Chapter 19
“Fuck,” I whispered to the empty air.
A bird trilled back. Behind me, the empty house seemed to loom, mocking my desperate words and beating heart.
The little patch where Yasmin had fallen through the deck stood out like a black eye.
The window in the shed with all of Agatha’s secrets, including the one that just blew up the one good thing that had happened to me here, seemed to wink at me.
The empty fire pit beckoned, its mouth open wide.
Of all the ways I expected our conversation to go, the possibility that Annabelle would say no, and be cruel about it, had never crossed my mind.
How had this gone so wrong? My heart was still beating rapidly, and my face was burning.
I shouted “FUCK” at the house. That helped, but not much. My first instinct was to run. To get away from this decrepit house and its ghost, who would rather stay dead than be with me.
Balling my fists so tightly my nails dug into my palms, I stalked back into the house, through the kitchen, and into the hallway.
I paused under the chandelier that had almost been my downfall when I arrived.
This fucking thing had almost killed me.
It was what made Annabelle reveal herself and started me down this path of magic books, spells, blood moons, and insanity.
My blood was still boiling. I still wanted to run as fast as I could away from this house. But there was nowhere to run.
The fugly pink sofa, still stained with blood from my head wound, sat in the front parlor.
I stared at it, focusing every bit of rage I felt at being rejected.
Tendrils of anger clawed at my throat. I was alone in a cursed house, having opened myself up to the ridiculous possibility that I could be loved, completely and honestly, by a ghost. How fucking stupid.
Now I was cleaning up the messes of a family I never wanted in the first place instead of living the life I worked so fucking hard to build for myself with no one’s help.
This wasn’t supposed to be my life, anyway. I came here to get my millions and fuck everybody else. Staring at the sofa, I remembered Seymour, who had made one very helpful suggestion: burn the ugly pink couch.
“We could have a bonfire,” I said to the house, smiling widely. It felt like my insides were too big for my body. “Let’s burn some bridges, shall we?”
I shoved matches from the kitchen in my back pocket and grabbed today’s edition of the Town Crier for kindling.
There was nothing but garden tools behind the shed, but at the side of the house was a wood pile.
Leaning against it, perfectly placed and only a little rusty, was an axe.
I was already sweating as I grabbed as much wood as I could hold under one arm and slung the axe over my shoulder.
I placed the newspapers in the pit and stacked the wood in a pile next to it.
“What’s next,” I said to the wind.
“The sofa” was its answer.
It took much more effort than I expected to hack the sofa to pieces.
The upholstery didn’t want to come apart, and I didn’t have my knife to cut it.
I managed to rip it into three uneven pieces and hacked off the legs.
Breathing hard, I hauled them out to the garden, leaving deep gouges in the hardwood floor as I dragged it behind me.
The newspapers and a few small pieces of wood ignited easily.
When the fire was about a foot high, I threw on one of the sofa legs, then another.
The sculpted wooden shapes looked like bones.
With both hands, I lifted one of the bulky pieces of the sofa’s frame and tossed it in the fire.
The stained pink fabric sizzled as it burned. A terrible smell emanated from the pit.
I whispered, “To the other fucking side you go.”
The fire made a satisfying crackling sound and the flames danced beautifully in the deepening shadows of the late afternoon. I stood watching the bloody sofa burn, feeling the heat on my face.
Entering the shed, I spotted Agatha’s book sitting innocently on her workbench. I picked it up and stuffed it under my arm, then returned to my fire.
“Bye, Aunt Agatha,” I said, and threw the book into the fire. Flames curled around the edges like hot orange fingers, clasping the book and pulling it into the inferno.
“Gibson!” Yasmin yelled, throwing open the door and running across the deck. “What are you doing?”
She lost one of her chunky sandals on the stairs, and she kicked the other one off before picking her way carefully barefoot across the yard.
“Oh, hi,” I said. “Want a s’more? No marshmallows, though.”
When she saw the black, curling pages of Agatha’s grimoire, she screamed, “No!” Her voice cracked.
I threw back my head and laughed, becoming the cackling witch I had accused her of being.
“The book!” Yasmin shrieked. She rushed at me and tried to reach past me into the fire. I blocked her, grabbing at her arms before she could thrust them into the flames. She fought me, trying to reach the burning book.
