Page 22 of Big Witch Energy

Caroline

The world had gone noisy and white, like it was snowing inside the bar—which, well, after the year she’d had seemed unlikely, but not impossible.

Caroline could sense that Ben was holding her. She could register the warmth of his chest against her cheek. And while it was welcome, all Caroline could really concern herself with was panic for her mother, for her customers, for the Rose itself. It felt like a family member was dying right in front of her, and there was nothing she could do about it. And yes, that was a little bit of a hot-button issue for her.

Her fingers tangled in Ben’s flannel shirt and the smell of pine and spice filled her nose. It brought her back to herself, to stolen moments in Ben’s old room, after she’d climbed up the trellis at Gray Fern Cottage. He hadn’t changed his cologne in all these years.

These were truly inconvenient thoughts to have when a building was trying to smack you around.

The noise finally stopped, and the floor wasn’t shaking anymore. Ben squeezed her even tighter and then released her, and while everything in her screamed for her to get up, to check on everybody—she couldn’t budge as Ben crouched over her, checking for injuries. He was so close she could reach out and brush her fingertips across his lips like she used to, after all this time. How many days had passed with her pretending she didn’t miss him? How many other names had she whispered trying to balm the wound? And now, he was looking at her like he loved her and all it did was hurt more.

“You OK?” he said, cupping his hands around her cheeks. “Does anything hurt? Did you bump your head?”

Caroline blinked at him. Was she OK? Had she bumped her head? Because her thought patterns did not seem healthy. Maybe she was just post-crisis randy? It had happened before with particularly dangerous ghost cases.

Ghosts.

Death.

Family.

“Mom?” Caroline scrambled up, practically throwing Ben off of her. He stood, helping her to her feet. Her mom was standing in the middle of the room, staring back at where Caroline had been tucked under Ben’s body. “Mom!”

Caroline hurtled across the room, throwing her arms around her mother, who seemed healthy and whole—mostly annoyed. Gert’s arms tightened briefly around Caroline before pulling away.

“You’re all right,” her mother said, almost to herself as much as to Caroline. “You’re all right.”

“Does anybody need medical assistance?” Ben yelled behind them.

“What the hell happened?” Caroline cried, surveying the confusion. While there was a lot of white plaster dust floating through the air, it didn’t seem like anyone was bleeding or clutching broken limbs. Customers were mostly coughing and waving their hands in front of their faces to chase off the dust. Caroline didn’t want to think about what they could be breathing in. Tables and chairs were overturned across the floor, like a giant, angry child had a tea-party tantrum. Dishes lay broken on the scarred wooden floor, but that seemed to be the result of people scrambling away from the porch…the porch that was just sort of hanging off the main section of the building like a loose tooth, teetering toward the edge of the hill.

“Does it matter?” Gert scoffed. “Call Celia and tell her we’re gonna need emergency services.”

Caroline blinked at her, too distracted by the sight of what the family called “the keeper’s quarters” upstairs now collapsed in the outdoor dining area her father had added only ten years before. She could see the sky through the ceiling. That was bad.

But, obviously, no one was dining al fresco with snow still on the tables, so fortunately, the debris had landed away from the crowd. At least no one was hurt.

When Caroline didn’t immediately pull her phone out of her pocket, Gert rolled her eyes and used her own phone to call. Caroline glanced up. The bedroom above was now visible through the open wound in the ceiling…right where Cole had noted the watermark only days before. It had been such a small thing, about the size of a Frisbee, and now…how had it gotten so much worse, so fast?

Ben moved methodically around the room, checking people over. Cole’s massive frame appeared at her left, his hand on her shoulder, as if he wanted to keep her from walking closer to the fractured ceiling.

“Uh, it looks like your ceiling had a heart attack,” he said, frowning.

Caroline nodded. Now that it seemed there were no injuries in the crowd, that this wasn’t some escalation of her family’s spiritual fuckery, she felt her body slowly relax. She felt very tired, which was probably the result of her adrenaline ebbing. “Is that a technical term?”

Cole shook his head. “Nope. I’ll take a look, see if I can figure out the problem and how extensive the damage is.”

A pained smile stretched across her face. “Thanks, Cole.”

Outside, she could hear shouting as the front door of the bar was yanked open. Alice and Riley were standing there, panting, coats hanging off their shoulders, boots half-tied, as if they’d run out half-dressed. Which they probably did.

“Don’t come in!” Cole shouted. “It might not be safe!”

“Quiet, you,” Alice barked at him, throwing her arms around Caroline. Her exhaustion was still there, but with Riley and Alice’s magic nearby, it didn’t seem as severe. Riley put her arms around the both of them, and the chaos raging inside Caroline quieted. They were here. She was safe.

Alice told her. “It’s just a building. We can figure everything else out.”

“We felt you,” Riley said. “It was like a full-body shriek.”

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