Second Chance Magic Read online

  Lorna couldn’t explain why, but she found herself sitting down and reaching for the book. She placed her hand next to Vivien’s, forming one point of the triangle. Energy pulsed through her causing excitement and fear.

  “I want to hear what Glenn has to say for himself,” Lorna said. “I want to know if I was a blind fool before I try dating again. I don’t know if I can trust myself. We can remove our hands and end it at any time.”

  Heather took a seat. She stared at the book, not touching it.

  Lorna felt Vivien’s longing for her lost love. The ache came in through her fingers on the book and trailed up her arm, as profound as any emotion she’d ever felt.

  That wasn’t all. The book amplified her longing for answers. She stopped worrying about what might happen and became focused on what she wanted, which was for Glenn to answer for what he did to her and their children.

  Heather hovered her hand over the book. “I don’t want to contact my son. Not right now. Not after I’ve been drinking. I’m not ready.” Tears entered her eyes and she took several deep breaths. “I don’t think I can…”

  “Okay, we won’t,” Vivien assured her. “We would never force that on you.”

  Heather nodded and lowered her hand.

  The instant Heather made contact, Lorna stiffened, her elbow locking into place. The energy became almost painful as it shot up her arm. She felt the hair lifting from her shoulders. Her palm began to burn.

  “Someone say something,” Vivien said. “What did the book say?”

  “Ah…?” Heather shook her head, trying to remember.

  Candles lit by themselves, flaming high before settling.

  “That was cool,” Vivien whispered.

  “We should have written down what we needed to say,” Lorna said. “Is it too late to start over?”

  “The ink is smeared,” Vivien said. “We have the basic idea. Let’s wing it. Worst case scenario it doesn’t work.”

  “Worst case scenario we open a portal to hell and call out a demon or something,” Lorna disagreed.

  “Don’t think like that,” Heather scolded. “Focus on what you want.”

  “Okay, I think it went something like, we open the door between two worlds?” Lorna knew this was maybe not the smartest plan, yet somehow the words eased any lingering fear. The nearness of the others gave her strength. She felt the power running through her, dulling her senses, whispering that it was going to be all right. She felt her new friends with her and didn’t want to stop.

  Heather nodded. “Yes, that’s it. We open the door between two worlds and call forth the tethered spirits of Sam and Glenn. Come back to us from the grave so that we may hear you speak.”

  The book began to shake. A tapping noise sounded as if coming from far away.

  “Come back from the grave so that all may see.” Lorna felt her arm being lifted as the book levitated from the table. Her eyes met Heather and Vivien’s. “Come back from the grave and tell me why…”

  Lorna couldn’t remember the rest. One of the incantations had said something about facing judgment. Another tried to give peace.

  “I want answers, Glenn,” Lorna blurted. “Give me answers.”

  “Sam?” Vivien called. “Are you with us? Can you hear me?”

  “You must be drunk.”

  At the sound of the male voice Lorna gasped in fright and jerked her hand away. She hadn’t meant to, but it was too late to take back. The book slammed down on the table. She jumped again at the heavy thud. Her heart beat fast and she shared a wide-eyed look with Heather and Vivien. No one spoke.

  “You called me. I’m William, not Sam.” William appeared at the top of the stairs. “I knocked but no one answered so I hope it’s all right that I just walked in. I take it you still want this food?”

  Heather gave a small laugh of surprise to see it was her brother. Lorna’s heart was still pounding and she barely managed a half smile.

  William came toward the kitchen counter carrying two large bags of food. “Someone owes me fifty dollars plus a tip for the delivery.”

  “Oh, ah…” Lorna glanced at the bags and then around the apartment for her purse.

  Vivien touched her arm to stop her. A tiny electrical snap jolted them at the contact and Vivien instantly let go. “He’s joking.”

  Lorna rubbed her arm.

  “She’s right. I’m teasing.” William set down the bags and then looked at the book on the table. He started to move toward it. “How’s book club?”

