He heads for the door to the alley. Before I join him, I put a hand to the storage room door and say, overly loud, “Ghost, I hear you. Whatever’s got you riled up, I’m sorry.” The pounding on the door stops for one moment, like it’s thinking, and then resumes twice as loud.
Not forgiven, then.
Once we’re out in the alley, I realize that upstairs is exactly the wrong place to go. If Hunter is finally going to tell me the truth about Maggie, I don’t need her trying to chew his nose off while screaming at me telepathically. I don’t know if she knows the true bite force of that beak, but I do, and giving Hunter stitches is not going to make him thaw toward me.
“Let’s go back to the video store if you don’t mind. Maybe I can start carrying out the office trash while we talk. My mamaalways said talking’s easier when your hands are busy, especially when you aren’t going to like what you hear.”
Hunter nods and we head for the video store. The mop bucket doesn’t seem to mind us being over here at least, and it doesn’t sound like the Angry Chair Barricade is budging. From this side of the door, all is silent, and I could almost believe that there’s nothing wrong and I have not been targeted by a supernatural entity. I motion for him to talk, and we each pick up a box of old receipts and head for the dumpster.
“Well, I guess I should ask: How much do you know about magic? Were you raised with it?” he asks.
I don’t want to lie to him, but it’s sure hard to talk around the Maggie of it all. “Nope. But I had to put Maggie’s ashes in the falls, and then Doris bit me, and suddenly I could hear her in my head. And Shelby and Tina have helped me a little, but not much. I’m floundering.”
He nods. “Okay, so doing magic without a grimoire is almost impossible. The spells are extremely exact. This isn’t like cooking or even baking, where too little baking powder leaves you with a cake that’s ugly and flat but still edible. You have to get the ingredients just right. The ratio of blood to water is very specific, and the incantation—well, it’s hard enough even when you’re staring at the phonetic pronunciation. So grimoires are precious, and spells are passed down among families and carefully guarded. Nobody really talks about magic outside of their family. It’s not forbidden, but the old folks act like it is.”
We toss our boxes over the side of the dumpster and head back inside. “So did Maggie actually steal everyone’s grimoires?”
A soft snort. “Kind of. Listen, you know how sometimes old Southern women get really protective about their famousrecipes? When they ‘share’ them”—he makes air quotes—“they leave out a few ingredients so that no one else can ever make Mildred’s Chocolate Dump Cake exactly the way she does.”
I nod. I definitely know the truth of that.
“Your grandmother cast a spell that did that to all the grimoires. She brought all the witches together for a potluck, and even though magic is generally a private family thing, she said she wanted everyone to join together to cast a spell of prosperity over Arcadia Falls after the big storm. Everybody trusted her. Why wouldn’t they? Up until then, she was beloved around here.”
I sneeze as I open the next box, which is full of old-timey credit card slips. I wonder if he knows that Maggie’s knack was influence. “How long ago was this?”
Hunter leans against the doorjamb. “A few years before I was born, as my grandmother tells it.”
He picks up the box I offer him, and I pick up a box of ancient lollipops, wondering if the raccoons are going to go into diabetic comas when they find tonight’s bounty. “So probably…not too long after my mom ran away.”
“Maybe? I don’t know the timeline. Anyway, since the storm destroyed your family’s old place, everyone got together at my grandmother’s farm and did this big ritual they were told would make Arcadia Falls prosperous and safe, protected from further storms. But instead, their grimoires became useless. Ingredients missing, words smudged. They didn’t notice for a couple of days. Knacks still helped with little things, and if someone had memorized a spell perfectly, it would still work, but the rest of the magic was out of reach. Maggie said it was an accident, but everyone knew that was a lie.”
We toss the boxes in the dumpster and return to the office for more.
“Folks started moving away, once they realized what had happened. My grandmother, aunt, and mother confronted Maggie, but she swore that she hadn’t done it on purpose and that there was no counterspell. Nothing she could do.”
“Did Maggie still have magic?” I ask as I quickly close a box over a rat skeleton nestled among stained VHS boxes that no one will want on eBay now.
Hunter steps back and holds up his arms. “Look at this place. A dying video store. Do you feel any magic here? The ritual must’ve hit her grimoire, too.”
I’m pretty sure Maggie did still have her magic, but I don’t mention that to Hunter because I don’t want to break the spell, pun intended. Hunter isn’t being cold. He’s not looking at me with age-old anger and conflicted emotions. He’s giving me exactly the information I’ve been trying to pry out of my grandmother. He’s finally telling me the secret she’s been so desperate to conceal.
“So why didn’t the families—I don’t know—threaten her? Or contact other witches somewhere else in the world to see if there’s a counterspell?”
Hunter peeks at the rat skeleton and gallantly picks up the box, while I pick up one with rolls of old-timey register paper for our next dumpster run.
“Witches are very private,” he tells me. “Grimoires are never shared. When parents teach a spell to their children, they write it down only when the child can perform it perfectly. It’s not like there’s a secret map of witches or a subreddit where we can exchange tips and tricks. Just like it won’t be spoken to non-witches, magic won’t appear on the internet; someone must’ve cast a very powerful spell to prevent any kind of communication. That’s why what Maggie did was especially terrible. Because sharing magic,doing a spell all together, was a new idea that she convinced everyone to try, and then she used it to take advantage of them.”
Our boxes tumble into the dumpster in a puff of dust.
“But why? Why would she steal the spells? Did she not like magic?”
She does like magic. I know this. Even in cockatoo form, she taught me a spell. She was still using an anti-dust spell, and I bet her grimoire is somewhere around here and more functional than Hunter believes. But I just don’t understand the why of it all.
Below.
Her grimoire is hiddenbelow.
Damn it, magical dictionary, below what?
