Chapter 29
“And why exactly would we do that?” Vivi asked, folding her arms over her chest. “You lied to me.”
“I did,” Tamsyn replied, not sounding all that sorry about it. Then she schooled her expression into something a little more contrite. “And that was wrong of me, but I had a very good reason.”
“Which was?” Rhys asked, walking over to the fireplace to brace a hand against the mantel.
Tamsyn looked between him and Vivi, and then sighed. “Okay, I was gonna say something about how I needed a trapped ghost to save my grandma or something, but really, I just wanted to make a whole bunch of money. People will pay thousands for a Eurydice Candle that has a ghost in it, and one with a witch ghost? Please. I was going to spend the summer in Portugal from this one sale alone. But”—she glared at the candle where it sat—“turns out, I can’t off-load that thing after all. Something’s wrong with it.”
She gestured around the room. “See how cold it is? How dark? It’s been doing that every day since I got here, and it’s just getting worse.”
Vivi slowly made her way over to the candle, and immediately saw what Tamsyn meant. The whole thing was radiating a kind of dark energy that let her know Piper’s ghost might still be trapped, but it was very unhappy about it.
“Eurydice Candles aren’t supposed to do that,” Rhys said in a low voice, coming to stand beside Vivi.
“Yeah, no shit,” Tamsyn replied, placing one hand on her hip. “I’ve bought and sold tons of the things but that one? It’s completely busted. And I can’t just dump it somewhere, and I definitely did not want to take it to the witches at your college, so I’ve been stuck here, trying to figure out what to do, and then you two showed up like some kind of witchy angels.”
“You’re not a witch, then?” Vivi asked, looking back over her shoulder at Tamsyn.
“Definitely not,” she replied with a little shudder. “Just make money off their stuff.”
“And lie to people to obtain said stuff,” Rhys said, to which Tamsyn shrugged.
“No one got hurt.”
“Yet,” Vivi said, reaching down to pick up the candle. It was so cold to the touch, it almost burned, and she winced as she tugged at her sweater, covering her hand so she could carry it.
“Why are you still so close to Graves Glen?” Vivi asked as she turned around, the candle still freezing in her hand. “I would’ve thought you would’ve gotten as far from there as you could’ve.”
“That was the plan,” she said on a sigh, then nodded at the candle. “But do you wanna take that thing on a plane?”
“Fair point,” Rhys muttered, glancing around the obviously haunted room.
“I guess we can do you the favor of taking this off your hands,” Vivi said, making herself sound irritated and not relieved.
“At great personal cost to ourselves,” Rhys added, his voice solemn, expression so serious Vivi had to bite back a grin.
“Oh god, thank you,” Tamsyn said, her shoulders sagging. “And seriously, I’m sorry about tricking you into trapping the ghost for me. Really. You seem nice. And I liked your office.”
“Thanks?” Vivi replied, and then Rhys had his hand on her lower back, steering her toward the door.
“Christ, that was easy,” he muttered once they were out in the hall, and then he looked around at the heavy wooden doors. “You know, we have some extra time now. I expected this to take up much more of the day. So if you wanted . . .”
“No,” Vivi replied, poking him in the chest. “We’re not getting a room. We’re taking this thing straight to Aunt Elaine.”
Giving a heavy sigh, Rhys cupped her face with one hand, leaning in to brush a kiss against her mouth. “I both love and hate when you’re sensible, Vivienne.”
Okay, we probably should’ve gotten a room, Vivi thought several hours later as she sat shivering in the woods beyond Elaine’s cabin. They’d gotten back to Graves Glen before noon, but Elaine was insistent that this kind of magic needed to be done at night, under the moon, although now, as Vivi huddled a little closer to Rhys, she wondered if this was more of Aunt Elaine just leaning into aesthetics.
Across from her, Gwyn sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, watching Aunt Elaine pour a salt circle on the forest floor, the Eurydice Candle in the middle, still radiating cold. “This is extremely metal of us,” Gwyn observed, then glanced down at herself. “Probably would be more metal if I weren’t wearing my pumpkin jammies, but what can you do?”
Snorting, Rhys wrapped an arm around Vivi’s shoulders, tugging her closer. “Trust me, having seen this ghost in the . . . well, in the flesh isn’t appropriate, but having seen it . . . in person isn’t good either, is it? In any case,” he finally said, shrugging. “The ghost is metal enough for all of us.”
“And this ghost hates you, yes?” Aunt Elaine asked, the bells on her skirt jingling softly as she completed the circle.
“Seems to, yes.”
“Hmmm.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Then maybe move a little farther back.”
Rhys looked down at Vivi, and she nodded, remembering him flying through the air at the library, the anger in the ghost’s eyes when it had seen him. Elaine’s theory was that because Piper McBride had been a witch, she might be a little more receptive to talking to fellow witches, especially ones who were setting her free. Vivi had reminded Elaine that she had also been the one to capture Piper, but Elaine was hoping Piper wouldn’t remember that bit.
“Ghosts don’t always have a good sense of what’s going on,” she’d said. “Time doesn’t exactly have any meaning for them.”
Vivi hoped she was right.
Rhys had stood up and moved back into the darkness, leaning against a tree as Vivi and Gwyn both rose to their feet, standing on opposite sides of the salt circle.
“Vivi?” Aunt Elaine asked, handing her a cardboard tube of long matches. “Would you like to do the honors?”
And so, for the second time in her life, Vivi lit a Eurydice Candle.
It was different this time. There was no slow creeping feeling as a spirit was drawn in. Instead, the candle sparked, flamed, and suddenly Piper McBride was there, in all her floaty, seriously pissed off glory.
