Chapter 33

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Holly fussed over Winter’s knuckles, even though Winter had repeatedly assured her she was fine. The entire Celeste kitchen was in an uproar over the scene that had transpired outside. Missy was furious she’d missed it; Aunt Rose was trying to convince Holly to file a restraining order while Aunt Daisy made tea; Erikson was texting on his phone and occasionally casting inscrutable looks in Winter’s direction; and Connor’s attention was entirely focused on her. Holly could feel the intensity of his gaze from where he leaned against the counter, silently stewing about something. She glanced up at him and gave him a smile, and he smiled back, but it didn’t touch his eyes.

He’d said something to Jeremy at his truck, and she would have paid good money to know what it was because Jeremy’s face had paled to a sickly color, and he’d driven away so fast he’d left dust flying in the air behind him.

Holly returned her attention to Winter just as Winter’s eyes went vacant and her expression blanked. Holly waited while Winter fought off the vision, her sister’s hand still grasped in hers, until finally Winter blinked again.

“Anything important?” Holly asked quietly.

Winter stood abruptly. “I need to think.” She left the room without a word to anyone else. Erikson’s eyes followed her, a little line between his brows.

Missy sidled up to the big blond Viking and gave him a flirty smile. “I’m Missy.”

Erikson flashed her one of those trademark panty-melting smiles. “Erikson.”

“Oh, I know who you are.” Missy hopped on the counter and crossed her bare legs. “Have you come to wrap up the show? Are you a closer?”

Erikson appeared amused by the double entendre, but unaffected. “Something like that.”

“Oh Holly!” Missy cried, forgetting all about her flirtatious efforts, her eyes widening in excitement. “In all the hoopla, the aunts and I forgot to tell you something exciting! You ghost hunters are going to love this. I mean, assuming he knows all about …” Missy tilted her head sideways at Erikson and waggled her eyebrows at Holly.

In turn, Holly looked toward Connor, who gave her a nod.

“Yep,” Holly said. “He knows we’re Wickeds.”

“Oh goody,” Missy squealed, jumping off the counter. “Come on, come on. Let’s go, Aunties,” she said, grabbing one of Erikson’s hands and one of Aunt Rose’s as she hauled them from the room.

Holly met Connor’s eyes and shrugged. Something was definitely bothering him, because although he put his hand on her lower back as they followed the others into the living room, he didn’t say a single word.

Holly and Connor sat in the love seat while Aunt Daisy and Aunt Rose took the couch. Erikson stood against the unlit fireplace and scanned the floor-to-ceiling wall of books with something like delight on his face. Prickles waddled over and stopped to sniff Erikson’s boot before curling into a ball at his feet and promptly falling asleep.

Missy lifted Autumn Celeste’s blank journal from the coffee table and reverently carried it to their aunts, presenting it as if it were made of gold leaf. “While you guys were off punching Holly’s smarmy ex, the aunties were working their little Wicked asses off.”

Aunt Rose sighed. There was no point in reprimanding Missy’s language. She was completely incorrigible.

“Shouldn’t we wait for your other sister?” Erikson interrupted.

Missy looked around as if surprised that Winter wasn’t there, then shrugged. “Nah, she disappears all the time.” At Erikson’s unsure expression, Missy flipped her curly hair over her shoulder and said, “No, Wickeds can’t literally disappear. I meant it in the normal sense. At least, I don’t think Wickeds can disappear.” She turned to the aunts. “Can some? No, never mind—let’s get to the good stuff.” Missy held out her arms with a flourish. “Commence, Aunts.”

“Well, now.” Aunt Rose fished for her reading glasses in the pocket of her sweater and set them on her nose. “Daisy and I suspected that Autumn cursed her journals so that no one but another Wicked could read them.”

Connor shot Holly a surprised look, and she winked at him.

“Autumn was more familiar with her powers than we are these hundreds of years later. It took Rose and me quite a while to figure out how she could have done it.”

