They say a witch lives in the old house under the interstate bridge. Always in the shadows, draped in ivy and sorrow, the house waits for a child too daring for his own good. And inside, the witch sits with her black eyes and toothless sneer. They say she can foresee your death in return for a lock of hair. She can make someone love you for the small price of a pinkie finger. And, of course, she can kill your enemy if you give her your soul. Some people think it’s only a silly tale to scare children, but it’s true. Every word.
I should know. She is my grandmother, after all, and right now I could steal her pudding stash for what she did to Winn. “Nana! He was just talking to me!”
She sits at her large mahogany desk, a variety of feathers and animal bones arranged precisely in front of her. She won’t look at me. She never does when I catch her cursing him. “Josephine, my dear, his intentions were clearly impure.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. She really needs to get over the fact that we like each other. I can barely call it dating with how much she’s interfered the past couple of months, but I’m determined to keep trying anyway. “I don’t see what the big deal is. Besides, what have I told you about spying on me at school?”
She frowns.
Letting out a long sigh, I sit in the throne-like chair her clients usually inhabit. “I’m safe, what with all the charms you make me wear. So can’t you let me date someone without cursing him every time he tries to touch me?” I jingle my bracelet, which is riddled with runes and tiny organs encased in glass baubles.
“I know you’re safe.” Nana grabs her ivory cane and hobbles over to me. As she puts her hand on my shoulder, I can’t help but feel ungrateful. “You are so precious to me. I cannot bear to lose you.”
“You won’t.” My mother died when I was seven—from the mysterious Curse that’s followed our family for generations—and ever since then I have been kept under tighter security than the president of the United States. It seemed important when I was young, but almost ten years later I want a little wiggle room. “And you can’t give a guy a face full of pimples because he smiled at me, especially when they just appear like that. Your reputation is already bad enough, even though most of Willow’s End doesn’t believe you’re real.”
She cackles. Seriously—it’s how she laughs. At least I’ve never heard anything else come out when she makes a joke.
“Nana, I mean it. Winn is a nice guy, and I really like him. Get rid of the zits.”
“Oh, fine.” She plops down in her chair, the old floorboards creaking even at her meager weight. She rearranges the feathers and bones, and then holds her hand over them. In the center, a flame sparks and consumes the feathers. “There.”
I smile. “Thank you.”
“In return, I need you to collect thirty spiders. I’m running low.”
My smile is no more. Should have figured—there is always a payment. It’s the number one rule of magic: you cannot get something for nothing. Nana lives and dies by that rule, even when magic isn’t involved. “Fine.”
Before I leave her apothecary, I grab a spare jar and fish out a frog eye from the bowl on her desk. Standing at the front door, I hold the frog eye in front of me and close my eyes. I picture the door I need: the one that leads to the ivy-covered home under the bridge. The magic pools in my hand, and I concentrate on what I desire it to do. It’s work, switching doors. Usually I keep it set on the brown one that connects to the house in the heart of town—the house my friends think is real. It is, in a way, since it leads to the same interior as the other one.
The door I need is heavy and black, with a large bronze knocker in the shape of a gargoyle. It always groans when it opens, like most things in this house do.
Once the frog eye dissolves, I open my eyes. The brown door is now black and old and menacing. I turn the gilded knob, and the sound of freeway traffic overhead greets me. Checking to make sure the coast is clear, I cautiously step onto the front porch. Not that many people use this road anymore, since ours is the only house still standing out here. And “standing” is a loose term—it looks more like an abandoned ruin.
It’s always cool under the bridge, even in the hot, humid summers. Sun gleams from either side, providing enough light to see. The tree in the yard is more moss than leaves, and the grass is thick and wet. I breathe in the air, full of dampness and magic.
That is, after all, part of why my great-great-grandmother moved here.
Normal people tend to think magic comes from inside a person. That’s partially true. Witches can store magic in their bodies, but without a source to replenish that power they lose it. Magic—real, pure magic—is in places. It seeps into the ground, grows in the plants, lives in the objects that inhabit its realm.
This house, this land, is one such place that simmers with magic. And no matter what, we Hemlocks will protect it.
I don’t have to go far to find my first spider. Half the front window is covered in webs, and I pluck one from its perch and drop it in the jar. In the corner behind the rusty swing, there are two more. By the time I step off the porch, I already have seven. The dark places under the stairs earn me eight more. I comb the ivy all the way to the back of the house until I get the rest. As I head to the front again, they struggle over one another in the slick, glass jar. “Sorry, guys, there’s no escaping.”
“Excuse me,” someone says.
I look up, freezing in place. A man in a suit stands at the weathered iron gate, his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t look like Nana’s usual clientele, who come dirty and smelling of hard times, who are so desperate that magic pulls them here without them knowing. He reeks of money—or maybe that’s the fancy convertible parked behind him that gleams even in these shadows. I take a few wary steps forward. “Yes? Do you need something?”
His eyes go wide as he takes me in. I grab the ends of my black hair, wondering if I have web in them. Nothing.
“What do you need?” I say again when he doesn’t answer. For some reason he makes me curious to get a closer look, like I’ve seen him somewhere, even though I know I haven’t.
He shakes his head, as if coming out of a daze. “Um, does a Carmina Hemlock live here?”
It’s my turn to be taken by surprise. Who on earth would be looking for my mother after so much time? Before I know it, I’m saying, “She’s dead.”
“Dead?” he croaks. “When?”
“Ten years ago.”
“Oh.” He looks away, and for a moment I wonder if he might be fighting tears. “I’m sorry.”
Something is off. There’s a coldness on the other side of the gate. Something waiting. I can feel it reach for the iron bars, hear it hiss when the protective spell bans its entrance. This man brought darkness and evil with him. “You’d better go.”
“I . . .” He stares at me, a strange sort of longing in his eyes. “Are you related to her? You look a lot like her.”
“Leave.” I take a few steps back before I dare to turn, and then I run for the house.