Page 9 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

–Jane Harrington-Price

Waking up in an unfamiliar house in New Gravesend, Maine

WAKING UP TO DISCOVER Sam had functionally tied himself to me in the night was no longer unusual, or particularly surprising. He’d grown up with his family’s carnival, never more than a few feet from people who knew what he was and didn’t have a problem with it. By choosing to run off and follow me, he’d given up the kind of safety and security most cryptids will never know, and he’d done it without being asked. If wrapping his tail around my ankle or waist while we slept meant he didn’t feel quite so unmoored, I was cool with it.

What I hadn’t realized was how much I’d come to take that contact as a security blanket, a sign that the world was sticking with its new, somewhat idiosyncratic normal. But when I opened my eyes to find myself alone in the middle of a wide, bare mattress—no sheets or blankets in evidence, nothing but a single caseless pillow shoved under my head—my first response was fear. Piercing, unfettered fear, the kind I normally associated with free fall and near misses.

I sat up. Sam didn’t appear. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t like being alone—I don’t have a problem with being alone—but that for the past several months, getting Sam away from my side had basically required a crowbar. We were both a little insecure after everything we’d been through, and while I might have eventually started seeing his presence as clingy, we weren’t there yet. So why was I alone?

The room was good-sized. It had to be, to accommodate the king-sized bed I was sitting in. The curtains were insufficient to block out the sunlight, but judging by its brightness, I’d slept until almost noon. Gingerly, I rolled out of bed, retrieved my jeans from where I’d clearly abandoned them the night before, and started for the door.

Everything after the conversation in the driveway was a blur, and not a very detailed one. I dimly remembered being shaken awake again, which implied that I’d gone back to sleep before we’d reached the house. I didn’t remember getting my things out of the car. Maybe I’d left them where they were for the night, trusting our isolation to keep them from getting stolen.

Outside the door was a long, cool hall, dust motes dancing in the air. The runner down the middle of the floor was the kind of faded wine-red flower pattern that seems to spring spontaneously into being in old houses the world over. It didn’t provide any cushioning as I walked, although it could probably become a tripping hazard in a pinch.

Photos of people I didn’t recognize and would probably never meet lined the walls, hung with care above locked barrister bookshelves full of leather-bound old volumes that didn’t look like they’d been touched in twenty years. I kept walking until I heard people talking quietly up ahead—and, more importantly, until I smelled bacon. That was enough to make my shoulders unclench. I took my hand away from the knife strapped to my wrist—more proof that I’d fallen into bed without taking the time to get properly undressed. I’m happy to sleep with weapons under my pillow. I’m less happy about sleeping with weapons actually on my person. When a bad dream can lead to a punctured kidney, nobody wins.

(This is just one of the many reasons that I feel developing sorcery as an adult is unfair and unreasonable, even if it’s not uncommon among sorcerers—although sorcerers are pretty uncommon to begin with, making this a problem for one percent of one percent of people, if that. Before the fire was taken from my fingers, I wasn’t waking up stabbed. I was waking up on fire. Not the kind of party I enjoy.)

The stairs were narrow, but not rickety, and carpeted in a rug that matched the one in the hall. At least our temporary home wasn’t a hovel. The third stair from the bottom creaked when I stepped on it. That would be an easy enough fix. Give me a hammer and some nails and I could take care of it in under an hour. The idea was pleasant. It had been way too long since I’d been able to spend an afternoon just improving my living conditions.

The living room at the bottom of the stairs was complete with couch, comfy-looking chairs, and one of those big televisions that look expensive until you realize they’re more than a year old. We could probably buy a more recent model at the local Goodwill or equivalent for under a hundred bucks, which explained why the owner had left it here while he filled his house with strangers. It was still nice to see. I could watch bad horror movies and eat popcorn and not be running for my life for fifteen minutes.

I’d never watched a horror movie with a boyfriend. I liked the idea. It’s more fun when there’s an excuse to get cozy, and when the monsters aren’t, y’know, real.

I followed the smell of bacon across the living room to the dining room, which was dim due to lack of external windows. Someone laughed, the sound coming from behind a closed door, and I hesitated.

The last time I woke up to surprise breakfast, it had been my Aunt Mary doing the cooking, and while that had been a delight—no one makes pancakes like someone who’s been doing it for more than fifty years—it wasn’t like she and I were currently exactly on what I’d consider speaking terms. She was furious with me for making my crossroads bargain, even though I’d done it to save my life. I couldn’t really blame her for that, although I could resent her a little for being willing to let me die if it meant the crossroads wouldn’t have a claim on me. I like being alive. It’s how I get things done.

Mary can find me anywhere I go. It’s one of the advantages of being her specific kind of ghost. If this was her trying to make a peace offering, maybe it was time to let her. I took a deep breath and opened the kitchen door.

I was almost disappointed when I stepped into the kitchen and found Fern standing at the stove, flipping bacon strips with a fork. She looked up at the sound of my footsteps, already smiling even before she saw me. “It’s eleven,” she informed me brightly. “You slept until eleven. I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”

“Is there coffee?” I asked.

“Coffee, toast, and bacon. No eggs. There weren’t any eggs in the fridge. No milk, either. Cylia has a list going over on the table. Check the fridge and cupboards and write down anything you want her to get from the store.”

“Right,” I said, casting around until I found the coffee maker. It was old-fashioned, twenty years old if it was a day, but the coffee was black and hot, and the sugar was sweet, and when I put them together, it started to feel like maybe I was going to finish waking up after all. “Where’s Cylia?”

“She’s cleaning out the car. Sam went for a walk in the woods. He wants to know how many neighbors we have.”

“Mmm,” I said, spooning more sugar into my coffee. Knowing the location and number of the neighbors mattered more to him than it did to the rest of us. If there were too many of them, he’d need to spend most of his time either indoors or making the effort to seem human. But if we were isolated, he could finally relax.

For his sake, I hoped he could relax.

The coffee was good. The bacon was better. I sat and ate and added things to the shopping list, some essential—bread and canned soup and mac and cheese—and others frivolous—marshmallow fluff and sugared cereal and microwave pizzas. There was a microwave. I could once again live on my natural diet of salt, fat, and artificial cheese.

Fern finished cooking and sat down across from me to eat her own breakfast. After we’d both swallowed more fried pig than was strictly good for us, she asked, “Do you like it here?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll get some shoes on and go for a walk, assuming Cylia doesn’t want me to come to the store with her.”

“I think she’s excited to have some time to herself,” admitted Fern.

“That’s what I figured,” I said. “Do you like it here?”

Her smile was immediate and bright. “It’s wonderful. There’s a little room up in the attic with bars on the window, so I can have it open all night and not worry about floating away.” Her smile dimmed. “I mean. Unless you want it. We’re supposed to pick our rooms today, now that we’re all awake.”

“Okay, first, us picking rooms doesn’t mean you automatically lose the one you want, so no, and second, I’m looking forward to sharing a room with Sam for more than a couple of days. We need to figure out all the ways we get on each other’s nerves. So a ‘little’ room isn’t going to work for us. I’m happy staying where we slept last night, unless Cylia has another suggestion.”