Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

‘Where's Catherine?'

Ashley looked up from her Saturday morning coffee and shrugged.

‘Good morning to you too. Sleep well? No, me neither.'

‘Where is she?' I asked again, the strange book tucked away in my backpack and throbbing against my spine. I didn't have the patience for her hot and cold attitude today. When I left the library the night before, I couldn't find my grandmother anywhere. I waited for hours, desperate to talk to her about the book I'd found, finally falling asleep on the sofa in the parlour, and when I woke up with the sunrise, she'd been back and was gone again.

‘I need to find her,' I pressed. ‘It's important. Why is she always gone anyway? There can't be that many meetings of the Savannah Historical Society.'

‘I don't know where she went to or why she's there,' my aunt snipped. ‘You think everything is important but it's not. Nothing is. You're just a cog in a wheel, honey, a part they need to keep the engine running, that's all. Get over yourself.'

‘Maybe you need to work on a new tea blend, something to sort out your mood,' I suggested, grabbing a freshly baked muffin from the counter. ‘I know Catherine told you about our vision, you must see how serious it is.'

‘How would you know what's serious?' She laughed, sharp and wicked. ‘You're sixteen, you don't know shit.'

‘Is that how you felt when you were sixteen?'

A flash of something bitter passed over Ashley's face but she composed herself and gave me a small smile instead.

‘Must be a head fuck,' she said sweetly. ‘All this prophecy stuff. It's Catherine's whole personality, being the grandmother of the witch. She's literally built her life around it. Personally, I'm more into your version, the one where you flip out and kill us all? But that's classic me, always the optimist.'

I stared at her from across the room as she chuckled to herself.

‘Why do I even try talking to you?' I asked, speaking more to myself than her.

‘Because you don't have any friends and no one likes you?'

Without meaning to, she gave me an idea.

‘Thanks for breakfast,' I said, reaching for a second muffin and wrapping it in a napkin. ‘If Catherine gets back before I do, please tell her I need to talk to her before she leaves again.'

‘Will do, great chat, have a nice day,' Ashley called as I tossed the baked goods into my bag and sprinted out the front door.

The sun seared the skin on the back of my neck as I pulled up my hair into a topknot, bouncing from foot to foot on the Powells' front porch. I was about to ring the bell a third time when the door opened and a smart older woman I hadn't met yet appeared. It had to be Virginia, Lydia's grandmother. The whole time I'd been in Savannah she'd been ill with some minor malady or other, too fragile for introductions, but according to Lydia, that was standard practice. Even a splinter would see Virginia Powell take to her bed for a week.

But that didn't explain why she stared at me as though she'd seen a ghost.

‘Catherine?' she breathed, clutching at the triple string of pearls fastened around her throat.

‘No, Mrs Powell,' I said, glancing behind me to make sure my own grandmother hadn't followed me here. ‘It's Emily, Catherine's granddaughter. Paul's daughter. I'm so pleased to meet you at last.'

Still more than a little alarmed, she recovered herself and pasted on a smile.

‘No one could argue the fact you're a Bell,' she replied as she fully opened the door. ‘Aren't you just as pretty as a peach? The spitting image of your grandmother when she was a girl.'

‘Thank you, that's so kind of you to say. Is Lydia home?'

‘I simply cannot get over how much you look like Catherine,' Virginia went on, stretching out one hand to poke my cheek and make sure I was real. ‘Even your hair … hers was the same when she was your age, not quite all the way red.'

‘Lydia's home!'

My friend thundered downstairs, ricocheting off the turn in the staircase right before leaping down the last four steps. She yanked a silk sleeping bonnet off her head and dumped it on the bench at the side of the door as her grandmother snatched her hand away from me and staggered back into the foyer.

‘Em, it's criminally early to come calling,' Lydia declared, adjusting the straps of her ribbed lavender crop top and matching boy shorts. ‘What's up?'

‘I need to contact a friend and I need your help.'

She clapped one hand on the newel post and set one foot back on the stairs. ‘You need to use my computer? No problem, let's go.'

‘Not the computer,' I replied quickly with a meaningful look. This wasn't something I could explain in front of her grandmother. ‘I have to go somewhere specific to send the message and I thought you might want to come with? It will be easier if there's two of us.'

