“Everything’s going to be okay,” I told them.
Morgan’s face relaxed. She nodded. That was enough for both of us. I returned to Alberta, chalice in hand.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yup.”
She lifted her palms to the sky. “Twenty-seven years ago, you were born under this moon. Now, it’s time for you to return from whence you came.” Her aura flared, and her palms lit up with the color of the sun. “Moon child, return.”
I took that as my cue. With one last look over my shoulder at Morgan and her sisters, I tipped the chalice back and drained it. My body went limp. I had no control over any of my limbs.
I fell backward, into the wishing well, with an enormous splash.
Yew Hollow spread itself out before me. I stood at the top of the hill, in the middle of the road that led into the shallow valley of little houses and businesses. From here, I could see the top of the town hall’s pointed roof and the outline of the square. If I squinted into the distance, I could almost make out a dark spot in the landscape where the Summers house was.
A car buzzed up behind me, swerved, and honked. I leapt out of the road and waved, but the car didn’t stop. So much for a ride into town. I got to walking.
By the time I reached the welcome sign, my calves and ankles were covered in orange dust. For springtime, it was awfully dry and hot for Yew Hollow. All of the grass was sunburnt, dead and dry from the heat. The town’s usual flowerbeds didn’t bloom with color. Rather, the locals were lucky if the dirt had been graced with any leaves at all.
The sun beat down on the back of my neck and seared my skin as I entered the town square. It was oddly empty. No one bustled about to complete their regular duties and errands except for a few stragglers. As I approached the middle, my heart sank into my stomach. In the direct center, where the yew tree always grew, was nothing but a burned black stump. Acid churned in my stomach as I averted my eyes and moved on.
Sweating, I made my way to Belinda’s Bakery. The glass windows were covered in dirt and grime. A handwritten sign hung on the door, “Closed until further notice.”
A loud bang echoed from the neighboring alleyway, so I turned the corner to check it out. There was Belinda, tossing a pile of belongings into the dumpster. As she heaved a heavy mixing machine over her shoulder, I rushed over to her.
“Whoa!” I grabbed the mixing machine from her before the weight of it sent her toppling over. “Belinda, why are you throwing this out? Don’t these things cost hundreds of dollars?”
“Who the hell are you, and how do you know my name?”
I stared blankly at her, cradling the heavy machine to my chest. “It’s me, Belinda. It’s Gwenlyn.”
She yanked the machine out of my hands. “Don’t try those tricks with me. I know a grifter when I see one, and there’s no way you’re getting your hands on this mixer.” With a grunt of effort, she lifted the mixer into the dumpster and dusted her hands as it clanged loudly. “What did I say, huh? Get outta here before I call the police!”
“I’m not a grifter.”
“Really? So this disgusting look of yours is intentional?”
She gestured to a bakery window that wasn’t quite so dingy, and I caught sight of my reflection. The person staring back didn’t look anything like the person I knew myself to be. First off, my hair was straggly, dirty, and long, as if I hadn’t washed or trimmed it in years. My face was drawn and gaunt, and I’d lost a lot of muscle mass. I wore a T-shirt two sizes too big for me and shorts that hung past my knees. They certainly weren’t my clothes.
“What is going on?” I murmured to myself as I tugged at my dirty outfit.
“Whatever it is, I’m not getting involved.” Belinda tossed one last bag of pot holders into the dumpster and took out her phone. “What’s it going to be? You want to scram or you want me to call the police?”
“Please don’t call the police,” I said. “What about Morgan Summers? Have you seen her around lately?”
Belinda frowned and lowered her phone. “Morgan Summers? I haven’t heard that name in almost ten years.”
“What? Why not?”
“No one talks about her,” she growled. “Too angry, I suppose. After all, she ruined everything.”
My eyebrows knit together. “What are you talking about? What did she ruin?”
“The town!” Belinda spat. “That stunt she pulled at the last festival set fire to half of Yew Hollow!”
“What?”
