Chapter 22

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Holly found the aunts in the little herb and vegetable patch behind the house. Aunt Rose was kneeling in the dirt with a giant straw hat on her head, digging out old plants and preparing to seed for the summer. Daisy was swaying on a wooden swing that had peeling paint and faded cushions, sipping an iced tea and contentedly watching her sister putter in the approaching twilight.

“Missy found me,” Holly said, kneeling beside Aunt Rose and yanking out a particularly tough stalk. “She said you have news about the blank journal?” Holly tossed the vegetation to the side, the scent of fresh dirt still clinging to its roots.

“We think we do,” corrected Aunt Daisy from the swing. A chilly wind swept around the corner of the house, and she zipped her hot-pink sweatshirt up to her chin. Aunt Daisy had lost most of her vision decades ago, but it had only sharpened her hearing. Holly’s cheeks reddened as she thought of Missy hollering about condoms. Aunt Daisy had definitely heard.

Aunt Rose sat on her heels and adjusted the brim of her hat. “We don’t think they’re blank.”

Holly stared at her in confusion. Aunt Rose and Aunt Daisy were in their early sixties and were as sharp as tacks; but the journals were blank. “I don’t follow.”

“We aren’t sure about anything,” Aunt Rose admitted. “Our family line has chosen to live quietly. One of the consequences of that is a loss of knowledge over time.”

It seemed there were a lot of consequences for the way the Celestes had chosen to live. At some point in history their family had decided to “live quietly,” which was a fancy way of saying they’d agreed to use their power as little as possible. Maybe they thought it was safer, or maybe they were ashamed of what they were. Holly didn’t know the reason, but she did know that all of that stifled energy didn’t just disappear. Generation after generation, it built in the Celeste bloodline, until it could no longer be contained and had found an outlet in three little girls, infusing them with all the pent-up power of generations. As a result, Aunt Rose and Aunt Daisy suspected Holly and her sisters were some of the most powerful of their kind to exist in centuries.

From an early age the girls had been taught how dangerous the world was for them and how imperative it was that they learn to blend in. That meant denying a lot of who they were and what they could do while still allowing enough of an outlet for their powers that history didn’t repeat itself.

“We think Autumn cursed the books,” Aunt Daisy piped in, the swing hinges rhythmically punctuating every third word, “so that only her descendants could read it.”

Holly sat back, thunderstruck. “Cursing is real ?”

Aunt Daisy and Aunt Rose were quiet for the same length of time, and Holly swore for the millionth time that the twins could communicate telepathically.

“With our family line’s choice to live quietly, we have lost centuries of oral knowledge,” Aunt Rose finally answered. “What would have been passed down—the history of our kind, information about how to control our powers, and all the tips and tricks that would have come with hundreds of years of knowledge—was instead silenced and forgotten.”

And there was another consequence of her family’s choices: it seemed life was nothing but a series of consequences and unpleasant corrections.

“And in some ways, because we’ve lost that knowledge and history, we’ve also lost our identity.” Aunt Rose reached for another plant and tugged it free. “We have power, but not the proper knowledge to use it. But we do have some very old texts that Daisy and I are going to look through to see if we can find answers.”

If the answers were written down somewhere, Rose and Daisy would find them. They’d both been librarians before her mother died. The Celestes really liked their books. The problem was that in the past, what they’d needed to know hadn’t been preserved in the written word. It wasn’t like their existence was common knowledge. And unlike Stacy’s community, Holly and her kind were largely solitary and had very few others they could ask for help.

“Okay.” Holly yanked out a weed. “I want to solve the mystery with Autumn and Councilman Miller before Connor does, in case the truth implicates our family.”

Holly helped clear a few more plants while chatting about what herbs Rose wanted to plant for the summer. Aunt Rose was an expert in herbs, and she carefully tended them during the warmer months and dried them for winter use.

“Oh, Aunt Daisy, Winter said something about needing you for cider tomorrow,” Holly said after a bit, stretching her arms over her head.

Aunt Daisy nodded, and Holly patted her on the shoulder as she walked back into the kitchen. She was pouring a glass of water when her phone buzzed. She pulled it from her back pocket and grinned stupidly when she saw that the text was from Connor.

Connor: Did you get all the paint off?

Holly: Yes. You?

Connor: The best I could. Charlotte caught me when I was walking back to my trailer. I told her I tripped over a bucket of paint. I don’t think she believed me. The handprints probably gave me away.

Holly: At least SHE didn’t walk in on us.

Connor: Before I got so delightfully distracted, I meant to ask if you want to watch the filming in the orchard tonight. It’s a full moon.

Holly: I can’t. We celebrate June 1st.

Connor: Why?

Holly could practically sense his curiosity through the text.

Holly: It’s just a silly tradition. We have a bonfire to clear away the waste from pruning. It’s not like we dance naked under the moonlight.

Three dots popped up as he typed, and then they disappeared again. The process repeated multiple times until finally a text came through.

Connor: Now that’s a shame. I’d really like to see you dancing naked around a fire.

She typed back that maybe someday he would and then quickly erased it. No, someday he wouldn’t, because whatever they were doing was temporary. They had a limited number of tomorrows together, and she was pretty sure none of them would involve full-moon fantasies.

