Chapter 24
Before I can react, Hunter steps in front of me and swings his bat. It connects with the flimsy white chair, which explodes with a meaty crunch. The chunks fall to the ground and go still. All I can do is stand there and boggle.
There is no one else here.
Chairs should not just be throwing themselves across the room.
They should not be stacked like a house of cards.
Another chair wiggles free of the clot, and Hunter grabs my arm, but gently. Still I don’t move. I can’t stop staring at the chair, watching it shimmy like a giant is playing Chair Jenga and doesn’t want to topple the tower. Hunter tugs at me, but I am frozen in place.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he murmurs quietly, as if trying not to spook a wild animal.
When I don’t respond, he picks me up with one arm, tucks me against his body, and carries me toward the door.
As I am pulled out of danger, I notice a cascade of strange little details.
The storage room runs the full length of the building and is maybe twenty feet wide.
Other than the Chair Jenga, there are boxes, a mop bucket, a broken fan, the kind of detritus anyone might expect.
As I watch, the mop bucket’s wheels twitch, and then it zooms directly toward us.
The mop flies out of it and skitters along behind it like an uptight snake.
And that’s when I remember I have feet and start moving on my own.
We all but dive into the hardware store, and Hunter slams the door and puts his back against it. The loud clatter that makes him jump suggests the mop bucket is apoplectic at the fact that it hasn’t murdered us.
“What is happening?” I ask.
Hunter’s face looks like a very sexy thunderstorm, dark and determined with a promise of violence. “What’s happening is that you have a poltergeist.”
I pause, waiting for more.
Waiting for him to burst out laughing at how ridiculous that sounds.
Then I remember…
Magic.
“A poltergeist,” I say carefully, doubtfully.
He nods, slow and certain. “In a town this old, they happen. We’ve got plenty of ghosts, and sometimes they get mad and act out. Like toddlers.”
“Poltergeists,” I say to myself. “Ghosts. Yes. This is all very normal and fine.”
He sighs heavily as the mop bucket jumps against the door like a nervous dog. “We don’t have to beat around the bush. I’m a Blakely, you’re a Kirkwood. You have to know about magic.”
The fact that he doesn’t choke tells us both everything we need to know, and yet this one word changes everything between us.
How much does he really know?
About me, about Maggie, about my family? And this thing Maggie did, whatever made people angry—was it magical?
It had to be.
That would explain why only some of the locals hold a grudge—
Because the rest of them don’t know about magic and thus have no idea what really happened.
Just like me. I still don’t know, either.
“Magic,” I say cautiously, grateful for the calm in my trachea. “Okay, so poltergeists are real, and there’s one in the storage room, and it likes chairs and hates me. How do we get rid of it?”
“We could use a spell.” His face suggests that I know something I do not. Sarcastic, annoyed, pinched.
“Okay, let’s use a spell. Do you have one?”
His hands are on his hips now, the dust dancing around him as the mop bucket, or something, plays the door like a tambourine. “No, Rhea, I don’t have a spell. I was hoping you did. Because your grandmother stole them all.”
My jaw drops.
I don’t know how to respond to that.
“Maggie stole all the spells? From whom? How? Why?”
His lips twist as he regards me with more curiosity than anger now. “You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t. I felt the temperature in the room drop when Joyce revealed that I was a Kirkwood. A few people went colder than a Wendy’s Frosty, including you. But I had no idea why, and no way to find out. I don’t know anyone, remember? I’m brand-new.”
He nods, clearly fighting with himself. “You never met Maggie? How does someone never meet their grandmother?”
Oh, I am not a good liar. I choose my words carefully. “I knew she existed, but I absolutely never had any contact with her before she died. She—”
Won’t tell me what she did wrong, I almost say.
“Well, she just sounds like a mess. Mama hated her enough to run away, and now you’re saying she stole spells. What does that even mean? Did she burgle you?”
Hunter looks around the hardware store. This conversation, and my conversational partner, is so interesting that I kinda forgot about the mop bucket—ghost—poltergeist—on the other side of the storage room door. It has not forgotten about me. It sounds like a horse trying to kick down a barn door.
“Let’s go upstairs,” he says. “It’s best to give them space before they get too dangerous.”
