“I do want to remember,” Taran said and rubbed his head.
Eilonwy and Haley waited.
Taran rose to his feet; he was calm but clearly experiencing something. “Ric was yelling at Dad in his greenhouse. You, me, and Wren were watching from the first floor. Aunt Janelle was dead in her bedroom, then Dad came back inside. He was screaming at me to pack a bag. I told him no. I told him I knew he had poisoned Mom and Janelle, and I would never forgive him. Then he struck me. You hit him with a spell and slammed him into the wall. Wren was screaming. Ric attacked Dad and was strangling him with a hex. I tried to get them apart. Then I don’t remember anything. I just know everyone was crying and yelling and throwing magick.”
“And nothing else?” Eilonwy asked.
“No. I thought…you put a forget spell on me, to protect me from knowing.”
Eilonwy got up and put her hand on Taran’s chest. “I would never do that to you. It was Ric. He tried to put one on all of us, but it didn’t work on me. Wren is beginning to remember.”
“Is that why she’s barely eating?” Taran said.
“I don’t know, and we have to tell her soon. I was just waiting for you to remember first, I can’t…” Eilonwy started to say she couldn’t deal with everything by herself, especially now that Ric was having a mental breakdown from grief. She stopped herself so she wouldn’t cry. They needed to deal with the ghost first.
Taran seemed to sense this and hugged her, then asked the ghost, “Tell us your story, Haley.”
“Sit down first, you’re making me dizzy.”
Eilonwy and Taran both sat.
“I was alive for twenty-one years, and I’ve been dead for twenty. The short story is that I was a dumb witch girl who fell inlove with an idiot goth boy, and when things didn’t go his way, he went all spooky and killed me. Then he tried to reanimate me so I’d do his sexy bidding. I’ll spare you the details on that.”
“Was he a wizard, or a necromancer?” Eilonwy asked.
“No, and he wasn’t a witch either. He was a poseur who thought worshipping dark gods would grant him anything he desired.”
“Which dark gods?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, you’re describing a binding, and there are several ways to break those, but it depends on the type of magick and the objects involved.”
“He said he was a vampiric druid, he talked a lot about demon knowledge, and he had rare books he was obsessed with.”
“A vampiric druid?” Taran repeated. “That seems antithetical.”
“I’ve never heard of one. Did he have any powers that seemed to work?” Eilonwy asked.
Haley sighed. “I didn’t think so until he killed me.”
“And made you a ghost?”
“He didn’t make me a ghost. I refused to cross over. I wanted revenge.”
“No offense, but you don’t sound vengeful,” Taran observed.
“It’s hard to keep that kind of energy up,” she said.
“I imagine it would be,” Eilonwy said, knowing exactly how hard it was.
“Besides, I tried to get revenge, and I failed. Now one of my friends is probably dead.”
“Tell us about that,” Taran said.
“Her name is Carey. She worked at the sandwich shop that was here last year. She knew me in real life, and I did everything I could to talk to her. I finally used the broom and mirror you saw upstairs.”
“How?” Eilonwy asked.
