Page 37 of Bewitched By the Wicked Witch
"Sage, dear! What brings you by so unexpectedly?"
Her smile was warm, but something flickered in her eyes when she noticed my expression.
"Gran, I need to ask you about my parents," I said without preamble.
Her pruning shears paused mid-cut. "What specifically about them, dear?"
"I've been having the most fascinating memories resurface," I said, watching her face carefully. "About the week before they died. Dad had papers scattered across his desk, symbols and diagrams that looked remarkably similar tothe ones we're seeing now. What are the odds of such a delightful coincidence?"
Gran's expression went carefully neutral. "Your father was a dedicated researcher, Sage. He studied all sorts of historical documents."
"But these weren't just historical, were they?" I pressed, taking a step closer. "They were current research. Recent findings. And he was scared, which was so unlike him. Fear didn't really suit his personality."
She turned back to her herbs, but I could see her hands trembling. "It was such a long time ago, dear. Memory can play tricks?—"
"Oh, how thoughtful of you to suggest I'm delusional," I said with deadpan sweetness. "But I'm not particularly interested in being gaslit today, Gran. Not when young women are disappearing using the exact same symbols I saw on his desk eighteen years ago. The symmetry is almost poetic."
Gran's shoulders sagged, and for a moment, she looked every one of her considerable years.
"Your parents were incredibly good people, Sage," she said quietly. "Everything they did was motivated by a desire to protect this community."
"Protect them from what?" I asked with clinical curiosity. "Or should I say, from whom?"
"From the same darkness we're facing now," she said, finally meeting my eyes. What I saw there sent ice through my veins. Fear. Real, bone-deep terror that could only come from experience. "But some stones are better left unturned, child. Some truths carry a price that's too high to pay."
"How delightfully ominous," I observed. "More dangerous than letting whoever killed those girls continue their hunting? Because that seems like a rather significant oversight in community safety."
Gran's pruning shears clattered to the stone pathway. "I never said anyone was killed."
The admission hung between us like a spider's web, beautiful and deadly. "How interesting," I said softly. "A Freudian slip, or just the truth finally making an appearance?"
Gran was already turning toward the house, her movements suddenly frail. "I think you should go now, dear. And perhaps you should be more careful about the questions you're asking. Some people don't appreciate being investigated, especially when they have so much to hide."
As I walked back to my car, Gran's warning echoed in my mind with delicious clarity. The pieces of a much larger puzzle were starting to fit together, forming a picture that was becoming beautifully, terrifyingly clear.
My parents' deaths and the current disappearances were connected by something far more sinister than coincidence. And someone in Old Hollows had been keeping that deadly secret for eighteen long years.
How absolutely thrilling.
Seventeen
Callum
After Tommy's unsettling encounter at the coffee shop, my phone buzzed with a text from the town coroner:
"Body turned up at the morgue this morning. Matches the missing person profile we discussed. Thought you should take a look."
I found myself needing to see concrete evidence of what we were dealing with. The morgue seemed like the logical next step; nothing quite clarifies a situation like examining the actual body count.
I arrived at the morgue with a sense of dread coiling in my gut as I pushed through the heavy double doors. The cocktail of antiseptic and death greeted me like an old, unwelcome friend. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with the persistence of angry wasps, casting everything inthat special shade of green that made even the living look deceased.
The coroner, a gaunt, bespectacled man who looked like he'd been personally carved by Death himself, led me to the body with the enthusiasm of someone showing off their least favorite houseguest. He pulled back the crisp white sheet with a practiced flick that suggested he'd done this dance far too many times.
My breath caught as I stared down at Beverly's lifeless form, though not for the reasons I'd expected. Her porcelain skin was unnaturally pale, almost translucent under the harsh lighting, and her golden hair fanned around her head like a halo designed by someone with a particularly twisted sense of aesthetics. But what struck me most was the eerie serenity of her features, as if she were merely taking the world's longest nap.
Beverly Hartwell, seventeen years old, high school student, half witch and half shifter, and one of Paige's closest friends. She was one of the five missing girls we'd been desperately searching for. Now she was here, reduced to a case number and a body on a steel table. The first victim we'd actually recovered, though finding her like this felt more like a devastating failure than investigative progress.
At first glance, her body appeared unmarred, which was somehow more disturbing than finding obvious trauma. But as I leaned closer, I noticed faint shimmering lines crisscrossing her skin, almost imperceptible to the naked eye. The marks formed an intricate pattern across her arms and torso, what looked like binding runes used in soul extraction rituals. They pulsed with a sickly,otherworldly light that screamed dark magic louder than a banshee with a megaphone..
