by Raven Snow
“Come on,” Eric urged. “It’s just talking to your grandmother, right? How many times have you done that without your aunts’ direct permission? If you genuinely believe there’s something going on here, she’s probably waiting for you to contact her.”
Rowen couldn’t deny that he had a point there. She looked down at her phone. Now she just had to decide which cousins to involve.
Chapter Four
“We have already tried contacting her.” Willow had said as much via text earlier and now said aloud when Rowen let her into her home. “It was the night she died. Peony came over to my apartment and we both tried contacting Grammy.
Peony nodded. “She didn’t answer. We figured she had moved on already.”
“We’re going to double check,” Rowen told the sisters. She had invited them because they were the most outgoing and the least likely to be scandalized. Apparently, they were so not scandalized since they had already gone behind their mother and aunts’ collective backs and tried it themselves.
The board had already been set up downstairs. Rowen had locked their dog, Chester, in the kitchen so that they wouldn’t be disturbed. The lights were dimmed and candles were lit. The ambiance was perfect for a séance. “Are there going to be snacks?” asked Willow.
“We didn’t eat dinner before we came,” explained Peony. “Willow thought for sure you were going to have something for us to eat here. I told her I didn’t think so, but she never listens to me.”
“I listen to you all the time.”
“If you say so.”
Rowen rolled her eyes. “I can get you something to eat after the séance. Is that all right?”
“I guess,” Willow said with a shrug, still sounding a tad disappointed.
They all took a seat around the coffee table. Rowen took a deep, cleansing breath, prompting the others to do the same. They all followed suit. The vibe turned peaceful. Everything in the living room suddenly seemed very still. “Grammy?” Rowen called. “We’re here to speak with you. Are you there?”
Rowen expected the planchette to fly to a response. Grammy would announce that she was there and demand to know why they hadn’t contacted her sooner. Maybe the polite thing to do was let her acclimatize to being a spirit, but she would still be there for the funeral. At least Rowen had imagined she would be. If there had been any foul play in her death, she would have lingered for even longer.
“I don’t feel anything,” Willow whispered, stating the obvious.
“Grammy, it’s your granddaughters,” Rowen said, a bit more forcefully.
“And Eric,” Eric added.
“And Eric. Are you there, Grammy? We need to talk to you.” Rowen waited. Still, there was no answer.
“What now?” asked Peony, looking uncertain. “Did she already move on?”
“She wouldn’t have done that.” Willow rolled her eyes at her sister. Gradually, she seemed to lose some of that confidence. “I mean… would she?”
“She might have,” said Rowen, leaving out the part where that seemed to be the case entirely.
“So, what now?” asked Willow.
Rowen stood from where she sat, giving up on the Ouija board. She wasn’t going to keep at it. It was obvious enough that it wasn’t going to help them. “We can eat if you guys want to, I guess. Eric, do you mind ordering a pizza?”
“What do you guys want on it?” Eric asked Willow and Peony. Rowen could still hear the sisters bickering over pizza toppings as she headed upstairs. Once she had some privacy, she pulled out her cell phone.
“Rowen?” Flint Stonewall answered, sounding skeptical.
“It’s me.” This was the first time Rowen had contacted him since he’d last betrayed her. He was an old friend but not one that wouldn’t interfere in a murder investigation if it meant gaining a foothold in the legal system for him. “I need a favor.”
Flint was silent for several long seconds. “What kind of favor?” he finally asked, his tone guarded.
Rowen rolled her eyes. Like he didn’t owe her whatever favor she wanted after all he had done. The nerve. “I need you to come home and be around your family for a while.”
“No thanks.” Flint lived in a city a state away. He worked as a lawyer there, a good one by the sound of it. He usually made an effort to distance himself from the whole witchcraft thing while he was there. That was probably a wise move.
“Come on. You owe me.” Rowen wasn’t going to mince words. “And this is important.”
“How important?”
“My grandmother died. I think it was foul play, but I can’t get in touch with her.”
“Your grandmother died?” Flint’s tone suddenly became softer, more sympathetic. It was clear to her that he hadn’t heard about what happened until now. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Then do me this favor.” Rowen had had enough apologies. What she needed now was some help.
“What do you need?” asked Flint, and then in the same breath he came up with the obvious question. “Why do you think it was foul play?”
“It’s just this feeling that I have.” Rowen didn’t want to include any of her working theories, so she left those out.
“But if you can’t get in touch with her, why do you think something went wrong?” It sounded like Flint was trying to figure out some of her theories anyway. “She would have stayed around to tell you what had happened, wouldn’t she?”
“Not if someone forced her to move on.” Rowen had seen it happen. As a girl, she had witnessed her aunts nudge some wayward spirits in the right direction. It wasn’t always possible, but if the spirit was already willing to move on, it could be done. Grammy had probably come to terms with the idea of being a spirit. Her grasp on the physical world probably hadn’t been all that tight. “It would have taken more than one person, I think, but… It’s a definite possibility.”
