“Oh.” Now Briar felt awkward for asking. Her words plucked an uncomfortable chord, a flat note in a trilling rhapsody. It left his skin prickly and cold.
Her life had been cut short, just as his would be.
“To top it off, I’m stuck here. Spirit’s tied to the house ’cause I died here. I can’t leave.”
Briar perked up at that. “What if I found your murderer?”
“Fat chance. I don’t remember anything about them. I was kind of dead right after.”
“Well, what about leaving here? If I found a way to let you out so you could explore and live a little, or as much as you can, would that help?”
The thought seemed never to have occurred to her. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”
“I’ll find a way. Just promise you won’t try to kill me even if my cooking is bad.”
“And you’ll let me out of this trap?”
“Of course.”
Vatii chirruped uneasily, but Briar ignored her. Sometimes placing trust in people was the best means to convince them to behave in a manner worthy of that trust.
“Fine,” said the ghost. “I guess you should tell me your name.”
“I’m Briar.”
“Gretchen. I’d shake your hand, but I exhausted my ability to affect the real world by chucking the whole kitchen at you.”
Briar stood and nudged the frying pan again. The moment the circle broke, Gretchen’s transparent figure flickered before vanishing in ephemeral wisps of violet smoke.
She didn’t return for the remainder of the evening. Briar’s fish pie turned out barely edible.
He got into bed and lit a candle to dispel the lingering fumes of his supper. Sitting with his phone propped on his knee, he checked messages and status updates from his friends on Alakagram. He took a photo of Vatii with her head tucked beneath her wing to post with the caption,Settling into our new home sweet home.It took ages to upload. Likewise, the live video of Linden Fairchild hinting about his “super-secret exciting news” spent longer on the whirling loading screen than on his speech. The WitchiCom internet seemed dodgy as anything. He wondered if the wards affected it, or if everything here was ancient and dragging its technological heels.
Settled, he took his potion, as usual.
Before his journey, he’d had a checkup with his doctor. He’d had blood drawn and dripped into a beaker of water and honeysuckle pollen, which turned carmine. It had been scarlet when he was first diagnosed, and the slow darkening of the color was an indication of the curse’s progression. If he was on death’s door, it would be nearly black.
“That’s a bit darker than I would have liked,” his doctor had said.
Briar didn’t see the point in these annual tests. The curse would wreck him regardless. The potions he took mitigated symptoms, slowed it down, but that was all. They’d guessed that his mother had the curse for four years before her diagnosis, and she lived four more. If their estimates were correct, Briar still had six years to make a name for himself.
Where normal curses were cast by witches, Bowen’s Wane was like a small plague that had struck a couple thousand people eight or so years ago. None of the victims appeared to have any connection to one another, and no one knew who cast it. Where a witch’s curse could condemn a victim to never finding true love or forever having an unexpected item in their bagging area, Bowen’s Wane had no such template.
Only when it claimed its first victim, an elderly man by the name of Hubert Bowen, did the aim become clear. It was a wasting curse. A simple thing. It drained you, and then you died.
His mother’s had begun with chronic fatigue. A sense that no amount of sleep would ever be enough. Helplessly, Briar had watched as his fat, rosy-cheeked mother, who gave bone-popping hugs, was reduced to a shade of herself. Her aura—once as vibrant as basking in the first sunlight after a long winter—became a threadbare blanket that couldn’t combat a whispering draft. Her hugs were bony, her arms light as Vatii’s wings. She’d had seizures.
He still had nightmares about those.
The days to come would be critical in preparing his shop for opening, and he balked at the thought of making the vacuum of space below into a welcoming place for customers. He needed fabric, sewing supplies, ingredients for spells, and he honestly didn’t know where to begin. Wishbrooke had given him the skills but none of the tools and resources. They’d taught him how to fish and then thrust him into the world without tackle, bait, or even a boat.
He would have to muddle through. He didn’t have much time to figure it out.
In the morning, Briar searched the flat for anything that was tethering Gretchen’s ghost to the house. According to his textbooks, poltergeists had often suffered violent deaths. Trapped spirits could be tethered to a place by an object of importance or even a ward spell. Searching every cupboard and under loose floorboards, he found no such tether. Luckily, he had an idea to temporarily circumvent her imprisonment.
He’d simply have to take part of the house with him.
While making toast and boiling the kettle, Briar took stock of the flat’s available fabric. He had limited options between the floral curtains and the wool blanket but opted for the curtains. He tore out the lining. Between sips of tea, he pinned the rough edge into a hem and ran it through his sewing machine, stitches gliding into place.
