“So, what happened to the girl?” Belladonna asked.
“She got scared when they stole her and brought her here. Her family and the entire town stormed the church to get her back, but the doors and windows were all sealed shut. I was in my office working late, and I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. The girl got scared and started a fire. Those inside who were affected by her fire ran out, while those people outside who weren’t, ran in. The little girl fled to this basement. I was the only one who saw her in the commotion, and I followed her down here. Unfortunately, she was affected by her own element, and she wasn’t thinking straight enough to use her witch magic to protect her. The fire was closing in on us, and there was no way out. So, I broke one of those windows with my hand.” The preacher pointed up to a broken ground-level window, and when he did, the Bible disappeared, and his hand looked broken and bloody.” I pushed her out before the fire could get to her. She tried to reach back in for me, but she was so small. I couldn’t climb out myself because my hand was so broken. She said she’d go get her Daddy to help, but a few seconds after she left, I lost consciousness because of the smoke.”
“You died saving her.” Granny Pepper said solemnly.
“I guess I did. Until now, I’d forgotten that. I’ve just been so angry. I didn’t realize I was mad at myself for letting my congregation slip away from me, but in the end, I did the best I could.” The preacher said and smiled.
A light appeared around him that was so bright it should have blinded Belladonna, but instead, she couldn’t take her eyes off it. It was warm and radiated love and acceptance.
“I loved my congregation, and I loved Winterfield too. I wish things could have gone differently. I wish we could all still be here together. If only people could understand that our beliefs aren’t so different. It all comes down to one thing. Love. Everything we do, from my prayers to your magic, is an expression of love. It’s only when we forget that things get twisted.”
An angel appeared next to the preacher, and she reached out her hand for him to take. He took it, and they both started to walk into the light that so mesmerized Belladonna. Before they made it all the way through, the angel turned to Granny Pepper.
“Whenever you’re ready, we have a spot for you.” She smiled at Granny lovingly and then turned back toward the light.
“What did that mean?” Belladonna whispered after a few long moments.
“Ah, they’ve got a spot for me on some council up there. Something about a host or archangels or some such nonsense.” She said and started to float back up the stairs.
“Granny, they want to make you an angel?” Belladonna asked as she followed Pepper up the stairs.
“Yeah, something like that.” Granny Pepper answered flatly.
“Are you going to do it?”
“I don’t know. Probably someday. I mean, when the Big Kahuna invites you to rule the universe with him, it’s hard to turn him down. But, I’ve still got things to do here. I’m not ready yet.”
Thirteen
Zoe sat in the little bedroom at the end of the hall in her foster parents’ house. She’d pushed her bed against the wall a few weeks ago, and that’s where she sat with her legs crossed and a notebook in her hands.
She could only think straight when she was drawing or writing poetry, so Zoe had hundreds of these notebooks stashed in the closet and in boxes under the bed.
Her mind wouldn’t let go of the woman in the bakery this afternoon, and she found herself drawing a picture of the woman’s face. Zoe’s first drawing was of the woman smiling when she ordered her coffee. When that drawing was done, she flipped the page and started trying to recall the shocked expression she’d displayed right before she’d thrown her money down on the counter and fled.
Once this drawing was complete, Zoe got down off her bed and walked over to her desk. She pulled open the bottom drawer and removed the beat up box of colored pencils. Zoe rarely colored anymore, but for some reason, this drawing compelled her to complete it.
For the next two hours, Zoe added color and shading to the sketch until it almost looked like a photograph. The whole time, she tried to piece together what had gone wrong with their exchange.
When the drawing was done, Zoe started to write words into the spaces in the picture. She was composing a poem completely from her subconscious mind.
Then, it hit her. The look was recognition and then fear.
“Why would someone be afraid of me?” Zoe said to herself.
It was true that her past wasn’t the fairy story most kids hoped for when they were little. That was kind of an understatement. Zoe had it rough, but she tried not to dwell on it. This new foster home was lovely even if people didn’t really understand her.
Zoe had a good heart, but she brought a little bit of chaos with her wherever she went. It seemed that some people took to her instantly, like Jessie, and others were driven a tiny bit mad by her presence. Her energy and life force fed some people and made others struggle.
None of this was Zoe’s fault, though. She was just different. No one, not even Zoe, understood how different. She was a paranormal caught in a world of ordinaries who had no idea who she was.
The people around her loved her fiercely, even if they didn’t always know how to show it. It was this love that was one day going to allow her to blossom even if it wasn’t apparent how yet.
Once Zoe was old enough to break free from the world that held her back, she was going to become unstoppable. Sometimes the forces that surrounded and protected her wondered if she could even fathom what she was capable of doing with just the mind she was born with.
“I need to talk to Jessie,” Zoe said as she grabbed her boots and jacket.
She was going to sneak out the bedroom window as she’d done many times before. Her foster parents would never understand this, although Zoe promised them silently that she wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t necessary.
One of the problems with being so creative and chaotic in an ordinary world was that it was sometimes hard for Zoe to behave in ways that people understood. She acted out because the forces inside of her would rage like an ocean and nothing in the regular world could calm them down.