‘I have no idea what you're talking about,' she replied happily. ‘But let me throw on some clothes, I'll be right back down.'

She raced away, leaving me alone again with her deeply distressed grandmother. Not knowing how else to break the awkward silence, I pulled a smushed up napkin from out of my bag.

‘Muffin?' I offered.

‘Goodness me,' Virginia mumbled, taking another step back. I double-checked the sweet treat in my hand to make sure I hadn't just offered her a baby rattlesnake by accident.

‘OK, I'll take that, thank you very much,' Lydia declared as she bounced back down the stairs, still in her crop top, hair pushed back by a pink silk scarf and a pair of torn-up jeans pulled over her shorts. ‘Let's go, 'bye, Grandmother, I'll be back later.'

She grabbed me by the arm, almost pulling it out the socket as she dragged me from the house.

‘Is your grandmother OK?' I asked when we stopped to cross the road into Madison Square.

‘The answer to that question is never yes, but that was a little more weird than usual.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said, offering her the least-squished muffin. ‘I didn't mean to upset her. She seemed so freaked out when she saw me.'

Lydia's sigh of response was frustrated, bordering on annoyed. ‘It's not just you. My literal existence seems to scandalize her these days. How are things between you and Catherine?'

‘Fine?' I said without any certainty. ‘She's so happy to have me here, but sometimes I think I'm letting her down, like she expects me to be someone I'm not when I'm not even sure I know who I am, so how am I supposed to be the person she wants me to be?'

‘Welcome to the world of socialite southern grandmothers,' she replied. ‘We'll never be exactly who they want us to be because we'll never be them. They want clones, not granddaughters. One day, they're going to wake up and realize it's the twenty-first century and it's going to be the shock of a lifetime.'

‘Does Virginia treat Jackson the same way?' I asked.

‘What do you think?'

I offered her a supportive smile. ‘Catherine already played the "it's different for boys" card with me.'

‘Then you understand,' she said. ‘Jackson is the golden child. He can do whatever he wants, go wherever he wants, see whoever he likes. He's always been the more acceptable twin, tall, handsome, charming, loves sports, does well in school. The perfect little man. Then Virginia says all the same things about me like they're bad things. I can't win. He's the good one, I'm the weird one.'

‘Weird is good,' I stated as she inhaled half of Ashley's muffin in one bite. ‘Brilliant in fact, because I'm about to ask you to do something extremely weird.'

‘OK, but only on the condition we stop for coffee first because these muffins are delicious but they are dry,' she replied. ‘And there's no such thing as too weird where I'm concerned.'

‘Let's get you that coffee,' I suggested, steering her along Bull Street. ‘Then you can decide for yourself.'

‘You want to do what now?'

Lydia hung back by the gates to the Colonial Park cemetery, eyes almost as wide as her grandmother's had been half an hour earlier.

‘It's nothing really,' I lied, shaking the ice in my triple mocha Frappuccino. ‘Just this cool thing I saw online.'

And not at all a ritual to invoke a spirit that I found in my dead great-great-great-great-grandmother's journal in the spooky library of my grandmother's magic house.

‘I won't lie, it's giving Satan.' She loudly sucked up her white chocolate macadamia cream cold brew through a green straw. ‘I wouldn't have pegged you as a witchcraft girlie, you haven't shown any of the usual signs.'

‘There are signs?'

‘You know, chipped black nail polish, heavy eyeliner, one of those piercings that leaves a giant gross hole in your ear.' She screwed up her face at the thought. ‘What exactly are we trying to do? Run it by me again.'

‘I want to contact the spirit of one of my ancestors,' I said with a forced smile. ‘I thought it might be … fun?'

Lydia didn't look so sure. ‘So this is like a Ouija board thing? We're just asking questions?'

‘That's right,' I agreed. ‘We're just asking questions.'

And I had a lot of them. But I also had a plan. The book I found in the library didn't have any useful information about the prophecy or how I could learn to control my magic but it did have an entire chapter on how I could bind it. The details were vague, a recurring bad Bell habit, but according to the author, our abilities could be tied up and the blessing bound within its host. It didn't say how, it didn't say what would happen afterwards, but it was something. A possible solution to my very real problem.

