Chapter 4.14 – A Marigold Speciality

Before they’d even fully materialised, April was squealing at a pitch that only she could reach.

She had run a circle of the small house while twittering excitedly, and had disappeared upstairs to unpack the contents of her small backpack.

Wyatt, who had obviously seen it all before, stayed downstairs with Melinda who, true to form, looked thoughtful. She slowly walked the perimeter of the kitchen, pausing at the empty mantle where Cabbage’s photo usually was.

Melinda was a quiet person in general, plagued by all sorts of things, but Wyatt could hazard a guess as to what was plaguing her at that very moment.

“Look, Mel, it’s okay that you bit him a little. You’re still pretty new, Omar was warm and probably inviting, if you’re into that. And I think I did a pretty good job at blurring the wound, so I’m sure—”

“It’s not that,” Melinda muttered. She wrapped her arms around herself and turned back to face him. “Where are we?” she asked. “In the world, I mean.”

“Glimmerbrook.”

“Glimmerbrook,” Melinda repeated, as if it had no meaning, which Wyatt realised, it probably didn’t. Before he could elaborate, Melinda sighed, “You said this place was secluded but…” she gestured at the window where a passing car was trundling down the road. “Are you sure it is? Is April safe here, with, um…” she looked at the floor. “With all that’s going on?”

Wyatt could read between these words, but could hardly blame her for questioning if April was safe with him. After everything she’d witnessed that morning. After everything he’d thus far screwed up.

She wasn’t the only one doubting him.

“Is it really secluded here?” she nudged. “There’s the road, there’s a river, a pretty fishing lake, it must get visitors.”

“No. No one ever stops here. They don’t see what we do; the house, lake etc. doesn’t show on any map and can’t be seen by anyone who doesn’t know it’s here, not even those who drive down that road.”

Melinda glanced at the window and shook her head, amazement and scepticism fighting to be the dominant expression on her face. “How does that work?”

“Beats me,” Wyatt admitted. “Beats most witches, but Hoggy’s grandma wasn’t most witches. Consider it a ‘Marigold Speciality’. Trust me, Mel. This house has ‘not existed’ for centuries. No one is finding us here.”

“Remind me; who was Marigold?”

“Oh, ‘Marigold’ was Ma’s – Hoggy’s grandma’s – actual name. You know, she had a few really neat tricks that only she could do and masking places was one of them. Man, once Hoggy and I played hide-and-seek with her and she was missing for three days. Turns out she’d been hiding in an invisible caravan at the end of garden and we walked past, like, a hundred times and had no clue it was even there.”

“That’s reassuring,” Melinda murmured. “And Marigold is such a pretty name. Witches like naming themselves after plants, don’t they? Marigold, Sa—”

He cut her off before she could finish that one. “I suppose. Although traditional ‘witch’ names, like Toadella and Snotrag are quite popular, too.”

“Snotrag?” Melinda chuckled. “That sounds like a nickname for a handkerchief.”

 “I know, right? It’s so gross. But it’s a traditional name so, y’know. Anyway, enough about the coven—”

“So why are you named ‘Wyatt’? Is that a plant I’ve never heard of?”

Wyatt huffed. “Nah. Some witches realise that you can’t blend into the world with flowery or revolting names. Some have ‘normal’ names they use for their daily lives; like, Snotrag sometimes calls himself ‘James’. Some have ‘normal’ names but use a different name for official witchy purposes. etc. etc.”

“Do you have an official ‘witchy’ name?”

“I used to use my middle name, Ranunculus,” he said, emphasising the past tense.

Melinda finally seemed to get that she should drop the subject, which took her an uncharacteristically long time. She nodded slowly. “I like flowers as names.”

Wyatt waited for her to elaborate or continue, but she didn’t. She cleared her throat and peered into the sink. “This place is immaculate. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere quite so clean. You’ll need to keep it clean, you know, if Broof is letting you stay here for free. Cleaner than you kept the last place,” she warned. “Although let’s face it, it couldn’t really be any worse than that. You really should go and clean it up sometime.”

“Yeah, I will. Sure,” Wyatt lied.

Thankfully, the little blonde rocket had burst into the room, sparing Wyatt any further lecturing. April spoke a mile a minute, clapping her hands to that tune she must’ve always had playing in her head.

