As of yet, no one had been able to capture it. And that was most likely because it was spiritual energy and, thus, difficult to trap. At that thought, Marty had called Henner and the two were basically chomping at the bit to get their ghost equipment to go after the entity. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but what I did know was that whoever or whatever this thing was, I didn’t like it wearing my face.

  All the while, thoughts of Roy continued to plague my mind as I reprimanded myself for not having told him about my feelings for Marty earlier. But, the damage was done, and I could only hope Roy would be able to forgive me at some point so we could be friends again. I did still care about him and I always would, and it pained me greatly to know I’d hurt him.

  At the sound of another knock on the door, Marty walked over to open it.

  “Howdy!” Henner Tayir stood on the opposite side, laden down with numerous ghost-hunting gadgets and gizmos. And standing just beside him was Betanya, Henner’s grandmother.

  Marty gave Betanya a hug and helped Henner unload his equipment into the foyer. I greeted them both and then found Betanya facing me intently.

  “Poppy, I’m sorry to barge in on you unexpectedly,” she started and before I could say it was no trouble and I was happy to see her, she continued, “but Henner mentioned something about a curse and a ghost on the loose who looks just like you?”

  “We’re not sure if it’s a ghost,” I answered.

  Betanya gave me an understanding smile. “How about you make some tea and the two of us sit down and you can tell me all about it?”

  So I did just that. Marty and Henner joined us in the living room and listened intently as I explained everything that had happened from the point at which I’d broken the mirror in my bedroom with the door until the moment Wanda and I had released the ghost from Katie’s mirror.

  “Why didn’t you call me, Poppy?” Betanya asked as soon as I’d finished my long explanation. “And Olga, too, for that matter?”

  “Well, I would have but Wanda—”

  Betanya immediately began nodding as if she knew what I was going to say before I said it.

  “She’s fretting about setting up the coven,” she finished for me. I nodded, and Betanya continued, shaking her head. “Wanda should know both Olga and I owe her… owe you both a great debt and we would have been happy to lend our help, covens notwithstanding.”

  “Well, I appreciate that.”

  “Now, you mentioned something about seeing a shadow behind you in the haunted mirror. Did you see that shadow when the mirror was still intact?”

  “Yes, I saw the shadow in the mirror, but Wanda actually saw the shadow in real life. She said it was standing right behind me.”

  “Hmm.”

  “The shadow looked like it was an outline of a woman.”

  “It was a woman,” Betanya answered, nodding. “But not just any woman.”

  “Okay?”

  “The shadow was a piece of your soul that got trapped in your mirror when you broke it with the door. The shadow is your own bad luck.”

  ***

  Once Betanya, Marty, and Henner left an hour or so later (the latter quite dejected to learn he’d brought all his ghost-hunting equipment for naught because this entity wasn’t a ghost) I picked up my cell phone and called Wanda.

  Yes, it was five in the morning, but I didn’t care. This was important and, apparently she must have been waiting for my call because she picked up on the first ring.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, except for the fact that we royally screwed up.”

  “We did?”

  “I had a special visitor this very early this morning and—”

  “I really don’t need to know about your sex life with Marty.”

  “Wanda, will you let me finish, please?”

  “Sorry.”

  “And there is no sex life with Marty, so you don’t have to worry about those details,” I continued as something else occurred to me. “Wait a second, weren’t you always begging me for details about my sex life with Roy?”

  “Well, yeah, but that was Roy. Marty? Not so much.”

  “Anyway…”

  “Anyway.”

  “My special visitor was Betanya, and she told me some information I think you might want to know.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a second or two. “Did she bring up the as of yet unformed coven?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Was she annoyed I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do yet?”

  “No, but she said she was annoyed we didn’t call her, owing to the state of the as-of-yet unformed coven. She said she and Olga are always there for us, whether or not there’s a coven in place.” I took a breath. “Now will you let me finish, please?”

  “Fine—goddess, you don’t have to be so grumpy about it.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Sometimes Wanda acted more like a teenager than Astrid did. “According to Betanya, ancient people believed a person’s reflection in a mirror was their soul trapped inside the glass.”

  “Okay, so what?”

  “So remember the shade you saw hanging around me? You said it looked like a woman.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So… Betanya said that woman, that shadow, was actually me—or, technically, a part of me.”

  “You! How could the shadow have been you when you’re you?”

  “Well, it’s like the shadow parts of me, that’s how Betanya explained it. The shade is like all the negative parts of Poppy in shadow form and that’s also the reason for all my bad luck.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah. When I broke my bedroom mirror, according to Betanya, the part of my soul that was trapped in my mirror, the bad part, was released and started causing my bad luck.” I took a breath. “The only reason you could see the shadow was owing to your witchly abilities, and the only place I could see it was in Katie’s mirror, because it was haunted.”

  “You couldn’t see the shadow in any other mirrors?”

  “No, because other mirrors don’t have deathly magic like Katie’s haunted mirror did.”

  “Okay, so in breaking your mirror, you released the bad part of yourself that ancient people believed was trapped inside the glass.”

