by A. W. Jantha
“Aunt Dani,” I say quietly.
“I knew you’d find us,” she tells me.
An unexpected panic hits me as I realize how closely she resembles Emily and Binx. “You’re not dead, are you?”
She chuckles. “Please. Those old birds can’t get rid of me that easily.”
“Poppy,” comes another voice.
I look up to Binx, but he’s been replaced by my dad, who looks just as pale and translucent as Aunt Dani. He’s still wearing the Hollywood headband, which makes me laugh, even now.
“No,” I breathe, the reality of the situation fully sinking in. My body feels waterlogged and my mind slow. I can hear my own heart pounding in my ears. “Dad, I’m so sorry. I can’t—Oh god, I’m sorry.” I take a deep shaking breath, the way my mom taught me to do when I feel stressed. It got her through LSATs and the bar exam, she’s always said. The thought of her makes me cry harder. “Where’s Mom? Are you sure you’re all okay? We’re going to get you out of there.”
“Your mother went to speak to the manager of this lovely wing of Hell,” says Aunt Dani.
“She thinks there should be better ventilation,” says Dad.
“She might organize a class-action lawsuit against Satan,” says Aunt Dani. “It’s unclear.”
I laugh again, drying my face with one sleeve.
“How do I bring you home?” I ask.
“By undoing the spell,” he says.
“Thanks, Dad. Real helpful.”
“You and your friends need to send those witches back here before sunrise, okay?” Dani says, nodding. I meet her eyes, which are a ghostly blue. “You’ve got hours left.”
“Hours? Great, no pressure,” I say with a sigh.
“You’re going to be fine,” adds Aunt Dani.
“But—but what if we can’t do it?” I choke out. I can’t imagine a life without Aunt Dani dragging me to Home Depot—or without Dad making popcorn with extra butter just to bribe me into watching some lame old-fashioned music documentary with him, usually one with lots of drumming and saccharine lyrics. “If we can’t help you, will you...die?”
“You can help us,” Aunt Dani says firmly. “And you will.”
I notice she hasn’t answered my question.
“You will,” Dad says. “Dani’s right.”
Aunt Dani throws him a satisfied smirk.
“It took us landing in Hell for you to say that, jerk face?” she asks, grinning.
Dad ignores her and faces me. “You’re better equipped for this than I ever was.”
“But be careful,” Aunt Dani says with a wink. “Blood moon magic and all.”
Suddenly, Dad and Aunt Dani look toward the woods.
There’s a thin glowing figure coming toward us through the trees. I would recognize that stride, straight and sure, anywhere.
Mom opens her arms as she comes near me, and I spring up and run toward her.
“Mom, I’m so sorry,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says. “But you don’t have to be.” Her arms wrap around me, warm and firm. “Though once we get back, you’re on dish duty every night for the rest of your life.”
I laugh, tucking my face into her hair.
The warmth of her body fades into something cool and permeable.
But when I pull away, I see another woman’s face.
I break away and stumble back, frightened.
The strange ghostly woman is Mom’s height, but probably twenty years younger. Her hair is black and curly around a narrow face. Her wide brown eyes are framed with long lashes. Her skin glows dark silver, as if the moonlight has worked itself into her pores, and she wears a pale yellow cloak and dress that flow to her bare feet.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “You’re not supposed to touch us when we’re channeling through the veil.”
“Who are you?” I ask, panicked. My whole body feels cold, and I can barely remember the way my mom’s arms felt around me just a second ago.
“My name is Elizabeth,” she says. “I woke up when Emily and Thackery did, but I didn’t want to frighten you. I’d like to help you, Poppy Dennison. My sisters can be quite brutal.”
“Sisters?” I ask, suddenly afraid. “Wait, you’re the ghost of Elizabeth Sanderson?”
The youngest Sanderson sister, hanged for being a witch after bravely ushering her husband and daughter to safety. I take another step back. She might be a ghost, but what if she still has witchy powers, like Winifred’s lightning magic? And what if she is actually evil?
“Why are you a ghost if your sisters aren’t?” cuts in Travis.
