Twelve
ZACH
It's a gorgeous September afternoon and I'm antsy as fuck. After I unpack my overnight bag, I change into running clothes and head out. I may not like the witchiness of Owl Cove, but I do love how entrenched in nature it is. There are bike trails throughout town, and running and hiking trails that lead into the woods on the edge of town.
Several of those trails run through Goode land, and Morgan's grandma lets anyone who wants use them. The only place she's deemed off limits are her daughters' and grandchildren's houses, and a clearing she claims they use for magic rituals.
I don't really care what they do in that clearing, but I appreciate her allowing me to run on their trails. Hazel is a nice woman, if you don't know she's head of a family of con artists. She and her sister, who I've yet to meet, started Goode Witches, Inc, when they were young and grew it into a billion-dollar empire .
It would be impressive, if they weren't frauds.
I focus on the sound of my feet pounding the dirt, on the cadence of my breath, and on the pull in my muscles. After being cramped into Morgan's front seat for three hours, it feels good to stretch my legs. And to focus on something that isn't how near Morgan is or how much I want to touch her.
The trail winds around the Goode land, and soon I'm running past Morgan's house. I'm several yards away; her lawn is both wide and deep around the blue Victorian. I may not like its occupant, but I have to admit it's a gorgeous house. Beats the hell out of my generic beige-on-white apartment.
I've started looking at houses. I make plenty of money and could easily afford to buy. For whatever reason, I just haven't yet.
I can't help staring as I pass her house. And inevitably, thinking about her leads to thinking about last night. My legs itch with a need to leave the path and head for her front door. But I shove the impulse, and the thoughts about our time together, out of my head, and refocus on my run.
Dusk is coming, so I round her house and head back toward my apartment complex. Once there, I take a quick shower and dress. I head to the living room to feed my turtle, a red-eared slider named Al. I often work long hours, so a more needy animal wouldn't work for me. But Al is pretty self-sufficient. I feed him daily, add water to his tank when too much has evaporated, and clean the tank biweekly.
"How's it goin', buddy?"
He stares up at me, blinking his wrinkly little turtle eyes.
"Yeah, me too."
Maybe it's sort of sad I talk to a turtle. But he's more entertaining than I ever thought a reptile would be. He swims around and knocks his shell against the glass. Sometimes it seems like he's trying to communicate via some sort of code. But I don't speak turtle .
The idea of talking to an animal makes me think of Morgan, and how she claims to communicate with her owl, Bowie.
"That's ridiculous, isn't it, Al? Humans can't talk to animals."
Sunday dinner at Angela's is always a bit of a zoo. Each of them brings their pet, who they refer to as familiars and claim they can talk to. Sirona has a cat, Bronwen has a damn goat, Angela has a chicken, and Hazel brings her snake. It's even worse the one Sunday each month when Angela's two sisters come, plus all their kids. At least they didn't all bring their animals with them to Milwaukee.
I'm not totally an animal guy. I didn't grow up with pets. I only got Al because I got sick of never having someone to talk to. So I get Morgan and her family talking to their pets. What's loopy is how they think the pets talk back.
Since it's Sunday, I'm expected at Angela's soon. Even though I just spent the whole weekend with her children. I could skip it, but I'm itching to snoop around her house more.
Was Morgan serious about us working together? Or is that off now that we've hooked up? I'm still suspicious of her motives, which is all the more reason to work with her: to keep an eye on her.
I get in my car, an electric Nissan SUV, with a lot more leg room. Morgan isn't short, she's probably five-foot-seven or so. I don't know why she drives such a tiny car. Given I'm over six foot, and my long legs are a big part of my height, riding in her car was mild torture.
Hazel is on the wide front porch of Angela's house when I get there, her snake, which for some reason is named Emma Asparagus, draped around her shoulders. My understanding is Hazel has her own house, the biggest one that sits atop a hill, but now that she's 79, she lives with her daughter.
"Zach, hello." Her smile is wide and welcoming.
I wish I could like this family. One-to-one, they're all very nice, and they've welcomed me and my dad into their family as well as anyone would expect. But it's always in the back of my mind that they are, at the core, frauds. And how can I like people I don't trust?
Still, I force a smile. It feels stiff on my face. "Hello, Mrs. Goode."
She swats my arm lightly. "When are you going to stop being so polite and call me either Hazel or Nana?"
"I'll let you know."
She chuckles as she opens the screen door and motions for me to go first.
Dinner goes rather quickly. Angela made lemon chicken with rice and green beans, and it's delicious. I eat a lot of takeout, so it is nice to get a home-cooked—though she claims it's conjured—meal at least once a week.
After dinner, everyone mills about, chatting in the kitchen as Angela and my dad rinse plates and load the dishwasher. When I glance across the massive island at Morgan, I find her looking at me.