Belinda pulled the door to the bakery open. “I’m done reliving the past. If you want to know what happened, I’m sure the sister can answer your questions for you. Check the house on the hill. She doesn’t like visitors, so be careful. Or don’t. What do I care?”
She slammed the door in my face.
I climbed the hill to the Summers house as I pondered the fate of Yew Hollow. With every step, I noticed another abandoned house or foreclosed sign. Weeds grew rampant on the side of the cracked, potholed roads. Some buildings still bore scorch marks of the fire Belinda spoke of. Though I passed two or three people, no one recognized me. They gave me a wide birth, eyeing my dirty appearance with disgust as they clutched their wallets or purses closer.
When I reached the Summers house, I regarded it with wide eyes and an open mouth. The house never looked new, but Morgan and her sisters had always made a point to keep it up to date. The house in front of me did not reflect that. Paint peeled off the exterior. The porch had fallen through in several places. Shingles were missing from the roof. The yard was overgrown with weeds and grass. The place looked as if no one had lived there for several years.
The fence was padlocked shut, but I vaulted over it anyway. As soon as I did, the weeds came to life. Roots sprang from the ground and grasped my ankles, rooting me in place. If I managed to tear one foot from the ground, another plant rose up to take the fallen one’s place. The weeds crawled up my calves and immobilized my knees. As they crept up my chest, I hollered for help.
A woman came out onto the front porch, avoiding the broken boards with such ease that she must have memorized where they were. Her frizzy blonde hair hung loosely around her face, obscuring any recognizable features, but she glowed with a sky-blue aura that I’d seen a hundred times before.
“Laurel?” I puffed as the weeds made their way around my neck. “Is that you?”
She shook her hair out of her eyes. The woman, indeed, was Laurel Summers, but not the one that I knew. This Laurel had lost all hope. She had great purple bags under her eyes and had aged far beyond the years she’d spent on this earth. Her clothes hung limply from her thin frame, as if she didn’t bother to feed herself enough to stay alive. Ironically, the two of us shared more similarities than we ever had before.
“Who are you?” she boomed across the yard. The Laurel I knew was timid and quiet. This one was done with everyone’s nonsense and had no problem letting them know it. “What gave you the right to jump my fence?”
The weeds tightened themselves around my neck, making me choke. “I—can’t—talk—”
Laurel’s aura flashed, and the weeds loosened their grip ever so slightly. “Well? Out with it!”
I gasped for air as the blood rushed out of my cheeks. “I’m Gwenlyn Bennett. I came to Yew Hollow ten years ago, when I was sixteen, to look for Morgan Summers. I knew she was a medium, like me, and I needed her to help me. You know me.” I caught Laurel’s sharp eye. “You’ve known me since I was a teenager. This isn’t the world you and I are supposed to be living in. We can help each other.”
Laurel regarded me from the front porch. If any hope crossed her mind, her doubt crushed it at once. “I have no idea who you are. Like it or not, this is the world we live in, and I won’t be tricked by some roguish witch from out of town. Get off my property, unless you want to become plant fertilizer.”
I craned my neck to keep the hungry weeds at bay. “Please! I’m a vessel for the ancient magic!”
Laurel paused, he
r back to me. “What ancient magic?”
“The magic that fuels the Summers coven,” I said desperately. “In my world, I’m connected to Morgan. She knows me, I swear.”
“Prove it.”
“Come look at the scar on my wrist.”
Laurel hesitated, then stepped off the broken porch and into the yard. As the weeds unwound themselves from me, she said, “This better not be a trick.”
“It’s not.”
When she was close enough, I presented my arm to her. The long, jagged scar that ran from my wrist to my elbow was easy to see in the bright, hot light of the sun. When Laurel touched it with gentle fingers, it flashed with blue magic. If she’d blinked, Laurel would have missed it.
“My goddess,” she whispered, peering intently into my eyes. “You’re not lying. Who are you?”
“I told you, you know me. We can help each other if you tell me what’s happened in this world.”