She was emitting enough light to cast them all in a blue-green glow, and across the circle, Gwyn’s eyes went huge in her face. “Oh, shit, a ghost,” she breathed, then fluttered her hands. “I mean, I knew we were gonna see one, but there’s knowing and then there’s actually seeing it.”
Piper floated around to face her, and even in the dim light, Vivi could see Gwyn swallow hard. “Um. Nice shirt, by the way. I like Nirvana, too.”
The ghost turned slowly, taking in Vivi and Elaine, and while her expression didn’t change all that much, Vivi didn’t get the sense she was as angry this time.
Maybe Elaine had been right.
“Are you a coven?” Piper asked, her voice sounding like it was coming from far away, an eerie effect given how close she was to them.
“Yes,” Vivi said, even though it wasn’t technically true, and the ghost turned back to her.
“You,” she said, upper lip curling slightly. “I’ve seen you.”
Her mouth suddenly dry, Vivi licked her lips. “Right. In the library.”
Piper was fully snarling now. “With a Penhallow.”
“Right. Which is what we want to talk to you about, actually. You knew Rhys, the Penhallow, was cursed. And you were right. I’m the one who cursed him, so—”
“It wasn’t you.”
The words were flat, almost bored, and Vivi wondered if she’d misheard.
“What?”
“I know the magic surrounding that Penhallow,” Piper said, still hovering over the ground, but starting to seem more like a teenage girl, less like a terrifying supernatural being. “And it was not yours. Or not only yours.”
“Whose was it, then?” Elaine asked, and Piper twisted again to face her.
“There is other magic running in the blood of this town,” Piper said, “magic that was stolen by the Penhallows. Hidden. Aelwyd Jones deserves her revenge.”
Aelwyd Jones.
Vivi’s ancestor, the one buried here in the town cemetery.
She looked at Elaine, whose face was creased in confusion. “Our ancestor didn’t have powerful magic,” she told Piper. “She was a regular witch, like all the women in our family.”
“She was more powerful than anyone knew,” Piper retorted, “but Gryffud Penhallow stole from her, used her, erased her name.”
“How?”
Vivi whirled around to see Rhys step forward just as Piper’s gaze fixed on him, and any trace of the regular girl vanished. Her eyes went black, hair streaming back, and with that same unearthly howl Vivi had heard in the library, she launched herself at Rhys.
Without thinking, Vivi stepped forward, putting herself between Piper and Rhys, her foot stepping into the salt circle, breaking it, and felt something icy cold wash over her, pushing into her, her vision whiting out as suddenly Piper’s own thoughts, own memories, swirled through her mind.
Piper in the library researching Graves Glen’s history, her black hair hanging down over a notebook, Aelwyd Jones written in purple ink, Piper in the cabin at her altar, candles lit, runes glowing and a spell, a spell to raise Aelwyd’s spirit, but it’s too much, the magic is too much and Piper can feel it pulling at her, sucking her down, and then it’s dark, it’s so dark, and it’s cold . . .
Vivi gasped, leaves crunching under her fingers as the cold rushed out of her, her heart racing, her vision still blurry as she tried to make sense of what she’d just seen.
“Vivienne.”
Rhys was kneeling down next to her—how had she ended up on the ground?—his hands on her shoulders, his face pale, and Vivi looked beyond him to see Piper still hovering over the candle, the salt circle repaired, Elaine looking frazzled.
“I’m fine,” she managed to croak, even though she wasn’t sure she was. “Really.”
She let Rhys help her to her feet, leaning heavily against him as she stared up at Piper.
“Trying to contact Aelwyd killed you,” she said, her voice still raspy, and Piper nodded even as she continued to glare at Rhys.
“It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. My magic wasn’t strong enough to break the bonds that held her.”
Her gaze swung to Vivi. “But yours was. You called her forth with your curse, and she gave you power because you’re her blood.”
“A blood curse,” Elaine said, frowning. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“Is that bad?” Gwyn asked, and then shook her head. “Okay, stupid question, anything called a ‘blood curse’ is clearly bad.”
“So how do we lift it?” Vivi asked Piper now, and Piper smiled.
“You can’t. Only Aelwyd can do that.”
“But she’s dead,” Gwyn said, hands on her hips. “Because she got an ear infection or whatever it was that killed people back then.”
“Gryffud killed her,” Piper retorted. “When he drained her magic from her to fuel this town. He covered it up, said she’d died from influenza.”
Gwyn blinked at that, and Vivi thought again of that cave, the magic pulsing through the ley lines. Not just magic, but Aelwyd’s very life force, taken from her.
“Still,” Gwyn went on. “You died trying to contact her, so it seems like asking her to lift this curse is kind of out of the question.”
“She wouldn’t lift it even if she could,” Piper replied. “I’ve seen what it’s done to this town. This town, Gryffud Penhallow’s legacy, suffers. So does Gryffud Penhallow’s heir.”
Those malevolent eyes fixed on Rhys again, who stared back at her, nonplussed.
“Me?” he said, laying a hand on his chest. “I’m not really his ‘heir.’ There are loads of us.”
“But you’re the one who’s here.” Piper smirked. “And tomorrow is Samhain, when the veil is the thinnest, and Aelwyd’s magic will be at its most powerful.”
Halloween. Tomorrow.
Vivi looked at the ghost, her blood suddenly ice cold, her stomach clenched. “So you’re saying—”
“The curse reaches its zenith tomorrow night at midnight,” Piper said, and that smile turned poisonous. “Tomorrow night, both this town and the Penhallow die.”