Page 21 of Witches of Dubious Origin
I always did a floating visualization to calm myself down and I had never—not once—actually floated. What had changed? The grimoire.
I was now in possession of a mysterious grimoire, and dead people were showing up at my door, and I was performing magic in my sleep. This was so bad.
Now I had two things to talk to the staff of the BODO about. Eloise and my sudden ability to levitate. Surely, given their extensive collection of the strange, they could help me with both.
Reassured that I had a strategic plan in place, I closed my eyes, willing sleep to come. It didn’t. Instead, images from my childhood flitted through my brain like the trailer for a stinker of a movie. Usually I could stuff my memories and myfeelings into a little glass jar in my mind and twist the lid until it was nice and tight, but tonight I couldn’t. My thoughts were as wild as a can of snakes.
My father. I remembered him as a tall, dark-haired, deep-voiced man who was always cheerfully singing. Whenever he returned home from work, he’d pick me up and swing me around, kissing both my cheeks before setting me back on my feet. My mother would laugh almost as hard as I did, and she would gaze at him with so much love in her eyes.
I felt my throat get tight. I swallowed past the lump. I blinked and mentally pictured stuffing these feeling back into their jar. They wouldn’t go.
My brain flitted to another memory I hadn’t pondered in years. It was the last night I ever saw Mamie. We had always been close to Mamie and visited her on her island home off the coast of Rhode Island several times a year. Mom and I had stayed with her for a year after my father passed away. My mother had cried all day every day, wouldn’t eat, and locked herself in her bedroom, refusing to come out. I was terrified that I was going to lose her, too, and was desperate to help her, but I didn’t know how.
Mamie had looked after me, comforting me while I worked through my own sadness, but I felt as if my mother was slipping farther and farther out of reach. To distract me from my mother’s emotional absence, Mamie started to teach me things. Namely spells, which I actively forgot—at my mother’s insistence—after we left Mamie’s house.
One night, while Mamie and I were baking a blueberry pie, my mom appeared in the kitchen. Mamie had taught mehow to roll out the pie crust without using my hands. As the rolling pin moved across the dough under my command, she had clapped and cheered and called me herbright beautiful girl. I had soaked up every bit of her praise like a sunflower turning its face to the sun.
“What is going on here?” my mother had demanded. She was thin and pale and shaking. She glared at Mamie and yelled, “You are not teaching her magic. We discussed this. I do not want her life burdened by this ‘gift.’ ”
The way Mom saidgiftmade it clear she didn’t think it was a gift at all. I hadn’t seen her use her magic since the night my father died. It was clear to me, even as a child, that she believed Dad’s death was her fault. I knew without being told that the guilt was eating her alive.
Mamie glanced at me and then my mom. She tenderly tugged my apron off and turned me toward the door with a gentle push. “Go to your room, mon chaton. I will be up to read to you soon.”
I tried to catch my mother’s eye, but she was staring at the floor. She was breathing hard and her lips were set in a thin grim line. She was clearly angry, so I scooted up the stairs as fast as I could. I didn’t want to be in the blast zone of whatever explosion was about to blow.
They fought for hours. I couldn’t make out the words, which was weird because I could usually hear Mamie quite clearly when she called me to breakfast—mon chaton, which was French formy kitten. But this argument, punctuated by the occasional slam of a door, was muffled. I almost felt as if I had earmuffs on even when I pressed my ear to the wall to hear more clearly.
Mamie didn’t come to read to me that night, or if she did, I’d fallen asleep and she chose to leave me be. It was the darker side of dawn when my mother scooped me up, telling me not to make a sound as she carried me out of the house and tucked me into the back seat of our minivan. We drove away as the sun just began to lighten the sky, and my mom never looked back.
My mother didn’t tell me about Mamie’s death until long after it had happened. Mom never mentioned the specifics of how or when Mamie had passed, and we didn’t attend the funeral. Our life became so chaotic, I didn’t have much time to think about it. The only thing I knew was that Mamie, the one person who had offered me some stability after my father had died, was gone.
I rubbed my chest with my knuckles. The memory of losing the happy mother I’d known as a child and the grandmother who had cared for me during the worst year of my life actually hurt. I cursed Eloise and the book. I didn’t want to remember these things. I had left my family in my rearview mirror years ago and that was where I wanted them to stay. It was well past midnight when I finally fell asleep.
• • •
Mercifully, I did not dream that night and when I woke up, I went right to my safe. I popped the latch and the lid lifted. The book was just where I had placed it the evening before. I sighed, relieved that it hadn’t moved. Then again, I’d been busy levitating, so perhaps the book had taken the night off, assuming I was busy.
Levitating. I still couldn’t wrap my brain around it and Iknew denying what had happened wouldn’t do me any good either. There was only one solution. I needed to talk to the staff at the BODO and find out what was happening to me.
I took the book out of the safe and put it in my shoulder bag. Then I went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and grab a Rice Krispies Treat out of the pantry. As I overloaded on sugar and caffeine to get my brain back online, I glanced at the clock. Assuming Eloise meant what she’d said last night, she’d be here to go to the Museum of Literature in half an hour. I took my power breakfast into the bedroom to get dressed.
According to the weather app on my phone, it was going to be cool and clear, so I wore black tights and a black wool skirt with a deep purple cashmere sweater over a white collared blouse. I wrestled my hair into a messy bun at the nape of my neck and secured it with several bobby pins. I glanced at my reflection. Functional and professional—it would do.
I returned to the living room, pulled the chair out from under the door handle, and placed it back in its position at the dining table in front of the bay window. In the light of day, it seemed a bit ridiculous to have done that, but in my defense, Eloise had caught me off guard. For a person who hated disorder, I was getting hit hard and fast by an overabundance of mayhem.
I glanced at the door. I wondered if the raven was out there. That was another odd happening, but maybe the bird’s appearance in my life really was just a coincidence. Either way, it couldn’t hurt to check.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open, bracing myself. Itwas unnecessary. No one was there. Even the raven had left my mailbox. I stepped forward and glanced at my wicker chairs, then jumped.
“Good morning, dear.” Eloise beamed at me. “Did you have a good sleep?”
8
“Eloise, have you been sitting in that chair all night?” I asked.
“Yes.” She nodded.
“You could have frozen to death out here.” I stared at her in horror, but she looked exactly as she had the day before, without a hair of her precisely coiffed ash-blond bob out of place.