“And how can I help with-” Flint stopped talking. He sighed. “You think my family had something to do with it.”
Rowen hated admitting as much, but it couldn’t really be avoided. “I’ve been running into them a lot lately. First Jasper is having an affair with Margo, then Amber is working at the prison Grammy died in.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Flint stopped her there before she could continue. “Jasper is having an affair with Margo? I didn’t even know Jasper was seeing someone.”
“I’m not sure if he is, but Margo is definitely dating a guy.”
“Well, that’s not so bad then.”
“It’s still an affair!”
“Yeah, but my brother is still on the slightly more innocent side of it. That counts for something.”
“Not really! It’s still-” Rowen stopped there. “Never mind. Forget about the affair. That’s not as important. What’s important is that I want some eyes on the inside.”
“You say that like they’re a gang that needs infiltrating. They’re not comic book villains, Rowen. They’re decent people… mostly.”
“Will you come back or not?”
“I don’t know,” said Flint. Rowen heard the sound of paper rustling, like he was checking some sort of schedule. “When is the funeral?”
“Tomorrow at two.”
“I’ll be there for that, at least,” he promised. “Assuming I’m welcome.”
“I’ll let my family know you’re coming. I’m sure they’ll be fine with it.” Actually, Rowen wasn’t at all sure of that. She did her best to exude confidence anyway. “I appreciate it, Flint. I’ll see you then.” With that, she hung up.
Chapter Five
Rowen’s family was not, in fact, at all happy about Flint showing up. This may have been due in part to the rather alarming fact that he showed up with the rest of his family. Everyone held their breath as a series of expensive cars pulled up to the nearest graveside curb. You could just feel the magic pouring from those vehicles. Witches could sense their own.
“Who invited the Stonewalls?” Aunt Lydia demanded looking at the family asse
mbled around her. Rowen had to raise a very sheepish hand. “You? Why? What on Earth were you thinking?”
“To be fair, I didn’t invite all of the Stonewalls,” said Rowen in her own defense. “I only invited Flint. He wanted to be here. You know we were close when we were younger. What was I going to tell him? No, you can’t come?” She left out the part where she had invited him because she suspected his family might have had a hand in Grammy’s sudden death. She hadn’t mentioned anything of that sort to her aunts. There wasn’t a whole lot of good that could come of that until she had a more solid theory to stand on. There was still the possibility that she was just looking for trouble.
“I think it’s nice when people you don’t expect show up to funerals,” said Clarence, standing with his arm around Tiffany. “It’s always nice to see how many lives someone touched.”
Tiffany gently touched the hand draped over her shoulder. She looked up with a smile. “That’s a nice thought.”
Aunt Lydia snorted. “She didn’t touch their lives… Punched their lives, maybe. She hated that lot.”
“Grammy wasn’t perfect,” Aunt Nadine said quickly and quietly. “Maybe they’re being the bigger person here, paying their respects. They’re certainly dressed appropriately.”
Two Stonewalls got out of the first car. Three got out of the second. Flint, Jasper, and Amber were all dressed in black. They looked like a set of triplets with their blond hair and lightly freckled faces. They stood on the curb as their parents got out of the next car. Tobias and Jeana Stonewall stood tall and stern-faced. Tobias had blond hair paler than that of his children. Jeana’s own graying hair was pulled back tight in a bun. The doors of a third car opened and two more people got out. It was another man and woman. Rowen recognized them but only barely. They looked like they’d stepped right out of an American Gothic painting. She’d seen these two only a few times during her life. They were Flint’s grandparents, Ferris and Diane Stonewall.
The whole clan was there. Rowen definitely hadn’t expected this when she asked Flint to come. All seven Stonewalls were currently making a straight line toward them. It was probably just as well that they had come, Rowen told herself. It wasn’t like the turnout had been a large one. Rowen’s aunts were there. Her cousins and their boyfriends were there as well. Peony didn’t have a boyfriend, but she had brought her close friend Trish. Aside from that, it was more than a little disheartening. Rowen had always known that Lainswich disliked the Greensmiths, but she had hoped that some of them would still show up, even if only out of curiosity.
To their credit, Rowen’s aunts managed to put on smiles before the Stonewalls got to them. It was Tobias and Jeana who approached first. “We’re very sorry for your loss,” said Tobias.
Jeana nodded in agreement. “We were devastated when we heard the news.”
Someone must have looked skeptical of that because Tobias quickly clarified. “We Stonewalls may have had our disputes with your family, but I would like to think there is a certain unspoken respect and comradery between our kind. If we can’t come together in times like these, we’re no better than animals.”
“We appreciate you being here.” Tiffany moved forward to shake hands with Tobias. Behind her, Clarence nodded.
