Page 42 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

“He was an adequate lay,” Alice corrected her, spotting a shudder from Josh. “Sorry kids, cover your ears.”

Clark’s responding sneer was razor sharp. “And you were—”

But before Clark could deliver what Alice was sure would be a pretty vile insult, his entire body seemed to buckle. Tendrils of dark ectoplasmic smoke rose through the front of his dress shirt and began to wriggle.

Alice shrieked and stumbled back into Riley, who caught her around the waist. Caroline leaped in front of the kids, shovel in hand, ready to defend. Clark flopped to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” the coven yelled collectively. Even the kids. No one had the presence of mind to chastise them. Alice would feel bad about that after she processed the emotional trauma of watching something emerge from Clark’s chest.

A small, dark transparent shape rose through the barrier of his shirt.

It wasn’t quite an animal, nor a ghost. It was like an eerie, furious combination of the two—a tiny, rodent-shaped, pocket-sized ghost surrounded by trails of dark smoke.

It turned its flat, catlike face to the group and bared a mouth full of gleaming fangs, rowed and hooked.

Screaming, the women took another step back, their arms thrown protectively across each other.

The kids joined them, curving their hands around the trio’s shoulders, forming a line.

The little monster took a run at them, but seemed to bounce off a ring of light that surrounded them.

It seemed very insulted by this development and ran at the protective barrier again and again.

Alice knew, somehow, that the light was something that she was making, but she had no idea how it was happening. She’d never tried to repel ghosts from other people. But these were her people, and she wasn’t about to let whatever that was touch them.

She glanced down. Clark was dead. He’d been standing there one moment, ready to say something horrible, and the next, he was lying on the ground, dead . No blood, no marks, just dead. How was this happening?

“Alice, is this you?” Riley asked.

“I’m not sure how. I just know I don’t want that thing coming near us. And apparently the magic is doing what I ask, which is nice.”

“Well, keep it up.” Caroline told her, baring her teeth when the little demon-hamster-thing tried to run at Josh. “I will punt you clear across the island, you little…whatever you are!”

The little monster bared its teeth right back and retreated to Clark’s chest, watching, waiting, staring up at them like a shark calculating how to bite through a diver’s cage.

“Oh, don’t be that way,” a soft voice cooed as a person stepped out from behind a bare lilac tree. “Chester’s such a well-behaved creature, when I tell him to be.”

A pair of orthopedically correct shoes stepped into view. Margaret Flanders smiled coldly as “Chester” skittered off Clark’s body and scrambled up to sit on her shoulder.

“Margaret?” Riley marveled. “You… Are you the Welling heir?”

“I did not see that coming,” Caroline said, shaking her head.

Alice asked, “Is that why you quit volunteering at the library?”

Mina gave her an incredulous look. Alice shrugged. “My brain snags on insignificant details in a crisis.”

“I never liked her,” Riley replied, never taking her eyes off the older woman. “Oh, no, someone should check on Edison.”

“Don’t bother,” Margaret huffed as Chester hissed at them.

“It’s not to my advantage to target Edison without you knowing I can target Edison.

It’s annoying, really. After all this time taking his orders, listening to him whine, I was looking forward to a nice creative payback.

Though, I suppose there’s still time for Chester here to turn his special brand of pressure to Edison’s circulatory system, stop his heart, turn his insides to a nonfunctional soup like he did to Clark’s.

He can make it look like poor Edison finally succumbed to all his stress and anxiety and had himself a massive coronary event.

So young, so tragic, after he finally found his second chance at love. ”

“You touch him and I will end you ,” Riley growled.

“And now, you know.” Margaret smiled as if Riley hadn’t spoken, but there was none of the unassuming, sweet-old-lady warmth she’d feigned for years. The reptilian sharpness of it made a shiver run down Alice’s back.

“Chester here is what you might call an adaptation of the family magic. I’ve been working on it for years, like previous generations of Wellings, and only just figured out the process—combining magic and ghostly energy and sheer force of will to make something entirely new.

Ghosts have always been able to hurt the living, but how to maintain absolute control?

It was a breakthrough, inspired by necessity—as all magic has been for my family since your family stole what we made,” Margaret seethed. “You took everything from us—”

“By kicking you out of a group project that you tried to hijack with secret supernatural time bombs?” Riley countered. “The amount of planning that went into making and hiding the locks borders on supervillain territory.”

