The Witches of Snyder Farms (The Wicked Garden Series) (9 page)

Eli’s efforts to contain a bark of laughter resulted in a choking fit. When he recovered enough to speak, he said, “I believe you’re thinking of vampires, Ame.”

“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Peyton’s cheeks flamed red. He decided to pretend that he had been fascinated by the photos above the fireplace, rather than the woman who had been looking at them. “Those pictures,” he sputtered, “Who are they?”

Ame’s mother turned and fixed the boy with a cool stare. His blush intensified.

G
retchel decided to be merciful. “They’re my ancestors,” she said.

“Well, no kidding,” Ame snapped. “But who
are
they. You’ve never really told me about them, and I would kind of like to know. I feel like I
need
to know.”

Eli stared at Gretchel, daring her to come forth with some information.

Gretchel nodded. “Yes. Yes, you probably do need to know, though I can’t tell you very much.” She pointed to the first picture. “That beautiful woman there was my Great Great Grand Mama. The picture’s black and white, but I’ve been told that her hair was as red as Satan’s ass.”

Peyton snickered, and looked to Gretchel to see if laughter was allowed. When he saw Gretchel’s half-smile, he relaxed enough to put his arm around Ame’s waist.

“What was her name?” Eli asked.

“Her name was Bridget. She was from Chicago. My Grand Mama never knew her.
I think she died rather young.”

A bell chimed in Eli’s head. Then he heard his mother’s voice, but he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying.

Gretchel continued. “The next picture is my Great Grand Mama. She and her lover built this cottage at the turn of the century. She was called Mary Catherine”

Gretchel paused and looked around the room. Eli, Ame, and Peyton were rapt, waiting for the rest of the story.

“I’ve been told that her lover slashed her face with a filet knife soon after this photo was taken.” Gretchel’s audience gasped. She continued. “He was, by all accounts a monster. He was also Miss Poni’s father.”

“That’s horrible. Why has Miss Poni never told me these stories?” Ame asked in a small voice.

Gretchel ignored her daughter’s question, as if she was in a trance. “I understand that Mary Catherine died on Samhain.”

Peyton looked to Ame confused. She gave him the simple answer when she whispered, “Halloween.”

Gretchel continued. “Miss Mary Catherine died young, like her mother, but her death matched her name.”

“Mary Catherine? What does that have to do with Samhain?” Eli’s heart was racing and he didn’t know why.

“‘Mary Catherine was the name her lover gave her. Her mother named her for the crone aspect of the triple goddess.”

Peyton was baffled. Eli was shaking. Ame had been raised by witches, and she had been working in a metaphysical bookstore for a couple of years. She hazarded a guess, “Cailleach?”   

Gretchel gave her daughter an approving glance. “Close, Ame.”

Eli held his breath.

Gretchel continued. “Her name was—”

“Carlin,” Eli whispered.

Gretchel turned to him, surprised. “Yes, Carlin. Carlin Fitzgerald.”

Eli looked sick. And elated. He looked both sick and elated.

“Excuse me,” he said, as he ran out the front door.

∞

Eli was shaking with excitement. He felt as if his whole life had come down to this moment. He dialed his mother, who answered on the first ring.

“
Please tell me you’re not with that girl.”

“
I’ve missed you, too,” he replied.

“Pardon my rudeness, Eli. H
ow are you?”

Eli smiled.
This is going to be fun.
“I’m great, Mother. Never better. But let’s get one thing straight before we go any further: The girl’s name is Gretchel. You will address her as such from this point forward. Do I make myself clear?”

“Nothing good can come of this.” Diana’s voice was tight.

“You sound as if you could use a joint. I’m pretty sure Dad could hook you up, if you asked nicely.”

Eli was positively giddy. He had information that his mother wanted, and he was prepared to make her pay for it.

“You can’t just run off for weeks without telling anyone, Elliot!”

“Really?
I’m almost forty-years-old. Besides, you do it all the time, sometimes for months—even years. Funny how the rules only apply to the men in this family.”

“You can go wherever the hell you want to go,
but, right now, you need to get yourself home.”

“
I am home, Mother.”

Diana was quiet for a moment.
“Eli, you have to trust me.”

“I’m n
ot so sure about that anymore. I’ve found the missing link, Mother.”

“Have you found the amethyst?”

Eli laughed. “No, but I did find out the name of Gretchel’s great-grandmother. She was from Chicago. Care to guess what her name was?”

“I’m not going to play games with you, Elliot.”

“Her name was Carlin. Carlin Fitzgerald.” He paused for a moment to let this information sink in.

Diana said nothing.

Eli continued, “That’s right, Gretchel’s great-grandmother is the woman you’ve been looking for.”

Eli heard nothing but silence. He waited. He could wait all day.

Finally, his mother asked, “How?”

