“So, you’re a...” I can’t say it.
“A witch.”
“Like a Wiccan or something?” I try to get my head around it and can’t. I think of witches the same way I do Tibetan monks. I know they exist, but I’ve never actually met one. At least I thought I hadn’t before today. And aside from a few suspect videos I’ve watched online, I have no reason to believe the ones that do exist can make their hair levitate.
“No. A witch as in the magical sense.” She shakes her head. “Magic is real, El, and I can wield it.”
Slowly, I lick my lips. My muscles are sore and tense from processing everything, and I rub the place where my shoulder meets my neck. “What exactly can you do?”
“Enough.” She cuts the word short like it’s all the explanation I’m going to get, but there’s one thing I have to know.
“Can you heal my grams?”
“No,” she says immediately. “I'm sorry. I wish I could. But healing something like cancer, especially when thedisease has progressed, is not within the Gowdie wheelhouse.”
“It's a family thing? You’re all, um—” I still can’t say it.
“Witches. We're all witches.”
“Even your dad?” I raise an eyebrow. Her father is a khaki-wearing accountant who looks about as magical as a Swingline stapler.
She lowers her voice. “He can brew a potion that would make Tony sleep through his fiftieth birthday.”
I lean in. “Seriously? Is that what you're proposing?”
She waves a hand dismissively. “No. I mean, it would work, but it's too close to home. Too risky. We need plausible deniability here. A third party to handle the situation at a time when both of us are accounted for.”
“Do you have someone in mind?”
She folds her hands beneath her chin. “First, I need to ask you what you're willing to do to save your house.”
I scoff. “What am Inotwilling to do? I'll do anything.Anything.”
Maeve's mouth bends into a wicked grin, and her dark hair falls from its twist, landing in perfect waves around her shoulders. “Good. Then I know someone who can help you… for a price.”
I toy with the pearl around my neck again. “I can’t afford much.”
“He won't want money.”
“Then what kind of price?”
Her dark brows rise above the rim of her glasses. “Exactly what you have to offer, Eloise. And you're going to give it to him.”
2
The Spell
ELOISE
I’m one thousand percent sure I’m not comfortable with this. Once again, I peruse the items in the box Maeve gave me that morning, then pop the cork on some roséand drink straight from the bottle. When she’d asked me what I was willing to do to save Harcourt Manor, I’d assumed certain logical boundaries. No one was going to ask me to charge through a fur-packed wardrobe into the magical land of Narnia because that wasn’t real. It didn’texist, right?
Never assume.
The spell Maeve told me to perform will conjure a supernatural advocate, a creature she claims will handle Tony and save my house. Only, the details about said advocate are rather nebulous, and the directions, clutched in my sweaty palm, are far crazier than I could have ever predicted.
Each tick of the grandfather clock reverberates in my head as the gold hands inch toward twelve. It has to be done at midnight, she explained, when the veil between theliving and the dead is thinnest, and the ghosts of my ancestors can help amplify the spell. I take another nip from the bottle before setting it down on the triangular art deco end table beside me, careful to center it on a coaster. I remember a time when I wouldn’t have given the wood finish a second thought, but those carefree days are long behind me.
I’m in the front parlor of Harcourt Manor, perched on the edge of an ancient green velvet sofa. This room was decorated by my great-grandfather Henry Harcourt in the 1920s. He’d been a photographer who’d traveled the world before settling in Virginia, and this room is filled with the spoils of his adventures.
