Chapter 19 The AI Autocorrect of Great and Unnecessary Suffering
I MAKE IT THROUGH THE last few hours of Sidney and Brett’s wedding on autopilot.
I drive Mandy and I back to Salem, completely forgetting about the lush accommodations available to me at the hotel.
Only after passing out on the living room recliner and waking up to unfiltered sunlight from the unkindly unadorned window does reality set in: last night, I pulled off another wedding.
I unmasked the saboteur. And I lost Hanry.
I’m about to lose my dream job too, but my imminent firing doesn’t sting as bad, for some reason. Probably because it’s been such a long time coming.
I check my phone. Start reading through my last texts with Hanry before I can stop myself.
I’m going to need a lot of ice cream to get through today.
I think Mandy has a secret stash with helpful spells worked into the cream.
Hexlato, she called it. Maybe one of them contains an emotional-numbing spell?
A paranormal brain freeze wouldn’t be remiss.
A banging sound coming from the front lawn forces me to roll over in bed and get up.
I’m mostly certain the noise belongs to a horde of go-getter revelers.
No surprise the holidaying Salem pilgrims are starting festivities early, and with a questionable understanding of private versus public space.
After all, today is the worst day of the calendar year: the one that memorializes my trauma.
Halloween.
I can’t believe I’m back here for this.
Grumbling, I make my way to the window, arms wrapped around my waist to close up my not-nearly-cozy-enough cardigan. Lean out to view the trespassers, prepared to shout at them to stop confusing my yard with a tourist stop.
It’s not tourists, though. It’s Matilda and the rest of Grandma’s witch cabal.
Somehow, that’s worse.
“Go away!” I shout at them. “You’ve already taken the flamingos, you can’t take the landscaping! I’m going to sell that eventually!”
In spite of her hunchback, Matilda waves back at me, but otherwise ignores me to join her friends in doing the conga. That’s it. Loud noises and petty theft are one thing, but Boomer dancing is where I draw the line.
I rumble downstairs, ready to tell that crew what’s what. Swing open the front door.
“Hi, Samantha,” Matilda creaks at me. “Care to join us? Kawbahahaha.”
“Absolutely not. Who’s the Oompa-Loompa?” I demand, pointing to the person at the end of the line. The witch’s skin has the hue and texture of an orange, so I’m sure I would’ve noticed her before.
“I’m Carol,” the witch says.
“You’re a warning advertisement for tanning beds,” I say.
“She just came back from Tampa,” Matilda explains. “She lives there now. Part-time.”
“There’s a nice community of brujas down there,” adds Carol. “Except for when Mercury goes retrograde on a full moon.”
One of the witches on the lawn, wearing bedazzled butterfly clips in her silky white hair, messes with the dials on a boom box. She is wearing white tiger-paw gloves.
“Why are you all here?” I ask the group—bravely, I might add. “Isn’t your thing to meet up in the woods at night on Halloween? Not waking up innocent twentysomethings at the crack of dawn, digging up the yard like a herd of wild hogs?”
“It’s a special occasion!” Matilda sucks in her breath, coughs, then lifts her arms dramatically to intone: “We blessed sisters seven, tied together by eternal bonds—”
The others chime in, monotone: “—seven tied together by eternal bonds—”
“STOP!”
They do, thankfully. My heart is going wild in my chest. I can’t believe what I just heard. Actually, I must’ve misheard it. It sounded—
It sounded like they said seven tides.
“Say that again,” I demand.
“We didn’t finish it,” says the tiger-pawed one. “We didn’t talk about the highs and lows yet.”
“I still prefer saying ‘thorns’ and ‘roses,’ ” says another.
“I thought it was eight, not seven?” asks Carol.
“I don’t know about any of that, but I heard you all just say,” I repeat, breathless, “that you were seven sisters, tied together by special bonds.”
“Eternal bonds,” confirms Matilda, her neck cracking. “That is true.”
“See, that’s why I think it should still be eight sisters,” says Carol. “Including Rose.”
The witches look at each other, nodding and shaking their heads like a dashboard of bobbleheads.
Their confusion aside, I’m more confident than ever with what I’ve heard.
And what I think it means. These seven still-living witches are best friends, tied together by their cabal.
Seven, tied together… the “tides” that Grandma must’ve been referring to in her will.
But Grandma was using that grammar-checking app that Bulan talked about, with its nefarious and inaccurate AI!
Which means all this time, the words in her will had nothing to do with the ocean, lunar time, or a scuba shop.
Grandma Rose was trying to say that she needed her friends to say goodbye.
