Chapter 14 #2
When I got to The Codfather, Yasmin spotted me immediately and waved me over.
She was seated with Miranda in a booth at the back of the restaurant.
The walls were lined with mobster movie posters, and the whole place smelled strongly of grease.
When I sat down, Yasmin pushed a basket of fried cod and french fries at me.
“Here. We have a lot to go over.” She wiped her hands on a napkin and added it to a large pile next to her plate.
I regarded the basket with suspicion. “You ordered for me?”
“We did.” Miranda smiled sweetly.
They were both seated on one side of the booth, with me on the other.
“What is this? An interrogation?” I said warily. “Or an intervention? I don’t smoke anymore and I had two beers last night, max. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“It’s not an intervention,” replied Yasmin. “Though your wardrobe could use one.”
I looked down at my vintage Bikini Kill T-shirt and frowned. “What’s wrong with my—never mind, you’re changing the subject. Why did we have to meet here instead of talking at the house?”
“Privacy, dear,” Miranda said. She picked up a french fry between two fake nail tips and daintily brought it to her lips.
It was the lunch rush, so the restaurant was packed with tourists. I raised my eyebrows skeptically.
“Eat,” Yasmin ordered. “And we’ll explain.”
My stomach growled, and I relented, squeezing a lemon wedge over a fish filet. As I ate, Yasmin brought out her old book and set it next to Agatha’s on the table.
Miranda gestured at the books. “These books make up the Cartwright Coven grimoire. Starting sometime in the 1600s, the book was passed down from mother to daughter, each generation adding to the knowledge contained within. At times, the book was copied—split to share between siblings who both inherited the gift of magic. This is what happened when Agatha and her sister Martha were born. Although Martha was the more powerful witch of the two of them, both sisters had a copy of the grimoire. When Martha died, hers was to be copied and split and passed to her daughters, Helena and Vivian.”
At the mention of my mother’s name, I put down the french fry I’d been eating, suddenly not hungry.
Miranda’s face grew sad. “I wasn’t on the island yet, but Agatha told me about the time she spent caring for her sister’s children—your mothers.
She tried her best but found it very challenging.
The girls were traumatized by the death of their mother.
Agatha didn’t know how to raise any children, never mind emotionally fragile ones. ”
Miranda folded her hands on the table, looking down at her mostly full basket of food. “And Agatha was also a little lost, I think, after her sister’s death.”
We fell quiet for a moment, silently considering the passing of a woman none of us knew.
But even though I struggled to understand my mother through most of my childhood and adolescence, I knew that the death of my grandmother Martha had a profound effect on her.
She often blamed her death on spirits and threw herself even more fervently into her worship whenever something reminded her of her mother.
Miranda continued. “Since Vivian wanted nothing to do with Agatha, her sister, or witchcraft, instead of copying Martha’s book, the original was passed to Helena. Then, to Yasmin.”
Yasmin picked up the tale from there. “My mother added to her grimoire, in keeping with tradition.” She flipped through her book until she got to a page almost at the end of the book.
“When I left for Michigan, she entrusted it to me. I’ve been cross-referencing Agatha’s book with my mom’s to find out if there’s missing or complementary information in each volume.
” She smiled, clearly proud of her work.
“Wait—” I pointed at Yasmin with a french fry. “She didn’t pass the book down to you until you left?”
Yasmin blinked.
“Why not? She didn’t trust you with it until she sent you off to do her dirty work for her?”
“I . . .” Yasmin’s face fell.
“Let’s not get sidetracked,” said Miranda. “You’ve accomplished a great deal in the short time you’ve been here, Yas.”
Yasmin shook her head. “You’re right. Both of you.
” She looked at me, unflinching. “My mother didn’t trust me with her grimoire, and she didn’t tell me about Annabelle.
When I see her again, I ... we’re going to have a discussion about that.
But I think it’s because she wanted me to figure this out on my own. ”
“And ... what? I still don’t see what any of this has to do with me.” I took a gulp of the soda they’d gotten me, slurping loudly through the straw.
“I’m getting to that.” Yasmin flipped through both books until she got to a page with what looked like a long poem.
Both books had about the same length of text on the page, though written in different handwriting.
Yasmin turned the books around to face me.
“This is the ritual that we think Agatha was working on before she died.”
She pointed to the page in Agatha’s book.
“This page was written in Agatha’s grimoire by her grandmother long before she was born.
” Then she pointed to the corresponding page in hers.
“And this page was written by Martha herself, sometime shortly before her death. Each book has the instructions and part of the ritual text.”
I shrugged. “So? Two books with the same info. You said yourself that they overlap.” I waved my hands in the air sarcastically. “And that you have psychic visions .”
She shook her head. “This ritual gains its power by numerology and the position of the moon. It’s written in Sicilian tercet, and the whole thing is based on the number three. This means that Agatha only had one-third of the picture. She didn’t know that my mother’s book had the second part.”
Miranda wiped her fingers daintily on a napkin, then rummaged in her purse. She brought out an old book and put it on the table. This one looked more like a dime-store romance paperback than a magic tome. “And I have the final third.”
“But you’re not a member of the family. No offense. How did you get a magic book?” I asked, before remembering that I didn’t care about any of this.
With a smile, Miranda said, “It may not be a fancy handmade volume like yours, but this book called to me. I picked it up in an adult bookstore clearance bin in San Francisco in the ’70s.”
She pursed her lips, and I could tell there was a wealth of stories behind that sentence waiting to be told, if someone asked.
But she shook her head. “When Agatha found out I had a copy of her family’s heritage, she was beside herself.
Nearly broke a hip laughing! It’s a funny old world, isn’t it? ”
Yasmin sat up straight, squaring her shoulders.
“This is what Agatha wanted to achieve before she died. According to her research, the ritual had to happen on a certain date, but she couldn’t figure out what that date was.
But I did. With this research, I proved myself worthy of the Cartwright grimoire. ”
“Congratulations,” I said dryly.
She ignored my sarcasm and continued. “But the ritual must be performed on the date of the next blood moon.”
I nodded. “Annabelle told me about Agatha becoming obsessed with a ritual before she died. But she said it required three people.”
Yasmin and Miranda looked at each other, then at me.
“Oh, no,” I said, holding up my hands. “I’m not going to help you cast a spell. I don’t believe in any of this. If you two want to do some hocus pocus next week on the full moon, you can go right ahead. But leave me out of it.”
Miranda dabbed her face with a napkin.
“You’ll want to do this with us, Gibson.” Yasmin looked like the cat that got the cream. Or the witch with the fastest broom.
“And why’s that?”
“Because the spell summons Annabelle.”
“You don’t need a spell to summon her.” I shrugged, letting my incredulity show in my voice. “Just walk in the door and say, ‘Hey, Annabelle.’ She’ll come right out.”
“Gibson, you’re not listening.” Yasmin leaned forward. Her sleeve pooled on the place mat, perilously close to a tub of ketchup.
“The ritual has to be done on the blood moon—the night of the thirty-first. If we perform it according to the instructions in all three grimoires, we can summon Annabelle, the living person . We can return her to her body.”