Of Spirits and Superstition Read online

  Mother takes each of our hands, bringing them together. “The shifter magick is different in you—it reaches outward, rather than inward. I can feel it in you, Ronan. If you tap into Winter’s, you can see how things should be, including the tapestry. You can shift the outer world and correct what’s been wrongfully altered. You also have a gift of prophecy; you can see the future and use that ability to see magick in all its forms. That can help us fix the loom and cape.”

  Stupefied, he shakes his head. “I had no idea… What? How?”

  The prophecy. Prue told us about the four sisters saving the world.

  “You’re a spirit walker,” she says to him. “You move between dimensions and see so much the rest of us can’t, right?”

  This makes sense to him and he nods.

  My ears begin to buzz again. The tightness in my chest makes it hard to breathe. “Tell me how to fix the cape.” I hear the faintest sound of my sisters calling me. “Hurry, Mom. I’m not going to be here much longer.”

  Her chin lifts and she glances around. I sense she can hear them, too. “Take apart the gifts you made and reweave the cape. The loom and Ronan will guide you.”

  The tugging hurts as I fight it, willing myself to stay a few seconds more. My body flickers and dances like thousands of fireflies, as the molecules begin to dissolve. “Mom, I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she says, stroking my fading face. “There’s one more thing, my daughter.”

  “What?”

  But before she can tell me, I’m hurtling through time and space.

  14

  Everything goes dark.

  When I come to, I’m in my cabin, the physical one, not with Mom and Ronan.

  I float above my bed, looking down at my body. My sisters and father are holding a séance around me.

  As I hover near the ceiling like a balloon, Shade jumps on my bed, lands on my chest, and stares up at my ghost. She lets out a plaintive meow, startling my sisters and sounding the alarm.

  They all gasp, and whirl, looking around. “What was that?” Summer asks, then sees Shade.

  Dad peaks one eye open, then the other. They follow Shade’s gaze, all eyes landing on me.

  “Oh dear,” Spring says, looking directly at me.

  “Wait, you can see me?” It’s more of a statement than a question, but I’m surprised, since I’m obviously a spirit.

  “Thank the goddess,” Autumn says. “We were afraid we wouldn’t get you back.”

  Summer glances between me and the bed. “Did we? You’re not in your body.”

  I’m not, and that worries me as much as it does her.

  “Don’t worry,” Autumn insists. “We’ll figure it out.”

  Dad nods. “Good to have you home.”

  I try to finagle my way down the wall, the sensation of levitating uncanny and unnerving. I feel lightheaded and my stomach keeps flip-flopping. “So I’m kind of a ghost,” I say more to myself than them. “Gotta tell ya’, this is freaking me out.”

  At that, Persephone appears near the window. “All this bopping around is exhausting,” she complains, putting a hand to her upswept hair. She looks around and plops on the chair in the corner. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this guardian stuff.”

  Irritation burns in my belly, but it also seems to weigh down my feet, and I find myself closer to the floor. Good. Denser, low vibration emotions might be the trick to keep me from dancing with the celling. “What about Ronan?” I ask. “Is he still stuck in the in-between with Mom?”

  Before Seph can answer, Spring jumps up from where she’s kneeling next to the bed. “You saw Mom? Is she okay?”

  I give them a quick update, and I know it’s not enough, but it’ll have to do for now. “Apparently, we’re all daughters of the loom, like Mom and the rest of our maternal ancestors.”

  I see the curious confusion on their faces, and try to think of the best way to explain it, since I’m not sure about the details myself. “The loom Mom has is magickal. It came directly from Ireland when the country was an island full of magick. The cape she wore has been handed down from generation to generation and is supposed to reside on the loom. Every thread is tied to the ley lines. Not only here on earth, but throughout the universe.”

  Autumn nods, and so does Dad, almost mirror images of each other. “I knew there was something special about that loom,” my sister says.

  Summer rubs her temple. “I’ve heard about some pretty crazy magick before, but this may top all of it.”

