Chapter One #2
With a stern look and a sharp tug, I felt the zipper give and yanked the dress-slash-straitjacket up and over her head, my aunt yelping with joy as her arms were released, and spinning in a semi-clad circle to celebrate her freedom.
‘For a minute there, I thought you were going to have to bury me in that thing.’ She snatched the dress out of my hands and tossed it in the general direction of her wastepaper basket. ‘I think I pulled something in my neck. I should sue the store.’
‘Did you try it on before you bought it?’ I asked.
She replied with a glare, an Ashley Bell special.
‘Sorry, what I meant to say was, you must absolutely call a lawyer,’ I said. ‘How dare a clothing store exchange goods and services for money? They must be stopped.’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,’ Ashley informed me as I crossed the room, retrieved the dress from the trash and gave it a shake. ‘You’re not good at it.’
I answered her with a glare of my own.
‘Then thank goodness I’m learning from the best.’
Laying the straightened-out dress on the bed, I ignored her as she pulled on an oversized blue shirt, then glanced towards the door, her nose twitching as she sniffed.
‘What is that smell?’ she asked. ‘Did you spill perfume or something?’
‘Um, something like that.’
With one eye on the door, I willed the flowers and trees that still filled the parlour to return to the earth.
As pretty as they were, a field of flowers in the parlour wasn’t exactly practical, especially when non-magical company came calling.
A blanket of living plants underfoot was the sort of thing people tended to notice.
‘Are you hungry?’ I asked, quickly changing the subject. The last thing I needed was another lecture from Ashley about controlling my magic. ‘I thought maybe we could go out for dinner tonight. I don’t know why, but I’m totally craving barbecue.’
‘While I would bite your arm off for a half-rack of ribs, I can’t.’
My disappointed face only earned a huff of frustration.
‘Since Catherine is still “visiting friends overseas”, I have to show my face at the historical society meeting,’ she explained with air quotes and a look of distaste.
‘Unless you want to conjure my mother up from whatever godforsaken magical hole she’s hiding in before six p.m., in which case, ribs are on me. ’
While I had spent the last four weeks getting to grips with my new reality as a witch, Ashley had spent it getting to grips with reality altogether.
For eleven long years, Catherine kept her magic-less daughter tethered to Bell House, unable to leave the enchanted grounds without permission.
At twenty-seven, she was free to stray, and shop, as she pleased for the first time in her life, but Catherine’s absence came with a price.
Someone had to take over all the responsibilities that came with belonging to one of the most prominent families in Savannah and, super-mega witch or not, I was still only seventeen, which meant most of the dull day-to-day stuff fell on Ashley’s shoulders.
I felt terrible. The blessing only visited every other generation; so Catherine and I were witches, but Ashley was not.
Instead of enjoying her new-found freedom, her days were taken up with Catherine’s business interests, her volunteer groups, council meetings, and the historical society.
Not quite the stuff dreams were made of, but there was no way around it.
‘Oh gosh, why didn’t I think of that before?’ I exclaimed in my very best Georgia peach accent. ‘Let me just snap my fingers and bring her on back – I sure would hate for you to be inconvenienced in any way, Miss Ashley.’
‘No need to be so touchy,’ she said with a smirk. ‘It was only a suggestion.’
I attempted a smile but my reply came out as a rough-edged whisper. ‘You know I’ve tried. I want to know where she is as much as you do.’
It was the truth. Catherine wasn’t just Ashley’s mother, my grandmother and a grand dame of Savannah society.
No, first and foremost, she was a Bell witch.
Just like me but at some point, she had decided magic was more important than the lives of people she was supposed to love.
She killed my mother and my father, her own son, but when she tried to siphon off my abilities for herself, it was one transgression too many for our ancestors to forgive.
Even when she offered up her own life to save mine, it wasn’t enough to appease them.
One moment we were together in our family crypt, surrounded by every Bell witch to have ever lived, the next she was gone.
Whatever plane of existence Catherine found herself on now, she was lost to me and Ashley until our foremothers decided otherwise.
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Or maybe she really is …’ My aunt’s eyes drifted over to the window. ‘Maybe she really is gone.’
I didn’t reply because I didn’t know what to say.
