The Hidden Grimoire Read online

  “You’re happy?” Nora asked.

  My heart bloomed with the way I loved Kyle. “I am.”

  “Then I suppose you know what you’re doing.” She finished her slice of bread and dusted her hands off over her plate. “I’m impressed with the control you’ve learned. I didn’t see anything flying across the room directed at Jason’s head.”

  I chuckled. “Not that I wasn’t tempted.”

  “And speaking of knowing what you’re doing, it’s time to show you the book.” She shot a glance over her shoulder, toward the kitchen. “Do you remember me telling you how Jerome used to tease us about ghosts in the coal chute when your mother and I were little?”

  “Yes?”

  “He wanted your mother and me to think he was much too intelligent for such fairytales.” She ducked her head and lowered her voice. “But I suspect his stories came as a result of witnessing a thing or two on his own.”

  Like the time a couple of months ago when, with no one in the house, the lid to my music box had been opened? “The house is haunted?”

  “Not exactly.” Nora crooked a finger for me to follow her through the kitchen to the utility room. The steel coal chute door, built into the brick exterior wall, had been sealed shut. Now, a washing machine and dryer occupied the place the coal bin would have been years ago.

  Nora lowered her voice to a whisper. “Jerome told me he’d seen a ghost waving a finger at him when he was playing in here one day. Scared him, but not so much that he didn’t try to scare me and Charlotte, too, by luring us here, hoping we’d see something.” She squeezed between the machines and moved her hands over the bricks, tugged one, and a false front pulled from the wall. “The ghost was protecting this.” She reached into the cache in the wall and pulled out a book.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A book of spells.”

  Chapter 3

  When Nora extended the book toward me, I backed away. The first spell I’d cast, before I understood my gift, had resulted in the death of my best friend. “A spell book? As in ‘direct the magic?’ Aren’t you the one who taught me magic with intentions comes with unintended consequences?”

  “I did. The first rule of magic,” Nora told me. “And an important reminder for those who don’t know how to harness their gifts.”

  I certainly hadn’t known how. After my first spell, I’d stayed far away from anything remotely magical for fear of killing someone else. “Isn’t a spell, by its nature, an intention?”

  She set the book on the washing machine. “What else have you learned about the magic?”

  After a summer of confusion, I’d come to accept the magic was a part of me, and I was a part of the world around me—interconnected. Do what you will, but do no harm.

  When I didn’t answer immediately, the tingling in my head let me know Nora probed my thoughts. “You saw firsthand what happens when someone intentionally sets out to harm someone else,” she said.

  Memories of flames shot up around me. I cleared my throat to dislodge the phantom congestion and wrapped my arms around myself. I struggled to breathe, put out a hand to steady myself.

  Someone took hold of my wrist and I let out a startled shriek before I met Nora’s eyes, bringing me back to the laundry room. Her lips moved, a silent incantation. Her voice was soft, soothing. “Be here. Now.”

  The witch I’d come to refer to as that woman—I hadn’t wanted to know her name—had locked me in my workroom and set it on fire—intentional harm. She had died instead. Too often, a random word or a restless night returned me to that day.

  I took measured breaths to steady my racing heart. The book of spells was still on the washing machine. My voice croaked. “What spells have you invoked?”

  Nora rubbed my arms. “I cast a spell for protection around you when you were born.”

  The stubborn ache of being abandoned tugged. “Why didn’t you come for me when my parents died?”

  “We’ve talked about this,” she said. “Jerome didn’t tell me your parents had died for two years. From what Jason said, he and your mother had made a pact to keep you from me unless your magic presented itself. Didn’t you tell me you did all you could to suppress the magic after you discovered your gifts? I suspect they never knew.”

  A nervous laugh bubbled up. “Apparently Jason knows.”

  “Only because you found your way to me.”

  Another uncomfortable thought pushed its way forward. “Do you think I’m the reason Jason stayed away from home, from Uncle Jerome’s? Because he didn’t want to be near a witch?”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  The book rose from the washing machine on its own and floated toward the cache in the wall. Nora grabbed it. “Not quite yet,” she said. She carried the book through the kitchen and to the dining table.

  I followed, maintaining a distance between myself and the grimoire. Did I want to know its secrets?

  “We can’t know, of course, if Jason’s daughter will inherit the gift, but if she does, you’ll need to do your part—whether he likes it or not,” Nora said.

  “You’re telling me I’ll need to cast a spell to protect her?”

  “The book will tell you, when the time comes. There’s always a chance Jason will come to terms with our legacy before then, but in any event, his daughter will need to be protected from herself—her, or whoever is born into the legacy next.”

  At times like these, I wished I had the answers, that life was more transparent, more straightforward.

  Nora opened the book and a tendril rose from the pages—smoke? Dust? A triquetra, the three circles of a Celtic knot, were drawn on the first page. Reflexively, I covered the bracelet my mother had given me, a pattern of triquetras.

  Nora slid a finger under a yellowed page and turned it gently. Letters seemed to crawl from her hand into the book. I held my breath as I watched them spell out my name beneath hers in a sort of family tree. Nora closed her eyes and sighed, then pushed the book toward me.