“We even had to call old Gerta,” Aunt Daisy said with a scowl, “and now we owe her Holly’s firstborn child.”

“What!” Holly screeched.

Aunt Daisy giggled. “I’m joking, Holly. A bit of ghoulish humor for our guests.”

Holly’s heart was still pounding. “You can’t say stuff like that. You know I don’t understand how all this Wicked stuff works.”

“That’s a failing on our part,” Aunt Rose reflected. “Our family line decided to live quietly, and Daisy and I accepted the choice of our ancestors without questioning it. Ultimately, all it did was isolate the family from other Wickeds and burden you girls with rebound powers.”

“Who is Gerta?” Connor asked.

“Like, the only other Wicked we know,” Missy said. She made a hurry-up gesture. “Can we get on with the good stuff?”

Aunt Daisy sniffed. “You could use some patience, young lady.”

“I could use a lot of things,” Missy replied solemnly.

Aunt Rose fanned the book open so they could see the blank pages from where they sat. “With Gerta’s help, we figured out that Autumn cursed the ink—we believe she had the same power as you, Missy. She decayed the pigment so that only a reversal of the decay would reveal the words.”

Holly’s eyebrows flew upward. “Can Missy reverse illness?”

Missy seemed flabbergasted. “I don’t think so.”

“No.” Aunt Daisy shook her head, her white braid beginning to fall from its snug coil. “She can’t. It took us a while to find a work-around, and the answer was rather simple. She’ll need to decay Autumn’s curse instead.”

It took Holly a moment to wrap her brain around that. “So essentially Missy needs to attack Autumn’s curse, not reverse it.”

“Cool,” Missy said, bounding over and kneeling by the book. “Let’s give it a whirl.”

Holly glanced over at Connor and then Erikson, who were so riveted by what they were watching that Holly thought the house could have collapsed on top of their heads and they wouldn’t have noticed until the rubble blocked their view of the journal. It was kind of cute, she thought. It would be like if someone had spent their entire life trying to prove basketball existed, and now someone was about to play a real live basketball game right in front of them.

Missy dramatically rubbed her hands together and laid them flat on the pages and closed her eyes. The two Grimm brothers caught their breath as a dark mist skated over the blank pages of the book, and like magic, words began to appear.

“Holy shit,” Erikson breathed.

After a minute of concentration, Missy removed her hands. The vibrant, taunting Missy was gone, her cheeks drained of color and her body limp. Holly stood to help her onto the couch between the aunts, where she slumped on Aunt Daisy’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

There was always a price to be paid for thwarting the natural intent of the powers. When the power wasn’t used for its intended purpose of chaos and destruction, the practicing Wicked suffered instead. It was yet another check on them, another way the universe ensured compliance. Holly had to bear migraines when she used power that didn’t hurt anyone. Missy suffered burnouts where she looked like she’d just gone two rounds with cholera. When Aunt Rose mixed an elixir to help and heal rather than harm, her hands cramped with excruciating pain for a full day afterward. It was why Holly was so sparing with the migraine tonics, why Missy had refused the hangover cure, and why Aunt Rose had spent their childhood with lines of pain radiating from her eyes. She’d given the girls tonics to mute their powers and keep them hidden from the Shadow Council, and in return she’d suffered nearly every day for years.

“Will you read it, Holly?” Aunt Daisy asked. “I can’t, and Aunt Rose doesn’t see as well as she used to.”

Holly nodded and lifted the book from her aunt’s gloved hands. Her own hands trembled slightly as she read the date aloud. “‘January 2, 1820. Yesterday was the first day of the new year, and I have many hopes and dreams for the coming months.’” Holly quickly scanned the entry, which was a boring account of how much wood was left and whether Thomas had actually liked the knitted socks Autumn had gifted him or if he’d only said he did. “It’s just a normal journal entry,” she said, fanning the pages as she searched for spring or summer entries that might have coincided with the night Councilman Miller saw something.

