Page 26 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

“Everyone, chill,” I said, and winced immediately after. “Everyone, forgive me for accidental ice puns and calm down. James, no one is making fun of you. This is difficult for us, too. We didn’t … I mean, this isn’t what we were expecting.”

“It’s sort of what I was expecting,” said Fern, who had been quiet up until this point. To be honest, I’d almost forgotten she was there. I turned to look at her. She shrugged. “Things always get weird before they get bad. We’re in the weird phase. Bad is next. That’s why we have to trust each other and start working together. Annie, did Mary come to tell you the crossroads knew about what James was trying to do?”

I nodded.

“Okay.” Fern walked up to James and extended her hand. “My name is Fern. It’s nice to meet you. I wish I could have met you when things were better, but I guess this will do.”

“Um.” The brittle glitter disappeared from the air around James’ hand as he lowered it and clasped Fern’s fingers. “Thank you for telling me your name.”

“If Fern’s in, I’m in,” said Cylia. “I’m Cylia.”

“Sam,” said Sam. He didn’t sound happy about it. I still couldn’t blame him.

“You already know my name,” I said. “I’m Annie. Annie Price.”

There was no flicker of recognition in James’ eyes at the sound of my surname. Normally, that would have been nice. Just my luck that the one time I wanted all the baggage that came with my name, I met someone who didn’t care about the cryptid world except where it intersected with the crossroads.

“Names are a nice start,” said James. “I still want to know why you have an ‘exception’ following you around.”

“Aunt Mary died a long time ago,” I said. “But she started off haunting her father. I guess he was old enough that the crossroads didn’t think he’d be much of an anchor, and they were right, because he died pretty soon after she did, but by that point, she was already babysitting my grandmother. It might not have been enough, if my family hadn’t known about ghosts. But they did, and when they found out Mary was dead, they didn’t care.” That was the simplified version. Oh, they’d cared, all right; they’d cried for the girl they’d come to love, whose death had somehow been so overlooked that she’d been able to slip right back into the life she’d left behind. And then they’d kept right on treating her like Mary, like who she was transcended everything else.

Maybe it had. Maybe that was why she was the only crossroads ghost who’d managed to maintain so much autonomy that she’d been able to continue being herself, being happy, even after everything else had changed.

“Your family is fine with dead people hanging around,” said James disbelievingly. “No problems, sure, come and haunt my house.”

“Not all of us,” I said. “My great-aunt Laura used to ward her trailer against the dead because they didn’t let her sleep. That’s how I know about wards, even if I can’t draw them.” I’d never bothered to learn. The only ghosts who were likely to interfere with my daily life were Mary and Rose, and I wanted both of them there.

“Got it,” said James. “Why are we warding the house now if your aunt is such an ‘exception’?”

“Because like I said, my aunt is gone, and the ghost the crossroads have sent in her place doesn’t seem nearly as friendly.” There was something coolly familiar about Bethany, something I couldn’t quite place. I was almost certain I had never met her before, alive or dead. I would have remembered her school colors, if nothing else, because cheerleaders never forget a spirit bow. “The crossroads … fuck. I don’t even know where to start.”

“Try the beginning,” said James. “That generally works for me.”

I took a deep breath. “All right. Did you see anything in the news about the accidents at Lowryland?”

James Smith was a decent audience: it took more than half an hour to explain the events that led up to my leaving Lowryland, and he only interrupted twice, both times to ask for clarification of something that needed more background to make sense. I was almost grateful for the pauses. They left me the space I needed to edit out cryptid involvement without actually lying. Sam, Cylia, and Fern might be willing to tell our new neighbor their names, but it was up to them when—and whether—they revealed the fact that none of them were as human as they looked.

When I reached the part about my bargain with the crossroads, and what I’d agreed to, his eyes became very wide and his cheeks became very pale. The air around him glittered as the temperature in the room dropped, not quite plunging to zero, but definitely trending away from the comfortable.

Finally, I said, “And that’s all. That’s why the crossroads are watching me.”

“They want you to kill me, don’t they?”

It was a simple question, almost casually asked: how’s the weather, what are you doing for the holidays, do the crossroads want you to kill me? I still had to stop and brace myself against the table. Sam placed a hand against the small of my back, steadying and stabilizing me. I shot him a grateful look. He looked back, familiar even in his unusual humanity, before returning his attention to James. I did the same.

“Yes,” I said. “They do. Although they want me to become your best friend first, so I can tell them everything you know. And supposedly in exchange, they’ll put the fire back in my fingers and let me go on my merry way, no longer in debt to anyone for anything.”

“They won’t, you know,” he said. “They’ll have some reason you didn’t quite follow their orders and need to do them one more favor before they let you go.”

“I know,” I said.

“You’ll never be free of them.”

“I know that, too.”

“So why did you—?”

“Knowing doesn’t change the fact that if I hadn’t agreed to their bargain, I would have died, and Sam would have died, and a bunch of other people I care about would have died, and sometimes a bad deal is better than no deal at all.” I shook my head, fighting the urge to glare. It would have been so easy to start blaming him for the destruction of our “take a break and recover for a while” plan. It would have been so easy. “I needed the chance to figure out how to get through this. I took what I could get.”