Page 27 of A Witch’s Guide to Surviving Halloween

Chapter Eighteen

Once we get on the now-abandoned path of the lantern walk from a couple of nights ago, it doesn’t take long to find Lucy in the woods.

She’s set up a circle of thick sticks and fist-sized rocks, creating a boundary for us to work within.

On a nearby boulder, she sits cross-legged, as per usual, playing on her phone as if she isn’t randomly hanging out in the middle of the woods two nights before Halloween.

The arms of her fuzzy checkered coat lay limp by her side, her arms tucked into the body so that the glow from her phone lights up her face through the neck hole.

Around the circle, she’s set up fake candles, which flicker and dance on a phantom breeze.

“What witch uses fake candles?” Oliver eyes the circle with a mix of scrutiny and amusement.

“I’m not trying to start a forest fire,” Lucy retorts. “Besides, it’s the thought that counts.”

“That’s not . . .” Oliver starts, then he simply shakes his head. “Whatever. The candles aren’t what’s important here. Did you bring the rest?”

“Of course.” Reluctantly, Lucy gets to her feet and grabs a cardboard box that had previously been sitting on the ground beside the boulder and starts laying out the contents on a nearby downed tree. Including, but not limited to, Oliver’s own book of shadows, since we still can’t trust our own.

Oliver takes the book and flips through it until he finds the page he’s looking for and lays the book flat against the boulder before turning to me.

“Ready?” he asks.

I shake my head, warily eyeing the circle the way a bug might a Venus flytrap. “No.”

“Good!” Lucy claps her hands together before bouncing on her toes and shaking out her arms. “Let’s get this over with. It’s freezing—and I’m hungry. Some of us haven’t had a chance to visit Food Truck Alley yet.”

I sigh. Just as I know I have to host the festival, I also know I need to do this.

If we wait even one more day, the magic might get so out of hand that we can’t handle it anymore.

If we wait too long and let Halloween pass, there might not be enough magical oomph to do anything at all.

That doesn’t mean I’m not dreading it, though .

. . Something deep in my gut is telling me this is a bad idea.

That the consequences are something we aren’t prepared to handle. But what choice do we have?

So, I step into the circle with Oliver and we face each other, waiting for Lucy to get things started.

Lucy picks up a smudge stick, lights it with a match to let it burn briefly, then blows it out, allowing the smoke to swirl in the cool air.

With slow, methodical movements, she begins painting X’s through the air along the border of our circle; the scent of white sage, lavender, and rosemary grows stronger with each pass.

Despite the ever-buzzing magic between Oliver and me, I feel lighter with each swipe of the smudger.

It might not be visible, but I can sense the barrier building around us, cutting us off from the rest of the forest. The click and rhythmic song of nighttime bugs becomes deadened background noise, and even the crunch beneath Lucy’s boots takes on a muted quality, as though there’s a thick blanket between us and the world.

When the barrier is complete, Lucy sets the smudge stick aside, somewhere it can’t cause any further problems, and picks up the cloth-wrapped loaf of bread Oliver dropped off at the bookstore earlier.

She quickly reads over the ritual again before coming to stand within the boundaries of our circle.

With a hand on both the top and the bottom of the rounded loaf, she holds it out between us and clears her throat.

“Do you come to this circle with an open mind and agreeable heart?” Her emerald eyes take on a serious edge, darkening until the clover green is almost black.

“I come to heal what has been wronged,” I tell her, repeating the line I memorized earlier.

She asks the same of Oliver, who gives the same answer in return.

Around us, the magic starts to crackle like static, and I can’t tell if it’s happy we are trying to find peace, or if it’s angry at yet another attempt to bypass what it was originally promised: The truth. Whatever it is.

With her top hand, Lucy unwraps the loaf of bread, revealing a perfectly browned top, sprinkled with thyme and salt. Oliver and I each grab our respective sides of the bread, and it crackles in our hands, the crust crisp atop a pliant center.

Lucy glances back at the book once more before closing her eyes, taking a deep breath to center herself, to start the spell in full. “Let bread be broken, not bonds of hate. Let peace fill what once held weight. From grain to grace, from crust to core, we close this path of ancient war.”

