by A. W. Jantha
Isabella lets out an indignant yip. “Hey—” she starts.
I lean in and whisper to her, “Maybe keep the talking dog stuff on the DL for now. One bombshell at a time.” Then I shoot Katie an apologetic look in the rearview mirror reflection.
Katie glances back toward Isabella, frowning. She seems to shake it off, though.
“I got a call from Bella, too. But, I mean, who talks on phones anymore?” Katie continues. “Anyway, Bella must be as much of a freak as your parents, because everyone started acting weird when they talked to her on the phone.”
I clench my jaw hearing her call Isabella a freak but take a deep, calming breath.
“I thought that was a prank, too,” Katie continues. “Then Jenny went off the rails, mumbling about finding a stone and a spell book, and I knew she couldn’t be joking.” Katie gestures out the window.
A group of boys dressed as superheroes in red spandex and black boots have broken out shovels and started digging in someone’s flower garden.
“So, you know how to fix this?” says Katie. “Then that means you do have something to do with this, don’t you, Dennison? I want answers, or you’re back on the street faster than you can say ‘witch hunt.’”
“What? No,” I say. “This wasn’t me.”
Then I remember that I am technically the one who summoned the Sandersons back. So I am, at least in part, responsible for this—whatever it is.
“You’re two of the only people in our class who are still normal,” she says. “Well, normal for you, anyway. That’s more than a little suspicious.”
I’ll admit that she has a point there.
“If I’m right and you’re behind this, you’re the only ones who can tell me what the hell is going on. And help me get Jenny back.” She seems more rattled than I’ve ever seen her. Her tone is as flat and irritated as it always is, but she’s white-knuckling the steering wheel and it’s clear that she’s a long way from nonchalant.
“You really care about Jenny,” says Travis.
“How heartless do you think I am?” Katie retorts.
At the speed we’re driving, we leave town behind within minutes and hit the open road of the narrow, wooded Salem Neck. Katie turns on her high beams as we streak through a grove of trees that totally obscures the moon. A power line runs along the road on the driver’s side.
I watch the moon through the windshield. Its reflection stretches over the hood of the car. Isabella is curled up on the seat next to me, head up and looking out the window.
I can’t get what Principal Taylor said out of my mind. How could my dad have done that to him? And how could he have never told me, especially during all his talks about looking out for others and being a good person?
“Does your dad ever talk about my dad?” I ask Katie.
She purses her lips, then shrugs. “My dad doesn’t really talk,” she says.
“Oh. I thought that was just a school thing,” I say quietly.
“It’s cool,” she says, but I can tell she’s lying. She pauses, then adds, “We were close when I was a kid. He’d bring me up here and I’d swim in South Channel or Cat Cove while he worked on the lighthouse. Taught me how to fish and how to boat.” She shrugs again. “But he’s, like, really paranoid. Especially around Halloween,” she adds.
I think about how my parents shared everything with me, and how Katie’s dad kept his run-in with the Sandersons a complete secret.
“He won’t tell me why, but I’m not blind. It has something to do with your family, Poppy,” she says.
I keep quiet.
“I heard your story about the Sandersons and your family earlier today at Allegra’s, and it’s totally ridiculous, but...when I was younger, my dad used to shut down any talk of the Sandersons. I’m starting to think that wasn’t a coincidence.”
“It wasn’t,” I say. “Your dad was there. He saw the same things. It’s his story, too. He just hasn’t told it.”
“Great, so both our families share the same strange story.” Katie pauses, like she wants to come up with a good zinger, but then she says, “Sorry I was such a jerk about that.”
I lock eyes with her in the rearview, eyebrows raised. I don’t think I’ve ever heard those words—or anything close to them—escape Katie Taylor’s mouth.
“It’s all good,” I say, and I mean it.
“So, what, the witches are back?” Katie asks sincerely.
“Yes,” I say.
“And we have to stop them?” Katie asks.
“Bingo,” I say.
Katie slows as the night sky breaks through the trees more easily.