“Yaz!” Nate had followed her into the backyard and scooped up her shoes. He dropped them and grabbed her around the waist.
“No!” she yelled. It turned into a sob as the three of us watched the fire consume Agatha’s life’s work. Yasmin stopped fighting and sank to her knees, defeated. She was breathing hard. A sheen of sweat was visible where her gauzy blue blouse clung to her neck.
Pieces of wood and hunks of the pink sofa littered the yard around the fire, which was starting to burn down. I put my hands in my pockets and turned my back on it, heading back into the house.
Yasmin caught up to me in the kitchen.
I had already thrown Annabelle’s angel wings mug on the floor, though infuriatingly, it didn’t break. I chose a mug that said “Tea Sluts Gotta Have It Every Day” to smash next.
“What are you doing? Are you insane?” she said, staring at the ceramic shards on the floor.
“No, actually, I think I’m quite sane now. My ghost problems are over.” I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach Annabelle’s tea blends. Her English breakfast went down the sink first. I needed the stepladder to reach her custom blend, which was situated at the back of the cabinet, so I let it be.
“Where’s Annabelle?” she asked. Nate was still in the backyard, watching the fire. I could see him through the window, stealing glances at the house every now and then.
“Annabelle, where are you?” Yasmin looked around as if the ghost might appear on the ceiling or walk through one of the walls.
I scoffed. “She’s gone. She’s not doing your stupid ritual. And the book is gone. You can take your stuff and leave.”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?”
I got into Yasmin’s face, invading her space until she shrank back. “She. Is. Gone.” Still running on adrenaline, I could smell the burned upholstery and paper wafting off my clothes and hair. “She said no. She’s gone.”
Yasmin’s face went through a series of emotions, all of them variations on sad.
Unable to look at them, I stomped through the broken mugs down the hallway and into Annabelle’s library.
“Do you think any of these books are first editions? Might be worth something.”
I picked titles at random, looking at the spine as if I knew anything about old books, then throwing them on the floor.
Yasmin followed me, and the door opened and closed, meaning Nate had come back inside. Drifting over to the Victrola, I considered Annabelle’s record collection. “Now these might be worth something. Just gotta find the right person on eBay.”
“Gibson, stop!” Yasmin stood at the stairs. Her whiny voice was grating to my ears. “What did she say? Why won’t you talk to me?”
“I’m done talking.” Sitting on Annabelle’s side table was the songbook I’d found at Mike’s. I opened it and ripped the book in half, expecting my heart to rip in two as well. But there wasn’t anything left in me to tear.
Behind me, Nate said softly, “Let’s go, babe. Give her some space.”
“Nate’s right,” I said. “Go.”
Yasmin was crying now. “No.”
I spun around and demanded, “What happens after?”
“What?” She wiped her eyes.
“The ritual. You said Annabelle could come back for one day. Then what?”
Yasmin shook her head. “I don’t know. Agatha didn’t—”
“Of course not! There’s so much you don’t know, but you and Agatha were more than willing to do this anyway because it means fulfilling some family tradition or whatever.
Because you don’t risk anything! If Annabelle disappears after the moon sets, then who cares, right? You get to move on with your life.”
“Of course I care! Gibson—”
I grabbed one of Annabelle’s larger books and took it to the front door. Swinging it wide open, I used the book as a doorstop and pointed. “Get out of my house.”
Yasmin stood by the stairs, looking hurt and confused. “But I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.” Pointing again at the front porch and gesturing at the wider world beyond Mackinac, I said, “You can go home! To your family, where you can ask your mother why she sent you here and you can apologize to her for anything you need to apologize for, and you can try to understand why she sent you here.”
“But—” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and then wiped her hand on her skirt. Nate was standing behind her, bracing her shoulders gently. His expression was infuriatingly kind.
“No buts.” I crossed my arms and stayed at the open door.
“Your family is alive, and you can get the answers you need from them. Mine isn’t.
I will never get to try again. I will never know if they would’ve accepted me as I am, and I’ll never get to try.
Because you were right about me. I put up a wall and I kept everyone out, including and especially them.
Maybe that was wrong. It can’t have been easy to love me.
I know that. But it’s too late! They will never get to see that I’ve grown up to be .
..” I pulled in a shaky breath, losing steam and unsure what the end of that sentence was.