Lily watched everyone moving around her as if in slow motion. Nothing inside her made sense. She was hot and cold, shaky and steady, fatigued and energized.

As the power had exploded out of her body, the world around her became clear. Firefighters hauled their equipment, motioning at each other. Dante watched the action, his hands on his hips. Nolan disappeared around the side of the house. Polly did a bizarre jig as she danced in a circle, her elbows flapping up like an excited chicken. The woman was always doing strange things, but she wasn’t doing them alone. The transparent image of another woman danced with her.

Other ghosts milled about the yard, like a layer of the past overlaid onto the present, with only Polly interacting between the two. Two men in cowboy hats walked out of what used to be the barn. A woman hung laundry on an invisible clothesline that disappeared the second she let go of it. Another woman worked her arms up and down as if drawing water from an invisible well. A child ran from the house as she chased a boy. A man watched them from the kitchen window, smiling.

They were the moments from life that probably meant very little at the time, an ordinary day, an ordinary task, a locked instant.

Lily wanted to speak, but she couldn’t find words. A chill crept up the back of her neck. It beckoned her to look, but she didn’t want to see. Someone stood close to her back.

Polly’s dance partner smiled, curtseyed, and then blurred into oblivion.

The feeling behind her didn’t go away, and Lily finally made her body turn. Part of her knew before she even looked.

Marigold.

Lily was not prepared for the emotions that welled inside her, bursting out of that little seed she kept buried deep to take over everything else.

Marigold looked as she remembered her from childhood, with auburn hair flowing down her back and kind hazel eyes—not the crazy lady drawing symbols on her window, not the junkie trying to score as her kids waited in the car. Knowing magic was real did not change that reality. Or did it? Could her mother have been under a magical spell, jonesing for a kind of infusion that Lily didn’t understand?

No. That was wishful thinking. Lily knew what she knew. Unless magic was being peddled in every major city’s back alley by some shady dude with greasy hair, and involved tiny plastic bags with powdery residue, her mother had been fighting a very human demon. If magic drove Marigold to that dark place, it didn’t really matter. The facts remained. The woman fell down a rabbit hole of self-destruction, abandoned her children, and…

And a part of Lily would always love the woman despite all of it.

Reality wasn’t only those bad memories Lily clung to. There was more to her legacy. More to Marigold Crawford Goode.

This woman had been her childhood—the youthful face, the smile, the laugh. How could she have forgotten the laugh? They had been a happy family once.

Marigold’s arm moved and Lily looked down to see a hand caressing a pregnant belly. When she looked back up, Marigold’s face had changed. Her hair was shorter and wrinkles fanned her eyes. She was no longer smiling. This broken, sad creature was how Lily remembered her mother.

“Mom?” Lily whispered, reaching out to touch her.

That one word seemed to break a spell. Marigold disappeared, taking the layer from the past with her. The ghosts faded. The talking around her became louder, as if it had been there all along, only she couldn’t hear it.

“—all clear. You’ll want to have that heat damage checked out as quickly as possible.” The burly firefighter who spoke didn’t wait for a confirmation.

“We seriously need to look at getting Polly a wellness check or something,” Dante said. “I mean, eccentric is one thing. I think Polly might have passed that and gone straight into madness with that chicken dance over there.”

“Polly’s fine. She knows what she’s doing,” Lily dismissed.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you? Normally you joke with me.” Dante placed a hand on her shoulder. “Talk to me.”

“I saw Mom.”

“Marigold?”

“Mom,” Lily repeated.

“We never call her that,” Dante said.

“I saw her,” Lily insisted.

“She’s not dead?”

“Mom. I saw Mom.” Lily tried to think of the words to explain what had happened, but the feelings were still too overwhelming for her. “She was standing right here. I saw her. And she was…”

“Marigold’s ghost is here?” Dante looked around as if he could somehow detect the spirit. “I’m so sorry, Lily. That sucks. When will your bad luck be over?”

“Oh, sugar bee.” Polly appeared, petting her arm.

“She’s gone,” Lily whispered.

“Is she haunting the place?” Dante asked. “Do you think she’ll come back?”

“That’s not the kind of gone she means, Florus,” Polly said, her voice soothing. “Yes, sugar bee, she’s gone.”

A tear slid down Lily’s cheek. It had been easier to hold on to anger, to not face this moment. When their mother had been alive, there was always that tiny hope, that chance that things could be repaired. Lily hadn’t expected the wave of grief that washed over her. It seized hold of her stomach and tightened over her heart. For a second, she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“What did she tell you?” Polly asked.

Lily shook her head. The ghost hadn’t spoken.

“Not with words. What did she tell you?” Polly insisted.

“She was young.” Lily tried to inhale deeply but her lungs physically did not want to obey. “She must have been pregnant. Then she wasn’t pregnant, and she looked like the last time I saw her.”

“What does it mean?” Polly asked.

“Goodbye? Reminding me of how she was my mother? I don’t know.” How was Lily supposed to interpret the actions of her mother’s ghost?

“Try not to think about it, Lily. Nothing good will come of it.” Dante sloshed through the muddy backyard toward his phone. “This is a mess. I can’t believe they just left it like this.”

“We’re Goodes. They don’t want to help us.” Exhaustion filled every inch of her as Lily examined the back of the house. There had been mishap after mishap since they’d come to this unlucky place. She was a fool to think she could ever have a business here. The first night, her guests could be lit on fire, or possessed, or tripped by gnomes. “Maybe the locals are right. Maybe we are the problem. We’re the curse. We’re the bad luck that’s infecting the town.”

“We didn’t do this,” Dante disagreed.

“Florus is right,” Polly said.

“Look what has happened since we moved into this damned death trap. Lights falling, barns burning, threats, exploding milkshakes, hungry ghosts who want to eat Herman and date Aunt Polly, and—”

“Wait.” Dante held up his hands to stop her tirade. “What exploding milkshakes? When did we have milkshakes?”

“Nothing good has come from us being here. So we’re witches, so what? That has only brought with it more trouble. Even if we learn to control our magic, you can’t tell me there won’t be consequences to using it.”

“Everything in life has consequences, sugar bee, even magic.” Polly looped her arm through Lily’s and pulled her toward the house. “Come inside. I’ll make you spaghetti squash.”

“No. We can’t stay here, Polly. It’s not safe. You should get Herman and we’ll check back into the mice hotel.”

“Oh, they caught the mice family,” Polly said.

“I should have made us leave long before now.” When it looked like they would protest, she said, “It’s my house. No one stays.”

“Jeez, way to pull rank,” Dante mumbled. “I’ll grab a bag.”