Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cinnamon rolls were the perfect fix for Roz’s previously sour mood.
Well, cinnamon rolls, getting eaten out in a bakery, and getting asked out by a ghost. That’s basically what Alaric proposed, wasn’t it?
That they break the curse so he might have some freedom, and then he would date her.
To anyone else, it was ridiculous. But Roz spent most of her time alone anyway, so it didn’t matter if no one could see her boyfriend.
Boyfriend. Is that what he was? She hadn’t answered him, mostly because she was so overwhelmed by the offer. Of course he’d wanted to sleep with her, she was the first person he could touch in three hundred years. He was still a man, dead or otherwise.
Still.
“I wished I’d lived in a world with cinnamon rolls,” Alaric said, his gaze snagging on her fingers as she licked the frosting from them.
“They’re delicious,” Roz agreed.
They were sitting in the cemetery, the only place Roz could think to regain some semblance of normalcy before investigating Franny’s cottage.
“So, this curse,” Roz said after she’d cleaned the last of the frosting off. “We know the circumstances of it, we can work backwards.”
“It’s that easy?” Alaric asked.
“Yes. We’re in a unique position of knowing exactly what went into the curse.
Usually we don’t have that insight, and we just see the remnants of the curse.
It’s usually a delicate matter of tracing backwards to find all the parts.
But you were there, you know the words, and...
” She waved her hands to punctuate her point.
“Magic is fascinating,” Alaric remarked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Roz agreed. It’d been part of her life so long that it was hard to think of it as anything other than mundane.
“What do we need?” Alaric asked.
“A waning moon,” she started. “Something from the one that cursed you—that might be harder to find.”
“Would hair do?” Alaric asked.
“You have his hair?”
“I might have gotten a swing at him,” he said, giving her another one of his wolfish smiles. It was hard to marry this version of Alaric with the one in the history books, until he gave her one of those sly smiles.
“And took his hair?”
“Grabbed a chunk of it. I wish they didn’t wear those ugly hats, then I could have marveled at the bald spot in the years after my death,” he said with a sigh. “Anyway, it’s likely on my robes.”
“The moon is waning all this week, and there’s a new moon on the Pumpkin Festival,” she said.
“So we’re at the right time. Then we’ll have the hair, then it just comes down to the right herbs.
I think doing it in the cemetery will give it power, grave dirt and all.
” She tapped her lower lip with her finger as she thought.
“And if it doesn’t work, we can try again next month,” she added.
“Why wouldn’t it work?” Alaric asked.
“I’ve never had to break a curse before,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone has ever been brave enough to try to curse me.”
“Why would they? I can’t imagine you’ve ever crossed anyone.”
“Kids are cruel,” she said. “I had a classmate who was cursed to have her hair never grow beyond her shoulders. It took years to reverse it because they thought it was medical, and no one knew who did it until years later, when the perpetrator got drunk at a party and admitted it.”
“Why?”
“Jealousy,” Roz said with a shrug. “Curses aren’t always retaliatory.”
“Now that we’ve solved the curse…” Alaric said, standing. “We can move on to more exciting things.”
“More exciting than ending your three-hundred-year curse?” Roz protested.
“Infinitely. This book that your aunt hid contains multitudes of secrets kept from the Graves line for decades. I, for one, am terribly excited to piss her off when we find it.”
Roz laughed and stood. They walked in silence into the neighborhood around Pumpkin Hollow, stopping before the line of cottages the Graves family lived in. Franny’s cottage was in the middle, one of the oldest and smallest.
Roz’s hand shook as she slipped the key into the door and turned. The door creaked open and Roz was hit with the overwhelming smell of her dead aunt. Dried herbs, spent candles, the coffee she drank black, all swirled in the space and made Roz pause.
“She’s gone,” Alaric said softly from behind her. “She can’t hurt you from the other side.”
Roz knew that. She shook her head and stepped over the threshold, flipping on an overhead light. It cast shadows over the space.
It was just as Roz remembered it. Worn tea towels hung from a stainless steel sink. The old cabinets were discolored from multiple attempts at filling in their cracks and nicks with spackle. The living room had several bookshelves, all overflowing with romance novels.
Alaric raised an eyebrow as he examined her bookshelf. “She didn’t keep many magical books, did she?”
“I told you, our family is the book,” Roz reminded him. “Did you know my ancestors?”
“In a way. They kept to themselves, very mysterious,” Alaric said.
“How did the line continue if they were so mysterious?”
“I imagine they’d just grab a man and drag him to a handfasting if they found him suitable,” Alaric said with a shrug. “It wasn’t I do, it was you’ll do.”
“Stop!” Roz laughed, swatting playfully at him.
“I’m allowed to speak ill of the dead,” Alaric said.
“Right,” Roz said.
Alaric peered at the old family tree hanging on the wall. “Ah, yes—Chasity Graves,” Alaric said, pointing to a name. “She reanimated a woman from town to point to her murderer. It was the start of the downfall.”
“The downfall?”
“Where the idea of witches started. The woman was murdered and there was no justice. Chasity couldn’t abide by it.
I think they were secret lovers. She reanimated her, and she pointed out her murderer.
Then she disappeared and tried to return to her town to see her family.
That caused quite a scene in town, and then the rumors started of devilry… ” Alaric trailed off.
“My family is responsible for the witch trials?” Roz asked.
“I think it was the fodder the local clergy needed. They were having trouble keeping order. There was a lot of land, a lot of space, a lot of reasons not to go to church on the holy day. Women were trying to gain independence, since they couldn’t just go back to England to live with their families if their husband died.
Witches were an excuse, and it would have boiled over without the reanimation. ”
“Wow,” Roz said. “They don’t teach that in school.”
