My mother, in a sense, had thwarted this stereotype for an unusual number of years. My father had stuck around for a while, long enough to bring four daughters and a son into the world. Still, for the better part of my life, my dad had never been around.
“You should’ve tried harder to stay,” I told my father. “You didn’t even stick around for the birth of your youngest daughter. Laurel’s never even met you! And then you went and had a one-night stand with Mom and knocked her up with Wren. What a major screw-up that was, by the way.”
My father’s expression of confusion only deepened. I wanted to smack it off of his face. All of my pent-up feelings were flowing to the surface, threatening to overflow and drown my father in them. Everything I felt about him, every bit of insecurity over his lack of involvement with my life, poured out. I guess being overemotional was a side effect of death. At that moment, I couldn’t understand why I was so focused on my father’s reappearance when I had other much more substantial issues on my plate.
“Wren?” said my father, a look of consternation still etched across his features. “You mean your mother never told you?”
“Told me what?” I demanded.
He rubbed his forehead between his first finger and his thumb, a habit of his that I remembered from way back when. “Morgan, I died shortly after Laurel was conceived. I didn’t leave you. Wren was never my son. I only know about him because I’ve kept an eye on you throughout the years. Though I admit I’ve been a little lax with that lately.”
My lips parted with the impact of this new information. “Run that by me again?”
My father sighed, looking out across the black water. “Your mother and I were happy, but the coven wasn’t. I… I died in the woods behind the house. You know where that big barn was?”
“I live there now,” I said unhappily, less than eager to hear the rest of my father’s story. Then I remembered how un-alive I was. “Lived, I guess.”
“I was out there chopping wood one night,” my father continued. “All of a sudden, one of the trees fell out of nowhere, crushing me beneath it. Your mother was beside herself when she found me, and I’m still convinced that the coven had everything to do with my death. Your mother thought so too. I guess that’s why she never told you the whole story.”
I waved my hands in front of me to defend myself against his recollections. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“I just need you to know that I wouldn’t have left you alone, Morgan,” he said softly. “I loved your mother and your sisters. And you, of course.”
My eyes were burning with the familiar presage of tears, but I swallowed the lump in my throat to steady my voice. I needed to get the facts straight. “So…Wren is only my half brother?”
“Yes. His father was a stranger that your mother only met with a few times.”
“And you think that the coven arranged to kill you?” I asked, having trouble making eye contact with him as I did so.
His eyes were solemn as he nodded. I sank down to the pebbled shore, hugging my knees into my chest. This was not the way I wanted to pass over into the next life, premature and with the aching knowledge of my father’s fate. I rested my head on my arms, listening to my father’s boots disturb the rocks beside me. Then he sat next to me, his long legs stretching out nearly to the water line, and wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulders. I leaned into him. He smelled the same as he always had, like mint leaves and smoking firewood.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I said. The otherworld ate sound up. My voice didn’t carry or echo. I wanted to yell into the abyss, to hear something resonate back to me.
My dad patted the top of my head. I guess it had been a while since he’d ever had to comfort anyone. “That’s what we all say, kid.”
I pondered that for a moment. I was no stranger to death. Every spirit I’d ever made contact with lamented their passing. There was almost always denial at first. After all, how could you be dead if your soul was still lingering on earth? But eventually, the facts filtered through, and the ghosts grasped the concept of death with varying amounts of grace. Not me, though. I refused to be dead.
I pushed myself up from the ground. “How do we get out of here?” I asked, planting my hands on my hips and looking down at my dad.
“How…? Ace, there’s no getting out of here.”
“No, I mean, this”—I indicated the vast emptiness around me—“can’t possibly be all of the otherworld, right? There are other people here? Other places?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, get up, then,” I said, waving him to stand. “I need to find someone who can send me back to Yew Hollow.”
My father studied me for a moment, peering up at me from his seat on the pebbled shore. “Morgan, I’m sorry, but you’re dead. There is no going back.”
“No,” I said firmly, my index finger pointing at him for emphasis. “I refuse to accept that. I was not a willing party of Dominic’s garbage ritual, and I don’t belong down here. Not yet, anyway.”
My father sighed heavily and hung his head between his knees. I felt like I was five again, asking him to explain why the sky was blue. This time, however, I didn’t need a rational or scientific explanation; I needed hope and a solid plan to reunite my soul with my material body. I’d be damned if my life was over so soon. Literally.
“Morgan—”
“Dad,” I interrupted before he could say anything else. “I need you to understand this. It is not my time. I have to go back to Yew Hollow. My family is still in trouble, and there’s no way I’m going to let Dominic use them as his creepy puppets. Besides, I promised Mom I’d look after someone.”
“Who?”
“She picked up a stray. Another psychic medium,” I said, running a hand through my loose hair and wishing I had a hair band. The otherworld was uncomfortably tepid, and despite the lazy wash of the tide, there was no hint of a breeze. “Her name is Gwenlyn. She’s only sixteen, and she doesn’t deserve to deal with Dominic’s crap on her own. She’s been through enough as it is.”
My father finally decided to rise to his feet, scattering pebbles as he elongated and stretched upward from the ground. “This Gwenlyn. Does she know you were taken to the otherworld?”
