The Forever Girl Read online

  But I needed the noise gone—yesterday.

  “Have I ever steered you wrong?” she pressed.

  She had a point. Paloma knew more than any Wiccan resource book.

  “One more thing,” she said, retrieving a large book from under her counter. “I have a gift for you.”

  My arms sunk with the unexpected weight. The leather binding displayed a labyrinth of leafy spirals and branches of laurel. A handwritten cover page read Council Records, Volume XXVI, Salem Witches.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. Gifts always made me feel as though I needed to do something nice in return, and I could never figure out what. “It looks … valuable? Like it should be in a museum or something.”

  “You mean it looks old? That’s why I’m giving it to you.”

  “You’re giving it to me because it’s old?”

  She waved me off. “You know what I mean. You study those ancient texts and all, don’t you?”

  “Paleography,” I said, surprised she remembered the special interest I’d had before leaving for college. If the book was handwritten, I’d certainly enjoy analyzing the text.

  “I’ve no use for it,” she continued. “In some people’s hands, that book would end up as a gag gift and eventually a door stop in some old man’s house with too many cats and too many back copies of newspapers, not to mention that one woman who used to come here to buy books just to burn them.”

  “You mean my mom?” I asked, only half-joking.

  “I’m rambling again, aren’t I?” She let out a brief sigh and gestured toward the book. “Consider it an early birthday present.”

  Early was an understatement. The start of September was a far cry from December 23rd.

  “Thank you, really.” I pulled some crumpled bills and a few Tic-Tac-sized balls of lint from my pocket.

  Paloma tapped several keys on her register. “A discount, since I didn’t have the agrimony,” she said. “Now how about a cup of tea before you get going?”

  We chatted in the back room, the light aroma of green tea hidden beneath the scent of hot ceramic. I smiled at the mismatched crockery stacked high in Paloma’s pale blue, doorless cabinets and her eclectic selection of orphaned pieces of dining room furniture. For the first time all day, I could almost relax. Almost—if only the hissing in my head would stop blotting out my thoughts.

  Paloma wanted to hear more about the ritual, but every time I opened my mouth, I told her about something else instead. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her about my curse—and that’s what I was calling this incessant hissing. It was too dreadful to call anything else.

  After we had caught up, she saw me to the door and made me promise to call if I needed anything.

  “Anything at all,” she pressed, closing the door behind me.

  I wasn’t halfway down the walk before I told myself I’d misread the concern in her voice.

  * * *

  INKY SHADOWS from the oak tree in my front yard cloaked the soothingly dark windows of my colonial-style house from the eyes of prying neighbors, but something stood between me and my haven—a note posted to my front door.

  Get Out Now. This is God’s Land. This is God’s House.

  More happy tidings from Mrs. Franklin’s Welcome Wagon. The congregation must have been growing tired of meeting for their fasting and impurity sweating sessions in her basement, and since a church had once occupied my land, they thought that somehow entitled them to my house. They’d offered half my house’s value, telling me the rest of the payment would be in knowing I’d done a good thing for the Lord. But they’d already stolen Mother, and I wasn’t about to let them take anything else from me.

  I’d considered filing a report with the police, but I’d feel like an ass complaining about something so trivial, especially when they had the menace of the Satanic Symboler to worry about.

  I crumbled the paper, tossed it in the bin beside the front steps, and went inside. The bedroom at the end of the hall had been Grandfather Dunne’s before he passed away, willing me the house along with his scrolled walnut furniture.

  This place, however, was not a reflection of me. I certainly wouldn’t have put sea-foam green carpeting in all the bedrooms. Here, I was merely a placeholder, occupying free space, keeping the house in the same tidy condition Grandpa Dunne had left it in … except for the closets and drawers. Those were mine for the taking, and I had a lovely habit of cramming my disorderliness out of sight.

