Chapter 19
Nineteen
Somehow the old pink Victorian feels different than it did last night. There’s a tension to it now. The minute I step through the door, followed closely by my sisters and Caleb, Gunner trotting at my side, that tension crackles across my skin and sends the hair on my arms straight up.
Whatever’s happening with the town, with the rumble in the depths of the ocean, and with the unexpected storm that broke and flooded across Silverlight Shore last night, it’s affecting the energy in the house.
An expectation rides it.
Almost like the feeling when you’re swimming on the beach and a wave starts to suck you out before it crashes over the shore, and you hold your breath and dive to the bottom and hope that you make it up for air before the next one crashes.
That’s the way the house feels right now.
“Hazel?” I call out, hoping to hear good news as soon as I can.
“In the living room,” she says.
Sure enough, she’s icing her foot, propped up on several old needlepoint pillows that were my grandmother’s pride and joy, an ice pack draped over her swollen ankle.
“How are you feeling?” I ask her.
“I don’t think it’s broken. I think it’s just a grumpy sprain. It should be fine in a few more days,” she says, wiggling her toes at me and grinning.
“What’d Grandma say?” I ask.
“Slow down. I want to hear about last night,” she says.
Caleb walks into the room.
“Oh, I mean I want to hear about why you didn’t get my car last night,” she says, too quickly. Then her smile drops. “Shoot. I bet the whole thing’s flooded out now, huh?”
“It might be,” Caleb says.
“Caleb, do you think you could maybe make us lunch so we can all talk?” Hazel asks, her eyes darting between the four of us.
Gunner jumps up on the couch and licks her face. “Don’t worry about that, Hazel,” he says. “Ivy already spilled the beans.”
“Gunner,” she says, shocked.
Her head slowly swivels to me and Rose and Posey nod at her knowingly.
Fig dances on top of Rose’s shoulder before she takes flight and lands on her perch on the fireplace mantle.
“She told him everything. And there were enchanted octopi,” Fig says. “You missed it, Hazel, you would have loved it.”
“I’m not sure they were enchanted,” Oatmeal argues. “I think they were just there to help.”
Hazel puts both of her hands up, the book she’s been holding on her lap nearly falling off before she catches it again.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean? What are you talking about here? Octopi? You told Caleb you’re a witch?” she says.
“Surprise.” I throw my hands up like an overcaffeinated Broadway dancer. “So he can listen. He wants to help however he can.”
“Oh. Huh.” Her eyes are huge. “Well, Grandma did have some news for us, but I’m not sure it was super helpful,” Hazel finally manages.
“How so?” Rose asks.
Hazel’s eyebrows shoot straight up, and her gaze turns to the floor. “For one, she said that we should start by looking in the basement.”
We all look at each other.
“The basement?” Posey says.
“Is Grandma okay?” Rose adds.
“We don’t have a basement.” I lean onto the couch, then drain the rest of my now very cold latte. Whatever. Sugar is sugar and caffeine is caffeine.
Better than magic, that stuff.
“She’s not sick, if that’s what you mean. But… I also wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Hazel says. “Grandma, turns out, was hiding a few things from us.”
“What a shock,” I mutter.
“Grandma hiding things from us? Who could have foreseen this?” Posey says dramatically, flopping into one of the chairs next to the fireplace.
Caleb crosses his arms and stares at us. “How the hell would you have a basement here? We’re too close to the shore.”
Hazel wiggles her fingers and grins up at Caleb. “Magic.”
That makes me laugh.
“All right, so let’s say there’s a magic basement hanging out here. Where is it?”
No sooner have I said that than the whole house shudders.
Dust explodes in a cloud from the floorboards and an ominous creaking and scrape of gears and wood on wood echoes throughout the house.
Caleb grips my hips to keep me from falling over as the house continues to shake.
“I guess you said the magic words,” Hazel says. “Grandma said one of us would figure it out. All we had to do was say where is it and the basement would appear.”
Posey folds her arms over her chest. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Hazel’s grin is slightly brittle.
“What she said is that we had to have need of it, and once the basement sensed the house sensed someone magical in need of it, it would open itself up.”
Her brittle smile makes sense.
Hazel’s always felt like an outsider around the three of us, always said that her magic wasn’t as strong as the rest of ours and that’s why she never got a familiar.
And now the house seems to be agreeing with her.
I for one don’t think it’s true.
But now’s not the time to try to make Hazel feel better about anything.
Now is the time to try and fix the town.
“We should probably head down there,” Posey says, and there’s no denying the excitement in her voice. Her fingers are immediately in her pockets. She’s pulling her phone out along with several small tools, and her eyes have a light in them that I recognize.
Whatever the mechanism is that revealed the basement to us magically, Posey wants to figure out exactly how to replicate it, and if I know Posey — and I do — she’ll have it figured out by dinner tonight.
The problem is going to be keeping her focused on fixing the ward and not taking apart the magical basement compartment.
“No locking us in there,” I say, wagging a finger at her. “You can figure out how it works another day. We have to fix the town first. We have to get the ward back up.”