  “Enlightening,” Vivien answered, taking the book and moving it across the studio apartment to set it on Lorna’s bed where he couldn’t see it as well.

  Lorna glanced around the apartment for signs of ghosts. There were none.

  “I’ll get plates.” Heather went to the kitchen.

  William pulled water bottles out of the food bags and set them on the counter where they could see them. “Make sure you ladies hydrate. That’s half the battle when it comes to hangovers.”

  He turned to leave.

  Lorna still felt strange. Being alone with Heather and Vivien had given her a sense of euphoria and caused her to act recklessly. Somehow William walking in had brought sanity back into the room. How else could she explain saying yes to summoning her dead husband while drunk? Heather had been right. They had no clue what they were messing with.

  “Have you eaten? Do you want to join us?” Lorna pushed up from the table, not wanting William to leave. If he went, they surely pick up where they left off and she wasn’t certain she was ready for that. If Vivien begged them to summon Sam, how could Lorna say no? She knew how much pain the other woman was in.

  “Yes, stay,” Heather insisted.

  “We interrupted your dinner,” Vivien added.

  Or maybe none of them were ready to try again.

  “I don’t want to intrude upon girls’ night.” William hesitated. “I can go—”

  “No,” Heather and Vivien shot in unison, cutting him off.

  “Please, stay,” Lorna added.

  He took several steps back toward them and stopped. “Are you ladies all right? You seem…”

  “Drunk?” Vivien offered. “Yep. We are.”

  “I was going to say worried,” William corrected.

  “Worried that… the food is going to get cold,” Vivien ineloquently said as she pointed at the bags. “Bring those bad boys over here.”

  William sighed and shook his head slightly as he did as Vivien commanded. “Keep ordering me around like this, Viv, and I won’t come to your rescue next time.”

  “Sure you will,” Vivien answered, moving around the table to take a seat near the windows. “You always say that and then you always do. You have to love me. I’m practically like a sister to you.”

  “I begged my mom not to adopt you,” he mumbled loud enough for her to hear.

  “I begged my mom for a puppy named Will,” Vivien retorted.

  “Stop it, both of you.” Heather interrupted their playful argument. “Lorna’s going to think you’re serious.”

  Lorna didn’t say anything as they bantered. They had known each other for a long time and it showed. That history was embedded in every movement, every teasing word. They didn’t mean to isolate her with their playfulness, but they did. She had to wonder why Vivien and William weren’t together. They had a natural rhythm between them. Most relationships were built on friendship.

  William sat down next to Lorna at the table. He leaned into her and whispered, “Are you sure this is all right? I don’t want to intrude.”

  Lorna nodded. “Yes. The more the merrier. We invited you, how’s that intruding?”

  Her eyes drifted behind him, once again searching for signs of the supernatural. So much for being a brave, independent woman. Levitating books and self-lighting candles might be super cool in theory but seeing it firsthand was also terrifying. There was no way she wanted to be left alone in the apartment. She’d take all the company she could get.

&nb
sp; Chapter Eight

  Soft, unfamiliar sounds and bright sunlight welcomed Lorna to a new day. She lay on her couch barely able to focus on the edge of her coffee table. Her eyes were dry and she realized she’d slept in her contacts. She blinked several times for moisture. It didn’t take long for the evening’s events to come rushing back. Heather and Vivien had slept in the bed, which left her the couch. The stiff back was worth not spending the night alone in her apartment.

  She reached for the coffee table and touched the surface. Her fingers adhered to the sticky wine residue. The sluggish ache in her body and dullness in her head were to be expected from a hangover, only the amount she’d drank couldn’t account for what she felt.

  When the magic—because what else could she call what had happened but magical—coursed through her, she’d felt powerful, exhilarated. It took her mind to a place where logic didn’t matter as much as feelings. Since the moment she’d put on the ring, it had been building inside her.