  My down comforter called me to sleep, and my small carriage shelf-clock urged the same, but there was something I needed to do first. I set the supplies from Paloma’s shop on the dresser and tucked the book she’d given me in a drawer, unsure when I’d have time to tackle such an immense read. I retrieved an altar candle from beneath some clutter in the next drawer down and unfastened the hatch on the casement windows to swing them out like shutters.

  A stone-topped altar sat flush against my windowsill, and I kneeled down to place a white candle on the altar pentacle’s spirit point. This wasn’t what Mrs. Franklin and her cronies liked to think of my practices. Judging by the way they acted, one would think I performed naked rituals in front of the local elementary school or spent my evenings sacrificing animals. Goats, perhaps.

  But that wasn’t true. I practiced indoors, fully-clothed, using only an open window to connect with nature. Not a single animal sacrifice, either. I hadn’t even been able to evict the raccoon family that spent last winter in my attic.

  I adorned the remaining pentacle points with four wooden dishes filled with the herbs from Paloma’s shop while chanting the Wiccan Rede:

  “Be true in love, this you must do, unless your love is false to you. With these words, the Rede fulfill: An it harm none, do what ye will.”

  Then I lit the altar candle. The flame cast a pale flickering glow over the pentacle. Outside, moonlight filtered through the trees, throwing patchwork shadows on the rain-soaked grass below.

  I sprinkled chalk dust on Grandpa’s sea-foam green carpet to create my physical circle, then called forth the Guardians to watch over my rites and cast my circle in the spiritual realm as well.

  Tonight would be the perfect night—a waxing moon, the fresh fall of rain.

  Come what may.

  I lifted the sage from the pentacle and blew across the dish’s surface to conjure wisdom. The sage flittered like snowflakes to the ground outside. Tipping the next dish outside my first floor window, I listened as cloudy fluid dribbled into the bushes, sure to evaporate in the early autumn warmth, garnering truth.

  Where was that balance Paloma had promised? So far, the white noise in my mind had only amplified. A cool breeze drifted in, and I lifted my hair away from my neck and shoulders to help me relax.

  I crushed marigold petals between my fingertips until they stained my skin, releasing an almost chemical scent, and envisioned a fire burning away all negative energy. I leaned out my window and tossed the marigold to the sky. The petals swirled and rained from above, scattering into my hair, back onto the altar, and across my front lawn.

  I inhaled deeply, listening to the breeze in the trees and the chirr of crickets below. It was as though I could hear the sound of night—the sound of the very moon looming above and the sound of the bruise-like shadows beneath the bushes.

  The right edge of my vision darkened. A streetlamp on the other side of the street had winked out. A man stood beside the iron post, staring. The overlapping spread of light from the flanking streetlamps revealed the muted gloss of black shoes with red outsoles and the frayed hem of denim, but otherwise, the shadows obscured his features, leaving him silhouetted against the Jackson family’s prized hydrangeas.

  My heart flip-flopped, and I narrowed my eyes, a silent dare for him to keep standing there. He stepped further into the shadows and walked off. When he didn’t reappear beneath the next streetlamp, I squinted into the darkness. He couldn’t have just disappeared.

  I needed to center my thoughts on bringing in positive
energy. Getting distracted during a ritual was dangerous.

  I settled back into the room. Light spilled from my window to illuminate teardrops of water on the blades of grass below, and I sprinkled the myrrh resin, watching it plummet downward to carry the request for transformation.

  As the first speck hit the ground, the offering bowls toppled, clattering against the altar. The remaining herbs stormed through my room. My altar candle extinguished. I fumbled around, frantically grabbing at the dishes, unsure what was happening. The bottle of liquid eyebright tipped, its contents staining the altar to a darker shade of gray. Flecks of myrrh resin stung my eyes. I blinked, but the gritty substance blurred my vision.

  What the—

  Strong currents pressed through my window with unnatural intensity. The lights flickered. Through the chaos, I saw someone in the street again. A glimpse of a girl standing across the street. No. Four girls.