I’m suddenly aware of the cemetery, of Travis, Isabella, and Binx and Emily, who have transformed back into themselves, as well.
“When one’s purpose is incomplete, work left undone has a way of keeping the dead around to return to serve the living,” Elizabeth replies. She looks longingly into the distance. “Perhaps you’re my purpose.”
“Another ghost. A witch ghost,” Travis says faintly, for anyone who might be keeping count. “Four Sanderson sisters.”
Isabella watches Elizabeth silently.
“Sanderson was my mother’s name,” Elizabeth says. “And my sisters’. And yes, mine. I kept it as long as I was alive because I wanted to show that a name doesn’t define who you are.”
My eyes drop to her throat, which is ringed with a dark, angry bruise.
“No,” she agrees, “it didn’t quite work out.”
“Sisters!” Winifred calls in a haughty, piercing voice that’s eerie and out of place in the land of the living. “How wonderful it is to be alive again. Once we find the blood moonstone, we’ll be alive forever, and we’ll bring back Mother and Master and all the greats of the beyond!”
The trio have stolen a push broom, a rake, and of all things, a barely operational leaf blower from a shed at the local park and are now soaring over Salem proper. Or perhaps more accurate, two of them are soaring while Mary sputters along, trying to coax the leaf blower into staying aloft, with limited success. Below them, the town lies dark and quiet, with just a few dotted lights pricking the ground like stars.
“And look at that moon,” Winifred adds. “Red as blood and wide as a bowl of kitten-paw soup. Never in my years have I seen something so beautiful. How doth a moon come to look that way, I wonder?”
“Well, actually,” says Mary, hanging on for dear life as the leaf blower dips and climbs erratically, “a blood moon occurs when the sun passes behind the moon in an eclipse, and the light of the sun is filtered through—”
“Shut up, you frowzy fopdoodle!” snaps Winifred. “I don’t have time for thy dithering.” She pulls a hand-size rectangle from her pocket. “I want to know what this box is,” she says, sitting up a little straighter to run both of her hands over the smooth surface. The thing suddenly glows with a brilliant white light and Winifred drops it, startled.
Sarah snatches the object from the air and cradles it. “Look!” she says. “It has an apple on the back, with a bite out of it.” She nibbles on the corner. “It doesn’t taste very good.” The face lights up again, and Sarah studies the numbers written there. “It says eleven twenty-four on October thirty-first,” she said. “Oooh! It is an almanac, Winnie. Or a clock without hands.” She tosses it over her shoulder. “Why carry around something so boring?”
Mary shoots down to catch the thing just before it hits the ground. When she looks up, she sees Winifred charting a straight course over Salem while Sarah loops overhead in a wide corkscrew. Sarah’s delighted squeals can be heard from a thousand feet below, where Mary steps lightly off of the leaf blower. She examines the box carefully and, when it lights up again, slides a finger over its screen, per its illuminated instructions.
Mary jumps when the image changes to that of a beach at sunset, the painting mostly obscured by a grid of circles and squares.
“W-Winnie,” she calls, rocketing back up toward her sisters. She skims alongside Winifred. “I think it’s a memory box. Or
—or a spell book. For thy pocket.”
Winifred shakes her head. “A spell book for thy pocket? Why would one ever want a thing like that?”
“But look!” says Mary, pushing on an image at random.
A new grid appears, this time with a series of images: a slice of bread with something green—cream of moss?—slathered on it and an egg spilling down its side; some young women in short dresses with smiling faces; calm water and a sandy beach with patches of tall dune grass. Each is rendered in precise detail and brilliant colors, and each is unlike anything Mary has ever seen.
She hands the box back to Winifred. “See?” she says. “Didst thou see?”
“A memory box,” Winifred repeats thoughtfully, without precisely agreeing. “I wonder, Sister: would it have a memory of where the blood moonstone is?” She presses the painting Mary showed her, and the image expands as if she’s leaned in to look closer.
Winifred makes an exasperated noise. Frustrated, she begins tapping everywhere until the box chimes.
