“Surprise.” I throw my hands up like an overcaffeinated Broadway dancer. “So he can listen. He wants to help however he can.”
“Oh. Huh.” Her eyes are huge. “Well, Grandma did have some news for us, but I’m not sure it was super helpful,” Hazel finally manages.
“How so?” Rose asks.
Hazel’s eyebrows shoot straight up, and her gaze turns to the floor. “For one, she said that we should start by looking in the basement.”
We all look at each other.
“The basement?” Posey says.
“Is Grandma okay?” Rose adds.
“We don’t have a basement.” I lean onto the couch, then drain the rest of my now very cold latte. Whatever. Sugar is sugar and caffeine is caffeine.
Better than magic, that stuff.
“She’s not sick, if that’s what you mean. But… I also wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Hazel says. “Grandma, turns out, was hiding a few things from us.”
“What a shock,” I mutter.
“Grandma hiding things from us? Who could have foreseen this?” Posey says dramatically, flopping into one of the chairs next to the fireplace.
Caleb crosses his arms and stares at us. “How the hell would you have a basement here? We’re too close to the shore.”
Hazel wiggles her fingers and grins up at Caleb. “Magic.”
That makes me laugh.
“All right, so let’s say there’s a magic basement hanging out here. Where is it?”
No sooner have I said that than the whole house shudders.
Dust explodes in a cloud from the floorboards and an ominous creaking and scrape of gears and wood on wood echoes throughout the house.
Caleb grips my hips to keep me from falling over as the house continues to shake.
“I guess you said the magic words,” Hazel says. “Grandma said one of us would figure it out. All we had to do was say where is it and the basement would appear.”
Posey folds her arms over her chest. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Hazel’s grin is slightly brittle.
“What she said is that we had to have need of it, and once the basement sensed the house sensed someone magical in need of it, it would open itself up.”
Her brittle smile makes sense.
Hazel’s always felt like an outsider around the three of us, always said that her magic wasn’t as strong as the rest of ours and that’s why she never got a familiar.
And now the house seems to be agreeing with her.
I for one don’t think it’s true.
But now’s not the time to try to make Hazel feel better about anything.
Now is the time to try and fix the town.
“We should probably head down there,” Posey says, and there’s no denying the excitement in her voice. Her fingers are immediately in her pockets. She’s pulling her phone out along with several small tools, and her eyes have a light in them that I recognize.