  Just as quickly as they appeared, they were gone.

  Maybe it’d just been a strange reflection in the dark windows of my neighbor’s house, but that thought didn’t stop the howling wind from swirling around me, assaulting my senses and stirring panic in my chest.

  The bedroom stilled, but my heart did not. Leaning against my dresser, I took in the mess scattered across the bedroom.

  A swarm of voices rushed into my mind. I spun around and glanced back out the window, but the streets were empty.”

  The whirring and rattling in my brain—that was gone. Instead, the haunting white noise passed in spurts, punctuated by voices, as though I was rapidly switching from one radio station to the next, never settling on one clear signal.

  I shook my head to clear my thoughts and focused instead on the rustling breeze of early autumn and the cool scent of earth and leaves. I would clean the mess in the morning.

  After closing my circle, I climbed into bed, listening as the sounds of evening ticked on. Televisions blaring. Babies crying. I lay awake until all of that faded, until all that remained was the hush of curtains whispering against my bedroom walls.

  That … and the sound of my curse, pecking away at my senses with static-like crackles. Just as I started to drift off, I heard someone talking. I jolted upright. Voices echoed through my window, but it felt as though they were echoing through my mind, saturating my brain with strange vibrations and overlapped whispers.

  I pulled my curtain aside. Four figures in brown hooded cloaks strolled down the street. The limited outdoor light revealed little of their features, but their eyes glowed in smoky purples and eerie greens.

  The face of one of the cloaked figures contorted into something wolfish before quickly transforming back. My heart thumped, and the air in the room thickened until it felt solid in my lungs. I watched the figures glide down the road, their formation choir-like, their rhythm without sync. Shapes bobbing into the distance until all I could see were the backs of their hoods. As they turned the corner onto the main road, their unintelligible mutterings faded from my mind.

  What was that?

  But the longer I stood staring at the empty street, the more I questioned what I’d really seen. What if my problem wasn’t that I was losing my mind … but that I already had?

  {chapter three}

  EAT BREAKFAST, find a better job, get rid of the damn voices. Now if all I had to do was wiggle my nose for that to happen. Alas, I was no Samantha.

  As a blend of white tea with wild cherry bark and blackberries brewed in my teapot, I popped an English muffin in the toaster and picked my way through the classifieds. Nearly every job for teaching history required experience. How was I supposed to get experience if no one would hire me without already having some?

  I poured my tea and set my English muffin on a plate. Then, newspaper tucked under my arm, I made for the living room.

  A silhouette shifted on my couch. The teacup slipped from my hand and shattered on the hardwood floor. My heart jumped to my throat, but as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realized it was only Mother. Usually eight AM meant Mother was at the daily prayer meeting held in Mrs. Franklin’s basement-church. Obviously not the case today.

  “You scared me.” I looked at the front door locks I’d changed for this very reason. “How did you get in?”

  She reached into her tan linen pants and removed a key, which she promptly clinked down on the glass-topped coffee table.

  I suppressed a growl. Sure, it had been her dad’s house, but she’d moved out when she was eighteen, same as I moved out of her house when I left for college. And when Grandpa died, he’d left the place to me. Maybe he wasn’t in the mood to have his estate liquidated to fund new living room curtains.

  Mother crossed her arms, tucking her fingers into the armpits of her dusty rose cardigan. Outwardly, she was the same woman she’d always been—dark hair parted straight down the middle and flipped up slightly at the shoulders, creamy white complexion, thin lips. She looked young for forty, except for the crease lines around her eyes and across her forehead. I never thought she looked much like a ‘Katherine’. Or a mother, for that matter … at least not if mothers were supposed to look warm instead of frigid.

  I set my paper and English muffin on the table to swish open the drapes, but as the sun hadn’t fully risen, it didn’t have much effect. I could feel Mother staring. I turned to face her. “Is everything okay?”

  She clicked her tongue and nodded toward the broken teacup. “Aren’t you going to clean that up?”

