Chapter 16
Dinner was already on the table when I entered the kitchen. I joined the meal in progress, shooting a quick glance at Yasmin. With my expression, I dared her to make a smart remark about my tardiness or our conversation at lunch.
“You’ve got to try this,” Nate said. He filled my empty plate with pieces of chicken and piled it high with mashed potatoes. He handed me the plate and pointed to the wine bottle to ask if I wanted a glass. “Your roommate is an amazing cook.”
I mouthed the word “roommate” to Annabelle, who wore an amused smirk.
They’d pulled the table out from the wall so it could accommodate four people.
Yasmin and Nate had already filled their glasses with wine, and I held mine out while Nate poured.
Tonight, he was wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants.
They were a little wrinkled, but he’d made the effort. His hair was even gelled in place.
“Gibson,” Yasmin said meaningfully, “don’t you have something to tell Annabelle?” The sweet smile she wore had teeth of its own.
I cleared my throat and smiled right back. “Yes, I do.” Turning to Annabelle, I said, “I’m writing a song.”
“Really? That’s wonderful, dear!”
Deciding to return fire on my cousin, I said, “Yas, did you want to tell Annabelle about your magical breakthrough?”
If she wasn’t sitting all the way across the table, I think Yasmin might have kicked me.
“Did you make progress on what you were trying to figure out, Yas?” Annabelle asked innocently. Nate watched the three of us, looking completely oblivious to the layers of conversation happening between two cousins and a ghost.
“Yes, I did,” Yasmin said. “I discovered the time frame for the ritual and that it requires angelica. I scoured the backyard for it but couldn’t find any. Miranda is trying to track it down via sketchy sites on the internet.”
“That’s lovely, dear,” said Annabelle, taking a pretend sip from her empty glass of wine.
Yasmin and I glared at each other until my stomach growled and I had to back down so I could take a bite.
The food really was delicious. I told Annabelle so, and she accepted the compliment, seeming to glow even brighter.
As I ate, she talked about the recipe she’d used and which book she found it in.
Then she regaled us with a story of how she had almost burned down the house trying to teach Agatha to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving.
Apparently, they’d had to call the Mackinac Island Fire Department, and then Miranda had flirted a little too hard with one of the firefighters and that led to a whole other story.
By the end of it, all three of us were cracking up.
In the lull that followed, Nate asked, “So, Gibson, you live in New York? What’s that like?”
“It’s, uh, exactly like what people think living in New York is like,” I said. “Rats. The best food in the world. Etc.”
“Cool.” Nate’s eyes were wide. The man didn’t have a sarcastic bone in his body. His earnest manner should’ve been infuriating, but it wasn’t in the slightest. “And you like it there?”
“Don’t even bother, babe,” Yasmin cut in. “Gibson doesn’t talk about herself.”
“What are you talking about?” I protested. “I’m an open book!”
“You are not an open book,” she shot back. “You’re like ... something happened to you and then you closed yourself off from literally everyone around you.”
“That’s not true at all.” It was.
Nate carried on, unfazed. “Yasmin says you’re a musician?”
“That’s right.” To prove my point about being an open book, I told them everything you could find out about me on a basic Google search.
“I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico. I hated it, so when I turned eighteen, I hitchhiked to New York with a guitar, a dream, and a girlfriend who abandoned me when we hit St. Louis. I worked in shitty restaurants and played on the street until I met Babs. Now I rent a modest studio apartment and I have very little savings. I inherited an old house in Michigan and a crazy cousin. The end.”
I glared at Yas, daring her to object. In the back of my mind, my own voice whispered, This is not the end of my story.
“Yeah, but that’s just, like, facts,” Yasmin said. She took another sip of wine.
“What else do you want to know?”
Yasmin pointed her glass at me accusingly. “Hopes? Fears? Dreams?”
“How about this,” Nate said. “What did you want to be when you grew up?”
“Easy.” I took a sip of my own wine and pointed it at him. “Debbie Harry.”
“Who was your first crush?” he asked.
“Also Debbie Harry.”
Nate considered for a moment. “Who was your most embarrassing crush?”
I winced, then admitted, “Posh Spice.”
“No, no, that’s legit.” Nate nodded and gave me a fist bump.
Yasmin sputtered, “You can’t be bonding with my boyfriend! That’s not possible.”
I raised an eyebrow at “boyfriend” but decided not to give her shit about it. Yet.
Nate continued, seeming to enjoy his role as inquisitor. “Do you have any siblings?”
“No. I think my parents tried after I was born, but no.”