  “It’s yours now.”

  I was tempted to protest, to tell her I didn’t know what to do with it, but after the events of this past summer, I knew better.

  “How did you do that?” I asked, running a finger over my name.

  “The books, all of them, are living things. They respond to you. Anticipate what you need. The same way your name wrote itself in this book, a spell will call to you when you need it—like with the other grimoires.”

  I shuddered. This book knew my name—the letters had moved to the page like spiders. “Why doesn’t that reassure me?”

  Nora laughed. “Don’t fret. In all the years I’ve known it was here, I’ve only used it twice.”

  I turned another brittle page to a drawing of a baby over a neatly written paragraph that read like a nursery rhyme.

  “The first spell,” Nora whispered over my shoulder. “To protect the daughters when they are born.”

  “But how do you know which daughter to cast it on?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure it matters if they’re gifted or not. Like preventative medicine.”

  A chill raised gooseflesh on my arms. I wasn’t the first daughter born of my generation. Jason’s sister was. “Did you cast it on Jeannine?”

  “I did. And then you.”

  Beneath the spell itself was a paragraph detailing its uses. One sentence stood out from the rest:

  Should the guide be lost to the daughter, this spell ensures she would find her way to her destiny.

  Like I’d found my way to Hillendale, to Aunt Nora.

  I turned another page. This one bore a drawing of a red pentagram at the top and a skull and crossbones at the bottom with a warning in the middle of the page above another verse—a spell.

  Harm cast forward reflects backward threefold.

  I shut the book hastily, sending out a cloud of dust.

  “Why would it even show a harmful spell?” I asked.

  “I guess there could be a need for one at
some point in time, that there had been a need.”

  The book rose from my hands and returned to the cache in the wall. This time, Nora let it go.

  “Now that you’ve been introduced, the book will call to you,” she said.

  What an odd way to refer to showing me a book. “Introduced?”

  Nora’s eyes shone midnight blue. “The book of spells serves one daughter at a time. I had a dream it was time to present it to you.”

  I shivered. “I’ll just leave it right where it is for the time being.”

  She leaned toward me. “More doubts?”

  I understood my gifts were part of the natural flow of life, like the flowers and herbs I grew in the garden. I’d come to think of my magic as the rain or the sun, an essential element to those within my orbit. “No doubts, but after witnessing the harm another witch can do, I’m understandably wary of doing the wrong thing.”

  Nora smiled as her eyes filled with tears. “I’m so very proud of you. I know you’ll take care with the powers you’ve been granted.”

  After the mistakes I’d made over the past few months, I wished I could be as confident.

  Chapter 4

  Despite nursing a cup of coffee, I couldn’t seem to get warm after my encounter with the hidden grimoire. I sat at the dining table looking toward the woods beyond the backyard.

  Nora placed a hand on top of mine. “You’re upset.”

  “No, unsettled.” I reached for a slice of banana bread and took a bite. “The books in the workroom are one thing. That one is something different.”

  “Yes, it is, and in the wrong hands, it could be dangerous. But another thing you know about the books, they’re particular about who they allow to read them.”

  Dangerous. I turned toward Nora. “Wasn’t the woman who tried to kill me bound by the same rules? Do no harm?”

  “She was, and you saw the results.”

  I did. That woman had died. “But she wasn’t afraid to try.”

  Nora lifted her coffee cup and stared into it. “No, she wasn’t.” She took a sip. “Greed isn’t limited to money.”

  “Greed,” I repeated.

  “Or envy? That woman wanted what you had.” Nora inclined toward the table. “She saw her gifts as a way to acquire more.”

  “More,” I echoed.

  “For some, more is never enough.” The tug inside my head indicated Nora was trying to see what I wasn’t saying. “The nightmares. Are they getting any better?”

  She’d witnessed my flashback moments earlier. The memories of the fire were a living part of me. Since the day I’d been locked in the workroom, I avoided closing doors wherever possible. “Some.”

  “Let’s talk about something more pleasant. What do you say? Tell me about Kyle. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him kiss you before. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve seen the two of you so much as hold hands.”

  Heat rushed to my face. I wasn’t one for public displays of affection, until recently. “I never felt it necessary to stoke the rumor mill. Everyone in town already knew we were dating.”

  “What’s changed?”

  I laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s about staking my claim. Everyone else holds hands in public, right? Or exchanges a brief kiss?” Or in Nora and her husband’s case, a not-so-brief kiss. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be as demonstrative as she and her husband were. “It isn’t as if we’re doing something obscene.”

  Nora tilted her head back and laughed. “No, I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

  She rose from the table and headed toward the workroom. “You should consider replacing the cupboard in the corner. You’ll never get the smoky smell out of the wood.”

  I followed, coming to a stop beside her. “Not on your life. As the only thing that survived the fire intact, the cupboard seems to want to be there.”

  Outside the windows, kids ran down the street in Halloween costumes. I reached for a bowl of candy and headed for the door.

  “They won’t knock,” Nora said.

  “Why not?”