  “Well, it was released… sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “If you recall, no one else could see the shadow. Just you and me. And I could only see it in Katie’s mirror. So it wasn’t really released into our plane of existence. As Betanya explained it, it was released in the in between.”

  “Okay, so, how did we royally screw up?”

  “Because, according to Betanya, we never should have broken Katie’s mirror before first dealing with the mirror I’d already broken.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because by dealing with my own broken mirror first—we would have essentially laid to rest the bad spirit of myself that was trapped within it. But, by instead breaking Katie’s mirror while my reflection was inside it, the entity was then sucked into Katie’s mirror. And then you performed your spell—”

  “Which released the pioneer woman’s spirit and… the bad luck spirit.”

  “Right, we actually released the shadow into our own plane of existence, which is why everyone can see it now all over town.”

  “And that’s why the shadow thingy looks like you?”

  “Right. Because it is me.”

  “So, how do we get rid of it or—send it wherever it’s supposed to go?”

  “Betanya said I need to break another mirror to trap the shadow me within that mirror and as soon as we do that, we go through with the ritual we were supposed to originally do… when we bury the glass under the light of the full moon. Speaking of, tonight is the full moon.”

  ***

  The big, round, yellow moon shone through the black treetops, silhouetting them. Ghostly light flooded the graveyard behind my house. It outlined every gravestone and turned every weed and blade of grass into an ominous phantom.

  “It’s time,” Wanda whispered. “Let’s go.”

  I picked up the paper shopping bag and looped the handles over my wrist. Then I followed Wanda as she headed out to the middle of the graveyard, winding between the slouching gravestones until she reached an ancient weeping willow tree on the western side. She ducked under its drooping branches.

  “This is the spot. We can do the ritual here.”

  I set the mirror I’d purchased at the thrift store earlier in the day against the trunk of the tree. Then, making sure my reflection was looking right back at me, I took the hammer Wanda handed me and broke the glass. It shattered right down the middle.

  Then, taking a large slat of wood from my bag, I laid it on the ground and adjusted its position until it was as level as possible. Wanda helped me scoop out a hollow in the middle to form a shallow depression. Then I donned a pair of heavy leather work gloves and a dustpan, and a big sheaf of newspaper. Now came the tedious part.

  Picking out all the pieces of glass from inside the broken mirror, I dumped them into the hollow of the wood. Then I reached inside the paper bag and pulled out a small bag containing the shards from the original mirror I’d broken, the one from my bedroom. Mixing in a few pieces from Katie’s mirror, I poured the broken glass into the wooden hollow. Then, grabbing my hammer, I pounded all the glass to a fine powder, then swept everything into the newspaper. In the end, I had a large pile of powdered glass.

  Then I walked under the weeping willow branches and found Wanda leaning on her shovel. She wiped sweat off her brow and nodded to the hole she’d dug near the tree’s roots. “That should be deep enough.” The hole was maybe two feet deep.

  With the moonlight illuminating the way, I dumped the glass into the hole and then the two of us stood back to stare at it.

  According to Betanya’s directions, we were meant to bury the pile of glass and Wanda was supposed to weave a spell around the broken glass and that would be the end of it—such was supposed to break the spell. I glanced over my shoulder toward the moonlight. “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “Then you’re stuck with seven years of bad luck.”

  Taking a deep breath, I took the shovel from Wanda and covered the lump of glass with dirt. Once the hole was completely filled in, I tapped it a few times.

  Then Wanda gave me a quick nod and, holding up her hands, she inhaled deeply. She threw her head back and, almost as if in response, a sudden wind whipped up, trailing her long black tresses out behind her. She closed her eyes and her lips began moving.

  “Take my hands,” she whispered.

  I did as I was instructed and closed my own eyes as I could feel her power thrumming through me.

  “Repeat after me: shadow sister, part of me.” I repeated the words. “I ban you from existing as your own entity. From this moment onward, we share the same destiny. As I will it, so mote it be.”

  When I finished repeating the words, Wanda dropped my hands, and I opened my eyes. Then I looked over at her and shrugged. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Silence descended over the graveyard as a soft breeze rustled the weeping willow branches. The full moon changed from yellow to white as it rose higher in the sky. As we watched it, a soft flow of snow began to fall down from the heavens above.

  When I’d first moved to Haven Hollow, I dreaded looking at this view because the nearby graveyard creeped me out so much. In only a year, however, this graveyard had become familiar to me, comforting even. And now I was out here performing a magic ritual with a witch—something I never would have even thought possible before.

  Haven Hollow had grown on me. It had also changed me and for the better.

  The wind whispered in the branches above us. It sounded like a person was breathing out a long, heavy sigh before falling fast asleep in a comfortable bed. That sound filled the graveyard with a sense of peace that washed over me with unexplained happiness. And it was at that moment that I thought of the dark-haired man in the dark suit. I wondered if he was aware of what I was doing right now and if he was pleased. Hopefully Wanda and I had just solved the issue of the shadow.

