Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emberwood is a private little town in the middle of nowhere with one stoplight and a guy named Darryl who pumps your gas at the fill-up station. The bank is an old brick house pretending to be a bank, and that theme continues to the law office and also the post office.
I wouldn’t exactly call it sleepy, because there are always people bustling about, but it’s definitely a closed community. And with us being strangers, the locals are keeping a very close eye on us.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say with as much calm as I can project. “They’re just curious.”
Asher snorts. “Or plotting our takedown. It feels like we’re about to be the starring characters in one of those horror films where the entire town turns out to be aliens living in the husks of people.”
I’d argue, but he’s not wrong.
The good news is, the farther we walk from the town square, the fewer people there are to stare.
Map in hand, we turn left on Willow, toward the old lumber mill, and the last thing we expect to find is a golf cart veered off the road.
It’s wedged deep into the manicured hedges of someone’s front yard, with an old woman hunched over on the front seat.
“Oh, hell,” Asher mutters. “That can’t be good.”
“No, it can’t.”
The two of us rush forward, my stomach twisting.
Please don’t be dead. Please, please don’t be dead.
The woman is slumped to the side, her purple pillbox hat slightly askew. Her mouth is open, and I’m about to reach for her pulse when she lets off a loud snore.
Asher jumps and lets out a little yip that makes me giggle. “Frickety frack, she scared me.”
“Me too.”
Another long, low vibration rumbles out of the old girl, and Asher laughs. “Wow, she’s really going for it.”
I gently shake the woman’s shoulder. “Miss?”
The old girl blinks awake, her eyes glassed over with a fog of confusion. She glances around, sits up, and runs a hand down the front of her camel coat as if steadying herself. “What on earth? What do you two think you’re up to?”
“Uh, checking on you?” Asher says, as if that was beyond obvious.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“Of course I’m all right!” she huffs, though the way she rubs at her temples suggests otherwise.
Asher gathers the woman’s bag from where it flopped onto the ground. Once he corrals her little spiral notebook, a couple of pens, and what looks like a handful of peppermint candies scattered in the leaves, he shoves them back into the oversized purse and sets it on the front seat.
“Are you all right to get home?” I ask.
She straightens in her seat and gives me an imperious look. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you kind of crashed into a bush.” Asher points at the hedge as if she couldn’t see it bristling up over the hood of her cart.
The woman scoffs, waving a dismissive hand. “Pfft. I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Children today. So dramatic. Such active imaginations.”
Then, with all the dignity of a queen, she grips her tiny steering wheel, shifts into reverse, and—with a crunching of branches and a tinny beep, beep, beep—backs right over a peony bush before puttering off down the street.
Asher and I watch her go, silent for a beat before he turns to me. “Did she imply we imagined her getting into a wreck with those boxwoods?”
I snort and pull us back into motion. “Yes, yes she did.”
Tanner’s map is perfect, and twenty minutes later, Asher and I are standing outside the iron gates of Emberwood’s Evergreen Cemetery.
“This isn’t how I imagined reconnecting with my parents.
I had a whole scene in my head… how I’d find them one day…
and they’d be so excited and relieved that I’m okay… and they’d run over and hug me…”
My laugh comes out thin, hollow. “It seems so stupid now.”
Asher laces his fingers with mine and squeezes. “It’s not stupid. My parents have been dead for almost fifteen years, and I still make up scenes in my head. I imagine how proud they would’ve been at my graduation. What they would’ve said when I brought my fiancé home to meet them…”
“Is he super-hot and rich?”
“Oh, yeah.” He flashes me a smile. “And he plays the guitar on the back deck of our lakefront cottage.”
“I love that for you.” I lean to the side and rest my cheek against his shoulder. My chest is tight, and I breathe deep, pulling much-needed oxygen into my lungs. “Thanks for being here.”
He leans over and kisses the top of my head. “It’s you and me, Pops. Wherever this life takes us.”
Yeah, but neither of us could’ve imagined it taking us to a realm of witchcraft and magical powers.
Still, this is where we are.
Together we walk through the cemetery, the air rich with the scent of fall leaves and damp earth. Late afternoon sunlight filters through the towering trees, dappling the path ahead. A gentle wind rustles the branches, promising the coming of colder weather.
It seems peaceful.
It should feel peaceful.
But something fundamental is changing inside me. Sebastian talked about the magical mist in my cells condensing. He said my powers are fighting for freedom.
