Page 23 of Haunting the Deep

How did this get turned on me? “Whoa—”

“I know I do,” Alice says behind me. “Now move it before Mary undoes your nose job.”

Mary winks at Niki as she comes to my side. Niki’s hand shoots to her face protectively and her lips tighten.

Blair pulls Niki away from us. “Let’s go.” Blair looks at me. They saunter off with their matching white jeans and knee-high boots.

Dillon rubs his neck, looking guilty. “Sorry, Sam. Really.”

“It’s fine,” I say, and he walks away.

“They’ve been acting entitled like that since they could talk,” Mary says.

“We haven’t gotten along with them since third grade,” Susannah says with a grin. “Not since Alice tarred Niki’s playhouse with a bucket and a broom.”

Alice looks at me. “We’re neighbors. She thought it was funny to dangle my kitten in front of her dog.”

I open my mouth. “Completely deserved.”

“Agreed,” Alice says, and pauses. “So…let me guess, you’re here to tell me I’m right and you need us?”

I hold my hands up in concession.One order of humble pie.“I do need you. Do you guys know anything about an older woman in town who wears lots of silver jewelry and has blacked-out windows in her shop?”

Mary’s mouth opens. “Shut up, you saw Redd?”

“She’s a local legend,” Susannah says.

Alice unlocks the Jeep and gestures at the doors. “Get in. I have no intention of having private conversations in the midst of these morons.”

Susannah and I slide in the back, and Mary takes the passenger seat.

It takes Alice all of two seconds to screech out of the parking space. Startled students jump out of the way.

I grab the car door. “So what do you guys know about her? Why are her windows blacked out?”

Susannah straightens her black skirt. “That building used to be Redd’s store. She sold herbal creams and tonics—they were the absolute best. Half the town went to her instead of the doctor. But she got fed up one day and basically said the town didn’t deserve her help anymore. At least, that’s what my mom says.”

“Now,” Mary says, turning around from the front seat, “no one knows what she does in there. A couple of shop owners complained about it last year, and the fire marshal went in to check it out. But the marshal reported it was just empty rooms.”

Alice swerves onto her street. “Redd’s a Descendant.”

If I didn’t have my seat belt on, I’d probably soar right out the window. “Redd…as in the accused witch Wilmot Redd? Why wouldn’t she tell me her name, then?”

Alice slams on her brakes by the curb in front of her house and we fly forward. “We all have our secrets.”

“Tell us everything,” Mary says.

I open my door, grateful to be out of the Jeep. “It was all pretty mysterious. She plucked me off the street and told me we started something last night with that spell and—”

Alice shushes us as we approach her massive white colonial house with pillars. Her front door opens before she lays a hand on it. A tall man in a suit and white gloves stands on the other side. He’s not the butler I remember from Alice’s party last semester. How many people does her family employ?

We step into the entrance hall, and our shoes echo off the shiny stone floors.

“Alice darling,” a woman’s voice says from a hallway to the left. She’s dressed in a flowing floral dress, and her blond hair is pinned into a twist.

“Mom,” Alice says.

“We’re having the Coreys over for dinner tonight. Wear something appropriate.” She pauses. “Unless you’re not coming, which is fine.”