Chapter 26
There’s a knock on the door.
We break apart, though not guiltily. Personally, I’m annoyed and disappointed, and I’d like to give the person on the other side of the door a kick in the shins. Hunter doesn’t look too pleased, either, and it’s nice to see that thunder aimed at someone besides me.
“Hasn’t this place been closed forever?” I ask.
Hunter looks longingly at my lips. “At least two years.”
“Well, you’d think the massive sheets of plywood and large Closed sign would set the tone.”
He rubs his stubble, which I almost got to feel rasping against my cheek. “Probably not a shopper. Must be one of the Chamber people.”
“Well, I hate them.”
I head for the door and pull back the newspaper plastered over the glass.
To my even greater annoyance, it’s Joyce Blakely, Hunter’s grandmother.
And she has seen me.
She gives me a tight smile—so like her grandson!—and points at the lock.
I have no choice but to open the door or further cement her hatred of me.
“Hi, Joyce,” I say, grateful at least that I don’t look like I’ve just been kissed into oblivion, because I’m pretty sure that’s where things were headed next, at least if I had anything to do with it. “Can I help you?”
“I just wanted to stop by and see how things are going,” Joyce says. She steps inside, politely shoving past me and looking around. “Poor girl. Left with such a mess. Maggie just sort of let things go, didn’t she?”
Time to show Hunter that unsinkable optimism. “Maybe so, but I have faith I can get things back in order.”
She walks around the antiques market, one hand on her purse, as if she’s shopping—for something specific.
“Have you explored the other properties much? The video store’s been open forever, but the hardware store’s been closed almost two decades, and this place has been shut up for two years, and the theater’s been out of commission for, oh, at least ten years. And who knows what’s upstairs.”
I do not tell Joyce about the storage room she failed to mention, including the poltergeist with a passion for percussion.
“One property at a time,” I say. “If you’re going to eat an elephant, might as well start with a little nibble and not go for the whole trunk.”
She beams at me like I’ve surprised her. “I swear, when I look at you, it’s like seeing Miranda again. She was a bright girl, which I know because she and Maggie never did get along. I guess if you’re here, your mama made a life somewhere else?”
I don’t know how I feel about Joyce. She has a right to be mad at my grandmother—more so than most. The spell theft occurred at her farm, and her daughter died trying to fix it.
And I know it’s easy to transfer that anger to me, even if I don’t deserve it.
But as things stand, I like her grandson.
And I’m realizing I want her to like me.
“Yes, ma’am, she did. She met my dad at college, and they were very happy together.
I have two sisters back in Alabama. My mama hated Maggie, and she made me promise to never come to Arcadia Falls, but…
” I look around. This shop, this downtown, this whole town, is magical.
“I figured with both my mama and Maggie gone, it would be okay. So I hope I can make it work.”
“Oh no. We lost Miranda, too? You poor thing.” Joyce pulls me into a hug much like the one I gave Hunter recently, and I’m enveloped in soft grandma, wrapped in the scent of baking and baby powder and hairspray.
This is what it should be like to hug a grandma.
All I get is claws and beak, these days, and that’s when I actually know where Maggie is. This is almost healing.
“Joyce?” I ask her hair.
“Yes, honey?”
I pull away and rub my eyes a little. “Can I be frank? There’s something I need to know.”
She cocks her head, confused. “Of course. I’ll help if I can.”
“I need to know more about how and why my grandmother messed with the spells. Why she took the magic.”
Joyce dusts some cobwebs off my shoulder. “Your generation. So bold. We would’ve danced around it for hours back in my day, offering each other sweet tea and cookies and smiling through lying teeth.” She sighs heavily. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”
I take a deep breath. “Because I want to find a way to restore it.”
She looks to Hunter and then back at me. “Oh, honey, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” There’s a note of panic in her voice. “You shouldn’t…No. It’s not worth it.”
I steady myself. I know this is a very sensitive topic for the Blakelys, but…
I don’t want to be on the outside anymore.
My family is from here. I belong here just as much as they do.
My grandmother betrayed them, and I want to set things right.
I want to give the magic back to Arcadia Falls.
“I don’t want to make up a spell,” I say, looking between grandmother and grandson. “I want to find Maggie’s grimoire. I think it’s still functional.” A deep breath. “I think she kept her magic when she stole yours. There might be something in that book that could help.”
Joyce puts a hand to her chest as emotions flit across her face.
Fear, worry, hope, more fear. She closes her eyes as if seeking an answer within and then grabs my hands in both of hers.
“Rhea, Hunter told me you were different, and he must be right. What you want to do—I appreciate it. It’s the right thing.
So I’m going to tell you something I haven’t told anyone.
” She looks around the antiques market again.
“I’ve been wondering for years if Maggie kept her magic.
There were little things, little things that could be explained away, but…
that’s why I’ve been so mad at her. She used me, she lied to me, and then she denied my family advantages I thought she’d kept for herself.
I think we’d learn a lot if we could find that grimoire.
But it could be anywhere. It could be somewhere in here, or it could be at the junkyard in her crushed car. With Maggie gone, we just don’t know.”
I almost tell Joyce and Hunter that Maggie isn’t truly gone, that for the moment she’s simply missing.
And yet something holds me back. We’ve just reached a new level of trust, but it’s dangerous for other people to know that Maggie is still around.
In her bird body, she’s relatively helpless.
I’m furious with her, and I know she’s been lying to me, but I can’t stand the thought of someone capturing her and threatening her to get what they want.
I don’t think Joyce would do that, but then nobody thought Maggie would do what she did, either.
