“Mischief Seeds?” Quinn says, not for the first time since she uttered the words.
“I was in sixth grade. I thought it sounded cool.” Harvest sits back in her chair and looks at the ocean in front of them. The sea breeze whips her hair around her face, and she tucks it behind her ears. They are on the first ferry out of Ilton, having spent the night at her family home.
Dinner had been surprisingly calming. Quinn somehow managed to charm Aunt Bea, who actually blushed when he complimented her apple pie, even though he couldn’t eat any of it. She’s not sure where her aunt rustled up a glass of blood for him either, but she wonders if they have one less chicken now.
Francine had taken a shine to him almost immediately, whispering to Harvest that she should bring him back for Christmas.
Her dad was equally impressed, but only after Quinn mentioned something favorable about the wine, which prompted an entire conversation about Theodore’s wine-making endeavors. Quinn even requested a tour of Theodore’s set-up, and they disappeared to the garage for an hour (which made Harvest so nervous she briefly thought about casting an amplify spell, so she could hear what they were talking about).
When Aunt Trixie arrived home, she pulled Harvest and Quinn away to discuss their progress on the case. They sat huddled in the library while Quinn talked about Hazel and Amy, and their connection to each other. Harvest knows that Quinn isn’t seriously considering Hazel as a suspect, but she could tell Aunt Trixie is worried about Hazel’s involvement.
If it came down to it, would Harvest be able to arrest her sister? She hopes she doesn’t have a chance to find out.
At one point, Quinn mentioned that Roderick was released on bail. Harvest stiffened at the news, caught between annoyance and fear. Quinn reached out to squeeze Harvest’s knee in support, a movement that Aunt Trixie noted with barely contained interest.
When Quinn began to talk about Locke and Ozias, Harvest got the sense that he was leaving something out, and when she commented that they were still looking for the boyfriend, she couldn’t help but wonder at his sudden disinterest.
Then again, Quinn could change his entire persona just by altering the tilt of his posture. Maybe her imagination was getting away from her.
She was probably just tired.
She is haunted, after all.
“As I said last night,” Harvest continues, “It was a cherry pit, just like the one Burrows found. I used a needle from my aunt’s sewing kit and carved an alchemical symbol on it. The symbol wasn’t real—I cobbled it together from various ones I found in the library.”
It took her most of the night to find the book, a bright pink spiral-bound notebook that said “Harvest Rosenbloom’s Book of Shadows - Keep Out.” She hastily flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for.
The spell had been meticulously researched, as meticulous as a twelve-year-old could be, that is. It was a mash-up of symbols from various eras and cultures and even a few random words of Latin that amounted to gibberish (or something lewd if Quinn’s smirk was anything to go by). Of course, since she was twelve years old, her spell was also sandwiched in between lyrics from a Spice Girls song and a doodle of a boy she had a crush on at the time.
To add to the effect, she had even written out her name with the crush’s surname and encased the whole thing in a heart. She quickly ripped out the pages she needed and slipped the notebook back onto the shelf before Quinn could question her about her wish to one day be “Harvest Honeysweet.”
“And what was it supposed to do again?” he asks.
“Give me magic powers,” she says with a smirk.
“Magic powers that you didn’t already have?”
“Yes. I wanted to be like Aunt Bea. Fae magic is different from most other forms of mischief. It’s not tied to nature. Not like witch magic is, which tends to be more elemental. Didn’t you notice that our library was a little bigger than it should be? That our house sits a little too close to the edge of the cliff? That’s fae magic.”
“What about the overgrown jungle?”
“That’s witch magic. My father’s, to be exact. I wanted to do what Aunt Bea could do. Defy the laws of physics and make my closet bigger on the inside. Turn leaves into actual money. Grow wings…”
“Isn’t that what illusions do?”
“An illusion doesn’t truly change anything. Fae magic fundamentally alters something so that it is entirely different or new.”
“I take it the seed didn’t work?”
“Nope. Gave me a stomach ache though, and I got to skip school, so that was something, at least.”
He frowns. “And Hazel knew about your little experiment?”
“Of course. We shared everything then.” Her voice is wistful, and she blinks as she looks out at the beach front that is looming closer. The ferry will dock in a few minutes.
When she awoke this morning, she was anxious to get started again—to unlink Amy and solve her murder—but now it feels like something is slipping out of her grasp. She’s being forced to wake up from a dream too early. She feels homesick and wonders if the feeling is hers or Amy’s. Both, probably.
Quinn’s shoulder is pressed against hers, and when she looks at him, his eyes are trained on her, searching for something. It’s a repeat of yesterday, standing in the doorway of her hotel room with her heart beating against her rib cage and his lips so close to hers.
He opens his mouth to say something, or maybe give her a smile or a smirk.
Perhaps his lips will find their way to her own.
She’s not sure which she prefers.
