Chapter 16: Ezra - Entities to Lovers

I have never been sent to the principal’s office, but I imagine it feels like this.

“Where is she?” I ask.

Rory bounces side to side and shuffles her tarot cards as we stand at the bottom of the stairs leading to Delia’s apartment. She’s been antsy since she announced we’d have to go talk to her mom for the next steps.

To be honest, I’m not keen on the idea either. Asking Delia for help means we’re going to have to confess that our bickering knocked over Temperance Talbot’s séance table, and we’re now cursed by an unruly socialite spirit. It’s the last thing I want to tell my boss.

At least Delia likes me more than Dr. Hugh Belmont. For now.

“I have no idea. She left last night, but I figure she’d have come back at some point,” Rory explains. “I texted her.”

Something in me broke watching her slide down the radiator and burst into tears. I’d never felt so woefully unprepared to fix a problem before. I don’t know how to fix a problem for someone like Rory, who is so tenacious and fiercely independent. And I certainly don’t know how to fix this one…

It may not have been a cure to this curse, but a single hug seemed to bring her back down to earth again. It’s like all she wanted was for someone to care and at least try to make a difference.

In the past, during rough patches in relationships, something about me was never worth fighting through the fire for. So…it’s easier to avoid getting invested and spare myself someone quitting on me yet again. For Rory, I really want to try to be enough. I keep checking on her and needing to know she’s okay. Her eyes are still a little red, and she sniffled for part of the walk over here. If I can just do something to get her smiling again…

“Maybe she’s out with Vic,” I suggest.

Finally, Rory breaks into a giggle. “God, don’t even joke.”

“Apparently, he talks to her.”

“She’s his boss.”

Her smile is like daylight. Bright and blinding in the best way. Her golden curls are unkempt and a little damp from the rainy walk over, weighed down and tightly coiled. The happiness that surges through me seeing her happy is the canary in the coal mine that I might be falling for her.

“There’s that smile,” I say.

Rory clams up. She bunches her fists in her parka pockets and her shoulders scrunch. “Yeah…sorry about losing it earlier.”

I shake my head. “It’s fine.”

“I hate failing. Especially in front of people. I feel like it’s all I do sometimes.”

“I don’t think you failed,” I assure her. “Is it a bummer that those spells didn’t work? Yeah, but…I don’t know what I could have done differently. Maybe that wasn’t the solution.”

“But what happens if I can’t figure it out?” She blinks up at me, tears building in her eyes again. “What if I can’t get it right?”

“The good news is, you’re not alone,” I say. “We’re going to figure this out together. Even if it’s hard. We’ll get there.”

I’m not sure I believe it myself, but Rory needs a boost now more than ever.

The skeleton keys above the door jingle and Delia walks into Ye Olde Spirit Shop, shaking the rain from her hair. She looks sleepy and a little disoriented, which isn’t exactly what I’m used to.

“Oh, hi,” she gasps in surprise. “What are you two doing here?”

“We need to talk to you,” Rory asserts.

“Okay…well, come on up,” Delia says, “I’ll put some tea on.”

Delia leads us up the stairs and into the apartment above the store. I’ve never been up here, but I’ve heard rumors about what it holds. I imagine it being a full continuation of the store, like a secret back room where they’d sell the good stuff. It’s where Rory grew up, where her childhood bedroom is, the kitchen table she learned to read tarot at…

There’s a sign hanging from the door reading Please Be Responsible for the Energy You Bring Into This Home and it makes me smile.

The door swings open, and I find that, yes, it is a continuation of the store in a lot of ways, but it’s also undeniably a home. The walls are covered in a light brown, floral wallpaper, something reminiscent of a Victorian parlor. There are smudges and tears, but it hardly feels like mess or damage. They’re signs of life. It’s cluttered and I think Luna would panic in here, but everything feels like it fundamentally belongs.