“It’s really cool of you to be here,” he said, like he had any business commenting on decades old family feuds. Clarence seemed sweet enough, but he had the brains of a jellyfish.
“Thanks for coming,” said Nadine, when Aunt Lydia just kept right on glaring.
It was at about that time that Rowen caught a look at Margo. She had come with David. By this point, Rowen had it on good authority that David knew about the affair. Eric said he had given him a call sometime after they had tried their luck with the Ouija board. He’d been angry but unsurprised. What he had been surprised about was the news concerning Grammy. He couldn’t exactly break up with Margo during all of that. Instead, he’d gotten on a flight and come back down to Lainswich on the double. Now that all the Stonewalls were here, he looked like he was regretting it. Or maybe he was just trying to figure out who Jasper was. Meanwhile, Margo was just staring very intently at the ground.
Rowen gave Eric a gentle nudge with her elbow. “Keep an eye on your brother, will you?” she whispered. She didn’t want any fights breaking out while everyone was here. When Eric didn’t say anything, she nudged him again. “Did you hear me?”
Eric nodded, vacantly. He was staring at the Stonewalls himself. Rowen followed his gaze a couple of times but still couldn’t figure out why. She was about to ask when everyone began taking their seats.
***
The service was a short one. The priest they had gotten to officiate seemed uncomfortable. Rowen’s family was equally uncomfortable, all for different reasons. Her aunts didn’t like the Stonewalls standing behind their backs. Margo was awkwardly close to David and Jasper. Eric kept glancing over his shoulder, and Rowen couldn’t figure out why.
Maybe it was a good thing Grammy had moved on. She would have hated this funeral. If Rowen hadn’t been depressed before, she was after this service. It was with a very heavy heart that she stood with the rest of the family and did the sort of mingling that was expected of them after a funeral. She stood beside her mother and listened to her try to make small talk with Jeana. Clarence, at least, seemed totally comfortable conversing.
“So you’re this whole other family of witches, huh?” Clarence asked, a wondrous smile on his face.
Jeana raised her eyebrows. It was easy to miss, but there was a distinct air of superiority there. “We are. We live in Tarricville. Once upon a time, we lived in Lainswich as well, but two families of witches are a bit much for a town as small as this one.” She offered Tiffany a smile that said there was no animosity there. “The move was so long ago, it feels like a very minor thing.”
“I still remember it like it was yesterday,” Tiffany began, but Rowen’s attention was called away by a hand tugging on her arm.
Rowen turned to find Eric trying to steer her away from the conversation. “What’s up?” she whispered, puzzled. Even if she wasn’t actively participating in the conversation, she was standing in the little semicircle they had made. It felt awkward to just waltz off.
“I need to talk to you,” Eric whispered back.
“Can it wait?”
“I’d rather it didn’t.”
Rowen followed her husband away from the people. “What is it?” she asked, impatient. It wasn’t that she was eager to get back to conversing with the Stonewalls, she just didn’t know how she was supposed to act at a time like this. You probably weren’t supposed to wander away and talk privately with your husband.
“It’s about those two over there.” Eric pointed. It was difficult to tell who he was indicating. She was about to ask when someone else got her attention.
“Rowen, may I have a moment?” It was Ben. He and Rowen had dated once, but he was Rose’s man now and the Chief of Police. His question piqued Rowen’s curiosity immediately. Did he have some news pertaining to Grammy?
“I’ll be right back,” Rowen assured her husband. She heard him begin to object but stop. There would be plenty of time for them to talk privately later. Rowen went with Ben a little further away from the grave site. “What is it?”
“I was going to wait until later, but Rose wanted me to come and speak with you ASAP.” Ben looked embarrassed, like this wasn’t appropriate talk to be having just then.
“Is it about Grammy?” Rowen had to know. “Did someone find something suspicious about her death?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Ben said quickly. “Well, maybe I would. It was only mildly suspicious. I really wouldn’t have thought anything of it if I didn’t know you and your family… and if Rose hadn’t hounded me about it.”
“What was it?”
Ben took a deep breath. “The coroner couldn’t determine an exact cause of death. He went with heart failure, but he insisted the case was unlike any he had ever seen. She
had had a thorough checkup at the prison only a week before all this happened and, well, it just didn’t add up. According to him, either the last checkup was completely fabricated or her health went into an unusually rapid decline practically overnight.”
Rowen wasn’t happy to hear this, but a feeling not unlike vindication settled in her chest anyway. “So why are we burying her? Why isn’t there some sort of investigation going on?”
“Because it’s not unheard of.” Ben gave a small shrug. “Sorry, this isn’t really my area. I can only pass on the news. If someone does an investigation, it’ll be some kind of internal one. No one is really suspicious of Lainswich Correctional, though. As far as the rest of law enforcement and I am concerned, they do good work.”