  Heather’s pain from the loss of her son. Vivien’s loneliness from missing her dead husband. And Lorna’s shame that needed answers. They were all three of them stuck in the past, and their individual losses controlled them.

  Pain had brought them together. Julia Warrick had told Heather as much. Lorna knew it to be true. This new friendship could be the key to unlocking the door that kept them trapped in their saddest moments.

  They could say, “Goodbye.”

  They could say, “I love you.”

  They could say, “Damn you, Glenn, for your betrayal.”

  A sound in the kitchen caused her to shift her hazy focus. She saw the door to her side-by-side fridge hanging open, only to close slowly.

  Lorna pushed up from the couch to see past the island. William held a rag and swiped it along the surface of the countertop. His eyes met hers and he smiled.

  “I cleaned up and put the leftovers in the fridge,” he said, his voice soft as he glanced toward her bedroom as if not to wake the others. He turned his back for a moment, and she ran her fingers quickly through her hair to straighten the locks before he again faced her with a lidded coffee cup from the shop down the block. He walked it toward her. “I thought you might need this.”

  “You came all the way back here to bring us coffees?” Lorna asked in surprise as she took it. “Are you trying for sainthood?”

  “It wasn’t too far. I walked down the street this morning when they opened. I slept downstairs last night. There’s a cot in the back storage that the old projectionist used to nap on during his shifts,” William said. “It was late and I didn’t feel like driving home. Ace kept me company. He slept on my chest.”

  Lorna sipped the latte and made a sound of appreciation. “Mm, well I for one am grateful you didn’t leave.”

  He again glanced toward the bed and gestured to the stairs. Lorna slipped the blankets off her lap so she could follow him. She drew her hand along the wall to steady herself. The faintest trace of his cologne drifted behind him. She wore fluffy pink socks from the night before and had to tread carefully to keep from slipping on the wooden stairs. When they made it down, she shut the door behind her.

  “I’ll be right back.” Lorna moved past him to go to the restroom, pausing only long enough to set her coffee on the concession counter.

  She soon found herself staring into the mirror as she washed her hands. Ten years ago she would have made an excuse to run to the bathroom to put on makeup and make herself presentable. There was still that part of her that didn’t want this to be the image she showed William. She splashed cold water on her face and rubbed at her dry eyes with moist fingers to force the contacts to move. Then she pinched her cheeks in some arcane effort to look less sleep deprived. It didn’t work.

  Lorna sighed. Then again, who cared?

  Lorna gave a small laugh and stopped what she was doing. She was an adult and this is what a forty-four-year-old woman looked like in the early morning.

  What was it the internet people always joked? I’m middle-aged and I have no more fucks to give.

  That was probably one of the aptest sayings she’d ever heard.

  Lorna left the restroom expecting to see William waiting for her. He wasn’t there. She heard a noise near the office and went to see where he’d gone.

  “William?”

  The office lights weren’t on. She paused to look inside the dark room. The temperature felt lower like it had before when Julia had been in the room. The shadows appeared to shift, and she instantly went to flip the light switch. Lorna looked at the corner. Nothing was there. The creepy feeling from the night before resurfaced.

  “Grandma Julia?” Lorna asked the empty office. “If that’s you can you give me a sign? Can you show yourself?”

  Lorna wasn’t sure if it was relief or disappointment that filled her when a spirit didn’t materialize. She turned off the lights and slowly backed away from the door.

  Hearing a noise coming from the storage area, she changed routes to check for William. It sounded like someone slid boxes along the floor.

  She opened the door. “Can I help you find something? I rearranged all the—”

  The noises stopped. The storage room was dark.

  “Hello?” She called. “Is someone in here?”

  No answer.

  “Ace?” she whispered, hoping it was as simple as that. “Kitty are you hiding in here?”

  “Lorna? Who are you talking to?” William asked behind her.

