Freaking ghosts.
The ones still bound to the earth were usually confused, and they took way too much pleasure in doing the same to the living. Why couldn’t they just answer a question?
“Did you have something to do with the magic… issues?” I asked.
Samara laughed at me. “You’re supposed to be the most powerful witch in the world. Well, you were, anyway, and yet you think I had something to do with it? You really need to get it together, Kinsley.”
“What did you do to my aunt?” I demanded.
“Only what was asked of me,” Samara said. “The cookies are ready to go in.”
She vanished after that. When I looked down, I’d mixed the dough and dropped it into neat little rows on the baking sheet. The oven dinged to let me know it was preheated, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“You okay?” Meri asked as he sauntered into the kitchen.
“No thanks to you,” I said. “I guess until we get this magic thing fixed, any old ghost can just come sauntering into this house.”
“Maybe don’t summon them,” Meri said.
“I wasn’t summoning her. I wanted cookies,” I protested.
“You feeling all right?” Meri asked. “I find it hard to believe that it didn’t occur to you that baking her cookie recipe might summon her spirit. Especially after it did just that back at her house.”
“No,” I admitted. “I’m foggy and disoriented. I must be because I didn’t think these cookies were a summoning spell. I guess I just assumed that she appeared at her house because I was baking in her kitchen.”
“You going to put them in the oven?” he asked.
I was standing there holding the tray. “Yeah, I mean, she was already here and now she’s gone. Might as well get the cookies out of the deal.”
Cookies in the oven and timer set, I grabbed Samara’s grimoire and sat down at the kitchen table. Meri jumped up and joined me. He lay down on the table a couple of inches from the book, and I cracked it open.
The smell of dragon’s blood wafted off of the pages and filled the room around us. Whatever protection spell she’d cast on the book wasn’t enough to keep me out.
I flipped through the entire book, and while I found a bunch of spells, incantations, and cookie recipes… I didn’t find anything that correlated with the bags. “Who has a grimoire that has no spell bag recipes?” I asked.
“You don’t even have a grimoire,” Meri said.
“That’s true,” I said.
“And if you did, would you need to put spell bag recipes in there?” Meri asked.
“I mean, not really. Things mean things, so you toss them in a bag together. It’s pretty elementary, which is why I probably haven’t made a spell bag for personal use since I was a kid,” I said. “This was a bust.”
“Did you really think you were going to find something earth-shattering in there?” Meri asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hoped so.”
“You really thought some witch you barely knew was powerful enough to blight magic?” Meri asked with a snort. “You need coffee.”
“I’m doing the best that I can,” I said and got up to make some coffee because he was right.
“What’s this?” Meri asked.
“What’s what?” I returned.
“Well, come look,” he groused.
I walked back over to the table and bent over to get a closer look at what Meri was talking about. He had his paw next to something on the last page of the grimoire.
It was a page of definitions Samara had written out for some reason. But, at the bottom in the middle were a few lines of writing that were not part of her personal glossary.
Four of the lines were scratched out with black ink so thoroughly that there was no way I could read them. The last line was as clear as day.
Mercy Cullen.
It was a name, but that wasn’t the most interesting part. Next to Mercy’s name was a doodle, but it wasn’t just any little pictograph. Samara had drawn a skull.
Chapter Seven
My phone rang as I took the cookies out of the oven. It was my mom, so I flung one of my oven mitts off, narrowly missing Meri’s head, and answered.
“Mom? How’s everything going,” I said when I put the phone up to my ear.
“They want to put Lilith in a nursing home,” she said. “Can you even imagine?”
“No, I can’t,” I said. “She can come here and stay with me. Please don’t do that.”
“We’re not going to, sweetie. And, you’re not taking her in either. You’ve got a new baby, but I’m sure she’d love you so much for offering,” Mom said.
“Then what?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve been dealing with this social worker all morning. She insists that I give the nursing home a shot and was completely unrelenting. Your father ran her out of the room,” Mom said. “We’re going to take her home, Kinsley. She needs to be somewhere familiar.”
“How is that going to work?” I asked.
“I’m going to stay with her,” Mom said. “Until we figure out how to bring her back from whatever this is, I’ll stay with her. Your father can help, and so can the other Aunties. Amelda is at the house now moving some stuff into one of the many spare rooms, so we’ll have her too.”
“You going to be okay living with Amelda?” I asked.
“I’ll be fine,” Mom said, but she took a deep, shuddering breath. “Your father will be there most of the time, so he’ll keep her entertained.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get this figured out before it was time for her to come home,” I said.
“Kinsley, sweetie, nobody expected you to,” Mom said.
“I expected me to,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter now. I’ll meet you at her house and help you get her settled.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Mom said.
“I know that, but I want to. Plus, I think she’d like to see Laney,” I said. “Lilith