“How can I help?” asks a woman’s voice.
Winifred quirks an intrigued eyebrow at it.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” says the box.
Winifred clears her throat. “Where is the blood moonstone?” she asks slowly and carefully.
The box pauses, then replies, “The Oracle Stone is located at The Oracle Stone, fourteen-sixteen Central Street, Salem, Massachusetts, zero one nine four four.”
“Sisters,” Winifred says. She guides her push broom in front of Sarah and Mary and gives each of them a light smack across the face.
Their giddy smiles turn to determined expressions to match hers.
Winifred purses her lips and then grins. “We have someplace to be.”
Elizabeth looks down as Emily comes over to tug on the sleeve of her dress.
The witch lifts the girl up and perches her on her hip, even though Emily looks far too big to be held. “Are you okay, my little flitter-mouse?” Elizabeth asks, checking Emily’s forehead with the back of her hand. “You were very brave to channel for dear Miss Poppy just now.”
Travis clears his throat. “Yeah,” he says, “we’re in a bit of a rush to figure out a way to send the Sanderson sisters back, so if you could...” He spins his fingers in a wrap-it-up motion.
I elbow him roughly. I assume that manners aren’t unique to our spectral plane.
“Yes,” Elizabeth says apologetically. “Quite right.” She sets Emily down. “I’ve come to help you. I only wish we’d found each other sooner tonight. I would have told you that the first rule of witching is not to trust Winifred’s spell book.” She gives us a commiserating look. “I also learned that the hard way. Once my sisters were hanged, I took up the book to try to bring Emily back from the grave, but it only led a hateful mob right to my doorstep.”
Emily rests a tiny hand on her arm. “There was nothing you could have done.”
Travis hugs the spell book close to him. “Well, don’t worry. I’ll watch it like a hawk.”
“I mean, I would, but...dog arms and all,” says Isabella. “Thanks, Travis.”
“Elizabeth, we have to stop your sisters from doing any more harm, and we have to help Isabella turn back into a human and rescue my family,” I tell her.
“I know,” Elizabeth says. “There is much to do, and not much time left.”
In the pause that follows, every fear I’ve ever had seems to flash through my mind. Fears of my parents dying, of disappointing them, of never being able to shake that sorrow and guilt.
And the witches doing horrible things to the world, to the town, to me and my friends...
“My sisters are conniving—or at least Winifred is. She’ll have already created a plan to complicate matters.”
Isabella lets out a high-pitched sigh. “Oh, great. What are we supposed to do now?”
When my eyes land on her, I see that she’s lain down and placed her two front paws over her face. No one deserves to be trapped in a dog’s body, especially not her.
“Yeah, what if they find the blood moonstone?” Travis asks.
“You must find it first, and I may be able to help you,” says Elizabeth. “For you see, my mother gave it to me when I married: a moonstone the size of a chicken egg that had been passed through the Sanderson line for centuries. It was always given by a mother to the daughter she believed would use it most responsibly, for that moonstone has two abilities: First, if boiled in a pot of river water and herbs, it makes a broth that will grant eternal life. Second, if the stone is broken, so too is every spell cast by a Sanderson.”
I glance over at Travis and his expression says, Yeah, that’s pertinent information to know.
Then I turn to Isabella.
She’s perked up—even her ears seem taller. “Every spell?” she asks Elizabeth.
“Any of them still in force,” says Elizabeth. “You would go back to two legs.” She looks at me. “And your parents and aunt would return from the world beyond the veil.”
“But I cast the spell, not Isabella,” I say.
“You read the spell,” Elizabeth agrees, “but the three of you cast it together.”
“Do you remember where the moonstone is?” Isabella asks. “We have to find it and destroy it before Winifred gets her hands on it.”
“How do we destroy a blood moonstone?” I ask. “Nuke it in the microwave?!”
“Microwave?” Elizabeth asks.
“Forget it,” I say.