But the ferry horn blows, announcing their imminent arrival at Valkaria Bay Boardwalk, and whatever he had been about to say or do dies on his lips. When he does open his mouth again, it is with a chuckle as he says, “You wanted wings?”
----------------------------------------
The address Aunt Bea gave them is on the outskirts of downtown, at the northernmost tip of Valkaria, where high rises give way to refurbished brick warehouses and blocks of bungalows-turned-storefronts.
Harvest isn’t sure what to expect—they have nothing but an address and a name—but what they find is still somewhat of a surprise. Sandwiched between a seemingly defunct jazz club and a donut shop is a hand-painted sign proclaiming their destination to be that of a psychic.
The air smells like exhaust and batter in hot oil. Harvest stares up at the sign with three layers of paint, specters of businesses past. She looks down at the note and then back up at the storefront.
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Quinn stands next to her, shielding his eyes from the sun with a frown as he looks up at the sign. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just that these are almost always a scam. Why would Aunt Bea send us here?”
“Unless it’s not a scam.” He looks over her shoulder at the note again. “And Frank is a real psychic.”
“Maybe.” She moves closer to look at the window display.
It’s dusty and dim inside. A tarot deck is splayed on a velvet tray next to a precariously stacked selection of occult titles that are almost certainly fake. Jethro’s Directory of Demons. Passport Handbook for Death. Understanding the Five Love Languages of Ghosts. There is a sign pasted against the glass: Get 20% off a tarot reading with every exorcism! The fine print says: Ghosts or poltergeists only! Does not apply to demonic possessions.
She swallows, nausea rising behind her sternum and reminding her why she is here. When Quinn pushes open the door, a small bell jingles, and Harvest looks up, noticing the satchel of salt above them. She spots a symbol—a circle bisected with a line—carved into the door frame, too.
Perhaps Aunt Bea is right. But the person who greets them isn’t Frank, and there is something about the woman behind the counter that makes Harvest feel cold and slightly worried as if there is a half-remembered task at the back of her thoughts.
“Welcome to Valkyrie Psychic Emporium!” She greets them with a smile. “My name is Penelope. How can I help you?” Penelope’s silk dress looks out of place in the small, dim store and would be far more appropriate at a dance club or a date night. There is a splash of something across the front, a stain from a dropped drink.
“Hello. We were looking for Frank,” says Harvest, making her way toward the sales counter on the far side of the room, Quinn trailing after her.
The floors creak comfortingly as they pass by a large circular table overflowing with occult accouterments. Bowls of dried herbs and crystals. Baskets of candles and incense in various colors and sizes. Copper spoons displayed inside tiny pewter cauldrons. Harvest absentmindedly lets her fingers trail against a chunk of amethyst.
Books line the walls, though a few of the titles look leather-bound and far older than Harvest would expect. In all, the room is a contrast of new and old, surprisingly normal, and yet there is a sense of heaviness to the objects; they hold mischief in their spines and cores.
“Frank is in a meeting.” Penelope purses her lips, head tilted to the side. “Perhaps it is something I can help you with?”
“Maybe.” Harvest hands the piece of paper to Penelope. “My aunt gave me this.”
Penelope nods smugly, reading the prescription from Dr. Rosenbloom. “I thought I heard some chains rattling. As a resident of the Afterlife myself, I have quite an ear for such things. Got yourself haunted, didn’t you?”
Yes, that’s what’s off about her, Harvest realizes. Penelope’s slip dress with spaghetti straps is out-of-date. Her long hair is pulled back into a bun with a few spiky strands sticking out, and her strappy heels, coupled with a choker necklace, are reminiscent of a decade long since past. Penelope’s skin is so pale, it is almost translucent. She seems half-here, touching and interacting with the world, and yet removed in an odd way, like a letter in a word just slightly out of order.
“Is that something Frank can help with?” asks Harvest.
Penelope nods again, adding a carefree wave of her perfectly manicured hand. “Oh, yeah, Frank handles cases like this almost daily. Follow me.”
They do as told, and Penelope leads them around the sales counter and through a heavy red curtain. When the curtain falls back into place, they are enveloped in a dense silence. The air is warm despite the darkness, a shimmer of mischief meant to keep people out—or to keep something in.
The hallway they are greeted with is far longer than it should be, considering the size of the building. It twists and turns and winds back into itself, forever leading them downward. At first, the walls are a simple white, then they are covered in damask wallpaper and tapestries. Penelope pauses at one of the tapestries and reaches out to touch the woven visage of a young man, with dark curly hair and pouting lips, staring out at the view like a subject in a Baroque painting.
She sighs sadly and moves on.
Soon, the walls are smooth wood, connecting seamlessly to the floor. A thick rug hides their footsteps. Harvest wonders if this is fae magic, but when she lets her fingers trail against the wood grain of the walls, the spark she feels is colder than she would expect.
“It’s a pocket,” says Penelope when Harvest comments on the coldness. “Not quite Death, not quite Life. Something in between.”
“Kind of like you,” Harvest teases, bumping Quinn’s elbow with her own.
