I pointed at Declan’s foot. “This is gonna sound crazy, but can I try that on?” I asked, and he tried to lean forward to tug it off but couldn’t bend far enough. “Stay put, I’ll get it,” I said and scurried to his foot. Thankfully, the boot’s laces were missing, so I hoisted his foot into my lap and gripped the toe and heel to prepare to pull, hoping his entire foot didn’t come off from the effort. “Ready?” I asked, and Declan nodded. “Okay, okay. We’ve got this,” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “On the count of three, okay? One. Two. Three!” I shouted and pulled.
With a gut-wrenching squelch, Declan’s boot flew off and his wet, brownish-green foot plopped into my lap, leaving a smear on my robes. It took everything I had not to lose the contents of my stomach at the sight, but I got back on my feet and yanked my own boot off. I hesitated with my foot hovering over Declan’s boot, unable to think about anything other than the muck I was about to sink into — and all this for a guy I didn’t even find all that sympathetic.
“Poppy!” Declan shouted as if to encourage me.
“All right, all right. Just gimme a sec, okay? I need to prepare for this,” I said and took a series of deep breaths. With my eyes closed and my courage slowly building, I rammed my foot inside the boot. I waited a few seconds, hoping for the familiar whooshing sound like a wave washing over me as a vision surged through my mind, but it never came. “Crap,” I hissed, and unevenly paced the length of the small nook where Declan had settled thanks to the height difference in our two boots.
And then, as if I’d stepped on a hidden switch somewhere, the surrounding room swirled and I froze with my hands against the wall to steady myself as, finally, a slice of the past coursed through me. I blinked, and when my eyes re-opened, I stood in a small space, maybe ten feet by ten feet. A square window cut into the wall to my right allowed moonlight to flood through the gaps between the shovels hanging from the wall, and on the left stood a floor-to-ceiling set of shelving lined with spades and other random, scattered utensils I didn’t recognize — which meant I had to be in the toolshed!
I spotted a door but didn’t get to take in much of its detail before a shadow passed in front of the window, drawing my attention to it. “Poppy!” I roared in Declan’s voice, and as if I were in his body feeling the sensation too, fear spread through my veins. Even then, he must’ve known that who or whatever was out there was bad news.
I stumbled toward the window, solely focused on getting a better look. A cloud drifted from the bottom of the window frame to the top — could it have been someone’s breath in the cold? — and I froze. Beneath the window where the shed’s wall met the ground, an orange glow ignited, and I knew right away what was coming.
“Poppy! Poppy! POPPY!” I howled desperately as I shuffled as fast as my undead legs could carry me to the shed’s door. I pounded the only fist I still had against it, to no avail. When that failed, I began throwing my body weight against the door, but it wouldn’t give. Someone or something must have barred it from the outside.
I turned and roared as I realized that, where there’d been a solid wooden wall moments before, there was now only a curtain of flame, one that spread like an uncontained disease, engulfing me and flooding the room with smoke. I stole another glance at the window and stumbled backward. There, framed perfectly in its center, floated the hooded face of a young woman approximately my age. Luscious blonde curls spilled out from the hood’s edges and around her face, but it wasn’t anyone I recognized.
The woman flashed me a smile, and we stood staring at each other for what felt like forever until finally the glass of the window bubbled and warped from the heat of the flame, distorting her face. A beat later, she vanished. But who was she?
“Poppy!” I howled, hoping someone, anyone, might hear me and come to my rescue. “Poppy! Poppy! POPPY!” I kept screaming until my voice in the vision merged with the one pouring from Declan where he sat slumped against the wall.
“Selena! Are you down there? Is everything okay?!” Someone called down the stairs, and I jolted out of the vision and back into my body just as the flames began closing in around me. “Selena!” they shouted again, and I lurched in fear as I realized that, somehow, Lox and Keez hadn’t kept everyone away from the basement entrance. Was it Blair finally coming to track me down for using unapproved magic?
“Oh no! No, no, no!” I whined and scrambled to get Declan’s boot off and replace it with mine. “I’m fine, everything’s fine!” I shouted, though I doubted it would convince whoever was listening. I didn’t bother re-tying my boot. As soon as it slipped over my foot, I tore out of the basement toward the stairs and lost count of the number of times I almost tripped while I scaled them desperately, the light from my wand bouncing erratically all around me.
I burst through the open door, expecting Blair to accost me — but ran right into Thorn’s arms instead. “Whoa, whoa, slow down!” he laughed as he struggled to keep hold of me while I flailed like a cornered animal. I should’ve been embarrassed by my behavior and by his arms around me, but the only thing I could think about was what on Earth was he doing here, and why now of all times? “What’s going on? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
For all I knew, he might be right. Who was that blonde apparition I’d seen outside the shed’s window? Where had she come from, and where had she gone — and more importantly, why had she come after Declan? She’d breezed onto the grounds like a shadow, torched the shed, and vanished in the wind like an errant snowflake of destruction.
