Page 10 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)
The Dentons eventually uncovered the plot and drove the Wellings away, but the locks remained hidden in the house like little supernatural time bombs.
Riley’s family created the fake narrative of the Shaddow family as benevolent but remote owners of the house to misdirect attention away from the Dentons, who spent decades searching the house for them and trying to figure out their purpose.
Even with all their magical experience, the Dentons had only managed to find one lock before Riley arrived.
The coven had managed to find six more in the past year or so.
Well, technically, fewer than six, because some of them had been located by people sent by the Wellings to confuse, attack, and otherwise sabotage the coven’s search.
The Wellings wanted their locks back to do…
Well, the coven still hadn’t figured that out.
At first, Riley and the coven were sure they were supposed to destroy the locks, but as they’d found more of them, they’d realized the locks did more than what the Dentons originally had thought.
They didn’t just lock ghosts in place (literally), or enthrall ghosts to the user’s will.
The locks opened doorways into the next spiritual plane, and one of those doorways opened onto something on the other side: some enormous, silent, formless void that still occasionally showed up in Alice’s nightmares, like cold storage for ghosts that had tried to murder them.
Also, the coven had tried to destroy the locks in a few different ways, but nothing had worked, so there was that too.
Josh opened the kitchen door, where Plover and Natalie were waiting, looking like the ghostly version of American Gothic . Josh made a sweeping gesture toward the yard.
“Thank you, young sir,” Plover intoned.
Caroline pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Hold on, let me turn off Ben’s backyard cameras.”
Riley turned to her. “We’re sharing app access now?”
“Do you want Ben recording secret magic rituals in your backyard on his home security system?” Caroline asked, her brows arched as she tapped her phone.
“I do not,” Riley replied.
“And yet, Mina and I suggesting that you and Dad get married is somehow crossing a line,” Josh said.
“We’re taking things slow,” Caroline reminded him. Josh sighed with all the disappointment of a matchmaking auntie, making Alice chuckle.
It was strange, now that Caroline and Ben were settling into their lives, moving in together, and talking about marriage in the abstract.
Now that Caroline and Riley were both paired up, Alice often felt like a third wheel.
Riley and Caroline had clearly defined magical powers—telekinesis and communication—and the kids’ gifts were growing stronger.
They could all work their magic without Alice, and that was a particularly difficult feeling for her because her grandparents had always made her feel much the same way: like a hanger-on, a parasite sucking away their precious time and resources.
She knew the coven was entirely different.
But it still hurt that they didn’t need her either.
Then again, she supposed it wasn’t so bad.
Alice wasn’t like Caroline, who couldn’t leave the island up until last year without the threat of death.
Alice could go freely. The only thing that kept her tied to the island was the coven itself.
These were the only people who had loved her in a way that didn’t hurt, but she was hurting them , even if she didn’t mean to.
“Besides, engagements tend to go…not great in this group, so I don’t think we want to run the risk after the whole ‘I survived my family’s centuries-long curse’ thing,” Caroline reminded him. She turned to Alice, snapping her out of her meandering thoughts. “You OK?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, that’s sensible,” Alice conceded.
“You sure?” Riley asked. “Is whatever’s in that bag distressing you in some way?”
“Maybe?” Alice took the candelabra out of the bag and set it on the grass.
It felt unsafe, somehow, to put it on the flagstones leading to the house.
“I found this in the drawer of Arthur’s cabinet.
Arthur is the cabinetmaking ghost who was all indignant this morning about us not paying attention to him.
He’s amused himself for the last few centuries by randomly holding the drawers closed, meaning whoever put it in there hasn’t been able to access it. ”
“Which I also find kind of amusing,” Josh said. “That’s just mean enough, without being awful.”
“When you look at it, what does it remind you of?” Alice asked.
Caroline suggested, “A rejected remainder from Pier 1 Imports?”
Riley got on her knees to inspect the copper arms. “The markings look like the runes on the locks.”
“What’s Pier 1 Imports?” Josh asked, as she looked the object over.
“Josh, I don’t want to smack a minor, but I will,” Riley told him, standing up.
“You’ll only hit my shoulder,” Josh scoffed as she peered up at him, even at her full height. “Possibly under my shoulder.”
