Page 63 of Big Witch Energy

Until last night, she’d been so leery of staying over. She didn’t want to give the kids the wrong impression, she’d told him. She didn’t want to be a bad influence. And then Mina had thrown a spare toothbrush at her and told her to stop overthinking it.

Maybe she’d gotten up in the middle of the night to avoid an awkward breakfast scene? He was sure his kids wouldn’t be the ones to put Caroline on the spot. They thought she was the most reasonable adult they’d ever met, which went a long way with both of them.

Or maybe Caroline’s disappearance had nothing to do with him and the kids. Maybe she’d gotten a telepathic message from a member of her coven and she needed to rush over to help. But if that was the case, wouldn’t she have told Ben first in case she ran into ghostly danger?

These were questions other single dads didn’t have to answer.

On his nightstand, Ben’s phone buzzed. His security-cam app showed notification after notification slipping up his screen. He opened the app and saw a clip of Caroline moving past his doorbell camera. She was limping, but there was a strange listlessness to how she was moving her upper body—none of Caroline’s usual verve. Her arms were just sort of hanging at her sides, and even as she opened his front gate, she moved as if a puppet master was pulling her strings. And her feet were bare.

Caroline knew better than to walk around town in bare feet—broken bottles and who-knew-what sort of foot-piercing dangers lurked on the cobblestones.

“What is she doing?” he muttered. He slid his feet into his sneakers and grabbed their jackets. Caroline’s shoes had been set neatly on the rack near the front door, right next to Josh’s. He tucked them under his arm. Then, he tore out of the house, dashing back to lock the door for the kids’ sake.

He ran toward the Main Square, his footsteps echoing across its eerily dark, silent stones. Caroline had already made it past the public library, still hobbling on her sore ankle. Had she woken up in the middle of the night and tried to sneak out before the kids realized she was there? And how had she managed to make it out so quietly? Every step in Gray Fern was an announcement of a foot on the squeaky floor.

“Caroline!” Ben cried, finally catching up to her as they neared the turn to the Rose. Was she really trying to go to the bar right now? He’d never known Caroline to sleepwalk. Had she developed some sort of sleep disorder while he was away?

He grabbed her shoulders, but she didn’t protest. She didn’t even make a sound, merely stared at him—well, no, she was staring past him, like he wasn’t even there. She seemed to be staring at the moon, to be honest.

“Caroline, what are you doing?” he demanded. “Are you all right? Where are you going?”

She didn’t answer. She simply began walking, bumping shoulders with him as she passed, as if he wasn’t even there. He dashed around her.

“Caroline, sto—” He stopped, seeing himself reflect in the blank white glassiness of her eyes. “Oh, shit.”

This wasn’t a sleep disorder. This was something supernatural. And while everything in him screamed to take her back to his house immediately and get her somewhere safe, he knew that would only make Caroline’s “work” more complicated and ultimately, more dangerous.

Sighing, he gently pushed her to a nearby bench, and docile as a doll, she let him slip on her shoes and glide her jacket over her arms. She might be possessed or whatever, but she would be warm.

Also, she would sock him in the eye if she ever heard him call her “docile,” so he would keep that to himself.

She stood and shuffled along the street. To his surprise, she didn’t turn toward the Rose but toward the path that led to the state park lands. That particular footpath continued all the way through the woods to the other side of the island.

There was only one thing she—or whatever was in control of her—could be interested in on that side of the island.

“Ohhhh, shit,” Ben muttered, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

***

It took far less time for the others to catch up with them than Ben expected, even in pajamas. Of course, neither Edison, Riley, nor Alice had an injured ankle to slow them down. Hell, Edison was carrying a to-go cup of coffee when they reached the footbridge leading to Vixen’s Fall.

“You stopped to make coffee?” Ben asked, sipping the contents of the cup as Caroline crossed the bridge.

“Coffee-enthusiast ghost attached to one of those fancy one-man programmable barista machines, just recently acquired,” Edison told him. “We always have coffee.”

“Nice,” Ben said.

“So, for future reference, yelling ‘ghost emergency’ into the phone and then hanging up is not what we would call ‘helpful communication,’” Alice told him.

“I was pretty out of breath by the time I called you,” Ben admitted. “Sorry.”

“It’s OK,” Alice said, nodding to Riley, who was hovering near a still-mobile Caroline, looking stricken.

“Do we have any idea where she’s going?” Edison asked.

“I think we know,” Alice said as they climbed the hill that eventually led to Vixen’s Fall. In the distance, the full moon glittered on waves that should have been impossible on a lake. Despite growing up on the island, Ben had only been this far out on the island a handful of times, and never under such perilous circumstances. How was it possible that there was a surface of the island that stretched this far up? It seemed a different planet from the gently rolling hills in town. And the waves? How was it possible the lake was creating waves like that? The noise seemed to be boxing Ben’s ears, unnaturally loud.

Alice jogged forward to join Riley and Caroline as they got closer to the edge of the cliff. The five rocks that formed the Crown came into view. Each of the women had a grip on Caroline’s arm, to keep her from jumping off the rock’s edge. The fear and dread burning at Ben’s chest banked a little as Caroline dropped to her knees. Riley and Alice knelt beside her.

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