“Can I peek inside?”Ivy asks, rubbing her hands together.Her eyes sparkle behind her glasses, and she pushes them up as she heads for the back entrance to the bookstore proper.
“Yeah, just watch out for the salt line,” I tell her.She’s already moving, and I know once Ivy gets going with an idea in her head, she’s not going to stop.
It’s best just to let her figure shit out on her own and get out of her way.
Sure enough, the moment she opens the door, sulfurous-smelling cold air blasts through the back room, ruffling the pages of the books and sending the alley door slamming shut.
The lights flicker, then go out, and Prudence lets out a low, menacing growl.
“It’s okay, kitty.”I pet her head, and the growl subsides slightly.
“Holy shit,” Ivy says, her voice full of wonder.Not fear, nope, that wouldn’t be Ivy.Just pure, unadulterated awe.“And it’s like this all the time?”
“Nope,” I tell her, then sigh, because hot damn, things have escalated quickly.“It was little things for a while, stuff moving around.It’s gotten worse every day since, well, since Aiden and I were forced to watch the memory of the whole coven snuffing it after a spell went wrong.Best guess?—”
“It’s not a guess,” Prudence sniffs.“It’s a working hypothesis.”
“Right.”I pause for a second, trying to collect myself.“Between the grimoire and Prudence’s esoteric,” I grin, pleased with the five dollar word, before continuing, “knowledge, we hypothesize that the increased, er, magical usage here attracted all the ghosts within a certain radius of town.”
Through the door, over three dozen distinct spirits slam into things, throw what’s left of my long-abandoned cleaning supplies around, and generally cause havoc.Icicles hang off the balconies and ceiling, huge, stalactite-sized things with vicious points.
I know there are over three dozen because I spent one morning over-caffeinated and over-sugared, counting them with Tara.We lost count around thirty-seven or thirty-nine when frost began creeping across the doorway.
“It’s unpleasant, to say the least.”Prudence’s whiskers twitch.
The potential damage to the salt line was too dangerous to risk, so we kept that door closed as soon as we realized how much worse it could get.
The Romantic sisters, needless to say, are agog.Aghast, even.
It’s surprisingly gratifying to see.
“Sometimes they make the walls bleed.It’s gross,” I tell them.“I’d shut that door before they mess with the salt barrier again.”
Ivy stares for just a second longer.A spirit shambles over, one of the worst-looking ones, big old blank holes where eyes should be, a dislocated jaw, stringy hair—basically if zombie and a ghost banged, this would be the extremely graphic result.
“Nightmare fuel, anyone?”I say cheerily.
“Ew,” she says, slamming the door.“Alright.That is hands down the worst haunting I’ve ever seen.”
“What did you say caused it, again?”The book lies forgotten in Rose’s hand.
“Best as we could find out, there was a bad outbreak of smallpox here over a hundred years ago.That was documented in the library.”
Posey snorts at the word library, but I ignore her.
“A bunch of kids got it and the vaccines that would have kept them safe were late arriving.The coven who lived here cast a spell to protect them, but something went wrong.”Most of the story had been in the grimoire, and Tara and Prudence and even Em, when she could get away from work, had poured over it in the previous weeks.“Best I can tell, either the spell inverted and drew strength from the coven as it killed them, trapping them here,” I jerk my chin at the closed door.“Or it drew strength from them as it killed them and trapped anyone else who died here in the following ten years.”
“That feels like a random number.”
“We found the spell they used and went through what could have gone wrong.It’s a best guess.”
“When do the other witches show up?”Posey doesn’t seem nearly as flippant after seeing what’s going on in my bookstore.
“Tara and Em should be here soon, and they’re bringing Tara’s aunt Tilly with them, too.”
“Don’t worry, dears, Aunt Tilly is here,” a voice cracks out, and sure enough, there’s the rest of my coven.Aunt Tilly, a spry older woman with a shock of short, newly dyed pink hair, is flanked by Em and Tara.Her shirt screams “Pussy Palace” in neon sequins, and the shapes of monster dildos are embroidered all over it.
I know what each one represents because Tilly explained them each to me in depth the first time I met her.