Why didn’t I realize it before?
I zoom in on Carol, the Florida Orange and the seventh member of the cabal. She’s the reason I must’ve discounted them. Because before, there’d only been six witches.
“You weren’t at Grandma’s funeral,” I accuse. “Were you?”
“Well, I tried to make it!” protests the witch. “But I couldn’t very well let myself be hexed by—”
“Carol, we all know it’s because you hate the Halloween traffic,” someone interrupts.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say. Streams of hope are springing in me unexpectedly.
Like a leak in a water main. I have a vision: an idea.
A feeling that I finally know what to do to settle Grandma’s spirit once and for all.
“Come on, witches. Come with me. Not because I’m me, obviously.
But for Grandma Rose. She needs her sisters. And that boom box.”
I all but skip to the cemetery with Grandma’s witch cabal in tow.
It’s more crowded than ever, but I easily ignore the pilgrims and their cameras as I lead us to the grave site.
This time, I have to admit, the trip goes much more easily.
This is the advantage of not needing to cut security wires and jump fences and lie to attractive pine-cone gatherers named Hanry.
I’m fluttering with excitement and nerves as I arrange the witch cabal atop the grave, like I did the flowers.
Here you go, Grandma Rose. I hope this does the trick for you. I hope you feel better and can do your whole ascending schtick now, knowing that you’re not alone. That your community, the Community, always had your back.
“Now what?” croaks Matilda.
“Line up from tallest to shortest,” I say. Just in case the “high” and “low” bits also refer to their heights.
They oblige me, amazingly enough.
“Now, together, cross over Grandma’s grave twice,” I instruct.
“And the boom box?”
“I assumed you’d prefer to do this to music,” I say dryly.
“Yes, we were going to learn this wonderful new dance Carol discovered in Tampa.” They put on “the Conga.” I shake my head, watching the witches as they figure out how to arrange their hands on each other’s shoulders and wiggle their feet under the robes in a dance-suggestive manner. “Let’s go, merry ladies!”
“No one says merry anymore, Joanna,” chides the tiger-paw witch.
“Shh, shh!”
I rest my hand on Grandma’s headstone.
This is what she wanted, I think. It makes sense. These were her people.
“Goodbye, Grandma,” I say.
Something happens. A breeze picks up, first catching in the bare-branched ash tree beside us, stirring the dead leaves at its roots. Then it moves, carrying over me, drawing with it leaves and black silk flowers and a phantom touch of human warmth.
The wind feels like a frail but wiry hug. Clinging to me with all its strength, just for a moment, as my nostrils fill with that combination of catnip and thorny rose lotion. I feel love—a love I’d forgotten. Not a perfect one, but a real one. It was there.
It was her.
The witches dance on, cackling as they trip over each other’s hems. And I don’t need to wipe my eyes or anything as the breeze dies down, and the leaves and flowers settle, and I sense Grandma Rose serenely drift away.
In Salem, Halloween requires forging the rivers of postapocalyptic humanity in order to perform basic survival functions.
The downtown has more or less run out of food, same as it’s run out of space.
Yet holidaying pilgrims only keep spilling out from trains and buses like sewage.
It’s impossible to tell who’s wearing costumes or regular clothes.
All is black. All is dire. Gone from the air is the tang of fall and pumpkin spice.
The smell of rotten pumpkins, marijuana, tobacco, and dollar-store incense permeates all.
In spite of that, the skipping continues, as I cross block after block of redbrick roads to Salem Station.
My miserable, Grandma Rose–induced sham-life is over.
Obviously, I’m happy about it. My inner being is radiant.
It doesn’t matter if anyone else here understands how joyful it is to say goodbye to this place.
I can lean into it. I’ve earned that much, damn it.
“Good effing bye,” I mutter at every crosswalk, dragging my things behind me one final time. “I hate you, stupid crossing light. You’re never long enough. Oh, and you, tree root. I see you there, trying to trip everyone. Not having that anymore. Nope. Ow. I’ll get you next time, second tree root.”
While I’m lugging my overstuffed suitcase and my sorely abused duffel to the front of the station, I find myself faced with another feature of Salem I dislike: Baldy.
Baldy?!
There’s no question he’s here waiting for me. His throat-clearing is insufferably loud, and among the hordes, his head shines like a beacon. He really missed his calling as a lighthouse.
“Samantha,” he announces, attempting to flag me down. “Samantha Spük!”
“You’re putting it all behind you,” I tell myself. “All behind. Way behind. You’re throwing it from the caboose.”