Chapter 20
Twenty
“You guys are freaking me out,” Hazel calls from up above. “Tell me if you’re okay. Tell me what’s going on down there.”
Posey licks her lips and stares at me before answering.
“We found something. We’ll bring it up — we’ll be right there.”
“I don’t remember this at all,” Rose mutters, her hand on the picture as though that can summon the memory of that awful day.
“We were all little,” I say. “Look at Hazel. She can’t be older than three or four.”
“Why do you remember it and we don’t?” Posey asks.
“I need to know what you’re doing. I can’t stand the suspense.” Hazel’s voice sounds tight.
“Look at the water,” I say. “Just behind Hazel’s head. Do you see it back there?”
“See what?” Posey asks, peering at the picture.
Caleb steps closer.
“The kraken,” he says.
I nod excitedly.
“Exactly. This picture has something to do with it.”
I push down the sadness, and it surprises me how angry I am now that I’m older. Angry at my parents for leaving the four of us, for calling once a week, then once a month, then whenever they remembered we existed, I suppose.
Without a shadow of a doubt, I know it’s because of what happened the day of this picture.
I remember the fear on their faces. The horror in my dad’s eyes. The way they spoke in hushed, angry tones to my grandmother. The sound of the door slamming behind them.
“This spell has something to do with what’s happening now,” I say. “I’m sure of it. I can feel it in my bones.”
“You’re right,” Rose says, tapping the picture frame with her fingernail. “I feel it too.”
“What is happening down there? Y’all are killing me. Don’t make me hobble down those steps. I don’t want to, but I will,” Hazel hollers from upstairs.
“We’ll be right there,” Posey yells. “Sit your ass down and ice that ugly foot. OnlyFeet will never let you pose there if you mess it up worse.”
“You’re a dick, Posey!” A pillow falls down the opening.
I can’t laugh, even though I can see the humor in the situation. There are too many big feelings going through me for me to pretend like I’m fine.
For a split second I’m jealous of my sisters.
They don’t remember this.
They don’t remember the horror on our parents’ faces. The power that we summoned that day was unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Unlike anything I’ve ever felt since.
And I know it has something to do with the kraken, even though I can’t place it. It’s all muddy.
“Do you remember this? Remember why we did it? Remember we had to? Remember what happened after?” I ask the questions in rapid succession, trying to force them to remember. I don’t want to have to relive this.
I don’t want them to, either.
“I wish there was a book that could tell us how to do this again and why we did it in the first—” Something falls off the bookshelf behind us, slamming to the concrete floor and making all of us startle.
“I don’t think we should say anything like ‘I wish’ again. Not down here,” Rose says cautiously.
“Take the picture off the wall,” I say to her.
Caleb eases her away and takes it down himself.
“I’ll carry it.” He holds it gingerly. “I’ve got you.”
For a second I think maybe there’ll be a message from my grandma behind the picture. Something there. A safe. Maybe some kind of indication of what the hell we’re supposed to do to make things right in Silverlight Shore.
But there’s nothing.
Just a slightly less dusty patch behind the picture frame.
“I’ve got the book!” Posey yells out.
“Get your butt up here right now so help me—”
“We’re coming,” Posey yells back.
“Go.” I make a shoo motion. “We can explore this basement lair of weird witchiness later, but we need to talk about what’s happening in this picture.”
“Basement lair of weird witchiness?” Posey snarks, doing her impression of me.
“This is freaking me out,” Rose moans. “What is it that you remember that’s so awful?”
“It’s not anything that you guys don’t already know,” I hedge.
“Well, considering I don’t remember this day at all and you do—”
“That’s not true,” Rose argues.
“Get upstairs and have this conversation with Hazel so I don’t have to do it twice,” I say, suddenly completely exhausted.
And all too aware of how filthy I am and that I’m wearing oversized sweatpants that are dangerously close to slipping all the way off my hips.
I’m tired. I slept on a couch. I talked to a kraken last night. Then I cleaned up Sugar & Salt all morning.
And now — now I have to figure out how to break it to my sisters that this spell is what made our parents leave. That we scared them so badly they decided they wanted nothing to do with us.
“Ivy. You good?” Caleb asks gently, his large hand spanning the width between my shoulder blades.
I nod.
“I’m okay,” I tell him.
It’s a lie.
I shrug his touch off and follow my sisters upstairs.
Caleb’s been exposed to a little bit, but if we have to do this — whatever this thing is again — it might scare him off too.
