Olivia

I woke early, to a headache that hinted of a migraine coming. I’d slept straight through the night but felt like I hadn’t slept. Coming up to my elbows I noted that the bedroom door, which I’d closed the night before, was open, and scattered all over the floor were the remnants of an opened bag of flour and an emptied packet of chocolate chips.

“Dammit,” I cursed, flopping back down, and laying a hand over my clammy forehead.

I hadn’t slept walked a day since I had moved away from the forest, and all it took was one bloody night. From the looks of things, I’d been wanting chocolate chip cookies. My kids and I had often made them together, but with—oh yep, there it was. Oatmeal, ground into the carpet. Great.

Before getting up and dealing with the clean-up, I addressed my beeping phone. It was Maddie.

How’s it going? Have you gone to see Grandma yet?

Today. Are you still wearing the pendant?

It was a protection spell I’d hastily made from one of my old necklaces—a real protection spell, unlike whatever it was my mother had made for Ellie and me.

Yes Mom.

Good. And did you sleep inside of the protection circle like I told you to?

I could practically hear her sighing.

Yes.

Good. Don’t forget to close it just like I taught you, and make sure you do it every night.

I know. I will. I told you not to worry—I will be fine.

You keep saying that Mad, but Rowena was inside you just a day ago.

Just trust me, okay. All she can do is scare you. Have you seen Ellie yet?

The mere mention of my sister caused me to scrunch up my nose. I couldn’t get that pained look on her face from the night before out of my head. It was all but etched into my psyche like the tattoos covering every inch of her porcelain skin.

It’s complicated.

I thought about it for a moment longer, then typed:

I think I have some mending to do. When is your dad going to let you come out here?

I don’t know. He’s really busy and says he needs my help.

Right. Not that he wasn’t seriously busy, but keeping Maddie away was more of a war game tactic than anything else.

I’ll text him again and try to relay the urgency of having you by my side.

Your ghost can’t hurt me. I’ll be okay.

My ghost isn’t playing by the rules this time, Mad.

Trust me, Mom.

I could almost see my daughter’s expression. Occasionally, she came at me with these phrases that made me wonder how it was she wasn’t a witch. And every now and again I could’ve sworn she did have magic . . . just not the same kind as the rest of us.

Just be careful, please.

Fine. So, by the way, Joe’s moving in with Dad and me for a little while—don’t tell Ellie.

I furrowed my brow. That was weird.

Okay.

I thought about asking why, but the truth of the matter was that I didn’t even know Joe. Her and my sister’s relationship was completely foreign to me, and as much as it pained me to say it—if I saw Joe walking down the street, I wouldn't have the vaguest idea who she was.

After chatting with my daughter, I sent a quick text to Tyler, again stating that it was imperative Maddie be with me while I was here. When I didn’t receive a response—and I knew he had to have his phone with him every second of the day since he was getting ready to open a restaurant—I sent another message. This time I pleaded with him to at least make sure our daughter didn’t leave his sight.

Eventually I got myself up and around, managing to clean up my mess from my sleep walking incident, and tied my frizzy hair back into a bun. I was too tired to try and unwrinkle it with the flat iron.

When I finally made it downstairs, I found a note that read, “Gone fishing.”

“Who’s dancing away now?” I muttered, pitching the note into the trash and glancing at the half empty pot of coffee. It was nearly see through.

Yuck. My father brewed coffee to the state of dirty water. I needed something with the consistency of wet sand; and one glance into the fridge, revealing nothing but a lot of fish, I quickly decided that I would be going out for breakfast.

I barely touched one foot to the ground once I got outside when a swoosh of moisture wrapped around my face like saran wrap. Since when had there been moisture in the mountains? Good thing I’d sprung for wearing my work-out capris and a tank top. Slacks and long sleeves were not going to work for this trip. I wiped away an immediate bead of sweat from my brow and headed out on foot for The Dewdrop.

I continued over the gravel path, undeterred. This time of day there were often guests out and about, either taking toys out onto the lake or enjoying a casual stroll. I didn’t feel like chatting or answering the common question of whether I was one of them—one of the witches who was rumored to live here in the forest.

I was getting closer to the smell of sweet dough rising and ground espresso when something to my left sought my attention. My gaze immediately darted that way, towards the trees, and to the sound of crunching pinecones followed shortly by a small bark.

“Biscuit?” I called out hesitantly.