Hunter’s been giving us space, but now he steps forward.
“We can look for it as we renovate the video store. Rhea, you can check around her apartment. Use your knack to find it, maybe? And you haven’t even been in the other two apartments or the theater.
All sorts of places where a book could be hidden. ”
Joyce releases my hands and nods. “I’ll talk to some of the other folks.
Quietly, of course. See if maybe they know of a place she might have hidden something.
Rhea, have you met Tina McGowan? She’s Diana’s daughter, and there’s a possibility that some of Maggie’s things might’ve ended up with her, since she and Diana were together when they passed. ”
I have to laugh. “So it could be anywhere in three apartments, a video store, a theater, a hardware store, Tina McGowan’s house, or the junkyard. Lordy, my grandmother was a piece of work.”
“That book’s been missing for decades. It’ll keep a while longer,” Joyce says.
“But it’s nice to know that you want to help.
I miss the days when witches helped each other.
” She walks over to Hunter for a hug. “I won’t keep you young people any longer.
I’ll be at Marla’s for lunch. You know where to find me.
” She stops at the door and looks back. “You’re a sweet girl, Rhea. Maggie didn’t deserve you.”
And then she’s gone and I’m locking the door behind her before the usual downtown shoppers try to rush in despite the plywood.
Part of me hopes Hunter will corner me against the door and try for another kiss, but I guess nothing kills the mood like an interrupting grandmother.
He’s keeping his distance. Of course, he’s also inspecting the bookshelves we came here to find, so I can’t really complain about that.
He plucks a paperback off the shelf and flips through it, making my heart flip, too.
“Can I keep this one?” he asks. “Bongo ate my copy of The Shining when he was a puppy.”
I can’t help grinning. Nothing makes a guy as cute as holding a book he loves. “Cujo would’ve been a more appropriate choice, but I guess puppies don’t know any better. Please, take anything you like.”
“Even the set of armor?”
I look back into the corner, where I see a life-size suit of armor. “Am I that scary?”
He laughs. “No, but some of my clients remind me of fire-breathing dragons.”
I wait, my back against the door. I’ll come over here again, once we’re further along, and see what else I need, but for now…
“So what’s the next step for the video store?” I ask. “I don’t mean to seem impatient, but…”
“Closed businesses aren’t good for business.
I get it.” He meets me at the door. “If we get the walls stripped and painted and the carpet torn up, I can get started as soon as I have the wood. The shelves will only take me a couple of days. Oh, and I’ll need a card to pay the lumberyard. Sound good?”
Maybe it’s not a kiss, but it’s just as sweet. “Yes, building my bookstore sounds good.”
It’s a relief to be back in the open air of the video store.
I give him Maggie’s debit card for the wood, and we both breathe a sigh of relief when it goes through and the lumber is officially mine.
As he moves around the room, I watch him, wondering if he feels the same constant pull toward me that I do toward him.
He has to; I catch him glancing at me, then looking down and smiling.
There’s something sweet and shy about him, something so different from the swagger of my only other boyfriend, back in Alabama.
“I feel so useless,” I say. “How can I help?”
“Maybe you could pack up all the movies and take down the posters? And if you want the walls a different color, we’ll need to clean and paint them before I start the build.
Three gallons of interior latex eggshell should do it.
I know that’s short notice for big design decisions, but I feel like you want this done fast.”
“Tidy up and buy paint,” I repeat. “Sounds like a fun afternoon.”
“Then I’m off to patch a hole in Marla’s wall. When I asked her how a cast-iron skillet ended up in the drywall, she told me she didn’t pay me to ask questions.”
“Well, just don’t give her a reason to throw a skillet at your head, and you should be fine.”
Hunter leaves, and then I’m alone in the store.
My store.
All I have to do is select a paint color.
And maybe that should intimidate me, but instead, I feel empowered. Hopeful. Excited. I have never had such freedom in my entire life, and I don’t have to ask for anyone’s opinion before I go buy paint. I know exactly what I want, and it feels amazing.
I fetch a couple of empty boxes from the hardware store and start carefully packing up the movies by genre.
Perhaps it didn’t seem like there were a lot of movies earlier, but now that I’m responsible for putting away every single box, there are way, way too many movies.
As I pull them from their shelves, I get accustomed to their weight and pay attention to see if anything is perhaps a little too heavy—as heavy as a grimoire. None are.
It takes me two hours before I’ve got all the boxes and cardboard stand-ups stashed by the alley door and I’m dragging a chair around to carefully unhook thirty-year-old tape from the peeling walls.
I roll up each poster and rubber band it, then put them all in a box.
When I’ve got more time, I’ll learn how to use eBay and see if Hunter is right about the street value of elderly Terminators and middle-aged Ninja Turtles.
Once that’s accomplished and I’m quite certain Hunter won’t be disappointed with me in the morning, I double-check that all the doors are locked and look at the stuffy little office with new eyes.
Maggie doesn’t want me in here. She doesn’t want anybody in here.
But why?
I go through the desk and the filing cabinets but don’t find anything resembling a grimoire. I feel around the walls, wondering if there’s a secret door, but there’s nothing. The ground is solid carpet, old and flat, a less-faded version of the eighties neon designs outside.
I take the dictionary out of my pocket.
“What is Maggie hiding in here?”
I flip through the pages, and my finger lands on one word:
Secret.
That is extremely unhelpful.
And yet…
There’s something here. I can feel it, like a TV left on in the background or the electric thrill of lightning in the air. It’s here, but I can’t find it.
And I don’t know what it is.