Chapter 23
When I woke the next morning, there were three mugs on the bedside table next to me.
Annabelle had dragged a table upstairs from one of the spare bedrooms. Each mug was a different color and held a different variety of tea that I had no interest in drinking.
One had the phrase “Uff da” on it. I sipped from each, trying to keep my face from showing how much I hated the taste.
Annabelle hovered by the bed, literally unable to keep her feet anchored to the floor.
I managed to get to the bathroom under my own power, then accepted a piece of toast from Annabelle and notified Yasmin that I wasn’t dead via text. Finally, I settled back down in bed, exhausted after being awake and moving for only an hour.
“Sit down, Marley,” I said, patting the empty stretch of bed next to me.
After fretting for a few more seconds, she sat down carefully on the bed, then lay down and faced me.
I carefully turned onto my uninjured side and reached out my hand.
Annabelle reached back, holding her hand above mine.
Our palms were ships passing each other by, sharing the same water but never meeting.
My eyelids dropped. With her cool, ghostly energy next to me, I felt safe and tired enough to sleep for days.
“What if I stayed?” I said, only half aware of what I was saying.
“What do you mean?”
“What if I didn’t go back to New York?” I didn’t say “back home.” My apartment was nice.
My pothos plant would probably miss me eventually.
But it wasn’t home. It was just the place I went to in between stints on stage.
As long as I was playing music, I was home.
Or so I thought. For a while, I thought Abaddon could be home, as long as Annabelle was here.
Now I wasn’t sure where home was anymore.
“I could stay here. With you.”
“If you stayed here,” Annabelle said slowly, her voice barely more than a whisper, like she didn’t want to wake me, “you’d need to make an actual apology to Yasmin. And I’d hold you to your promise to buy me a new fridge.”
I smiled but didn’t have the energy to laugh.
“And you’d finish your song,” she continued. “You’d record it and put it on the internet Tubes, then make a million dollars off it.”
I chuckled at that. “Don’t make me laugh, Marley, it hurts.”
She smiled, tucking the hand that wasn’t holding mine under her cheek. “Fine. You would sing to me, and I would be the best audience of one.”
“That’s much more likely.”
“I would make dinner for you. We would pretend to have tea together. And you would get bored.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“You would. I would tell you to travel, and when you got back, you’d tell me all about the places you’d seen. And you’d bring me souvenirs and buy me more books. I’d read to you at night and watch you sleep.”
I must’ve made a face, because she added, “Not in a creepy way.”
“Sounds nice,” I murmured.
“It would be,” she whispered. “You’d grow older.
There’s nothing either of us could do about that.
And if you got sick or sad, I couldn’t hold you or comfort you.
If you fell from another ladder or another stupid horse, I couldn’t fix you.
I could only watch as you slipped further away from me.
And then one day, I would be alone again. ”
There was no sound in the room but my raspy breathing and the beating of my heart. Eventually, I blinked and shook my head, trying to come to my senses through a thick fog of painkillers but not quite getting there.
“Nuh uh,” I said.
“What?”
“That’s horseshit. A great big pile of—”
“Oh, not again, please.”
“Nuh uh,” I repeated. “You’re just scared.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re not scared of me eventually dying. If I left, you wouldn’t have to risk being alive again. You’re scared of being alive again because you’re scared of dying. But it’s okay, Marley, it’s normal to be scared of dying. Even if you’re a ghost.”
“Oh darling,” she said, and I realized that Annabelle was crying softly. Her tears fell from her face but dissipated into nothing before they reached the pillowcase. “That’s not at all what I’m afraid of.”
“Then what?”
“I’m afraid of only being able to love you for one day.
” She wiped her eyes, then held my hand again.
I expected it to feel wet, but it didn’t, just cold and tingly.
“What if I came back, but all I had was one day with you? I couldn’t bear it, knowing that we might’ve had a lifetime.
It would break my heart to see you live your life to the end, but I would rather have that than only one day. ”
I put both my hands out, about a foot apart. I gestured to one, then the other. “Rock. Hard place.”
She passed her hand through both of mine. “I go through them both.”
“You’re right, Marley,” I said, closing my eyes. I was exhausted even though I’d only been awake for a short time. “I didn’t have the right to ask you to choose. Those are both shitty options. But I still wish you would choose to come back and be with me.”
I must’ve fallen asleep again, because the next thing I knew, my room was full of daylight and my ghost was gone.