Connor shined a flashlight beneath his chin and spoke into the camera. “We’re here in the old Gala orchard, which was planted two hundred years ago by Autumn Celeste. This is where most of the sightings of the councilman have taken place. It was under this apple tree that Amy Gordon spoke to the councilman, and this is where she later found the rotten apple core that he left behind.”

Connor backed up to the tree and gestured to its gnarled and knotted trunk. The camera followed his movements and then panned upward to capture a perfect shot of the moon and stars through the black, twisted branches.

When the camera turned back to him, Connor held the flashlight beam over the EMF detector. “If this red bulb lights up, it means the machine is detecting high levels of electromagnetic energy.”

While the cameras filmed, he asked the ghost to talk to him. He was dramatic for the cameras, but the EMF wasn’t going off, and he didn’t see the councilman anywhere. He was unsurprised. Most of his brushes with the paranormal happened when he was alone or with his brother, not when an entire film crew was hanging around.

Other ghost-hunting shows had rigged EMFs that would go off so they could claim a ghostly presence. Connor was happy to cultivate drama on Grimm Reality —it was a necessity for any successful show—but he didn’t deal in lies. If the EMF went off, which it did occasionally, it went off for real. When it didn’t, he liked to think it only built his audience’s trust in him.

He wandered through the old orchard waving the EMF meter in front of him, his mind only half on what he was doing. To the west he could see the glow of the Celeste bonfire, could hear echoes of laughter and the sounds of someone playing the violin. He didn’t know which sister was playing it, and he was dying to find out. Was it Holly? Winter? What other delightful secrets was their family hiding?

When Holly had told him her family celebrated June 1 st , he’d been both intrigued and confounded. Witches and pagans had celebrated the solstices for thousands of years, but the solstice wasn’t for another twenty days. He’d spent half an hour scrolling the internet, looking for any reason that someone might celebrate June 1 st each year, and had come up with nothing other than it was International Dinosaur Day and National Go Barefoot Day.

For the first time ever, Connor would rather be somewhere else than hosting his show. His show was his life—had been his life for a decade—but at that moment he wanted nothing more than to sit on a log in front of a bonfire and hold Holly’s hand. He wanted to watch her throw her head back and laugh, the flames dancing in her eyes, and the navy canvas of stars overhead.

If they were alone, he’d slowly unbutton her plaid and kiss her soft skin, breathe in her scent, and make love to her with the shifting glow of flames and shadow inking their skin.

Shit, what was the matter with him? Maybe Charlotte was right. Maybe he was getting so close that he was losing perspective. He’d gone from convincing himself it was best to keep it professional with Holly so that he wouldn’t compromise the integrity of his show, to stripping her out of her clothes literally the first chance he had.

And hell, he’d choose bringing Holly to orgasm while hearing her chant his name every time. That was what worried him. He’d never before prioritized anything over his show, but with Holly, things were starting to feel complicated. He was making choices that weren’t necessarily in the best interest of his business.

Charlotte walked toward him, her own flashlight sweeping over the trees. Sometimes when Erikson wasn’t available, Charlotte stepped in as cohost. She brought an entirely new energy to the show that Connor appreciated more and more. Charlotte was the most proficient assistant he’d ever had, but he was beginning to think her talents were wasted behind the camera. It was something to consider.

“Dozens of witnesses claim to have seen the councilman wandering the orchards, apple in hand. Much like this one,” Charlotte said, pulling an apple from her jacket pocket. There weren’t any apples on the trees yet, but the Celestes had plenty in storage. She took a dramatic bite out of its flesh, and the sound mic hovered overhead, making sure to capture each crunch. “Is it possible a man died here two hundred years ago, poisoned by the fruit from one of these very trees?”

“If so,” Connor added, shining his light up and down the tree, “who poisoned the apple, and why?”

They would insert dramatic music there, along with a commercial break that would nicely pad their pockets.

“Good work,” his cameraman said.

Connor nodded. “Let’s get a few more shots of us wandering through the trees and sharing all of our hypotheses.”

They spent the next half hour filming, he and Charlotte pulling out all the dramatic stops and scanning with the EMF sensor. Charlotte thought she saw the EMF sensor light up, and Connor thought that would make another good commercial break.

Connor was in the middle of orchestrating a specific shot of the moon when the green light on the EMF reader flashed. He signaled his cameraman, and the lens zoomed in on the machine. The green lightbulb represented the lowest level of EMF, followed by light green, yellow, orange, and then red. Connor watched the steady green bulb and carefully waved the machine around, expecting the light to blink off. It didn’t. Suddenly all the bulbs lit up in such a blazing rainbow of light that Connor was stunned.

“Oh my God,” Charlotte said when the lights stayed steady. “Are you seeing this?”

He’d never seen anything like it, actually.

A sharp, piercing scream came from the direction of the Celeste fire.

He whipped his head around, every hair on his body standing straight up. He knew his crew was just as spooked, because a hush fell over them. A second scream rang through the orchard. Connor dropped the EMF reader and took off at a sprint.