  Lorna gave a small jolt of surprise and spun around to face him. She let go of the door, allowing its weight to pull it shut. “Where were you?”

  “Sitting in the theater drinking my coffee,” he answered. “Can I help you get something out of storage?”

  He pushed open the door and turned on the light to investigate who she’d been talking to. Lorna glanced around. There was no one. However, a box sat in the middle of the room where it didn’t belong.

  Not wanting to admit she’d been scaring herself after a night of ghost talk, she asked, “Did you see the stage floor? I don’t know how we’re going to fix that hole.”

  “I didn’t notice a hole. What happened? Did the floor crack? This building is old, but the stage has always appeared solid.”

  “You didn’t see it? It’s a giant hole in the middle of the stage. You can’t miss it,” she answered.

  William gave her a quizzical look before he made his way toward the theater. “Does my sister have help coming to fix it? She mentioned you all were fully booked for the next few months. I have to put together some paperwork today for the bank, but I can come back later with my tools.”

  “We have some indie film screening set up for the first of the week,” Lorna said. “But after that, yeah, people will need to get on there. A director has us booked for auditions. He’s shooting a movie not far from here in a few months.”

  “Are you going to audition? Become a movie star?” William went to look at the stage.

  Lorna followed him as he outpaced her, studying him as he walked up the stairs ahead of her. “I think my days starring in a string bikini on the beach are past me.”

  “I don’t know.” He gave a quick smile. “I’d watch that.”

  Lorna nearly choked on a laugh at the flirtation. She had set him up for it without thinking. It only proved how out of practice she was when it came to dating.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  “How can you miss it?” Lorna frowned. Even as she asked the question, she noticed the floor looked flat from where she stood. She joined him on the stage. The hole had been repaired. The night before the mechanism had been broken, and the altar had rolled over the section of lowered floorboards. It would’ve taken some effort to get the floor out from underneath it. “I don’t understand. Did you…?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” William walked along the stage, looking down as if he’d find what she was talking about.

  Lorna stood on the edge of where the giant hole had been and to
uched the floor with her toe. She put her weight slowly forward to see if it would move. It felt firm as if nothing had happened. Frowning, she went to the curtains where the levers had been. They were still there.

  “Don’t move,” she instructed so he wouldn’t fall through. She flipped the lever, but nothing happened.

  “Am I waiting for something?” He gave a small laugh.

  “I don’t…” Lorna reached to try the two remaining levers, flipping them up and down multiple times. She listened for the sound of vibrations to come up through the stage. She dropped her hand to her side and frowned. “My mistake. Heather must have already taken care of it.”

  Only, Heather had been with her the entire night.

  She rubbed her eyes. It had been real. It happened.

  Lorna had seen the broken pullies and old cogs beneath the stage. She’d felt the dirty floor against her hands and knees as she crawled to retrieve the book. Whatever had been in place to retract the altar had long ago deteriorated and stopped working. There was no reason why the stage should be fixed.

  William strode toward her. Lorna cringed as he stepped over the hole’s location, but he made it across without the floor buckling beneath him. He stopped about a foot away from where she stood next to the curtain.

  “You seem…” He hesitated as he studied her. “Did my sister and Vivien tell you the family ghost stories last night? Is that what they were doing with that old book? I can’t help but notice you seem jumpy this morning, and I’m hoping it has nothing to do with me showing up with coffee.”

  “It’s not you,” Lorna assured him. He’d made it clear how he felt about his family’s history with spirits, and she didn’t feel comfortable answering the rest of his questions. Also, she couldn’t help but wonder how many of those spirits were watching them right now.

  She glanced out over the empty seats. What if all of them were filled with ghosts watching them—the living—like a play? Most of the seats had springs that retracted them back to make room for walking, but a few were broken. Those few were on her to-do list to fix and didn’t stay up no matter how many times she tightened and replaced the bolts. What if that was where Julia Warrick and her spirit friends sat?