Ana
After pulling into the quiet lot of the bookstore, I come to a stop in front of the gray wood-framed building. I’ve been here
before—with Agnes as a kid, with Vera, even alone looking for ingredients or information, or other things.
Windchimes hang from the eaves, filling the air with a discordant music I can hear even through the closed windows of the
car.
Noah stirs in the back, opens his eyes, makes a noise that sounds cranky. He’s going to need a bottle soon, I think, which
means I have to get back to Iggy’s. See, this is what I mean. When there’s a kid around, you can’t think about anything else. The constant need. How do people stand it?
“Just chill a minute,” I tell him in the rearview mirror. He’s watching me with that frown he gets right before he’s going
to start bawling. “Auntie Ana has to figure out who killed Paul and made your mommy sick otherwise I’m probably going to jail,
or worse. Okay? It’s not just about you.”
He offers a little chortle, which I take to mean that like all children he couldn’t care less about what’s going on with me.
He turns his gaze away to look out the window, then coos and points at the glittering chimes.
“Let’s go see those,” I say, getting out into the cold.
It’s frigid, the sky an ugly gray, black branches all around like fingers reaching for me.
I hate winter. Death. Sleep. I dream of spring when the plants come back to life, when Agnes’s garden is in full bloom.
Even the deadly residents of her walled garden are beautiful, have their moment preening in the sun.
I find that baby carrier thing in the trunk and strap it on with the kid facing out. God, he weighs a ton. My back is already
aching as I climb the stairs to the porch, and push into Make Magic, Little Valley’s only occult—a word I hate as it conjures
darkness, evil—bookstore.
A little bell rings as I open the door. Inside it smells heavily of sandalwood and sage. Dim light sneaks in from the west-facing
windows, casting a milky glow on the books and shelves, a table of tarot cards in colorful boxes, trays of glittering crystals
all shapes and sizes, and a painted rose gold wall displaying a variety of handmade dream catchers.
“Can I help you make some magic?” says the woman at the counter, skeletally thin, gray, with those big glasses that hide most
of her face, make her eyes look huge. April.
“Oh,” she says, recognizing me. “Hello.”
It’s not that we don’t like each other. I mean—we don’t. But it’s not exactly antipathy between us. It’s more like distrust, laced with a thread of distaste.
April gazes upon Vera with devotion, something like hero worship, and it annoys me. Vera, I guess, is like a mentor to her,
but my sister is far less versed in The Knowledge than I am. She doesn’t practice actively, doesn’t want to. I don’t really
either, but I keep up my skills at least. I know how they see me in The Cove. I’m the badly behaved kid sister who’s always
in trouble. Which is so not fair. Agnes thought I had more talent than Vera. But less control, she was always careful to add.
Like a baby rattlesnake. Whatever.
“Can I help you?” April says, pushing her glasses up. She comes around from her perch behind the counter and approaches Noah.
“Who’s this?”
I’m annoyed when he giggles and closes his little hand around one of her fingers. She smiles and it’s like she’s a different person—very young, sweet. She’s not old; her hair is just prematurely gray.
“Iggy’s baby, Noah.”
She frowns, looks up at me with her one green, one brown eye. Heterochromia. The Native Americans called it Ghost Eye, believing
that one who had it could see into heaven and into the earth, was connected to the divine. But that’s all bullshit. It’s a
simple genetic mutation. Science, people.
“How is she?” April asks, her voice heavy with concern.
“Not good.” I quash a rush of fear and sadness. But it’s like she sees it, softens a little toward me, puts a hand on my arm.
“I made a doll for her,” she says.
I flash on the effigy Detective Bandeau showed us, black sticks bound with twine, most likely laced through with hair, charms,
bones, crystal chips. “I’ve been praying. Let me show you.”
April locks the front door and flips the sign to Closed. I follow her into the back, with Noah reaching for every crystal
and shiny object as we go, cooing happily.
She takes me to her workbench, which is covered by all manner of weird dolls. April rescues doll parts from dumpsters and
Goodwill locations. She weaves, stitches, patches together bodies. Collects buttons, crystals, other charms and objects from
flea markets, thrift stores, garbage cans. Then she creates and sells dolls for various purposes. Her “Get Well” doll is the
most popular and she makes them to order, sells them online and from the shop.
Among the collection of big-headed, button-eyed, stitched-mouthed dolls of all shapes, sizes, and colors, I see the one she made for Iggy.
Small with a wild tangle of yellow yarn hair, big blue crystal eye buttons, a pink stitched mouth, dressed in a gauzy white gown.
