Page 15 of Big Witch Energy

“Don’t give her ideas,” Caroline told Riley.

Just then, the front door opened, and a gargantuan dark-haired man had to actually duck his head to walk through it. His piercing blue eyes scanned the room until they landed on Riley. He grinned, showing perfect, even white teeth through a beard lightly salted with silver. The cold spring wind cut through the room like a knife, making Eric Perkins yell, “Shut the door!”

“Oof,” Caroline said. “I don’t remember Cole looking that good last time he was here.”

“I think that’s your sexual frustration talking,” Alice said.

“I will not be shamed,” Caroline informed her as she went to the bar to fetch Cole a mug of coffee. She left Riley to her meeting and went about her lunchtime business. Every few minutes, she glanced up to the corner to see if the lady ghost returned. Caroline wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed when she didn’t.

***

Later that night, Riley summoned Alice and Caroline to Shaddow House with the promise that she had “something cool” to show them.

Caroline was curious what it was, but she still wasn’t sure if she wanted to go, and might not have if Riley hadn’t promised her that Cole was long gone. The big man might have been attractive, but he’d annoyed Caroline by noting several “possible structural problems” with the bar, including a watermark on the ceiling that Caroline had never noticed before. In Michigan, a leaking ceiling was a major problem, particularly if it was winter. Ice jams, pestilence, and chaos were sure to follow.

She knew Cole was probably right; the building was a sort of Frankenstein’s monster with an ancient foundation, plus additions made and torn down and remade over the years. It would shock her if there weren’t plumbing issues, roof leaks, and an eventual implosion of the HVAC system. But honestly, Caroline didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with a remodel. And adding one more straw to her mom’s burden? Caroline wasn’t going to do that.

She carefully walked up the icy steps to Shaddow House. As neither Riley nor Edison had grown up in the snowbound north, they hadn’t quite mastered the art of salting. It made reaching their door an exercise in potential injuries.

Once she was safely on the sweeping front porch, she approached the door with its ornate bronze doorknob. She was careful not to put her thumb near the rounded depression on top of the lock, which was molded with an outline of a house with an S shape in the middle. When Riley unlocked the door for the first time, that insignia had extracted blood from her thumb before it would allow her inside the house—sealing a magical blood pact that bound Riley to Shaddow House for the rest of her life. Caroline hadn’t trusted the door since—though she supposed a magical blood pact wouldn’t make much difference for her.

Caroline had grown up looking up at Shaddow House like some sort of unapproachable museum, and now she practically had her own key. Occasionally, the door would even open to her without anyone touching it, like it did this evening.

Caroline paused, pursing her lips. “Still haven’t figured out how you can do that.”

The house wasn’t supposed to be sentient, but it seemed to have…opinions. Caroline could feel them as she moved from room to room. Caroline was just glad that (as a member of Riley’s coven) the house’s opinion of her was positive. It was a bizarre new reality in her previously unremarkable life that she hadn’t quite accepted yet.

“I’m here!” she called. Magic sang across her nerve endings as she crossed the threshold, sending a pleasant little hum up her spine. The inside of the house was a combination of a wizard’s den and a kooky Victorian mansion. It was elegant and immaculately constructed of polished wood, burnished brass, and a rainbow of paint and enamel, but also chock-full of antiques from every era and weird touches like staircases that rose directly into ceilings and windows that opened to coat closets—little idiosyncrasies added to confuse the ghosts. There were so many details, it almost hurt the human eye to take it all in.

The Dentons had originally worked as mediums in London, helping people communicate with lost loved ones and evicting the more malicious specters to the next plane. The clients moved along untroubled, and the Dentons either stored the still-haunted items or sold the objects that were no longer attached. Over the years, those sales built into a considerable fortune, which the Dentons invested wisely. By the time they reached the New World, they’d also amassed a huge collection of haunted items they sought to store in a safe place. The family chose Starfall because of its energy, whether it was from ley lines or copper deposits under its surface, no one really knew. The Dentons just knew it felt right to build their home there.