The coffee table’s come from another time, and the entertainment center houses a midsize TV, with haunting Matryoshka dolls, figurines, and preserved butterflies lining the hutch above it. Next time I go home, maybe I’ll have my dad make Delia and Rory little figurines. They’d fit right in.

The kitchen’s a small U shape, with an aged table stacked high with papers, receipts, and schedules. A single hallway leads to two bedrooms and a bathroom, I presume. The air smells like cedar, a cozy campfire, and cinnamon. It’s comfortable.

“Can you make the one I brought you the other day?” Rory whispers to her mom, like a little kid needing comfort on a bad day. I’m mentally taking notes. Tea. Tea seems to help.

Delia nods and turns the kettle on for us. Rory settles in like she’s right at home, taking a seat on the couch with me. After what she confessed, it occurs to me that Rory doesn’t see herself the way everyone else does. She sees her shortcomings and worries, but she doesn’t see that I work twice as hard because she sets the bar high in the sky. She doesn’t see the way everyone in the store admires her because she’s so good at what she does. She doesn’t see the way Delia has always looked at her like she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her. They’re so much alike, but never in a way that feels like Delia deliberately molded her into a carbon copy. She’s so much her own person. She just needs to believe in that person.

I’m not done looking around yet. I zero in on a particularly portentous gnome statue looming in the corner. It’s surrounded by a protective circle of salt.

“Who is that?”

“My mom calls him the Old One,” Rory says. “We got paid to take it off someone’s hands.”

“Oh…that’s not ominous at all.”

Delia brings over two cups of tea and places them on the table in front of us. She takes a seat in the armchair adjacent to the table. I sip the tea. It’s sweet and spicy, a little bit of cinnamon with dashes of pear.

“Did you make this?” I ask Rory, already knowing the answer. She nods meekly. “It’s really good.”

“Oh…” she replies and tries to hide her smile. “Thank you?”

“So, what brings you here bright and early?” Delia implores.

Rory picks her cuticles and hesitates. I don’t know if she’s going to have it in her to say anything, so maybe I need to step up and be brave for her.

“We’re…in a little trouble,” I say.

“Are you pregnant?” Delia asks Rory, very gently. I’m about to enjoy another sip of tea, but now I’m choking on it.

“No,” Rory insists. “No, we’re not…we’re not even together.”

God damn it, now I’m thinking things I should not be thinking, like how messy Rory’s curls get when someone coils their fingers in them, or if her concealed skin is as porcelain and perfect as the rest of it. But Rory’s right: We aren’t together, yet there is something building between us. The longer we’re bonded together, the harder it is to claim that these feelings I have for her are just rivalry. There is something else underneath it. Maybe there always has been.

“We…The other night when we first did the tour together, we might have caused a little accident at Talbot House,” she finishes for me.

Delia’s back straightens. “What happened?”

“We were resetting the room after the guests left, and we knocked over that séance table they have in the parlor. It was an accident. I tripped and Ezra tried to help me. The table was fine, and we put everything back, but one of those little bottles on display broke. And I’m really sorry, I know we broke an antique relic—”

Delia huffs and waves us off. “Those are from Goodwill.”

“What?”

“The bottles fill out the table. I don’t think the Talbot family even kept her old bottles.” She sips her tea. “Jean—the curator there—and I picked them out together on a girls’ day years ago.”

I nudge Rory’s knee with mine. “See? I told you it wasn’t antique.”

“How was I supposed to know that?” she grumbles.

“Listen to me?”

“Yeah, okay…”

I return to the subject at hand. “So, breaking them doesn’t mean anything?”

“Correct. You have nothing to worry about,” Delia says. “I bet they didn’t even notice. Some of the pillows in the parlor are from HomeGoods. They’ve taken some liberties to keep the aesthetic going.”

“That’s not the problem, though,” Rory interrupts. “It’s not just the bottle. Mom, I think we’re cursed.”

Delia sits back in her chair and runs a finger around the rim of her teacup. Concern washes over her expression but not panic. It’s a measured shift in the air like she’s thinking of possible solutions. I hope to god she has one. “Cursed? What makes you say that?”