“It seems that she went by ‘Mary Catherine.’ That might explain how you didn’t find her.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, but maybe you should come to Southern Illinois yourself. You’re going to love it here.”

     
Part Two

Chicago, 1900s

He was finally coming home.

He was too far away for Bridget to see his face, but she knew it was him. She held the gun to her chest. Nervous energy coursed through her body, but her hands were steady.

He had learned to walk slowly, carefully, purposefully when he was drunk. It wouldn’t do for the neighbors to see him stumble. But he had begun to betray himself lately as his drinking got worse. Of course, she had no business judging him, since she had a deep and abiding relationship with the Scotch bottle herself. She just hid it better than he did. She had to. He was worried about keeping up appearances. She was worried about a beating.

Giving up the drink wasn’t an option for Bridget. When she stayed dry, the voice in her head came back. Over the years, she had learned to maintain the perfect level of intoxication: drunk enough to drown out the voice, but sober enough to convince her husband that she hadn’t had a drop.

But she wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. Soon it would all be over.

Her bags were packed. The box and the loving cup were carefully wrapped and tucked safely away in her suitcase. She’d prepared her daughter, and they were ready to run.

She looked to the girl asleep on the sofa. It was the day before Carlin’s fourteenth birthday. The boy who had been caught having his way with her was let go without punishment or reprimand. Her daughter, however, had been beaten beyond anything Bridget had ever witnessed. It was an old, old story, one the women in her family seemed doomed to repeat. Over and over again. 

History has no mercy.

Bridget tightened her grip on the gun. She’d gathered what money she could find, which wasn’t much at all. Her husband—that pillar of the community—was not only a drunk but an inveterate gambler, heavily in debt.

Is this freedom?
she wondered.
Losing everything? Nah. There has to be something better. This curse cannae go on forever.

“But it can, lassie. On with it.”

Bridget turned slowly to see the Woman in Wool. Bridget was shocked by the sight. It had been a long, long time since this demon in a woman’s shape was anything more than a hateful voice in Bridget’s head.

Bridget lowered the gun and pulled herself up as tall and strong as she could.

“There’ll come a day when yer demands are nah met. Without a sacrifice yah cannae live, now can yah?” Bridget asked.

The specter’s nose flared. “Yah cannae be rid of me. It goes on.”

Bridget grinned. “But I’ve seen my granddaughter. In visions, I’ve seen her. She’s stronger than yah. She’ll resist yah. Cannae see what’s to come, can yah?”

“Dinnae need to see what’s to come to know that the curse goes on.” The Woman in Wool stepped closer to Bridget, her heavy dress leaving a trail of sea water on the floor.

“Now on with it, yah nasty tart!” the Woman in Wool screeched, and the sound echoed so loudly in Bridget’s head that she nearly dropped the gun.

As the banshee wail died, Bridget looked out the window. Her husband was going around to the back of the house.
Damn the man!
She left her post at the front door and raced through the living room, into the kitchen.

Her hand was turning the knob when she saw them. Two men, one holding a gun.

Their voices were quiet as they confronted her husband, but Bridget could hear them in her mind. It was one of her gifts.

“You’ve had your last chance. Where’s the money?” It was the man without the gun speaking.

“I’ll have it tomorrow—”

“We’ve heard that before. You’re out of tomorrows, Fitzgerald.” He grabbed his quarry by the collar. “Do you have the money or not?”

Bridget saw the terror in her husband’s eyes as he shook his head. She might have pitied him, if she hadn’t seen the same fear in her daughter’s eyes when she thought her father was going to beat her to death. 

“May yah rot in hell with the rest of ‘em, Bart Fitzgerald. And bless yah ruffians for doin’ mah dirty work for me,” she whispered.

She didn’t even blink when her husband was shot in the head.

CHAPTER NINE

Irvine
, 2010s

“She’s been researching my famil
y for forty years?” Gretchel asked. She had asked multiple versions of this question already. Many times.

When Eli told her that his parents were on their way to Irvine, he did his best to explain why, and he struggled to do it as delicately and diplomatically as he could.

Gretchel was still baffled, though, and Eli was beginning to imagine the many ways in which a meeting between Diana and Gretchel might go horribly, horribly wrong. At the moment, though, he needed to focus on helping Gretchel understand why Carlin Fitzgerald was the missing piece of a puzzle that his mother had been trying to put together for decades.

“I just
don’t get why my family is worth studying, Eli. It doesn’t make sense that a bunch of wild country nobodies would be worthy of research. Is it because we’re witches?”

“Please, just trust me, Gretchel. It’s best if you let my mother give you the details herself.” This was probably true, since Eli had purposefully avoided knowing anything more than he had to about his mother’s obsession. But he was also reluctant to be the one who explained the role his mother’s meddling had played in his relationship with Gretchel. “The best thing you can do right now—the thing that would most help me—would be to gather up all the family documents you can find: b
irth certificates, death certificates, marriage license, deeds, letters, diaries—everything.”