“Hey,” says Travis suddenly. “There’s a spell in here to send evil spirits back to Hell.”
I look to my left and find Winifred’s spell book open in Travis’s lap. He’s looking at a page with intricate letters spelling out gates of hell. There’s a sketch of a gaping pit filled with fire and smoke. He flips to the next page: on one side is a spell to reveal and destroy a succubus, and on the other a charm for flavoring newt livers. A shaft of warm yellow light hovers above the pages as he continues to flip, revealing more spells, with names like SPELLS TO RESURRECT THE DEAD and MAGICIAN’S PACT and EXCRUCIATING PUNISHMENTS.
“Don’t open that!” I shout.
Travis shuts the book with a bang.
Katie jumps, punching the brakes. “What the hell are you doing back there?” she says, looking at Travis in the rearview mirror.
“Nothing!” Travis and I shout in unison.
Ahead of us, the road is blocked by a low metal gate secured with a chain and padlock. The gate is little more than a triangle outlined with aluminum pipes, so it’ll be easy to climb over.
“We’re here,” says Katie. She throws the car into park, kills the engine, and gets out.
Isabella and I both turn to glare at Travis.
“Do you remember zero of my family’s story?” I whisper to him.
“Or what Elizabeth told us?” adds Isabella.
“Until forty-five minutes ago, their story was fake, remember?” Travis whispers.
“That thing can call the Sandersons when it’s open,” I say.
“Yeah, Poppy’s right. It’ll betray us the first chance it gets!” says Isabella.
“So whatever you do,” I tell Travis, “don’t. Open. It. Again.”
He rests it on his lap. “Don’t open it again,” he parrots. “One accidental spell and Sandy Sanderson over here thinks she’s Head Witch in Charge.” He looks back up at me, flashing a smile to show he’s joking.
I sigh loudly, giving him a sidelong smile, and open my door to let Isabella hop out.
Katie is standing a few feet away, arms crossed over her chest as she surveys the poorly lit greenery of the park ahead of us. “Okay, now what?” she says grumpily.
There are a few sporadically placed streetlights that look like they haven’t been updated since my parents were hunting witches. The lighthouse is a darker smudge right on the water, maybe a mile away, but its light isn’t on. It’s mostly just a historic monument now, I guess.
I can’t imagine what it looked like here back when Elizabeth was alive. I try to picture her house, and all the other homes, and I wonder where her husband would hide a moonstone.
“I’m glad the Sanderson search party hasn’t arrived here yet,” says Travis.
“That’s comforting,” I say sarcastically.
“So, what are we looking for again?” Katie asks. “And you’re sure whatever it is will fix whatever’s going on with Jenny and the rest of the town?”
“Yes,” I say, hoping it’s true, and hoping against all odds that it’s even still here.
“We’re looking for a rock,” says Travis, climbing out of his side of the car.
Katie looks over her shoulder at him. “Are you kidding me?”
“A magical rock,” he clarifies.
“Jesus,” she says, starting toward the gate. “Remind me why I agreed to help you guys.”
<
br /> “Because you want to get your BFF back,” Travis points out.
That shuts her up.
The three of us climb over the gate, and Isabella squeezes through it.
There’s a small building in front of us, the booth where the park ranger usually sits and accepts payment for parking, but it’s dark and deserted at this time of night.
Travis enters it and returns with a shovel. “Score!” he says.
“How old is it?” Katie asks us.
I give her a confused look.
“The magical rock you’re looking for,” she says, using a tone that suggests she’ll abandon me on Winter Island if I can’t keep up.
“Old,” says Travis. “Like, buried-three-hundred-years-ago old.”
She pauses to process this new information, then starts walking again. “If it’s from the seventeen hundreds, it’s probably buried here, in the middle of the green. The lighthouse was built in the late eighteen hundreds, and they ripped up a lot of the old buildings on the island when they turned it into a park in the nineties.” She leads us down one curve of the roundabout that encircles the booth, and then continues along a road that runs the length of the clearing before curving toward the lighthouse.