“Broof’s room is so pretty!” she gushed. “He has a vanity! Oh, and fresh flowers, and silk sheets and scatter cushions! Can I please have that room?”

“Yeah, of course. Gotta keep it tidy though, Apes”

April crossed her heart, effervescent with glee. “I promise I will.” She turned to her girlfriend. “Mel, before you go, would you mind showing me how to make a bed?”

Before she had an answer, she’d continued to wander the room, oohing and ahhing over every magical artifact at Broof’s altar. She gently ran her fingertips over the crystals, the leather-bound books, and whispered, “Wow.”

“You are surrounded by so much magical stuff here, April,” Melinda said, appearing at Wyatt’s side in a heartbeat. “Did you spot the cauldron, over by the fire?”

April whipped around, almost dropping the crystal ball she was holding. “Oh my gosh!” she sprinted over the fireplace and ran her finger around the rim of the aged iron pot. “An actual cauldron! Look at it! It’s so cute!”

She hopped around, lit like the sun. “Can we make potions together again, Wy? Now that we have this magical house, and all this magical equipment, and now that you’re doing magic again?”

Wyatt looked pleadingly at Melinda as April chattered on with excitement.

“Lilith will find the cure recipe in the swamp, I just know it! And then we can make the potion and then we’ll be human again by Winterfest! Will I be human? Or will I be half witch?” She pondered for a while before her attention was caught by something in another room. “Ooh, what is that?”

Melinda laughed, a cute tinkle of sound, while Wyatt groaned.

“This was such a bad idea. I should’ve just sent her to Moon’s and, I dunno, vanished or something like the deadbeat I am.”

“What?” Melinda gasped. “Why?”

“I can’t do it,” he hissed. “I have no bloody idea what I’m doing. With her, with me, with anything. Mel, today was a fluke. Omar was a fluke. I can’t make potions. I can’t do magic, okay? I just can’t. I can’t even think about it.”

“You can’t? Or you won’t?”

“…I want to. Man, do I want to. Goddess, the feeling I get when the energy flows through me I…” he sucked in a breath. “I know I need to just suck it up, you know? Carry on. If anyone’s going to make this potion, it’s going to be me. I just can’t stop thinking about that last brew, about… what happened.” He ran a hand though his hair. “What if I can’t figure it out? What if I make a hundred potions and nothing works? I could poison her.”

“Or she could poison herself.”

Wyatt stopped in his tracks. “What?”

“She almost poisoned herself today. And me, too.”

“She’ll try to find a cure with or without you, Wyatt. She’s been practicing making potions, by herself. She tried to make a sun lotion potion so we could watch the sunrise,” Melinda said. “Luckily Moon was nearby to put out the literal fire that was caused.”

“Shi-oot,” Wyatt sighed.

Melinda nodded and walked back around the counter. “I understand that you need to take your time, but please don’t give up. On her, or yourself.”

Wyatt swallowed hard against the tears that threatened to spill over. “She thinks she’ll be cured by Winterfest.”

Melinda shrugged. “She didn’t specify which Winterfest. Whatever the outcome, Wyatt, as long as she can see that you care, that you’re trying, she will understand. We all will.”

The corner of Wyatt’s lips twitched into a smile and he playfully thumped Melinda’s arm. “I’m glad she has you.”

“She has you too,” Melinda pointed out.

Wyatt laughed. “Sure.”

“Is it okay if I visit?”

Wyatt shrugged.

“Can Moon?”

Wyatt shook his head and Melinda slowly nodded. She glanced back over at the window as a dogwalker strolled down the path right outside the house. She lowered her voice and whispered, “Are you absolutely, one hundred percent sure that no one will find her here?”

“Positive,” Wyatt whispered back. “If they don’t know the house is here, all they will see, and hear, is—”

“—An empty clearing,” Morag confirmed, tapping the laptop screen. “Are you sure that was the route?”

Jessica wasn’t sure of anything. She had had a sleepless night on Morag’s sofa bed after being too unsettled to stay at her place. Following Jessica’s mysterious visit, the GliTS had paused their Forgotten Hollow investigation and decided to re-strategise with this new information.

She scratched at her itchy scalp. She was sure she was allergic to tin foil. “So, the route up to fork is correct? That’s on the map?”

“Yes,” Morag concurred, tracing the route that Jessica had previously described on the screen. “But then going right at the fork, like you said, brings you to an empty clearing, not a house. Are you sure it wasn’t left at the fork?”

