focus.”
Natalie was tired of repeating herself without making progress, and she knew the specter was going to be increasingly interested in the portal now that she’d noticed it. When Maureen started drifting that way, she reached in her pocket quickly for the powder and blew a blast of ground carob into the ectoplasm that made Maureen whole. The powder stopped the ghost’s progress toward the light.
“Sweet Dahlia! She would never hurt anyone on purpose.”
Natalie’s eyes narrowed. “How different is this Dahlia?”
But Maureen was looking at the portal again, smiling. “Are the girls there? Because I need to go, Natalie. I don’t mean to be rude, but my little flowers need me. Thank you for stopping by.” She drifted toward the portal again.
“Bursting balloonfish! Get a grip on yourself.” Natalie blew the last of the carob powder at the specter’s back, but Maureen accelerated and disappeared into the portal despite her effort.
It closed after her and disappeared in a flash of brilliant white light.
***
Natalie had cut the ritual circle with the athame and was already rolling up the sheet she’d laid down to protect the crime scene from contamination when a male voice behind her said, “I really hope you got what you came for.”
She didn’t turn. “I should have known you’d show up. I despise that I can no longer sense when you’re sneaking around. I wish you still materialized in a puff of ozone like the spirits.”
William moved to the sheet to help her fold it as he said, “Preferred me dead, did you? Gee, that would explain a lot.”
“Stop it, William. This is no time for a relationship discussion. I’m trying to leave a pristine crime scene here. You should be thanking me.”
“For breaking in to the scene of an active investigation? Gosh, let me go get Denton. I bet with him being so keen on you, he’ll probably give you the key to the city.”
“Do you want to know what I learned or not?” she returned, taking the other end of the sheet from him and folding it over two more times before shoving it into the mouth of her purse.
He gave her his innocent, disarming smile. “Of course I do. Why else do you think I’m here?” He moved to help her with the sheet again when it stuck halfway into the bag. With a shove from him as she held the mouth open, it dropped into the dark interior, and Natalie snapped the clasp shut quickly before he could
get a look inside.
She hung the purse over her right arm as she rested left hand on her hip. “Maybe you’re here because you’re in cahoots with my new great grandson and he spilled the beans.”
“If he did do some bean-spilling, it would only be to keep you safe. Apparently, he believes that in a family, taking care of people is important.”
She shoved her purse up her forearm and pressed her fingers together, bringing her hands toward her mouth as she pursed her lips. Then she lowered them and said, “I know that. But Marcus is a child and shouldn’t have to take care of adults. Anyway, I was in no danger. And neither was your crime scene.”
“Good. Just let me know the next time you want to go tramping around at a cordoned-off site. Denton’s committed. He’ll do his job, but I don’t want him to have to do it with contaminated evidence or, heaven help us, have to add you to the casualty list.”
“Let me remind you that I’ve spent most of my seventy-four years on this planet taking care of myself, thank you. And I don’t need you looking after me. Nor Marcus, either.”
“I see. I was going to offer to accompany you to your door after a walk along the shore in the moonlight. But I’d probably end up offering you my jacket for the chill, and who could put up with an insult like that?”
Then, just to annoy her, she was sure, he crossed his arms and did the head-nod-with-a-blink that he’d seen on “I Dream of Jeannie” reruns on the internet. With that, he disappeared.
The moonlit walk might actually have been nice after the tiring ritual. But why did he have to be so understanding and supportive all the time? It was unnatural.
At least she didn’t have to admit to him that she’d learned nothing by trespassing, only that the missing infant was “different” in some way. But what did that mean? Was it different in a way that would attract evil? Would the town be endangered if…no, when they found the girl?
Hmph. Ghosts.
***
