Page 34 of Truly Madly Magically

I’M A LITTLE fuzzy when I wake up, like I have some kind of Summoning hangover, which is not unusual.

The face in mine as I open my eyes, however, is.

I remember last night enough not to scream bloody murder at the ghost looking down at me, but it’s all sort of...jumbled details and panic as my heart tries to jump out of my chest.

“What the hell, Elizabeth?” I manage to get out when it’s clear I’m not actually having a cardiac event. I wish I could throw the covers back over my head rather than deal with ghosts today.

Or anything else.

“Is this...regular?” she demands, looking affronted for some reason.

I push myself up into sitting position, rubbing my hands over my eyes. “Is what regular?”

Elizabeth draws herself up while hovering in midair. “Sleeping all morning? Lazing about?”

I tap the phone on my nightstand, then scowl at her. “It’s seven in the morning. My shop doesn’t open until ten.”

She presses her lips together. “Shop? What kind of shop?”

It’s clear I won’t be falling back asleep. “I sell tea.”

“Tea,” she repeats wonderingly, as if this is her first inkling of any real magic around here. “Do you make remedies?”

“Remedies. Potions. And sometimes just tea.” I shrug, thinking of my holiday blends and novelty blends, like my perennial bestseller, Drink to Pretend You’re Single—always a hit with the wine o’clock ladies. “Whatever sells.”

She makes a noise, and I don’t know her well enough to characterize it, but it’s not disapproval. It’s also not that sharpness that reminds me too much of myself. It’s softer.

“I had dreams of a shop like that,” she says. “Remedies for maladies of all types. I thought it was for me, but perhaps it was for you.”

That doesn’t make much sense since I’m not her direct descendant. But it warms me all the same. “You never tried to open one? There were all kinds of shops here back in the day.”

I know this because I’ve been lectured extensively on this subject by none other than Emerson Wilde. Including the history of my building, which was first a blacksmith, then a haberdashery, then a millinery—which pleases me, as I like to think of those hat shop ladies reclaiming the building from all that maleness. I’m the first tea shop though, as far as I know.

Elizabeth fiddles with her dress and retreats until she appears as if she’s perched on the side of my bed. “Oh, no. My father wouldn’t hear of it. His unwed daughter in trade while he drew breath? Certainly not. Then I married Zachariah, without a penny to his name. My parents weren’t about to help me finance a silly dream after I’d lowered myself so far, and against their wishes, not even after he died.”

“A Good considered marrying a Rivers...lowering?”

Elizabeth gets a strange look on her face then. “Zachariah was very...odd. My parents were quite determined to turn around the Good name and reputation. Though it doesn’t appear to have worked.”

No, but what interests me is any member of the Rivers clan so strange that he was considered beneath the historically and currently problematic Good family. “How was he odd?”

“He had delusions of grandeur, I suppose.” Elizabeth presses her lips together as if she wants to say more but is holding herself back. “He had this little group of fellows who thought they had uncovered a great mystery of epic proportions, but it was little more than a fairy tale.”

Sounds a lot like us trying for ascension, I think to myself. Except the Joywood being evil is no fairy tale.

That’s a reality that I don’t really want to think about, but look at that, here comes all the anxiety that accompanies thoughts of the Joywood anyway. I decide I might as well get up to face the onslaught.

I wave Elizabeth away so I can get out of bed without climbing through her ghostly form—it feels rude—but as I do, I remember our conversation from last night. “What was that term you used? For your witch designation?”

She looks taken aback again, but in a way that makes me think she’s more comfortable with that than those softer reminiscences. That feels a little too familiar. “Revelare.” She sounds it out as if I’m dim. “Honestly, are all the witches in these times so ignorant?”

I want to say yes, mostly to annoy her, but if it’s true that we’re all ignorant, I don’t want to prove it by saying so. I need to speak to Georgie. Frost. Emerson. Everyone?

But today I’m babysitting a ghost.

I do mean babysitting. Elizabeth follows me everywhere. She talks at me constantly, following me around the room, down the hall, and even into the bathroom when I decide I’m going to hide out there with my phone. There’s no escaping her. If she’s not asking a million questions about faucets and light switches, she’s complaining about Zachariah, or casting aspersions on the waste and luxury of the modern world.

After at least an hour of this, I feel like I’m about to implode.

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