Chapter 38
“Can I leave the circle now?” I ask. I’ve read way too many books and watched way too many movies in which the heroine thinks she has completed her task and then fumbles it at the last minute.
Farrah nods, and I let go of Hunter’s hand and hurry over to Maggie, gently picking her up. Her personality is so big that I forget how delicate she really is, how slight her body is under those feathers.
“You okay, honey?” I ask, gently stroking her. At least her neck isn’t loose. I’m pretty sure I can feel her breathing. She’s warm. But her eyes are firmly closed.
Until one opens and focuses on me. “Shipoopi!” she squawks.
She flaps her wings until she’s perching on my arm, looking around the room in confusion.
“What on earth?” she says in my head in a voice that I’ve never heard before.
“Maggie?”
She blinks up at me. “Pretty sure my name is Doris, but I think I just got knocked ass over teakettle.”
I stand, holding my cockatoo, my eyes burning.
“I…I think Maggie’s really gone,” I say.
“Maggie?” Joyce asks, confused.
And I guess I don’t have to keep her secret anymore.
“Before now, that was her. My cockatoo. Maggie was…in her. She did some kind of spell so she could come back, and she ended up in the parrot’s body.
But now I think Doris is just Doris again.
” I look down at the smudged salt circle.
“She was outside of the circle, at the end. The spell—it must’ve worked on her, too. ”
The hands that held mine now touch my shoulders as Hunter and the other witches gather around me.
“That’s what’s supposed to happen,” Joyce says softly. “She was able to move beyond. To find peace. And I’m sure she was glad she got to meet you and get some time with the granddaughter she never knew.”
“She sure loved you, honey.” Tears are making a mess of Tina’s mascara. “It took forever for her to move those Scrabble tiles into place with her little beak, but she wanted what was best for you.”
I’m crying now, too. Maybe the only real peace Maggie and I ever knew was watching movies together for one single night, but I’ll hold that memory fondly for all of my days.
She brought magic into my life, and she brought me here, to Arcadia Falls, even if it was by accident.
My grandmother gave me the choice to dream and the resources to help make that dream come true.
I’m just sorry she won’t get to see everything come to fruition and know that her legacy, that this land and our family, will carry on here in Arcadia Falls.
“Okay, now we really have to do a mural on the side of the bookstore.” I sniffle. “Can we do, like, half Stevie Nicks and half cockatoo?”
“She always was a vain old thing,” Tina says, shaking her head. “Had more lipsticks than anybody I ever met. Miranda and I borrowed one once, and she went on a rampage.”
“Who died?” Doris asks in my head. “Where’s the body? Because let me tell you, you don’t want to let those things sit around. When my last owner died, I had to smell her for days.” And then, out loud, “Lordy!”
The women tell me old stories about my grandmother as Hunter sweeps up the salt.
I try to get used to this new voice in my head, try to remind myself that I got my old Doris back and that now I have a built-in friend who won’t holler at me quite so much, hopefully.
Doris has never called me a hussy, at least. And maybe she won’t raise such a fuss if she catches me kissing Hunter, because I definitely plan on doing that at the earliest possible convenience.
But then I remember—calming the poltergeist was only one half of the plan.
“Tina, can you hold Doris?” I ask, and Tina holds out her arm. Doris steps over, murmuring, “She seems familiar. And a little scared? And she smells like VapoRub, just like Hilda used to. That’s good. I won’t bite her.”
Now that the poltergeist isn’t a threat, I kick at the office carpet and am not surprised to find that it isn’t firmly stuck down. With a few rough jerks, I pull it back to reveal…
A trapdoor.
“Holy shit!” Hunter says.
“Language!” his grandmother admonishes.
“Shipoopi!” Doris adds.
The trapdoor looks just as old as the floors, which is to say, original to the building.
There isn’t a pull ring or rope like you see on an attic pull-down door, but there is a recessed area just the right size for Hunter to get his fingers under the edge and lift it.
The darkness beyond is complete, and the scent of wet stone and minerals wafts out.
Stone stairs lead downward, and I turn on my phone’s flashlight and prepare myself to descend.
“Want me to go first?” Hunter asks.
The poor man must be absolutely frazzled after watching the people he cares about attempt a spell, and yet he’s still offering to descend into the unknown depths first. But this is my store, my grandmother’s transgression that needs to be made right, and honestly I’m such a seething cauldron of emotions that it’s not like fear can really touch me.
Adrenaline and grief are coursing through my veins like hot coffee, and I’m eager to see what Maggie tried so hard to keep hidden.
“I’ve got it, but thank you.”
I have a hand out to catch myself as I take the steep stone steps deeper down.
With each inch lower I get, the air grows colder, but not like ghost-cold.
More like cave-cold. Back in middle school we went on a field trip to a historic home that had an ice house—basically a closet hollowed out of the underground stone to keep food cold. That’s what this cellar feels like.
“She has nice manners,” Joyce whispers when she thinks I’m out of range. “I like her.”
I am unsurprised when I see ancient rock ledges lined with mason jars full of various gunk that I identify as pickles and jams and chowchow.
My phone light plays over the thick glass, and I wonder if it was Maggie or another, older relative of mine who stood over a stove, stirring and stirring before putting away food for a rainy day.
Maybe a whole line of Kirkwoods contributed to this cache of good food, always making sure the next generation would be cared for.
I step onto the uneven stone floor, and I’m in a room about the same size as the office. It’s dominated by more filled mason jars, and I feel…weirdly at home here. As I shine my phone around every crevice, I finally see it.