The Iggy doll lies on a felt bed, surrounded by plant sprigs, herbs, and crystals.
I recognize a dried mistletoe sprig for surmounting all difficulties, mint for consolation, lavender, sage for cleansing and healing.
In her hands, the doll holds a piece of quartz crystal, the mother of all healing stones.
“Iggy must return to this little one,” she says softly, turning to touch Noah on the cheek.
“You were there that day,” I say. “In the kitchen, preparing food, serving.”
She pauses a second, turns her eyes away from Noah and up to me. Her gaze, when focused, is unsettling.
“She’s a mystery,” Vera often says of April. “Still waters.”
The stare of her green eye is cold. Her brown one seems kinder, more compassionate. Like there are two people on the inside
looking out.
“You’re not implying . . .” she begins as I lift a palm to interrupt.
“I’m not implying anything. I’m asking.”
“There was nothing unusual served at brunch,” she says crisply. “In fact, the only ones who brought anything that wasn’t store-bought
were Iggy and you. Her cookies. Your cassoulet.”
“I would never hurt Iggy,” I say.
“You two haven’t been getting along,” says April, turning back to the Iggy doll, tucking the little felt blanket around her
tenderly. “You were angry at her, weren’t you? For being happy.”
Ouch. Okay, bull’s-eye. I did resent her happiness a little. After all, she picked Brock up from the curb where I’d discarded
him like an unwanted piece of furniture. I wondered about all the time we’d spent together as a threesome. Had she always had designs on him? And now they were so annoyingly happy.
Noah starts to fuss a little. I bounce instinctively and he goes quiet, but I can tell he’s about to blow. Who doesn’t get
cranky when he’s hungry?
“That’s not a reason to hurt my best friend,” I say, sounding defensive even to my own ears.
April fusses with her dolls.
“Well, here you are with her baby,” she says. “I bet you’ve been working overtime to comfort Brock, as well. If Iggy doesn’t
wake up, you could just swoop in and take it all, couldn’t you?”
I back a few steps away from her.
April is in tight with Lisander, who owns this store and sits at the head of the small council that’s governed The Cove since
Agnes passed.
“And Paul broke up with you, found happiness with someone else,” April continues. “Funny coincidence . . . I hear his new
girlfriend Amanda is also missing. I see a theme: Ana doesn’t like it when other people find happiness.”
Those weird eyes are flashing with something like glee.
“Paul was a monster,” I say. “He had a thousand enemies. Anyway, I was over him.”
“So why were you with him?”
Good question.
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
“That’s why you called an ex-orcism? Because you were so over him? The whole point of that brunch was to eradicate him from everyone’s life. Mission accomplished,
I’d say.”
My throat feels thick; I swallow hard.
“You’ve punished Paul, his new girlfriend, and you’re in the process of taking back what you lost to Iggy. That’s how I’m
seeing it. And I’m not the only one. But you’re here to do what, to accuse me?”
I square my shoulders to her. “Someone’s been at Agnes’s. Whoever it is has been reading the book. I think they were in The
Kitchen.”
“Agnes’s is well monitored. Lisander knows who comes and goes.”
“Is that so? That house belongs to Vera and me. Why would Lisander be watching it?”
April smiles and shakes her head. “You’ll have to ask her.”
“I didn’t do this. Any of it.” I feel like I keep saying this to people, and the more I say it, the less believable it seems.
Noah is getting louder, squirming in his carrier.
“How many times have we heard that, Ana? And how many times has it been true? Kevin Harding was abusing you. So, you poisoned
him. That other one from HookUp. He got rough with you, so you smashed him over the head with a vase. Lisander had to clean
up this mess. Now Paul and Amanda. Iggy.”
I feel a cold finger of fear trail down my spine, start backing toward the door.
“They found a doll near Paul’s grave,” I say, nodding toward her creepy collection. They all seem to be staring at me with
their shiny button eyes and crooked mouths.
April blinks at me. “What kind of doll?”
“A stick effigy.”
She draws in a breath. There’s a flash of something frightened across her features. “My dolls heal and help only—get well,
draw money or love, protection from negative energy, career advancement.”
I glance through her collection, and I don’t see anything that looks like what they found in the woods. That effigy was crude,
radiated a kind of menace. April’s dolls are different. White magic, not black. Or gray. In Voodoo they call it gris gris, a nod to how much in this world and beyond is not good or bad, just gray.
Still, I won’t hesitate to throw her under the bus if it comes to that.