I had yet to see my sister’s familiar, but when he or she barked again I knew it couldn’t be her. This was more like that of a pup.

“Hello?” I called out cautiously.

A small rustling of leaves ensued, followed by a soft, girlish laughter and tiny feet running after another set of even smaller feet . . . or paws.

It was probably just the child of one of our guests playing around.

“Okay you, be careful in those woods! We’ve been known to house wolves in there! And skunks!”

I shook my head, exhaling a light-hearted chuckle, and continued to the shop.

My stomach growled hungrily as I reached for the flimsy wooden storm door and flung it open, drenched suddenly in the smell of sausages, cinnamon rolls, and coffee. I nearly had to wipe my mouth of saliva as I dropped down into one of the stools before the bar and looked up at the waitress to place my order.

“Hey,” she said to me, throwing a towel over her shoulder and reaching for a menu. “How’s it goin’? Care for some coffee?”

“Yes,” I said, pushing the menu back towards her. “Large. And one of Patty’s famous cinnamon rolls if you don’t mind.”

“You got it,” she replied, pausing to look at me as she pulled away the unused menu. “Hey, I recognize your face. You’re Olivia, right? Tyler’s ex-wife.” The way she said my name—it signaled instant distaste.

My blood sugar was too low to put in the energy needed to scowl, and there was no point in correcting the part about ex. “Yeah,” was all I said.

Her eyes fixed uncomfortably into mine. Cool. She must’ve been good friends with Ellie.

I patted the counter and stood back up. “I think I’m going to take my stuff out onto the porch if that’s okay. I’d like to eat outside.”

Raising her brows, she said a little too quickly, “No problem.”

After doctoring up my coffee with a bit of cream and honey and inspecting my cinnamon roll for poison, I retreated to the front porch where Delila was waiting for me, perched on one of the chairs as though she was an ornament. Curled up on the ground next to her was my mother’s cat, Mr. Jackel. I nearly fell to my knees at the sight of him. My heart fluttered with the knowledge that my mother’s familiar was alive and well, and a breath of fresh air entered my lungs.

Carefully placing my breakfast on one of the tables, I bent down and lifted him up. “Hey there, bud. You have no idea how good it is to see you.”

As soon as he was in my arms, I experienced an immediate connection with my mother. I pulled him into my chest and sat down at the table, petting his head, and letting him swoon. As I held him and took a ravished bite of the breakfast roll—cinnamon and butter melting against my tongue and sending happy impulses into my brain—a small child holding a puppy materialized in the chair opposite me.

I paused mid-chew, staring across at her impish little face, before checking to see that no one else was around.

“Hello,” I said, washing it down with a sip of the finest arabica brew in the state, if not the world.

The little girl smiled.

I nodded to the creature in her arms. “Is that your dog?”

She shook her head, and her dimples grew deeper into her cheeks.

“He’s not yours?”

“She’s not a dog,” she repeated in the cutest little voice.

Mr. Jackel purred. I petted his head, looking closer at the spirit animal in the little apparition’s arms. “Oh,” I said, a gentle smile on my face. “She’s a wolf pup.”

The girl nodded.

“My sister has a wolf, too. Her name is Biscuit.”

“I know,” she answered.

“Are you the one who was playing in the woods back there just a little while ago?”

She nodded; her smile so big I was worried it would jump off her face.

“Were you following me?”

She squirmed giddily in her seat. “You can see me. Nobody else has yet.”

I sipped from my coffee and set the mug back down. “What’s your name?”

“Lillette.”

Mr. Jackel purred again and I laid my hand over his head. “That’s a very pretty name. How long have you been here, Lillette?”

“Not long.” It was like she was in on her own little joke.

I started to ask her whether she was just visiting or what she was up to—because she definitely seemed up to something, but just then I was suddenly interrupted by a growl. When I turned my head, I found myself face to face with Biscuit. Her fur was sticking up on the back of her neck, just like Ellie’s would be if it was her sitting before me instead of her proxy, and her teeth were bared.

“Seriously?” I asked the wolf.

She barked, as if in answer. When I returned my attention to the little girl, she was gone.

“Thanks B,” I muttered, taking a rather un-lady-like bite from my roll. “She was the only one who hasn’t looked at me with disdain in their eyes since my return.” She barked again.