The ritual to invoke a spirit, on the other hand, looked pretty straightforward. Despite Catherine's warnings about connecting to the other side, I knew who I wanted to speak to, and I had something of hers as well as everything else noted in the journal. It had to be worth a try. If I could connect to the Emma Catherine who wrote the journal, I might have a better shot at managing my magic and saving Savannah.

‘I would like to go on record as saying this feels not great,' Lydia declared, but she still willingly followed me through the gates.

‘I never used to like cemeteries,' I agreed, walking directly towards the moss-less magnolia tree. ‘They always made me think of horror movies and I hate horror movies.'

Lydia clucked her tongue as I knelt on the ground then flopped down at my side.

‘But you still think it would be cute to summon the dead.'

‘No one said anything about it being cute,' I replied before laying out the items I'd swiped from the pantry the night before: salt, bay laurel leaves, an apple, and three small pieces of cedar. Nothing especially weird, nothing that might put Lydia off her cold brew.

Almost all the rituals in the Emma Catherine journals called for a second witch but I couldn't wait around for my grandmother to come home. I shook the salt out into a circle while Lydia slurped her coffee, saying nothing. Catherine said the Powells had had magic in their blood once. Maybe there was still enough there for this to work.

‘This looks super professional,' she said as I crossed my legs and pulled out a box of matches. ‘And that ain't a compliment. You sure you haven't done this before?'

‘Definitely haven't,' I replied, striking a match. ‘I don't know if this makes it better or worse but I really have no idea what I'm doing.'

I lit the three pieces of cedar and the wood burned, white smoke drifting up into the branches of the tree, then took a bite of the apple and spat it out. Lydia made a quiet retching sound.

‘Gross,' she whispered loudly.

Next came the bay laurel leaf. I tore it in half and added it to my tiny bonfire.

‘Shouldn't we be doing this at night?' Lydia asked through a very loud yawn, stretching both her arms over her head until the bottom of her crop top started to roll up her ribs. ‘Communing with the dead feels more like a stroke of midnight thing than not-even-nine-thirty on a Saturday morning.'

Before I could answer, the flame of the burning cedar turned black. My fingertips began to prickle and the heat took over my body, pumping magic through my heart, scorching me from the inside out. Everything happened faster this time, so fast I didn't have time to warn Lydia before we were plunged into darkness. I heard her calling my name but I couldn't see her. I couldn't see anything. I was back in the nowhere space, held in black velvet nothingness, waiting.

The vision was the same but different. I was there, and so was the wolf, the same one from Bonaventure, I was sure of it. But this time, we were in a tight, dark space, lit with black candles. Outside, I heard water rushing as the flames roared, an apocalyptic contradiction. Inside, the wolf was bleeding, tangled up in wires, and behind it I saw two people. One sprawled on the floor in front of a marble altar, covered in cuts and gashes. Catherine. The other was the pale woman with the white hair.

‘This isn't what I was looking for,' I said, clawing at the ground. ‘That isn't what I wanted to know.'

But what I wanted didn't matter. The woman flew at me with inhuman speed, faster and faster until I felt her slam into my body, my essence matched by hers, and together we let out an agonizing scream. I fell backwards and the chaos around me disappeared, replaced by the bright blue summer sky.

‘What the hell was that?'

Pushing myself upright, I saw Lydia kicking at the salt circle, her cheeks stained with tears.

‘It's OK,' I said, crawling towards her, weak and empty. ‘You're OK.'

‘No, I am not! I am so fucking far from OK,' she yelled. ‘Did you put something in my coffee? Am I tripping?'

‘You saw it?'

Lydia Powell, descendant of a dormant witch had shared my vision.

She jumped to her feet and knocked over the ashes of my offering, stamping it out with her sneaker. ‘I will try anything once but that was not just anything. I thought cedar repelled moths, not made you trip balls and hallucinate giant freaking wolves. Is it even cedar? Oh my god, what did we burn? What have I been breathing in?'

‘Lyds, please, I'm sorry,' I insisted, pleading for her to sit back down. She might have seen the vision but I felt like I had lived it, and my insides crawled with the sensation of the ghost passing through me. I wasn't strong enough to stand and if she ran, I wouldn't be able to chase after her.

