“I’ll start the popcorn and hotdogs.” Lorna reached over to grab one of the lattes out of the holder.
“What about our ring power?” Vivien asked. “Aren’t we going to tell her?”
“I should start cooking if everything is going to be ready in time,” Lorna said.
“What ring thing?” Heather asked.
Lorna held up her hand. “We all found one last night. It’s a strange coincidence.”
“There is power in threes,” Vivien said. “Magic. Death. Julia always said to look out for multiples of three. This has to mean something. Like a sign.”
“A sign?” Heather gave a small laugh.
“Okay, not a sign. More like destiny,” Vivien insisted. “Inevitable. Fate.”
“Inevitable?” Heather gave a slow nod but looked like she was humoring Vivien more than believing her. “Like how women our age start to get perimenopausal. So, not only do we get hot flashes, they come with decoder rings?”
Lorna chuckled at Heather’s wit. She noticed one of the dance instructors on the security monitor coming in the front door. “I’m sorry, but I need to get out there. I don’t want my boss to fire me.”
“I’ll fill her in on what happened in the coffee shop, and tonight we’ll meet here after the show,” Vivien said. As Lorna left to go to work, she swore she heard the woman add, “This is just like the sort of magical event your grandma used to talk about. Is Julia still haunting the place? Can you ask her if this means we’re finally real witches?”
Chapter Five
Lorna had two trains of thought on the matter of Julia Warrick haunting the theater if she allowed herself to believe in the possibility. First, it was a neat idea, a kind of up-late-playing-with-the-Ouija-board-girl-party scenario. Second, it was terrifying in the sense that she slept every night alone in the old building, and now every creak and whine would set her on edge. It seemed ridiculous that a woman in her forties would suddenly become afraid of ghosts.
The ballerinas commanded an almost full house. Lorna watched the dancing mice performance from the back but found her eyes drifting to where she’d seen Heather acknowledge her grandma. No otherworldly beings were there amongst the living, at least none that she could see between the backs of heads.
Lorna felt a gentle tap on her shoulder and turned around. Her arm bumped the curtain blocking the light from the front and she pushed through. Besides a woman coming from the restrooms, the lobby was empty.
She rubbed her shoulder, realizing she must have leaned into something and mistook the feeling as a tap.
Ace’s eyes met hers. It looked like he wanted someone to open the door to her apartment. Lorna made a move toward him. He waited until she was close and then turned to walk toward the office.
“I can’t tell them that,” Heather said. “We’ve been through this.”
Lorna stopped, trying to see who Heather spoke to. No one answered.
“You shouldn’t have done it. You should have left well enough alone,” Heather insisted.
Lorna frowned. Was she talking on the phone? To her mother about the lawn people perhaps?
“Grandma, stop,” Heather commanded in a harsh, quiet tone. “I can’t hear you when you get like that. You know—dammit, did you just disappear? Grandma, get back here!”
A cold chill worked up Lorna’s spine. She inched closer to see inside the office door. Heather stood alone with her hand on her head and her eyes closed as she sighed in exasperation.
“Heather?” Lorna asked, leaning into the door to look around. Heather gave a small gasp at the interruption and dropped her hands. “Were you talking to someone?”
“Just…” Heather glanced at the corner of the room and then back again. “Just to myself.”
The office felt cold and Lorna rubbed her arms to warm them. “It’s freezing in here. Do you want me to turn off the air conditioning or shut the air vents? The rest of the building feels fine.”
“No, it’s just a draft. It’s an old building. It happens,” Heather dismissed, again glancing toward the corner of the room.
Lorna followed her gaze. An eerie feeling crawled across her skin.
They weren’t alone.
“I can’t believe I’m going to ask this, but…” She closed her eyes and gave a small shake of her head. “Are you talking to your dead grandmother Julia?”
“I think the question you mean to ask is, ‘Is my dead grandmother Julia talking to me?’,” Heather corrected.
Lorna opened her eyes. “Is she?”
Heather rubbed her hand, not appearing like she wanted to answer.
Lorna felt a tingle radiating down her arm from the ring. “May I see your hand, please?”
Heather stopped rubbing her palm. Lorna reached across the desk. Heather hesitated before placing her hand in Lorna’s.
A pulse of energy rushed through her, just as it had when she’d touched Vivien. Her vision dimmed. Heather stared at her, breathing hard. Her hair began to lift from static charge.
Lorna felt a tightness growing in her chest, created from emotions that she did not recognize as her own. A shell began to form around it, both insulating it and trapping it deep inside her. Such hardness should have taken years to develop, built of pain and sorrow, but instead grew in an instant. The ache reminded her of the time Jacob had gone missing, only intensified. They’d found him playing in a neighbor’s shed, but that very specific kind of fear—that soul-shaking panic—was unlike any other feeling.
She might have been able to dismiss the reaction as weird the first time, but now?
Lorna pulled away. The direct sensation stopped, but the effects of Heather’s pain lingered.
“If you tell me you see your dead grandmother, I’m inclined to believe you,” Lorna said. Each thump of her heart reverberated through her, but it did not lessen the anguish. Nothing could diminish this kind of pain, not really. Time made it more manageable, hardened a shell around it, but it was always there, always inside. “Something is happening to us, isn’t it? We’re becoming connected.”
“I’m fairly certain that these rings belonged to my grandmother. She wanted us to find them and put them on.” Heather sat down in her chair. She tried smoothing down her hair before digging into the desk to find a hair tie.
“Why?” Lorna moved to take a seat across from the desk and leaned forward.
“She said our pain joins us. It called to her. It…” Heather glanced at the empty corner. “She says our meeting was destined.”
“So you can talk to her ghost?” Lorna stared at the corner, trying to see any shift of light or color that might indicate a spirit was with them. There was nothing.
“Yes. I see her. I don’t expect you to believe me. I’m aware of how crazy it sounds. I’ve been told my whole life it was my imagination.”
“Are there others or just Julia?” Lorna didn’t know if it was her tingling hand, or her desire to want to believe such a thing were real that caused her to accept what was happening. Emotions were hardly empirical evidence, but they were real. “Can you see anyone with me?”