“Ghosts can be dangerous,” Elaine said, still frowning. “You should’ve come to me first.”
“Rhys and I had it handled.”
Gwyn’s eyes sparked, and she opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Vivi held up a finger. “No. No ‘I’ll bet Rhys handled it,’ or whatever filthy thing you were gonna say.”
“You’re no fun at all,” Gwyn replied. “And my joke was going to be a little more sophisticated than that, I promise.”
“Sure it was.”
Vivi reached across the table to pick up the candle, but before she could, Aunt Elaine laid a hand on hers.
“Is that all you wanted to tell us? You caught a ghost in a Eurydice Candle?”
For a moment, Vivi had the horrifying idea that Elaine knew what had happened back here last night, that there was, like, the magical equivalent of security cameras, and Elaine had gotten quite the show, in which case, Vivi hoped there was some kind of “disappearing into the floor” spell.
But Aunt Elaine wasn’t giving her any kind of knowing look. She was genuinely asking, and Vivi realized there was something else she needed to tell them both.
“The ghost said some stuff before the candle got her,” Vivi said, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “About ‘cursed Penhallow,’ and taking something that didn’t belong to him. But I don’t think it was about Rhys specifically. I think it might have been about Gryffud, or some other ancestor.”
“Could be worth looking into,” Gwyn mused, resting her chin on her knee.
“I’ll do a little research,” Aunt Elaine said, then nodded at Vivi’s bag.
“And you go give that foul thing to its rightful owner.”
“Will do,” Vivi said with a little salute.
And then Aunt Elaine smiled at her, her eyes bright behind her glasses. “I’m proud of you, Vivi. A Eurydice Candle is serious magic.”
Vivi waved her off. “I didn’t do much, really. I just lit it. Not exactly next-level sorcery.”
“Still,” Aunt Elaine insisted, covering Vivi’s hand with her own. “You’re a witch who won’t even use magic to clean her apartment, and now look at you go!”
“Okay, that’s just because I use that time to catch up on listening to podcasts, plus I watched that Mickey Mouse cartoon with the devil brooms as a kid and it freaked me out.”
“I loved that cartoon,” Gwyn said, propping her chin in her hand, her silver earrings winking.
“Of course you did.”
“But Mom is right,” Gwyn went on, nudging Vivi. “Very baller magic.”
“I don’t really know what that means,” Aunt Elaine replied, “but I suspect it means ‘impressive,’ and it was. Your mother would have been proud, too.”
Surprised, Vivi glanced at Elaine. “Except that Mom hated magic?”
Aunt Elaine shook her head, leaning back in her chair. “It scared her. She felt like being a witch was . . . I don’t know, something that happened to her, not something she chose. But she was good. Really good when she wanted to be. She just chose another path.”
Vivi had spent so long with this idea of her mom as firmly in camp Magic Is Bad that she didn’t really know what to say to that.
Standing up, Vivi moved to the curtain sectioning off the storage room from the rest of the store, and came up short as she stared at the girl standing there, her eyes wide.
“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “I’ve never seen this part of the store before.”