She’s practically Principal Taylor 2.0—and a fountain of lighthouse facts to boot. Perfect.
“Where’s your new BFF gone off to?” Katie asks me.
As if on cue, Isabella runs beside her and heels.
“Well, about that...” I say, trying to think of what to do.
“You know, Bella used to be my friend,” Katie says. “Like, when we were ten,” she adds, clearly expecting us to be skeptical. “Back when she actually still wanted people to call her Bella.” She sighs. “I don’t blame you if you don’t remember. Me or the nickname. Sometimes I don’t think Isabella does, either.”
I wonder why they stopped being friends.
“What happened?” Travis asks, as if reading my mind.
Katie shrugs. “She was nice. And she was busy. Future SCOTUS clerk and all that. I guess we just took two different paths. She always defended me, though. Even after we got to high school and people realized the principal was my dad. She wouldn’t sit with me at lunch, but she never let anyone call me Tattletale Taylor without giving them a piece of her mind.” She looks at me. “I’m surprised she’s not here now. You’re her new charity case, aren’t you?”
The insult feels phoned in, even for Katie, but it still hurts.
I shrug and shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans. So much for playing nice.
Isabella heads back to me and whispers, “I guess this would be a bad time to chime in?”
I nod.
“Fine. Let me see if I can sniff out this blood moonstone.” Isabella puts her nose to the ground and weaves among us. We all keep walking, returning to the head of the loop, where a thicket of bushes separates the road and the field. Finally, Isabella leaves the road and sniffs among the foliage, vanishing into the ferns.
“I never knew you had a dog, Poppy,” says Katie. “So is he like one of those truffle-finding pigs?” she asks, jerking her chin at the bushes.
I shrug again, though it’s a better explanation than I could’ve made up. “She’s a she, actually,” I say.
“Okay,” says Katie. “So is she like one of those—”
A bolt of yellow lightning forks through the air, making contact with something beyond the line of bushes separating the road from the small field beyond it. My stomach lurches.
“Isabella!” I race toward the site of the lightning strike with Travis by my side.
“You named your dog after Isabella Richards?” Katie asks, jogging to keep up.
I shove my way through the bushes, which scratch at my legs and arms, and enter a grassy field to find a park bench, a few trees, and a clear view of the dark, vast ocean far below.
I also find Isabella, who turns to me and wags her stumpy tail. Thank god she’s okay.
As for the patch of earth in front of Isabella, it’s charred and smoking.
“Sorry!” Isabella says. “I started feeling weird—like the air had too much static—but I didn’t know that would happen. But I think this is exactly where we should dig.” She runs in a circle around the charred earth.
“What, did lightning just show us where X marks the spot?” I ask, flabbergasted.
“I’m not asking questions,” says Travis, starting to dig.
“I wish Elizabeth were here to shed some light on what happened,” says Isabella.
Katie looks around. “Uh, Bella? Where are you?”
“Isabella,” she corrects.
Katie eyes the dog. “Very funny,” she says. “Ventriloquist much?”
“Not so much,” says Isabella.
This time, Katie sees her mouth move.
Katie stumbles backward, her eyes widening. “No,” she breathes. “No, no, no, no, no.”
I take pity and walk over to steady her before she falls over from shock.
There’s the bench nearby, so I steer her over to it and help her sit down.
Isabella follows us.
“Okay, what the hell is going on?” Katie points at Isabella, who backs away. Katie narrows her eyes at me. “You owe me an explanation, Dennison.”
I think of Principal Taylor telling me he doesn’t owe my family anything, and for a fleeting moment I imagine doing the same to Katie. But then I think of how that made me feel, and I know that she’s right.
I spill everything while Travis digs. I don’t hesitate, even though Katie’s expression moves from concerned to shocked to disbelieving right before my eyes. I even tell her about her father and mine, even though she admits she overheard everything I said to Isabella earlier at Allegra’s—was that only just today? I continue giving my dad’s side of the story and then her dad’s side, and explain why we went straight for her dad’s house and why he turned us down.
