DoubleDown V (24 page)

“We’re so glad you’ve decided to join us, Still Waters,” Boden said from the sofa, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

Karen bristled at this. “I haven’t
joined
you, and I told you to call me Karen.”

“We only use our witch names in the coven,” said a middle-aged woman with dyed-black hair who called herself Crimson Petal. She was sitting on the bed next to a wisp of a girl whose facial features were so similar that she could only be Crimson’s daughter.

“Well, I’m not part of the coven, am I?”

“Not yet,” Boden said.

“I didn’t say anything about signing up.”

“Then why are you here?” asked the wisp. Karen didn’t know her name, but she sensed her hostility.

“I came here for some answers.”

Boden leaned back, spreading his arms wide. “Any knowledge we possess is yours.”

“I want to know about Penelope.”

 “You mean Morgane Aster.”

“No, I mean Penelope.”

“If she’s not going to respect our traditions by using the witch names, I don’t know why we’re bothering with this,” said the wisp.

“Calm down, Willow,” Crimson said, patting the girl on the arm. “Still Waters is new to our world.”

Willow
...Karen wondered if she was named after the tree or the lesbian witch on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. Either way, it was the most normal name she’d heard so far.

Turning her attention to Boden, who seemed to be the leader, Karen said, “You kicked Penelope out of the coven because she wanted to bring her son back from the dead. Is that right?”

“When it became apparent that this was her goal and that she wanted the coven to help her achieve it, yes, we banished her. We tried to talk to her first, to get her to see that what she wanted broke all the natural laws, but she would not heed us.”

“Is it possible? I mean, can a person really be brought back from the dead?”

Boden looked uncomfortable, as if experiencing painful gas, and shifted on the sofa. “It would require a tremendous amount of power, but theoretically, yes, it could be done.”

“But Bobby has been dead since 1999. His body would be decomposed.”

“It isn’t the flesh she would be attempting to reanimate. She would have to install his soul into another body.”

“Another body? What would happen to the original soul of that body?”

“I really don’t see how any of this is relevant,” said Crimson.

“It’s relevant because I want to know, and after everything, I think I deserve some answers.”

“Agreed,” Boden said with a nod. “If Morgane
—
I’m sorry, Penelope—were to try to install her son into the body of someone living, it would displace the original soul. Evicting it, if you will.”

“Meaning that person would become a ghost instead of Bobby?”

“
Ghost
is a Halloween term, but the spirit would either linger or move on to whatever comes after this life.”

“So Penelope would in essence have to murder someone to bring back her son?”

“If she went that route. However, that way would be unpredictable. A soul being forcibly displaced from its body would react with desperation and make the process much more difficult. More than likely, she would try to put the soul into the body of someone recently deceased.”

Karen let this sink in for a moment, processing all this new information. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “So it’s possible that she could do it without actually harming anyone.”

“The body would have to be incredibly fresh, fresh enough so that the brain would not have started to deteriorate.”

“But it is possible?”

“It’s unnatural!” This from Avandale, sitting on Boden’s left.

“Penelope explained to me the difference between natural and unnatural death, and Bobby was hit by a car, a manmade object, so his death was unnatural.”

Crimson scoffed at this. “We’ve all heard Morgane’s rationalizations. I assure you, nothing in any of the tenants of Wicca support her views.”

“Does that matter? Can’t she have her own views, decide for herself what’s right and what’s wrong?”

“In some things, there is no leeway,” Boden said. “Penelope has proven herself unethical. Remember, she lied to you and manipulated you.”

“As did you all,” Karen pointed out, glancing at Jacoby, who remained silent on the beanbag.

“To be fair, Avandale and I tried to approach you directly, but you were...shall we say, less than receptive.”

Karen couldn’t deny that so she changed the subject. “Is that the only reason you banished her?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Willow snapped.

Karen ignored her. “So perhaps the reason Penelope felt she couldn’t be honest with me about her intentions was because of the way she was treated by this group.”

“You don’t know us,” Boden said, “but there is nothing but respect and love here. If you’ll just give us a chance, you’ll see that this is an environment in which you could truly grow.”

“Please, listen to them.”

Karen turned to find Jacoby kneeling next to her chair. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

“They can help you,” he said with a sad smile.

“You say ‘they’ like you’re not a part of it.”

He shrugged. “Well, I’ve done my part. I’ll be leaving soon.”

“Leaving? To where?”

“To nowhere. To nothing.”

With a frown, Karen looked around at the coven. “What is he talking about?”

Boden sighed heavily and his face screwed up in another of those gas-grimaces. “I guess if we want you to trust us, it’s time for full disclosure.”

“Just spit it out.”

“You see, Jacoby isn’t in the strictest sense...
real
.”

Karen felt as if the ceiling were caving in on her, and she fought her way through the rubble. “No. No way. Jacoby can’t be a ghost too. I’ve touched him.” And here she put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing, to illustrate her point. “I’ve seen him pick up things. Other people have seen and talked to him. He’s real.”

“No, I’m not,” Jacoby said, placing a hand over the one clutching his shoulder. “But I’m also not a ghost. You can’t be a ghost if you were never alive.”

“What are you talking about.”

Boden cleared his throat. “Jacoby is what is called a thought form.”

“Thought form...what is that?”

“Guess Morgane hasn’t gotten around to teaching you about that yet,” Willow said with a smirk.

