Lost Magic

by Alexandria Clarke

  One person glowed gold. As I focused on that one person, Eudora’s energy surged through me. Her sponsorship helped me hone in on the sensus. The person in gold magnified, giving me a better look. It was an older gentleman standing on the stoop of a quaint house near the town square. As I studied him, I understood his forlorn expression. This man was dead, and he had not passed over. He was my first target.

  I pulled out of the sensus as I would let go of my aura and returned to real life on Morgan’s front porch. Alberta pulled the carrots out of her ear and stuck them in her mouth.

  “Well?” she asked. “What did you see?”

  “Paul Holland,” I replied. “I recognized him. He was the man who saw a wood nymph at the spring equinox festival and had a heart attack. I didn’t know he’d died.” My eyes burned and threatened tears, but I kept them at bay. “I thought I saved him. The paramedics made it sound like he was going to be okay.”

  “Fret not, Guinevere,” Alberta said. “We all die for a reason. Don’t feel bad. Paul Holland was a hundred and four years old.”

  “He was?”

  “I have no idea,” she replied. “Anyway, happy hunting. I’ve got a plucky potion boiling at home, and it would not do this world well to see it overflow.”

  Once again, I found myself chasing after Alberta as she strolled away from me. “That’s it? Aren’t you going to tell me how to get him into the otherworld?”

  “Work off instinct,” Alberta advised. “You already know what to do. You’ve been doing it ever since you met Morgan. Ta-ta!”

  She splashed a potion in the air, and I dodged out of the way to avoid any droplets. When I regained my balance, Alberta had disappeared.

  I decided to start with the obvious and follow the map my sensus had provided me to Paul Holland’s last-known position. When I arrived at the house in question, Paul was not present in any form. Most ghosts made their presence known to me right away, so I figured Paul had moved along. A little research, however, wouldn’t hurt.

  The house was a few blocks from the town square. It was one of the few that did not house a business on its first floor. It had a cozy look to it, with pretty white shutters and flower boxes in the front. The mailbox was painted with the calligraphic letters P & S. As cute as the house was, it looked like no one had lived there for a while. The grass grew taller than Yew Hollow’s homeowner’s association preferred, and the overgrown flowers in the window boxes waved wildly in the breeze. The windows sported a layer of grime on them, and dead leaves from last fall littered the front porch. The knocker, missing a nail, hung crookedly from the door. For the heck of it, I knocked anyway.

  Of course, no one answered. I hadn’t expected them to. I considered visiting the neighbors on either side, but it wasn’t always the best idea to get mortals involved with a witch’s business. They were naturally curious beings and stuck their noses in places they might get bitten off.

  I walked through the side yard, lifting my feet high to march through the jungly grass, and into the backyard. A grape vine tangled itself around the fence, sprouting wherever it pleased without someone to tend to it. A swinging bench hung broken from its support system. Perhaps saddest of all was the wheelbarrow full of potting soil and the pair of garden gloves resting over the handle. It was as if Mr. Holland had finally thought it warm enough to care for his yard, only to die before getting the chance.

  Nosily, I peeked through one of the cleaner windows. The inside boasted similar vibes of an older man who was no longer able to keep up with everyday tasks. The garbage overflowed, as did the dishes in the sink. A pile of clean laundry sat on the sofa. Half of it was folded into crooked piles, the other half neglected. When I caught sight of the fridge, my heart sank. It was covered in photos of Paul Holland with his arms around a woman who had not grown any less beautiful with age. No doubt this was his wife, the one he’d told me on the night of his death that he couldn’t bear leaving.

  I tried knocking on the back door. “Mrs. Holland?” I called up to the second floor windows. “Are you home? It’s Gwenlyn Bennett!”

  The house remained silent. If Mrs. Holland was home, she wasn’t in the mood for visitors. Next door, a middle-aged woman came out on her back porch.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “What are you doing over there? That’s private property!”

