Page 91 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

If I was here to stop the thing we knew as the crossroads from latching onto and replacing the actual crossroads—whatever that was or meant—and I had managed to use the parasite’s power to come back this far, how was I going to get home?

Twenty-four

“We make our choices. We live with their consequences. That’s what it means to walk in this world, whether we like it or not.”

–Evelyn Baker

In the liminal space between worlds, having a minor panic attack

THE ANSWER TO THE question I hadn’t asked came from an unexpected place: behind me. “You can’t go home,” said a voice, familiar as waffles on a Sunday morning and cold as the wind blowing through a graveyard. “You’re already there. Antimony Timpani Price, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Some of the tension left my shoulders, replaced by a yawning exhaustion that felt big enough to reach up and swallow me whole. “Hi, Aunt Mary,” I said, turning. I’d always known, on some level, that when I finally died, she would be the one who’d come to carry me down into the twilight, down to where the ghost girls go.

Rose claims the position of primary psychopomp for our family, and that’s all right, really. She’s earned it. But for Mary, the youngest member of the family is her responsibility until they’re not, and that meant if—well, if—

“Am I dead?” I blurted. “Because that wasn’t supposed to make me dead, but I don’t really see how you can be here if I’m not.”

“You’re not dead,” she said. She wasn’t smiling. That wasn’t a good sign. “You did just break about a hundred rules of dealing with the crossroads. We’re standing five hundred years in the past. Do you understand how much trouble you’re in, young lady?”

“Are you going to ground me for irresponsible time travel?”

“I might!” She stomped her foot, glaring at me. “You don’t seem to understand how serious this is! What were you trying to do?”

“Travel five hundred years into the past. Give or take a few decades.”

Mary stilled. “Why?”

“How are you here? The spell only covered me. Are you still arguing for James? He’s defenseless if you aren’t there to stand between him and the crossroads.”

“He has his sorcery, which is more than I can say for you,” she countered. “And he has a group of cryptids who’ve already said they want to keep him alive, and a foolhardy knight of that damned Covenant looking to prove himself against a greater foe. James is fine. As for your first question, I’m here because you’re mine, and anywhere you go, I can always follow. Whether I want to or not, apparently. Annie, what are you doing?”

I took a deep breath. “Hopefully? An exorcism.”

Mary stared at me for a count of ten, empty highway eyes wide with confusion that slowly transformed into horror. “Annie.”

“It’s the only way.”

“Annie.”

“It’s not really time travel. I’m not going to create a paradox or rewrite the past or anything stupid like that.” Or was I? If I broke the hold of the faux-crossroads before they could clamp down, would the crossroads ever have the chance to take my grandfather? Maybe I was about to create a timeline where I’d never been born, one where I either didn’t exist or was the last shipwrecked survivor of a world that had never been given the chance to become.

It was a pretty horrifying idea. Although if there was any consolation, it was also pretty cool.

“Are you sure? Absolutely certain? You’re talking about fighting a force powerful enough to claim and corrupt all this.” She waved her hands, indicating the pastoral landscape around us.

“About that,” I said. “Where is the current crossroads?”

“There isn’t one.”

I blinked.

“There never was.” Mary sighed. “It was only us, in the beginning. Ghosts like me, who’d died where the roads converged, who listened and helped people tap into the power of this place. It’s the anima mundi, Annie. It’s the spirit of Earth. This is where all the magic and all the will that doesn’t get used by the living goes when they become the dead. It’s a lake. People could drown here if they weren’t careful, and that’s why guardians were posted around the edges, to keep the ones who found their way this deep from losing themselves entirely. The bargains are part of keeping the water levels high—or they were, until things changed.”

“Why did they change?”

“I don’t know.” She turned her face toward the sky. “But I think we’re about to find out.”

I looked up. The clouds, no longer fluffy and white, were gathering in what looked suspiciously like a hurricane funnel. It was obscene, a stain on the previously perfect sky, and I hated and feared it in immediate equal measure. I took an involuntary step backward, as if I could run away from something that looked wide enough to swallow the entire world.