“I have something that’ll get you there,” she replied. “No questions asked. No cheap tricks. Just a one-way ticket to paradise.”
Paul’s face lit up, but I shook my head before he could answer. “No way. Whatever you give us will probably launch us into the hell dimension.”
“I would never!” Billie insisted. “You think I’m stupid enough to sell a hell shot to Morgan Summers’s savior? Girl, you’re a legend. All I’m trying to do is give you a little something back for your good deeds.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Fine,” I said. “Two tickets to paradise. If anything goes wrong, you’ll have to answer to me.”
Billie grinned, poured two shots of what looked like molten gold, and slid them across the bar. “I’d be happy to. Cheers.”
I clicked my glass against Paul’s, and we knocked them back together.
The bar dissolved in a cloud of fog, and when it cleared, I thought we’d somehow ended up back on earth. Paul and Sarah’s house sat in front of us, but it looked different. The front lawn was in pristine condition. Each blade of grass shone the brightest green. The flowers in the window boxes bloomed in all different colors. The house was freshly painted, and someone had laid a welcome mat handwoven with palm fronds on the threshold. The sun shone from high above, but there was also a light drizzle.
“Ah.” Paul held out his palm to catch a few raindrops. “A sun shower. Sarah always loved them.”
The front door opened, and a woman stepped out. She was in her early twenties, wearing a 1950s dress and shoes. When I looked at Paul, he was unrecognizable as a young man with strong cheekbones and a thick head of curly black hair. Like the woman, he was dressed in clothing from a past era: tan trousers and a collared blue shirt.
“There she is,” he said, his eyes wide in awe of the woman on the porch. “My Sarah.”
I gave him a little nudge. “Go to her.”
He stepped forward.
10
Paul, young and sprightly now that he’d returned to the ripe age of twenty-three, sprinted up the paved walkway, vaulted over the porch steps, and took Sarah in his arms. She laughed, wrapping herself around him, as he twirled her in a circle.
“Oh, my love,” he said, setting her down. He traced the outline of her cheek and gazed at her as if committing her face to memory. “I’ve been waiting for this ever since you left me.”
Sarah took Paul’s face between her palms. “I never left you, my dear. I’ve been here this entire time, watching over you and waiting for you. I’m so glad you’re finally here.”
“I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Gwen.” Paul jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at me. “They weren’t going to let me into the paradise level, but she convinced them.”
I waved sheepishly. Sarah took Paul’s hand and led him off the porch to meet me in the front garden. When she was close enough, she hugged me tightly.
“I’m so thankful for you,” she mumbled in my ear. “What can I do to repay you?”
“Nothing.” As I pulled out of her grasp, the world shifted beneath my feet. I stumbled and fell backward. The couple’s little house became blurry. Halos of light shimmered around Paul and Sarah’s heads. “Whoa. I think those drinks from the bar really did a number on me.”
Younger Paul didn’t have wrinkles, but when his brow furrowed with worry, I could see where the lines had deepened in his old age. He pulled my arm over his shoulder and lifted me from the ground.
“Careful,” Sarah said, going ahead of Paul to open the front door for him.
As he carried me over the threshold, the earthy tones of roses and jasmines overwhelmed my sense of smell. With every inhale through my nose, my head pounded like someone had taken a hammer to it. I breathed through my mouth instead, but it didn’t help as much as I would have liked.
“Put her here.” Sarah helped me to the flowery white sofa in the middle of the living room. Unlike the Hollands’ real house in Yew Hollow, this one was neat and tidy. The dishes were done, the floor was clean, and all of the fresh laundry had been neatly folded and sorted into piles so it could be put away.
A vase of white roses mocked me from the side table. I could practically see the smell radiating off of them. It wafted over me, and the pulsating pain in my head grew more intense.
“Gah!” I covered my eyes, blocking out the light in the hope that it might diminish the pain. “The flowers! Can you move the flowers? The smell is giving me a terrible headache.”
