I pause, waiting for more.
Waiting for him to burst out laughing at how ridiculous that sounds.
Then I remember…
Magic.
“A poltergeist,” I say carefully, doubtfully.
He nods, slow and certain. “In a town this old, they happen. We’ve got plenty of ghosts, and sometimes they get mad and act out. Like toddlers.”
“Poltergeists,” I say to myself. “Ghosts. Yes. This is all very normal and fine.”
He sighs heavily as the mop bucket jumps against the door like a nervous dog. “We don’t have to beat around the bush. I’m a Blakely, you’re a Kirkwood. You have to know about magic.”
The fact that he doesn’t choke tells us both everything we need to know, and yet this one word changes everything between us.
How much does he really know?
About me, about Maggie, about my family? And this thing Maggie did, whatever made people angry—was it magical?
It had to be.
That would explain why only some of the locals hold a grudge—
Because the rest of them don’t know about magic and thus have no idea what really happened.
Just like me. I still don’t know, either.
“Magic,” I say cautiously, grateful for the calm in my trachea. “Okay, so poltergeists are real, and there’s one in the storage room, and it likes chairs and hates me. How do we get rid of it?”
“We could use a spell.” His face suggests that I know something I do not. Sarcastic, annoyed, pinched.
“Okay, let’s use a spell. Do you have one?”
His hands are on his hips now, the dust dancing around him as the mop bucket, or something, plays the door like a tambourine. “No, Rhea, I don’t have a spell. I was hoping you did. Because your grandmother stole them all.”
My jaw drops.
I don’t know how to respond to that.
“Maggie stole all the spells? From whom? How? Why?”
His lips twist as he regards me with more curiosity than anger now. “You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t. I felt the temperature in the room drop when Joyce revealed that I was a Kirkwood. A few people went colder than a Wendy’s Frosty, including you. But I had no idea why, and no way to find out. I don’t know anyone, remember? I’m brand-new.”
He nods, clearly fighting with himself. “You never met Maggie? How does someone never meet their grandmother?”
Oh, I am not a good liar. I choose my words carefully. “I knew she existed, but I absolutely never had any contact with her before she died. She—”
Won’t tell me what she did wrong,I almost say.
“Well, she just sounds like a mess. Mama hated her enough to run away, and now you’re saying she stole spells. What does that even mean? Did she burgle you?”
Hunter looks around the hardware store. This conversation, and my conversational partner, is so interesting that I kinda forgot about the mop bucket—ghost—poltergeist—on the other side of the storage room door. It has not forgotten about me. It sounds like a horse trying to kick down a barn door.
“Let’s go upstairs,” he says. “It’s best to give them space before they get too dangerous.”