He shrugs as if to say You’re not wrong.
They pass several doors with various styles of entryways—simple wooden slats, intricate stained glass, rusty metal—until they come to a pebbled glass doorway with gold lettering.
Souls Town Investigative Services
Frankie Hart, Detective
Penelope Church, Detective and Stylist
Penelope knocks, two short raps of her knuckles, and then pokes her head inside. “Got a haunting for you, Frank.”
There is a muffled conversation, and then Penelope opens the door wider to let Frank’s previous client through. Quinn and Harvest step to the side to allow the eight-foot troll to duck out of the room.
Penelope greets him with a hand on his arm and a concerned smile. “Hey, Oscar. Cat missing again? Let’s get you some tea.” Penelope escorts Oscar down the hall, waving goodbye to Harvest and Quinn.
Frank, it turns out, is not the middle-aged, paunchy man that Harvest had been imagining. Frank is actually a young girl, a little younger than Penelope, with large round glasses and a short brown bob. She’s wearing an oversized army green jacket, patched and raggedy.
“Got a reference?” she asks gruffly. She’s sitting behind a large desk squeezed into a room that is much too small for it.
Harvest enters the office to hand Frank the prescription Frank inspects it carefully, holding it up to the bare light bulb hanging in the middle of the room, looking for an invisible watermark. “You’re Bea’s…?”
“Niece,” supplies Harvest.
Frank nods approvingly. “Well, I owe Bea a favor. Tell her this makes us even.”
Frank stuffs the paper in the inside pocket of her jacket and then motions for them to sit down. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
Frank takes notes as Harvest explains what brought her here, nodding and humming. In the end, Frank leans back with a knowing smile, agreeing that Aunt Bea had the right idea. “Yes, I can definitely help with that.”
----------------------------------------
“Explain this to me again,” says Quinn. It’s not that he doesn’t understand, but that he wants to know how to explain to Commissioner Rosenbloom why her niece walked through a door and never came out again. Frank keeps insisting that this won’t happen but there is something in her tone that makes Quinn suspicious. “And it’s perfectly safe?”
Frank shrugs. “Nothing is perfectly safe. Life isn’t perfectly safe. How can you expect Death to be anything close to safe?”
They are in the room next to Frank’s office. The doorway was a rough-hewn plank of ash wood, and when they passed through, they could see why such a door was chosen: the room holds a forest of ash trees, stretching up into a sky of nothingness. The air is eerily silent and crisp.
“It doesn’t matter,” says Harvest. She wears a long overcoat in a drab olive that highlights the dark circles under her eyes. Frank tells her that it’s cold where she’s going. “I need to do this.”
This is walking through a door into Death to find Amy and undo the chain that links them together. When Quinn asked for more details (how is the chain undone? Is there a key?), Frank had been annoyingly blasé about the whole thing, with a simple shrug as their go-to answer for almost all of Quinn’s questions.
“And it’s an actual chain?” he asks again.
“I mean, no. But it’s real enough. Why do you think her arm is so sore?”
“And you can do this? Open the door?”
“Yep.” Frank adjusts her glasses. “I’m a Reaper. Well, I used to be a Reaper. I’m retired now. But I still have a passport. She’ll be protected under my visa.”
“What could go wrong?” he asks.
“She could get stuck, I suppose. But I doubt that.” Frank looks at Harvest appraisingly. “If she’s got an ounce of the mischief her aunt has, nothing will keep her in Death if she doesn’t want to be there.”
“I’m coming with her,” he says, but Frank is shaking her head even before he finishes the sentence.
“You can’t. Not with those fangs. Death would spit you out as soon as you stepped over the threshold. The only reason you’ve gotten this close is because Penelope made sure the wards allow all souls to enter, regardless of their state of damnation.”
“It’ll be okay, Julian,” says Harvest softly. Quinn looks at her sharply. “I trust my aunt. She wouldn’t send us here if she thought it was dangerous.”
A muscle in Quinn’s jaw twitches. He doesn’t voice his approval, yet he doesn’t stop Frank when she walks up to a tree and knocks on the trunk. When the door appears, it is a simple yellow door that reminds Quinn of the Whitmore seaside cottage.
He regrets his approval of this plan immensely.
But, of course, now he can see the chain that links Harvest to Amy’s spirit, somewhere on the other side of Death. It’s a simple silver chain that ends in a thick manacle around Harvest’s wrist, the obvious source of the rash marking her delicately pale skin. Harvest looks even more exhausted, with splotchy, feverish cheeks and drooping shoulders.
“Well,” says Frank. “See you in a bit.”
Harvest bites her lip, her hand poised above the door handle. She looks at Quinn over her shoulder. “Wait for me.”
Quinn’s jaw muscle twitches again. His arms are folded across his chest, and his legs are spread wide as he stands in front of her. “If you die, I’m having Frank bring you back as a ghost so you can file your own paperwork.”