“I won’t be responsible for wrenching people out of their eternal resting places,” I said. As I spoke, several spirits reappeared. Dominic had apparently sent them off to gather the ingredients he needed for his ritual, as the ghosts began to lay several items on the ground by the yew tree.
“Helpful, aren’t they?” Dominic said, regarding the ghosts with an approving nod. “No dittany, though. Did you know it’s remarkably similar to oregano? We’re using that instead.”
His conversational tone made it sound as if we were discussing a lasagna recipe.
“Dominic.”
He refocused on me, saw the look on my face, and said, “Listen, Morgan. I’m sorry about Teagan, okay? I was just trying to make a point. I need you for this ritual, and I want you to be willing to help me.”
Get it through your thick head,” I said, poking Dominic in the chest. “I will never help you with this.”
“At this point, I expected that response,” he said, sighing heavily. He legitimately seemed disappointed with my refusal to cooperate. I wished I had brought the butcher’s knife from Teagan’s room along with me. My unpracticed witchcraft wouldn’t put Dominic down, and there was no other humane way to dispatch him.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any more time to brainstorm. Dominic gestured to his spirit army, which immediately surrounded me. I saw what was coming about a second before it happened and tried to dart away, but the spirits boxed me in. They took hold of my arms and legs, lifting me and carrying me to the base of the yew tree. I kicked out hard, my foot connecting with the very solid jaw of one ghost, but to no avail. No matter how much I flailed, I couldn’t free myself from their mutual grasp. They went to work, binding my hands behind my back with a length of rope.
My back scraped against the yew tree as the spirits forced me to sit against it. The last time I’d been forced to participate in a ritual, the yew tree had filled me with the power of the original Summers coven. Regrettably, that transference had only been temporary, as I hadn’t realized what was happening. I wished that I had figured it out sooner. The tree was empty now. Its remaining power lay only in its existence as a natural protection, which wasn’t something that would work like witchcraft and fuel my defense against Dominic. I could only sit there, restrained as I was, and hope that, by some miracle, Dominic’s ritual would fall through.
Several yards away, Dominic began setting up his spell. He mixed the ingredients together in a small olive-wood bowl. A sweet and sharp scent swept over me, the result of his honey-and-oregano blend. He dabbed the mixture on at his pulse points. Then, with a bottle of red wine in one hand, he approached me. I watched dolefully, waiting for an opportunity to knock his ritual off balance.
“Excuse me,” he said politely. He picked me up by the armpits and dragged me away from the yew tree, the wine bottle bouncing against my rib cage. He allowed me to lean against the nearby bench, facing the tree. Then he extracted a tiny switchblade from his pocket.
I leaned away as he neared my throat.
“Don’t worry,” Dominic said, tipping my chin back. “Just a prick.”
Sure enough, I felt the sharp sting of the blade at my neck but nothing more. Dominic held the bottle of wine to my throat, and I heard the hollow plinking sound of my blood dripping into the wine. He swished the bottle around to mix it then took a swig. My stomach turned.
Dominic plugged the mouth of the bottle with his thumb, restricting the flow of wine, and began to pour it delicately out onto the dirt near my feet. The ground did not absorb the liquid as it should have. Instead, the wine remained on the surface, glistening in the moonlight. Part of me couldn’t help but admire the artistry of Dominic’s hand. With every tip of the bottle, he created the large, detailed outline of a phoenix.
A large part of our magic relied on the interpretation of symbols. This, Dominic clearly knew. The phoenix symbolized resurrection, what with the mythical bird’s ability to remake itself out of the ashes of its previous body. In combination with the yew tree, which was also known for rebirth, there was no doubt to Dominic’s intentions. A strange thought crossed my mind.
“Quick question, Dom,” I said, feeling the cut on my throat dribble. “Where do you intend on housing your mother and sister’s spirits once you’ve raised them? Because I assume their bodies aren’t exactly in great shape after all these years.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Dominic said, now lighting candles and placing them at strategic points within the phoenix. “The ritual will allow them to create new bodies in their original image.”