Yasmin nodded. “That explains a lot. My brothers would not let me act like you do.”
“What?” I sat back in my chair. “Wait, you have brothers? You never mentioned brothers.”
She shrugged. “Three. Daniel is a doctor, Eric is an accountant, and Dave is ... Dave.” She smiled fondly. “He’s a screwball but he helps me with the Etsy shop.”
“I can’t believe you never mentioned them,” I said.
“Are they witches too?” Annabelle asked.
She shook her head. “No. Daniel refuses to talk about Mom’s practice, Eric thinks it’s amusing, and Dave ... tries to help but he’s Dave.”
My understanding of Yasmin shifted to allow for her as the only girl in a rowdy house of boys with their own lives and their own ideas about magic.
I asked Annabelle, “Did you have any siblings? When you were ... alive?”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh, yes! Two brothers.” She also smiled fondly, fiddling with the fork next to her empty plate. “They fought and died in what you would call the Napoleonic Wars.”
The three living humans fell silent, unable to formulate responses to that.
Then Nate said, “My sister moved to Cleveland.”
After a pause, Annabelle, Yasmin, and I started chuckling, which then turned into all-out laughter. I had to wipe my eyes with a napkin.
“I did have a question about Annabelle, though,” Nate said. He looked at Yasmin, first, silently asking for her permission. Yasmin shrugged.
“Go ahead,” Annabelle said, her usual smile in place.
“Can you see the future?” he asked.
“She’s a ghost, not a psychic!” Yasmin said.
But Annabelle answered gently, “I don’t see the future, no. And I’m glad, too, because it’s hard enough keeping two hundred years of memories in my head. So many things have happened in the world, I can’t keep track of it all.”
“Do you have slime?” Nate asked.
“Slime?” Yasmin and I said in unison.
“Yeah, like Ghostbusters !”
“Oh, goodness,” Annabelle said, laughing. “I’m not sure. I suppose I’ve never tried to slime anyone!”
“Let’s not slime anyone at the dinner table, please,” I said. I gathered the empty dishes and brought them to the sink, then put away Annabelle’s unused plate. Then I opened another bottle of wine.
Yasmin had brought out her magic book and was letting Nate browse through the pages when I returned to the table.
“Oh, this looks like the Michigan Dogman,” Nate was saying, pointing to a page that did, indeed, look like a dog-like man.
“Don’t tell me you believe in all this, too, Nate?” I said with a groan. “What kind of house did you grow up in where witches and ghosts are no big deal?”
He smiled. “My mom is a hippy. Always sending me crystals for my birthday.” He scratched his stubbly chin, thinking. “She’s really into essential oils right now, but they make me sneeze.”
I squinted at him. “How are you real? It’s like you were grown in a lab to be Yasmin’s wholesome—” I stopped myself before I could say “boyfriend,” but Nate just laughed.
“I guess I’m ... open to possibilities.” The look he shared with Yasmin was flirty as fuck. I averted my eyes.
They looked at the book for a while, heads together. Then Nate asked, “How come you’re not a witch, Gibson? You didn’t get the witch gene?”
“No,” I said, “I most definitely did not. I don’t believe in anything I can’t see with my own eyes.”
“How can you not believe in anything? You’re sitting at a table with a literal ghost.” With the addition of wine, Yasmin’s words were bolder and louder than usual.
“Yeah, but the transitive property of spirits is not a thing.” I gestured at Annabelle, who was calmly observing us, clearly amused. “Just because I acknowledge that Annabelle is a ghost who should have died two hundred years ago doesn’t mean I also believe in the Easter bunny. Or leprechauns.”
“Oh, leprechauns are definitely real.” Yasmin nodded seriously. “You don’t want to mess with those guys.”
“Really?” Nate asked, eyes wide.
But Yasmin broke into a crude laugh. “No, I’m fucking with you.”
“You’re so ridiculous that I can’t tell when you’re joking!” I refilled my own glass and topped off Nate’s. Annabelle had her hands curled around an empty glass so that she would feel included.
“Wait, babe,” Nate said, “Can you see the future?”
Yasmin’s expression went serious. She swayed a little and seemed to have trouble focusing on the book.
“They’re not ... I’m not exactly sure what it is, honestly.
” She took the book from Nate and flipped through the pages until she found one.
Pointing to a crude drawing, she said, “There. When I have visions, I see that.”
“What is it?” Annabelle leaned closer to the book, but I grabbed it away from Yasmin, suddenly feeling completely sober and also like I might be sick.