Page 52 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

Margaret stooped to pick up the lock they’d found in the folly, the one covered in a green coat of age. “I suppose you don’t know what this one does.”

“It’s not the whole ‘Wellings want to use the locks to turn ghosts into assassins’ thing, right?” Caroline said, Mina tucked firmly behind her. “I never really bought that theory.”

“The Denton family’s vision was so limited, believing the locks only had one use.

Your magic is a joke, a parlor trick.” Margaret continued talking as if Caroline hadn’t even spoken.

“My family had to go underground, humoring rich idiots like the Bancrofts. And then we had to change gears, pretend to be nothing. Sweet, guileless blue-collar folk who would blend in on this godforsaken island, even as we used our wealth to fund our search for the locks. For years, I worked against your bitch aunt—”

“Watch it,” Riley told her, even as the most grotesque spirits—most likely Plover’s “basement ghosts”—crept closer from their rooftop perches like a murder of crows waiting for their chance to plunge.

Margaret continued. “—sowing discord on that ridiculous Nana Grapevine, letting people think the worst of Nora, but she was such a goody-goody that the worst anyone could say was that she was aloof. You, though—oh, you and your faithless mother provided far more fodder. People on this island will believe anything. And all that time, I was hiding what I could do. I had this magic inside me.” Margaret lifted one of the locks from its cup, the green-patinaed specimen they’d found in the folly.

“This is the prize gem of the collection. Each of the locks serves a different purpose, hones some aspect of the Welling magic, but this one, this was what we were planning on, drawing the suckers into our ‘communication center.’”

“So not ghost assassins,” Caroline said. “I knew it.”

“Oh, no, ghost assassins would have been one of the many services we offered,” Margaret replied, holding the green lock out in her palm like bait.

“Once we booted your idiot predecessors out of the house and claimed our rightful place. But this little beauty would have allowed us to do this. Uncle Stanford!”

“Uncle?” Riley turned to the door just in time to see the ceiling ghost sail through the door—no longer bound by the wards.

The dark, viscous surface melted away and from the murk emerged a thin, pale, sharp-featured man in a high-collared shirt and suit.

He landed on his well-shod feet next to Margaret, beaming at her like an old friend.

The ceiling ghost was Stanford Newlin, Victoria’s former fiancé.

“That, I did not expect,” Natalie called from the doorway.

“What the hell?” Alice exchanged glances with her covenmates, and so many pieces fell into place. The way Victoria seemed so uncomfortable whenever the ceiling ghost was nearby. The way it hovered near the locks, seeming displeased whenever they made progress.

“Yes, one of the locks allows you to let ghosts through the wards at will. Or hadn’t you figured that out yet?” Margaret simpered. She patted where Stanford’s insubstantial arm should have been. “Uncle Stanford was the Welling heir. Until my grandmother took over for him.”

“Designing the Duchess gave me access to the best families on the island,” Stanford told them, his voice raspy from disuse.

“We’d changed the family name a few times by then.

Not that the Dentons would give me the time of day.

Their detachment from the town allowed me to sow discontent among the yokels, about how the Shaddows—and, by extension, the Dentons—were snobs who thought they were too good to talk to anybody.

I’d hoped marriage to that silly twit Victoria would give me a permanent hold here, the ability to undermine the Dentons and take back our legacy.

But I suppose you know how that turned out. ”

“You’re a murdering asshole?” Riley suggested. “Oh, no, this means Victoria’s been stuck inside the house this whole time with the guy who killed her?”

“Oh…no,” Collin sighed. “That’s so awful.”

“She wasn’t aware,” Stanford said. The basement ghosts seemed thrilled by Stanford’s appearance, like they were members of his fan club. That…really told Alice all she needed to know.

“I took on that amorphous form so she wouldn’t run when she saw me, warn others, give the Dentons some clue they might be able to follow to my identity.

It’s such a relief, dropping the ruse, even if I did enjoy keeping an eye on her.

I like to think that eventually, I could have won her over again. ”

“Riley’s right,” Collin told the ghost. “You are an asshole.”

This was good, Alice supposed. Caroline once said it was important in a crisis to keep the villain talking, stalling them so…

what? She glanced up at the ghosts lining the roofline like crows.

What was the coven going to do? Call Celia?

There was no backup. There was no weapon against the combined locks. They only had themselves.

“I knew my time on the island was short,” Stanford replied.