“That would explain his paranoia,” says Katie, shaking her head.
Travis’s shovel makes a solid thunk.
“Anything?” I call to him.
“Just rocks and roots,” he replies.
Beside me, Katie puts her head in her hands and lets out a deep breath.
“Katie,” I say slowly, “I know it’s...a lot to take in.”
She looks up at me with wide, desperate eyes. “This is unbelievable.”
I shake my head. “It’ll be okay,” I tell her. “We will find this blood moonstone and destroy it, and I’ll get my family back, and you’ll get Jenny back, and Isabella won’t have paws anymore—”
Katie bolts up off the bench. “We’re just a few hours away from daybreak!” she cries out. “We’ll never make it!”
Her words hit me with more impact than I expect, and I feel sick.
“I got nothing,” Travis says and dumps out another shovelful of dirt. “It was a long shot anyway. I mean, digging where lightning strikes isn’t the most logical reasoning.” He throws down the shovel and wipes his hands off on his lab coat. “So, who’s hungry?”
“That wasn’t just any ordinary lightning.” Isabella pads over and walks a wide circle around Travis and the hole he’s dug. She shakes as if trying to dispel water from her coat. “It’s happening again!” she says. “You should probably move.”
Travis climbs out of the hole and joins me and Katie near the bench.
Isabella narrows in, sniffing and wagging her tail as her circle gets smaller and smaller, until her nose is pressed against the edge of the pit. She sniffs one last time, then comes to a complete stop and stares off toward the shore, a distant look coming over her face.
Silence sweeps over us, the sound of crickets seeming to arise out of nowhere, and a slight breeze is cold on my skin. Then comes a rumbling crash and another bolt of yellow lightning. It’s so bright and powerful that we all shriek and stumble backward, clutching one another.
“I told you to move,” Isabella says.
“You didn’t say how far,�
� Travis grumbles in response.
“What is happening? Are you having some kind of witch allergy?” I ask. “But instead of sneezing, you’re...lightning-ing?”
“Maybe!” says Isabella. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She goes to the precise point where the lightning touched down, which is just an inch or two away from the hole Travis was working on. As she digs, dirt begins to fly everywhere, settling in a fine dust over her back.
After a minute or so, Isabella stops and shakes hard.
She turns to reveal a limp, disintegrating pouch, and spits it out.
“Ugh. It tastes like death,” she says.
I get up, walk over to her, and pry the damp bag open. I reach in and pull out a porous red stone. I hold it up to the moon, letting the light stream around the edges.
“Yes. We found it. The blood moonstone.” I cheer, holding it up high in my fist.
“The lightning actually worked!” says Isabella.
“Yeah! What she said!” exults Travis.
“Whatever,” says Katie, approaching me. “Now what do we do with it?”
“We have to smash this thing, stat,” I say.
“Totally,” says Isabella. “But how?”
“It’s not working!” Winifred exclaims, exasperated. She paces in front of the sitting room windows of the large house they’d entered, but not a single soul scurries up with a blood moonstone or her precious spell book in their hands. Behind her is a fireplace, but the fire has long since died in the hearth, leaving a smell of burnt wood that Winifred finds strangely comforting. It reminds her of winter mornings spent eating hot raven’s wing porridge while Mother fussed over a bubbling cauldron.
Mother, who will be reunited with her soon, she thinks fondly—and hopefully.
Nearby, Mary is inspecting the table of food along one wall. There’s a bowl with lozenges wrapped in white paper and attached to paper sticks. The wrappings all have faces drawn on them—some of them uglier than others. Mary sniffs one, then tosses it back. Instead, she picks up a long, pale thing and nibbles. “The sign says these are the fingers of ladies,” she tells no one in particular, “but they taste like cake.” She spits the stuff into one of the lozenge wrappers and returns the treat to its bowl.