Elizabeth shakes her head. “I feared my sisters would find it, so I gave it to my husband to look after, and I asked him to never tell another living soul where he hid it. And then, the day after my sisters were hanged, I knew the town would come for me and my family next, so I prepared everything for a hasty exit. We nearly made it, too. But as my husband, Jacob, and I made to leave, they came for us with pitchforks and torches. I only just bought Jacob and our daughter, Ismay, enough time to escape to the woods. I never saw them or the moonstone again.” She looks at Isabella. “That stone is tied to the Sanderson family, and the Sanderson family is in your blood. You can cast a spell to find it.”
“Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like—I don’t know—the worst possible idea we could think of?” asks Travis. “Magic got us into this mess in the first place.”
Elizabeth rests a hand on his shoulder. “And only magic can get you out.”
The Sanderson sisters land in the middle of the deserted street, heels clicking on pavement as they cross to a squat unlit building with plate-glass windows and a hand-lettered sign reading the oracle stone. Beneath it, a second, smaller sign reads: crystals, incense, talismans & texts.
While Winifred stalks up to the shop to let herself in, Mary finds her attention drawn by the shop next door. A banner hangs in the front window with a series of pictures of women and men laughing as they press different versions of the strange memory box to their cheeks. The text along the bottom of the banner reads your contacts. our network. connect more.
Mary looks at the object in her hands doubtfully and presses the buttons again until she finds an outline of a head and torso. Beneath the image is the word contacts. She presses it, and a long list of names appears. Chewing her lip, Mary follows Winifred to the front of The Oracle Stone.
A group of three men in costumes comes staggering down the street, laughing loudly. One has his arms draped around the shoulders of the other two. He looks, Winifred thinks, as if he’s been too long in the brewer’s cold cellar.
“Excuse me, good sir.” Sarah puts a hand on the arm of the man in the middle. He has high cheekbones and a perfect smile. She squeezes his forearm with barely masked excitement. “Could you help a lady in need?”
The group swivels to face the witches. “Oh my gawd!” The middle one balks, straightening when he spots them. “The Sanderson sisters!”
Sarah’s sisters peer around her shoulder at the man, and he gives a shriek of laughter. His friends are beaming, too. He extracts
his arms from around their shoulders but stumbles backward. “You ladies look fab,” he says. “Can I get a selfie?”
“A—” Winifred looks at her sisters, perturbed and uncertain. “A what?”
“A selfie,” he repeats. “I’ll be quick.” He hiccups, then shakes his head as if trying to knock some sense back into himself. “Okay, let’s work it.” He pulls out a box that resembles the one in Mary’s hand. He poses in front of the confused sisters, and when the box lights up with a brilliant white burst, they shriek and jump back. The man laughs.
“You ladies are so spot-on. I love it.” His curls all seem to gather at the top of his head, spilling down a little over his forehead. He combs them back with his fingers and slings his arms back around his friends.
“And you are sooo drunk,” one friend grunts at him, giving the sisters an apologetic smile. “Night, ladies.”
“We have need to enter this shop,” says Winifred. She points at the dark locked door of The Oracle Stone.
“They’re open tomorrow,” he says, nodding at a sign with the store’s hours. “But come early. It’ll be packed the rest of the weekend for post-Halloween sales.”
The three men wander off, the stumbling one in the middle shouting “I put a spell on you, and now you’re mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!” as they veer off down a pedestrian alley.
Winifred watches them go.
“Hooligans,” she mutters.
“Beautiful hooligans,” Sarah agrees dreamily.
Winifred turns back to the shop and zaps the brass handle with a quick bolt of lightning. She thunders into the store and looks around, skirts billowing around her.
“It isn’t here!” she exclaims, voice shaking. “That memory box lied to us!”
The shop smells musty and spicy, especially near one table where candles sit next to carefully arranged bundles of dried herbs and baskets of sticks that exude the scents of earth and tumbled leaves.
There are shelves of books on spirituality and the occult, each section propped up by bookends made from huge agates, their polished faces rippling with bands of color. There are jewelry displays shining with polished stones and burnished metals. Sarah claps her hands, plucking up a necklace of huge black pearls surrounding an even larger purple gemstone.
