Once I caught my breath, I darted forward, and snatched my son into my arms, hugging him tightly, probably tightly enough to hurt, but he didn’t complain, he just held me back.

  “Don’t you ever do that again.” Fear made my voice rough, harsher than I meant it to be. “I’m your mom. It’s my job to protect you, not yours to protect me. I mean it, Finn.”

  “I didn’t want him to hurt you,” he said in a soft voice.

  “It’s okay.” I stroked his hair back from his forehead, rocking us slightly to the side. And if I used that motion to get Finn a few more feet away from the sleeping Mr. Lannister, well, he didn’t seem to notice or if he did, he didn’t care.

  “Where’s Sophie?” I hadn’t seen the girl since Finn pulled her out of the classroom.

  Finn sniffed, wiping his forearm over his eyes. “I told her to hide in the maintenance closet. That I’d find her when it was safe and I’d explain everything.”

  “Finn,” I said carefully. “You know you can’t explain things to her.”

  He nodded, his eyes still red from crying. “I know. I just… didn’t know what else to say. I hate lying to her. But yeah, I know. I really am sorry, Mom.”

  “I know, buddy.”

  We were okay. Everything was going to be okay. We could fix it. That was all that mattered.

  The door to the classroom screeched open then, dragging against the linoleum, and I shoved Finn behind me, my hand going to my bag, while the quiet, hollow spot in my chest managed a few pitiful sparks in the face of a potential new threat.

  But instead of a threat, it was just Wanda.

  Her eyebrows slowly climbed up her forehead as she first looked at me and then Finn, then Mr. Lannister, and the amazing gilded mess the classroom had been turned into. Her eyes landed on me once more, where I stood in front of Finn, two random potion bottles held between my knuckles. Her gaze dropped to my chest, and a little wrinkle formed between her eyes.

  Slowly, she shook her head back and forth. “I can’t believe you started the party without me.”

  Relief made me giddy, a grin stretching my face. “Is Mr. Stillwater, okay?”

  “Who?” Wanda rolled her eyes. “Oh, the ex-statue in the front office? He’s fine. Confused as spell, but he’ll live.” She paused to breathe and when she spoke again, her voice was soft. “Are you and Finn okay?”

  “We’re fine,” I answered at the same time Finn said, “I’m fine, Aunty Wanda.”

  “Aunty Wanda?” I repeated as Wanda gave me a little smile and then waved Finn’s comment away with an unconcerned, manicured hand.

  “I might have told your son... at some point... that I wouldn’t have minded if... well, you know.”

  “No, actually I don’t.”

  She frowned at me. “Leave it to you to make me spit it out.”

  “You wouldn’t have minded if what?” I couldn’t help my own smile.

  “If I were your sister! There! Are you happy now?” And she even plopped her hands on her hips as she scowled at me.

  I walked over to her and threw my arms around her, with Finn quickly following suit. “Well, you’ll always be a sister to me, Wanda.”

  “And an aunty to me,” Finn added.

  “You both better stop it or you’re going to make my mascara run and then I’ll have no choice but to hex you both.”

  Then Wanda turned to face the gold disaster behind us. She gestured to the teacher sprawled on the floor.

  “What’s the story with him?”

  “He’s our accidental Midas,” I answered on a shrug. “His hands are super-duper cursed, so be careful. I was thinking of dunking them in some Uncrossing Oil before he touches anything else? Do you think that would help?”

  Wanda pursed her lips as she took a few more steps into the room to peer down at Mr. Lannister. “It couldn’t hurt. Probably.”

  She glanced at me then, her eyes shifting to Finn. Something like understanding rippled over her face, so of course, she immediately sighed and rolled her eyes like everything in the world was an imposition. “Well, you might as well give the Uncrossing Oil to me and go check on Mr. Darcy.”

  There were times that Wanda did things that reminded me why she was my BFF.

  I took Finn’s hand, and we headed for the classroom door.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Alright, fam,” Kenzie Chase whispered into the camera as she slid through the dilapidated door of an old and falling apart farmhouse.