Boden silenced her with a stern look. “A thought form is a kind of group magick. The coven joined our collective powers together and formed Jacoby, from our minds he was molded into flesh. He is corporeal but not permanent. Once his purpose has been served he will dissipate. At least until he is called again.”

Karen looked at the coven, staring into the face of each member, searching for any sign that this was a bizarre prank. Finally she looked at Jacoby, at his sweet and innocent face. “They’re serious?”

He nodded. “Yes. I’m here to help. That’s my sole reason for existing. Last time they called me, I was sent to Morgane just after her banishment to try to help her finish grieving for her son so she could move on. However, she recognized me for what I was and performed a spell that prevented me from appearing to her.”

“So you remember? I mean, when they call you, you don’t start over fresh but remember previous times they called you?”

“I remember everything.”

“And what about in between, after you...dissipate? Do you remember that?”

Jacoby shook his head. “I don’t exist during those periods, so there’s nothing to remember.”

“That sounds so cruel.”

“It’s not cruel,” Avandale said. “Jacoby isn’t a person, he’s an extension of the coven, a manifestation of our collective power. It’s not like living and dying—it’s more like being turned on and off.”

Karen smiled at Jacoby. Then she removed her hand from his shoulder and stood. “I think I’m going to go now.”

Boden seemed surprised by this. “But...so soon? Surely you have more questions.”

“No, I think I’ve received all the information I need. Learned quite a bit, in fact.”

“I told you all this was a waste of time,” Willow grumbled.

Crimson shushed her, then got off the bed and walked toward Karen. At first Karen thought she was going to bar her way from the apartment, but the woman merely said, “You know where our place is now. If you ever need us, don’t hesitate to drop in.”

Karen thought about shooting back something sarcastic and snide, but there was no need. She didn’t doubt that these people had good intentions, but in their own way they had been as dishonest and manipulative as Penelope. She glanced at Jacoby one last time. That odd, sweet boy...it was hard to wrap her brain around the fact that he wasn’t real, that he had been conjured from thin air just to bump into her on campus that day.

Finally Karen mumbled, “Thank you all for your time,” and left.

Karen had missed quite a few classes lately so she had a lot of work to make up. Since her scholarship was contingent on maintaining at least a 3.0 GPA, it was imperative that she not get too far behind. She had an English Composition paper to finish, a ton of reading for Psychology, Statistics homework, and some slides to go over for Art Appreciation.

She was sitting at her desk, surfing the web on her laptop.

But she was doing research. Research on the life—and more pertinent, the death—of one Robert Anthony Jersey.

It had taken her a while to find the information she needed, since she hadn’t known Bobby’s full name or where he’d died. She’d had to add “Penelope Young” into the mix and had finally hit pay dirt.

First she found the obituary with a grainy black-and-white photo. Poor quality, but she easily recognized Bobby. She was surprised by how hard this hit her. It had been several days since she’d found out that Bobby was dead, but seeing that obituary brought it home in a way that made it seem more real, more tangible. And the pain she felt was also very real and tangible.

Backing up a bit, she found an article about the accident itself. According to what she read, it happened pretty much as Bobby had described...with one difference. He said when the car hit him, he died instantly, but the article was dated a month and a half before the obituary and said that young Mr. Jersey was in a coma. So apparently he had lingered for a while before finally passing away.

With a sigh, Karen closed the internet browser and sat motionless for a moment. She glanced at her bed, then opened one of her desk drawers, pulling out the bracelet Penelope had given her. Placing it on her wrist, she stared at her lap and said, “Hello, Bobby.”

“Hi,” Bobby said quietly. She looked up and saw him standing beside her bed.

“Funny, even though I can’t see or communicate with you without this talisman, I could still sense that you were here. I even knew exactly where you were standing.”

“You have a lot of power.”

Karen nodded and turned her gaze back to her lap. “That’s why you and your mother want me.”

“That’s not...I mean, I hate that I lied to you. I didn’t want to, but Mom thought it was best, that you would never want to help otherwise. But I do care about you. I want you to know that, whether you help or not.”

Karen didn’t answer right away, and silence settled in the room like a third, uninvited person. Finally, after several moments, Karen took a deep breath and banished this unwanted visitor. “So...Wisconsin, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s where I was born. And where I died. Funny, when I was alive I never left the state, rarely even left my hometown, but since my death, I’ve been all over the country.”

“Because Penelope was looking for someone to help her...right?”

Bobby nodded. “She says she doesn’t have enough power to do the spell on her own. She’s traveled around for years, joining different covens, trying to find someone that would lend their power.”

“And I guess most of the covens she encountered responded the same way as the one here in Greenville.”

“More or less. Just before we moved here, we were living in New Orleans and there was a young man there named Pete Huston who offered assistance, but...let’s just say it didn’t work out.”

“But for some reason your mother thinks it will work out with me?”

“She says you have more power than any witch she has ever met, a lot of it yet untapped.”

“I suppose she wants to help me tap it. For altruistic reasons, of course.”

Bobby stepped near her...but not too near. He was being overly cautious—which Karen recognized as a sign of respect—and she appreciated that. “I meant what I said before. If you choose not to help, I won’t think any less of you. I’ll still be your friend.”

Karen smiled at him, but the effort exhausted her and the corners of her lips fell after only a few seconds. “So what’s it like?”