Chapter 2

Kate

“Everything okay, North?”

I close my eyes and breathe deep, opening them to find Brooks watching me from the picnic table in the backyard of the Pink Lady. He’s mixing powder for a spell that he believes will hide the enchanted paintbrushes and rollers from prying eyes.

I suppose I’m curious to see if it’ll work.

In the meantime, I’m getting my ass up on that scaffolding and tackling the gingerbread trim. I won’t entrust anyone else with a task as delicate as this.

“Just tired. Stressed out.” I turn away from Brooks to study the pink and white Victorian house that we’ve been contracted to paint. It’s looking good, magic or no magic. All three of these guys are hard workers; they’re definitely earning their keep on the jobsite.

And in the bedroom? Maybe. Not Brooks, but the other two.

“Don’t be. Let me worry about the Hag Wytch.” Brooks yanks a bit of red hair from his head and adds it to the mortar and pestle on the table in front of him. “Compared to life in the Witchwoods, this is easy work. And, soon enough, even the painting will take care of itself.”

But that’s not why I feel tired and stressed. Not the house. Not the Hag.

Mrs. Madsen is studying us from the safety of the back deck, the ghost hovering in the window behind her. It’s our lunch break so we can do whatever we want—besides the fact that this is freelance work—but her stare is impossible to ignore.

“She’s definitely filming us,” I murmur, wondering how many cameras she’s got hidden around here. “Filming this conversation.” We do not need to get any bigger on the internet than we already are. The situation with the cops at the community forest is only getting worse, not better.

My name is now the third most searched term on the internet, preceded by the names Brooks McDowell and Marlowe Waverley. Tanner Skye comes in fourth. People are getting mighty curious.

I lean back against the fence as Tanner opens a bottle of water and holds it out to Marlowe.

“Make it cold for me?” he asks, and Marlowe gives him a nasty look. “You did it for Kate yesterday. What? Am I any less your coven than she is?” Tanner finds this hilarious, lips pulled back in a massive grin.

Nobody is this happy all the time. What’s your deal, Mr. Skye? I have a feeling that Tanner’s only showing me what he thinks I want to see. How do I get him to open up? I’ll never truly know him if I only see the happy. I want the good, bad, and the hideously ugly, too.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if your element were less useless than it is?” Marlowe smiles tightly back at him, unamused.

“I could suck the oxygen out of your lungs, asphyxiate you where you stand. How useless would it be then?” Tanner retorts, handing the now-cold water out to me. I smile as I take it, tipping it back and drinking half in one go.

When I move to hand it over to the men so we can share, Marlowe flicks a finger and water condenses on the inside of the plastic. It dribbles down the sides until the bottle is full again.

“Guys, we’re being filmed ,” I remind them, even though I’m enjoying the magic, too. “This is a big deal. Catastrophic. I know it’s hard to grasp since social media wasn’t a thing in your time periods.” I pause and give Marlowe a look. “Well, except for Myspace.”

“Yes, Kate. I had Myspace. Have you looked my old profile up?” Marlowe watches me with his arms crossed over his sweat-soaked shirt, a baseball cap on his head that he stole from me. It has the Humboldt Crabs baseball logo on the front and it’s too small for him.

We could use some new caps. Maybe if we had a nice selection of alternative hat choices, we wouldn’t have to wear the witch ones everywhere? That’d help the social media frenzy die down a bit.

“I have,” I admit, and I don’t tell him how I got teary-eyed reading all the messages of hope and love that people posted for him. Even now, twenty years later, he has friends and family showing up to his candlelight vigil.

Marlowe Waverley was loved.

But Tanner? Poor Tanner. I know that he … wasn’t. Which is probably why his name is number four on the popular search terms. Oh, East.

He notices me noticing him, running his tongue across his upper teeth, lip curled up on one side in a flirtatious snarl. Intentional. Every single thing he does is calculated. Sexy, but calculated. Adorable, but calculated.

He’s not as nice as he first appears, I’m sure of it. My squishy heart wants to show him what it means to be loved, but he has to earn it. He needs to want Kate for Kate, not just for woman-mine-wife-pussy. You know?