‘I should never have asked you to do this. I'm so, so sorry.'

She didn't move. Instead she stared at me for a second then stamped on the bonfire once more for good measure.

‘You shouldn't have asked me to do it without telling me exactly what "it" was,' she replied as she knelt back down beside me. ‘You look awful, by the way. Super dehydrated.'

‘I feel awful,' I replied, relieved and beyond grateful that she was still by my side. ‘I really am so sorry, I truly didn't know that was going to happen.'

‘Then why did we do it?'

The cemetery was empty, nothing but trees and headstones, green grass and blue sky. No white-haired woman, no red-haired grandmother. No wolf.

‘I just wanted to ask a question,' I said, struggling to get the words out. ‘I'm so confused about everything.'

Lydia stroked my back, a wash of compassion filling her brown eyes.

‘You were trying to contact your dad,' she guessed. ‘Your birthday is coming up and you miss him. I get it, Em, I really do. I pretend not to care about my father but I search for him all the time, although I mostly use the internet instead of the dark arts. It's less traumatic, but only a little.'

‘It's not my dad,' I replied in a thick voice, determined not to cry. It wouldn't help the situation now. ‘There's no way to contact him.'

‘Wyn then?'

One perfectly round tear slid down my cheek at the sound of his name and landed in the ashes of the cedar.

Lydia took it to be a yes.

‘I don't want to have to say this, Em, but you need to wake up. Sometimes people you love, the ones who are supposed to love you back, they leave and you never really understand why,' she said, her words measured, detached. ‘My dad left. My mom left. Even my own twin can't wait to start college to get away from me. Sometimes the reason people aren't with you is because they don't want to be.'

‘Lyds, that's just not true.' It killed me to know she was hurting and I hated myself for not seeing it before now. Lydia Powell was a walking ray of sunshine but even the brightest days had to deal with dark clouds sometimes.

‘Your dad didn't leave you, he didn't even know your mom was pregnant. Jackson loves you, and your mom didn't leave, she just moved. She wants you in Charleston with her, doesn't she?'

‘Charleston,' she groaned, almost more upset about my suggestion than the ritual. ‘You don't have to try to sugarcoat anything for me, Em. I'm old enough to know how things are. People lie and people leave. The only person I can truly rely on is myself.'

‘You're definitely wrong about that,' I said, reaching for her arm. ‘You can rely on me.'

Her eyes skirted the disrupted circle of salt.

‘Starting now,' I amended. ‘You can rely on me starting now.'

‘Promise there will be no more creepy witch shit in the cemetery?'

I nodded.

There would be no more creepy witch shit in the cemetery. At least not for her.

‘Good.' She hugged herself tightly and cocked her head towards the gates. ‘Let's get out of here, I would like to forget everything I saw as soon as possible.'

I reached down for my bag, tucking my hair behind my ears, when something in the pile of ashes caught my eye. Poking a finger in the remains of my failed experiment, I scooped out a small black gem, faceted and sparkling.

‘What is that?' Lydia asked as she plucked it from my fingers. Her eyes glazed over for a second as she stared into the shifting rainbow at its heart. Then she shrugged and dropped it back into the palm of my hand. ‘Cool crystal. Anyway, sorry your little witchy trick didn't work, whatever you were trying to do. You wanna get another coffee?'

‘Little witchy trick?' I repeated slowly.

She slapped her bare midriff and stretched her arms high above her head. ‘Let's get something to eat. Witchcraft makes me mad hungry. Who knew?'

Her smile was too happy, her posture too relaxed. No one could get over something so terrifying so quickly, I knew I hadn't.

‘You don't remember,' I murmured, the black stone pulsating in my hand.

‘Remember what?'

I tucked the crystal away in the smallest pocket of my jeans, keeping my hand pressed against it for a long moment. ‘Nothing. You're right, it didn't work.'

‘Don't cry about it, Em,' she said kindly as she slid her arm back through mine. ‘We could try again after we eat, or are we done for the day?'

Under the tree, I saw the white-haired woman standing over the pile of ashes, wearing the same dark expression I'd seen in my vision.

‘We're done for the day,' I confirmed as I pulled Lydia away towards the cemetery gates. ‘We're definitely done.'