Chapter 9
The next few days settle into something that almost resembles normal.
Classes finally stop feeling like a whirlwind of introductions and syllabi and become actual work.
I learn which coffee shop has the shortest morning line, and which professors start on time.
But beneath it all, I don’t forget what I’m really doing here in Salem’s Fall.
Every move I make inevitably circles back to Josh.
My meeting with Professor Pemberton keeps replaying in my head. The split second of panic when I mentioned the Veil. The way he’d shut the conversation down so abruptly.
I keep digging, keep asking questions that earn me confused looks. Most people don’t remember my brother. The ones that do answer the same. Josh was nice but quiet. Smart. Always buried in old books.
One girl who clearly had a crush on him remembers him spending hours in the Special Collections section of Ashcroft Library, surrounded by stacks of colonial records and frequently meeting with Professor Beatrice Endicott, the university’s historian and curator of Strega’s Hollow, Salem’s Fall’s most popular tourist attraction.
I put Professor Endicott next on my interview list, which is why I find myself walking into the Historical Studies Building on Friday afternoon.
The hallway is quiet, most students already escaping into the weekend.
My heart sinks as I reach her office and find the door closed and a handwritten sign hanging beneath the brass nameplate:
OUT OF OFFICE: AT STREGA’S HOLLOW. BACK MONDAY.
“You should know the faculty here are basically allergic to office hours.” Deep male laughter echoes down the hallway.
I turn, folding my arms across my chest. “Seriously? Quit stalking me.”
Rowan Ashcroft stands a few yards away, one hand tucked into the pocket of his SFU Lacrosse Team jacket, looking effortlessly polished.
The afternoon light spilling through nearby windows catches the golden strands of his hair, and there’s that expression on his face that suggests the world exists primarily for his amusement.
“I didn’t realize walking down a hallway qualifies as stalking,” he says.
“It does when it’s always hallways I’m already occupying.”
He tilts his head thoughtfully, as if considering my accusation with exaggerated sincerity. “Campus isn’t that big, Jack,” he says. “And I have excellent timing.”
“You have suspicious timing.”
“Okay, fine.” He shrugs. “How about we call it fate? Sounds more charming than stalking.”
“It sounds like grounds for a restraining order.”
He chuckles, gaze drifting toward Professor Endicott’s note on the door. “Looking for Bea?”
“You know Professor Endicott?”
“Everybody knows Bea,” he says.
“Bea? You call professors by their first names?”
“Trust me, she’ll insist.”
I glance back at the sign and let out a long sigh. “I suppose you know where Strega’s Hollow is too?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” He lets the sentence hang just long enough to become irritating. “Would you like me to take you?”
“Directions would be fine,” I say. “I’m sure a good-looking, popular guy like yourself already has plans on a Friday night.”
His mouth curves into a pleased smile. “So you think I’m good-looking?”
“Oh please. You know you’re good-looking.”
His grin widens.
“You want my help or not?”
I plant a hand on my hip. “What’s it going to cost me?”
He thinks for a moment. “How about drinks later?” he asks. “Tonight’s the Fall Equinox. Downtown goes off.”
“I don’t think so.” I sigh. “I still don’t trust you, Rowan.”
“I understand.” A flicker of disappointment crosses his face. “Let me help you first then. I’ll take you to Strega’s Hollow. We’ll talk to Bea, and afterward you can decide what you think.”
“I don’t know…”
“Come on, don’t make me beg,” he says. “My car’s already out front.”
Against my better judgment, I agree.
Strega’s Hollow is on the outskirts of town.
The drive would normally take at least twenty minutes during the busy fall season, but in Rowan’s sleek midnight-blue Porsche 911, we tear through town.
Tourists crowd the sidewalks as we race past. Nearly every storefront has embraced the approaching equinox with ridiculous enthusiasm.
Pumpkins. Hay bales. Corn stalks. Paper bats.
“Does this happen every year?” I ask.
“This is just the warm-up. Wait until October,” he says. “You’ll learn this town survives on three things. Private university tuition money. Wealthy benefactors. And convincing tourists they’ve wandered into the most haunted town in America.”
“So… witches?”
“Marketing,” he says, his eyes bright with mischief. Once we’re past the town limits, he glances over at me. “What do you know about Strega’s Hollow?”
“It has something to do with the old witch trials, right?”