Margaret looked annoyed at being interrupted or possibly by being reminded that her family had played a role in its own catastrophe.

All their attempts to control the ghosts of Shaddow House with their hidden lock system had never gotten them the power they wanted.

Instead, it relegated them to a lonely secret world filled with lies, twisted schemes, and festering resentments.

Chester hissed and growled at the coven, swiping his long, sharp-clawed fingers at the circle.

He chittered in frustration every time he was deflected.

“Creating him took quite a lot out of me, and then there was even more of a time investment to train him, make him civil,” Margaret said, scratching under Chester’s chin.

“As you can now see, he does whatever I tell him to, hurts whomever I tell him to. It’s undetectable, untraceable.

It’s the achievement of several lifetimes. ”

“Oh, man, I’m going to have to explain another body on my property,” Riley huffed. “Celia is not going to believe this was natural causes.”

Alice wondered how she was able to keep her cool under these circumstances, but Riley had always been an accomplished compartmentalizer.

“Why reveal yourself now?” Riley asked.

“Because I know how close you are to the last of the locks. Honestly, I’m just getting bored, using all these intermediaries, the games,” Margaret told her, sounding bored.

“And to be even more frank, it’s getting really expensive.

You girls have proven worthy adversaries, far more so than that joke Nora or your mother. ”

“Don’t talk about my mother,” Riley warned her testily.

“But I’m a senior citizen, you know. I’m on a fixed income. I only have so much time left. I wanted to clear the field, so to speak,” Margaret simpered, her smile razor thin. “Simplify matters.”

“And Clark was causing problems for you?” Caroline asked.

Alice looked down at Clark, and it was as if she’d finally processed that the man that—while she loathed him more than a little—she had once shared intimacies with was dead.

Nausea rolled up her throat, threatening the delicate control she held over the protective circle.

She swallowed with an audible gulp. She did not want to be trapped in a magic circle with vomit.

“The little prick was demanding another retainer,” Margaret seethed, losing her grip on her temper. She kicked Clark in the ribs. “For his silence.”

It was truly disconcerting to hear such profane language coming from the mouth of the woman who once played Mother Goose at the library’s story hour every week. Between that and the corpse-kicking, this was an eye-opening evening in terms of Margaret’s character.

“It’s going to be really hard to explain his death as a non-murder if you leave kick marks on him,” Riley said. “And we will sell you out to anyone with any semblance of authority. Mina can work up tears at the drop of a hat. She and Josh can be sympathetic and convincing.”

Margaret’s face shifted to that of an actual human being, eyes wide and pooled with tears, mouth turned down in a distressed frown.

“Oh, well, I was just passing by and saw poor Clark on the ground. The poor thing must have had a heart attack, so unusual for someone his age, but with the workload he took on, who knows what sort of strain he put on his system?”

Margaret followed this by whipping out a lace-edged hankie and dabbing delicately at the corners of her eyes.

“Damn, she is good,” Caroline mused quietly.

“You’ve been warned,” Margaret told them, her tone flint-hard again.

“I’m bored and impatient, which is not good for you, in combination with my little pet here.

I’m clearing extraneous frustrations from my life.

That means that you’re out of your league.

I’m going to find a way into that castle of yours. ”

“But if you’re able to make Chester, why even bother?” Josh asked. “I thought that’s what you wanted. Shouldn’t you be happy?”

“You don’t even know what the locks do, the supernatural wealth that’s inside Shaddow House—do you, you stupid boy?

” Margaret scoffed, drawing angry hisses from Caroline and Mina.

“I’ll be happy when I finally get what my family is owed, what I’m owed.

And your stolen empire will crumble to the ground. ”

“To be fair, we stole it back after your family tried to bury supernatural time bombs in it,” Riley told her. Margaret sneered.

“We could tell everybody you’re a murderous ghost-hamster-wrangler,” Mina noted.

“Oh, of course you could, sweetheart,” Margaret cooed. “But who would believe you?”

Realizing Margaret was correct, Mina grumbled quietly to herself. With that, Margaret sauntered off, with Chester turned on her shoulder, making deeply unpleasant faces at them.