He heads for the door to the alley. Before I join him, I put a hand to the storage room door and say, overly loud, “Ghost, I hear you. Whatever’s got you riled up, I’m sorry.” The pounding on the door stops for one moment, like it’s thinking, and then resumes twice as loud.
Not forgiven, then.
Once we’re out in the alley, I realize that upstairs is exactly the wrong place to go.
If Hunter is finally going to tell me the truth about Maggie, I don’t need her trying to chew his nose off while screaming at me telepathically.
I don’t know if she knows the true bite force of that beak, but I do, and giving Hunter stitches is not going to make him thaw toward me.
“Let’s go back to the video store if you don’t mind. Maybe I can start carrying out the office trash while we talk. My mama always said talking’s easier when your hands are busy, especially when you aren’t going to like what you hear.”
Hunter nods and we head for the video store.
The mop bucket doesn’t seem to mind us being over here at least, and it doesn’t sound like the Angry Chair Barricade is budging.
From this side of the door, all is silent, and I could almost believe that there’s nothing wrong and I have not been targeted by a supernatural entity.
I motion for him to talk, and we each pick up a box of old receipts and head for the dumpster.
“Well, I guess I should ask: How much do you know about magic? Were you raised with it?” he asks.
I don’t want to lie to him, but it’s sure hard to talk around the Maggie of it all. “Nope. But I had to put Maggie’s ashes in the falls, and then Doris bit me, and suddenly I could hear her in my head. And Shelby and Tina have helped me a little, but not much. I’m floundering.”
He nods. “Okay, so doing magic without a grimoire is almost impossible. The spells are extremely exact. This isn’t like cooking or even baking, where too little baking powder leaves you with a cake that’s ugly and flat but still edible.
You have to get the ingredients just right.
The ratio of blood to water is very specific, and the incantation—well, it’s hard enough even when you’re staring at the phonetic pronunciation.
So grimoires are precious, and spells are passed down among families and carefully guarded.
Nobody really talks about magic outside of their family.
It’s not forbidden, but the old folks act like it is. ”
We toss our boxes over the side of the dumpster and head back inside. “So did Maggie actually steal everyone’s grimoires?”
A soft snort. “Kind of. Listen, you know how sometimes old Southern women get really protective about their famous recipes? When they ‘share’ them”—he makes air quotes—“they leave out a few ingredients so that no one else can ever make Mildred’s Chocolate Dump Cake exactly the way she does.”
I nod. I definitely know the truth of that.
“Your grandmother cast a spell that did that to all the grimoires. She brought all the witches together for a potluck, and even though magic is generally a private family thing, she said she wanted everyone to join together to cast a spell of prosperity over Arcadia Falls after the big storm. Everybody trusted her. Why wouldn’t they?
Up until then, she was beloved around here. ”
I sneeze as I open the next box, which is full of old-timey credit card slips. I wonder if he knows that Maggie’s knack was influence. “How long ago was this?”
Hunter leans against the doorjamb. “A few years before I was born, as my grandmother tells it.”
He picks up the box I offer him, and I pick up a box of ancient lollipops, wondering if the raccoons are going to go into diabetic comas when they find tonight’s bounty. “So probably…not too long after my mom ran away.”
“Maybe? I don’t know the timeline. Anyway, since the storm destroyed your family’s old place, everyone got together at my grandmother’s farm and did this big ritual they were told would make Arcadia Falls prosperous and safe, protected from further storms. But instead, their grimoires became useless.
Ingredients missing, words smudged. They didn’t notice for a couple of days.
Knacks still helped with little things, and if someone had memorized a spell perfectly, it would still work, but the rest of the magic was out of reach.
Maggie said it was an accident, but everyone knew that was a lie. ”
We toss the boxes in the dumpster and return to the office for more.
“Folks started moving away, once they realized what had happened. My grandmother, aunt, and mother confronted Maggie, but she swore that she hadn’t done it on purpose and that there was no counterspell. Nothing she could do.”
“Did Maggie still have magic?” I ask as I quickly close a box over a rat skeleton nestled among stained VHS boxes that no one will want on eBay now.
Hunter steps back and holds up his arms. “Look at this place. A dying video store. Do you feel any magic here? The ritual must’ve hit her grimoire, too.”