Page 48 of Big Witch Energy

“Oh! That would be cool!” Mina said, her eyes bright with excitement. “I could call you ‘Aunt Riley!’”

“I don’t hate it,” Riley said, shaking her head.

“I think we’re supposed to be here,” Josh said. “I’ve had this gut feeling since we got here that this is where our family belongs. Like…everything just makes more sense.”

“I know what you mean,” Mina said. “I’ve been feeling it, too. It’s kind of like a special tingle I’ve never felt before.”

“Ew, Mina!” said Josh.

“Not like that.” Mina rolled her eyes, then raised her hand and a coaster flew off the nearby table. “Like that.”

Riley blinked. “Um, I wasn’t able to do that, not with that sort of control, until I’d been here a while. Wow.”

“It only works on the haunted stuff, though,” Mina observed, sounding annoyed.

“The coaster is haunted?” Ben asked, brow furrowing.

“By the ghost of a housewife who was extremely protective of her furniture,” Mina said, nodding.

“I’ve been using it for months, putting my ciders on it,” Caroline muttered. “Aw, now I feel bad.”

Mina continued, “Josh doesn’t seem to have ‘direct’ magic like I do, but his hearing is weirdly receptive. He could hear ghosts on the other side of the house that I couldn’t, which seems fair. He’s always been the listener, between the two of us.”

“I wasn’t sure of what I was hearing, but it’s good to know I wasn’t, you know, losing it,” Josh said. “Plover and the gang are the first ones I’ve seen.”

Ben recalled the voices he heard from Shaddow House as a teenager, the laughter, and he wondered whether this was something Josh inherited from him.

“It sort of makes sense, when you consider that—even with the male members of the family practicing and seeing ghosts in the past—the Denton magic seems to be matrilineal, or at least, female-focused,” Alice said. “The house, the magic, is making up its own rules out of necessity.”

“It’s been a little scary,” Josh confessed. “But I can block them out, if I concentrate hard enough.”

“On his first day?” Riley gasped.

“In your defense, kids grow up faster these days,” Caroline assured her.

Josh shrugged. “It’s like music: when I don’t like the sound of one part of a composition, I just don’t see it or hear it. Drove my violin teachers nuts.”

“Should I be offended that the kids seem better at this than I am?” Riley asked Plover. “Honestly, I’m a little bit offended.”

“In my experience with the Dentons, younger practitioners always have an easier time adjusting to their newfound abilities than those who found their magic later in life,” Plover assured her.

“And now, how do you feel?” Riley asked kindly. “It can be a lot. And you two have already got the whole teenage angst thing going on.”

“It’s…better?” Mina said. “It’s sort of comforting to know that everything can’t be explained. Because that means everything is knowable, and I’d rather that not be true? I mean, I have magic. I can do stuff. I don’t know what yet, but it’s going to be awesome.”

“And I’m OK with just the hearing stuff, because honestly, everything else seems like…a lot,” Josh said. “Besides, you’ve always said you were just waiting to find that thing you were good at. Clearly, this is it.”

“Not quite the thing I was picturing,” Mina said. “Hard to put ‘ghost whisperer and part-time witch’ on a college application.”

“Maybe with the right college,” Josh told her, nodding solemnly.

Riley grinned and wrapped an arm around Mina. “Welcome to the Shaddow House Ghost and Friday Night Euchre Club, kiddo.”

“Still not the name,” Caroline told her.

Josh shrugged. “It’s still not as weird as the hair I’ve got showing up in unexpected places, so…yeah it’s fine.”

“Ew, Josh!” Mina said, shaking her head at him.

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