  The building’s white paint was peeling so badly, it looked like a reptile shedding its skin, and the wood underneath didn’t look much better.

  “Everyone in this town is really tight-lipped,” the menace continued. “They definitely don’t like outsiders poking around. But you know Kenzie Chase doesn’t give up, and I’ve finally managed to track down the source of the apparent gold-transformations this town has been seeing.”

  The door creaked ominously behind her as she slid it shut, and the feed bobbled a little as she switched from her phone to what looked like a head mounted night-vision camera, if the weird green tinge washing over everything was anything to go by.

  The room she walked into looked like maybe once upon a time it had been a kitchen. Time, and the demolition skills of racoons, birds, foliage, rats, and squirrels had left the place a rust streaked, sagging mess. The counter where the sink had once been had caved in entirely. The floors were sagging, and there were paler outlines in the general grime where the refrigerator and stove used to be.

  I turned to Henner, who was sitting in the conference chair of Hallowed Homes next to me, happily munching on a bag of kettle corn he’d brought with him. “Where is this place?”

  He tossed a kernel and caught it with his mouth, chewing quickly. “It’s this old, abandoned place way out at the end of Mill Street. Marty, R.J. and I used to go out there to test our equipment, but there’s nothing paranormal there. A few angry raccoons maybe, but it’s safe enough structurally.”

  “Really? It doesn’t look very safe,” I responded as I frowned and tried to look at the place with a new set of eyes but failed.

  “Yeah, we’ve tugged on the roof and it’s not coming down any time soon,” Henner answered.

  He chewed another bite, and offered me a handful from the bag, but I turned him down. My stomach was still twisted in knots after everything I’d gone through over the last couple of days. Mr. Lannister’s curse had been successfully removed, and all the gold objects scattered around the town had finally been hunted down and returned to their previous condition (courtesy of Wanda and the coven), but no one had ever found any of the missing gold jewelry or antiques, so Taliyah had been pretty annoyed that she still had a bunch of theft reports that weren’t likely to be solved any time soon.

  Finn was also grounded, and we’d be revisiting the whole ‘do not expose mundanes to magic’ talk that we’d had as soon as he was old enough to talk. He still felt terrible about the whole situation, so he hadn’t protested his punishment at all. I was just glad no one had gotten permanently hurt.

  Wanda and the coven had done an excellent job of removing Sophie, Mr. Stillwater, and Mr. Lannister’s memories of the event, so at least Finn’s friend wasn’t flinching at every quick movement or raised voice. And Mr. Lannister had been admitted to the closest hospital to be treated for malnutrition and dehydration, under the guise of a terrible fever that had hit him for a few days. He was responding well, and there weren’t any lingering affects expected, which was a huge relief.

  But even with all the gold madness resolved and finally put to bed, there was still one, big, annoying loose end to tie up. Just because things had stopped blatantly turning to gold, and none of her videos seemed to make it to her online platforms (courtesy of Henner), Kenzie Chase just seemed more determined to get to the bottom of the ‘secret of Haven Hollow’, which wasn’t ideal for a whole lot of reasons.

  The council had come together to debate exactly what should be done about her, but with someone so completely online, who had documented her arrival here, and posted a few clips online before Henner had removed them, just erasing her memory and sending her on her way wasn’t likely to work.

  So, Henner had proposed something else.

  The council had met again at Hallowed Homes, in the big conference room, and Henner had set up his laptop and projected the screen so we could all see the ‘show’, as he called it.

  I still wasn’t so convinced about any of it. Kenzie might not have powers, or anything like that, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. The whole ordeal had pointed out to me exactly how thin the veil of safety covering this town really was, and Kenzie’s perpetually online presence made me nervous.

  I glanced at Henner, who looked totally relaxed in his skeleton hoody, black cargo shorts, black beret and his army boots kicked up onto an empty chair as he snacked. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Oh, yeah. Don’t worry. The guys were out there before we ‘tipped her off’.”

  “They were out there doing what?” Roy asked.