Maggie’s grimoire.
Several grimoires, actually, each tucked up in a gallon Ziploc bag, the nicer kind with the slider on top, decorated with a Christmas motif.
I carefully gather all of them, the plastic chill against my arms, and carry them upstairs, out of the office, and over to the counter.
Laid out in a line, there are four grimoires, the oldest of which looks like it might fall apart into dust at any moment.
Maggie’s grimoire is the youngest, with a faded green cloth cover.
The other witches circle around but give me plenty of room.
No one says anything. There’s a reverence, an electricity in the air.
To think, all this time, Maggie’s grimoire has been right beneath me.
Below me. As I walked around my apartment, as I flirted with Hunter, as a surprisingly helpful poltergeist banged on the trapdoor repeatedly, trying to get my attention.
A witch’s ancient spell book being zipped into a modern plastic bag with snowflakes printed in light blue is a strange juxtaposition, but Maggie was clever and stubborn and knew full well the wet would destroy the pages otherwise.
I wonder how long her grimoire has been down here.
Did she hide it after casting her disruptive spell or more recently?
And then I wonder what happened to my mother’s grimoire.
Did she leave it behind when she ran away from Arcadia Falls?
Or is it hidden somewhere in those plastic tubs in the storage shed behind our old house, just some random old book I hastily tossed in among her college yearbooks and spiral-bound church cookbooks that carefully kept itself magically hidden from my then un-witchy senses?
I’m stalling, I know I am.
Because what happens if the answer isn’t here?
What if I can’t fix what Maggie destroyed, can’t return what my grandmother stole?
Well, what if?
Hell, if I can face down a poltergeist, I can unzip a bag.
The book is cold in my hands but not wet, at least. The bag did its job; sometimes, the name brand really is best. I open the faded cover like it might fall apart in my hands, but it’s sturdy enough.
The spells at the beginning are in a wobbling, childish hand, then a loopy cursive, then the neat, slanted script that every Southern grandma uses when copying a recipe onto an index card.
“Do we know what we’re looking for?” I ask the group.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Farrah says grimly. “I’d guess it’ll be somewhere toward the end.”
I keep flipping until I find it.
Missing Ingredients.
But of course, to someone like me, who has done exactly two spells, it’s like reading a different language. There isn’t some highlighted part that tells me how to reverse it.
“Can we fix it?” I ask, worried.
Farrah leans in, running a French-manicured nail covered in tiny crystals down the long list of ingredients. “I don’t know how,” she finally says. “If there’s a way to break it, it’s not obvious. I’m so sorry, Rhea.”
No one else steps forward.
The mood falls, all our former excitement drained away by the handwritten letters on a yellowing page.
“We appreciate you trying, honey,” Joyce says, patting my arm before she turns to leave.
But then I realize…this isn’t done.
“Wait.”
The other witches stop and turn back, curious.
I run my palm over the line of books in freezer bags.
“The problem isn’t that some families have lost their magic.
It’s that they’ve lost their spells. And because of that, everyone has been too distrustful and scared to talk to each other.
No one has been willing to share. Between my family’s grimoires, Farrah’s grimoire, and the McGowans’ grimoires, if we can all just trust each other, the families whose spells were taken should be able to start new grimoires.
Right?” No one speaks, so the words keep tumbling out of me.
“I mean, I know it’ll never be the same as it was before.
That some things will be lost forever. But I’m happy to share whatever is useful from what’s here. ”
They’re being so quiet that it’s freaking me out, but then Hunter’s arms wrap around me and lift me off the ground in a twirling hug.
“Really?” Joyce is saying, shell-shocked. “Really, that’s all it takes? After all this time?”
“If somebody had just asked for help, I would’ve helped.” Farrah shakes her head, her bleached curls bouncing. “I didn’t even know why everybody hated Maggie all of a sudden.”
“Did you know?” Shelby asks Tina as Hunter sets me back down. My legs are weak for more than one reason.
“No, but I bet my mama did. She and Maggie were thick as thieves. I was taught to keep the family spells secret, like everybody else, but I remember feeling slighted, that we weren’t invited to the farm that day.
” She looks at me with a shy smile. “And I missed Miranda something fierce, too. But after she left, things changed.”
“Well, let’s change ’em again,” I say. “Wait! I’ve got something upstairs.”
I run up to the apartment and dig through the books I’ve put on Maggie’s old bookshelves until I find two nice journals.
Yes, I have several unused journals.
I know, I know. I can’t help it. They’re just so pretty.
I bring them back downstairs with a couple of pens and put them on the counter.
“Hunter, Joyce, y’all can go through these grimoires and write down any spells you like.
Or maybe you want to go upstairs and sit at the kitchen table?
Or come back at a more convenient time? I just want you to know that you’re welcome.
The Kirkwoods owe y’all, and I want to make it up to you. ”
Joyce holds the blank journal against her chest like a little girl. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
“I think thank you will do,” Hunter tells her, pulling me in with one arm.
Farrah puts her hands on her hips. “Just let me run home and get my family’s books. We can have a little party. A real one, not like Maggie’s.”
“I’ll run home and get mine, too,” Shelby says. When Tina clears her throat, Shelby adds, “And I’ll stop by the bakery.”
Half an hour later, I’ve got a kitchen full of witches swapping stories and spells as they drink my sweet tea and eat monster cookies. Doris happily bobs her head from her cage.
“Oh, what a beautiful mornin’!” she sings.
And it is.