Eyebrows raised and a questioning look on her face, she nods toward the doorway that leads to the hall. And the stairs. I nod back and slip out of the room.
A few moments later, she's behind me as we head up the grand staircase. Angela's house is yet another large Victorian, even bigger than Morgan's. So far I've counted five bedrooms on the second floor. There's a third floor but I haven't been up there yet. There's also a huge room that appears to be a mix of study and living room, right at the top of the stairs.
"What is this room for?" I ask, keeping my voice low. I don't want someone downstairs to hear us and come looking.
"That was sort of our den when we were kids. We did homework and studied magic at the table, or just sat around and hung out on the couches."
It sounds rather luxurious to me. My dad did OK financially after Mom died, but we never had a house of our own. Always two-bedroom apartments with small kitchens and living rooms. Just enough space for the two of us.
Is Angela's money and her huge home part of why my dad is marrying her? I don't think of him as that shallow, but before he moved into Angela's, he was living in a studio apartment that couldn't have been more than 600 square feet.
That could explain why he's willing to overlook their lies about magic.
"I've pretty much searched every room on this floor. I think the third floor is our best bet."
I follow her lead since she knows the house better than I do. "What are you looking for, anyway?" I ask as we climb the narrow staircase.
She glances over her shoulder at me, frowning. Once she looks away and reaches the top of the stairs, she says, "This summer, I found my mom's old Grimoire. And?—"
"What's a Grimoire?"
She cocks her head to one side, her ponytail swinging behind her. I've seen her with her hair up before, but never in a ponytail; her hair is short enough that the ponytail itself is small and what I can only describe as perky.
It's annoyingly cute and makes me want to play with it while I kiss her on the tip of her equally perky nose.
I definitely hate her in this hairdo.
"It's like a witch's journal. We record our thoughts, our training, spells we do and the outcomes. Any and everything related to our magic." She stares hard at me, as if expecting me to challenge her.
I don't. It's all part of her illusion. I will say, if they're keeping journals of their fakery, that's a level of dedication I didn't expect. "OK, so what about your mom's Grimoire?"
"I was flipping through one of them—we all have several volumes—and it's from right around when my dad died. There’s a whole chunk of pages torn out. It skips to several months later, when she was about seven months pregnant with Bronwen."
"So you're looking for the missing pages?"
She nods, her ponytail bouncing.
"What do you think will be in them?" Why am I asking all these personal questions? Getting to know her will only make things harder between us. I could start to like her. And that would become complicated and messy.
She turns away and walks to a floor-to-ceiling bookcase along the far wall. It's filled with what look like leather-bound journals. The top two rows are purple, the middle two rows a teal color on the leather, and the bottom two rows hold pink journals.
"I'm not sure what will be in there." She runs her hand along the teal books. "But I want to know. I need to know. There's a reason someone tore them out. You know how sometimes you just know something, without a logical reason?"
"Sure."
"That's how I am with this. I know there's something in there I need to know." She glances over her shoulder at me, her brown eyes sad.
My chest squeezes. I don't like seeing her sad. Which is something I'll unpack later. Or not.
"Maybe I'll find something that explains why I can conjure every damn spirit who has ever lived on this planet, except for the one man I desperately want to talk to." Her voice chokes up at the end, like she might cry.
My instinct is to go to her. To wrap her in my arms and comfort her. But I force myself to stay where I am. Our relationship isn't like that. Hell, she'd probably punch me if I tried to hug her.
She turns back to face me, leaning back on the shelf. "And what exactly do you think you're going to find?"
I don't know how to answer that. It's awkward saying directly to someone's face you think they're a habitual lair. Even more awkward when you've had sex with that person. And her refusing to drop the act with me, even a little, is confusing.
Before I can come up with any sort of answer, she says, "Do you really think, even if we were the frauds you think we are, we would keep some sort of gotcha evidence laying around the house?"
I open my mouth and nothing comes out. So I close it again.
The silence between us is heavy, full of anticipation and animosity. I hate it.
Finally I say, "I don't know what I'm looking for. I guess, like you, I just have this instinct that I have to keep looking. And trust that I'll know it when I find it."
Face void of expression, she stares at me. It's a palpable weight moving over my features, as if she's reached out to touch me from across the room. It's a small room, rounded, with windows all along the walls. Some sort of Victorian tower room.
"You know what those instincts are? Where they come from?" Her gaze cracks over my face, like she's trying to read my true motives.
"Where?"
"The deities."
I sigh. "Yes, well, it should come as no shock to you that I'm an atheist. I don't believe there are magical beings here on Earth, and I don't believe there are magical beings in the sky that control things for us."
Pushing off the wall, she shrugs. She reaches for the first teal journal and flips through the pages. "Suit yourself. I can't help it if you're wrong."