Like Ashley, I felt conflicted about Catherine.
The woman was a manipulator and a murderer; she’d taken the lives of both my parents and had been ready to sacrifice my friends and my love in order to control my magic.
Yet despite all the horrific things she had done, there was still a part of me that missed her.
When I was alone in the world, my grandmother had given me a home, made me feel I belonged.
When I woke up screaming from a nightmare, it was Catherine I hoped to find sitting by my bed, telling me I was safe.
Without her intervention, I might never have found my magic – a fate I couldn’t begin to comprehend now.
And I knew that, even in her darkest moments, she’d truly believed she was doing the right thing.
In her eyes, she wasn’t stealing my magic but defending the Bell legacy from someone she saw as unworthy.
Ashley flipped her long brown braid over her shoulder, letting it slice through the tension in the room.
‘You’d think those ancestral ghosties might be more helpful,’ she said. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate them saving your life and all, but it’s bad manners to swoop in and spirit Catherine away without giving me a chance to ask where she keeps the credit cards.’
‘Typical long-lost relatives,’ I replied. ‘Show up for your birthday party then vanish into thin air when it’s time to clean up.’
‘Speaking of polter-gran, still no sign of her?’
I shook my head.
‘No sign of any of them.’
Pressing her lips together into a tight line, Ashley’s chest swelled with a deep breath, as though she was preparing herself for something unpleasant.
‘I’m going to suggest something but, before I do, I would ask that you don’t punch me in the face,’ she said, holding her hands out to defend herself.
I nodded for her to go on.
‘Maybe the formerly-alive members of the family might feel more chatty if you took a trip down to Bonaventure to visit?’
Something fragile snapped in my chest, letting loose that dark sequence of images. Bonaventure Cemetery, Catherine, the archway, a wolf, the moon, black sky, red-haired women and so much blood …
‘Really?’ I replied, taut and tense and forcing the scenes to the edges of my mind. ‘You want me to go back to the place where I almost died to ask a ghost where Catherine keeps her Mastercard?’
Ashley sighed theatrically and turned to sift through the assortment of brightly coloured T-shirts and tanks piled on her bed.
‘I don’t know what this world is coming to,’ she said.
‘If you can’t trust the ghost of your three-hundred-year-old original witch ancestor, who can you trust?
But honestly, if it’s a choice between risking my life in the cemetery or spending another day bartering with those fools down at the bank, I’d happily choose the cemetery – ghosts, gremlins, wolves and all. ’
‘And you could pick up Randy’s BBQ on your way back,’ I said, a half-hearted joke. ‘If you come back.’
Softening slightly, Ashley abandoned the pile of clothes and smoothed my hair away from my face.
We’d come a long way in the last few weeks.
It felt like only two minutes since I’d been dumped into her life, the aunt I didn’t know existed, the niece she’d never asked for.
Now I couldn’t imagine my life without her.
‘You’re spending altogether too much time cooped up in this house,’ she said. ‘Trust me, I should know. Why don’t you call Lydia? Surely that little monster will find the time to come over and keep you company while I’m out at this dumb meeting.’
‘Really?’ I replied with wonder. ‘You’re really suggesting I invite Lydia Powell into this house?’
‘As long as she’s gone by the time I get back.’
Former enemies, my aunt and my best friend had forged an unspoken truce, finding a way to tolerate each other ever since Lydia and her twin brother, Jackson, had been dragged into our family drama. And by ‘dragged into’, I did mean ‘were almost killed by’.
‘As much as I know you would love to see her, Lyds has something planned with her grandmother,’ I said, pretending not to notice when she let out a small exhale of relief. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.’
‘A likely story,’ she replied. ‘What about Wyn, have you heard from him?’
I bit into my bottom lip, pressing down until I tasted blood.
I had not heard from Wyn.
‘That’s it, you’re coming to the meeting with me,’ Ashley declared.
‘And don’t you try to talk your way out of it because if I have to sit through another debate about whether or not Mr Ellison can paint the front of his townhouse fluorescent pink, then you should suffer too.
And I just know Mr Chisholm would love to educate you on the history of the Farewell Ball at City Market.
I swear, if that man tries to show me the photos of his grandmother dressed as a slice of cantaloupe one more time—’