Despite the melodic cadence of Lucy’s words, the rhyme hangs heavy around us. It becomes a rope wrapping tighter and tighter with each sentence, the magic pressing closer until it becomes hard to breathe.

“Break the bread, formed by your own hands. Kneaded from memory and baked with intent,” she commands, her voice taking on a deep raspy edge.

My fingers break through the crust of the bread, digging into the soft center, and the magic around us begins to swarm with furious energy. It lifts our hair on a phantom wind, a tornado whipping and whirling. Oliver and I lock eyes, my own uncertainty reflected in his pale gaze.

“Break the bread!” Lucy commands, her words rising above the tunnel of chaos we’re standing at the center of.

Without another moment’s hesitation, I pull. The loaf of bread tears in two, and the magic explodes.

The three of us are thrown back and crash against the barrier.

The magic ping-pongs off the barrier, violently ricocheting around as it searches for a way out.

I shield my head with my hands, burying my face in the dirt.

A scream rakes against my throat, and my whole body trembles as the magic reaches its peak, pounding against the barrier.

I pull my elbows in closer, trying to curl into a fetal position, and catch the corner of one of the wrist-thick sticks forming the boundary of our circle.

The branch shifts and the magic whooshes out in a gust of wind, dissipating into the night.

Eventually, I start to sit up and realize I’m still clutching my half of the loaf in my hand. Only now, the perfectly baked round of bread is nothing more than a dense ball of carbs.

I throw it to the ground like it suddenly became diseased and run my hands through my hair, pulling at the roots.

After a long, long silence, Lucy pushes a heavy breath through tight lips. “Well, that didn’t work.”

My hands fall, my elbows resting on my knees as I send her a deadpan glare. “You think? Really?”

“Just an observation,” she snarls, fluffing out her red curls and pulling a twig from her hair with a sneer.

“What the hell kind of magic do you guys have here?” Oliver stammered, more to himself than to us.

“The barrier broke. You don’t think the magic is going to cause any trouble, do you?” I don’t direct the question to anyone in particular.

“Oh, I hope not,” Oliver mumbles, running his hands over his face.

“No, I don’t think so,” Lucy answers, glancing around the woods. “That was a pretty serious whirlwind, and nothing outside the circle seems disturbed.”

We all sit there for a while, catching our breath and listening to the sounds of the forest return.

“So what do we do now?” Oliver prods, breaking the silence.

My brows fly so high they practically reach my hairline. “You want to try again?”

“I’m supposed to be opening a new business in two days, and I don’t want to get run out of town like my papa.”

“That’s fair.” I moan into my hands, wanting nothing more than to curl up into a ball and give up.

This whole thing is such a mess. Not only is the biggest money maker of the year at risk, but so is Oliver’s entire livelihood.

Starting a new business is expensive, and he gave up his entire life to take this risk.

Giving up isn’t an option, but I don’t know what else to do.

“I don’t think we have any more options,” Lucy asserts, pulling her knees to her chest. “There’s only one way we’re going to break this thing once and for all.”

“The old-fashioned way,” I whine.

She nods. “We have to figure out what the curse wants. We have to solve the riddle. No more trying to work around it.”

Oliver nods as well. “Agreed.”

“Okay,” I whine again. “Does anyone remember it?”

“’Til truths unfold, and masks descend. Two wounded souls, their stories lend,” Lucy repeats, reciting the curse verbatim without hesitation.

I quirk a questioning brow at her.

She shrugs. “I’ve read it enough over the last few days I’ve got it memorized.”

I decide not to question her any further, grateful that she knows the curse at all, saving us the time of having to return to the store to find it.

“The only thing I can think is that the curse just wants honesty,” Oliver offers, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“But what about?” I plead, desperate to find a solution to this mess.

Oliver’s brows start twitching, his eyes narrowing with confusion as he sniffs the air. He looks like a dog walking by a barbecue, his nose bouncing up and down.

“Are you having a stroke?” Lucy sneers, leaning away from him like he’s about to snap and lose his mind.

“Do you guys smell . . .” He sniffs again. “Fake butter?”

“Like the popcorn?” I ask.

Oliver’s expression falls, a look of horror washing over his face. “Exactly like the popcorn.”

It takes a moment for his words to sink in, and then we all jump to our feet, sprinting headlong toward Main Square.