17
Demi
The aunts are making tea for our Coven meeting, and I’m sitting in a sun-and-moon chair, eyeing the locked cabinet and its “Do Not Touch” sign.
I’ve never had much of a desire to explore the contents—the ancient spell books and opaque glass jars of ingredients that need to be kept hidden.
Still, the idea of the possibilities ?in that cupboard has scratched at my brain ever since Tristan’s face came into view for the first time.
I know that the balance of nature is delicate. Kitty and Mickey have made that very clear to my sister and me since we were young. There’s a give-and-take, a push-and-pull, when it comes to the Craft they practice. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and all that.
Once, to demonstrate, the aunts took an old book from the cabinet and wove a charm on a vase of cut lilacs whose branches were dry, the pale purple petals falling onto the table like snowdrops.
With an herbal mixture, a candle, and a few words whispered in Latin with their eyes closed, they restored the lilacs before our very eyes.
It was the scent that hit me first, fragrant with spring, and I watched in awe as the branches became taller and the flowers re-bloomed.
“But you see,” Kitty said. “For these to live, something else must die.”
She pointed to the flourishing philodendron in the corner of their living room. It happened slowly, the wilting, but within a few hours, the houseplant was dead. Its leaves went limp, then yellowed, then turned brown and crisp.
And, yet… I remember going back to the aunts’ house a few days later and noticing new growth on the philodendron.
It was small, barely visible to the naked eye.
But when I looked closely, there it was: one tiny green leaf sprouting amongst all that brown death.
I never said anything about it, and the next time I was there, the plant was gone.
Kitty’s velvet skirt brushes against my legs as she sets the tea on the table, bringing me out of my daydream, and my aunt regards me with curiosity.
Following my sightline, she looks over at the locked cabinet, and when she looks back at me, her brows knit.
She reaches forward and touches my cheek affectionately.
“Everything okay?” Kitty asks, taking a seat on the sofa across from me.
I’ve debated whether or not to tell the Coven about Tristan, but the fact of the matter is that I’m seeing ghosts.
Who better to give advice than the town witches?
Maybe they can explain why I didn’t see him at first, but now I do.
Or, on a deeper level, why I find myself wanting ?someone who’s only halfway there.
Mickey sits down next to Kitty, just as the bells over the front door tinkle, and Blue walks in.
“Have you ever seen a ghost?” I ask.
Blue is reaching for a cup of tea and pauses, stiffening for a moment and giving me a look that I can’t quite decipher.
Which is strange, because I swear that Blue and I share a strange telepathy at times, and I’m usually able to know what she’s thinking just by the expression in her eyes.
But now, there’s something veiled there, something… haunted.
“After Felix…” she starts, then shakes her head.
Shit.
Blue swallows and clenches her teeth so hard that her jaw sharpens. She shakes her head again. “It wasn’t.”
So much is left unsaid, but I know. I know, and I should have been more careful when asking my question.
When her husband died, Blue had dreams about him every night and thought she saw glimpses of him from time to time.
The dreams eventually stopped, and the glimpses always turned out to be a shadow or a trick of the light. And my sister was so very, very sad.
“It takes a particular type of witch to see the spirits. Why do you ask?” Mickey responds with an expert tenderness that softens the awkward silence in the wake of Blue’s reaction.
My sister relaxes and leans back in her chair, either moving on from the unexpected trigger or burying it deep. Blue is a professional at doing both.
“What if you’re not a witch?” I ask.
“Are you ? ?seeing ghosts?” Mickey asks, and I don’t miss the look the aunts share.
I take a sip of my tea and reply casually, “Yeah. Tristan Beaumont.”
Both aunts lean forward, their eyes sparkling with interest.
“How does he appear to you?” Kitty asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what form does he take? Shadows? Mist? Does he appear in mirrors, or out of the corner of your eye? ”
“No, he’s just there. Like a person, but not fully solid.”
Kitty’s eyes widen. Mickey stands, piling her wild curls on the top of her head and securing them haphazardly with a clip. She moves to the altar and pulls the thick grimoire into her hands. I wonder what she’s looking for as she studiously leafs through the well-worn pages.
“Have you touched him?” Kitty asks.
“Yes,” I say, and I’m brought back to lying in bed with him, holding his hand. The warm and cold mist of him. His silver eyes and the longing in them.
“You’re blushing,” Blue deadpans.
“Am not,” I snap back, but my hands go to my cheeks, and they are, in fact, warm.
“Has your ghost boyfriend touched you ?” Blue teases, crooking her first two fingers at me suggestively.