Paul hastily picked up the vase and relocated it to the kitchen, but for some reason, the perfume of their petals did not fade. Sarah touched the back of her hand to my forehead.
“She’s burning up,” she reported to Paul. “Get me a cold compress for her!”
“I’m fine,” I gasped, though I was not fine at all. Along with the headache, black nothingness crept from the corners of my eyes to gradual steal my vision. Droplets of sweat beaded up on my hairline, temple, and neck. Before long, I was coated in a cold layer of it. My whole body shook, as if the temperature had dropped to arctic levels. I couldn’t hold myself upright either. Sarah caught me as I slumped over, and she lowered me to lay gently on the sofa. “W-what’s happening to me?”
Paul returned with the cold compress, but when Sarah laid it across my forehead, it provided no relief. It was like someone had dumped me into an ice bath.
“This never happens to people who belong here,” Sarah said to Paul. “We don’t get sick in paradise. I’ve only seen this once before.”
Paul’s lips pressed together as he took in my flu-like symptoms. “Did they pull through?”
Sarah averted her eyes. I knew what that meant. I took her hand and pulled her toward me. “I’m still alive,” I whispered with the last of my strength. “That’s why I don’t belong here. I’m supposed to go back to earth.”
Sarah lit up with realization and sprang to her feet. “Quick, Paul,” she said, grabbing her husband by the arm. “Help me in the kitchen. I need to find some things.”
While the two of them bustled about in the kitchen, I focused on drawing one breath after another. Each time, it got a little harder, like a fifty-pound boulder had been dropped on my chest and was slowly crushing me. My eyes fluttered shut. The sensus was gone. I guess I didn’t have access to it in the otherworld, where everyone was already dead.
Other images popped up, some from when I was too young to remember. I watched a three-year-old version of myself run into a woman’s arms. The woman had shiny black hair and greenish-gold eyes, and there was something familiar about the shape of her nose.
The vision vanished before I could make sense of it, and another one arose. Sixteen-year-old me rode in the bed of a pick-up truck and poked my head up to see how far away the next town was. The driver caught sight of me in the side mirror and slammed on his brakes. Not expecting the sudden stop, I jerked forward and slammed my forehead against the back window of the truck. The driver kicked his door open.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing back there?” he yelled, his knuckles white as he grasped the side of the pick-up truck. “When did you sneak in there, huh?”
I rubbed the lump on my head and blinked away stars. “About seventy miles back. It’s not my fault you don’t pay attention to your surroundings at the gas station.”
The man rolled his eyes and unlatched the trunk. “Get out of there, and make better decisions next time. I could have been some nutcase! Or you could have been flung out of the truck and died.”
“Not at the rate you drive.” I clambered out of the truck. “Do you know how to get to Yew Hollow from here?”
“That tiny, creepy town?” the man asked. “Don’t they lure tourists in with dumb witch stories?”
“I’m a tourist,” I told him. “I want to hear about the witch stories.”
The truck driver pointed to the north. “It’s another twenty miles that way, up toward the mountains.�
�
I gave him my best smile. “Since we’re friends now, mind giving me a ride?”
The truck driver narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re not a grifter, are you?”
“Only when necessary.”
He considered this for longer than expected, as if trying to figure out whether I was serious or not. “Fine. Hop in. No funny business, okay?”
I hopped into the passenger seat of his truck. The man got back in, put it in drive, and got back on the road. Fifteen minutes later, we passed Yew Hollow’s welcome sign, and my body thrummed with excitement and hope. Soon, I’d meet Morgan Summers, and she would give me the help I needed.
“Paul, hurry!”
I jolted back to the present time. Sarah and Paul were still in the kitchen. Paul pounded herbs with a mortar and pestle while Sarah chopped something with vigorous intention. She grabbed the entire bouquet of white roses that had been in the living room, tore off the petals, and threw them into a large mixing bowl with whatever she’d been chopping.
