Page 60 of Bewicched

“Try one of the lemon things,” she heard Dave suggest.

A moment later, Sam groaned. “Oh my—you have to learn to make these things.”

“I’ve been trying. I can’t get it right,” the demon said.

I returned with a magically brewed fresh pot—the spell brewed the tea leaves quickly, but the taste wasn’t as rich—and poured for Mom and myself.

“If you can help us in any way,” I said to the demon, “I’ll give you my recipe.”

He nodded. “Good trade.”

“Okay,” I said, curling up in my chair. “I think the person who needs to start this conversation is you, Sam. It’s been twenty-something years since you and Aunt Bridget left. What happened?”

26

In Which Sam Learns She Has Family Who Don’t Want to Kill Her

Sam clutched Clive’s hand but she’d angled her body toward my mother, addressing the one woman in the room who needed the story the most. “Some of this, I remember. Some I’ve pieced together. Mom’s younger sister—”

“Abigail,” Mom interrupted. “She’s so worried about your mom. She’s constantly scrying, trying to find her. When she thinks she’s located her, she runs off, only to come back a few days or a week later, dejected that she’s missed you again. It’s been months now and she’s not answering her phone.” Mom shook her head. “Sometimes I think Abigail took Bridget’s disappearance the hardest of us.”

Mom ignored the tea, both of her hands wrapped around Sam’s. “We all wanted you back. Desperately. We would have protected you from the wolves”—her eyes darted to Declan—“or whatever had killed your father and was hunting you.”

Sam held Mom’s hand and gave her an overview of the last twenty-plus years—and it was insane. Bridget was dead, had been for almost eight years. Sam had been attacked, her body left covered in scars, before she’d been abandoned in San Francisco. At seventeen, she opened The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore & Bar, an establishment on the ocean’s edge that catered to supernaturals only

She’d run her business quietly, without too much fuss, until this past year when all hell had broken loose. She’d been trapped in visions, attacked by wolves, pulled into vampire wars, abducted into Faerie, met the queen, had beef with the king, and visited Hell. Somewhere, through all that, she’d fallen in love with a vampire and eventually married him.

I leaned forward to get Sam’s attention. “Did I hear that right? You’re a necromancer?”

Sam nodded. “It was that pendant I told you about. My mom made it for me when I was little. It tamped down and hid my powers—even from myself. I’m sure my mom would have explained it all if she’d had more time. I didn’t know I was a born wolf either; didn’t understand Quinn held any special meaning. Once the pendant was destroyed, though, things started changing.”

Clive and Dave chuffed laughs as though that was an understatement.

“When I learned I was a wicche, I tried to do simple wicchey things but was an embarrassing failure. And then ghosts started popping up to talk to me and I discovered there was a reason I couldn’t do a lot of normal wicchey stuff.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We’re very rare, you and me, and the fact that we’re both alive at the same time”—I checked with my mom—“that’s never happened, has it?”

Mom wiped her face dry of tears. Thinking it was possible her sister was dead was different from knowing it. And the news about Abigail had knocked her off balance. “No. True necromancy and precognition are extremely rare. Wicches with those abilities only show up every couple hundred years. I’ve never read any histories about them ever being alive at the same time.”

“No, that’s not right,” Sam said to me. “You and Martha overlapped. Though she did say it was really strange that she and I, two necromancers, overlapped.”

“My Aunt Martha?” Mom asked. “She left town when she was in her late teens, early twenties and we never heard from her again. How in the world did you meet her?” Mom glanced over, checking with me. “Did you know that Martha was a necromancer?”

I shook my head. “No, but I do remember having a dream about her when I was little. She lived in a foggy forest, in a hollowed-out tree with a woman who had long, silvery hair.”

“Yes!” Sam confirmed. “That was her wife Galadriel. She’s an elven warrior. The fog was the hazy ghosts all around her. Martha said she dealt with a lot of cruelty growing up because she didn’t manifest magical talent when others did. Later, when she started showing signs of being a necromancer, family members were suddenly interested in her. She’d said they’d already shown their true faces and so she’d left. She and Galadriel were together for over fifty years.

“Once it became clear that I was a necromancer, we tried to find someone to train me. My friend’s mom did some sleuthing and took me to meet this old woman who owned a fae bar in Colma, south of San Francisco. She lived in a massive tree, part of it in this world, part in Faerie.” Sam shook her head. “I thought she was the only family I had left, on either side. When she was killed—”

Mom flinched.

“Oh,” Sam said, “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that. That was thoughtless.”

“No, no,” Mom said, waving a hand. “It’s just—this has all been a lot to take in. I barely remember Martha. I’d been building up hope to see her while you spoke but then, well, I suppose not.” Mom caught my eye. “But she grew to an old woman. That’s good to know.”

Sam looked confused, so I explained, “Necromancers often die young.”

“We do?” Sam asked.

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