The weeds recoiled, sank into the ground, and became still. Laurel clasped my arm in hers and pulled me out of the sticky mud. Together, we made our way up to the house.
The inside wasn’t much better than the outside. It smelled like mold and dirt. Laurel had allowed nature to invade. A huge tree grew through the floor of the living room, through the ceiling, and onto the second story. Moss hung from the ceiling in the dining room, much like the curtains that surrounded the wishing well. Water gushed down the staircase like a bizarre indoor stream then disappeared at the first step. As Laurel led me past it, the cool spray tickled my face. The kitchen, at least, was clean, dry, and free of dirt.
Laurel opened the fridge, drew out a banana, and offered it to me. I thanked her and peeled it, suddenly starving. She watched me eat with keen eyes.
“Start at the beginning,” she said. “How did you get that scar on your wrist?”
I swallowed too early and coughed on a large bite of banana. Banging my fist against my chest, I said, “When I first got to Yew Hollow, Morgan was working at the police station with a guy named Dominic Dobbes. He ended up being a warlock who threatened the coven and opened a portal to the otherworld to bring his mother and sister back from the dead. But Morgan got sucked in.”
Laurel’s eyebrows furrowed as she listened. “And then what happened?”
“I managed to communicate with Morgan from Yew Hollow while she was in the otherworld,” I explained. “When she reached a certain level, I sacrificed myself to pull her out. When she got back, she saved me from bleeding out. Since she returned from the otherworld with the ancient power, she shared it with me first. I guess you could call me one of the majority shareholders. Ever since then, we’ve always worked together for the good of the coven.” I finished off the banana and tossed the peel into the garbage can. A pair of raccoon hands caught it. “Then one of your stupid relatives made me do the coming of age ritual. This is the soul realm, not the real world.”
Laurel shook her head. “Not for me. This is my reality. How am I supposed to trust yours?”
She seemed so unsure and sad. I placed a comforting hand on her knee. “What happened here, Laurel?” I asked gently. “Belinda said something about a fire?”
Laurel picked at a hangnail, ripping the skin from her finger. “Most of what you said happened here too. Dominic came and opened the portal. Morgan disappeared into the otherworld. The yew tree caught fire, and it spread across the town.”
“What about Dominic?”
“After a year of torturing us, he burned himself out,” Laurel spat. “Died in that ugly mansion all by himself. His half-zombie family went with him.”
“What about the other witches?” I asked, swallowing hard. “Where is everyone? Malia and Karma? Where’s Morgan?”
Laurel lifted her sad eyes to meet mine. “My sisters are dead. Everyone’s dead.”
18
For the next hour, Laurel and I compared the events of my world to hers. In this reality, I’d never turned up in Yew Hollow, so Morgan never had anyone to pull her out of the otherworld with the ancient magical weapon to slay Dominic. My absence set off a chain of bad luck. Dominic, with the stolen power of the yew tree, killed Cassandra so that she wasn’t able to bond with it. Then Dominic burned the yew tree to the ground to prevent the coven from rising against him. As the year passed, he tortured and killed every witch that dared try to defy him. The Summers got picked off one by one.
“A few might have made it out,” Laurel said, rubbing her tired eyes. “Before Dominic set the border to keep the rest of us in.”
“What about Malia and Karma?”
“Malia attempted to gather the witches that were left to lead a rebellion,” she explained. “But there were only ten or so that joined her, and Dominic wiped them all out at once. Karma’s last stand was to make a doll for Dominic, but I guess he anticipated that. He somehow engineered a reversal spell, so when Karma put the needle in the doll’s heart, she ended up killing herself instead.”
Pain ricocheted through my soul. Laurel spoke so nonchalantly about the death of her sisters, as if she had accepted the dark fate of the coven and her family long ago.
“And Morgan?” I asked.
Laurel shrugged and avoided my eyes, picking at a splinter in the wooden kitchen table. “Still stuck in the otherworld for all I know. She might as well be dead. If she’s not, she’ll have gone crazy by now.”