“Put them here,” she ordered Paul, and he dumped the contents of the mortar into the mixing bowl. Sarah stirred everything together, added a bit of olive oil, and brought the mixture over to the sofa. “I hope this works,” she said to me. “My nana always taught me that oregano, jasmine, and green tea leaves were best for alertness.”
She dipped her whole hand in the mixing bowl and brought out a clump of wet, bright-green mud. I fought feebly against her—the fever was making it hard to tell who meant me help or harm. Paul gently pinned my arms to the sofa, and Sarah smeared the mixture across my forehead.
Unlike the cold compress, it had an immediately soothing effect. The muddy green concoction absorbed my sweat and calmed the heat scorching through my body. As Sarah smeared it down my cheeks and neck, the intense shaking subsided. The jasmine scent that had bothered me so much before now acted as a relaxant when combined with the green tea leaves and oregano, fresher than the best vapor rub I’d ever used.
As my body relaxed, so did my mind. I found my eyes closing of their own accord. My head lolled lifelessly on my chest.
“No!” Sarah dropped the mixing bowl and tapped on my cheek. “This was supposed to work!”
Paul took his wife by the shoulders, pulling her away from me. “I think it is, my dear.”
I sank into another dimension. The sight of Paul, Sarah, and their sweet home rose high above me, as if I’d somehow fallen into a manhole of external depths. I tried to wave goodbye or say something in parting, but I was not in control of my body. I just kept sinking.
“Wake you, you asinine teenager!”
The insides of my eyelids glowed with orange light, so bright and alive that I took it for real fire and cowered. As the light faded, I took the risk of opening one eye. When I recognized my surroundings, I let out a breath and leaned over my knees.
“Are you going to puke?”
Alberta sat in the far corner of the living room, in an ugly purple armchair with white tassels that made it look like the beast had teeth. She eyed me suspiciously over the lids of ten different polish bottles as she painted each of her nails a various shade of orange.
“Because if you’re going to puke,” she said. “I’d rather you do it in a pot. You can do a lot with a person’s vomit.”
“Ugh.” I groaned as I straightened up. “I wasn’t going to puke, but the thought of you using bodily fluids for potions makes me a little sick.”
“I’m not making brownies, Guinevere.” She finished the pinky nail of her right hand and blew on the paint to help it dry. “Way to go. You broke Reaping rules on your first try.”
My back twinged. Apparently, traveling between worlds wasn’t the best for your spine. Grimacing, I lowered myself into an armchair that didn’t look like it would eat you alive if you tried to sit on it.
“What rules are those?” I asked.
“Reapers aren’t supposed to pass beyond the first level of the otherworld,” Alberta explained. “It’s how you stay alive. The deeper levels are further away from the dimensional connection to earth. The farther you go, the more you lose your connection with the living room.”
“I went all the way to Paradise.”
“That’s between you and your creator, honey.”
“Not like that,” I scolded. “I meant I skipped all those levels and went to the one they call paradise.”
Alberta held her hand at arm’s length to examine her handywork. “You sure did. If I hadn’t yanked you out of there, you would’ve joined your ghost friends for the rest of eternity.”
“Yanked me out? What are you talking about?”
“You were dying,” Alberta said. “This is why you get assigned a mentor, Guinevere. You and I are tethered together, so when you started trying to murder yourself, I could feel it. Do me a favor? Don’t do that again? I sprouted two more grays getting you out of that damned dimension.”
“Oh,” I said. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you?”
She hummed impatiently. “Whatever. By the way, you’ve been fired.”
I propped my head on one armrest and draped my feet over the other. “Fired from what?”
“Your Reaping job.”
“What?” I leapt up, yelping when the residual pain radiated up my spine. I groaned and braced my hands against my lower back. “I can’t be fired. How am I supposed to finish my community task?”
