Chapter Seven
The mysterious illness swept through the coven overnight. It spared no one. Every witch bore some symptom or another. Alana was the worst off. She had not awoken since her collapse the day before. Yvette and Yvonne—the twin sisters who lived with Alana—watched her round the clock. When she stopped breathing on her own, the twins implemented spells to keep her alive. Alana was officially in a coma, a fact that terrified the rest of the coven. If Alana had succumbed so quickly to the illness, the other witches assumed they were not far behind.
There was no rhyme or reason as to why the illness affected some witches worse than others. Morgan and her sisters looked like hell, but they were comparatively healthy to some of the other women in the coven. Morgan bore only the symptoms of a common cold—coughing, runny nose, sore throat—while others developed an itchy red rash or agonizing muscles aches. I spent the morning lugging buckets of healing salve from one house to the next, distributing enchanted compresses to those who needed them, and feeling guilty that I appeared to be the only witch on the mend in the entire neighborhood.
The work was far from over though. Tasks were redistributed amongst the healthiest witches. Morgan and her crew began building the ward from the ground up, patrolling the perimeter of Yew Hollow in order to lay down the first layer of our defense. I helped where I could, despite Morgan’s protests. Even with the witch’s mark, I was the strongest witch of the coven at the moment, and Morgan couldn’t deny that for long. As the hours wore on, she gave up on trying to get me to go home and rest. The ward was too important, and it was taking longer than usual to construct. I led a group of witches around town to reinforce our base layer. In the evening, as the gray day faded into a gray night, I sent my workers home with a sad farewell. They were exhausted and sick, and they deserved to rest.
When I returned to the house, I went up to my room with Winnie, where we watched television in silence. I stared vacantly as images of Korean barbecue and speciality tacos graced the screen. Winnie deserved so much more from me, but our daily pattern of not having enough time for each other continued. At this point, pure guilt prevented me from speaking to her, but I used my exhaustion from the day’s work as an excuse to avoid conversation.
In time, Morgan wandered upstairs and peeked into my room. “Did you eat?”
Winnie and I reacted at the same time, turning our heads to acknowledge our visitor. Morgan’s gaze ping-ponged between us, as though she’d forgotten which one of us was alive or dead.
“No,” I replied. “Not hungry.”
“Karma made lobster bisque. Your favorite.”
“I’ll get some later.”
Morgan sat at the edge of the bed and smoothed the wrinkles in the duvet. “I wanted to say thank you for your help today. It meant the world to me. And Winnie? I wanted to apologize to you.”
Winnie looked away from the television, surprised. “What for?”
“Were it not for all of this, Gwenlyn would have more time to focus on you,” Morgan answered. “I’m sorry we haven’t had the opportunity to help you cross over. I know it must be frustrating.”
Winnie tucked her chin to her chest sheepishly, her hair swinging forward to cover her face. “Morgan, I can’t begin to fathom how challenging the situation is for you right now. Please don’t worry about me.”
Morgan surprised Winnie again, reaching out to cup the younger woman’s translucent cheek in her palm. Winnie’s eyes widened, and I smiled. Ever since Morgan’s return from the otherworld, she had honed powers that no other psychic medium had the hope of acquiring. I wished that the ability to interact physically with ghosts was more commonplace. Morgan’s touch was comforting to lost spirits. It reminded them of true compassion, and oftentimes, it helped ease them into the world beyond this one.
“I need the two of you now more than ever,” Morgan said. “Tomorrow, I would like you to go to the library and look through the archives.”
“But the ward—”
Morgan shook her head to silence me. “I’ll take care of the ward. The hardest part is through. All we have to do now is work on reinforcing it and complete the spell. I need you to research this illness, Gwenlyn. You’re the only witch in this coven as familiar with the archives as I am. We need a cure and a plan to combat the curse. Otherwise, this ward acts as nothing but a quarantine. Find me the cure. Find me the culprit. Anything that will help us get Yew Hollow back on its feet.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’m going to keep Camryn off my back,” Morgan replied. “She’s been using this ailment as fuel for her fire. I found her preaching to a few of the sicker witches today, trying to convince them that if she was coven leader, she would’ve never let this happen.”