Caroline knew the feeling. She’d felt at home in other buildings, but this was one of the few places she felt accepted. Riley and Alice didn’t judge. They didn’t make her feel guilty for every little missed gesture or failing to read someone’s mind. They just wanted her to be OK.

Caroline grinned at Alice, who was curled on the end of the sofa in the cavernous but somehow cozy family room, sipping tea and reading one of Nora Denton’s old journals. Riley’s aunt had left them a treasure trove of magical education materials, as no member of either of their families had ever practiced magic—to their knowledge.

Caroline had been calling Alice’s grandmother a witch for years, but under a different context.

In the last year, they’d learned as much as they could about the Dentons’ magic system of charmed herbs and salt, combined with runes the family had created—drawn on the air with one’s hands. (Riley was still disappointed that there was no wand involved.) So far, the laws of magic seemed like a complicated set of instructions that the three of them never saw in their entirety. She could see ghosts on her own and talk to them, but for any sort of spell work, Caroline needed Alice and Riley.

It seemed that each of them served a particular purpose within the group. Caroline’s own magical gift seemed to focus on communication with ghosts, which sort of went along with her day job—bartending. People wanted to talk to her, tell her their problems, and when you were trying to figure out the unfinished business that was keeping a spirit bound to earth, that was an essential skill. Sometimes, they needed something simple, like a phone call allowing them to hear a beloved dog. Other ghosts required more. Riley seemed to specialize in finding that something more, not to mention moving haunted objects around without touching them. The “finding something more” made sense, given Riley’s rich and colorful work history, which gave her a knack for interpreting subtle clues and solving intricate mysteries. The telekinesis bit was probably related to her being Denton witch by blood, rather than magical selection.

Alice’s special gift hadn’t become quite clear yet, but Caroline was sure they would figure it out. Alice was too competent in the other areas of her life to not have one.

A roaring fire burned merrily in the wide stone hearth. It still rattled Riley that she needed a fire in the spring. But even without the cold, it was expected when one of the house’s ghosts was attached to a brass match cloche and enjoyed “making things cheery” for the girls. (A ghost child being the one to start fires was really not ideal.)

The unidentified “ceiling ghost” that oozed like an oily mass overhead (and occasionally dropped chandeliers on Kyle, the previously heretofore unknown nemeses)? Not as cheery. Even if that chandelier drop had ultimately been helpful and the ceiling ghost hadn’t shown itself since, it creeped the three of them out, knowing that particular spirit was somewhere in the house, lurking. Neither Riley nor Edison had been able to find any mention of it in Nora’s journals or “ceiling hauntings” in the house’s massive library. So for now, they did what they had to do and kept their eyes up. Caroline was happy to do that in the library. A voracious reader, she still couldn’t believe her luck, finding a treasure trove of obscure, beautiful books she could borrow any time she wanted—provided they weren’t haunted.

Her life wasn’t like other people’s lives.

“Good evening, Miss,” Plover greeted her from the foot of the stately hand-carved stairs, all translucent silver mist and gaunt features. Bowing at the waist in his dark pin-striped suit, as elegant as it was opaque, he smiled at her—well as close as Plover got to smiling.

“How’s the new arrival?” Caroline asked, nodding to the cake stands, which she could see displayed on the kitchen counter through the open galley door.

“Quiet, contemplative,” Plover said, with a note of approval in his voice. “I don’t think Mrs. Fairlight was quite prepared for the reality of Shaddow House’s interior. But as you know, newcomers are rarely prepared for it.”

“Wait, you didn’t put her next to Charlie’s silver box, right?” Caroline asked, referring to the histrionic Regency-era gentleman attached to his murderous wife’s silver service. “That’s just mean.”

“I did not,” Plover said. “I thought it prudent to give her a few days to adjust before that particular trial by fire.”

---