Prologue
"Gigi, come on," Lucy waved her hand in an impatient motion to her cousin.
Giselle stood at the edge of the browning corn stalks, a shiver dancing down her spine, tangoing up her arms, ending in a certain ringing in her head.
'You're being silly,' she told herself.
She'd been in that field a hundred times picking green beans with her Granny Walford, yanking worms and weeds from places they were unwelcome, sneaking away as she was doing now.
She glanced up to where Lucy stood, hand on hip, ready to stomp her foot like a spoiled child.
"They aren't going to wait forever," her same-aged cousin reminded her in a loud whisper.
Gigi thought briefly of how a whisper wouldn't keep their grandmother from knowing of their nocturnal activities, but she pushed the thought aside and stepped her foot into the turned soil. As quickly as she stepped inside, she had the urge to yank back and turn towards the security of the old farmhouse.
A dull throbbing in her temple seemed to echo her footsteps as she moved towards Lucy, who had turned to face the quickest path to the other side. Gigi tried to concentrate on the road that led to a night of beer and boys, to freedom for the pair of seventeen year olds confined all summer inside an always-cooking-something kitchen.
"One step, two step, three step," she whispered to herself, "I ward off any hex."
Lucy had moved just out of sight as she continued, "Four stride, five stride, six stride, I surround myself with the light."
She could almost hear her Granny's voice replacing her own as she chanted the remembered spell to ward off evil-doings during travels down treacherous roads.
Until that summer they'd both secretly laughed at their elder's strange ranting and rhymes, feeling beleaguered when she insisted they stir her brews or wear the odd pieces of rope and string she attached to their arms and necks despite their protest.
But, when Lucy arrived again in late May, as had been family tradition for as long as either could remember, her attitude had changed. She begged to see inside their grandmother's guarded "recipe" books and had her hand smacked away more than once when she tried to steal a glance.
Gigi still hadn't fully let go of their first conversation under the covers a few weeks earlier when Lucy said, "She really is a witch, Gi."
She'd laughed at first. It all sounded so absurd. Yes, she was a little strange and very superstitious, but a witch?
"Come on, Lucy," she shook her head, "you're being silly. Witches live in gingerbread houses and eat little children."
Lucy was dead serious when she answered, "You don't understand, little cousin. Maybe I'm just like her and you're not. Aunt Rachel said my mother was much more powerful than yours, so maybe it skipped a generation in your case."
Giselle's skin prickled. She hated to be called little cousin by the girl she'd accepted as a near-sibling but had never really liked in any traditional sense.
She'd admitted her clandestine feelings towards Lucy at the end of one summer to her mother who smiled and said, "Honey, you're just too close in age."
Lucy was eight days older. Eight days. One week and one day.
The elder teenager was standing in the middle of the field when Giselle finally caught up to her. Lucy didn't see their grandfather's old hunting knife in her hand until she was almost beside her.
"What the hell, Lucy?" she instinctively backed away from the weapon.
Lucy laughed, "Where are you going?"
She looked down at how the bright light of the full moon reflected menacingly against the silver and dropped her arm to her side.
"God, you've watched too many horror movies," she said in a voice that was no longer a whisper.
She continued to add, "If I wanted to kill you, I'd just poison you with some of the hemlock Granny grows out back."
Giselle took a cautious step forward and asked, "So, what's that for? I thought we were meeting Jenny and Karen and going to town? Remember?"
Lucy's face changed to a smirk that made Gigi unspeakably uncomfortable.
"I've got something better planned," she informed her as she pulled a department store shopping bag from beneath a pile of garden debris waiting to be composted.