All in all, I was actually very surprised that I hadn’t seen more spirits in the forest. I was still wide open and didn’t plan on closing the gap any time soon—not with a monster that smelled like shit lurking around every corner of my life. Keep your enemies close. And truthfully, it felt better to have the veil loose. When it was closed, I found myself more constricted than usual.

The spirit world had been part of my own ever since I was a little girl. The way I saw it was like this: the world I lived in was an envelope. All one had to do was slip their hand inside and they could touch the other realms; but it was also like there were envelopes inside of envelopes, and it was possible that if one kept digging, that they could find where they were currently residing deep inside another fold. It wasn’t something many people could understand, sometimes even witches were confused by it. To me it always made perfect sense.

This place, however, this retreat—spirits flocked to it in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes even bringing entire realms, or past scenes—memories—with them. It was the magic, I believed, that caused everything to be so much thicker. That little spirit, she wasn’t like the others. Her glow had been different. I would venture to say that she wasn’t on her way out . . . but she didn’t seem to be a traveler or a drifter either. I was a tad upset that I hadn’t been able to speak with her longer.

The sound of gravel spitting stole the attention from my thoughts as Patrick pulled speedily into a vacant spot. He threw on his chef’s jacket and jumped out of the car, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Looks like you’re late!” I hollered to him as he neared.

He winked. “I had to take last night’s date home this morning.” Scouting out the gathering around me, he gestured to the animals while putting out his cigarette. “What’s all this? Having a familiar reunion?”

“Looks like it,” I said with a mouth full of sweet roll. “Hey, who’s that waitress in there? Are her and Ellie really tight?”

He glanced through one of the windows before smirking down at me. “No, not really. That’s Mona.”

I scoffed, rolling my eyes and taking another sip from my brew. “Well, that explains that.”

Mona and Tyler had dated for about a year, but they’d broken up quite a while ago. Maddie had told me all about it, of course. Apparently, Mona had started contracting some sort of rare condition that made her hiccup all the time, which was only annoying until she started coughing up insects. So that sort of put a damper on things. I’d gotten a few unhappy texts from Tyler about that one, but what was I supposed to do? I would have gladly divorced him if I could. Unfortunately, the sort of ceremony we’d had couldn’t be undone, and as Rowena’s ghost was proof of, curses, or magical binds, weren’t all that easy to break.

Patrick, seemingly not in a hurry to head into the kitchen, flopped down into the seat where the spirit girl had been sitting. Curling his lips into a wicked smile, he asked, “She give you any shit?”

“No, but she sure as hell didn’t try to hide her discontent.”

“Yeah, well . . .” He let his words drift away. “Shit, it’s like humid, right?”

“Yeah.” I ripped away part of my roll and stuck it in my mouth, careful not to let my mom’s cat get any. She’d kill me if I fed her familiar sugar. She’d curse me from her coma. “Was it not like this at your place?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

That was weird, he only lived a few miles away.

Next to me, Biscuit continued to growl, and I somehow just knew that she was romanticizing the idea of piercing my skin with her fangs.

Nodding in the wolf’s direction, Patrick asked, “What’s her problem?”

“Me. Ellie hates me, so Biscuit hates me.”

“Right.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes, holding them out to me in offering.

I shook my head. “No thanks.” I’d used to indulge now and again, but I hadn’t had a cigarette in so long that it would probably just make me sick.

Patrick lit up and exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. “Give her time. When it comes to Ellie, everything hits harder.”

“Yeah, I know. On that note—I’m really sorry I just left like that, Patty.”

He took another drag off his cigarette. “Right. But, uh, V, what happens after all this? If you can sort out Arianna and all that? You just gonna run off again?”

I pulled my coffee into my chest and squinted out into the forest. “Truth?”

“Always.”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. Coming here was on a total whim. I didn’t really have a choice.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him tap his hand on the armchair, causing ashes to fall. “Sure ya did.”

“Not really.”

He was dissecting me, trying to undo the layers I’d spent years perfecting around my being. “What’s really going on, V?”

Searching through the branches for any traces of the little spirit girl, I said almost too softly for him to hear, “I can’t talk about it right now.” Besides the name of our curse, I didn’t even really know.

“I guess that’s fair.” I couldn’t tell if his response was genuine or sarcastic, but I chose to just leave it on the table. “So,” he asked after a short while, “you talk to Tyler yet? Like, in person?”