“Bring me a roller,” Brooks commands, and Tanner moves away to do it, like maybe he’s trying to flee the scene under the guise of being helpful.

Brooks looks up at me, holding out his hand to indicate that I should sit. I move over to the table and take a seat across from him. You were loved, too, weren’t you? It’s just been so long since you went missing that all the people who loved you are dead.

I can’t decide which of their three predicaments is the saddest.

Me, being lonely with a deceased grandma who loved me and three friends who care is nowhere near to making that list.

Speaking of … Georgia is texting me repeatedly, warning me that if I don’t answer her incoming phone call, that she’s asking for a welfare check. Fine. She wins.

“Hey,” I say cheerily. It’s only been a few days, right? Have I ignored that many text messages?

“ Two people have disappeared in the Witchwoods this week, Kate.” Georgia is angry, and probably confused, what with the holes in her memory. “Tacy and Fernanda have been talking about going there nonstop, and even Nathan called me to ask if I knew the truth. The whole world knows that those men you’ve got with you are the missing Witchwood boys. What the hell is happening over there?”

I just sit there, watching as Tanner places a roller on the table in front of Brooks. He sprinkles some of the powder across it and then holds out both hands. Tanner stands at the head of the table and takes both my left hand and Brooks’ right into his.

Marlowe crawls up to sit on the tabletop, taking Brooks’ hand and then holding his out for mine. I hesitate to take it, and he notices. His mouth purses, but he doesn’t make any snarky remarks. That’s appreciated.

I lift up a single finger for them to give me a minute, like it’s not the weirdness with Marlowe keeping me from taking his hand. No, no, it’s the phone call with my best friend. I need to hold the phone, right?

“Breakfast on Saturday, Georgia. I’ll tell you then, okay? Just … let’s get to Saturday. I’ve got this big job at the Pink Lady, and I don’t want to mess it up.”

She sighs at me, and I can imagine her twirling her finger around in the air. Georgia loves movies from the eighties, and fantasizes about winding a brightly colored, curly cord around her finger while she talks on the phone.

“Fine, but if you don’t show, I am calling the police.”

And I’m sure the police will soon be calling me. I was the last person to go missing in those woods, and I came back. Detective Gilley disappeared on a mission to speak with me. I’m in possession of three missing persons. You think Brooks could whip up a jailbreak spell for me? I might need it.

I placate Georgia with several more promises before I hang up and set the phone aside.

“If we don’t do something soon, the internet is going to swarm those woods,” I explain as Marlowe finally takes my hand in his. He doesn’t grab me as hard as he might’ve before. Good. Did breaking my hand teach him a thing or two about being nice?

“I’ll figure out a way to seal that gate,” Brooks assures me as he closes his eyes and then starts to hum. Tanner and Marlowe join in. With a mumbled curse under my breath, I squeeze their hands in mine and do the same.

I pretend like I can’t feel Mrs. Madsen watching us.

“We were praying,” I repeat to her for the fifth time. “Over our lunch.”

It’s a silly lie, but it’s plausible. Before we cast the spell, the guys and I popped into Fresh Freeze for greasy bags of drive-in diner food and lobbed them onto the picnic table. Technically , we were holding hands around our lunch, too.

“It’s quite curious that all three missing Witchwoods men have sons the same age,” Robin Madsen adds, trying to fish for information while I desperately try to keep her near the front of the house. We have magical paintbrushes and rollers going in the back, and it’s incredible.

A little bit of humming, some more spit (why though?), and the spell was active. It’s doing a lovely job, too. Not one smudge. Perfect edging. No paint splatters or drips. Brooks promises that his a€?spell of disinterest’ will keep people from noticing them, but why tempt fate?

“Look, Kate, I’m sorry if this comes across in an inappropriate way, but …” Mrs. Madsen swallows, like she’s nervous about something. I’m sitting on the front porch with her, dragged into a conversation over lemonade as a necessity. I’m not going to let the spell paint the whole house for me; that’s not the point. I enjoy my work. I enjoy the process. “I was hoping it was all true, you and the men coming back from some magical place. I … I think there’s a ghost in my house, and I’m terrified.”