  “We repair the rips in the tapestry, and fix magick.” Dad rubs his hands together. “Seems straight forward.”

  Now that I’m nearly touching the floor, some of the lightheadedness eases. “There’s a wee bit of a problem with that.”

  Autumn stands, and points toward the end of the hall and Mom’s old bedroom. “You have it in the armoire, right? I’ll go get it. You haven’t worn it since Samhain.”

  Persephone laughs. “I can’t wait until you tell them about this little hiccup.”

  I shoot her a glance. Shade meows as if reprimanding her. My father frowns at her. My sisters can’t see her, but they follow my gaze, then focus back on me.

  “Is Ronan here?” Summer asks, hopeful.

  “Unfortunately, no, it’s Persephone.” I start toward the door and find myself teleported down the hall. “Whoa,” I exclaim. It’s like all I had to do was think about the armoire and I’m suddenly in front of the bedroom door. I hear my sisters scrambling to follow, and they rush out, pulling up short when they see me at the other end. I lift a hand and wave. “Sorry about that. I’m still getting used to this noncorporeal body. Apparently, all I have to do is think about where I want to go and, poof, I’m there.”

  They file down the hallway, Dad lagging slightly behind. Seph walks next to him, and he attempts to give her a wide berth.

  She’s not having that, pushing herself into his personal space and giving him a wink. I can’t open the door, so I simply float right through it.

  Autumn turns the knob and the three of them enter. I point at the armoire. “The problem is, I was trying to give each of you a piece of Mom as a Yule gift. I sort of…dismantled what was left of the cape and remade it into items for you.”

  Summer hustles over and opens the double doors. Inside are three neatly wrapped packages from me. The rug is still on the loom, a bag of threads I haven’t used yet on the floor next to it.

  “Go ahead,” I tell Summer. “Hand them out.”

  Dad stops in the doorway, Persephone hovering over his shoulder. Summer does as instructed, noting the names and handing those to Spring and Autumn, while keeping her own.

  “You might as well open them, we have to take them apart, put all the yarn back on the loom and try to recreate the original fabric.”

  They tear into them, while I study the loom and half-done rug. No wonder Mom couldn’t reweave her cape in the in-between—every time she tried, my work on this side undid it.

  “Oh, these are wonderful,” Spring says over the cloth trivets.

  Summer tries on the gloves. “You made these?”

  “Hard to believe, I know.” I say, deprecatingly. “I wanted each of us to have a piece of that cape, since it was always so important to her. I had no idea just how much.”

  Autumn caresses her cheek with a piece of her blanket. “Why didn’t Mom tell us?”

  “Someone working for the demon put a block in her memory.” I glare at Seph, still hovering around Dad. “We’ll get that figured out shortly, but the thing is, we only have until solstice to fix this, and I need Ronan here…”

  I stop at the horrified looks on my sisters’ faces. “What?”

  Autumn comes forward, as if she’s going to take my hand. She realizes belatedly she can’t actually do that, her fingers slipping right through my astral self. “You’ve been unconscious for two days, sister.”

  “Two days?”

  She nods. “Tonight is your birthday. It’s winter solstice.�
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  15

  The implications of that hit me like a giant cauldron. My spirit has been out of my body for two days, Ronan’s longer.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Nearly eleven,” my father says.

  “At night?” The top of my head feels like it’s going to explode at his nod. “So I have approximately seven hours before sunrise to save the souls the demon has claimed, get Ronan and myself back into our physical bodies, keep the demon from rising again, get him into some kind of container held between time and space, and reweave magick into the ley lines.”

  Everyone stares at me dead silent—no pun intended—confirming my worst fears.

  “Great.” I can’t breathe, and not just because I’m a ghost.

  Be strong. Act brave. Pretend you know what you’re doing.

  I’ve been operating like that since Mom died. I should be able to handle it now. “I need a minute to think. Spring? Why don’t you take everyone to the kitchen and make tea? I’ll join you in a minute.”