“I knew I couldn’t explain lingering on the island much past the completion of the hotel, particularly with Forsythe asking when I was planning to move on to my next project.

So I took long walks around the island at night, waiting for the opportunity to take my lock to the house, to influence the others.

I failed in a spectacular fashion. I don’t want to go into it, but somehow, the brick closed over it. ”

“I’m telling you, the house is alive,” Caroline whispered to Riley, who shrugged.

“Nothing I did could get the lock back and I suppose that the shock of it all, after so much recent manual labor…” Stanford sighed and made a helpless gesture.

“Heart attack on the way back to the hotel?” Edison guessed.

Stanford nodded. “I felt a horrific pressure in my chest and then I woke up in Shaddow House itself. I couldn’t get out, couldn’t interact with any object around me, much less the haunted ones.

I was trapped. It was awful. I suppose some part of me remained in the hotel too.

It was my greatest creation. It’s really rather tragic. ”

“Yeah, just imagine how much worse it would be if your fiancée pushed you down the stairs and then you were stuck in a house with her for a hundred years?” Riley deadpanned, making Stanford give her an undead frown.

“A note telling my grandmother where the lock was hidden would have been helpful,” Margaret told him.

“I didn’t have time,” Stanford snapped. “It’s called unfinished business for a reason. The house was my attachment object. It’s a bit poetic, if you think about it.”

“What does Jeff know about any of this?” Alice asked. “He’s always been so…nice and normal.”

“Nothing,” Margaret insisted. “Jeff doesn’t have the—well, my generation would have called it ‘gumption’—for this sort of thing.

And honestly, the effort would have been wasted on him.

He’s never shown the slightest magical ability.

He gets that from his father’s side. Useless, really. I’m the last hope for my family.”

Even after being raised by the Proctors, it was shocking to hear a mother talking about her son that way. Poor Jeff.

Margaret sniffed, as if she didn’t like being reminded of Jeff’s place in all this. “Enough of this waltzing down Memory Lane. It’s time for you idiots to see what this masterpiece does.”

Margaret raised her arms, and all the locks twisted at once.

“Oh, I have waited my entire life and after for this,” Stanford crooned.

The candelabra began to spin, grinding into the cold dirt and sending clods of it flying.

Overhead, the now-familiar void split the sky.

The silence seemed to overtake the earthbound ambient noise, swallowing it up.

Unlike before, they could see shapes moving inside that black endless space, not quite bodies, not quite smoke.

“Once the other locks opened this doorway into the next world, this piece”—she paused to stroke the candelabra—“would allow our family to call forth any spirit a client asked for.”

Stanford put his hand on Margaret’s shoulder, smiling like a proud papa.

“Bullshit,” Mina called. Stanford frowned at her and Mina snarled at him. “Oh, correct my language, you evil dickhead, I dare you.”

“I’ll bet you want me to call forward your poor dead mama, don’t you, Riley, dear?” Margaret cooed. “Or maybe even your dear Aunt Nora. Maybe she could help.”

Her simpering tone set Riley’s teeth on edge—visibly, to Alice.

“I suppose that would be too distracting for you,” Margaret said. “How about someone you have a little less emotional attachment to?”

Margaret moved her hands, a little bit like the basic movements of the Denton system, but more aggressive, like she was expressing her displeasure in heavy traffic. A figure in the depths of the void moved forward, became more solid. He landed on the ground in a ghostly heap.

“Whoa,” Riley marveled.

“See?” Margaret huffed, watching dark-purple magic swirling around her fingers like smoke. That was a skill none of them had mastered yet. “Thank you. That’s all I’m looking for, some respect for my family’s craft. A little cowering would be nice.”

“Cole?” Caroline cried as the former construction foreman stood, looking pretty healthy and whole, all things considered. Alice supposed it helped that he’d had the life squeezed out of his heart. It didn’t leave any marks.

“Hi,” he said, his expression chagrined. “Uh, ladies, good to see you again.”

“No,” Caroline shot back, shaking her head. “Too soon.”

“Oh, great, it’s the other guy who kidnapped a member of my family,” Ben muttered. “Also, could we get back to where is my son ?”

“Yeah, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I owe you an apology,” Cole said. “I was wrong to kidnap you and try to get your ghost grandma to kill you. That’s on me. My bad.”

Alice stared at Cole and wondered at the summation of a murder attempt as “my bad.”