  Even as I thought the words, I could feel the truth in them—we had solved the problem. Everything was all right now. I could feel the truth of that statement in the breeze that ruffled the trees and my hair and in the sound of the snow crunching underfoot.

  Wanda grabbed her shovel. “It’s done. Let’s pack up and go home.”

  She shoveled some dirt into the hole and stamped it down with her boot. I put my gloves, hammer, and other accessories into the bag.

  “Do you want to come in for a nightcap or something? It isn’t that late,” I said.

  “I definitely will,” Wanda replied. “I need a drink after that.”

  “You and me both.”

  We were quiet as we walked the rest of the distance up the hill towards my house.

  “Now that your curse is broken, do you want to get Finn and bring him home, or do you want him to sleep at my house one more night?”

  “Was he asleep when you left?”

  Wanda nodded.

  “Let’s not wake him then.”

  When we walked into the house, Wanda immediately started for the kitchen. She was much better with alcohol than I was, so I had no argument with that.

  “Looks like you’ve got rum. What chasers?”

  “There’s some diet coke in the fridge,” I answered.

  “Ugh, disgusting. You realize diet drinks are worse for you than non diet ones?”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” I said and waved an unconcerned hand her way. She frowned at me as I took out the stool from the kitchen counter and sat down.

  Wanda was a few seconds more with our drinks and then she handed one to me as she walked the other one around the bar and took a seat beside me. We turned to face each other as she held out her drink and I did the same.

  “Here’s to freedom from all things that go bump in the night,” she said.

  “Amen to that,” I agreed.

  We clinked our glasses and drank the toast.

  “So… about your sex life with Marty,” Wanda started.

  Epilogue

  The day of Astrid’s surprise seventeenth birthday party came with clear skies, even though there was still a carpet of snow draping everything. Wanda had opted to have the birthday party at one of Lorcan’s numerous rental properties since the party was a surprise.

  So the lot of us stood inside the garage, waiting for Wanda to drive up in her Escalade and hit the garage door opener so we could all yell out, “surprise!” Meanwhile, Lorcan was supposed to be following her in Astrid’s brand new Ford Explorer.

  The ‘lot of us’ equated to Finn and me, the Stompers, Darla and Libby, Louisa Rutledge and her many many children, Fifi and Roy (who refused to so much as even look at me), Marty, Henner and RJ, and Betanya and Olga.

  At the sound of tires in the driveway, a second later the garage door started opening and then we found ourselves facing Lorcan, who was sitting behind a brand new white Porsche 911. Pulling up right behind him was Wanda in her Escalade.

  And when she stepped down from the SUV, she didn’t look happy.

  “Dammit, Lorcan, what the spell is that?” she demanded as she threw her door shut and Lorcan stepped out of the driver’s side of the Porsche.

  Once Astrid came into view, Louisa tentatively called out: “Happy…”

  And then we all filled in with “Birthday!”

  Meanwhile, Wanda threw her hands on her hips and walked right up to her would-be boyfriend and looked like she was ready to sock him one.

  “I thought we agreed on the Ford Explorer!” Then she motioned to the Porsche. “And that is most decidedly NOT a Ford Explorer!”

  “Dearest,” Lorcan started, as he held his hands up. “I can explain.”

  “Wait,” Astrid said as she looked from the white Porsche topped with a massive red bow, to Lorcan and then to Wanda. “Is that… for me?”

  “Explain!” Wanda told Lorcan.

  “Well, I do so enjoy driving my own lovely Porsche that I could not gift our dearest Astrid with anything but the best.”

  “So you went out and bought a sixteen-year-old a Porsche?” Wanda demanded.

  “I’m actually seventeen,” Astrid answered. Then she looked between them again. “Is this… is it really for me?”

  “Happy Birthday?” Lorcan said with a shrug at Wanda as Astrid’s eyes went wide and she threw her arms around him.

  “Oh, thank you, Lorcan!”

  Everyone clapped then, even if they also gave each other expressions of complete and total shock.

  Wanda walked past Lorcan and Astrid and paused when she reached Finn and me.

  “I need a shot of whatever—on the double.”

  “Did Lorcan really just give Astrid a Porsche?” Finn asked.

  “You bet your ass, kid,” Wanda answered, shaking her head. “And he’s going to go right back to that dealership tomorrow so he can return it,” she continued as she looked at me. “My seventeen-year-old cousin doesn’t get to drive a better car than I do!”

  The End

  ~~~~~

  Return to Haven Hollow in:

  Art Deco Apparitions

  ~~~~~

  Did you know that all the Remarkable Remedies stories are based on superstitions, some of which still exist today?

  If you’d like to learn more about the superstitions regarding candles burning themselves out during rituals, then turn the page!

  ~~~~~

  Return to the Table of Contents

  Remarkable Remedies: The Superstitions Behind The Stories

  We hope you enjoyed The Broken Mirror novella!

  Did you know that all the Remarkable Remedies stories are based on superstitions, some of which still exist today?

  If you’d like to learn more about the superstitions regarding breaking mirrors and bad luck, then read on!

  Broken Mirrors and Bad Luck