Gretchel narrowed her eyes, preparing to keep pushing for answers, but then she decided to give Eli a break. If she wanted him to be patient with her secrets—and she most certainly did—she needed to be patient with his. “All right. I’ll pull together everything I took when I came to the cottage, and then I’ll go see what I can dig up at the house on the hill.”

Gretchel
was tugging on her jacket when she stopped, struck by a thought. “Eli, does this have anything to do with the prophecy, and why you left Carbondale?”

Eli
smiled and kissed her gently. “It has everything to do with why I left Carbondale, and it has everything to do with the prophecy that kept me away from you.”

∞

In her dream Gretchel was trekking through a garden of orange poppies. The scene was familiar. She was inside the painting she had made so long ago, just as she had been during the ‘shroom trip she took with Eli in college.

This was a sacred place. She
had known magic here. But a shiver ran through her. A warning.

She reached the center of the garden and stopped. The power of the place was strongest here. She gently touched the petals of one of the poppies, and withdrew her hand with a gasp, her fingers burnt.

The poppies were flames now, and she was burning.  This was familiar, too.

∞

Eli tossed and turned, nervous about his parents’ arrival. When he finally did fall asleep, he dropped right into a nightmare. Gretchel was dancing naked in front of a fire. He could see her so clearly. She held out the loving cup to him, but he couldn’t reach it. His mother was holding him back. He saw a familiar snake slithering up to him. He couldn’t get to Gretchel, he couldn’t escape his mother, and he couldn’t get away from the snake.

He closed his eyes in the dream, and he felt
fangs sinking into his thigh. He screamed, but the pain was good; it was right and proper, necessary for growth. He felt his mother release her grip on him and he moved toward Gretchel. Then he was jerked backward as his mother tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled.

H
e woke up sweating and gasping.

∞

Gretchel was shaking. She hadn’t eaten breakfast. She hadn’t even cooked.
She was sitting on a chair in her bedroom facing the new full-length mirror Eli had put up the day before. Teddy finished tying up her hair with a vanilla scarf that matched her mid-length pencil skirt.

She slipped on a pair of brown stile
ttos that matched her silk blouse and modeled for the assembled crowd, which included Ame and Teddy’s partner, Stephen. “How do I look? Be honest,” she asked.

“Like a gypsy whore about to crash a
country club,” Ame snarked.

Teddy shot the teenager a dirty look.

“Hey, you know why Jesus wasn’t born in Scotland?” Ame continued. Teddy sighed and resigned himself to another bad joke. “God couldn’t find three wise men or a virgin.”

Teddy
and Stephen both glared at Ame, and then Teddy redirected his attention back to Gretchel. “You look absolutely lovely, darling.”

“I have a
really bad feeling about this, Teddy,” Gretchel said. “And spending hours listening to Grand Mama ramble on is not my idea of fun.”

“I
thought you liked Miss Poni’s stories,” Ame said, stretching her impossibly long body out on the bed.

“When I was younger, yes.
When she told stories about heroes and heroines, goddesses and gods, yes. I don’t want to hear stories about a bunch of people that don’t matter.”

“Why don’t they matter? They’re our family.
You’re a part of that story, and
you
matter.”

Gretchel looke
d somberly at Ame. “No, I don’t,” she muttered.

Gretchel regretted the words when she saw the tears well up in Ame’s eyes.

“You matter to
me
,” Ame said.

Gretchel
was rendered speechless by her daughter’s love and shamed by her own lack of self-worth. She was saved from wallowing in the throes of self-pity by a soft rap at the bedroom door. Eli poked his head in.  Gretchel gestured for him to enter, and the trio excused themselves. She pulled herself together and managed to give Eli a gentle smile.

“You look incredible, Gretchel.
Very chic, but definitely not soccer mom—or volleyball mom, for that matter.”

“You don’t look too bad yourself,” she said, looking over his outfit of button
down shirt, blazer and jeans. She grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him close.“Think I might cancel the whole damn thing and seduce you instead.”

Eli sh
ook his head. “Please don’t tempt me now, Gretchel. My mother’s waiting in the living room, and I’m not sure which one of you scares me more.”

“Pussy,” she whispered under her breath.

“I said don’t tempt me,” he whispered into her ear, nibbling at the lobe. “I love you. Don’t ever forget that.”

She snuggled into his chest, and felt as though
she might cry. “I love you too, Eli. Infinitely. Don’t ever forget
that
.”

Diana stood in front of the fireplace, transfixed by a photo of Carlin Fitzgerald. This was the face from her vision. There was no room for doubt. But, still… She was unsure. No, she was
outraged
. It simply wasn’t possible that she had been wrong. Gretchel had broken Eli’s heart! Gretchel wasn’t the one!