  I lifted my hands innocently. “Sorry, I was looking for someone. I’m not causing trouble.”

  The woman crossed her arms. “A likely story. Get out of here before I call the police.”

  “I know the police,” I informed her. “Chief Torres is a personal friend of my family.”

  She raised a doubtful eyebrow. “I know you. You arranged the spring fling, didn’t you?”

  “Sure did.”

  “It was far too crowded,” she said. “Next year, you should establish a better map of the booths so those awful bottlenecks don’t happen.

  “I’ll make a note of it.” I forced a smile and waved. “See you around.”

  The woman watched from her porch as I picked my way out of Mr. Holland’s yard. Once out of her eyesight, I paused for one last look at the house, hoping to pick up any hint of where Mr. Holland might be. Luck didn’t strike me though, so I turned on my heel to try somewhere else.

  As I walked up the street, something glimmered out of the corner of my eye. I whipped my head around and saw a gardening boot slipping out of sight around the next avenue. Something tingled in my mind like a mental alarm was going off. I changed direction and jogged after the person in flowery boots.

  Sure enough, it was Mr. Holland. He shuffled along the sidewalk as quickly as he could, wincing with every step. The garden boots, pink and purple, did not appear to belong to him. I had to laugh. Once you died, you weren’t stuck in whatever state you were in when you passed away. Usually, your conscience matched your appearance to your truest nature. That meant Mr. Holland’s truest nature involved too-small gardening boots, a wide-brimmed straw hat, and an oversized UV protection shirt patterned with Hawaiian flowers.

  “Mr. Holland!” I called after him. A passerby gave me a puzzled look, and I remembered that no one else could see the fleeing elderly man other than me. I hastened to catch up with him and called again in a less audible voice. “Mr. Holland, wait! I need to speak with you.”

  “No, no, no,” he said, wagging his finger at me as he hobbled along. “I know exactly what you want. Listen here, young woman! I don’t care about whatever political party you’re affiliated with, religion you want me to join, or product you’re selling. Unless it’s cookies, leave me alone!”

  “Mr. Holland, I’m not a solicitor.” Once I caught up with him, I didn’t need to jog anymore. Each of my long strides was equal to three of his shuffled steps. “I’m Gwenlyn Bennett. We met at the Sing Fling Festival. Do you remember what happened?”

  Mr. Holland’s brow wrinkled as he fought to recall the events of that night. Most times, ghosts didn’t have the best memory of how they died. That was half the problem of getting someone to cross over. You often had to solve the mystery of their death before they were satisfied with leaving this world for the next one.

  “The Sing Fling Festival?” he mused. “That does sound familiar, I suppose. What did you say happened?”

  This was the hard part. No matter how I delivered the news—tone of voice, straightforward or beating around the bush—ghosts never reacted happily to the fact that they were dead.

  “Mr. Holland—”

  “Call me Paul.”

  “Paul,” I said. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this. You had a heart attack at the festival. I administered compressions until the paramedics arrived, but I’m afraid you didn’t make it.”

  Paul finally stopped hustling up the sidewalk to turn and look at me. “What did you say? You young whippersnappers have a poor habit of muttering.”

  “You’re dead,” I replied shortly. “You died two nights ago at the Sing Fling Festival.”

  “Bah!” Paul flung
his hands up and continued on. “That’s ridiculous! If I’m dead, how are you talking to me right now? How come I haven’t moved on to heaven? Or hell, I suppose. I’m not one to assume I’m perfect, but I do hope the scales have tipped in my favor—”

  I blew out a sigh. This wasn’t going to be easy. In cases like these, the truth helped more than any other explanation I could come up with. “Paul, I’m a witch with the ability to speak to the dead. It’s my job to take you to the world after this one.”

  Paul paused outside a house with bright pink peonies in the front yard. “Say, do you think anyone will notice if I pull a few of those for my wife?”

  “Why don’t you give it a go?”

  “I daresay I will.”