The bakery was different. For whatever reason, Zoe felt relaxed there. In fact, she felt centered and peaceful whenever she visited Winterfield. Something about the town and her new friends there made her feel accepted in a way she’d never experienced.
So, Zoe had been working on recalling that feeling even when she was at home or school. If the turbulence inside of her started to rise, Zoe could close her eyes, take a deep breath, and call that feeling of being home back to the surface. In her mind, she could be in Winterfield whenever she needed. It had taken some time and a lot of practice, but these meditations had changed everything for her.
Now, though, she had to sneak out one more time. Jessie would help her figure out why the stranger was afraid of her. The house was quiet, and Zoe guessed that her foster parents were already asleep. She opened the window and climbed out.
There was only twenty dollars in her purse left from her paycheck. Zoe hoped that would be enough for a cab ride to Winterfield. She wasn’t supposed to take the car out at night, and Zoe wasn’t going to chance it.
The cab ride ate up all but three dollars of her money, and Zoe gave that to the driver as a tip. She had to hope that Jessie would give her a ride home or let her have an advance on her paycheck so she could afford the cab to get back home.
Jessie looked a bit surprised when she opened her door and saw Zoe standing on her front porch. She smiled, though, and that made Zoe feel a bit better. On her walk up the drive to the front door, her stomach had been doing flip flops from the nervousness.
“Come in. Come in.” Jessie beckoned her inside. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I need to talk to you. It’s about the woman who came into the coffee shop earlier. The one who was acting strangely.” Zoe said.
“Sure, we can talk, but why did you take a cab here, Zoe?” Jessie looked more than a little concerned. “Why didn’t you drive or have your foster parents drop you off?”
“They don’t know I left. I snuck out.” Zoe looked at the floor and scuffed the toe of her book against the entry way rug.”
“Zoe.” Jessie sounded a little bit disappointed, and that made Zoe feel sick. “You can’t sneak out. We talked about this. It was one of the conditions of me hiring you. You promised you would obey your foster parents’ rules.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. This just seemed so urgent. Something is wrong. I can feel it. I was afraid they would say no, and then something awful would happen.” Zoe was near tears, so Jessie reached out and hugged her.
“Don’t cry. It’s okay. Come in, and take off your coat. I’m going to call them. I have a way with people.” Jessie said with a wink. “If they say you can stay, we’ll talk. Alright?”
Zoe nodded her head. Jessie left her in the living room and went to the kitchen to call her foster parents. Jessie did have a way with people, and she got them to agree to let Zoe stay for a while.
“They want you home by eleven,” Jessie said when she reappeared. “And you’re lucky you don’t have school tomorrow, or I’d have to take you right home.”
Jessie made the two of them some tea with sugar and took out a tray of peanut butter cookies she had cooling in her pantry. The house had a small pantry when Jessie bought it, but it had a huge dining room. So, she’d knocked out the wall between the pantry and the dining room and extended it into the dining room. It left her with a more than adequate pantry space for her baking and a perfectly acceptable dining room.
They sat in the living room eating cookies and drinking tea while Zoe told Jessie the story of the drawings, the poem, and her revelation about the woman. Jessie couldn’t figure out what the woman could have seen in Zoe to make her afraid.
It hit her like a train.
“She recognized what you are,” Jessie said with a gasp. “I didn’t see it before either, but it’s as plain as day now.”
“What I am? Zoe looked confused.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about this place, Zoe,” Jessie said with a smile. “So much you don’t know about Winterfield, and its residents. I was concerned about hiring you because of the differences, but I somehow knew it would be okay. Now, I realize why.”
“You have to tell me.” Zoe said with wide eyes.’
“I will, Sweetie. I will tell you everything, but first, we need to talk to Murielle and Belladonna.”
Jessie grabbed her coat and shoes and threw them on as fast as she could. She handed Zoe her jacket and started to usher her out the door. The young woman walked right through, but Jessie ran into a force field that knocked her back into the house.
“Jessie, what’s wrong? What happened?” Zoe looked terrified.
“It’s part of what I have to explain, but there’s not time. What you need to know is that magic is real. Like for real real, and some bad magic has me trapped in my house. You’ve got to go get Belladonna and Murielle. I hope they aren’t at home.”
Zoe followed the directions Jessie gave her to get to the street where Belladonna and Murielle lived. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the lights were out in both houses. At least there was a chance they weren’t home.
At Belladonna’s house, a dog barked and a silver cat jumped into the window next to the front door when she rang the bell, but nobody answered. Zoe ran across the street to Luke and Murielle’s house, and thankfully no one answered there either. Jessie had said she would call her friends and have them meet Zoe outside if they weren’t trapped in the house.
Zoe checked her phone, and just as she got the text message from Jessie that Murielle and Luke were on their way home, a car pulled up in the driveway.
“Zoe, get in.” Murielle only got halfway out of the car.
They met Belladonna and Granny Pepper at the edge of the field that led to the church. Zoe’s eyes just about bugged out of her head when she saw Belladonna’s grandmother, but she didn’t run away.