“That sounds too good to be true,” I muttered, wondering how Dominic managed to find such a convenient and organic spell to raise the dead. From what I understood, when the same thing had been attempted in the past, the rituals used had been infinitely more gruesome than some spilled wine in the dirt. “Did you know that people used to consume corpses in order to raise the dead? You aren’t planning to do that, are you? Because I don’t think I’d be able to keep my dinner down.”
“Do you ever shut up?” Dominic snapped. A small smirk tugged at the corners of my mouth. Though he was skilled at hiding it, Dominic was stressed out. The enormity of his task must have finally hit him as he faced it head-on. That was good. I could work with stressed.
“It’s true,” I pushed. “Necromancers believed that by consuming the flesh of the dead, their spirits would rise again. Crazy, right? Although, I hear cannibalism goes well with Chianti, so you’re halfway there.”
“Shut. Up.”
He crumbled the bay leaves, pulverizing them between the palms of his hands, and began to sprinkle the pieces along the outer edges of the phoenix.
“Oh, and necromancers also believed that bodies had an expiration date,” I added, watching as Dominic’s back muscles scrunched in aggravation beneath the fabric of his cotton T-shirt. “One year after the death of the physical body. Kinda puts a dent in your ritual, doesn’t it? Your mother and sister are going to be fu—”
“SHUT UP.”
This time, the words were punctuated with a crisp slap across my face. My eyes watered at the sting of it, but inwardly I felt strangely pleased with myself. Dominic was nervous; that much was clear in his lack of emotional control and the shaking of his hands. The ghosts seemed to sense it too. They gave him a wide berth, as though afraid he would lash out at them should they float any closer. Dominic, however, seemed to have plans for his spirits to participate in the ritual.
It turned out that Dominic had indeed gotten a hold of a set of handbells, which I assumed he’d thieved from the nearby church. He assigned each one to a spirit, instructing them to bridge the gap between the yew tree and the phoenix. They fell into two lines, forming a glowing, ethereal hallway from me to the tree.
He began to direct them, pointing at each ghost when it was their turn to ring their bells. As they caught on to the rhythm, the music swelled, filling the night air with a surprisingly sweet melody. Dominic added his voice to the mix, singing passionately in Latin as he had during his earlier transference ritual. He knelt to the ground, tipped a candle on its side, and ignited the outline of bay leaves.
The phoenix erupted in green flames, corralling Dominic within it. The blaze was so bright that I could only make out Dominic’s silhouette. He faced the yew tree, his arms outstretched as if to welcome someone into his hallway of spirits. The yew tree stretched and morphed before my eyes. Its trunk widened, splitting open to reveal a peculiar portal, from which spilled a great deal of bright white light.
As Dominic continued to warble, summoning forth the souls of his lost ones, two figures appeared in the strange doorway of the yew tree. They seemed to struggle against an unknown force within the light, pushing and pulling at one another in the attempt to step out of the tree. With a great crescendo, Dominic called to them, his lips shaping the names of his mother and sister. The fire of the phoenix waved and surged around him, egging him on, and then, all at once, the two figures stepped from the tr
ee and onto the earth in front of them.
As soon as they emerged from the trunk, their physical features swam into focus. The tall, slender figure solidified first, evolving into an elegant young woman with the same piercing blue eyes as Dominic. The smaller figure coalesced slowly, but gradually became recognizable as one half of Dominic’s genetics. She was a petite woman, perhaps in her forties at the time of her death, but there was no mistaking the similarities between her and her children.
Though the bells chimed on, Dominic had stopped singing. Either he had lost his voice, or the emergence of his family had overwhelmed him to the point of incoherence. With his back to me, I couldn’t tell which it was, though I assumed it was the latter. His shoulders slumped with something like relief, as though he couldn’t fathom the fact that his ritual had actually worked. I was similarly afflicted. In all of time, there were no success stories about raising the dead, and yet here was Dominic, reunited with the two people he claimed to love most.