“It’s our version of Disney World, just with witch hangings and ancient occult sacrifices instead of Mickey Mouse and rollercoasters.
The tourists eat it up,” he says. “Part of the property was actually used during the witch trials, then they turned it into a kitschy museum. There was a fire about twenty years ago, but it’s been restored and expanded since then. ”
A few minutes later, Strega’s Hollow comes into view. Rowan lets out an exaggerated sigh as he parks the car. “And here we are—Salem’s Fall’s greatest cash cow.”
Strega’s Hollow sits at the edge of a dark, wooded property surrounded by an old wrought-iron fence.
The main building’s stone exterior looks like two different structures stitched together.
One side is dark, cracked fieldstone, weathered and slouched with age, its uneven shingles patched here and there with moss.
The other side rises taller and straighter, the stone a shade lighter, still gray but cleaner somehow.
The slate roof on that half is steep and unblemished, none of the sag or wear of its older twin.
The place has presence, I’ll give it that.
Families wander the front path carrying shopping bags from the gift shop.
Children race between wooden displays, a few of them stopping to pose beside a woman dressed as a seventeenth-century witch, while a guide dressed in colonial clothing theatrically recounts something to a tour group, earning delighted gasps.
I follow Rowan to the ticket stand where he graciously pays for my ticket and then escorts me to the first building we see.
It’s a cute little store, crammed with crystals, spellbooks, and shelves of handmade talismans promising everything from good luck to protection against curses.
The air smells like cinnamon and melting chocolate, layered with something earthier underneath—sage, maybe—and a chalkboard by the register advertises homemade teas and fudge.
“Exhibit A. Overpriced crystal crap tourists love,” Rowan says, nodding toward a display advertising handcrafted protective charms.
I instinctively reach for a black gemstone. I turn it over in my hand, feeling a shock as a buzzing sort of energy flows through me. On the back is a label that reads: Black tourmaline: for protection, to absorb negative energy, ward off harmful forces, and grant power.
“You don’t believe any of it’s real?” I ask.
“A bunch of rocks? No.”
“Me neither, I guess.” I shrug. “But they’re pretty.”
For some strange reason, I don’t want to put the black crystal down. I’m drawn to it. Something about the stone feels familiar, comforting, like it belongs to me, and I belong to it.
A flash of memory hits me then, and I see Silas’s ring again.
His black tourmaline ring.
I drop the crystal immediately, wiping my hands on my jeans until my skin stings.
“Let’s go inside the museum,” Rowan says and pushes me toward the exit. “That’s where Bea will be.”
We follow the winding path to the main building at the heart of the grounds.
Rowan opens the door, and I step into air tinged with old paper and the lingering scent of ash.
Glass display cases line the entrance hall, filled with colonial artifacts, handwritten journals, and enough broomsticks to stock a dozen Halloween movies.
Every few feet, someone is taking selfies beside plastic skeletons or oversized signs declaring REAL WITCH CURSES!
Rowan steers me toward a rusty old witch’s cauldron sitting beneath a spotlight. It’s surrounded by fake fog, and a brass plaque announces: THE CURSED CAULDRON OF STREGA’S HOLLOW.
He lowers his voice dramatically. “Legend says if you touch it…” I look at him expectantly. “…absolutely nothing happens.”
I roll my eyes.
“You’re terrible.”
“Joking aside, people really do believe Strega’s Hollow is cursed,” he says.
“Every couple of years, someone goes missing here—no trace, nothing. Supposedly it’s a thin spot where the veil between worlds is especially weak.
” He shrugs. “Of course, the curse doesn’t apply to overpriced souvenirs.
Otherwise, they’d never sell anything in the gift shop. ”
I snort. “Naturally.”
Rowan motions for me to follow him deeper into the museum where he narrates exhibits with the confidence of a man who has spent an unreasonable amount of time making fun of them.
A wax figure accused of witchcraft becomes “Agnes, patron saint of poor legal counsel.” A collection of rusted medical instruments earns a solemn warning about seventeenth-century dentistry.
When we pass by a carved wooden bowl decorated with black feathers, he informs me that anyone who gazes upon it after sunset is doomed to receive mediocre service at every restaurant in town.
“Terrifying,” I say.
“Don’t mock,” he says. “There are few things worse in life than Kobe beef cooked at the wrong temperature.”