Page 40 of Big Witch Energy

“Have you been seeing a lot of them since you moved here?” Caroline asked. As they spoke, the purple-dress ghost materialized in the shadows, watching them. Josh had already hauled a box full of dishes out the front door, and Caroline wondered if he was finding a reason not to stay in the room. Could he feel the miasma of cold discomfort this woman’s spirit seemed to spread through the very air around her?

“Feels like it.” Mina’s mouth opened, as if she was going to add something, but she pinched her lips shut. Caroline reached out to take her wrist, and an electrical crackle of energy sparked between their hands. Across the room, the purple-dress ghost grinned, the wild edge of it sending a shiver down Caroline’s spine. The blood drained out of Mina’s face.

The woman’s mouth wasn’t moving, but a rasping voice practically scraped across the surface of Caroline’s brain like steel wool. “Poor, sweet girl. Look at them, making you work your fingers to the bone. You’re too young to be toiling away. If you were my own daughter, I would make sure you had the time to enjoy yourself. They’re stealing your life from you…”

It felt…wrong, like she was listening to a radio skipping across the channels. Caroline didn’t think she was supposed to be hearing it, even if it did feel awfully personalized toward Caroline.

“Sometimes, we see things that don’t make sense, and sometimes we hear things that make even less sense,” Caroline said carefully.

The purple-dress ghost’s head snapped toward Caroline. Her grin had turned to something calmer and scarier. Determined. She faded back into the shadows.

“I’ve been hearing things since I first walked into the bar,” Mina blurted out, not loud enough for Cole to hear, but clear to Caroline. “Josh, too, but I don’t think he wants to admit it. He keeps talking about someone leaving a TV on upstairs here, hearing the voices. But why would you leave a TV on upstairs in rooms that have been wrecked?”

“OK,” Caroline said, nodding and trying her best to sound nonjudgmental and calm.

Mina’s voice was low. “It’s like a whisper, like two different voices at once. I think she’s trying to sound nice, sweet, but there’s something else, just mean, underneath it. It’s like that fairy-tale grandma you know you can’t trust because the minute you take the candy from her hand, she’s gonna throw you in an oven. I don’t want her around Josh if she’s going to whisper like that. She’s trying to trick us, and I don’t know why.”

“OK,” Caroline said, taking Mina’s hand. “It’s going to be all right, I promise.”

A crashing sound from behind the bar caught their attention. Cole was looking back at them, a mortified expression turning his face bright red. The framed landscape of Starfall Point, the one that Nora Denton used to sit at the bar and stare at on her rare visits, was broken between his massive hands.

“Damn, I’m sorry,” Cole said, sounding absolutely contrite. “I’m usually a little quicker on my feet than that. Or…with my hands, I guess. Knocked it right off the shelf trying to get it down without a ladder, because I tried to be a smart-ass.”

“It’s OK, the whole family hates that painting,” Caroline assured him. Mina followed close at her heels as she approached the bar. “We just didn’t have the heart to toss it because some ancient, untalented Wilton painted what this part of the island looked like before the bar was built.”

“Huh, will you look at this,” Cole mused, peeling the broken frame away from the backing. A second layer of canvas was poking out from under the landscape. Cole set the painting on the bar and pulled a series of tiny nails from the backing—which, in itself, seemed impressive in terms of hand strength. “There’s another painting under this one.”

The three of them worked together to remove the nails. The fragile canvas flaked old paint onto the floor as they worked. “Maybe we should wait for Edison or someone who knows what they’re doing,” Caroline mused. “For all we know, this is some priceless piece of Starfall history.”

“I don’t think there’s a Van Gogh under here, Caroline,” Mina told her, regaining some of her “Mina-ness.” When they pulled the landscape canvas away from the second layer, they revealed a face that almost made Caroline shriek. Mina recoiled, grabbing at Caroline’s hands.

“Whoa,” Cole marveled, swallowing heavily.

This was considerably better art than what Riley bought from Willard’s place. It wasn’t a wedding portrait, even though the gown the woman was wearing was made from a luxuriant cream silk. One could tell by the way the light was painted over the soft folds of the skirt. The lady was sitting rigidly in a chair so spindly and impractical, it had to be expensive. The subject was the purple-dress ghost, but younger. Not necessarily softer or happier, but younger. There was no hint of a smile curving her thin lips, or warmth in her hydrangea-blue eyes. She was holding her head at such an angle that she was looking down her long nose at the viewer no matter where they were standing. It was like one of those creepy funhouse pictures, but way more judgmental.

It was at this moment that Caroline remembered that in Plover’s flower language, hydrangeas meant “heartlessness.”

This was a painting that was meant to be displayed over a mantel, to frown down at future generations and let them know they were not living up to standards. But something was off about it. It was…trying too hard? It was as if the woman’s head had been old-timey Photoshopped onto a grand lady’s body. Her features were too rough, too boxy, for the delicacy the silk gown implied. Maybe the subject had borrowed a dress for the occasion, to prove that she could afford to wear a white gown when most people bought clothes for their durability and resistance to stains?

It didn’t matter, really. Caroline was just trying to find a way to avoid mentally processing the dread this painting transmuted in her belly. Was this the nurse described in Mrs. Lettston’s journal, the one that tried to usurp her employer? The famous Wilted Rose? The portrait would be an expensive tribute to an employee, particularly given the fancy dress, but maybe, if she’d actually managed to marry the Wilton husband she’d been targeting, it was possible.

There was something altogether strange about it. Not just the mendacious appearance but the magical vibrations coming off the canvas. Caroline got the feeling that this wasn’t an attachment object, but it was definitely important to someone…not nice.

“Obviously, I can fix the frame, free of charge, off the clock,” Cole said. “It’s my responsibility, for breaking it.”

He could, but she didn’t want Cole taking potentially haunted debris to his house and muddying the ghost waters.

She used to think like a normal person. What happened?

“For now, let’s put it with the other display items and store,” Caroline said. “We’ve got too much other stuff to worry about for you to be exhausting yourself on side carpentry projects.”

Cole shrugged. “All right then.”

The phone in Caroline’s pocket buzzed. She muttered, “Speaking of which.”

She prayed it wasn’t a text from her mother asking her to break up whatever fight between Will and Wally was still happening outside. The text was from Riley.

Big development. Get here ASAP.

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