“I-I’m fine. I just went into the basement for some cleaning supplies and got a little spooked in the dark, that’s all,” I lied, flustered. Thorn released me and shot me a disbelieving look.
“Are you sure? I heard shouting down there. Something about poppies, I think?”
“What? No. I was saying ‘get away from me.’ There are a lot of rats down there.” Thorn smirked smugly, and despite how good he looked doing it, I still wanted to slap the look off his face.
“Well, that explains the awful smell coming from down there. Is there food rotting or something?” he asked, but all I could do was kick myself mentally. Where the heck were Lox and Keez, and why hadn’t they kept Thorn away?
“Yeah, I bet that’s what the rats are after. We’ll have to figure out what it is,” I said and kicked the door closed behind me, cutting off the stench. “But you don’t need to worry about that.”
“Are you sure? We could help you sniff out the rotten food.”
“We?” I asked and glanced around his shoulder for the first time to find Venus standing a few feet away. She twiddled her fingers at me, and my stomach dropped. As if it weren’t bad enough that Thorn had caught me down in the basement, that jabberjaw Venus had too.
“Hey, Selena. I don’t blame you for freaking out. I can’t stand rats either,” she said and smiled sympathetically.
“Yeah, they’re pretty gross. Well, anyway, I don’t want to keep you. Go get some rest. Hopefully, the snow lets up overnight so you can actually get some skiing in tomorrow,” I said as casually as possible and inched away toward the front desk, desperate to escape into the office behind it — even if it meant fessing up to Blair about what I’d done if she was in there. I still would’ve preferred to face her than keep talking with Thorn and Blair.
“Yeah, good idea. I’m wiped out,” Thorn said with an infuriatingly taunting smile. Thankfully, though, he turned to Venus and gestured to the elevator. “After you.”
I stood rooted to the spot as he and Venus got into the elevator, refusing to leave until I knew for sure they’d gone upstairs. Thorn slid the grate closed and winked at me. “Good night, Selena. Watch out for those rats,” he said and disappeared as the elevator climbed.
The door behind me whooshed open, and without even looking, I knew who waited for me.
“You’ve got some explaining to do, young lady,” Blair said. Gulping, I turned and found her standing with a stern look on her face and her arms crossed over her chest. We stared each other down for a few moments until finally a hint of a smirk appeared at the corner of her mouth. “I don’t know how you did it, but I’m impressed you did, regardless.”
“What do you mean?”
Blair frowned at me. “Oh, come on, love, don’t play dumb. The illumination spell you cast! I felt the ping of its magic as soon as you did, but I still don’t understand how you pulled it off. That shouldn’t have been possible.”
“I’m surprised it worked too, honestly. I didn’t do anything special, though. I just said the same incantation I heard you use the first time we were down in the—”
“Let’s not talk about that out here,” Blair cut me off. “Come in,” she said and ushered me inside. When we were safely alone behind the door, she leaned against the paper-covered table along the back wall and cleared her throat. “So, were you doing what I think you were down in the basement?”
“I had to! I’ve talked to everyone here, and I’m no closer to figuring out what happened to Declan — but I know for sure that something did. I saw it with my own two eyes. Well, I guess technically they weren’t my two eyes, but—”
“You had another vision?” Blair interrupted me again, and I nodded.
“Lox and Keez helped me break into the basement so I could see Declan again.”
“Selena! That explains the illumination spell, but what were you thinking?! What if someone had followed you? You could’ve led his attacker right back to him!”
“I didn’t, I swear,” I lied. Though Thorn and Venus hadn’t followed me into the basement, they both knew I’d been down there, and I couldn’t definitively say that they were both innocent. In fact, I couldn’t say that about any of the reunion guests.
“You still shouldn’t have done that. Why didn’t you just ask me? I would’ve taken you downstairs.”
“Oh, well… Honestly, I didn’t think of that, but that’s mostly because I doubted you’d be open to it, anyway.”
Blair sighed. “What’s done is done, I guess. What did you see?”
“It’s a bit of a long story, so I need to fill you in on some other stuff first,” I said and told her all about what Fallon and Edna claimed they’d seen near the shed just before the fire started.
“Goodness. No wonder you wanted to see Declan,” she said, smiling at me. “I’m still not happy with you about it, but I have to admit, it was good thinking.”
“Thanks. Anyway, when I put on Declan’s boot, I saw someone lurking outside the shed, a young woman in a dark, hooded robe with long, curly blonde hair. I didn’t recognize her.”