“Not if I wait ’til you’re sitting down,” Riley shot back, narrowing her eyes in an exaggerated manner. Josh patted her on the top of her head affectionately, making her scowl.
“I think it’s like a display for the locks?” Alice suggested. “Look at all the little depressions.”
“I see it,” Caroline said. “Well, that’s interesting. I never considered that it was all part of a puzzle.”
“A very ugly puzzle,” Riley added, pursing her lips. “Plover, Nat, any weird ‘ghostly apocalypse-type feelings’?”
“No more than what we normally feel when the locks are around,” Natalie replied.
Plover shook his head. “I feel no significant distress. I suspect it will be as safe to house this…fascinating item as it is to keep the locks here.”
Josh’s head whipped toward the house. He frowned. “Oh, no, not this guy.”
The others turned toward the house to see an oily dark shape moving along the kitchen ceiling.
Alice took an instinctive step back. Nothing good ever came of the ceiling ghost showing up.
A part of Alice felt bad for rejecting this ghost so overtly when she’d been open to most of the ghosts at Shaddow House.
But the ceiling ghost had no backstory, no personality.
It had never given any indication that it wanted anything good for the coven.
Josh’s theory was that it was a sort of poltergeist, the will of the Wellings personified.
It was the personality of the family’s magic and, in his words, “it was real shitty.”
Plover threatened to have the “young sir’s” mouth washed with soap for that one.
The ceiling ghost darted toward the back door like a particularly lithe sea predator. Plover pulled Natalie out of harm’s way. The ceiling ghost threw itself at the barrier of the open door.
Alice had to admit it was a relief to see the ghost all smooshed up as an amorphous blob against the magical boundary like a jellyfish pressed against an aquarium wall.
It sort of took some of its scary mystique away.
The ceiling ghost seemed to be straining toward the candelabra.
It had lurked menacingly around the locks before, but this intense, creepy interest was something new.
Then it got angry and threw itself against the barrier over and over, making a sort of screaming-roaring-shrieking noise.
Nope, it was scary again.
Huffing out a breath, Riley grabbed a silver garden gazing ball meant to serve as a hide-a-key safe.
It folded back to reveal a baggie full of herbed salt, which she opened and slung toward the open door.
The salt sizzled as it struck the ghost’s oily surface.
The ghost let out one last guttural howl and dissipated, leaving an irritated Plover in its wake.
“That particular being is becoming very forward,” he muttered.
“The ceiling ghost wants the candelabra,” Caroline said. “What does that mean?”
“Well, we need to be pretty careful about warding it, wherever we put it,” Riley told her.
“Plover, any chance we could stash it in one of the scary red storage rooms downstairs we don’t talk about?”
Plover shot a guilty look at Natalie. “I’m sorry, Miss, but those are full.”
Riley nodded. “Awesome.”
“It’s never gone after anything like that,” Natalie observed. “It’s never gone near any of the doors.”
“Huh. Well, this is pretty significant, in terms of progress,” Riley said, looking up at Alice, her expression anxious.
“So why do you look so unhappy?” Alice asked. “For the first time, we might actually know how many locks there are for sure. Nine depressions, nine locks…probably. Most likely.”
“I’m concerned ,” Riley said carefully, taking her arm.
As usual, an electric flutter ran up Alice’s torso, registering the presence of Riley’s magic nudging hers.
“Because every other time we’ve had a development, we’ve all felt it from each other, this surge of energy—or, you know, panic.
The psychic Bat-Signal. And this time, when you found this significant thing on your own, we felt nothing. ”
Alice frowned. “Nothing?”
Riley and Caroline exchanged a concerned look, then Riley said carefully, “Something just feels off in your magic.”
“It’s like there’s a hole in it,” Caroline added. “Does that make any sense?”
Alice swallowed the molten lump gathering in her throat. It did make sense, because she was hiding something from them. Magic didn’t tolerate, well, bullshit. It wasn’t a particularly flowery sentiment, but she’d found it to be true.
“It doesn’t feel different to me, but I’m not as sensitive as the others,” Josh told them. “But you seem stressed out, Alice. Like more than normal.”
“I’m fine,” Alice assured them. “It’s just my grandparents and running the store and apparently, I have a new haunted armoire to contend with. It’s a lot.”
“Are you sure?” Riley asked. “It feels like you’ve been distant lately.”