“Damn right!” Maggie crows in my head. “That’s my girl!”
Hunter looks to Joyce, and she nods encouragement. “I trust Farrah. It looks sound.”
“I’ve done this spell before,” Farrah says firmly. “Several times. Or else I wouldn’t suggest it.”
Poor Hunter is going through some real internal shit, but the women around me are comfortable with each other and thesilence. As we wait, there’s a heavy stomp on the floor inside the office as if the poltergeist is urging us to hurry up and get on with it. I briefly wonder if it knows that it’s hastening its own end, but maybe it’s not that intelligent.
Finally, Hunter nods.
“If I can’t trust the people in this room, I can’t trust anybody. And I’m not leaving Rhea. Or Grandma.”
I hold out my grocery tote, which includes all the ingredients, plus a jar full of falls water and a safety pin. My Doris bite has healed, but I’m ready to sacrifice the ten drops of blood the spell wants.
“Is there a casting circle down here?” Farrah asks.
“There’s one upstairs. Almost exactly over this spot, now that I think about it.”
Farrah looks up, considering. “Do you have enough salt to draw a circle that could fit us all?”
I hand Maggie over to Tina and hurry upstairs, and whatever happens while I’m fetching my brand-new canister of iodized salt, everyone is laughing together and hugging when I get back down. Farrah takes the salt and pours out a near-perfect circle on the wooden boards that were revealed when Hunter ripped out the hideous old carpet between the storage room and the office. The other women step over it and take their places within, urging me to join them. Hunter is the last outside the circle, and I can see that he’s still worried.
“You don’t have to do this,” I remind him.
“Well, maybe I want to. No point in wishing for magic if you’re not going to use it, right? And Farrah said that the more people involved, the more smoothly it’s likely to go. I’m not gonna chicken out and leave you to do all the heavy lifting.” He steps inside the circle and takes my hand.
“It would be best if Rhea did this part,” Farrah says. “This ghost seems to have some connection with you, or something it wants to communicate.” She guides me as I fill a small bowl with the falls water, add the ingredients, and prick my finger. After the tenth drop falls, she gently moves my hand away from the bowl. I look down, watching the red drops swirl over an amalgam of herbs and flowers and little stones.
“Now join hands.”
I follow Farrah’s directions, holding her hand on one side and Hunter’s on the other. Six witches, hand in hand to close the circle. Maggie sits on Tina’s shoulder still, but she’s keeping quiet. I would imagine that, like Hunter, she’s having some big emotions right now.
The spell sits on the floor by the bowl, and when Farrah nods to me, I begin reading. The incantation is spelled out phonetically, the unfamiliar syllables as slick as oil on water. With each word, I speak clearly, terrified that one wrong sound or intonation will start a tornado or an explosion. Hunter’s hand is tight around mine, and if I pay too much attention to his wide, worried eyes or the sweat beading his forehead, I won’t be able to continue. There are more words than there were for the light spell, and Maggie isn’t helpfully pronouncing them for me. I feel like a kindergartner sounding out unfamiliar sentences, or like a kid riding a bike without training wheels for the first time. I pause, and Farrah squeezes my hand in assurance. I continue.
As I reach the final line, the storage door slams open, banging against the wall as a fierce wind rushes out.
The poltergeist, it seems, has taken notice.
37.
A sudden windgusts around the room, whipping our hair into a frenzy, although the salt on the floor doesn’t budge. The desk drawers, already on the floor, dance a jig, and that loud thumping starts up again, right where the two chairs once sat. The temperature drops, raising goose bumps along my arms. It’s like being plunged into ice water, the cold seeping into my veins.
“You have to finish it,” Farrah whispers. “Ignore what’s happening outside.”
I refocus on the paper, but the wind yanks it out of the circle and toward the open storage room door. I try to step on it, but it’s out of range.
“Don’t let go!” Farrah shouts, and I don’t know how to proceed, because even if I had memorized the last words, I don’t remember how to pronounce them.
With a loud squawk, Maggie flaps to the ground outside the salt circle and waddles after the paper. She catches it in her beak right before it slips through the open doorway. She has to fight the wind on her way back, her head jutting forward and herfeathers billowing in the gusts. I’m worried it’s going to blow her away since she weighs just about nothing, but she makes it into the circle and uses her feet to flatten down the spell. The words come up slowly, like they’re fighting to stay inside me. Hunter squeezes my hand hard, and I finish the spell as Maggie gets blown backward into the wall.
The air immediately goes still as all the banging and stomping cease.
There in the middle of our circle stands—
A ghost.
Gently glowing, a shape takes form.
A bent old man.
