Spells for Forgetting(96)

It was Jake and Noah who’d followed him from the pub and made sure he never made it home. They’d taken him deep into the woods and Jake was the one to pull the trigger. They buried him while Bernard and Zachariah ferried his boat across the Sound and left it to be found in the Seattle Harbor. It didn’t take long for it to get reported, and by all accounts, he’d just skipped town.

It wasn’t a huge leap for anyone to believe. Calvin was a selfish, cowardly excuse for a man who’d loathed his responsibility to take over the orchard. We were closer than ever to getting Henry to turn it over to the council, but when Eloise gave birth to a baby boy, all of that changed. He finally had his heir and we had nothing.

Calvin was out of the way, but we were still left with two Salts. I’d had plans for August from the time his mother’s swollen belly first began to show. He and my own granddaughter Lily were born only months apart, and the natural course of things was to bring the orchard back to the Morgans the same way it had been stolen: marriage. But I hadn’t counted on Emery Blackwood or the fact that Lily would do something as stupid as wind up pregnant.

August had never taken to Lily, and it became clear that I’d have to hasten Henry Salt’s death. If he died with his only heir not yet of age, we’d have a chance.

I’d spent months preparing the curse for Henry, and I’d cast it by burying the spell deep in the woods. A few days later, the coughing began, and a month after that, the bleeding. There was a palpable relief among the town. We would finally be rid of him, and we were mere days from burying the bastard when I stopped feeling the draw of the island, the buzz of magic missing from my fingertips. And it never returned. Not a single spell or charm had taken life since, and I’d had to wait for his natural death to finally set plans for the orchard into motion. But August was about to destroy all of that.

It was my own fault. I’d delivered August after a thirty-three-hour labor, and I’d held the newborn in my hands the moment he took his first breath. He wasn’t just a child. He was a Salt. Another pair of hands to inherit what wasn’t his.

I remember looking down at him, hatred boiling inside me at seeing another soul born into the bloodline. If I’d done what I needed to do then, we would have buried an infant, and we wouldn’t be here. But there was no going back and changing it now.

The town had a habit of looking the other way when it came to the Salts. They always had. No one gave a shit when Calvin showed up to school covered in bruises, and no one said a thing when the same started happening to August. I’d never liked either of the boys, but I had a responsibility to the orchard.

My great-grandmother planted the first five seeds of the apple orchard and my family line had tended it until one of them married a Salt and the Morgans were pruned from the vine. But I still understood my duty, which was more than I could say for any of this lot. It had taken a lifetime, but I’d done the thing I’d sworn to do. I’d lived to see the orchard untethered from the Salts. And by the time I was laid to rest in that cemetery, I’d rest soundly knowing I had fulfilled my purpose. Even if I’d lost my own magic in the process.

I was born a healer on this island, and the Salts were a bone-deep cancer.

That’s why I told Lily exactly what to do when she came to my door, red-faced and crying about August and Emery leaving the island. I told her that the bond between them could only be broken by death. It was easy to reason with someone who was heartsick. It took only minutes to convince her to go to Albertine’s for the book of spells, and then I went to the apothecary and unlocked the cupboard, just like I promised.

I knew that trusting her with the task was a risk. I’d have done the spell myself, if I could.

I let out a long, measured breath, looking from Zachariah to Bernard. I’d have to speak the only language these fools understood—a seventeen-year-old dead girl. The town’s belief that August killed Lily was enough to get rid of him the first time.

“August killed my granddaughter,” I said. “You know it, and I know it. The entire town knows it.”

“Just because Dutch lied doesn’t mean August killed her.” Nixie shot a look to Zachariah, who would be her most likely ally.

I knew how this worked. If I was going to get them on board, we needed all of us.

“There’s not an innocent among us,” I reminded them, and that got their attention.

It was a dangerous shift in the discussion, but a necessary one. Every single person in the room had been guilty of crimes they’d gone unpunished for.

“We all have blood on our hands, some of us more than others.” I eyed Nixie. She and Hannah had led the charge against Calvin, and Nixie herself had been the notary on the orchard’s deed.

Zachariah cleared his throat. “We still don’t know for sure that he did it. He could be innocent.”

“Even if that’s true—and it’s not—we let August go, and it’s only a matter of time before this all comes crashing down on top of us. He’s on to what we did with the orchard, which means he isn’t just a murderer, he’s a threat to the island itself. If he goes to a lawyer or to the authorities, it’s over. All of it. He could already have the will.”

A deep silence fell over the small room and a moment passed before the first of them crossed the line in the sand.

“If we’re going to do it, it needs to be tonight.” Bernard was the one to say it, but I’d put those words in his mouth. There was a different kind of magic I was wielding now.