by Amy Boyles
A malicious smile coiled on the vampire’s mouth. “Now see what you’ve done? You’ve gone and broke it. Good luck finding the four pieces before I do.”
The vampires ran into the night, their vampiric speed helping them to disappear before any of us could catch them.
I fell to my knees, tears stinging my eyes and fogging my vision.
A warm hand touched my shoulder. “It will be all right,” Axel said. “It will be all right.”
I glanced up at him. His features swam before me, the beautiful face swirling.
I shook my head. For the first time in my life, I didn’t believe him.
Daylight seemed to never arrive. Axel and I had spent the rest of that night searching for the vampires. We scoured Magnolia Cove, but to no avail.
They were gone, and we were left to pick up the pieces.
It was now morning. Dawn had just broken through the trees, and I awoke to find Axel sitting at the foot of my old bed, in my old bedroom in Betty’s house.
He pulled on a dark sweater. I stretched and whimpered. He heard me and turned. Axel smiled, but worry filled his eyes.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“We see the damage. We find the heart—all four pieces—and we put it back together.”
I sat up. “We have to move fast. Blake will be searching.”
“He already is.” Axel rose. “He can search without sleeping.”
“One of the perks of being a vampire.”
I pulled back the covers and padded over to my closet, where I found a brown cable-knit sweater and jeans. I tugged them on while I spoke. “Will Betty have ideas of where to start?”
Axel turned the wedding band on his ring finger. “I’m sure she will. She was connected to the heart fire a long time.”
I finished dressing, and Axel pulled me into a hug. I inhaled the pine and woodsy scent of him, sniffing deeply.
He brushed the hair back from my forehead. “Are you crying?”
“No, smelling you. It makes me happy.”
“Come on. Let’s get.”
We made it downstairs to find Betty, my cousins Amelia and Cordelia, Garrick, and a whole slew of other folks in the living room.
People were quiet. There were a few grim hellos but not much else.
I knew the heart fire made our town magical, but what would happen now that it was gone?
Everyone’s heads were hanging, and I knew the subject was raw. It was too much for me to ask the real consequences, so I quietly opened the front door and sneaked onto the porch to take a look for myself.
The first thing I noticed was Jenny the Guard-vine. The green rope of a plant sagged. From its place secured to the porch ceiling, Jenny drooped, her luscious emerald color fading rather quickly to a pale green.
I patted one of her rose-colored buds. “Oh, Jenny,” I murmured.
My gaze drifted to the houses around us. Where they were normally painted bright colors, the hues themselves looked as if someone had literally walked by and sucked the glory from them.
A shingle from atop a home split off from the roof and plummeted to the ground with a scraping sound.
I cringed.
This was just how the lack of the heart fire was affecting the homes, not the actual magical places in town. What did the Potion Ponds look like? Were they dried up? Were the Conjuring Caverns caved in?
What was the state of downtown? Were my animals in Familiar Place okay?
The screen door groaned open behind me. A hand squeezed my shoulder.
It’s only started here, Axel said in my head.
The anger in his ocean-blue eyes took me by surprise. He hadn’t seemed so angry only a few minutes ago. My own gaze filled with concern, and the muscles around his eyes relaxed, his expression becoming more still.
“What do you mean? It’s only started here?” I said.
“Since the heart was destroyed not far away, the actual chain reaction of its magical hold is strongest here, but it’s spreading.”
He motioned toward downtown. “Soon it will reach the heart of Magnolia Cove, and from there, it will continue on until there’s nothing left of our town but crumbling buildings.” Axel wound a hand around my waist. “Come in. Eat some breakfast. We’re hatching a plan.”
I nodded and numbly followed him inside.
I nibbled a sausage biscuit. My stomach had no interest in food and neither did I.
I listened to the fragile conversations that surrounded me, but they quickly faded as people finished eating. From the somber looks on everyone’s faces, it was go time.
Betty stood in front of the empty hearth. The charred black hole looked wrong. It should have been filled with a fire. It should have been churning and hissing, but instead it was an ebony mouth waiting to be fed.
“As all of y’all know, we have a situation on our hands. Thanks to Blake Calhoun, who sneaked into Magnolia Cove using magic that someone must’ve provided for him, the heart has been broken and scattered.”
Betty took a moment to look at each of us sternly, one at a time. “He will be on the trail of it. Like a bloodhound, that vampire is. Blake and his vampires will be searching out the heart. We must beat him to it. We must find the four pieces and sew them back together before there is nothing left of our town except dust.”
A few murmurs of agreement flitted in the room. It was all fine and dandy for us to know that we needed to find it, but how? How would we track it down?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Betty continued. “How are we supposed to find the pieces? What is it that will make them easy to locate?” She rubbed her chin as her eyes glittered. “I admit I had to think long and hard on this one. But in this, we have the advantage over the vampires. Blake won’t know the ins and outs of the heart. He won’t know what happens to it when it’s split apart.”
Was that mischief filling Betty’s eyes? Seriously? What was there to be so excited about? Unless we could call the heart home with magic, I didn’t see how we had any advantage.