Holly flipped past a page and spotted the name Miller and thumbed back. When she saw the dates on the pages, she swallowed hard. June 1 st —one of their nights of celebration—and June 2 nd . She looked up and met Connor’s eyes. Then she took a deep breath and began to read.

June 1, 1820

Thomas is terribly ill, and I fret day and night. His fever has not broken, his hands are so dry, and his body so hot that I live in eternal fear that he will die and leave me on this cursed earth without him. If I knew a Witch, I would commission a healing potion, but I know of none that do not live far away in my homeland.

Tonight is the first, and I shall make an offering for his life. I am but a curse, and what my husband needs is a blessing.

The silence in the room was all encompassing—not a single person shifted or spoke. Holly read the next page, dated June 2, 1820.

Last night was, as life often is, both a curse and a blessing. Whilst I gazed into the fire and made my offering, I peered through the smoke and saw the form of Councilman Miller watching me, his lips twisted with sick satisfaction. He had come late into the night to inquire about Thomas’s welfare, or so he claimed, but I do not believe that was his true intent, for in his hand he held the paperwork for the sale of our land. I believe he wished to coerce Thomas into signing away our property in the midst of his delirium. Miller stoops so low, I wonder that he can straighten his back at the end of the day.

Chills raced down her arms. Councilman Miller’s ghost had visited on the same offering night more than two hundred years later, appearing through the smoke of the fire in a similar manner.

He prayed aloud to God and demanded I heal those in the village that I had made ill with my witchcraft. I tried to explain that I did not harm anyone and that even my own husband was ill, but his smile only widened. That was when I understood his intention. Miller has not thought well of me since he learned I did not take my husband’s name, and he blames me for Thomas’s resistance to selling. He does not understand how Thomas could love someone like me.

This morning as I walked the fields by the small babbling brook, I saw it: an apple tree. We have not had any luck planting them here, but there it was, fully formed and grown overnight, a single fat, juicy apple hanging from its branches, even though it is only spring and far too early for such fruit. I knew my offering had been answered.

Holly met Missy’s alarmed gaze. Her sister had roused enough to whisper, “Oh shit. I’ve been asking for some really wonky stuff at the offerings. I just thought they were tradition. I didn’t know they were real .”

“Me neither,” Holly said, feeling a bit lied to. What had they been messing with all this time that they knew nothing about?

I plucked the apple, and later that morning I was inspired to curse it with a disease that would kill whatever illness was slowly taking my husband’s life. He was too weak to eat the apple, so I mashed it finely and spoon-fed it to him. To my immense relief, he got well rapidly—so rapidly that by dinnertime the fever had broken, and he sat and took his supper with much more strength.

I love my Thomas, but he does not know what I am. I fear Councilman Miller shall tell him.

Holly flipped to the next page, dated a week later.

June 9, 1820

I saved the seeds from the miraculous apple and planted one in the ground by the front of the house. The next day it had sprouted into a fully formed tree. My husband was astonished, but he thought it was a blessing from God. Maybe it was.

Councilman Miller returned tonight. I had not heard from him and had foolishly hoped he had reconsidered, although I should have known better. He despises me. I believe he despises all women. If we were in my home country, he would lead the crusade to burn me alive.

He had heard Thomas was well and had come to convince him to sign the papers. He immediately noticed the apple tree, which had not been there the week previous, and tried to use it as proof that I am a Witch, but Thomas has a good heart, and he would not hear of it and sent him away.

I do not think that is the last we will hear from him.

Winter had slipped into the room and perched on the arm of the couch beside Holly, reading over her shoulder as Holly turned to the next page to continue the saga. Holly was almost afraid to discover how it ended. She knew something would result in Councilman Miller’s death. Would this journal implicate Autumn or exonerate her?

Autumn had only been trying to live her life in peace, as Holly and her sisters did. Holly ached for the woman who’d been persecuted across two different countries for being different, who’d lost her family to that very hatred, only to find more of it at her new home.

Holly scanned the next few entries, and her cheeks paled. “This is it,” she whispered. “This is what we’ve been looking for.”