  My sisters lay their gifts on the bed and file out with Dad. I return to my room and look at my physical body lying so still. Shade jumps on the bed and lies down on my chest again, looking between my spirit and body. She gives a plaintive meow.

  Persephone comes in and flops in the chair again, and I wonder how she can act so corporeal when she’s not.

  I look up at the ceiling, “Coyote, I need you.”

  He doesn’t appear. “Coyote, Ronan, somebody, anybody. I need help.”

  Seph rolls her eyes. “You don’t need them, you have me.”

  It’s my turn for an eye roll. “Then do something. Help me. Tell me how to save the world before sunrise.”

  “You need to think outside the box. You’re a spirit, for goodness’ sake. You can move between worlds if you want to. You can jumpstart time or make it pause if you try hard enough. You have abilities far beyond what you give yourself credit for, and now might be a good time to tap into them.”

  “Thanks for the speech. You kind of suck as a spirit guide, you know that, right?”

  She glares at me sullenly. I glare back.

  “I told you that you were going to help millions of people,” she says in a snarky tone.

  “Yes, you were absolutely right, Seph. You just didn’t mention the part about me saving the world from a demon in order to do that.”

  “Technicality. They didn’t tell me I’d be dealing with a whiny witch, either. We don’t always get what we want, including full disclosure sometimes.”

  My first vision quest was at age eleven. I wanted to go to the mountains. Dad took me to the desert. Everything there was hard-edged and hot. There was red sand everywhere I looked, striking canyons, and a few scrub trees here and there. We camped for three days, going on long walks, with no food and very little water. My first actual vision was Coyote.

  He came to me in animal form, then shifted to a young boy my age. He told me incredible stories, showed me the different paths I could walk. He also transported me to a past life, where the two of us grew up together. In another one, he was human and I was his spirit guide.

  The relationship I have with him is similar to, and yet different than, the one I have with my sisters. I’ve always known I was a witch, but since that vision quest, I’ve also known I could walk the path of a shaman if I wanted. My father has been a great influence on me, and before Mom died, I was considering doing shamanic work, helping people retrieve parts of their souls they’ve left in the lowerworld or in past lives.

  My life, however, is defined by my mother’s death. Before, I was one person. Afterwards, I knew I couldn’t leave my sisters, even for brief stints to apprentice with Dad, and it felt like I split in two. I’m sure the three of them would be fine without me, but I held back.

  We’re a unit…the four Whitethorne sisters…and I’m the leader.

  When Dad left our family unit it caused intense upheaval. Mom’s death did the same on an even larger scale. The ripple it sent out became a wave, and we are still finding a new way of acting as a unit. As a family.

  Right now, I need them—Dad, Shade, my sisters. I also need insight and inspiration. A key for the lock in my brain. A piece of the puzzle I’m still missing.

  Coyote has always brought that to me. He’s always been the one to help me see beyond the fire I’m standing in the middle of.

  I pace back and forth at the end of the bed. Please, please, I think. Don’t desert me now.

  “You know,” Persephone says, “Magick wasn’t exactly great before you rearranged the threads in that tapestry.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, only half-listening to her.

  “Humanity has been ignoring and condemning it for centuries. I can’t say the ley lines and magick have created an ideal world, by any means, can you? Sure, back when your ancestors lived on an enchanted island, it might have, but that was thousands of years ago. Since then? Not so great, even with the tapestry and loom being guarded and hidden. Realigning a few of those threads might be a good thing. The stress and strife, war, all the other stuff humans worry about—what if you could change that? What if you, Winter Whitethorne, could create a new form for magick, a new cape? You could do a lot of good.”

  I stop. “What if I weave it the wrong way and everything gets worse?”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  There’s a knock, and I hear Autumn answer it. I float out to the living room, seeing Ava come through the door brushing snow off her coat and stomping her boots.