“Probably not,” I sighed. That was another qualm to add to my already extensive list of issues. Gwenlyn was a teenaged runaway and had never had another human being around that she could truly rely on. I hated that my unexplained disappearance would most likely only contribute further to Gwenlyn’s troubles. “She wasn’t around during the ritual, so I don’t know how else she would have found out.”
“Shame,” my father said. “A medium in the otherworld already puts you at an advantage in this place, but a link with another medium in the real world? You might have actually had a shot at fixing things up there.”
“Wait. How so?”
“I’ve only heard stories,” my father said. “But apparently your ability to communicate with the dead is an asset down here. There should be a way that your friend—Gwenlyn, was it?—would be able to contact you. Like a very long-distance telephone call.”
“Why didn’t you say so before?” I asked, my voice pitching with the sudden prospect of possibility. If I could reach Gwenlyn and figure out what the situation was in Yew Hollow, she could straighten out Dominic’s backward ritual to bring me back. “How do I do it?”
But my father looked forlorn at my eagerness. “I don’t know, Ace. It’s all legend down here. Half the time, I don’t know what’s true or false.”
“I’m going to take this opportunity to believe that all the legends are true,” I said. If my dad, without a drop of witchcraft in his veins, had heard about a way to contact the living, there had to be some kind of merit to it.
“You might not want to jump to that conclusion so quickly,” my father warned. “There are things in the otherworld you don’t want to know about.”
“Oh, I want to know,” I insisted. I didn’
t have time to ponder what horrors lay waiting. At the moment, it didn’t seem likely that the colorless stretch of beach held anything other than more pebbles, but I trusted my father to know what he was talking about.
My father arched an eyebrow. Clearly, he was skeptical of my show of confidence, but I wasn’t about to let his distrust of the unknown parts of the otherworld stop me from making an attempt to reach Gwenlyn. It was the only sliver of a plan that I had to latch on to.
“Ever heard of Cerberus?” he asked, one eyebrow still quizzically raised.
“The three-headed dog that guards the gates of hell in Greek mythology?” I clarified. He nodded. “Sure, I’ve heard of him.”
My father fixed me with a meaningful stare.
“What, he’s real?” I asked with a scoff. “Well, good thing I have no intention of popping into Hades’s realm. I was never really a fan of hot tubs. Now, tell me, where’s the local pub around here?”
“Sorry?
Apparently, the otherworld had also robbed my father of his sense of humor. “I want to get off this damn beach,” I said, picking up a handful of stones and throwing them into the water just to disturb its annoyingly peaceful ebb. “Where do all of the other inbetweeners hang out?”
“You have to find your own way off the beach, Morgan,” my father said. “I was only sent to welcome you.”
“Not a great welcome wagon, Dad,” I commented. “And what do you mean, I have to find my own way off the beach? In case you haven’t noticed, there isn’t exactly a handy dandy map around. You got a special trapdoor that I don’t know about?”
“All you have to do is walk into the water,” another voice said from behind us.
I whirled around, almost expecting one of the dangerous legends my father had just promised to me, but I was met with the face of a different legend, one that hit a lot closer to my home of Yew Hollow.
The woman who had spoken had a familiar face, a face that I had seen every morning in the mirror. Like me, she was small and thin with honey-colored hair and a crooked set to her lips. There was only one difference. She had the trademark gray eyes of the Summers coven. Were it not for this subtle distinction, I would have patted the otherworld on the back for conjuring such a convincing twin of myself. There was nothing more terrifying than confronting yourself and owning up to your personal insecurities.
“Who are you?” I asked, glancing nervously at my father. He did not appeared to be worried by this ethereal woman’s presence. If anything, the wrinkle of his nose and curl of his upper lip indicated an evident distaste for her.
The woman extended a dainty hand out toward me, which I hesitantly reached forward to shake.
“Dorothy Summers,” she said. “A pleasure to meet you.”
My jaw dropped open. “Dorothy Summers. As in, one of the original witches of Yew Hollow?”
She dipped her head in acknowledgement. “At your service.”
2
In Which I Make a Possibly Regrettable Deal
In my world, Dorothy Summers was essentially a goddess. From day one, every child born into the Summers coven was thoroughly educated on our illustrious history. My elementary studies of arithmetic and language arts were supplemented with the biographies of the five women who created and shaped Yew Hollow for what it was today. Mary Summers, the coven’s earliest leader, and her four daughters—Ann, Elizabeth, Bridget, and Dorothy—were the roots of my heritage, and though I had once tried to reject the sorority I had been born into, I never lost the immense amount of respect for the original Summers women that had been fostered in me since birth. To come face to face with any one of them was beyond surreal. Yet here I was, my hand clasped tightly between both of Dorothy’s as if we had known each other personally all along.
My father, on the other hand, did not seem to hold Dorothy in such high regard. As I blathered on to Dorothy about what an immense pleasure it was to meet her, my father shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable with the interaction before him. Dorothy seemed to recognize this, because she withdrew her hand from my grasp and turned to face my father.
“Calvin,” she greeted him, smiling cordially.
