Chapter 8
Eight
Ikick my shoes off at the pink front door, and the house creaks in alarm at the mess of sand I’ve tracked inside. Gunner shakes himself, a fine dusting of sand flying out in every direction. The house sighs beneath my feet, the sand vanishing straight away.
It’s handy charm, that.
“Is anyone home?” I call up.
It’s around eight, so it’s not unreasonable to think my sisters are all around here somewhere. Though, unlike me, they have lives. Posey tinkers or hangs out at Saltline, and Rose could be teaching lessons or performing or doing artsy things with her friends.
They’re not running around staring at ocean eyeballs.
Yet.
No one answers, and my hands tremble slightly at my side.
“Okay then, it’s just you and me, Gunner.” That’s fine.
This is going to be fine.
“Don’t just stand there,” Gunner tells me. “This isn’t okay. That was a serious ward on that light that failed, and I know you saw whatever the—” he barks instead of cursing. “Thing was in the bay.”
“It wasn’t great, was it.” My palms are sweaty, and I wipe them against my dress, trying to figure out how I’m going to tackle this new problem.
“But your flair for understatement is perfectly intact,” Gunner mutters. “You should call your sisters—”
“But they’re busy with their own things—”
“It wasn’t a suggestion.” There’s a bit of a bite to Gunner’s tone, and that, more than anything, gets my hackles up.
I sigh, staring at the ceiling overhead. A cobweb stretches from the Capiz-shell fixture to the wall.
A cobweb that shouldn’t be here if the magic was still working properly. It is, mostly, thank goodness… but something’s gone wrong. I frown like the cobweb’s personally chosen violence against me.
“Why hadn’t anyone told us about the ward?” I ask, but Gunner doesn’t give a response. Instead, he bounds up the old ornate stairs, toenails clicking where he misses the thin runner in his haste.
It should feel homey, comfortable, familiar, the sound of his regular doggy noises in the old house.
It doesn’t.
It feels ominous, and my skin prickles with the knowledge that something has shifted.
I’ve never been good with change.
Fishing my phone from the pocket in my cardigan, I hem and haw for a moment about calling my sisters and finally settle on texting them. I can handle this, or at least start handling this and there is no reason to freak them out and ruin their nights.
Ivy: No worries, but I have a thing I need to talk about with you
Rose replies back nearly immediately.
Rose: If it’s about the pot in the sink it needed to soak. I had a pasta sauce indiscretion
I start to type out a response. It’s not about a pot in the sink, but we’ve talked about that, if you just — and I delete it.
Ivy: It’s about what’s going on with the town. Something happened at the lighthouse tonight
Rose: Please tell me you kissed Caleb and you’re going to make babies
My cheeks go hot, and I glare at the message.
Posey: Rose, shut up. Ivy, just tell us what’s wrong
Ivy: There is something in the bay. There was a ward on Watchmere Light, and something happened to it, and now there is something out there. I don’t know what it is.
Hazel: I’ll be home tomorrow morning. I can help
I knew she was coming, of course I did, but Hazel has never really been helpful. More like needing help. The baby of us four, none of us
can hold it against her, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Ivy: I’ll get your room ready for you, we can’t wait to see you!
Rose: Please tell me you’re not bringing another random dude home
Posey: Rose, shut up. Hazel, no dudes.
I bite back a scream and fight the urge to cry or go scrub Rose’s burnt sauce pot that’s in the sink.
Rose: I’m on the way home as soon as I finish this last lesson
Posey: I’m closing shop, be there as soon as I can
I don’t cry. I don’t go to the kitchen and take out my stress on the pot.
Nope. I shove the phone back into my pocket and walk upstairs.
Past the second floor landing where all our rooms are and the big window seat that looks out across the water.
Up the second set of stairs to the attic, where we hardly go anymore.
Well, I suppose my sisters might, but I haven’t been up here in years.
