Now that the poltergeist isn’t a threat, I kick at the office carpet and am not surprised to find that it isn’t firmly stuck down. With a few rough jerks, I pull it back to reveal…
A trapdoor.
“Holy shit!” Hunter says.
“Language!” his grandmother admonishes.
“Shipoopi!” Doris adds.
The trapdoor looks just as old as the floors, which is to say, original to the building. There isn’t a pull ring or rope like you see on an attic pull-down door, but there is a recessed area just the right size for Hunter to get his fingers under the edge and lift it. The darkness beyond is complete, and the scent of wet stone and minerals wafts out. Stone stairs lead downward, and I turn on my phone’s flashlight and prepare myself to descend.
“Want me to go first?” Hunter asks.
The poor man must be absolutely frazzled after watching the people he cares about attempt a spell, and yet he’s still offering to descend into the unknown depths first. But this is my store, my grandmother’s transgression that needs to be made right, and honestly I’m such a seething cauldron of emotions that it’s not like fear can really touch me. Adrenaline and grief are coursing through my veins like hot coffee, and I’m eager to see what Maggie tried so hard to keep hidden.
“I’ve got it, but thank you.”
I have a hand out to catch myself as I take the steep stone steps deeper down. With each inch lower I get, the air grows colder, but not like ghost-cold. More like cave-cold. Back in middle school we went on a field trip to a historic home that had an ice house—basically a closet hollowed out of the underground stone to keep food cold. That’s what this cellar feels like.
“She has nice manners,” Joyce whispers when she thinks I’m out of range. “I like her.”
I am unsurprised when I see ancient rock ledges lined with mason jars full of various gunk that I identify as pickles and jams and chowchow. My phone light plays over the thick glass, and I wonder if it was Maggie or another, older relative of mine who stood over a stove, stirring and stirring before putting away food for a rainy day. Maybe a whole line of Kirkwoods contributed tothis cache of good food, always making sure the next generation would be cared for.
I step onto the uneven stone floor, and I’m in a room about the same size as the office. It’s dominated by more filled mason jars, and I feel…weirdly at home here. As I shine my phone around every crevice, I finally see it.
Maggie’s grimoire.
Several grimoires, actually, each tucked up in a gallon Ziploc bag, the nicer kind with the slider on top, decorated with a Christmas motif. I carefully gather all of them, the plastic chill against my arms, and carry them upstairs, out of the office, and over to the counter. Laid out in a line, there are four grimoires, the oldest of which looks like it might fall apart into dust at any moment. Maggie’s grimoire is the youngest, with a faded green cloth cover. The other witches circle around but give me plenty of room. No one says anything. There’s a reverence, an electricity in the air.
To think, all this time, Maggie’s grimoire has been right beneath me.Belowme. As I walked around my apartment, as I flirted with Hunter, as a surprisingly helpful poltergeist banged on the trapdoor repeatedly, trying to get my attention. A witch’s ancient spell book being zipped into a modern plastic bag with snowflakes printed in light blue is a strange juxtaposition, but Maggie was clever and stubborn and knew full well the wet would destroy the pages otherwise. I wonder how long her grimoire has been down here. Did she hide it after casting her disruptive spell or more recently? And then I wonder what happened to my mother’s grimoire. Did she leave it behind when she ran away from Arcadia Falls? Or is it hidden somewhere in those plastic tubs in the storage shed behind our old house, just some random old book I hastily tossed in among her college yearbooksand spiral-bound church cookbooks that carefully kept itself magically hidden from my then un-witchy senses?
I’m stalling, I know I am.
Because what happens if the answer isn’t here?
What if I can’t fix what Maggie destroyed, can’t return what my grandmother stole?
Well, what if?
Hell, if I can face down a poltergeist, I can unzip a bag.
The book is cold in my hands but not wet, at least. The bag did its job; sometimes, the name brand really is best. I open the faded cover like it might fall apart in my hands, but it’s sturdy enough. The spells at the beginning are in a wobbling, childish hand, then a loopy cursive, then the neat, slanted script that every Southern grandma uses when copying a recipe onto an index card.
“Do we know what we’re looking for?” I ask the group.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Farrah says grimly. “I’d guess it’ll be somewhere toward the end.”
I keep flipping until I find it.
Missing Ingredients.
But of course, to someone like me, who has done exactly two spells, it’s like reading a different language. There isn’t some highlighted part that tells me how to reverse it.
“Can we fix it?” I ask, worried.
Farrah leans in, running a French-manicured nail covered in tiny crystals down the long list of ingredients. “I don’t know how,” she finally says. “If there’s a way to break it, it’s not obvious. I’m so sorry, Rhea.”
No one else steps forward.