  I stood back and watched as Paul tiptoed across the front yard and attempted to pick one of the flowers. Being dead, however, he didn’t have the power to grasp the flowers by the stem. Most ghosts could rattle pipes or knock knick-knacks from a counter like a bored cat, but it was unusual for them to harness any further horsepower over the physical world.

  “What in the world?” he muttered, trying once more to pull the peonies. His fingers swept right through them. “Why can’t I pick these?” He turned to face me, his bottom lip trembling. “Do you mean to say—?”

  “You passed away, Paul,” I said gently. “You won’t be able to pick flowers or have your morning cup of coffee or weed your garden. It’s time to move on.”

  Paul’s eyes filled with tears, but they didn’t fall. His quivering lip stiffened as his expression hardened. “I won’t!” he declared. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I refuse to be dead!”

  “I’m afraid you don’t have much of a choice,” I told him.

  He gasped and pointed over my shoulder. “Look, over there! Is that another ghost?”

  Stupidly, I glanced behind me, wondering if another target had popped up on my sensus, but there was no one dead in the area except for Paul. I ended up giving Mrs. Shepherd, another of Yew Hollow’s older bunch, the evil eye without meaning to. Her mouth popped open in an “o” shape, and she scurried away.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Shepherd!” I called after her. “I didn’t mean to scare you!”

  By the time I turned around to face Paul again, he had gone.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

  Nothing I did helped locate Paul. I checked my sensus first, sure he would pop up on the map in gold again like before. This time around, no gold appeared, as if Paul had somehow escaped discovery. I went back to Paul’s house, stole his gardening gloves, and used them to perform a search spell. No luck with that either. Search spells were made for the living, not the dead. As dusk fell, I gave up on finding Paul by myself. It was time to bring in the big guns.

  “You need me already?” Alberta asked as I leapt over her unwelcome mat and into her living room before she invited me. “How hard is it to get a dead old man to the otherworld?”

  “Harder than I thought.” I examined the fabric of Alberta’s couch to verify that it had not been altered like her doormat before sitting. “He gave me the slip.”

  “Use your sensus.”

  “I tried,” I told her. “He’s not showing up. What gives? I thought the whole point of the sensus was to help me track these ghosts down.”

  As usual, Alberta was cooking. The house smelled like burnt rubber and mint leaves. As she tended to her many potions, she laughed in my face. “The sensus allows you to locate ghosts until you make yourself known to them. At that point, they have the choice whether or not to be found.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I thumped the couch cushions in anger. “What’s the point of it then?”

  “I believe most Reapers don’t make their targets aware of their intentions,” Alberta said. “I assume that’s where you went wrong?”

  I hugged the cushion to my chest and harrumphed. Alberta chuckled.

  “Oh, little one,” she said. “You have much to learn.”

  “What am I supposed to do now?” I demanded. “Wait until he shows up again? I don’t have all week to track this guy down!”

  Alberta tossed an entire twig into one of the pots and gave the potion a stir. “Lucky for you, I’ve been whipping up a few recipes that might be of service.”

  The pot exploded with sparks and singed Alberta’s eyebrows off. It didn’t seem to bother her.

  “No way,” I said. “Every time I take one of your potions, I end up with boils or drowning in a lake with a kelpie. I’m good. I’ll find Paul without your help.”

  The burning rubber scent faded, replaced with the soothing warmth of cinnamon and chocolate. Every time I inhaled, a sense of relief washed over me. Alberta continued stirring and watched as I melted into the couch.

  “Did you slip me something?” I asked, slurring my words together.

  “Not yet.” Alberta ladled some of the potion into a coffee mug and handed it to me. “Here, honey pie. Drink up.”

  If I didn’t know better, I would have taken the drink for a good old-fashioned hot chocolate, but since it came out of Alberta’s pot, I held it far away from my mouth. “I’m not—”

  Alberta pushed the mug to my lips, and my wobbly arms made no attempt to stop her. The potion sloshed into my mouth. It didn’t taste as good as it smelled, but when I tried to spit it out, Alberta tilted my chin up and force me to swallow.