“Whoa.” Zoe was completely fascinated.
“Zoe, this is my Granny Pepper. Granny Pepper, this is Zoe.” Belladonna said with a smile.
“She’s a ghost.”
“Yep. That she is. We’ll explain it all to you later, I swear.”
They drove to the police station to meet Ben and Aunt Sumac. Sumac hadn’t been able to draw Reverend Zombie out of his comatose state.
“What are we going to do now?” Murielle asked. “We need to do something soon because most of us can’t go home or we’ll probably get trapped.
“I think I have an idea, but I want to talk to Joe first,” Belladonna said.
Belladonna and Ben arrived at Joe’s shop, and they were glad to find that his lights were still on. The door wasn’t locked, so they went in and found Joe sitting on his cot in the back room watching some old television show.
“Hi, guys!” He said cheerfully.
“Hey, Joe. I hope we’re not bothering you.” Ben said.
“Not at all. I’m sure you’re getting used to hearing this by now, but I was expecting you. What can I do for you two lovebirds? I’m taking it that since you’ve given up on pretending to hate each other, we’re reaching the end of our shared predicament.” Joe said and took a swig of the root beer he held.
“I hope so, Joe. And, I think you can help. When we talked the other day in your shop, before Ben and I left, you mentioned seeing an angel in your hospital room. Can you tell me any more about that?”
“Oh, yeah. That was something else alright. Dad used to talk about angels all of the time, but I’d never seen one before. She was beautiful, and the light that emanated from her was breathtaking.” Joe said with a wistful smile.
“I’m sure it was. I saw one earlier tonight, and it was incredible. What I need to know is if she tried to tell you anything. You said that you didn’t think she saw the specter of Reverend Midnight, but could that have been a ruse? Could she have been trying to get you a message?” Belladonna asked hopefully.
“No, she reached out to me, and then that man stuck his ghost hand in my chest and fixed my heart…” Joe trailed off for a moment. “He couldn’t have healed my heart, could he? Evil can’t cure. Hold on, let me think.”
That’s when Joe remembered his mother coming to visit him after the Reverend Midnight left. He recalled her sitting in his kitchen with him telling him the story of his birth while he ate cookies.
“My mother came to me twice. Once while I was in the hospital and once while you were moving my Dad into the attic. At least I thought it was my mother. Could she have been an angel disguised as my mom?”
“I don’t know how to tell you this, Joe, but your mom could be an angel,” Belladonna recalled what the angel in the church had told her Granny. “Do you have a picture of her?”
Joe pulled out his wallet and flipped through a plastic organizer stuffed full of different photographs. He finally pulled one out and handed it to Belladonna. It was his mother’s graduation picture.
“I always thought she looked like an angel in this picture,” Joe said with a tear in one eye.
“That’s her!” Belladonna exclaimed. “That’s the angel in the church. It was your mother. Joe, think carefully about the angel in your hospital room. Try to remember her.”
Joe did. He closed his eyes and let the memory come back. At first, the beautiful angel looked either fuzzy or unfamiliar. Her face moved and ebbed in a way that made it hard to focus on her specific features, but when he took a deep breath and focused, he realized it was his mother. She didn’t want the Reverend Midnight to know who she was, so she’d kept her identity hidden until he was gone.
“She’s an angel.” Joe couldn’t hold back the tears, so he just let them flow down his cheeks. “Mama’s an angel.”
“Yes, Joe. She is. I know this must be overwhelming, but you have to he
lp us. Please.” Belladonna said gently.
Joe nodded his head yes as he looked at the picture Belladonna had handed back to him.
“The things she told you when she visited you. They were meant to comfort you, but there also could have been a message. What did she talk to you about?”
“In the hospital, she told me about the time my Daddy broke his leg and almost died of sepsis. At my house, she told me the story of the day I was born.” He said.
“What could those stories have in common?” Belladonna bit her lip and tried to piece it together.
“I almost died when I was born, Belladonna. Daddy almost died when he broke his leg.” Joe said thoughtfully. “My parents have always said that the only reason we survived was because of how hard people prayed. The reached out to us with all of the love in their hearts, and it healed us.”
“That’s it!” Belladonna jumped up and headed for the door. “Come on you guys. Shake a tail feather!”
Fourteen
They’d gathered as many people as possible in the town square. The turnout was smaller than she’d anticipated. Most of Winterfield’s residents were trapped inside their houses because of Sister Oshun’s magic. The town’s other witches were all trapped, and so was Carly. Nick was there, but that was because he’d run out to pick up soap at the corner store.
Jessie and Carly were still able to join them, though, thanks to video calling.
“Everybody get out your phone and call someone. If they can’t be here physically, we want them here electronically.” She said.
There were people from the diner and the coffee house joining the gathering, and they took out their phones and called any friends who couldn’t get to the square.
Pretty soon, everyone who could show up had. Every phone had someone on the other end ready to help.
“Okay, you guys. What we need is for you to start praying.”
Love Hexed Page 7