“What if she hasn’t?” I asked, a plan forming in my head. “All of this terrible crap happened because I never brought Morgan back from the dead, but I’m here now. If I can get Morgan back, we can save the yew tree and reignite the coven’s magic.”
Laurel’s eyelids drooped as she propped her feet up and leaned back in her chair. “I don’t think you’ve understood me properly. The war is over. We’ve already lost. There’s nothing left to fight for.”
“You’re wrong,” I told her. “If there’s even the slightest chance we can get Morgan back from the otherworld, then you do have something to fight for.”
“Oh, yeah?” Laurel scoffed. “What?”
“Your sister.”
She rested her palms over her eyes as if to black out the world around her. “I’m exhausted, Gwen. A lot of times, I wonder why I haven’t put an end to myself already. Why stick around when the rest of my family is already dead?”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” I said. “I need you to believe me. If we bring Morgan back, everything will return to normal. You don’t have to live like this.”
Laurel blew out a sigh. “It’s not as easy as you make it sound. The circumstances are different than when you pulled Morgan out. In your reality, she was able to follow your cues through the otherworld’s levels. Here, she’s been stuck in there for almost a decade. She doesn’t know you. The two of you don’t share any kind of bond. How are you supposed to pull her out?”
I pondered the question, rolling around the options in my head until I settled on one that made sense to me. “I guess I have to go to the otherworld myself and find her.”
Laurel jerked upward at the suggestion. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“You can’t go into the otherworld,” she said. “You have to be dead.”
“Or,” I replied, “you have to be a Reaper.”
“But you’re not one.”
The sun shifted positions and glared through the windows to beat down on us. With a snap, I pulled the shades then conjured a miniature fan and a pitcher of pink lemonade. Laurel looked impressed as I poured her a glass.
“I was one,” I told her. “I don’t have the privileges anymore, but I remember how to access the otherworld from this one. It’ll just take a little more effort, but with your help—”
Laurel pushed the lemonade away as if rejecting it meant also rejecting my proposal. “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I know exactly what you want me to do. Everyone knows the otherworld and this one are connected through nature. It’s how Dominic opened a portal through the yew tree in the
first place. But I won’t use my ability unnaturally. It goes against everything I stand for.”
“In my reality, almost everyone sacrificed something to defeat Dominic,” I told her. “Morgan fought through the otherworld. I gave my life for hers. Cassandra gave herself to the yew tree. The coven gave themselves to each other with a dangerous blood bond. If we hadn’t done all those things—if we hadn’t taken those risks—we never would have been able to save the coven and Yew Hollow. I’m asking you for one thing: make me a portal.”
Laurel stared at me over the glass of lemonade. For the first time since I’d reunited with her, there was a little bit of fire in her dark eyes. “If I do this, do you promise you can bring Morgan back?”
“I did it once,” I assured her. “I can do it again.”
She extended her hand for me to shake. “I guess we have a deal then.”
The trouble with opening a passage to the otherworld is that you weren’t supposed to do it. Witches who played with the dimensions often ended up making grave mistakes. Dominic, for instance, used a portal to bring his mother and sister back from the dead, but they were half of the people they had been when they were alive. Witchcraft had specific rules about necromancy, and opening a portal defied the most important one: leave the dead where they were supposed to be.
That being said, opening a portal was a challenge not easily taken on. Laurel and I were lucky enough to possess abilities that allowed us to do it. Without her, I couldn’t open a portal on my own, and vice versa. We either did this together or not at all.
Since this was Laurel’s world, I let her lead the project. First off, we needed the perfect place to open the portal, somewhere it wouldn’t affect the mortal world if something unpleasant came through. I thought of the wishing well, hidden in the woods, but instinct told me not to mention it to Laurel. The Laurel I knew wouldn’t dare to make a wish there, but this one might be desperate enough to take a dangerous shortcut if it was presented to her.
Lost Magic Page 22
