Chapter 10
While Yasmin went gaga over the weird herbs and parchments with what could be recipes or serial killer notes on them, I ran my hands lovingly over the instrument.
“Whose was this?” I asked. “Agatha’s?”
Annabelle nodded. “Quite a folk singer back in the day. She used to sing protest songs until the residents got mad at her and made her quit. They signed a petition, and eventually the city council passed a very specific noise ordinance.”
While I examined my new obsession, Yasmin poured over the books on Agatha’s shelf while Nate inspected the wires leading to a television mounted on the wall over her head.
“Ugh!” She slammed one of the books shut and rubbed her eyes.
“What’s up?”
“I can’t make heads or tails of this. Some of it is familiar Cartwright Coven lore, but a lot is hedge witchcraft with some plant magic thrown in.
Hedge magic is inherently tied to the witch who develops it, so I’m never going to figure this out without the primary source—Agatha herself.
I’m not strong in plant magic at all. It’s not my discipline.
My mother is a cosmic witch, but I’m still an apprentice.
And the witchfluencers I follow are basically just putting Instagram aesthetics on classic New Age ideas, not actually coming up with untested rituals themselves. ”
I held up a hand. “I’m going to stop you right there.” I got up from the trunk I’d been sitting on, wiping the dust off my butt. “I know nothing about that stuff, so don’t bother trying to explain.”
Yasmin pouted. She looked furious with herself, a feeling I was intimately familiar with. I imagined she felt exactly how I did when I was trying to learn to do barre chords consistently. But it’s not like I could help. And why did I want to, anyway?
Then I had a thought.
“Actually ...” I was wearing my favorite pair of black skinny jeans, one of three pairs I’d brought.
This one had a thigh pocket that I sometimes put a knife in.
But the first day I’d arrived, I’d received two business cards and stuck them in my knife pocket, then promptly forgot about them.
I dug out Miranda’s wrinkled card and handed it to Yasmin. “I bet I know someone who could help.”
She did not look impressed. “Tarot readings? I was doing tarot readings when I was six.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” I said. “She can probably help you, and I’m going to call her.”
Miranda picked up on the second ring and agreed to come over immediately without me even explaining why. I thought about warning Yasmin about Miranda’s overeager friendliness, then decided to let her experience it firsthand.
It only took ten minutes for the older woman to arrive. She came in the door like a fresh breeze, kissing Pete on the cheek despite his grumbling, then waving a cheery hello to Nate.
“Oh!” she exclaimed when I took her back to the shed. “You were able to open it!”
I frowned, then asked, “Do you know why it was locked from the inside?”
Miranda cocked her head to the side. She was wearing light blue eyeshadow that extended all the way up to her eyebrows today, along with peach blush on her cheeks and matching peach lipstick.
She wore a house dress that was far too fancy to wear while digging around in a dusty old shed.
“There’s only one person who could’ve unlocked that shed, Gibson.
Agatha entrusted her most prized possessions to her. ”
With that, she nodded toward the far corner of the garden, then stepped inside the shed. She greeted Yasmin with a warm exclamation and then a series of murmurs as the witch and the medium got to work decoding whatever it was Agatha had been writing in her book.
I looked off to where Miranda had indicated, surprised to see Annabelle standing in the middle of one of the garden beds.
Her feet were ensconced in the soil, as if they were roots and she had been planted in the bed along with a row of peas.
I made plenty of noise as I approached so that I wouldn’t scare her by appearing suddenly, which I thought was rather big of me, all things considered.
“You okay, Marley?”
She turned, and I had a moment of fear, wondering if I’d see a repeat of the ghoulish vision I’d had of her the previous night. But no black water streamed out of her face. She wore her usual placid smile, the one she used to hide behind. “Oh, hello, dear.”
“Anything wrong?”
Annabelle licked her lips, considering her answer. Bugs buzzed around my head, tickling my ear. They went right through Annabelle while I was stuck swatting them in annoyance. She plucked at the lacy neck-tie that hung down from the collar of her shirt, seeming distracted.
“I never liked that shed. I was happy to see it locked up.”
“You didn’t have to open it for me, you know.” I didn’t mention that we probably would have taken Nate up on his circular saw offer if she hadn’t.