“Believe it or not, this works out in our favor for once.” Her nails finished, she waved a hand at her supplies. The caps flew from the table and sat upon the bottles. Then the bottles danced off to the bathroom in a conga line. “Since you got Paul to the otherworld, you technically completed your community task. Usually, you’d have to ferry a certain amount of souls to close the connection between you and the next world, but since you got fired, that connection has been severed anyway. Lucky you.”
As Alberta cast a protection spell on her nails to prevent the paint from chipping or fading, I took a deep breath. “So my first task is complete? Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Alberta’s pots, as always, were boiling. She checked inside the largest one. “We’re having vegetable soup for dinner by the way. I hope you don’t mind.”
I was too tired to refuse. At this point, if Alberta wanted to poison me with an unknown potion, I’d accept it in a coffee mug. “Soup sounds great. The self task is up next, right? What did they say about it? I’m supposed to discover my fatal flaw and thwart it?” I snorted. “I have too many flaws to count.”
“Self-deprivation tastes like rapini,” Alberta said. “Bitter, no matter how much it wilts.”
“I’m extra wilted,” I replied. “Please tell me I don’t have to go back to Eudora to figure out my second task. I don’t think I can survive another trip into the wishing well.”
“That’s not how the second task works.” Alberta brought the soup ladle to her lips and tasted it. “More salt. You must seek out the second task yourself.”
“Seek it out?” I said. “What do you mean, like go look for it? I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
She shook the salt shaker over the pot, stirred, and served two bowls. “The second task is always about getting in touch with yourself, Guinevere. How are you supposed to do that through someone else?” She set the bowl in front of me and a spoon in my hand. “Eat. It’ll help severe the rest of that connection to the otherworld. That’s what’s making your back hurt.”
I tentatively tried a small sip of soup. The warmth spread from the tip of my tongue to the ends of my fingers and toes. For once, I was grateful for one of Alberta’s potions as the pain subsided.
“Go home and get a good night’s sleep,” Alberta advised. “Tomorrow, you can start seeking out your self task.”
I slept for ten hours in the barn and woke refreshed. The sensus was gone from my head permanently. In the morning, I stopped by Morgan’s for breakfast and to catch her up on my progress so far.
“Alberta pulled her weight,
” she noted with surprise. “Sometimes, I can’t help but wonder if she’s totally crazy, but a crazy person wouldn’t have been able to pull you out of the otherworld like that.”
“She’s definitely crazy,” I said, buttering a croissant. “But I think the coven underestimates her. She hides how smart she is behind all those nutty potions of hers.”
Morgan sipped her tea. “My, my, my. You might have a point.”
“Anything weird going on in the town today?” I asked. “Apparently, I have to find my self task on my own, and I don’t know where to start.”
“No weirder than usual,” said Morgan. “The surprise party for Chief Torres is at the station today, the watch shop is—get this—closed for repair, and the mayor didn’t show up to an important meeting this morning, so I gotta check out what that’s all about.”
“Expecting foul play?”
She replenished the empty plate of croissants with a snap of her fingers. “There are a lot of people in Yew Hollow who liked things better before Pilar got here. It’s not like her to skip a meeting and not tell anyone about it.”
“She’s probably sick.”
“I have a hunch it’s more than that.”
“Let me do it.” I set the rest of my cold croissant aside and reached for a fresh one instead. The butter melted into the perfect flaky crust. “I’ll make sure the mayor’s okay. That way you can focus on Chief Torres’s party.”
Morgan leaned on the back two legs of her chair and cast me a wry look. “Why so eager to tail Pilar?”
“I need something to do while I figure out my second task,” I insisted.
“Yeah, and you have the hots for Pilar.”
“First of all, no one says that anymore.” I shoved half the croissant in my mouth and kept talking as crumbs flew from my lips. “Secondly, I admire Pilar. She’s an amazing lady. I never thought Yew Hollow would vote someone into office as progressive as her, but she convinced them to do it. And have you seen her face? She looks like she’s been frozen in time. I hope I look like that when I’m her age.”
Lost Magic Page 13