Jessica retraced the route in her head. “It’s right, and only a few hundred feet along on the right. It’s a big house, there’s a crypt with a gargoyle.”

“Not according to the map there isn’t. Just a clearing.”

“Hmm,” Yibbo mused, following the route on her phone. “For argument’s sake, let’s go left at the fork, shall we? Is there a house if you take the left?”

Morag squinted at the screen and traced the satellite path. She shook her head. “No. We must be taking a wrong turning, somewhere.”

It was oddly heart-warming that the GliTS had so much faith in her that they were still pursuing the chance that Jessica had, somehow, happened across a route to a vampire house and not that she was simply losing her mind. But the more they backtracked and wandered virtually around the forests of Forgotten Hollow, the more Jessica believed she was simply losing the plot and taking them down with her.

“Perhaps it was dream, or a hallucination,” she murmured. “Let’s give up.”

Yibbo nodded. “Maybe that’s for the best—“

“No! We are the Glimmerbrook Truth Society – we will never give up on the pursuit of the truth!” Pixie insisted. “Go back to Joe’s bar and start from there.”

“I agree with Pixie,” Morag said, replotting the bar co-ordinates. “Jessica was given this route for a reason and I think we should follow it.”

“But there’s nothing there,” Yibbo pointed out. “What if the house has been demolished?”

“The ghosts might still be there,” Pixie said. “They might be able to give us answers,” she pointed between herself and Jessica when she said ‘us’, although Jessica had still never seen Pixie actually contact a ghost. “Hey, perhaps we can see if we can find Paul again, he might be able to guide us.”

Yibbo pouted. She started to say something, stopped, and then decided it needed to be said. “Is this such a good idea? What if it’s a trap and there’s a vampire waiting in this clearing to rip our throats out?”

“You’re so pessimistic, Yibbo.”

“Well, excuse me for not wanting to die!”

“Odds are that you’re not going to die,” Morag said smoothly. “When we signed up for this whole thing, we were told there was only a tiny chance of us dying.”

“No,” Yibbo corrected. “We were told that there was a tiny chance of us ‘dying permanently’.”

“Same thing.”

“It’s not the same thing!” Yibbo hissed. “We’ve never even questioned that. What does it mean?”

Morag shrugged and resumed her search. “I’m sure we’ll find out, one day.”

“I’m not sure I want to find out.”

“Of course you do, that’s why we’re all here, right? We’re after the answers. We need to know. Right, Morag? Right, Jess?”

Yibbo huffed and folded her arms. “I guess. But why do answers always have to come with a chance of death?”

“We’re not going to die,” Pixie said firmly.

“A chance of ‘non-fatal but likely horrific injury’, then.”

“We’ll be fine. We have the van fully stocked with garlic oil, wooden stakes and holy water. By all accounts, we are well-equipped to face a vampire.”

“Hmm,” Yibbo murmured, unconvinced.

“We could always exploit their biggest weakness,” Morag added.

“And what’s that, blood?” Yibbo scoffed. “What shall we do? Turn up in the forest with a wheelbarrow full of dead goats and catapult them as a distraction?”

“…Um, no, not goats; sunlight.”

“…Oh.”

“Think about it; if we go during the day instead of the night, we hold the strongest position.”

“Are you talking about goths again?” Morag’s roommate asked as he wandered into the room.

“This is top secret GliTS business, Placeholder 4. I told you to wait in the bathroom. Shoo!”

Placeholder 4 wandered off, muttering under his breath about not being able to sit in his own living room in his own apartment.

“Sorry about that,” Morag muttered. “I forgot to turn freewill off. Where were we?”

“We were talking about visiting the forest during daylight hours.”

“Ah! Yes. We could go tomorrow, bright and early.”

“I’m not working tomorrow, so we could,” Jessica agreed, perking up a bit. She had to admit that, as terrifying as this whole thing was, she, too, was desperate for answers to what it all meant. And walking around in what was, admittedly, a beautiful forest during the daytime didn’t sound so bad. “It will be far less scary, much easier to navigate. Heck, it might even be fun!”

“And the forecast for tomorrow is for bright sun!” Yibbo added. “What a great idea! Everyone knows that vampires can’t go out in the sun…”

“…so we’ll be completely safe!”

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