Chapter Thirty-Three
With everything happening around us, it didn’t feel like the right time for a party but Lydia would not be told.
‘All I’m saying is, having a party the day before your Becoming really feels like we’re asking for trouble,’ I pointed out from the easy chair in her bedroom, nestled in among her piles of clothes. ‘Can’t you have it Friday or Saturday, or wait until the weekend after?’
‘The weekend after is ten days after our birthday, no one wants to celebrate ten days late, it isn’t the same,’ she said, staring at the screen of her laptop and swirling the cursor over a helium tank before clicking add to cart.
‘Friday night is Patsy Lunsford’s annual back to school party, practically the social event of the season, and Saturday is the first day of the college football season. ’
‘So?’
She stared back at me, mouth open, eyes blinking.
‘In case there was ever any doubt you were not raised in Savannah,’ she declared. ‘Jackson and I could give away winning lottery tickets at our party and people would still choose the Georgia Bulldogs over us. It has to be Sunday.’
A week had passed since her Wilcuma and now all I could think of was her Becoming ceremony.
Wyn and Jackson were in charge of worrying about Astrid Hansen, albeit not together, and my job was to get Lydia safely through the final ritual in one piece.
I had more confidence in myself, after the Wilcuma, but every evening, when the moon bloomed slightly bigger in the sky than it had the night before, my confidence in keeping the Weres away diminished.
We’d been agreed the ceremony would take place at Bell House, the safest possible location, and Virginia would attend though she couldn’t take Lydia through it herself.
While I concerned myself with making sure the whole thing went off without a hitch, Lydia was busy clicking through a party supply website adding more and more items to her cart.
‘You can sit there with that frown on your face all day,’ Lydia said. ‘We’re not cancelling. I get that you’re worried, really I do, but what’s the point in all of this if we’re hiding away at home for the next eighty years? Why try to save lives we’re not living?’
‘It’s not only our lives we have to think about.’
‘Maybe, but sometimes I think you’ve forgotten you aren’t just a witch. You’re a whole person, Em, you have to remember that. I totally respect your commitment but dedication can turn into obsession. Isn’t that how Catherine found herself on the wrong path?’
‘I know,’ I replied, sucking the air in through my teeth. ‘But I won’t get lost the way she did. I have too much to live for. Catherine didn’t have you or Jackson, she didn’t have Wyn.’
‘She had Virginia, she had her husband, she had Ashley.’ Lydia paused and softened her voice to deliver the final blow. ‘She had your dad.’
I flinched as though I’d been hit. The truth sometimes hurt more than a physical blow.
‘Besides’ – my best friend glanced at me with shifty eyes, slipping back into a lighter, happier tone – ‘it’s not only a birthday party. We’re celebrating me coming into my full magic.’
‘Maybe we don’t announce your new status to the entire city,’ I suggested, my new diamond pendant tapping against my mother’s gold locket. ‘Unless you want me to order a cake that says “congrats on being a witch”?’
‘I already ordered the banner and the party hats, so, sure, if you don’t mind.’
‘There’s no point arguing with you, I know that.’ I sighed when she pumped her fist with success. ‘But I have conditions. One, you don’t invite the entire town, two, it’s over before midnight and three, it has to happen at Bell House.’
‘I’m down for everything except for point number two. Midnight is when all the best things happen at parties, everyone knows that. We’re turning seventeen not twelve.’
One thing about Lydia Powell, she always got her way. But I wasn’t going to let this one go. I didn’t have a ton of experience to share with my sister witch but I did know about this.
‘After midnight it’ll officially be the day of your Becoming,’ I told her. ‘It’s intense, you need to prepare.’
‘A girl can’t prepare and party at the same time?’
‘You tell me,’ I replied with an arched eyebrow. ‘Weren’t you the one who caused a typhoon in her own bathroom yesterday?’
‘Excuse me for thinking it might be fun to turn the tub into a jacuzzi,’ she muttered. ‘Fine, we’ll keep a lid on the late-night shenanigans. Everyone out by two a.m.’
‘Midnight.’
‘One a.m.’
‘Midnight.’
‘Fine!’ she said, throwing up her hands. ‘With a small after party for close acquaintances.’
‘Tell me y’all aren’t planning my own birthday party without me?’
I looked up to see Jackson leaning against the doorjamb, a sly grin on his face.