The living room feels almost gloomy after the magical brightness of the basement, and I blink a few times letting my eyes adjust.
Hazel’s sitting excitedly on the couch, propped up by pillows, her foot still elevated in front of her.
“What is it? What did you guys find?”
Caleb follows me up and sets the picture on the floor, leaning against one of the chairs.
“We found this,” Rose says.
“It’s that the four of us when we were little,” I tell them
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Hazel says, rolling her eyes.
“We were calling the corners,” I say, my voice thick.
“What does that mean?” Hazel asks. “Why am I there if you’re doing that? We all know I don’t have any power.”
“That’s the thing, Hazel,” I say slowly. “You do.”
“Look at where you are. That’s right by the lighthouse, at Mist Point,” Posey says. “Look. You can see the corner of it in the very edge of the picture right there.”
Posey taps the glass.
Caleb nods slowly.
“Yeah. That’s the jetty behind my house.”
I like the way he calls it his house, even though back then it was his uncle’s.
I like the fact that he sees himself as living here again.
But how long will that last? How long will he actually want to stay here once he sees what it is my sisters and I are going to have to do? At least, it’s what I think we’re going to have to do.
Again.
My memory is foggy, but I have a sneaking suspicion I know exactly what that book Posey’s holding is going to say.
“Well, we know I don’t have any magic,” Hazel scoffs. “Or if I do, it’s completely messed up, just like everything else I touch.”
“That’s not true, Hazel,” Rose says.
“Yes, it is. We would have a familiar that wanted anything to do with me if I was strong enough of a witch to be able to sustain one. Much less my own magic.”
Gunner whines softly.
Hazel pets his head as he walks over to her.
“It’s not true, Hazel,” Gunner says.
“You guys can argue with me all you want, but I’m the living proof that I don’t have any power.”
“Look at that picture,” I interrupt her. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and look. Look at your hand. Look at your eyes. You have power, Hazel.”
I feel sick to my stomach as a realization hits me.
“And I think I know why you haven’t been able to tap into it since.”
That gets everybody’s attention. Even Hazel’s.
Her mouth snaps shut, her lips a thin line as she stares at me.
“What are you trying to say?” she finally asks when the silence becomes too much for us to bear.
“I’m trying to say that you suppressed your magic when you were four years old.”
“Impossible,” Hazel argues, but her expression’s shifted, just a bit.
“Look.” I tap the frame. “Do you remember Mr. Bunny? I do.”
Rose frowns.
“You remember Mr. Bunny?” I repeat. “There’s no way you don’t. You dragged that thing around everywhere.”
Hazel sits up, lips thin, eyes tight. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“You stopped using your magic after we did this spell.” It comes out in a rush, a dam broken and I can’t hold it back anymore.
“Because this is the day Mom and Dad left. They were afraid of us. I remember sitting in our room that we shared when we came to visit Grandma. This was before we all had our own separate rooms here. Mom and Dad were fighting. Screaming. Arguing with Grandma.” I lick my lips before continuing.
“‘Take it away,’ they said. They didn’t want us anymore.
They didn’t want us to be witches. They didn’t want us to have magic.
And Grandma said that she could no more do that than she could cut off our hands, because the magic was a part of us.
” I’m crying now, my breath coming in large sobbing gasps.
Gunner comes to sit next to my feet, nuzzling my calves. It doesn’t help.
Caleb tries to touch me again, but I shake him off.
I don’t want anyone to touch me right now. I need to say this, and I need to say it by myself.
“They were afraid of us,” I tell the three of them. “I distracted you all as best I could that night before Mom and Dad left so that you didn’t have to hear the same things that I was hearing.”
I look at my youngest sister, the tears mostly subsiding now, the hurt for her, not for me.
“Hazel… you did hear it. You snuck out while they were arguing. I remember I had to grab you off the landing. But you heard them. You had magic, Hazel. Look. Look at the proof right here. You were part of our coven before we even knew what that word meant. Before we even said it. You helped us call the corners, and do whatever spell this is — And I am almost positive that’s how the ward got set.
We were the ones that created the ward and the pact with the kraken.
Not Grandma. Us. We did this. And we have to fix it again. And it needs all four of us to happen.”
The house settles around us, just enough that I notice it, like it’s been trying to tell us this for years and now it can finally relax.
I’m anything but relaxed.
“Perfect,” Posey says after a long, pregnant pause. “So now we just have to figure out how to do that.”