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Grandma was laughing with me as she watched me have fun with the bubbles and I suddenly missed her with all my heart. I wished I could hug her and be enfolded in her arms.

But she was gone now. How had the Orc put it? She had “faded”—which seemed like an odd way to say someone had died. Anyway, it was just me and Sebastian and the little voice which sometimes spoke in my ear. I still wasn’t sure if that was her spirit or just an echo of her, left behind.

I waited, but the voice didn’t say anything, so I moved on to the next room in the house at the other end of the hall.

It turned out to be a library with a fireplace on one wall and a window seat that had been turned into a reading nook with a mound of fluffy cushions.

There were lots of very old-looking books that were bound in leather but also plenty of tattered paperback Harlequin romances.

I seemed to remember that Grandma had always had a romance tucked in a pocket of her apron or her cardigan. She called them her “love stories.”

There was a desk in one corner that would make the perfect place to work—if the house had Internet connection, which I kind of doubted.

I hadn’t seen any Wi-Fi router anywhere so far and there was no computer either—not even a clunky old one.

I was going to have to get that fixed somehow, if I was going to keep working from home.

Lying on the desk was a big, ancient-looking leather-bound book.

On the front of it I saw an intricate scene had been worked into the leather—a willow tree with many trailing branches that dipped into a flowing river.

It looked like the tree in the backyard, I thought.

On the spine was stamped a single word— Pruitt— my Grandmother’s last name.

Opening it to the first page, I saw a kind of family tree had been drawn.

I read my Grandma’s name and my mother’s and mine too.

It went all the way back to the 1600s. Of course, I didn’t recognize most of the male names—I saw my father’s and then I looked for my Grandfather on my Mom’s side.

When I saw his name, I frowned. Morris? Had Grandma named her house after her late husband?

It seemed like a weird thing to do, but whatever. I shrugged to myself and moved on.

I turned to the next page and saw the word, Grimoire in flowing script. Wait—wasn’t that a book of spells? I flipped through more of the brittle old pages carefully and saw that I was right—the book was filled with all kinds of herb lore, advice, and yes—what looked like rituals for magic.

A Spell for the Banishment of a Man Unwanted, read one.

Light candles three of honeycomb stained black.

Place them in a triangle, picture he who you wish to banish, and chant the following:

“I Banish thee Once

I Banish thee Twice

And if I must

I Banish thee Thrice.

Never more to Darken my Door

Get Ye Hence

And come No More

So Mote it Be!”

Blow out the candles and the Banished Male will bother you no more.

“Wow, that’s convenient—if it works,” I murmured, still flipping pages.

There were other spells too—love potions, spells for fruitful harvests, lots of protection spells for home and family and children, spells for good health and for finding misplaced items and healing the sick as well as hexing enemies and repelling evil…there were so many I couldn’t count them all.

And mixed in with the spells were pages and pages of herbal lore with recipes for curing different ailments.

Many of them included drawings of the plants in question or even dried specimens.

One especially looked interesting to me.

It was a plant called Valerian and it was supposed to “Loosen the tongue and gladden the heart.”

To make a tincture of Valerian, take equal parts crushed root and flowers and add to it equal parts dried blackberries, fresh Passionflower blooms, and dried Lavender.

Steep in hot water until a sweet scent fills the room.

Sweeten with honey and drink, it read. But be cautious!

For this tincture may loosen more than the tongue.

Hmm …I thought I had seen most of those ingredients down in the greenhouse room. Along with the many plants, there were also jars filled with dried herbs and bottles filled with other concoctions. Could it be that Grandma had actually made some of these recipes or cast these spells?

Had my Grandmother been a witch?

The thought was both weird and shocking.

Witches were bent old crones with crooked noses who rode broomsticks.

They owned black cats and stirred potions in cauldrons and cackled menacingly.

They weren’t kindly old ladies who made the best brownies and apple pie and quilted and knitted and read Harlequin romances—right?

Surely Grandma hadn’t really followed any of the pages in the book… had she?

As if to answer my question, a few of the pages flipped by themselves and I saw myself looking down at a recipe written in my Grandma’s spidery handwriting.

Best Apple Pie, it read.

I looked through it and saw it called for many spices, including cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and mace.

That was quite a long list of ingredients—I wondered if all those spices were still downstairs in the kitchen and if so, were they still good?

If so, maybe I could recreate Grandma’s apple pie after all.

Then again, I didn’t know if I dared to pick any more apples. After being nearly scared to death by that asshole Orc, it was going to take some real courage to go into the backyard and get enough apples for a pie.

I tried to put the Orc out of my mind as I firmly closed the book. I could look at it all night, but there was still more of the house to explore. As for the question of if my Grandma had been some kind of witch, I decided to put it out of my head.

Clearly the Grimoire was an ancient book that had been passed down in a matrilineal line through my family. Grandma must have used the recipes but the rest of it was just nonsense from the past.

Nonsense? whispered a little voice in my head. If magic is nonsense then how do you explain the door that brought you here?

I had no answer for that, so I pushed it away. It was time to see the rest of the house that I now owned. I left, closing the door to the library behind me and went to look in the last room. I opened the door, and stood there, staring.

The library had been fascinating but the last and final bedroom was even more amazing…because it had all my things in it.