  “They’re afraid. Or respectful. No one would dream of calling us witches to our faces. They might not even consciously think of us that way, but deep down...” She tapped a fist against her chest. “Deep down, they don’t want to take the chance.”

  I crossed to the kitchen, to the window that faced the street, and watched the kids go door to door—skipping my house. “Well, that doesn’t seem right.”

  Kyle drove into his driveway across the street. I checked the clock—three-forty, right on time after his six-to-three shift today. The kids in costumes swarmed him and he laughed, raising his arms over his head. They trailed him to his front door and waited while he reached inside for a bowl of candy and handed them each a piece. When they left, he waved to me and walked over.

  “I’m going to stay home for the trick or treaters,” he said, “but I’ll come over in time for dinner.” He squeezed my hand and nodded to Nora. “See you later.”

  “I’m going to head to the rez before it gets too dark,” she said. “Now that I know you two are together, I’ll let you enjoy some quiet time.”

  “You don’t have to go,” he said.

  She held up a hand. “I want to.”

  With one more wave, Kyle trotted to his house.

  “So what do witches do on Halloween?” I asked as I closed the door. “If the trick or treaters don’t stop by?”

  “We’ve never been together on Samhain before, have we?” She reached for a couple of wine glasses on the open shelves. “We celebrate the lives of those who have gone before.” She took a bottle from her tote bag and uncorked it, pouring us each a glass of red. She handed one to me and raised hers in a toast. “To your mother, God rest her soul, and the wonderful man she married.”

  I clinked my glass to hers and took a sip.

  “To my aunt,” she continued. “Your great-aunt, who taught me all I know.”

  “God rest her soul,” I finished.

  “And to your grandparents, who did the best they could to understand a legacy they didn’t know enough about.”

  We touched glasses once more and took a third sip. I remembered my parents with love, even if a memory was all I had left of them.

  Nora set her glass on the counter. “To answer your question more thoroughly, the solstices and the equinoxes are what you might call solar holidays. They aren’t restricted to witches, though. The indigenous people and farmers also celebrate them. The cross-quarter days, of which Samhain—Halloween—is one, fall between the solar holidays. The cross-quarter days are considered earth holidays. Samhain is when death is formally honored, until the winter solstice when hope is born again and the days grow longer. Samhain is also when the veil between life and death is at its thinnest. Those who have gone before are most likely to make themselves known today.”

  I shivered. “We’re talking pagan holidays again?”

  Nora took my hand in hers. “Brynn, celebrating pagan holidays doesn’t make you not a Christian, or whatever religion you choose to practice. The beliefs are complementary. We celebrate the world we’ve been given, the world we live in. We are interconnected parts, whether you believe in creationism or evolution.”

  “What do you believe?” I asked.

  Her eyes reflected the waning daylight. “I was raised the same way my sister—your mother—was. I believe the same things she did, and the same things she taught to you. We are on this earth to love and support each other, and with or without special gifts, not everyone has gotten the message. In the end, we’re no different from anyone else. Not really. We all should do our part to protect the earth for future generations and to take care of one another.”

  Nora set the bottle of wine in my refrigerator. “And now I should be leaving.”

  I hugged her close. “Do you really have to go back to the rez?”

  “Do I have to? No. But it’s where I belong.” She whirled into her cape. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She squeezed my hand one more time
and left.

  Which left me to manage a potentially difficult dinner conversation with Kyle alone.

  Chapter 5

  Kyle came through the door a few minutes after six. I led him to the candlelit dining table, where I’d set two places and poured two glasses of cab. The chicken rice casserole steamed in the center.

  “Romantic,” he said with a teasing note.

  “I figured since it’s just you and me...” I ran my fingers through his dark, wavy hair.

  He smiled. “You know I like Nora, but I’m not sorry she decided to go home early.”

  As tempted as I was to delay dinner in favor of amorous distractions, I took my seat and handed him the spoon to help himself. He sat beside me and dished a portion of the casserole onto my plate before he heaped some on his own.

  Kyle told me about his day, how the Hazelton kid had TP’d the house where the high school quarterback lived. A creepy scarecrow in the park remained motionless until someone approached, at which point he stopped passersby to take selfies. I laughed, watching the animation in Kyle’s slate-blue eyes, admiring the scruff sprouting on his jaw. After our difficult break up over the summer, our renewed relationship filled me with hope.

  He took the last bite from his plate and chased it with his remaining wine. He exhaled a satisfied sigh and leveled his attention on me. “You okay after what happened today?”

  The moment of truth. Nora had expected he’d ask, and I suppose I had, too, as much as I’d hoped he might forget what Jason had said to him. “You mean with my cousin?”

  “Not sure I’d be charitable enough to claim him as family after the way he treated you.”

  Kyle, my champion. “To be fair, he’s trying to protect his family. He has a baby on the way. I’m told people can go a little overboard when they’re expecting.”

  “Way past overboard, Brynn.”

  To his credit, Kyle hadn’t batted an eyelash when Jason hurled the insult, but that didn’t mean Kyle didn’t have deep-seated feelings on the subject. “What about you?” I asked. “You caught some of his ire, too.”