“Hm, well, that description doesn’t match anyone here.”
“I know, but that’s the thing: I think whoever’s targeting Declan is working with someone else outside the inn. They have to be. Otherwise, how would that woman have known to set the shed on fire? She couldn’t have known he was out there unless someone told her. Did you and Kiki see any evidence of a trespasser when you went to put out the fire?”
“No, but I wasn’t really looking, to be totally honest. We were much more focused on saving Declan,” Blair said. She pushed off the edge of the table and began pacing the room. “I don’t like this at all. Someone really wants Declan gone, but why? Are they afraid he knows something? I don’t see why they would be, though. He can’t talk except to say ‘Poppy,’ whatever that means.”
“They might not know that, though. I mean, think about what I just saw by diving into his memories. If he could talk, he probably would’ve told us a lot more about what happened to him by now. Whoever turned him into a zombie has got to be scared to death that we’re closing in on them.”
“Then we should probably be thankful that few people know about your visions — and do our best to keep it that way.”
“Agreed,” I said, suppressing a shiver at the thought of what might happen if whoever was behind all this found out I was hot on their trail — and that I might find out what Declan knew about whoever was after him.
“And you still think a guest is responsible?”
“I’m even more sure of it now. At the very least, both Thorn and Miranda know that there’s a zombie here somewhere, and I’m not sure if either of them told someone else,” I said, though it was likely, especially considering the heated conversation I’d caught Miranda having with Venus in the reception room.
“But did one or both of them know that we’d moved Declan to the shed? Or did anyone, for that matter?”
I gulped. “I didn’t tell Miranda exactly where we’d moved him, but I mentioned it was somewhere on the grounds, so it probably wouldn’t have been hard for her to figure out.”
Blair sighed. “And now that the shed has turned to ashes, it’s not exactly inconspicuous anymore.”
“Right, and if they couldn’t confirm that Declan died in the fire, they’ll probably be on the lookout for other places we might’ve moved him.”
Blair eyed me critically. “Which makes your decision to let yourself into the basement even more ill-advised,” she said, though it wasn’t as scolding as I probably deserved. “Well, like I said, what’s done is done. Regardless, I’m exhausted, and I’m sure you must be too, what with all your running around and extracurricular spell casting today,” she said, smiling devilishly at me.
“The magic police aren’t going to come and arrest me for that or something, are they?”
Blair chuckled and shook her head. “No, the only one who knows about that is me. The two wands I gave to you and Jadis are bound magically to mine, which is how I knew what you’d done.”
“And you aren’t upset?”
“Over an illumination spell? Why would I be? I fully expected the two of you troublemakers to experiment with the wands to see what you could get away with, so it wasn’t a shock. I’m just relieved you weren’t trying to turn yourself into a bear or something, not that that would’ve surprised me.”
“Wait, that’s possible?”
“Never mind that,” Blair said, though her smile widened. “I always knew there was something special about you, Selena, but you keep finding new ways to prove it. If you keep this up, you might turn out to be a more skilled witch than Kiki and I combined.”
“Really? Just because I cast a spell to turn my wand into a glorified night light?”
Blair snorted and waved away my self-deprecation. “It’s just like you to downplay your abilities. Your mother was the same way,” she said with a wistful expression. She looked away, lost in thoughts of her estranged sister, and I hesitated with a question burning on the tip of my tongue, unsure whether it was appropriate to ask. Blair must’ve sensed my curiosity, though, because she returned her gaze to me with her brows raised. “Something on your mind?”
“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but I’d love to know more about what happened between you two. I mean, you’re awesome, so I don’t really understand why she and the rest of your family would want to toss you aside just because you were a little different.”
Blair shrugged. “People often reject what they don’t understand. I think you have a bit of insight into how that feels now, don’t you?”
Oh boy, did I. My parents hadn’t shown me a lick of sympathy when I’d told them I was dropping out of college, but that seemed so long ago and far away from my life now that it barely stung anymore.
Was that how Blair felt too? I hoped so, but I found it hard to believe. As painful as their rejection of me was, my experience paled compared to the way our family had cast Blair out and forced her to run away and start a whole new life — and though that’d happened twenty years ago, it still didn’t seem like enough time for the wound to heal fully, assuming it ever would.
Blair rested a hand on my shoulder and smiled at me fondly. “Someday, I’ll tell you the whole sordid story — you deserve the truth — but not today. All that matters now is that we have each other, and as crazy as things can get here, we have Kindred Spirits too,” she said, and I nodded. “And speaking of, we should really get some rest. We’ve got another long day ahead of us tomorrow, and I have a feeling these guests won’t make it easy for us. Come on, I’ll walk you to your room.”
Somehow, I knew she was right.