“After we tipped over the table, Talbot House spoke to me.”

“You said Talbot House never speaks to you.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Rory explains. “It said I’ll show you.”

I wonder how often this happens. Do they regularly invite dark spirits into their midst? A shiver ripples up Delia’s back, but she keeps quiet to listen.

“After that, things started going wrong,” I elaborate.

“I slept through my alarm. Fell down the stairs. Made all those people cry,” Rory says.

I hold up my phone. “I broke my phone. I failed my class by accident. I got hit in the head with a street sign.”

Delia’s brows furrow. “A street sign?”

“Yes, it’s really pathetic, I know.”

At least the bruising has gone down, and it doesn’t hurt when I roll over in my sleep anymore.

“Oh,” she muses. “That’s what happened to your head.”

“Indeed.”

“But then,” Rory adds, “when Ezra walked into the store the other day, that was when we got the email about The Out There. My fortune changed the second he was around. When he left again, those antlers hit me. I spilled beer all over myself.”

“And that was the night of the tour from hell,” I continue, “with the flat. When I was with Rory, I got drinks for free. When she left, my card declined, and I spilled wine all over someone. I think whatever we pissed off in Talbot House, it doesn’t want us to be apart. I think we’re literally cursed to stay by each other’s sides if we want to keep everything from going to shit.”

She ponders it. “Okay, well, at least you’ve figured that part out. It explains all of…this.”

She waves at the two of us. I wondered what went through her head yesterday when I showed up with Rory. There was a conniving look in her eyes, like she’d hoped we might get along someday.

“Yeah,” Rory says. “It sure does.”

“But something happened this morning,” I continue. “The bad luck returned even though we were in the same room. We were doing everything right, and then all of a sudden, we were back to square one.”

Delia contemplates. The cuckoo clock behind her strikes ten a.m., and instead of a little bird popping out, a Headless Horseman gallops around ten times. I shift forward. Rory rests a hand on my leg and gives me a pat, saying, “I’ll let you look at the creepy clock later, buddy.”

She’s learned me so well.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of something like this happening,” Delia says.

“Well, yeah,” Rory agrees. “We know Temperance Talbot loved to put hexes on people—”

“I mean from beyond the grave.”

Rory looks to me, finally a hint of hope in her eyes. This has the potential to be more helpful than Temperance’s book of stink bombs.

“Every now and then, I hear whispers that people end up befallen by something after being in Talbot House. I know one personally. Lettie. She was the curator there about fifteen years ago.”

“Can we talk to her?” I inquire. “If she managed to break the curse, she might know how.”

I half expect she’s going to drop it on us that this Lettie woman is dead. Which may not be helpful, unless Rory can get in touch with her somehow.

“I can tell you where to find her.”

“Can’t we just call her?” I ask.

“Lettie…” Delia sighs. “After the whole experience, she quit her job there and moved up to Maine. There’s a thriving spiritualist community up there—Dawn Ridge—and that’s where you’ll find her. She’s off the grid, no phone, no email, but she sent me the address of the village in a letter a while ago. As far as I know, she’s still there. She might be able to help you.”

Well, this is totally impractical. It reminds me of the days I had to dig through books and encyclopedias to find information I needed, rather than having the entire internet at my fingertips. The internet is terrible for things like radicalization and having to beg my kids to not use AI to write their homework assignments, but I do value it for how accessible it’s made the ability to learn something new.

But boy, someone who doesn’t even have email?

“You’re suggesting we go to Maine?” Rory probes. “That’s a different state!”

“Nothing gets past you,” I tease. This time, when she rolls her eyes, she also laughs.

“Are there even any easy train or bus routes up there?” Rory asks.

“No, you’ll need to drive,” Delia says.

“I don’t know how to drive!” Rory cries.

I rub the back of my neck and clear my throat. “I can get us a car.”