“And this ghost hates you, yes?” Aunt Elaine asked, the bells on her skirt jingling softly as she completed the circle.
“Seems to, yes.”
“Hmmm.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Then maybe move a little farther back.”
Rhys looked down at Vivi, and she nodded, remembering him flying through the air at the library, the anger in the ghost’s eyes when it had seen him. Elaine’s theory was that because Piper McBride had been a witch, she might be a little more receptive to talking to fellow witches, especially ones who were setting her free. Vivi had reminded Elaine that she had also been the one to capture Piper, but Elaine was hoping Piper wouldn’t remember that bit.
“Ghosts don’t always have a good sense of what’s going on,” she’d said. “Time doesn’t exactly have any meaning for them.”
Vivi hoped she was right.
Rhys had stood up and moved back into the darkness, leaning against a tree as Vivi and Gwyn both rose to their feet, standing on opposite sides of the salt circle.
“Vivi?” Aunt Elaine asked, handing her a cardboard tube of long matches. “Would you like to do the honors?”
And so, for the second time in her life, Vivi lit a Eurydice Candle.
It was different this time. There was no slow creeping feeling as a spirit was drawn in. Instead, the candle sparked, flamed, and suddenly Piper McBride was there, in all her floaty, seriously pissed off glory.
She was emitting enough light to cast them all in a blue-green glow, and across the circle, Gwyn’s eyes went huge in her face. “Oh, shit, a ghost,” she breathed, then fluttered her hands. “I mean, I knew we were gonna see one, but there’s knowing and then there’s actually seeing it.”
Piper floated around to face her, and even in the dim light, Vivi could see Gwyn swallow hard. “Um. Nice shirt, by the way. I like Nirvana, too.”
The ghost turned slowly, taking in Vivi and Elaine, and while her expression didn’t change all that much, Vivi didn’t get the sense she was as angry this time.
Maybe Elaine had been right.
“Are you a coven?” Piper asked, her voice sounding like it was coming from far away, an eerie effect given how close she was to them.
“Yes,” Vivi said, even though it wasn’t technically true, and the ghost turned back to her.
“You,” she said, upper lip curling slightly. “I’ve seen you.”
Her mouth suddenly dry, Vivi licked her lips. “Right. In the library.”
Piper was fully snarling now. “With a Penhallow.”
“Right. Which is what we want to talk to you about, actually. You knew Rhys, the Penhallow, was cursed. And you were right. I’m the one who cursed him, so—”
“It wasn’t you.”
The words were flat, almost bored, and Vivi wondered if she’d misheard.
“What?”
“I know the magic surrounding that Penhallow,” Piper said, still hovering over the ground, but starting to seem more like a teenage girl, less like a terrifying supernatural being. “And it was not yours. Or not only yours.”
“Whose was it, then?” Elaine asked, and Piper twisted again to face her.
“There is other magic running in the blood of this town,” Piper said, “magic that was stolen by the Penhallows. Hidden. Aelwyd Jones deserves her revenge.”
Aelwyd Jones.
Vivi’s ancestor, the one buried here in the town cemetery.
She looked at Elaine, whose face was creased in confusion. “Our ancestor didn’t have powerful magic,” she told Piper. “She was a regular witch, like all the women in our family.”