He stepped forward, abandoning the fire of the phoenix, moving quietly along the hallway of spirits. His mother and sister, both sporting expressions of both joy and great sorrow, walked from the yew tree toward Dominic. The family met in the middle. For a second, they only stared at each other. Then Dominic fell into the arms of his mother.
Suddenly, I was yanked forward by an invisible force. Something seemed to have a hold of my ankles, dragging me through the harmless green fire of Dominic’s phoenix and down the ghostly corridor. I yelled as my shirt rode up and my back scraped over roots and rocks embedded in the dirt. With alarming speed, the strange force swept me right past Dominic and his family. Dominic, wide eyed, reached down in an attempt to stop me, but he only caught a handful of my T-shirt before I was ripped away and rushed toward the open portal in the yew tree.
“No!” cried Dominic, separating himself from his mother and sister to chase after me.
The friction had freed my hands of the rope, and I flipped over in an attempt to grab something to hold onto before I was sucked into the depths of the portal. My legs slid into the abyss of blinding white light, but I managed to hook my elbow around one of the yew tree’s thick roots. The force pulled at me, my tendons stretching and popping. Dominic fell to his knees before me, trying and failing to yank me back into the real world. My arm slipped around the root, and my elbow hyperextended. I couldn’t hold on much longer. Pure panic, like a ship in a storm, blew through the high seas of Dominic’s eyes.
With my lungs burning, I gasped to him, “You dumb bastard.”
And then I let go.
One moment, I was falling through nothing, and the next, I was lying on a dark, pebbled shore, listening to the sounds of water gently lapping at my jeans. I scrambled away from the inky water, which had already soaked through my clothing. Shivering, I looked around. The strange beach went on for miles in either direction, beneath a starless and utterly dark sky. Where was I?
A light patter of footsteps approached me from behind, and I whirled around to meet the gaze of a very tall, very familiar figure.
“Dad?” I asked breathlessly.
“Hey, ace.”
I remembered the nickname from his brief involvement in my childhood. He extended a hand, and I took it, letting him pull me to my feet. He brushed a few pebbles from the back of my damp shirt.
“I’ll admit it,” he said as I pondered his inexplicable appearance. “I’m not thrilled to see you here so soon.”
“Here?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Where are we?”
“Oh, honey,” my father said. His eyes crinkled with the weight of the information he was about to bestow upon me. “We’re in the otherworld.”
I backed away from him, yanking my hand from his grasp. “No.”
He was stoic and solemn with his next words.
“Yes. I’m afraid you’re dead, ace.”
Many thanks to everyone who read my story!
Writing is the best way I know to express myself, and I’m so glad that you all have rewarded me with the opportunity to share my imagination with you. As an author, I learn and evolve from the input of others, so if you have a spare moment and you enjoyed the story, please leave a short, spoiler-free review of the book. As readers, your personal opinions are often the best references for a writer. Your commentary allows me to further provide you all with fun, engaging material.
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Again, thank you all for diving into mine and Morgan’s world. May we meet again!
All the best,
Alexandria Clarke
Witch Myth: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery- Book 2
1
In Which I Challenge the Definition of Dead
The pebbled beach of the otherworld was not something I had expected to see for a very long time. The dark water tickled my toes, almost as if to welcome me to this new world, but I stepped away from the black tide, rejecting its salutation. My father, a man I had not seen since I was a child, stood silently next to me, waiting patiently for me to come to terms with my new state of being. As I gazed off into the distance, disturbed by the fact that death seemed to have no horizon, a terrifying thought finally crossed my mind.
I, Morgan Summers, had died.
The real shit ticket was that my death was purely accidental. At least I hoped it was. If I understood the laws of life and death correctly, my soul had basically been offered up in return for two others. The catch? I’d never agreed to go forth and become a sacrifice. My frustration, which I’d been trying to temper ever since I’d woken up in the otherworld, seethed and bubbled over.