I look over at her sharply, noticing the ghost in the window again, watching from char-edged eye sockets. In the reflection above her, I can see the eyes of the Hag, soulful and human. When I meet those eyes, I can hear the echoes of her victims’ cries in my head.

“ Is this what death looks like?” a voice whispers inside my skull.

“A ghost?” I ask, as if I didn’t hear Robin the first time. Tanner comes around the house to give me a thumbs-up, indicating that all of the work on the back is done. I gape at him. I see now that this project is going to take much less time than I originally thought.

Mrs. Madsen interprets my expression as something else, but she does glance his way and blink like she can’t quite believe her eyes.

She shakes her head and mutters something like, “this is Tanner Junior, Robin.”

“Yes, a ghost. It … I feel like it’s hunting me, Kate. I’m afraid to sleep at night. I’ve been staying in a hotel, if I’m being honest.” She looks at me like I can help her.

I quickly steer the conversation in a new direction, and then hurry away from her when I get the chance.

“How do we exorcise a ghost?” I ask Marlowe, startling him. He was standing on the sidewalk looking in the direction of the bay. Or maybe he was looking at the Adorni Center, a city-owned rec building that’s across the street. That’s where I had my high school proms. Him, too. Twenty years apart and we share a lot of similar memories.

Would he have been at those proms with Miriam like I was with Nathan?

Slowly, almost like he’s coming out of a fog, Marlowe turns to face me. Were his eyelashes always that long, that dark? I take a small step back, jam my hands into the pockets of my overalls, and wait for a response.

When one doesn’t come, I quirk a brow at him.

“Sorry, what?” he asks me, studying my face with those impressively dark eyes of his. “A ghost?” He glances over at the house, just as pink as it was when we started, but with much more flattering shades, trim choices, and accents. It looks like a glorious birthday cake against the blotted gray Humboldt County sky.

“Are you okay?” I ask, tilting my head to the side and trying not to think about our embarrassing morning yesterday. Something weird and special happened in my backyard. It’s a lot of emotion to deal with all at once.

Marlowe wets his lips, digs his hands into his own pockets. He stares down at the ground, working his jaw as he tries to wrangle whatever wild thoughts are going through his head.

“Kate, I—” He starts talking only to stop abruptly, mouth flattening into a mean line.

Tanner’s hand clamps down on my shoulder, and I shiver all over, catching his exaggerated wink out of the corner of my eye. There’s a sharp glint in his blue gaze, an ice pick of jealousy that he tries to hide beneath a joke.

“I just want you to know that it’s me behind you this time,” he teases as Brooks joins us. My cheeks flush, recalling my horrible mixup yet again. Marlowe did wrong by breaking my hand, so that kind of makes us even. Tanner is a different story altogether. “You want to exorcise a ghost, huh? That’s a tricky spell, North.”

“Bone dust, grave dirt, corpse fingernails.” Brooks sighs as he watches a roller skim up the wall with expert precision. “Exorcising a ghost isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. I don’t think we can manage that spell on top of the one we’re already trying to cast. Fear spell, invisibility spell, some esoteric gate binding. It’s not happening.”

“I’m worried about Mrs. Madsen.” I gesture at the house, and all three men give me the strangest looks. “What? It’s normal to care about other people, you know.” I slide a paintbrush from my pocket and brush my thumb against the bristles, studying them. “Marlowe.” He stares even more intently at me when I say his name.

“ If I were your boyfriend.” Oh my God. He said that, didn’t he? Wow.

“Marlowe, what?” he asks, one knee cocked, toe of his boot pressed to the sidewalk. Even without the witch hats, these guys are conspicuous. He looks like an unholy ink blot against the sleepy coastal backdrop. His shadow is weirdly projected on the wall of the Adorni Center, despite the physics being entirely wrong for such a thing.

“You said you wanted to exorcise the ghost, too.” I look over at Tanner. He was standing right there on the porch when Marlowe brought it up. He smiles at me, but there’s an edge to it that reminds me I’ve only just met him. Vows or no, I should be careful.