“They can’t possibly believe her,” Winnie piped in. “I know I haven’t been here long, but I can see that the coven trusts you, Morgan. They should understand this isn’t your fault.”
Morgan patted Winnie’s knee and stood up. “Thank you, Winnie. Unfortunately, it isn’t always about trust. Camryn’s building a following based on fear, and I need to focus on containing it before it morphs into a mutiny.”
“That wouldn’t happen,” I said.
“Thinking like that will guarantee that it does,” Morgan rebutted. She leaned over the bed and tugged at the burnt ends of my hair, which I had yet to trim off. “Please, Gwen. Do the research.”
“First thing tomorrow.”
The Summers coven archives were stored in the local library, hidden away from prying mortal eyes by a few simple illusionary spells. With the town vacant, we didn’t have to worry about being discreet. Winnie and I walked to the library together. The sky was gray, as it had been for the past three days, and an annoyingly cold drizzle numbed my ears and the tip of my nose. I started questioning my love of dreary weather. This was definitely a “be careful what you wish for” scenario. The monochrome setting dampened the entire coven’s energy, bringing the already morose mood down further, and I couldn’t wait to see the sun again.
The witches worked in small clumps to strengthen the ward. Their auras entwined to feed the defensive spell, stretching up toward the sky and arcing out toward the horizon. I worried that the scale of the ward might negatively impact its effectiveness, but with Morgan’s craft at the epicenter of its architecture, the witches had a decent shot at constructing a fully-fledged fortress. Morgan herself was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Camryn. I wondered if they were hidden in the woods somewhere, duking it out with an old-school style witch’s duel, then laughed at the thought. Morgan had long since abandoned her hotheaded tendencies, and she no doubt had a better plan to taper off Camryn’s backlash.
The library was deserted, save for thirteen-year-old Arianna hunched over a desk in the corner. Since the town’s teachers had left too, the coven children were on a hiatus from public school. Most of them ran rampant like they did on summer vacation, but Arianna dutifully kept up with the curriculum, reading ahead in the textbooks to further her education. I waved to her.
“Anything good?” I asked.
She held up a workbook and made a face. “Geometry proofs.”
“Ew. Shout if you need help. I’ll be in the archives.”
Winnie and I made our way to the back of the library, where the shelves grew taller and the book titles more incomprehensible with every step. Yew Hollow’s literary collection was small and sacred, but the hidden stacks of witch history put the mortal volumes to shame.
“Here we are,” I announced, stopping in front of the self-help section.
Winnie turned her head sideways to read some of the titles. “Gwen, no offense, but I don’t think The Power of Positive Thinking is going to help Morgan get rid of this curse.”
I chuckled and rubbed my hands together. My aura sparked between my palms. Green flecks of energy reflected off the spines of the books. With the tip of my glowing index finger, I traced a delicate pattern through the self-help section. When I was finis
hed, I stepped back to admire my handiwork. My craft outlined a set of two-dimensional stairs that were, at first glance, no more accessible than the bookshelf itself.
“Ready?” I asked Winnie.
“You bet.”
I completed the spell with a small push to the top step. The books fell forward, as though the wall behind the shelf didn’t exist, flattening on their sides to construct a staircase of hardbacks that wasn’t there before. The whirl of pages settled, revealing a passageway into the nonexistent basement of the library. A cozy glow beckoned us downward.
“Shall we?”
I led the way down. The books beneath my feet were protected by another spell, but I always felt bad about stepping on them. They led us into a small circular room. Two leather armchairs rested on a collection of handwoven rugs. A desk sat across from them, in case a witch needed a better surface to study at. The glow came from several lit candles and a burning fireplace, all of which warmed the underground room. Curved shelves lined the walls, but these books were not for self-help. They were full of stories that mortals considered old wives’ tales or moral lessons to read to children at night. In actuality, everything we knew about our kind was stored in these pages, including the entire history of the Summers coven.
“Nice digs,” Winnie commented, impressed. She sat down in one of the cushioned chairs and bounced up and down. “Has this always been here?”