  “I planned to,” I said, gritting my teeth. Wasn’t it bad enough I had to deal with the voices whipping through my mind too quickly for me to focus? At least I could tune them out, the same way I might tune out a bar full of people while talking to a friend. Tuning out Mother, on the other hand, would be much harder. “You want anything from the kitchen?”

  “Breakfast is fine.” She retrieved a book from her purse—another one of those religious apocalyptic novels—and didn’t acknowledge me as I cleared away the broken china. A few swipes with some paper towels and it was as if the whole thing never happened.

  How nice for her.

  Waiting for some coffee to perk, I made myself focus. She’d ordered breakfast. The coffee would be expected, as she’d already told me twice before it was rude not to keep some in the house for my visitors. Forget that she was my only ‘visitor’ who was a coffee-drinker. She’d also want some orange juice. There was some left in the fridge and the use-by date on the container had only just passed. She’d never know the difference. I poured the juice into a pretty glass. And I’d give her my English muffin, since my appetite had gone into the trash along with the shattered teacup.

  When I brought out her breakfast, she was still absorbed in her book, and I dared not speak. I didn’t want to ruin a good thing.

  Life hadn’t always been this way. Back in Keota, we’d often sat on the back porch and watched the sun rise from behind the distant trees as we nibbled on cinnamon raisin toast topped with cream cheese. Fresh lemonade in tall glasses glittered in the early light, and we spent the morning painting each other’s toenails deep Capri blue while listening to Trisha Yearwood sing ‘The Song Remembers When’. Now Mother abhorred ‘secular’ music and said only harlots painted their nails.

  I wanted her back—the woman she was before Mrs. Franklin invited her to visit the church. The woman she’d been before the church told her that her brother’s death was a punishment for her sins. I wanted my Mom.

  Within a week of moving to Belle Meadow, the church convinced Mother that God had healed her bipolar disorder. I wouldn’t have minded if it’d been true, but when Mother stopped taking her Lithium, life took a drastic turn for the worse. Dishes careening through the kitchen. Fists pounding the floor. Had all that really been nearly a decade ago?

  Mother set her book aside, and I placed her coffee and juice on the coffee table next to the English muffin.

  Her face contorted as she assessed the arrangement. “Oh, Sophia. You know I can’t eat this early in the day.”
>
  I suppressed a sigh. “I’ll leave it there in case you change your mind.” Again. “Jam is on the side.”

  She smiled and patted the couch cushion, but I remained standing.

  “When I was your age,” she began, “I would have done anything for my parents’ approval. And here you have it. I finally found a group of people who accept me, and I just know they would accept you, too, if you’d open your heart to Jesus.”

  “I have my own beliefs,” I replied firmly.

  She frowned, her finger repeating an idle pick, pick, pick at the piping along the edges of my couch cushions. “I worry for you. You’re courting damnation.”

  Mrs. Franklin must have sent her on a mission—save your daughter and redeem yourself! Before long, Mother would suggest I give Grandpa Dunne’s house to the church.

  Maybe the distance between us was my fault. In my teen years, I’d neglected our relationship to spend time with friends—friends who stopped talking to me after Mr. Petrenko’s murder. No one looked at me the same after I’d found his body. Mrs. Franklin, one of the first to arrive on the scene behind the flashing lights of police cruisers, hadn’t been quiet in her implications. What she—and everyone—wanted to know was why my clothes were saturated with his blood and why I hadn’t called the police.

  I didn’t know who called them. And I never told anyone I’d watched him die—watched him die, but hadn’t seen who’d killed him. No one would believe that. I just said I found him that way.

  What were you doing there in the first place? everyone asked.

  What was I supposed to say? That I was robbing his store to feed some homeless runaway? That it felt safer to steal from a store than my own mother’s pantry? Yeah. That would’ve gone over well.

  Now Ivory and Lauren were my only friends, and the space between Mother and me was an ever-growing expanse.