She glares at me for a moment then sighs and sticks her tiny toolkit back in her pocket.
“Fine,” she says, scowling.
“I’ll go down first,” Caleb says.
Gunner barks, wagging his tail.
“The dog always goes first,” Gunner says. “I have the best nose of anyone here, and if there’s a problem I’m gonna sniff it out first.”
Caleb laughs and holds up his hand in mock surrender.
“Gunner, far be it from me to take your job away from you. You go on ahead and I’ll come right down after you with the flashlight, OK?”
Gunner wags his whole body.
Caleb gives him a pat on the head as he races past him to where the wood floor yawns open, revealing absolutely nothing but black underneath.
“I’m not sure I like this,” Rose says.
“I’m not sure that we have a choice of whether to like it or not,” I say.
“Wish I could come with you guys,” Hazel says.
“You stay put and keep looking through your book,” I tell her. “We’ll tell you all about it when we come back up.”
“I’ll take pictures for you,” Rose says.
“Besides,” I say, “we might need someone to stay up here in case we get stuck down there.”
“Don’t say that,” Posey says admonishingly. “God, you always go straight to worst-case scenario.”
“I’ll work with her on that,” Caleb says cheerfully.
I sigh.
Gunner barks, and the sound echoes far up from below the house.
When I glance back at the opening, it’s no longer dark down there. A warm golden light spills up the stairs.
Posey and Rose glance at each other before heading down, following Caleb and Gunner.
“It looks safe enough,” Caleb yells up.
“Hazel,” I tell her.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t start in on me right now, okay? I’ll do the best I can to help you guys.”
“Hazel, you are helping us. You can’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I’m different than the three of you. The three of you can pretend that I’m not as much as you like, but that doesn’t change the truth. You’re all witches and I’m not. I’m just a normal weirdo with no skills, no talents, and nothing special about me at all.”
“Down here, Ivy. We need you,” Rose yells up.
“You better see this, Ivy,” Caleb says.
I point a finger at Hazel.
“We’re not done talking about this. And you’re not a weirdo.”
She gives me a long look.
“Okay, well maybe you’re a weirdo, but you’re part of this family no matter what. And I have a feeling that whatever magic you have, you just haven’t figured out how to unlock it yet.”
I bend over and brush her curly hair off her forehead the way I used to when she was a baby. I give her a kiss right on top of her forehead.
The smile she gives me as I walk away is watery, and I give her a thumbs-up and pretend not to notice the hurt clear in her eyes.
We have to fix the town. I have to make sure we’re safe before I can do anything to help Hazel.
Besides, there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life.
You can’t fix people for them. They have to want to fix themselves.
The basement stairs are surprisingly sturdy. They don’t creak and moan like the rest of the house does as I walk down them.
The light itself is as close to sunshine indoors as I’ve ever seen. Golden orbs hang around the ceiling of the basement that wasn’t there more than five minutes ago.
Books line the walls along with all kinds of magical artifacts I’ve never seen anyone use. Stacks and stacks of tarot cards. Summoning boxes, some bound with rubber bands, others in velvet pouches, haphazardly scattered around.
And one in a container that looks like it’s made of bone.
I grimace when I see it. Bad vibes, that.
“Over here,” Rose says.
She’s standing in front of the wall along with the other two.
There’s a picture there.
Staring at it in black and white, though it hits me right away that that isn’t because the picture’s old. No. The picture is likely only twenty-five to thirty years old.
And the reason I know that is because I recognize the four people in it.
What I don’t recognize — not right away — is what they’re doing.
Icy cold fingers run up my spine. My stomach sinks as a memory of this very day photographed and hung in black and white on the secret basement wall washes over me.
“It’s the four of us,” Posey says, sounding more shocked than I’ve ever heard her.
“You hanging in there?” Caleb murmurs against my ear, one steady hand at the small of my back.
Goosebumps race across my skin and I swallow, my mouth gone dry.
“I remember this day,” I say.
The words come out breathy, uneven.
The three of them look away from the blown up photograph, showing the four of us girls making a square.
Hazel clutches a stuffed rabbit with chewed whiskers, hand raised, mouth open, eyes glowing white, facing the camera.
Posey and Rose stand across from each other, both hands raised, mouths open like their saying something.
My back’s to the camera, but I know it’s me, I recognize the red grosgrain bow tied to the end of my braid and my favorite pair of tights.
High waves crash against the jetty, froth frozen in time.
Our hair’s blown back by the oncoming storm, and I swear I make out a familiar eye in the ocean.
“I don’t remember this at all,” Posey says.
“What does that say?” Rose, says, poking at unintelligible scrawl on the bottom of the photo.
The minute her finger touches the paper, the words unwind themselves.
“My granddaughters, the most powerful witches I’ve ever seen, calling the corners and setting the ward.”
Tears prick my eyes, and I run a finger over the back of little me’s head, knowing the way she spent that night crying her eyes out.
“You said you remember this day,” Posey says, her voice hushed.
“This was the day Mom and Dad left.”