I shucked off my raincoat and dropped it by the staircase. “Nope. We used to keep the archives at the house, but we kept acquiring new volumes. Witches from other covens would drop things off, our coven updated the history of the town, et cetera. When a hurricane came through and nearly ruined the entire collection, Morgan decided we needed a better place to store everything.”
“Ever think about going digital?”
I snorted. “The Summerses don’t do digital.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Winnie joked. “How am I supposed to help you look for information when I can’t touch the books?”
“Morgan thought of that already.”
I took a vial from my pocket. Inside, a little will-o-the-wisp glimmered with Morgan’s blue craft. When I uncorked the vial, it levitated in front of Winnie for a moment before floating straight into her heart space. Her diaphanous skin glowed blue and became opaque.
“Voilá,” I said as Winnie examined her alien appearance. “Technically, you still aren’t able to touch anything, but it will at least let you help me search the stacks. Try it out.”
Winnie wandered over to a shelf and reached for a book. The volume responded to Morgan’s craft rather than Winnie’s touch, floating out to meet her fingertips. She grinned as she guided the book through the air to rest on the desk.
“I feel like a real magician,” she remarked. She waved her hands around another hovering book. “Look! No strings!”
I rolled my eyes in amusement. “It won’t last very long, so don’t waste it. Let’s get to work.”
Unlike the library above, the archives were poorly organized. The Dewey Decimal System didn’t exist down here. Witch literature was difficult to keep track of. Most of it was written in the form of personal diaries and never edited. The pages preserved the essence of the authors, but when it came to research, search and find was the only method available.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Winnie asked, skimming the titles on the shelf nearest the fireplace. “101 Uses for Toadstools? Come Hell or High Water? Is this a romance novel?”
She held up the book. Sure enough, a cheesy picture of a witch and her human lover set against a background of hellfire graced the front cover.
“Don’t judge me,” I said, “but I’ve read that.”
Winnie whacked my shoulder lightly with the novel. “Got a thing for forbidden romances, huh?”
“Yew Hollow gets pretty boring when there aren’t any demons or dark witches to vanquish,” I explained. I snatched the book from her grasp. “I’m starting to think letting you borrow Morgan’s craft for a little while was a mistake.”
“Fine,” she laughed. “Point me in the right direction, would you?”
“We’re looking for accounts of dark magic.” I drifted toward a shelf full of hand-bound notebooks and chose a random stack to skim through. “Personal diaries or history textbooks are our best bets. If a witch has seen something like this before, she would’ve written it down.” I sat down at the desk with my haul. “Look for anything that seems similar to our situation, like crafted thunderstorms or widespread disease.”
Winnie collected her own handful of notebooks and settled in one of the armchairs. “Morgan said that this was some kind of curse. Is that different from another type of enchantment?”
“Curses are inherently malevolent,” I answered, gingerly turning the front cover of the first journal. It was dated 1878, and the yellowing pages were fragile. “Witches balance power just like any other supernatural entity. Light and dark, so to speak. Everyone starts off neutral. Usually, we’re taught to follow the general rules of morality, but some witches, just like mortals, want something more. It’s the arrogant or the petty ones that usually turn to curses, personalities that need attention and power. They start out small, a pox curse here or a trip hex there. If they continue, it gets worse. Famine, plague, war. Half of this world’s historic disasters were due to some kind of witch’s curse.”
Winnie forgot to skim the books for information. Instead, she stared at me with rapt attention. “So what happens to the witches who continue to cast curses?”
“They go dark,” I answered simply. “Curses morph into dark magic. You start to access something that isn’t of this earth anymore. It’s created by your own faults, stemming from guilt or rage or vengeance. Then every spell you cast, every enchantment you create, is dark. You aura blackens and you lose yourself.”
Winnie rested her chin in her hands. “Why would anyone want that?”
“Power,” I replied. “That’s the biggest reason, but not all witches intentionally turn to black magic. Some of them are merely overwhelmed by their own internal darkness.” I faltered, staring at a page in the journal without reading the words. “I should know. When I was a kid, I did a lot of questionable things to stay alive. I pushed myself to the brink.”
“But you came back,” Winnie reminded me.
“Yeah,” I said, returning my attention to the journal. “I came back.”