“Mother fu—”
“Language, Morgan!” my father scolded before I had a chance to complete my epithet of irritation.
I flashed him the middle finger and stormed away from him down the beach. He had all of eternity to forgive my rudeness, and I was allowed to be upset over my own untimely quietus. Unfortunately, the never-ending beach wasn’t helping me cope with my current status. It would have been one thing if the otherworld had a little bit of sunshine, but this depressive gray riverbank was so far from paradise. It was miles and miles of stupid dusty pebbles and no end to the dim beach in sight. At some point, I realized that no matter how far I seemed to walk, my father, who hadn’t moved his feet, was still only a few paces away from me. I spun around to face him.
“Ace,” he said gently, employing a nickname that I hadn’t heard since I was nine years old. “Tell me what happened.”
I didn’t even know where to begin. All of my problems, including that of being trapped in the otherworld, stemmed from the fact that I lived in a small town called Yew Hollow. The town seemed like any other in the New England area, quaint and charismatic, but that wasn’t the whole story. Yew Hollow was home to one of the largest known covens of witches. My coven: the Summers. It shouldn’t have been any surprise that Yew Hollow experienced a myriad of unnatural occurrences. I thought I had seen it all. As a psychic medium, you eventually get used to the idea of the impossible, what with all the ghosts and spirits contacting you from the beyond and requesting your services. My current dilemma, though, was a whole new ball game.
“There was this guy,” I began, now pacing from the water’s edge to my father and back again. “A real dumbass. He stole our coven’s power, Dad. And then he went and brought back his mother and sister from the dead. So—”
“Wait a second,” my father said, forcing me to halt my retelling. “What do you mean someone stole your power? If I recall, one of the most important facts of witchery is that only women have the privilege.”
“Witchcraft,” I corrected. “Normally, you’d be right. It’s a long story, but this guy, Dominic Dobbes, is a real witch.”
My father squinted at me as if trying to understand a complicated mathematical equation. “Okay, I’ll just let that one go. Now, you say, he raised the dead?’
“Yes. And apparently it was one hell of a trade.”
“Me
aning?”
I huffed out a big breath. Truthfully, I didn’t even understand what had really happened that night in Yew Hollow, so explaining it to my father was an even greater challenge.
“I think I’m stuck here because of Dominic’s ritual,” I finally said. It was the only thing that made sense. If witchcraft was temperamental, then necromancy was downright manic. Dominic had succeeded in his mission to bring back his mother and sister from this gloomy, eternal bank, but magic always had to balance itself out. Their return to earth required payment, and since Dominic had used my blood in his ritual, I was the first one to get dragged through the passageway into the otherworld. The mere thought of Dominic’s ill-prepared plan was enough to reignite my already turbulent emotions.
“Where are we anyway?” I demanded, kicking the ground furiously and showering my father’s sensible work boots with the tiny, colorless stones. “What is this place, purgatory? Because it sure as hell isn’t heaven. And what are you doing here? I had no idea you were dead.”
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You didn’t? Where did you think I was?”
I glared up at him. For all of our similarities—the apple-green of our eyes, the disheveled brown hair, and the olive skin—I certainly had not inherited my father’s height. He loomed above me, his handsome face no older than the last time I had seen him.
“You left us,” I accused my father.
If it was possible, his eyebrows would’ve disappeared into his hairline. “Morgan, I would never leave you or your sisters. You know how the Summerses are. They tried to run me out.”
He had a point there. My family was unorthodox, to say the least. Then again, when your family was a coven of witches, things were bound to get a little dicey. Witches were notoriously cynical toward men, and the Summers coven was no exception to the rule. The women in my family were infamous for luring good men in, only to drop the poor suckers like hotcakes as soon as their warranties expired.
Witch Myth Super Boxset: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery Page 19