He winked and I returned a tight smile. Ever since her initiation, Lydia had been inclined to stay closer to home than usual.
Not that I didn’t understand, she was still going through unpredictable growth spurts that got stronger every day.
Little flurries of snow appearing whenever she felt too warm, winds whipping up out of nowhere when she wanted her laundry to dry faster, and the skies over the whole city darkening when her favourite author announced a delay to the upcoming final book in her favourite series.
But things still felt off between Jackson and me.
Or to be more accurate, things were off between Jackson and Wyn, and I was caught in the middle.
‘You can’t be trusted with party plans and you know it,’ Lydia said. ‘If it were up to him, we’d have a keg and a Costco pack of Solo cups and that would be it.’
‘Not true,’ Jackson replied. ‘I would also order pizza. Em, you got a sec?’
‘She was just leaving.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘If you don’t leave, I’ll go,’ Lydia replied. ‘You’re killing my vibe.’
When I followed him out of his sister’s room, something seemed off.
Lydia swore he’d be out all day buying back-to-school supplies and I hadn’t heard or sensed him arriving home.
As Lydia’s magic moulded itself around her, mine felt clearer, more finely tuned.
There were so many ghosts in the streets, I could hardly leave the house without walking into someone and everywhere I went, my favourite flowers bloomed months out of season.
So how come Jackson Powell had become a walking, talking blank space?
He strolled casually into his room, expecting me to follow.
Instead, I lingered in the doorway, one foot in and one foot out.
The space was so definitively him, classic with a cool twist, all crisp colours and clean lines, one wall covered in memorabilia, an assortment of ticket stubs, postcards, posters, photographs and sketches.
If I tried to do something like that, it would look like a toddler threw the contents of a trashcan at the wall, but Jackson managed to make it look stylish, like something out of a gallery.
‘Didn’t want to distract Lyds when I know she’s studying,’ he said as he flicked through a stack of papers on his antique rolltop desk. ‘Or at least when she’s supposed to be studying. It’s Astrid.’
‘You’ve found her?’
‘I reckon so.’
Reservations forgotten, I was at his side in half a second as he pulled out a bunch of printouts and handed them to me one at a time.
‘Wasn’t easy to find much, your girl doesn’t like to leave a paper trail. Had to get her name on the magic shop lease, something to do with the alarm company.’
I studied each piece of paper in turn. The first was a copy of the lease, complete with address, phone number and social security number, the second a photograph of an old Victorian house and the third, what looked like a blurry doorbell camera image of the woman from the magic shop.
‘All the info on the lease is bogus except the phone number, and that’s out of order now.
But I did get one hit off of it: a short-term rental down on Jefferson Street.
According to the guy who lived downstairs, she damn near set the whole building on fire four or five times, but the landlord never once spoke to her about it. ’
The whole thing reeked of magic, whether Wyn believed it or not.
‘How did you get all this?’ I asked, staring at the photo, my magic prickling at the sight of her. The violet eyes were hard and the rest of her features fell naturally into an antagonistic scowl.
‘Friend of a friend. Someone I know from the historical society, used to be a police officer, now he kind of digs into people’s lives as a kind of hobby.’
‘A kind of hobby where he gets paid a ton of money and has a special licence?’
‘Something like that,’ he shrugged, as though hiring a private investigator to hunt down a werewolf were a perfectly normal thing to do.
‘Also, the neighbour said she had a strong accent. Couldn’t say what exactly but definitely not one he could identify, and this dude works in a hotel downtown so nothing obvious.
My guy said it sounded like he was doing an impression of Count von Count. Should I be worried about vampires?’
‘I’d love to tell you no,’ I replied, still studying another photograph of Astrid, standing on a stoop, lit cigarette in one hand, a cell phone pressed up to her ear.
‘Great, garlic knots for dinner then,’ Jackson deadpanned.
‘Strange how she couldn’t find a way around the alarm company stuff.
She rented a place, a car, seems as though she’s got her hands on a phone but there’s no trace of her on anyone’s records.
The landlord for the rental remembered her but couldn’t find any paperwork. ’
‘Where is the alarm company based?’
Jackson held out his hand for the lease and scanned the piece of paper quickly.
‘Company address is listed as Tennessee, but the phone number has a +91 area code.’