Chapter 7
My knees wobbled. I stared at the wholesome-looking woman standing in front of me. The chilly night air made me shiver as it slipped past me, into my house, as if it had just been waiting for an opening.
“How do you know about—?” I stopped. Should I admit that I had the grimoire to a stranger? Probably not. I only had her word that she was who she said she was, and who she said she was did not seem even remotely possible to me. I took a steadying breath.
Eloise tipped her head to the side and blinked at me.
She didn’t look dead. Perhaps she was excessively pale, but otherwise, she appeared absolutely normal.
Her cheeks were round, her nose pert, and her eyes were kind and filled with understanding.
Clearly the strange woman was suffering from something, but being dead wasn’t it.
“Why did you say that Mamie was murdered by my mother?” I put aside her claim of being deceased for the moment and focused on the statement that alarmed me the most, as it seemed overly personal.
“I thought it was common knowledge,” Eloise said.
“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” I said. “And I don’t believe you.”
“Poor lamb.” Eloise lifted her hand as if she would pat my arm, but she paused, neatly clasping her hands in front of her. “I assumed you knew. Oh, I have made a mess of things, haven’t I?”
I said nothing. What could I say? It wasn’t true. There was no way it could be true. It was an outrageous thing to say. I mean, I would have known if my mom had murdered Mamie, wouldn’t I?
Eloise sighed. “In our world, everyone believes that Juliet murdered Toni when she stole the grimoire and disappeared.”
I felt my heart pound in my chest. I remembered the argument between my mom and Mamie right before my mother insisted we leave my grandmother’s house in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. I knew my mom had been furious that Mamie had begun to teach me magic. But murder?
I would deny it completely, except I remembered my mom’s erratic behavior during the years when we moved constantly, never staying anywhere longer than a school semester and usually shorter than that.
Had she— we —been on the run? It would explain so much.
I thought of Agatha’s guess that my mom had been living in other time periods.
Had she been accused of murder? Was she hiding from authorities?
Was she hiding the grimoire? But why? Had she left me in Agatha’s care to avoid putting me in danger? I thought I was going to be sick.
“Of course, since your mother’s death was also a murder—”
“ What? ” I cried. “Why would you say such a thing?”
Eloise’s mouth formed an O and her eyes went wide. She didn’t answer, as if aware that I was seconds from slamming the door in her face.
“My mother was not murdered.” I said the words slowly with extra emphasis. “She died in her sleep at Mystwood Manor, where she was a resident.”
“Okay.” Eloise’s eyebrows lifted, as if she knew better than to argue with me about this.
I felt my anger dissipate as I realized I was standing on my porch in the cold, arguing with a perfect stranger. This was ridiculous.
“How exactly did you find me?” I asked.
Eloise’s eyes brightened as if she, too, was relieved by the change of subject. “I’ve always known where you were, but you didn’t have the grimoire, so you couldn’t help me.”
I swallowed. Had it been this woman my mom had been running from? It seemed improbable, but this hadn’t been a typical day, and I really had no idea what to think about anything at the moment.
“Once you opened the book, I sensed it bonding to you just as it did to your mother. Sadly, I could never manage to find her. Very talented your mother was. I’m certain she would have had no trouble with the necromancy spells—both the retrieving and returning of the dead.
No matter. Now that you have the Donadieu grimoire, you can send me on.
” Eloise stared at me hopefully and I felt my face grow warm as I thought about the book in my safe.
I didn’t know this woman. I wasn’t about to tell her anything. As a librarian and book lover myself, I knew how fanatical people could be about books. I could only imagine what a ruckus a grimoire, readable or not, might cause.
There was no help for it. I needed the input of professionals.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you, but I know some people who can.” Before Eloise could say a word, I said, “Come back tomorrow morning at eight and I’ll take you to them.”
Eloise’s eyes narrowed in suspicion just for a moment, but then her congenial smile was back in place, the fleck of pink lipstick still on her teeth. “All right. Sleep well, Zoe.”
Relieved that Eloise had agreed to go without a fuss, I stepped back into the house, noting that the raven who’d tapped on my window earlier was again perched on the mailbox.