“Unsurprising, given that they tried to hide the skill of reanimation. Don’t be so hard on your ancestor, she did it out of love.”
“I bet she felt awful,” Roz said quietly, tracing her finger over Chasity’s name. The sentence under her name was blacked out, the paper burned in the spot to prevent anyone from reading her accomplishments.
“She did,” Alaric agreed. “Now, where would your aunt hide a book she didn’t want anyone to find?”
“I wish I knew,” Roz admitted. They continued through the rooms, opening cabinets and turning things over to look for any evidence of a hidden book.
Roz paused before the last room—Franny’s bedroom. She’d never been inside it, never been permitted. The door was always closed tight.
“Last room,” Alaric said. Roz nodded and pushed the door open.
A small bed sat just below the windowsill, overlooking the garden beside the house. A simple desk was pushed against a wall, with a notepad and a set of pens atop it. There was an ancient, large armoire that towered in the corner, filled with Franny’s clothes.
“This place is untouched,” Alaric remarked.
“I don’t think anyone has the heart to remove anything,” Roz admitted. “Franny was a bit of a matriarch, I think they’re all worried she’ll come back and haunt them if they move her things.”
“So they just keep it clean,” Alaric said. “Fascinating. Even in death, your aunt is a commanding woman.”
“Especially in death, because no one can escape her,” Roz said.
They searched through the room to no avail. Roz sighed and sat on the floor before the bed. When she landed, the floor made a strange noise—a hollow sound. Alaric heard it too, his head snapping to the sound.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
“If she kept it hidden under the floorboards…” Roz grumbled, turning over to examine the floor. Her fingers dug along the edges of the planks until it slipped into an empty space. She pulled back, the floor easily coming up with her.
There, under the floorboards, was a book.
Roz reached in and removed the book slowly, carefully. It was old and heavy and smelled of mildew. When she gingerly pulled back the brown cover, a plume of dust flew into her face and she sneezed, nearly dropping the book.
“This must be it,” Alaric said, sitting on the floor next to her.
The first pages were the family tree, identical to the one on the wall, but with nothing marked off or blacked out. It stopped several generations before Roz.
Roz was quiet for a long moment, her finger still resting on the page. Alaric looked past her shoulder at the family tree at the front of the book, the names stretching back further than most towns existed. Each one a life. Each one a thread in something continuous.
He had no such thread. No family tree, no cottage kept intact by people too afraid to move his things.
The museum had his clothes and a painting of his death.
The town had a statue with a face more handsome than his own.
Neither of those was the same as this—a house that still smelled like the person who lived in it.
"Are you alright?" Roz asked. She'd turned to look at him without him noticing.
"I was thinking about continuity," he said, because it was true and easier than the rest of it. She gave him a small smile, her fingers interlacing with his.
“Go ahead, keep reading,” he encouraged, because this wasn’t about him and his discomfort. This was about her, finally learning who she was.
Then came the magic.
Page after page of magic that Roz had never heard of before. Blood magic, reanimation, traveling to the spirit world, taking others to the spirit world.
“Goddess,” Roz breathed. “This is serious magic.”
“Have you never seen anyone do this?” Alaric asked.
“No. Honestly, it makes my family seem like they do parlor tricks. This is more than just delivering messages to the other side, this is…” Roz trailed off.
“Do you want me to step away?” Alaric asked.
“I…” Roz started. The idea of him leaving never occurred to her. “No,” she said at last. “I’d like you to stay.”
Alaric’s arms closed around her, holding her steady as she read through generations of lost magic. When she got to the page about blood magic, Alaric held her tighter, his presence a steady anchor as her world spun.
Blood magic is not for every witch. Within us is a core of energy and life. With our blood, we offer life to those who would otherwise not have it. Blood can reanimate, it can revive, it can sustain. Vampires are indiscriminate with blood and its life force, but for the witch, it is more selective.
Those who can utilize the magic in their blood have the ability to heal.
This may seem at odds with necromancy, but we must always remember that a balance exists.
Opposite of death is birth. Opposite of living is dead.
For a necromancer to have the gift of blood magic is a rare thing.
For a necromancer to control both life and death is impossible.
Like all things, blood magic has rules. To use one’s blood to heal or give life is to give a piece of your vitality and soul.
Too much can lead to premature aging or illness.
However, a blood witch operates in excess, and if they do not occasionally use their gift, the excess will manifest. This could be through never falling ill, or ill family members making miraculous recoveries.
Miraculous recoveries. Excess. Roz’s head spun, a surge of memories flooding her at once.
Great Aunt Franny, so ill they thought she’d die, back to almost normal the day after they visited her in the hospital.
Delia never getting sick, even as she struggled with her rot magic.
Roz never getting sick, despite being a small premature twin. Had it been her magic this whole time?
This is why a necromancer who does not immediately show proficiency for communing with the dead should be put through trials.
“Trials,” Roz groaned. “I did enough of those as a child.”
“The same ones?” Alaric asked. She liked the way his voice vibrated against her back. How could he feel so real, yet be only a ghost?
Roz flipped the page and read through the nonsensical list of trials. “No,” she said. “Definitely not these.”
“Why not try them?” Alaric suggested.
“We already know I can do blood magic,” she said.
“Then only do the fun ones,” he said.
Roz snorted, but her gaze lingered on the page. The ink shifted slightly where it had bled into the paper, the words older than anything she’d ever read.
Blood is the conduit. Intent is the command.
Her fingers brushed the edge of the page.
“These don’t look fun,” she murmured.
“No,” Alaric said quietly behind her. “They don’t.”
She turned the page anyway.