“What happens,” Betty continued, “is that strange things start to occur. It could be a pyramid sprouting up in the middle of a mountain town, or a bridezilla actually changing into a monster, but what will probably happen”—here she lifted a finger, the glimmer in her eyes becoming a full-on sparkle—“is that if someone unsuspecting finds a piece of the heart, they will be imbued with strange magical powers.”
“What sort of strange powers?” Amelia asked.
“We don’t know,” Betty said, “but the best place to look is here.”
She snapped her fingers, and an online newspaper entitled the Magical World News flared to life on a magical screen behind her.
Cordelia groaned. “Are you kidding?”
Betty shook her head. “I am not kidding.”
Confused, I raised my hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. What’s the big deal about that paper?”
“The big deal,” Cordelia said, “is that it’s not a real paper at all. It’s a joke paper.”
Hurt filled Betty’s eyes. “I would like to inform you that there are more real points in this paper than you know.”
Cordelia scoffed. “Right. When I was little, I remember reading the headline that magical ants were creating a bridge from South America to North America. They were going to take over our continent. That never happened.”
Betty poked the air with authority. “I admit some of the stories are far-fetched.”
“Some of them?” Cordelia muttered.
“But”—Betty shot Cordelia a dark look—“some have a ring of truth. If we want to find the heart”—she pointed to the wavering front page—“then this is where we start. Right here.”
“Okay,” I said, willing to cut Betty some slack, “what have you found?”
“Well, nothing yet,” she admitted. “But I know if we try hard, really, really hard, we’ll come up with something that will make all the difference.”
She splayed out her hand. A sma
ller version of the online newspaper flared to life in front of each of us.
“Now,” she said. “I suggest we all start looking. The sooner we find this heart, the better.”
Blissful
“Come on, you ghost. Come on over here and get what’s coming to you.”
From my left, Alice Cassidy, a plump, gray-haired sixty-something with a penchant for carrying around tins full of shortbread, said, “What’s coming to it, Blissful? What’s coming to the ghost?”
“A catheter,” Ruth Biggs, my other companion, snapped. “What do you think, Alice? It’s supposed to go to the other side.”
“Listen, if all you ladies are going to do is argue, I’ll take my demon-hunting skills somewhere else.”
My gaze flickered to Roan Storm, the love of my life and the one rooster amid a bunch of hens—most of whom were postmenopausal.
“Ruth’s the one who’s arguing,” Alice whimpered. “All I asked was a simple question.”
Meanwhile the apparition we’d been hunting stared at us wide-eyed as if it couldn’t believe we were actually arguing.
Granted, I couldn’t say I blamed him. We stood in the kitchen of a home built over one hundred and fifty years ago. The room was pitch-black except for moonlight slicing through the blinds and the green glow from the big bad I was facing.
Yep, the spirit that stood in front of us glowed green from head to foot.
He was an old miser, an apparition trapped in the house. Granted, the house used to be his, so in his esteemed opinion I’m sure he felt he had claim to the place. News flash—all ghosts felt they had a claim to places that they’d lived or died in.
This guy had died over eighty years ago. It was time he either faced reality or the light that led to the afterlife—whichever came first.
“You will get out of my house,” he declared.
“Listen, pal,” I said, “first of all, this isn’t your house. It was like, forever ago, but it isn’t any longer. You’ve upset this family too much. It’s time for you to leave.”
His lower jaw unhinged, his eyes glowed red and he yelled, “This is my house.”
I shot Roan an exasperated look. “Someone isn’t getting the message, is he?”
Roan came up beside me. His dark hair curled under his ears; his brown eyes were piercing, full of focus. “This isn’t exactly my realm of expertise.”
I touched his arm. “You deal with the demons, I know. Let me see what else I can do.”
I raised my hand. A constellation of lights appeared above the spirit’s head.
“Are you casting the light?” Alice said eagerly.
I clicked my tongue. “Sure am. I’m shooting the light all over the place.”
Alice pointed at the apparition. “You get yourself on in there,” Alice demanded. “You been bothering the people who live here too long.”
The ghost glanced up at the ceiling and hissed like a vampire exposed to sunlight.
“Well, that’s a new one,” Roan said. “He’s allergic to the other side.”
“I’m not leaving,” the ghost spat. “These people have invaded my home.”
“These people,” as he referred to them, were a married couple with three children from ages five to twelve. The kids, at different times, had seen the apparition and had been scared out of their wits.
The oldest saw the old man in the bathroom mirror, and the youngest said he arrived in her bedroom late at night, demanding she go.
Needless to say, our grandpa miser of a spirit needed to get the heck out of this house in order to offer the family some peace.
And I was just the person to help.
“I know who you are,” the ghost spat. “You’re that hunter. The one who makes spirits cross to the other side. Well, I’m not going.”
He glared at me and I smirked. “Oh, you’re not, are you? Well, I can make your existence in this house unbearable if you won’t leave.”
The ghost’s eyes widened. He was suspicious—thinking, worried.
Good. That’s exactly how I wanted him.
His eyes narrowed. “How will you do that?”