I returned my gaze to his. I’d only eaten part of my roll, but I couldn’t finish it. Too much sugar. “No. But I plan to at some point.” I waited for him say something else, perhaps clue me in as to what to expect from my husband, because he and Tyler were close. But he simply let the subject drift away. Probably in the same way as Tyler had let me go finally.

Biscuit whimpered in surrender and licked Patrick’s knee before shuffling off and away. A second later Mr. Jackel jumped from my lap and followed her into the forest.

“Off they go,” I whispered.

Patrick finished his cigarette and put it out. Laying his hands over his pants, he leaned back in his chair and rested his head. “You gotta know Arianna’s okay—wherever she’s at right now—cause Mr. Jackel is just fine.”

“I know.” A familiar couldn’t leave his or her earthly body until his or her witch passed on. Reminiscing, I said, “You know, I used to sit out here for hours after Thaden was taken.”

Patrick’s eyes grew wide in attention, probably wickedly surprised at the mention of my son’s name. Before I left, after we’d finally realized he wasn’t coming back, I’d refused to let anyone say it out loud. It hurt too much to hear.

“My mom said Delila came to me when I was three, and Biscuit found Ellie when she was only six-months-old. A witch’s familiar always comes to them at a young age, but I never ever saw an animal around my son. After he disappeared, I thought, well maybe if I could find his guardian then I would be able to communicate with him through the animal. I sat here every day and stared out into those trees, looking for any signs of him in any animal that I could find, but there was nothing. Eventually I deduced that he was going to evaporate without me ever knowing when or how.” I struggled to find my next words. “Without proof of his existence I was forced to believe my son was dead.”

“He’s not—”

“Don’t,” I warned, shaking my head. I hadn’t seen, heard, or smelled any trace of my son since the day he left us. Just believing that he was around wasn’t enough for me. False hope was more dangerous than any dark castor. It was why I didn’t dwell on the what ifs.

Patrick bit down over his lip, presumably choking back his next words. After a few moments, he replied, “Nana never told you about how she met Lola, did she?”

“Lola?” I scoffed. Delila made a gurgling sound in the back of her throat before flying away. “That bird hated me.”

Patrick pulled a hand over his mouth and half coughed half laughed. “She didn’t hate you, V,” he said, amused. “She just took after our grandmother. She was stiff as hell, and without much of a sense of humor—kinda like this persona you’re trying to pull off.”

I scowled at him, and pulled apart a piece of my roll, chucking it at his chest.

“All right, all right,” he chuckled, throwing up a surrendering hand. "But the reason I bring her up is because Lola didn’t fly down and take a perch on Nana’s shoulder until she was, like, thirteen.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Nuh uh.”

“Yeah.” He lit another cig. “Evidently, they don’t always find us right away, or they don’t come until the moment is right.”

“Are you sure Nana just never saw her? That’s a really long time to go without a familiar.”

“Positive. Every witch is different. Mom told me once that Balthazar flew into our house one night before I was even born. She thought there was something unusual about the bat, but it didn’t make sense until I was two and he flew through my window and slept next to my head. Our familiars have their own spirits too, V. They come from the same place as our souls. But getting here is a journey and we don’t always take the same train, otherwise our moms would be twins. It’s possible Thaden hadn’t met his familiar yet when what happened happened; or he had, but you’d never seen him or her.”

I poured over his words. All I could hear was the presence of my son in what he was saying.

“So, you think that he’s . . . You really do think he’s still alive?” Even as I said the words, I knew that I’d just peeled away a protective casing around my heart, around my soul. Vulnerability had found me.

Patrick hesitated. “Yeah. I do.”

“He’s not though . . .”

My chin snapped up in attention. “What was that?”

Patrick frowned. “What?”

“You didn’t hear that?”

“Hear what?”

That sickening, vile, voice. She was here.

“Um, nothing,” I replied, shakily, carefully leaning forward and setting my coffee on the table.

Patrick sat up and tapped the ashes of his cigarette, then asked in his best big brother tone, “You all right?”

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “It’s just a lot right now, you know. And I don’t like talking about him. You know that.”

“V, you do know that what happened—it wasn’t your fault.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” I repeated.

But he did. Leaning in so the elbow of his chef’s jacket was over the table, he said, “He was alone, V. He was practicing shit he shouldn’t have been.”

“He wasn’t alone—she was with him,” I shot back.