  “Got here as fast as I could. The blizzard has caused all kinds of problems at the airports here on the West Coast. This is why I live in Georgia.”

  “She’s freaking out,” Summer informs my friend.

  Her eyes widen as she sees my ghostly form. “Holy magick and then some,” she says quietly. “The cats were right.”

  “Cats?” Spring asks.

  Shade walks in, rubbing against my ankles two inches off the floor. Ava points at her. “The ghost hotline let me know. Shade informed Arthur and Lancelot and they told me you were passing between worlds. I didn’t really believe it. I mean, you know I don’t tune into the spirit world at all, if I can help it, but they were persistent. Guess this confirms it.”

  Arthur and Lancelot are Ava’s cats. “I’m afraid so,” I tell her. “And Ronan is still in an in-between dimension, with our mom and a whole lot of other souls that haven’t been laid to rest. We have a big job ahead of us.”

  She shakes her head. “Not sure I can help.”

  Still in denial. Or maybe just aversion.

  “I need you, Ava,” I tell her honestly. “I need everyone.”

  She removes her gloves, stashing them in her pockets, then hangs up her coat before turning to me. Reluctantly, she nods. “Then we better get started.”

  16

  Spring makes Ava some tea as I fill her in and Summer lights a fire. Dad and Autumn sit at the dining room table, hatching plans.

  Even as I finish up my story, I feel an inexplicable draw to go outside. I smell pine and cypress in my nose. A sensation tugs me toward the skeletal trees, like fingernails running up my spine to the back of my neck and propelling me forward.

  I resist and try to move toward the dining room. My ghostly form freezes. As if my head is on a string, it turns to stare out the window. Snow falls in the dark night. I hear the skitter of ghosts. I sense magick on the air. The urging inside me can’t be ignored.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell the others, and float onto the porch, my noncorporeal body light as air.

  Shade sits on the top step, tale flicking back and forth as she stares at the deep, dark forest. It’s close to my cabin, with a scattering of trees popping up around the building, too. Clouds hang dark and low, the sky black as can be.

  The trees jet upward, their limbs painted with ice. The skittering noise is slightly louder but blends with the sound of the falling snow. I see movement between the trunks, hear whisp
ers. I can’t decide whether they’re calling for help or warning me they’re coming to get me.

  Through the veil, the master’s world is superimposed over mine. He’s in there, along with the souls he’s claimed, and the shadows I see are a combination of both.

  Without the carpet of snow, the darkness would be a heavy blanket. The forest seems to glow from within. I see the veil between the two worlds ripple, like waves in a pond.

  A hand stretches forward, beckoning, the membrane growing thinner. I know that hand. I fly down the steps, toward it, without my feet actually touching them.

  “Ronan?”

  With the hand comes his face, the membrane distorting his features. I reach for him, as if my ghostly appendage can make that connection, but as soon as I touch the veil, he disappears.

  Frustrated, I yell, “No!”

  The word echoes through the landscape. The tug of the forest grows stronger, a spot in the middle of my chest like a magnet seeking steel. The worlds are so close, the veil so thin, I could probably pass right through it.

  The master is calling. Luring me in…

  I fight the sensation, anchoring my mind and heart to the people inside the cabin.

  From out of the forest—mine, not the master’s—five women appear. They’re flesh and blood, but they can’t speak.

  These are my ancestors, whom Autumn unintentionally raised from their graves at Samhain. These women in the Gwrtheryn line have been guarding the five points of the pentagram prison we have the demon trapped in.

  Now each appears before me, forming a row between me and the forest.

  They are stopping me from crossing.

  “How do I save them?” I ask. “How do I save Ronan?”

  There’s a flash of light, and instantly one by one each of them morphs into a wolf.

  Spring always says there’s a touch of fae blood in us that runs through our mother’s genes. I’ve never felt it, even in my shamanic journeys, and we don’t seem to have any on our father’s side. Seeing my grandmothers shift surprises me, and I feel there’s another message here.