  Henner shrugged. “Oh, you know,” chomp, chomp, “just making the place look a bit more run down, and basically setting the stage for a haunting. And, hey, we have to take our fun where we can, right?”

  A glance around the table revealed that none of the other council members seemed concerned about what was unfolding before us on the screen and maybe I should have taken my cue from them. Taliyah just looked long suffering. Roy and Fifi were cozied up together like it was a movie date, and Angelo and Wanda looked like they were actively enjoying the showing, making little comments towards the screen.

  I let out a breath and tried to shake off the unease. Henner was a good man. Kind, and patient. He had to be, to be dating Darla. My ex-ghost involuntary roommate was nice enough, but she was a lot to deal with 24-7. Henner seemed to enjoy their relationship though, so I was just glad they were happy. The point was, no matter how annoyed he might have gotten with constantly having to thwart Kenzie’s more risky videos, Henner would never let her get hurt. Whatever he and his ghost-busting crew had come up with, Kenzie would be safe. And I knew Henner well enough to know that.

  My nerves were probably just a holdover from whatever had happened that day in Principal Stillwater’s office, when that strange magic had welled up inside me and spilled over. Wanda had taken a look at me later, once everything had calmed down. I’d tried not to get anxious over the baffled expression that had crossed her face before she’d hidden it under a mask of indifference.

  “Well, whatever it was, you seem to have worn it out for now, at least,” she’d said with a shrug.

  The space in my chest had been quiet once I broke the gold curse, but not empty and since then, it had been rebuilding itself. I could feel it.

  “So, you think it will come back?” I’d asked Wanda, while twisting the edges of my sleeves repeatedly until she’d grabbed my hands and made me stop.

  “Leave your poor clothes out of this, they have enough trouble as it is.” Then she’d sighed. “The power isn’t ‘gone’ now, so it isn’t about it coming back. It’s already there so it can’t come back.”

  “So?”

  “So, it’s just tired. Spent. When it has some time to recover, we’ll run some more tests.”

  “Hmm.”

  “It’s fine,” she’d said, waving her hand at me as if it really wasn’t a big deal. “Power is never a bad thing.”

  When I hadn’t looked convinced, she’d screwed up her face like she was cleaning up someone else’s vomit, and then patted me on the back. “There, there.”

  Wanda’s complete lack of comforting instincts had made me laugh, at least, and some of the worry had faded. Faded, sure, but it was far from gone. I didn’t understand this newfound power and it made me nervous, even if I tried to remind myself that what Wanda had said was true—more power was better than less power. And, really, in this insecure town, I probably needed all the magical mojo I could get.

  On the screen, Kenzie took another few steps across the ominously creaking floor. The camera swept left and then right, taking in the room. The light glinted off the broken window where the sink used to be and threw back a glare.

  Her voice was low when she spoke, like she was trying to sound spooky. “An old woman told me that a witch used to live in this house. A witch with a spindle made out of gold.”

  I glanced between Wanda and Henner, frowning. “A witch?”

  Henner tossed himself another piece of kettle corn and grinned, chewing. “The last people to actually live there were an insurance salesman and his family, back in the 1950s. But they pulled up stakes and moved when they realized Haven Hollow wasn’t the best spot for his business.”

  “Okay, so where did the witch bit come in?” I asked.

  By this point, I was fairly sure Angelo was asleep. At least, his eyes were closed.

  Wanda tossed back her head and laughed. “You should’ve seen Betanya’s face when she was feeding this ditz that line about the witch. She looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. It was hilarious.”

  I couldn’t believe they’d actually gotten Betanya to play along, but then, Henner was her only grandchild, so that might have had something to do with it. Or probably all to do with it.

  “The witch could use her spindle to weave things into gold,” Kenzie continued. “Things like cloth and thread and chains—really anything she pleased.”

  “Wait.” Fifi blinked, pausing with her hand in the bag of candy corns she and Roy were sharing. “Isn’t that the story of Rumpelstiltskin?”

  Henner shrugged, unconcerned. “We’re ghostbusters, not storytellers.”