***
Dr. Johnson had been right. The day after the fall—and the day after that—I was in an absolute world of hurt. I slept most of the next day in a painkiller haze, then moved downstairs. My bruises got darker and uglier while my joints screamed at me every time I moved.
While I recovered, Sage, Adam, and Tyler became permanent fixtures in the house.
Tyler delivered casseroles from his moms and sent back reports on my health to Sara.
He and Adam followed Annabelle around the house, relentlessly prodding her with questions and asking her to walk through walls.
Every attempt at filming the result failed, but they recorded at least a dozen tries, dissolving into laughter each time they witnessed Annabelle float or stick her arm through a wall.
She laughed along with them, rediscovering some of the joy of her current form as the boys found her mundane life in the cottage worthy of a dozen failed TikToks.
My right arm was still too sore to comfortably hold my guitar, but I sat on the intact sofa in the sitting room and watched Sage play, giving them pointers. Sage was a natural musician, and watching them improve after just a few hours of instruction did something funny to my insides.
When Nate appeared at the front door holding Yasmin’s trunk in his beefy arms, Annabelle let him in. He gingerly stepped toward me and kept his voice in a whisper. “Hi, Gibson.”
“I’m not in a coma, Nate, you can talk normally.”
He looked relieved but still stood at a distance like he was afraid I might bite him.
“Okay, then. I’ll just ...” He pointed to the stairs.
Yasmin had moved her things back into the rose-wallpaper room for the time being.
Our ceasefire was holding, but Yasmin and I hadn’t really talked since she brought me home from the Johnsons.
“Yeah.” I chewed the inside of my cheek. I settled in Annabelle’s chair in her alcove, trying not to move in ways that hurt, which meant mostly not moving.
Annabelle gave me a disapproving look that said “You need to talk to her” with her eyebrows.
I cleared my throat. “Nate, can you ask Yasmin to come downstairs? I’d like to talk.”
“Sure.” He continued up the stairs with her bag, and gently opened and closed the door to her room.
“How about some tea to help you with this conversation?” Annabelle asked, even though I already had a half-full mug at my elbow. Her manic insistence on making tea as a way of repairing the damage done by our argument and my fall made me even more fond of her.
“Sure, Marley.” I got up with a groan and followed her into the kitchen, watching as Annabelle busied herself at the sink. When Yasmin came downstairs, Annabelle set two cups on the table and then vanished, giving me a thumbs-up before she faded completely.
“Do you want this? I literally can’t drink any more tea but I will never tell Annabelle that.” I pointed to my mug. It was yellow and was labeled “Tears of Ohio fans.”
Yasmin sat down in what had become her usual spot at the table. She sniffed her mug and then mine. She shrugged and accepted both.
I began, “So, uh—”
At the same time, she said, “I guess we—”
We both paused, then I said, “Look, I’m sorry for what I said the other day.”
She played with the lacy hem of her sleeve. She was wearing a blouse that wouldn’t look out of place at the Renaissance fair.
“I was mad at Annabelle for rejecting me and I took it out on you. Even though you were basically squatting here without paying rent or utilities, it was immature of me and it wasn’t fair to you.”
“Thank you for apologizing.” She directed her words to the mug in front of her instead of me. “I don’t know what went down, but clearly it really hurt you and I’m sorry for that. We both probably could’ve handled this better.”
“Maybe.” Sitting across from her, I felt attached to my weird cousin all of a sudden. “But we’re Cartwright women, so maybe that’s expecting a bit much.”
She laughed. “Facts.”
We sat comfortably while awkward guitar chords drifted in from the alcove. Sage was trying to learn “Because the Night” on my guitar, but their progress was slow.
“We can still do it, you know,” Yasmin said quietly. “The ritual.”
I frowned. “But I burned the book.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you honestly think I didn’t copy that entire book? I scanned it and hand copied the diagrams. They are backed up to three different types of drives. The Cartwright family grimoire is fully digital now.”
“You are something else, you know that?” I said. She frowned, and I added, “I mean that as a compliment.”
Yasmin finished one mug of tea and started on the other. “She really didn’t want to come back?”
I shook my head.
“I guess it doesn’t matter, then.”
Annabelle appeared suddenly, seated in the chair between us. Both Yasmin and I jumped, startled, and Yasmin’s empty mug knocked over.
Annabelle righted the mug and said, “Let’s do it.” She looked at Yasmin, then at me, a serious expression on her face. “I’ll do the ritual. Just tell me what I need to do.”