Diana readied herself for a fight.

Hand
in hand, Gretchel and Eli walked out of the bedroom and into the living room, where Diana stood staring at the photos arranged on the mantelpiece. For a split second Gretchel felt relieved. The woman she had so dreaded meeting was practically miniature—so tiny that it was just about impossible to be afraid of her. Then Diana turned and looked Gretchel in the eye. A strange tingle worked its way down the spines of both women.

Diana had the odd feeling that this woman was going to be a huge pain in the ass, but she also felt connected to her—in a way that might possibly be a huge pain the ass.

Gretchel had the odd feeling that this woman was going to be a huge pain in the ass, but she also felt connected to her—in a way that might possibly be a huge pain in the ass.

“Gretchen, I presume?” Diana asked.

“It’s Gretch
el
.”

Diana locked Gretchel in her death stare. Her attitude seemed to suggest that
Gretchel
was the one who was confused about her name.

Gretchel took Diana’s hand, shook it
, and prayed she didn’t pass out or vomit.

“You have a beautiful daughter,” she said, and didn’t let go of Gretchel’s hand
. In fact, she clasped it tight for maximum impact.

“I was looking forward to meeting Eli’s father. Will he be joining us?”

“He’s resting at the hotel. For now, it’s just me.” Diana gave Gretchel’s hand one final, viselike squeeze.

Oh. My. God
. Gretchel thought.

∞

Once they arrived at the house on the hill, Gretchel kept busy in the kitchen with her mother, preparing the beginnings of a large country dinner. The house smelled of baked ham and all its delicious trimmings. Marcus helped Eli and Diana set up a screen and a laptop with a projector in the living room.

“What the hell is
she doing?” Gretchel snapped. “It’s not like we’re going to be on a prime time news show. She acts like this is some big deal.”

“Enough,” Ella said softly, but sharply.

Gretchel glanced into the living room, and Eli shot her a seductive glare. She grinned playfully.

“You’re going to make me puke. Please stop,” Ame whined
, folding her arms and dropping her head on the kitchen table.

“I think it’s sweet,” Holly
said, smiling at her aunt, and Gretchel gave her quiet niece a wink.

Cindy
laid down her knife and sat down next to Ame. “That, my dear, is what people in love look like. I’m sure you act like that with Peyton, but you just don’t realize it.”

“
Maybe…,” Ame was skeptical.

“I think you’re just unaccustome
d to your mother feeling good. You’ve never seen her in a happy, healthy relationship and it makes you nervous and uncomfortable,” Cindy said, rubbing Ame’s back.

Ame looked at Cindy sideways. “Hey Auntie C
, do you know what the height of conceit is?” Cindy sighed and shrugged. “Having an orgasm and calling out your own name.”

Holly
covered her mouth, and tried to stifle her laughter, and Cindy rolled her eyes.

“That’s enough, Ame,” Gretchel snapped.

They all looked up as Miss Poni hobbled into the kitchen from her nap. 

“Story time,” Ame said in a singsong voice, giving her mother a questioning glance.

Gretchel took a deep breath, and started for the living room.

Diana sat in a hard-back chair that had been fetched from the kitchen. The picture of Carlin at the cottage looked exactly like the woman from her vision. But, after decades of rejecting the idea that Gretchel had anything to do with the Solstice Twins, she was reluctant to give in. She clung to the knowledge that much of what she knew went counter to what her son had told her.

She hoped that, by coming here
, she would finally convince Eli that Gretchel wasn’t the woman he was meant to be with. At the same time, she was too invested in the Solstice Twins to simply discount the new information that her son had given her.

She
considered each family member, soaking in each personality. She was surprised to see that Gretchel had a brother. This was the first male child she knew of among the Twins’ family line. She had an instinctive liking for Marcus, though. He was a handsome man, and she could see the intelligence in his eyes. He could have done great things, but he chose farm life in an act of family loyalty. Poor thing, to have been born into a family of redheaded vixens...
Oh, my. What a fate!
she thought.

His wi
fe Cindy sat next to him. She was lovely. She seemed intelligent, too, and compassionate, but tough enough to endure life on a farm. She had a calm about her that set her apart from everyone else in the room.

Their daughter Holly
was a bit of a cipher. She was quiet, but Diana sensed depth beneath the calm surface.

Ella
sat down next to the one they called Miss Poni. The women were, temperamentally, complete opposites, but they shared an intangible quality that Diana couldn’t quite name. It was obvious that Miss Poni didn’t like being taken care of, but it was also clear that Ella would bend over backwards for the old woman. Their connection was very strong.

Then Diana turned to
Gretchel...
That wretched Gretchen!
Diana might never be able to forgive the woman for how she had hurt Eli, even though Diana had wanted desperately for Eli to leave
her
.