I don’t know about that, but the world feels different.
The air feels thinner… especially here.
Is it my spirit affinity? I should’ve asked Sebastian more about it. Does that mean the spirit of people or does it mean the spirits of the departed? Am I a ghost whisperer?
A handful of cars dot the winding paths, their owners scattered across the grounds, visiting memories carved in stone. A woman with a red Prius is parked near a grave.
We exchange a knowing smile, one that says: I see your grief. I understand it. I carry it too.
Asher and I weave along the path toward the back of the property, and find fancy statues standing sentinel in front of thirteen ancient mausoleums.
The imposing marble monstrosities mark the back of the property and look down over the rest of the cemetery.
The Emberwood Elite are the thirteen founding families of this small town, and all of them have a family crypt back here.
My maternal family included.
We find the Hallowind mausoleum, and my pulse races. My parents were laid to rest five years ago, but I only found out yesterday. I don’t remember them yet, but even so, I miss them.
I mourn the family I’ll never get to know.
The mausoleum stands at the back of the cemetery property, near a creek that murmurs softly beyond the trees. The crypt is old, ancient even, its black granite stone veined with silver, worn but unyielding.
It doesn’t match the pristine ivory vaults of the more modern mausoleums near the front. No, like the crypts of the other Emberwood Elite families, it stands apart from the rest. They are eerily cool—much like Hallowind House.
I run my fingers over the engraved marble tableaus on the outside wall and find the one for James Forrester—my father.
“Hey, Dad. It’s me, Poppy. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.” Not that my absence had anything to do with me. “I’m also sorry I don’t remember you… or Mom.”
But I will. If Sebastian is right, someone from the coven will come for me, and I’ll make them give me my memories back. I’ll also find out what they did with Violet and Lily.
I don’t know how I can make a coven of witches bend to my will, but I’ll figure it out.
Asher is standing beside me, reading the names of the dead. “It’s kinda sad that the husbands don’t get to go inside, isn’t it?”
“Kinda, but maybe there’s something witchy about the resting place of the Hallowinds. Maybe the ancestors need to remain together with their magic or something.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
I pause at the threshold and sigh at the sun dipping behind the trees. “I won’t be able to visit long, or we’ll be walking back in the pitch dark.”
Asher huffs a laugh. “Take all the time you need, baby girl. Fog or no fog, I’ll make sure we get home safe.”
Yep. Everyone deserves an Asher.
The old-fashioned copper handle is warm against my palm despite the cool November air. It turns easier than I expect and then the heavy door groans open.
Inside, the air is cool, still, and heavy. The sconces along the stone walls flicker to life and glow with weak, golden light. My mind jumps to magic doing that but then realize it might be as simple as motion detection.
That’s far less interesting.
The vaulted ceiling arches high above, its carvings and artistry lost in the shadows of darkness.
In the center of the space, a wide, smooth marble altar table sits. I know that in the olden days, people laid out the casket of their loved ones on these altars so friends and family could come mourn. I wonder if my mom’s casket sat here.
And if so, who came to mourn her?
I move to the carved stone crypt lying beneath a large stained-glass window. The dimming light of the sinking sun doesn’t do the window justice.
It depicts a beautiful raven in flight, surrounded by swirling mist. In full sun, it must be breathtaking. Magical.
My fingers trace over the inscription on the bronze plaque.
Zoe Hallowind-Forrester
Loving mother. Devoted wife.
I swallow against the tightness in my throat. “Hey, Mom.”
Stillness presses in, and my fingers curl into my sleeves as words escape me. “So, I met Sebastian, and he brought me here to Emberwood. He says he was a colleague of yours and that you were helping him with a dangerous problem. He said that’s how you and Dad were killed.”
I drag my finger through the dust on the stone of her crypt, tracing patterns. “There’s too much I don’t know, but I wanted to tell you that I’ll find out what happened and what the coven did to me, Violet, and Lily.”
I feel the gaping hole of my knowledge to the marrow of my bones and won’t rest until I figure things out and fill in the blanks. Even if I wanted to move on—which I don’t—I couldn’t. There’s a huge part of me I can’t access, and it’s eating me up from the inside.
Movement outside catches at the edge of my vision. At first, I think it’s Asher, but I can see him plainly through the stained-glass window. He’s reading the family nameplates on the other Emberwood Elite mausoleums.