  When the potion kicked in, my brain expanded. At first, I didn’t understand what was happening as the world around me turned technicolor. When Alberta glowed with the dark green of my aura, indicating that she was not near death, I realized what she’d done.

  She’d brought the sensus to the front of my mind. I didn’t have to access it anymore. The general lifespan of everyone in Yew Hollow was laid right out in front of me.

  9

  “What the heck did you do?” I demanded of Alberta. No matter where I looked, stats on the citizens of Yew Hollow pervaded my vision like the heads-up display of a complicated video game. “I can’t see anything!”

  “I upgraded your sensus,” Alberta said. “And on the contrary, you can see everything.”

  I squinted through the many layers of information until I could focus on Alberta again, but straining to do so gave me an immediate headache. I squeezed my eyes shut, which helped a little to block out my surroundings, but the heads-up display, map of the town, and technicolor film remained in place as if the images were embedded on the inside of my eyelids.

  “What do you mean, you upgraded it?” I asked through clenched teeth. My head throbbed as the computer-like images whirled through my mind. “How is this supposed to help?”

  “Between your ability and my enhancement potion, the sensus is more practical and useful,” Alberta answered. “First of all, your prey can’t hide from you anymore. Go ahead. Check.”

  “Any instructions on how?”

  “It’s nature’s technology, Guinevere.” She crossed her arms. “Always changing and evolving, just like real world science. If you can send a text message on a smartphone, you can figure out how to manipulate the sensus.”

  The metaphor helped something click. Right now, the sensus was feeding me too much information at once. I needed to figure out a way to focus on one thing at a time. I closed my eyes again and examined the magical screen inside my head as if it was a computer display. I pretended I had a mouse in hand and used it to shift the information into separate files. I miniaturized the map, set the life stats aside, and pulled my “target list” to the front. Paul’s name was the only one. I clicked on it with my imaginary mouse.

  A profile of Paul popped up, including his address, a full-body hologram of him, and his official cause of death. It also contained information about his life, health, and connection to Yew Hollow. His family was one of the first groups of mortals to move to the area. Most likely, his ancestors had experienced some of the Summers’ magic before everything was hidden behind secrecy and protection spells. Since he bore blood of the past, he was connect
ed to our coven in a convenient way.

  Paul’s location was also available to me. He was a block or two away from his old house. I checked his profile for information on his wife, but all I found was her name, Sarah Holland, which explained the cute P&S inscribed on their mailbox. When I searched for Sarah in the sensus, it returned no entries.

  “What is it?” Alberta asked, yanking me back to the real world.

  “I can’t find Paul’s wife in the sensus,” I replied. “Is that a glitch?”

  “That means she’s dead.”

  Pain pounded through my head as I lost focus over the sensus and the images went nuts again. I winced and put everything back where it was supposed to be. “Dead? But when Paul had his heart attack, he told me he couldn’t leave her.”

  Alberta stirred the extra potions on the stove. “Sounds like Paul has a touch of dementia.”

  “Ugh, you’re right. Morgan mentioned that.” I rested my head against the back of the couch. “Poor guy. Imagine being trapped in between worlds because you can’t remember that your one true love is already waiting for you in the next one. Talk about purgatory.”

  “Are you going to sit around and empathize or are you going to do something about it?” Alberta indicated the clock with her spoon, splattering gooey liquid across its face. “You’ve already wasted precious hours since you were assigned your first task. Don’t you have a deadline?”

  I groaned and pried myself out of my seat. “Doing my best.”

  On my walk into town, I played with the sensus. As I practiced with it, I learned how to display only what I needed. If I wanted, I could hide the entire thing or leave the HUD up for reference. As I neared Paul’s old house, I consulted the HUD for his exact whereabouts.