“What? Who?”

Rowena. That foul evil skank.

“Nobody,” I muttered, looking away.

“Whatever,” he remarked, shaking away my comment. “Anyway, our parents always told us that playing with magic was like playing with matches—”

“He thinks your ignorance did this to your son . . . everyone does. That you should’ve been there. If you had been with him this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Jesus! Where are you, you nasty bitch!” I exclaimed, my gaze wrapping around every tree, every square inch of what was surrounding us.

“V, what the hell? Are you all right?”

I clenched my jaw, waiting for more, but no more whispers came. Attempting to straighten myself out, I started to retort, “Sorry—”

But suddenly my chest ignited with fire; and as it did, something reached a hand carefully around my neck. I could feel its breath, and its touch instantly darkened me.

Patrick, oblivious to what was happening, went on. “Look V, when Thaden found that spell he knew he was playing with fire. There was a reason we weren’t supposed to recite anything alone until we got old enough.”

A searing knife cut through my chest, and I clenched up. “Is this your way of saying I was a bad parent before I was a bad parent? Because I wasn’t watching my kid when this happened?”

“No—god no. Shit, you’re frustrating sometimes.” He laid a hand over his forehead and stood up. “All of us miss him. But you can’t change fate. His physical life wasn’t in the cards this time. In fact, do you remember those things, Olivia? Your cards? Do you remember who you used to be before you let this” –-he waved a hand over my body— “whatever person you claim to be now, take you over?”

“Shut up, Patrick.” The hatred that was infiltrating my being continued to brew in my gut like rancid goat’s milk.

“They used to be your eyes, those cards. You aren’t you without them—without your magic.”

My voice meshed with someone else’s, and I growled. “I don’t use my magic anymore.”

“What the hell?” Patrick leaned down, inspecting who was looking back at him. After a pensive moment, he very slowly pulled a long hickory stick from where it was hiding, tucked into his sock.

“Hey—Hey V. Look at me.”

I wanted to take a hold of him by his neck, squeeze it. I could already feel the pleasure of his life in my hands . . .

“V!” He pointed to his eyes. “Look here, kid. You got me?”

I furrowed my brow at him. What was he doing?

Then there was a flash of purple, an angry bout of shouting in my head, and an instant feeling like I’d just been set free. I blinked a couple of times, realizing that Patrick’s wand was pointed directly at my forehead.

“What just happened?” I asked.

Pulling it away, he leaned down and perused my pupils. “You had a fucking lunatic on your back, that’s what just happened.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry,” Patrick said, sticking his wand back where it belonged. “It’s gone. For now.” Exhaling his most recent drag, he pointed his cigarette down at me and returned to his agenda as though the possession was nothing more than a bee he’d had to shoo away. “This is what I’m talking about—you gotta get over all this. You’re inviting shit into your body just by being this way. We’ve had enough of that shit in this family.”

Unlike him, I wasn’t keen on simply skimming over the mad occurrence. That thing had just infiltrated me. In all my years I’d never allowed anything to get inside of me. Rowena wasn’t just messing around—she was just getting started.

Meanwhile, Patrick was still ranting. I shook my head at the ground, rubbing at the back of my neck. “I get it. That’s enough, you can stop.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Enough, I said!” I was way too overstimulated. “Jesus Patty, just—thanks for getting that thing off me, but don’t you have to go cook something for Christ’s sakes.”

He didn’t respond right away, instead he just hovered in front of the door, scrutinizing my entire being. Taking a few more drags, he put out his cigarette. “When you gonna stop dancing, girl? Ain’t those legs tired yet?”

Before I could utter another word, he pushed open the door and disappeared into the cafe. That was that. So far, my homecoming was going as smoothly as a road paved out of broken glass.

A second later Ellie walked up, a subdued look on her face. “Sup yo? You and Patrick have a fight or something?”

“I’m not the most popular kid in school right now, that’s for sure,” I said, before I reached for my coffee and chugged it.

Ellie rocked back and forth on her toes, but thankfully didn’t feel the need to press further in about the argument. Sizing up my workout clothes, she smirked. “Whatevs, at least you’re not dressed like a Bible salesman today. I’m going over to Lana’s, you coming?”

I brought my hands together in front of my stomach and began to wring them. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

After that the two of us walked towards my old house, a soft wind clinging to my side, urging us forward. In the background, darkness—biding its time.