It turned its head to the side and studied me with a sharp gaze from its pale blue eye.
Weirdly, it made me feel as if it was watching over me, and I was strangely comforted by that.
I locked the door behind me. It didn’t feel like enough protection, so I took one of the wooden chairs from my small dining set and wedged it under the door handle.
Yes, Eloise was in her fifties. No, she didn’t look as if she worked out.
But she also believed she was dead and needed a spell from a grimoire to move on, so I figured better safe than sorry.
I shut off all the lights in the living room and peered out the peephole, which gave me a view of the other side of the front door and the walkway. It was empty. Only the raven on the mailbox remained, ever watchful.
Quietly, I prepped for bed and climbed into my cocoon of blankets.
I tucked them tightly around me. It was a habit I’d developed as a kid who’d moved around a lot.
I’d always felt as if my bed was my safe space.
So long as I was tucked in nice and tight, the monsters couldn’t get me.
Even in the summer when it was hot, I slept with a light blanket and I never ever let so much as a toe poke out.
Mentally, I ran through my day tomorrow. I was going to have to call out of work…again. I didn’t like it, but it couldn’t be helped.
The grimoire. I’d never heard of it until it had showed up at the library.
Yes, I had grown up knowing that Mamie and my mom were witches, but when my mother had left me in Wessex, she’d made me promise to forget all of it.
She’d insisted a magical life brought nothing but misery, and as I was abandoned at boarding school, having lost everyone I loved in one way or another, I believed her. I’d shut it all down.
Agatha, to her credit, had never pushed her belief in or practice of the witchy arts onto me—probably because Mom told her not to—so I’d spent the last twenty-two years happily living a quiet nonmagical life in Wessex just like the regular folks.
Now it felt as if all my peace was being ripped away from me.
I could feel my anxiety bubbling up inside me.
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through it.
I hadn’t had a panic attack in years and refused to have one now.
Remembering what my mother had taught me when I was little and had nightmares, I visualized myself floating, as light as a flower petal on a warm spring breeze.
I could feel the tension seep out of my shoulders and my back.
The breeze gently tugged on my hair and clothes as I drifted over rolling green hills with the sounds of happy songbirds in my ears.
My lightness of being filled me up and I felt warmed from the inside out.
I sighed, relieved to have staved off the anxiety attack.
I slowly opened my eyes and blinked. I was staring at the ceiling, but instead of being eight feet away, it was only one foot.
I could reach out and touch the swirling patterns in the paint if I tried.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw my bed many feet below.
I started and yelped and then I was falling, landing on my bed with a thump.
I scrambled up to a seated position, clutching my blankets to my chest.
Had I really just levitated? How? Why? Did Eloise have something to do with this? No, that made no sense. Maybe I was dreaming. I pinched myself. Ouch! No, not dreaming. There was simply no denying what had just happened. Somehow I had caused that to happen. But how?
I always did a floating visualization to calm myself down and I had never—not once—actually floated. What had changed? The grimoire.
I was now in possession of a mysterious grimoire, and dead people were showing up at my door, and I was performing magic in my sleep. This was so bad.
Now I had two things to talk to the staff of the BODO about. Eloise and my sudden ability to levitate. Surely, given their extensive collection of the strange, they could help me with both.
Reassured that I had a strategic plan in place, I closed my eyes, willing sleep to come.
It didn’t. Instead, images from my childhood flitted through my brain like the trailer for a stinker of a movie.
Usually I could stuff my memories and my feelings into a little glass jar in my mind and twist the lid until it was nice and tight, but tonight I couldn’t.
My thoughts were as wild as a can of snakes.
My father. I remembered him as a tall, dark-haired, deep-voiced man who was always cheerfully singing.
Whenever he returned home from work, he’d pick me up and swing me around, kissing both my cheeks before setting me back on my feet.
My mother would laugh almost as hard as I did, and she would gaze at him with so much love in her eyes.
I felt my throat get tight. I swallowed past the lump. I blinked and mentally pictured stuffing these feeling back into their jar. They wouldn’t go.