“Stop doing that with your fingers,” I say, trying to hide my amusement behind an expression of feigned disgust.
“You’re avoiding the question. You’re fucking the ghost in your house, I knew it.”
“I don’t want to hear about this,” Kitty mutters, shaking her head at us with a long-suffering eye roll. Behind her, nose still in the grimoire, Mickey chuckles.
“Actually, he took care of me when I was sick,” I respond.
At that, all three of them look at me as the mood amongst us changes. The jokes fade, and curiosity takes its place.
“Spirits don’t typically interact with the living as if they’re living themselves,” Mickey says.
Huh. Interesting .
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means your ghost is weird,” Blue quips.
Ignoring her, Kitty responds, “Spirits exist on the periphery. In quick glimpses, dreams, shadows. From my understanding, they either don’t or can’t usually show themselves to the living the way Tristan Beaumont seems to be showing himself to you.”
“Right,” Mickey adds. “That’s sort of what makes ghosts so tragic. They’re stuck between two realms, the living and the dead, and they can’t interact in any real way with either.”
She sets the grimoire back down on the altar, then moves out of the seating area and into the shop, stopping at a tall bookshelf. Mickey wears a pair of reading glasses on a rhinestone chain around her neck. She puts them on to search through the titles on the shelf in front of her.
“Can anyone else see him?” Kitty asks.
“I don’t think so. He seemed as surprised as I was when he appeared.”
She taps her chin with her fingers, taking in my words and contemplating them. “You’ve spoken to him? You can hear his voice?”
“Yep, just like a person.”
“Like a real boy,” Blue adds.
I swat at her leg with the back of my hand. “Shut up.”
“To be able to be seen and ?heard, there must be something in your energy that calls to him. That matches his energy,” Kitty says.
So very lonesome. ? ??That’s the energy Kitty felt when she first entered my new house.
Maybe it wasn’t just my energy she sensed, but Tristan’s, too.
Maybe our longing and loneliness collided, and that’s why he’s drawn to me.
Why we’re drawn to each other, why I can see him in a way that no one else can.
At the bookshelf, Mickey huffs in frustration and puts her hands on her hips. “Where is that damn book—”
“In the cabinet, Mick,” Kitty responds, reading Mickey’s thoughts the same way Blue and I can sometimes read each other’s.
‘The cabinet,” Mickey repeats, and marches back to us, past the velvet rope and to the locked cupboard. She pulls a key out of her skirt pocket; its filigreed end looped with a long, crimson ribbon. Another look passes between the aunts, then Mickey opens the cabinet.
I recognize the book she retrieves immediately. A chocolate brown cover with gilded pages, so old that all memory of its title has worn away. It’s the books the aunts used for the spell on the lilacs when Blue and I were kids.
Mickey stands in front of me, her knees touching mine, and holds the book out to me with both hands. For whatever reason, this feels like a big moment, and that I’m not exactly worthy of it.
“But it’s from the ‘do-not-touch’ cabinet,” I say.
She looks over her shoulder at Kitty, who nods. “We trust you.”
“It’s for research purposes only,” Kitty remarks gravely.
“That’s right. There are chapters here about communing with spirits, about the realms of the living, the dead, and the in-between. Maybe it will help us understand why your — this ?ghost is different.”
Your ghost. My aunt nearly called Tristan my ?ghost. It kindles something in me, something warm and solid like a stone that’s been under a ray of sunlight.
It’s the way the word “mine” feels when it’s declared about someone meaningful to you.
My family, my sister, my friend, my love… my ghost. Mine.
I shake the thought from my head before the romantic notion runs away with me.
My aunt hands me the book. It’s heavy and smells like woodsmoke, and I know it might sound strange, but I can feel ?how old it is as I set it in my lap. There are delicate flowers imprinted on the cover. I can feel them as I run my fingers over it, but all the paint and printing are long gone.
“Be careful, Demi,” Blue warns.
When I look over at her, I see the way her usually full mouth is pinched into a tight line, and the way she’s eyeing the book like it might sprout legs and turn into a spider.
The aunts might trust me with this artifact, but my sister seems less convinced.
I can’t tell if it’s me she doesn’t trust, or the book itself.
“Research only,” Kitty reiterates.
“Got it, girls,” I say, flipping to the back of the book, opening a chapter titled Exorcisms and Demonic Possessions . I grin and turn the book so they can see the page. “Anyone wanna play this game with me?”
The rest of the Coven is unimpressed.