Page 42 of Big Witch Energy

“Can we just celebrate the fact that we found another one?” Riley demanded.

“I found one of the good bottles of champagne your Aunt Nora stashed in the pantry!” Natalie the dry-erase board ghost yelled from the kitchen. “I would get it for you, but I can’t move it!”

“Thank you, Natalie! That is the kind of enthusiasm I was hoping for!” Riley cried. “Also, good job shouting!”

“We don’t mean to bring you down after your hard-earned success,” Alice assured her. “It’s just that, the more of these locks we locate, the more logistical issues we have. For instance, is it smart to store all of the locks in one place, from a strategic point of view? We can’t move them from the house, obviously, because that’s a terrible idea, but should we hide them in different locations so if someone manages to get inside, they won’t grab all of them in one swoop?”

“That’s a good point,” Riley conceded. “Though I’m not sure re-hiding them is smart, either. We could lose them all over again.”

“And how are we going to destroy these things?” Caroline asked. “We’ve tried spells. We tried dissolving the locks in acid. We even tried smelting one. All we did was leave some very interesting patterns in the stone in the atrium, which Plover took quite personally.”

“Yeah, my sense of victory is definitely waning,” Riley said, chewing her lip and flopping onto the couch. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “OK, I accept all of your points. My celebration was a little premature. I’m just…looking for a win, I guess, considering the relatively rough month we’ve had. Caroline nearly getting knocked inside out and all.”

“I appreciate the effort to find a silver lining,” Caroline assured her. “It’s considerably more cheerful than my thought patterns about the locks lately.”

Riley’s brows arched. “Meaning?”

“Well, I’ve been wondering, do you really think that the Wellings are going to all this trouble just to control ghosts and get access to ghost assassins?” Caroline asked, shaking her head. “I mean, untraceable murder was probably super handy hundreds of years ago, but that sort of thing can be accomplished by drones nowadays. Why are they still trying so hard to get at them?”

“I think denying bad people access to ghost assassins is probably a good policy regardless,” Alice noted.

“I’m just saying that it doesn’t seem like a relevant goal nowadays,” Caroline said. “Your magical ancestors didn’t have the full story when they started building Shaddow House. Maybe your Aunt Nora didn’t have the full story when she died. Maybe it’s something more sinister?”

“Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way,” Edison suggested. “Maybe instead of trying to destroy the locks, we should try to figure out what they’re supposed to do. If we knew what the Wellings wanted to do with them, we could, I don’t know, beat them to the punch. How do we know what they are and what they do anyway?”

“Because of my Aunt Nora’s journals,” Riley said. “She was pretty clear about the fact that locks both attract and bind the ghosts’ power. And that the Wellings’ whole plan was to weaponize that power against their enemies.”

“And how did she know that?” Edison asked. “Because of what her family told her, from what they gleaned from clues the Wellings left behind? So, it’s possible we don’t really know what they do. Or at least, not everything that they do.”

“She did write ‘multiple loops for multiple magical uses question mark’ in her journal,” Riley said. “So, what, we conduct experiments to see what the locks can do? That seems…ill-advised.”

“Everything we’ve done since you’ve stepped on the island is technically ill-advised,” Alice reminded her. “By the standards of most average people.”

“Fair,” Riley sighed. “So how would we even start?”

Caroline’s expression was half grin, half grimace. “It’s funny you should ask.”

***

Standing outside in the darkened yard of Shaddow House, Caroline felt a little guilty for disrupting the elegant peace of the property. While it wasn’t exactly well-tended vegetationwise, there were multiple statues from various mythologies arranged in a sort of sundial formation around a recently painted white gazebo. Cozy benches lined the inside of each octagonal angle of the gazebo, creating a reading space Caroline envied on a soul level.

“None of these statues are haunted, right?” Edison asked. They’d chosen a corner of the garden relatively obscured by Gray Fern Cottage. The last thing they needed was nosy non-Hoult neighbors seeing their activities over the fence. Weirdly enough, it was the first time they’d really had to worry about such a thing at Shaddow House.

“Not to my knowledge,” Riley said as Alice clipped the disturbing canvas to a display easel they frequently used to examine artifacts. It was sort of weird they had a designated easel for ghost artifacts, but Caroline had learned not to question this sort of thing. “I think one of the prewar Dentons wanted to give us a place to go without ghostly company—which was thoughtful of them. So, what do we have here, Caroline?”

Caroline adjusted her stance on her crutches to approach the easel. “So, before you yell at me about mistreating historical artifacts, Edison, I didn’t know I was going to be handling this, so I did the best I could.”

Edison looked affronted, his face shifting pale under the full summer moon. “I don’t…yell. I talk…emphatically.”

All three women gave him a bemused look. Edison added, “I talk emphatically…at a louder than average volume… OK, but it’s just about this one thing!”

Riley burst out laughing and kissed him. Behind them, Plover made an aggravated huffing noise from the kitchen door. He and Natalie had to watch the proceedings from there, as the magic of Shaddow House kept them inside.

“OK, so this is a painting that we found hidden under another painting at the bar,” Caroline said, waving toward the purple-dress ghost’s stern younger visage. Riley, Edison, and Alice winced in unison.

“Yeah, she’s a piece of work,” Caroline agreed. “And even less pleasant in person. As far as I knew, the place wasn’t haunted. But it’s her portrait. The ghost is definitely the older version of her, but her whole persona feels faked somehow, like she’s not as old as she looks, not as sad and sick. Her voice doesn’t sound right. It’s got layers to it, like some badly mixed demo tape. And since I started seeing her around the same time as the dreams started, I think the two issues are connected.”

“What dreams?” Alice asked. “I thought you only had that dream once after the accident.”

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