“Marlowe has no idea what goes into a spell like that; we’re not exorcising this ghost.” Brooks tucks his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans and glances up at the mansion. The ghost is staring at us from the upstairs window, and I shiver under its cool observation. “At least not yet. It’s more practical for us to close the gate and then deal with the escapees. What’d be the point now? We exorcise it and the ghost comes right back? You two have a lot to learn.” He takes off across the grass and then pauses to glance over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s head home and I’ll make dinner.”

Brooks snaps his fingers, and the roller stops painting, floating down until he can clutch it in one big hand.

“Once we close the gate, we can work on this, eh kitten?” Tanner cocks his fancy brow at me and then hesitates, like he doesn’t want to leave me alone with Marlowe. I watch him inhale, nice and deep. Exhale. He smiles and then he, too, turns and follows after Brooks to start cleaning up.

I knew it. Tanner, talk to me, goddamn it.

But he’s gone, and I’ll have to wait for a better opportunity.

It’s just me and Marlowe again, and it gets very awkward, very quickly.

“Are you okay?” I repeat, because he didn’t answer me before, and I feel like I need to know.

“Do we have a lawn mower?” is what he asks me instead. No angry scowl. No bitchy quips. Just a completely innocuous and totally random question. I furrow my brow as he swipes a hand over the lower half of his face, staring off at the bay again.

“Yes, I have a lawn mower,” I respond, wondering if the emphasis on the word a€?I’ might get his attention.

It does.

He turns then, facing off against me with those terrifying eyes of his. That perfect mouth. Marlowe is made up of contrasts—sharp glare, soft mouth, hard body, silky hair. He looks ridiculously unattainable and completely standoffish.

“ We have a lawn mower. Good to know.”

“You promised to be nice to me,” I remind him, lifting up my hand. It still hurts, by the way. Not a lot, but enough that I can recall the memories from yesterday whenever I flex it. Marlowe stares at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“No,” he says with a wild, little laugh. “I said I would take care of you. Completely different thing. I would never promise to be nice, not to anyone.”

“According to everyone that knew you before you went missing, you were nice.”

He laughs at me again, and it’s not just slightly feral, it’s completely unhinged.

“Right. I was nice. Before Tanner and Brooks. Before the woods.” Marlowe steps forward suddenly, and bumps into me. My back hits the side of the house, his palm slamming into the pink siding behind me. Marlowe’s lips descend on mine, capturing me and somehow forcing me to my tiptoes even though our mouths are the only point of contact.

He kisses me like I mean something, like I matter. I like that.

“ Are you my boyfriend?”

“ Better than that. I’m your coven .”

He draws back so that he can look at me, studying my face with a curious expression on his own.

“You were born right before I went missing,” he remarks, like he’s just realized how strange that is. I don’t correct him and tell him that I was born two years before he went missing. Close enough. “If I hadn’t gotten trapped in the Witchwoods, we never would’ve … I’d have been far too old for you.”

Marlowe draws away from me and turns, heading up the grassy incline behind the house. He pauses once to look back at me, raising a brow like he’s asking if I’m coming.

He never specifies whether he thinks it’s a good thing or a bad one, us being the same age against all the odds in the universe. Even the march of time couldn’t stop this meeting.

Our relationship is like a dark fairy tale, something from the Brothers Grimm. Way too disturbed to be a Disney version.

“A couple decades of age gap,” I tease as I move up to stand beside him. “You never know.”

A ghostly smile flits over his lips, but then his attention lifts to the stained-glass window on the second story of the house. The actual, real-life ghost is right there, fingers pressed to the glass. She opens her mouth to flash sharp teeth and lets out a howl that shakes the entire house.

“Ghosts are bad omens, signs of trouble,” Marlowe repeats, just like he did the other day. As if to confirm his point, a bucket of paint topples over into the grass and Brooks curses furiously. “Huh.”

Marlowe snatches my hand in his and drags me after him.

There’s something like butterflies in my stomach which makes zero sense.

He’s a monster.

I have to keep that in mind.

They are all monsters.

They are all witches.