“Oh no. We lost Miranda, too? You poor thing.” Joyce pulls me into a hug much like the one I gave Hunter recently, and I’m enveloped in soft grandma, wrapped in the scent of baking and baby powder and hairspray. This is what it should be like to hug a grandma. All I get is claws and beak, these days, and that’s when I actually know where Maggie is. This is almost healing.
“Joyce?” I ask her hair.
“Yes, honey?”
I pull away and rub my eyes a little. “Can I be frank? There’s something I need to know.”
She cocks her head, confused. “Of course. I’ll help if I can.”
“I need to know more about how and why my grandmother messed with the spells. Why she took the magic.”
Joyce dusts some cobwebs off my shoulder. “Your generation. So bold. We would’ve danced around it for hours back in my day, offering each other sweet tea and cookies and smiling through lying teeth.” She sighs heavily. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”
I take a deep breath. “Because I want to find a way to restore it.”
She looks to Hunter and then back at me. “Oh, honey, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” There’s a note of panic in her voice. “You shouldn’t…No. It’s not worth it.”
I steady myself. I know this is a very sensitive topic for the Blakelys, but…
I don’t want to be on the outside anymore.
My family is from here. I belong here just as much as they do.
My grandmother betrayed them, and I want to set things right.
I want to give the magic back to Arcadia Falls.
“I don’t want to make up a spell,” I say, looking between grandmother and grandson. “I want to find Maggie’s grimoire. I think it’s still functional.” A deep breath. “I think she kept her magic when she stole yours. There might be something in that book that could help.”
Joyce puts a hand to her chest as emotions flit across her face. Fear, worry, hope, more fear. She closes her eyes as if seeking an answer within and then grabs my hands in both of hers. “Rhea, Hunter told me you were different, and he must be right. What you want to do—I appreciate it. It’s the right thing. So I’m going to tell you something I haven’t told anyone.” She looks around the antiques market again. “I’ve been wondering for years if Maggie kept her magic. There were little things, little things that could be explained away, but…that’s why I’ve been so mad at her. She used me, she lied to me, and then she denied my family advantages I thought she’d kept for herself. I think we’d learn a lot if we could find that grimoire. But it could be anywhere. It could be somewhere in here, or it could be at the junkyard in her crushed car. With Maggie gone, we just don’t know.”
I almost tell Joyce and Hunter that Maggie isn’t truly gone,that for the moment she’s simply missing. And yet something holds me back. We’ve just reached a new level of trust, but it’s dangerous for other people to know that Maggie is still around. In her bird body, she’s relatively helpless. I’m furious with her, and I know she’s been lying to me, but I can’t stand the thought of someone capturing her and threatening her to get what they want. I don’t think Joyce would do that, but then nobody thought Maggie would do what she did, either.
Hunter’s been giving us space, but now he steps forward. “We can look for it as we renovate the video store. Rhea, you can check around her apartment. Use your knack to find it, maybe? And you haven’t even been in the other two apartments or the theater. All sorts of places where a book could be hidden.”
Joyce releases my hands and nods. “I’ll talk to some of the other folks. Quietly, of course. See if maybe they know of a place she might have hidden something. Rhea, have you met Tina McGowan? She’s Diana’s daughter, and there’s a possibility that some of Maggie’s things might’ve ended up with her, since she and Diana were together when they passed.”
I have to laugh. “So it could be anywhere in three apartments, a video store, a theater, a hardware store, Tina McGowan’s house, or the junkyard. Lordy, my grandmother was a piece of work.”
“That book’s been missing for decades. It’ll keep a while longer,” Joyce says. “But it’s nice to know that you want to help. I miss the days when witches helped each other.” She walks over to Hunter for a hug. “I won’t keep you young people any longer. I’ll be at Marla’s for lunch. You know where to find me.” She stops at the door and looks back. “You’re a sweet girl, Rhea. Maggie didn’t deserve you.”
And then she’s gone and I’m locking the door behind herbefore the usual downtown shoppers try to rush in despite the plywood. Part of me hopes Hunter will corner me against the door and try for another kiss, but I guess nothing kills the mood like an interrupting grandmother. He’s keeping his distance. Of course, he’s also inspecting the bookshelves we came here to find, so I can’t really complain about that. He plucks a paperback off the shelf and flips through it, making my heart flip, too.
“Can I keep this one?” he asks. “Bongo ate my copy ofThe Shiningwhen he was a puppy.”
I can’t help grinning. Nothing makes a guy as cute as holding a book he loves. “Cujowould’ve been a more appropriate choice, but I guess puppies don’t know any better. Please, take anything you like.”
“Even the set of armor?”
I look back into the corner, where I see a life-size suit of armor. “Am I that scary?”
He laughs. “No, but some of my clients remind me of fire-breathing dragons.”
I wait, my back against the door. I’ll come over here again, once we’re further along, and see what else I need, but for now…
“So what’s the next step for the video store?” I ask. “I don’t mean to seem impatient, but…”
“Closed businesses aren’t good for business. I get it.” He meets me at the door. “If we get the walls stripped and painted and the carpet torn up, I can get started as soon as I have the wood. The shelves will only take me a couple of days. Oh, and I’ll need a card to pay the lumberyard. Sound good?”