“Dorothy.”
“Wait a second,” I said, stepping between the opposite sides of my genealogy. “The two of you know each other?”
“Lamentably,” my father said as he eyed Dorothy’s serene expression. He reached out and pulled me closer to his side, as though he expected Dorothy to inexplicably combust and shower me with burning sparks.
“Now, Calvin,” Dorothy said, her palms turned upward in a gesture of innocence. “I thought we’d put all of our disagreements behind us.”
“Disagreements?” I echoed. I detached myself from my father, unwilling to align with either party until I understood the specifics of their argument. “What kind of disagreements?”
My father’s chin lifted upward, though his eyes remained locked on Dorothy. “Don’t,” he warned her.
Dorothy’s tranquility was unaffected by my father’s command. “Oh, Calvin,” she said. “She’ll find out eventually.”
“Find what out?” I demanded, my glare bouncing between the two of them.
Dorothy sighed, as if resigning herself to answer my question. “Morgan, my dear—”
Dorothy, I swear…” Calvin cut in.
“Hush, you,” Dorothy commanded, pointing a finger at my father.
His voice cut off immediately, silenced by whatever spell Dorothy had so neatly employed. He gestured angrily at her, mouthing unintelligible commands. A surge of relief coursed through me as I realized that witchcraft was still viable in the otherworld. It would undoubtedly come in handy what with all of the supposed monsters down here. I mentally reviewed the process for creating a protection ward. Generally, I preferred offense over defense, but I wasn’t about to risk strutting about the otherworld without a basic level of security. For now, though, secrets were at hand.
“Tell me,” I urged Dorothy before my father could protest further.
“It’s nothing, really,” she said with a breezy wave of her hand. “We’ve simply toiled in shaping the curvature of your life.”
“Shaping the… what?”
“As your father mentioned earlier—pardon my eavesdropping, by the way. I’m afraid it’s a habit I never was able to kick—we in the otherworld are often able to observe our earthly equivalents,” she said, her fingers twirling sparkles of deep blue witchcraft, similarly colored to my own, through the still air.
I peered around Dorothy to look at my father. “Does she always speak like this? All vague and such?”
He rolled his eyes. I took that as a yes.
“I see that you take after your father verbally,” said Dorothy drily. “How unfortunate. Anyway, my point is that we have the tiniest bit of effect on the way your life plays out. Your father and I are the most active members of your team, despite our numerous, er, disputes.”
“Back up a second,” I ordered. “Did you just say that you were controlling my life?”
Calvin, at the end of his rope, reached down to tug at one of Dorothy’s earlobes as if she were a child in need of disciplinary action. Momentarily abandoning her balletic appearance, Dorothy shot a small attack spell at my father’s fingers. He yelped silently and retreated, shaking out his injured hand. As he glared at her, Dorothy conceded and returned his voice to him.
“We weren’t controlling you, Morgan,” Calvin said, massaging his throat.
“Funny. That’s what Dorothy seems to have just implied.”
“It’s not like that,” my father said. He attempted to place a consoling arm around my shoulder. “We only have the ability to prod you in the right direction. Think of us more as guardian angels than puppet masters.”
“Well, you’re doing a shit job!” I said, shaking off his embrace. “What are these disputes about anyway? Are you fighting over me?”
Dorothy lifted a hand to examine her nails, unconcerned with the conve
rsation at hand. “Your father seems to think he has superior knowledge when it comes to you. Never mind the fact that I’ve been lazing about in the otherworld for a greater number of eons. Anyone rational would accept my guidance without question.”
“Your guidance is what got her in this mess in the first place,” my father argued back. At his great height, he should have lorded over Dorothy, but she seemed to possess an ability to micrify anyone who challenged her.
“If I recall correctly, Calvin,” she said, “she wasn’t exactly thriving when you sent her to that infernal hellhole you call New York.”
My father opened his mouth to form a retort, but I stepped between them to halt their argument.
“Whoa, hold up!” I said. “What do you mean, you sent me to New York?”
“I didn’t send you there,” said Calvin. He seemed exasperated by the knowledge barriers between him and me. “I simply wanted to get you out of Yew Hollow, which I did. It was upon Dorothy’s request that we send you back.”
“Because the coven’s welfare was at stake,” Dorothy interjected.
“Yes, because God forbid the coven’s welfare be challenged,” my father bit back. “She would’ve been safer in New York.”
“And the Summers coven would have perished without her,” snapped Dorothy. “Do you care not for your wife or other daughters?”
That shut my father up. As for me, the fact that two dead people had been puppeteering certain aspects of my life didn’t seem as bizarre as it should have been. In fact, it almost made more sense this way. At the very least, I wasn’t entirely accountable for all of the terrible crap that had happened in Yew Hollow since my return there.
“Can we just, I don’t know, relax?” I requested. I was beginning to think that we really were in purgatory, and the bickering match between my father and great-to-whatever-degree grandmother was the boulder to my Sisyphus. “Because if we’re going to be any help to the coven at all, I’m going to need the two of you to draw up a peace treaty.”
Witch Myth Super Boxset: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery Page 20