I thumbed toward my friends. “See, we won’t leave. You stay here and we will bother you until you can’t handle it anymore. We will make your existence in your own home so miserable you’ll be begging to go. I will come into this kitchen banging pots and pans day and night.”
“And I’ll follow you around with a pair of booties for your feet, making you try them on,” Alice said.
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Please, don’t make her start crocheting booties for adults. There could be nothing worse. If Alice gets a hankering for adult-sized footwear, what will we do?”
“Sell them?” Roan offered sarcastically.
“Don’t encourage her,” Ruth said.
“Quiet,” the apparition screamed. And then, as if he’d swallowed a pill with the word GROW printed on the side, the ghost swelled to at least eight feet tall.
The constellation of lights, the gateway to the other side, churned and swirled above him. If he could just keep growing, just keep right on reaching for the constellations, then the gravitational pull of the other side might be too great and he’d slip on over.
“You will leave me be,” he yelled.
The walls shook. Pottery clattered from shelves, smashing to the floor.
“Good thing I like you so much,” Roan murmured. “Our dates tend to be a bit on the wild side.”
I smirked at him, and he flashed a grin.
The apparition continued to grow.
“Keep going,” I whispered.
He was inches away from touching the vortex. He was so near it I thought for sure he’d get sucked right in.
But just as the crown of his head brushed the lights, his shoulders bunched up and he winced.
The ghost grazed his fingers across the stars. “Thought you had me, didn’t you?”
I had hoped.
The ghost sneered. Okay, it was time for the big guns, the emotional tactics that might or might not work.
“You know you’re scaring the children who live here.”
His face fell. “Children?”
“The little girl who you’ve visited, you’ve appeared to her in her bedroom, in the middle of the night. It scares her.”
His lower lip stiffened. “She should leave with the rest of them.”
“Then where would she go? She’s only a child. There are two other children here—two kids who haven’t done anything wrong.”
The miser’s eyes narrowed. “You’re tricking me.”
I shook my head. “I would love to be tricking you. In fact, tricking you would probably make my job a heck of a lot easier. The problem is that if I trick you, it actually makes me feel bad. You see, contrary to popular belief, I actually have a conscience.”
“You do?” Alice blurted out.
Ruth elbowed her.
I ignored all of it. “And that conscience would mean that if I sent you clueless to the other side, I would feel bad. Probably wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Well, I might, but it would be rough. I’d toss and turn for sure. So you see, I’m not that sort of person. I’m not the kind who’s willing to lie in order to have you bend to my will.”
A low rumble escaped his throat. I thought it was a reply, but I couldn’t be sure.
I clicked my tongue. “But I’m not lying when I say you’re scaring children. Children. Don’t you think there’s something wrong with that? Like, do you get off on scaring kids? Because if you do, my friend here”—I nodded to Roan—“has darker power than me. He can send you to the bad place”—I snapped my fingers—“like that.”
“Not technically true,” Roan murmured.
Okay, so it wasn’t technically true. As a demonologist, Roan had dominion over the truly evil—demons, as it were. But since I was dealing with a ghost and I would bet my last dollar that the ghost had no clue that what I was saying was an outright lie, I decided to go with it.
&nbs
p; The spirit shrank before us.
Ah, so it was working.
I nibbled my bottom lip, trying to quell the smile that threatened to sprout up. “Listen, buddy, we don’t have all night. This family you’ve been haunting needs rest. I need rest. The light on the other side will help you. It will bring you peace. You won’t want to harm anyone anymore.”
As if on cue, the constellations parted and a light beamed down. It was peaceful, as I said. It only offered goodness and rest for weary souls like this one.
After all, we needed rest some time or another.
Plus I was going on empty. Before this spirit, we’d tracked down the ghost of a six-year-old who liked to leave presents—in your hair. Stuff like taffy and chocolate, chewing gum, even. Oh yes, the gum had been chewed and spat out.
That was no fun trying to remove.
Before the six-year-old, I had dealt with a disgruntled waitress at a night club. Seemed the previous owner had been a real douchebag and not only assaulted her but strangled her in a bathroom and then buried her under a new concrete pad he was having installed.
I mean, some people. The cops had been on the trail of the club owner, who’d all but vanished a few years ago. Lucky for me, the ghost of the waitress helped me track him down.
In between those jobs, I’d had very little sleep. I was exhausted. But the truth was, as soon as I climbed into bed, I started thinking about the dreams I’d been having—and they weren’t good ones.
It was the same thing, night after night. A figure approached me. The person was hooded. I couldn’t tell if they were a man or a woman. They moved like water, a dark cloud of vapor trailing behind them.
As they approached, I felt my throat tighten. Maybe it was the hood, maybe it was the rolling fog that person had behind them. I didn’t know. But something immediately struck fear in my chest.
They were on the attack. I’m not like Roan; I can’t send a dark spirit away. But this wasn’t a spirit. This was a human. Before I could respond, the person touched me in the center of my breastbone.
At first I thought nothing had happened. But as the figure moved away, floating like water out of sight, I glanced down.