  Kenzie kept moving forward, carefully skirting the edges of the kitchen, away from some of the spots where the floor sagged, and in one spot, I noticed a hole in the rotting boards. And Henner had said this place was safe? I just hoped Kenzie didn’t fall through and break her leg, or something worse.

  Henner caught my concerned look. “R.J. got a little overly enthusiastic with the sledgehammer, and his foot went through the floor.”

  “Oh my God,” I started, eyes going wide.

  “Nah, don’t worry about it,” Henner answered, shaking his head. “He was just fine. Marty and I pulled him out. Once we stopped laughing, I mean.”

  Taliyah pinched the bridge of her nose like she had a headache.

  The door to the living room was hanging crooked on its hinges, and it took Kenzie a couple tries to get it open. Rusted metal squealed as she finally managed to wrestle the door back. “They say that the witch became obsessed with gold, spinning day and night, and turning everything around her into metal. Even her food. Even her water well. Until she slowly starved to death.” Then she paused as she frowned. “Though how you’d spin food into gold or a water well doesn’t exactly make sense.” But she shrugged and the question was forgotten, at least for now.

  “Good question,” Roy grumbled as he looked at Henner.

  “Hey, I’m just the messenger,” Henner shrugged.

  I turned back to the camera footage and watched as Kenzie clearly attempted to play things up, to appeal to her audience’s ghoulish leanings, but that comment about turning food and water into gold hit a little too close to home. If things had dragged out any longer, if Mr. Lannister hadn’t figured out how to get a few sips of water through a golden straw, that very well could have been his fate.

  “And some say,” Kenzie whispered, the squealing of the door hinges an annoying backdrop. “That her ghost—the ghost of the witch—still lingers here. Still guarding her precious spindle.”

  She swept the room with her night vision camera, passing over old, moth-eaten rugs, and a couch that sagged so far in the middle that it was resting on the ground, springs and moth-nibbled foam poking out of it. Over on the far side of the room, by the old, fieldstone fireplace, was a rocking chair that glinted gold in the dark, with a drop spindle resting on the seat.

  Kenzie hurried forward, but I frowned, squinting at the lower corner of the screen. “Wait, is that...?”

  Henner grinned like a loon, not looking away.

  As Kenzie came closer, the dripping lines of gold got more and more obvious. Her foot hit a pile of something that clattered and rolled across the floor, and she stumbled, bending forward to give her viewers a clear shot of the obviously badly painted faux gold cover on the old chair and spindle.

  She grabbed one of the things she’d tripped on, holding it up to the light to reveal one of a dozen cans of gold spray paint.

  “What the hell? Seriously,” she seethed under her breath, and then she threw the empty can into the cold fireplace. There was a click that echoed through the old farmhouse, and something white and billowing dropped from the ceiling, sending Kenzie shrieking and scrabbling backwards. The camera bounced and jostled dizzyingly as she bolted across the room, her heavy breathing filling the air. Finally, she stopped, and spun to press her back to the wall in order to see what had almost fallen on her.

  A ghost made out of a bedsheet and some fishing twine, its face of three circles drawn in what looked like black sharpy, dangled from the ceiling, slowly rocking and turning midair where it hung. The guys must have hid it in the rafters, ready to drop when someone messed with the fireplace.

  I clasped a hand over my mouth, trying not to laugh. “You didn’t.”

  Henner grinned, unrepentant. “Oh, we did.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Kenzie whisper-shrieked. “When I find out who did this, I’m going to–”

  The rest of her threat was cut off by the sounds of howling coming from directly outside the house. The howls were very quickly followed by a series of bangs on the walls, as though numerous people were drumming their fists against the old wood.

  “Oh, my God,” Kenzie started, her voice cracking with her pitch. “What the hell is that?”

  Soon, the sounds dissolved into laughter and a few more spooky fake ghost sounds that sounded surprisingly like children.

  “Louisa Rutlidge’s kids were happy to volunteer to perform their civic duty for Haven Hollow,” Henner explained, with a straight face somehow.