“No, it’s ...” She wrung her hands, her face an unhappy war between a smile and whatever it was she was actually feeling. “Agatha and I were friends,” she said at last. “We coexisted for a long time. But we didn’t always agree on things.”
“What things?”
Annabelle paused, then blurted out, “I didn’t want her to do the spell! It wasn’t good for her, and it wasn’t necessary.”
“What spell?”
She crossed her arms, then put them back at her side.
“Near the end of her life, Agatha became obsessed with a ritual. She was convinced it would be her final act, one that would take great power to achieve. I think she found glory in it, to be honest. But she worked on it night and day, obsessing over it to the expense of everything else, including her health. Agatha locked herself away in that shed, day after day, sometimes not leaving it at all. And then when she knew she wasn’t going to be able to do the ritual, the way she acted . ..”
“How did she act?” I needed to know—not just because it would help relieve Annabelle of whatever burden she was carrying about Agatha’s death, but because if she was acting erratically prior to her death, Yasmin would have a stronger case against my inheritance.
“She was determined. Like she could make it happen, no matter what, even if it killed her.”
I let silence fall between us as we processed Annabelle’s words. Then, when it seemed like Annabelle had calmed down, I asked, “What was the ritual supposed to do?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But it required three people. So, she wasn’t able to perform it while she was alive.”
“But she had you and Miranda?”
She shook her head again, vehemently this time. “Three people , Gibson. I don’t count.”
“You count, Marley.”
“Not for this.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. My fingers brushed against her insubstantial ones, causing me to shiver. “You didn’t answer my question earlier. Why did Agatha leave the house to me when clearly Yasmin is a better fit?”
Annabelle shrugged. “Maybe she knew Yasmin would come anyway if she gave it to you. That gets the two of you here.”
“And along with Miranda, we could do whatever magic thing she was working on? I guess she didn’t realize I don’t believe in all that stuff.”
“It’s just a theory, Gibson. Unless she specifically wrote it down, we can’t really know what Agatha was thinking.”
I nodded. If she did write her thoughts down in that big book of hers, Yasmin would find it sooner or later. “What do you want to happen to the house? Do you want Yasmin to have it?”
Annabelle turned to me with a surprised expression. “I don’t know. I’ve never been ... consulted on decisions like this before.”
“Seems fair, don’t you think?”
“I—no, I don’t, actually.” Her voice had been soft, hesitant.
But she gained confidence as she pondered.
“No. I had my time. And now it’s up. This is .
.. extra. I’m not sure why or how I came to have this afterlife, but it’s not consequential.
I cannot influence the state of the world like you can, nor should I. ”
“But—”
“It’s not up to me. I’m merely an observer to whatever happens here.” Annabelle’s face shimmered in the afternoon sun like a heat mirage on an empty road. “It’s how this has to be.”
“It’s a load of crap, is what it is.”
“Excuse me?”
“Horse shit! What you just said is a bigger pile of nonsense than the one I stepped in the other day. There are some big piles of dung around here, Marley, you’ve seen these horses, and what you just said is bigger than—”
“I take your point, Gibson. No more manure, please.”
“Good.”
“But you don’t understand. I’m dead. I died , Gibson. Over two hundred years ago. The actions of the dead cannot supersede those of the living. It’s not—my actions don’t have consequences. Yours do.”
“Do I have to describe the horse shit to you again? Because I will.” I raked a hand through my hair, surprised at how quickly my fingers ran through the short strands.
It seemed like forever ago, but I’d only changed it two days ago.
I wondered what else I’d end up changing about myself by the time I managed to leave this stupid island.
I paused, then said, “Eggs.”
“What?”
“My head would be like that carton of eggs I dropped yesterday. Brains splattered across the hallway, just waiting for a sorcerer to divine the future in the pattern of my gray matter if it weren’t for you.”
Annabelle pursed her lips but didn’t respond.
“I’d be dead, Marley. If you think you can’t influence the world, you’re wrong. Because if you were right, I’d be dead.”
“I suppose,” she said.
And there was clearly something here, something between us. Otherwise, I knew I wouldn’t care so much. And I wouldn’t have jerked off thinking about her while she watched me. What was that, anyway? I didn’t know what it meant, but it wasn’t nothing.