Not since our grandmother moved out, deciding to retire to the Caribbean and let the four of us “do our own thing” as she put it.
It still smells like her perfume up here, which should be impossible. But there it is: white oud and a whisper of amber, parchment and ink and fragrant black tea.
The thing about living in a magical house is that the things that should be impossible never really are.
And the smell of my grandmother’s perfume immediately conjures her in my mind’s eye.
A halo of steel grey hair, fine lines around her lips and too-bright eyes, the lingering smell of sunscreen she’d lather on us from the time we were babies to when we were probably old enough to do it ourselves but she’d still do it anyway.
My heart aches, and I rub at it for a moment, caught off guard by the strength of her memory.
I should call her, too. See what she knows.
But I know our grandmother, and I know whatever this is, whatever is happening here… she’d want us to figure it out on our own.
And she would have left us clues.
“So where are the clues?” I ask, staring at a lifetime of accumulation in the attic. A cream shade softens the light from the bulb overhead, and an old-fashioned rocking horse in the corner stares back at me with painted on eyes.
“Where would your grandmother have left her notes about the magic here?” Gunner asks, sniffing around at the old furniture and boxes. His thick tail wags slowly, and I get the distinct impression he’s enjoying himself.
“I don’t think she took notes. I never saw her.”
Gunner stops sniffing and gives me a long, hound dog look. “Just because you didn’t pay attention to everything your grandmother did doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.”
“Bit rude,” I mutter, shuffling past boxes labeled HOLIDAY ORNAMENTS DOWNSTAIRS TREE in huge block letters.
“Rude doesn’t mean wrong,” Gunner says. “I can smell the magic up here.”
“Are you sure it isn’t mice?”
“Well, attempt to prove rude means wrong, by all means, Ivy.”
“Sorry, Gunner.” I let loose a shaky breath. “I don’t know what any of this means.”
“You are a competent witch. You helped your friend in Texas solve a major ghost infestation. You can do this.”
I scratch him behind his ears, because I don’t have words to respond to that loyal expression of faith.
“If I were my grandmother, I’d have any and all writings in my old desk.” I’m not my grandmother, and we both know that, but Gunner nods and wriggles through the boxes to the old cedar roll-top along the back wall.
A green glass lamp sits on the top of it, and I twist the knob to turn it on.
Trepidatiously, I press my fingertips into the roll-top and push. It takes a moment, but the desk finally responds and the cover disappears into the mechanism.
Revealing… nothing. The desk itself is bare, devoid of dust or pens or any other ephemera that might have been helpful.
“Well, shit,” I say, pursing my lips. “There couldn’t have been a spell book just sitting there, waiting for me, open to the right page? No?” I sigh.
“That would have been nice.” Gunner’s tongue lolls out in a doggy smile. “Nice is hardly ever the operating system for magic.”
“Operating system?” I ask, pulling out the drawers and looking through the detritus of my grandmother’s life. Receipts, yellowed with age, a cracked fountain pen, ticket stubs for an event at the Reach. “Have you been reading about technology again?”
“What else am I going to do when you’re working?” He snuffles at the side drawer, letting out a whine. “Something’s in here.”
“It’s a shame you don’t have thumbs,” I tell him.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want those.” He snorts.
“Here.” I scoot him to the side and he leans against me while I tug open the drawer.
“Oh,” we say at the same time.
There’s a lone scrapbook in the drawer. Reverently, I pull it out, letting my fingers luxuriate over the brown silk cover, the matching velvet tie.
“I’ve never seen this before.”
He wags his tail, and I beam at him. “You did good, Gunner.”
Gunner looks like he could die happy from praise.
The light flickers overhead, and I frown, tucking the scrapbook under one arm. “I vote we go down stairs with this and wait for my sisters in a place where there aren’t stairs to fall down if the lights go out.”
“Agreed,” Gunner says. “But you know I wouldn’t let you fall.”
We both know he wouldn’t.