Juniper dragged her hand across her face and crossed off another address on her list. She blinked and did a double take, realizing that it was the last one. She flipped it over to the side where she’d written down the ones that were viable options. There were six: one side of a duplex with some water damage, a small but impeccable house in a good area, an average house in an area unfriendly to witches, a larger house that was far from her friends and family, a cute house that would need a new roof before long, and a house that had a lab in the basement, but not an alchemy lab.
At the bottom of the list was a half-written address that was struck out. She groaned and shut the lid of her laptop, resting her head and arms on it.
“That didn’t sound good,” Dana said, looking up from her mug. “What is it?”
“That’s it. That was everything. Every damn listing within a hundred miles. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Why couldn’t I have just gotten the house? Natalie had enough of her own money that she actually could have made mom’s go further. This isn’t enough to buy something.”
Dana stood up and came over to sit next to Juniper on the couch. She set her mug down and lifted the blanket that was around her shoulders, spreading it out so that it covered both of them. “We’ll figure this out. We always do. Can I see the list?” Juniper nodded and slid it over to her.
“The water damage can be fixed on that first one, but I get the feeling they’re hiding what caused it. If it’s still a problem, there could be a lot of hidden costs. That one was already at the top of your budget, too.”
“Alright, let’s cross that one off.”
That left them with five. Dana took a sip of her tea. “You could make the small house work. You totally could. Even if you still wanted to do a home business, you don’t have to like... mass produce cauldrons in your home. You could make digital templates for grimoires for tech witches or something.”
“Let’s keep that one then.”
“I feel like that one on Dahlia Street would be fine if you were careful? You could get by without raising suspicion.”
Juniper sighed. “I’m sick of having to pretend to be something I’m not.”
Dana tapped the pen, probably wondering if she should push the issue. “You could still be yourself everywhere else. Besides, maybe... maybe you could be the one to get your neighbors to come around!”
“I’m tired of having to play advocate for an entire group of people. I just want to be me- no explanations necessary.”
She felt exhaustion down to her core. She’d thought, towards the end, that maybe on her deathbed her mom would say ‘you know what, be whatever makes you happy.’ But she’d stubbornly held onto her prejudices up until the very end. It had been four months, and Natalie showed no signs of forgiving her for how everything had played out in those final days.
“I know, I know,” Dana murmured, leaning into her. She didn’t say whether or not they would keep that house on the options list. The large house far from everyone was kept, as neither of them minded long drives all that much. Juniper just hoped her car would hold out. The one in need of a new roof was crossed off. She just didn’t see herself having the money to fix that kind of thing any time in the near future. They both laughed as they marked down the house with the remnants of what had once clearly been a meth lab as a “maybe.”
Dana tapped the list, running her fingers over the lines. “Do you think making potions in an old meth lab would affect the final product?”
“Oh my God, Dana, I would not be keeping the meth lab if I got that house. Natalie would kill me. Well... what do we have? Two? Three?”
Dana looked down at the line that had been scribbled out so hard it had made an indent in the paper. “You know, you could talk to your Grandma? About the big house? I think if anyone would know if it was a lost cause, it would be her.”
Juniper felt lost. None of the other houses called out to her. They were just cookie cutter things without a drop of magic in them. Sure, she could remodel and make them hers- weave herself into them. They were good blank slates. It would work, if she could find more than a few drops of her magic at a time anymore. That was partly why she was so invested in this house hunting business. Maybe the right house, a house with power, could help her heal.
She sighed and pulled out her phone. “I’m not doing this because I would consider that house. It’s just, now that you mention it, it’s been a few weeks since I called her.”
Dana nodded. “She always has interesting stories. If nothing else, maybe she can get your mind off the house hunt for a bit.”
That, and she felt the weight of her secrets lift whenever they spoke. Dana and her grandmother were the only people who both knew her and accepted her, and knew what happened the day she was expelled from her coven.
She punched in her grandmother’s number and she answered after three rings. “June! What a pleasant surprise.”
“Hi Gram Gram,” Juniper said, with Dana echoing her. They’d known each other long enough that Dana had basically adopted Juniper’s grandmother as her own. “Is it a good time for a video call?”
“Yes, I was just out in the garden trying to figure out what the mandrakes were in a huff about,” she said, turning on her video. Her long grey hair was tied in a side braid under a wide-brimmed floppy straw hat. She wore blue overalls embroidered with flowers.
“Again?” Dana asked. “What are they mad about this time, Margie?”
Marjorie shrugged and shook her head. “I think it’s the hard water. I’ll have to look into installing something on the house so I don’t have to keep buying bottles for them. How’ve you both been? How are you holding up?” Her bright, intelligent eyes searched their faces and saw the haggard looks they bore.
“House hunting sucks,” Juniper said, plopping her head on one arm while the other held up the phone. “I’ve been looking for months, and I can count my options on one hand.”
Her grandmother nibbled on a fingernail before remembering there was probably dirt under it. She wiped it on her overalls and put her hand in her lap. “I know this hasn’t been an easy year for you. I’ve always heard that trials come in waves, but the damn things seem to be overlapping in your case. Well, some options are better than none. Any of them speaking to you?”
Juniper shook her head. “No. They’re just... houses. I guess I could always make them mine, but- I don’t feel attachment to any of them.”
“Perhaps attachment will come with work and persistence, or maybe the right house is still out there somewhere. You’ve been putting intention out to find the right place?”
Dana excused herself to go refill her mug and said that she would bring another for Juniper. A warm mug in her hands would feel good. That always steadied her.
“I... I have been.” She paused. She was just asking a question. There would be no consequences for asking it. It didn’t mean she was going to change her mind. “I’ve been trying to connect with each house.”
“None of them felt right?”
“None... of the six on that list,” she said carefully.
Her grandmother blinked, and Juniper got the feeling she was mildly abusing her clairvoyant abilities. She raised an eyebrow. “Not even the address you crossed out?”
Juniper pouted. “It was the only house that interested me.”
“But there was something about it that made you cross it off so hard you almost put a hole through the paper. Some kind of scar? Is that what has you upset?”
She nodded. Dana came back with two mugs of tea and slid one into Juniper’s grateful hands. “Lavender with milk and honey,” she murmured. Juniper thanked her and leaned over to let the steam waft across her face. It was an unseasonably cool September day, and the shade from the magnolia tree in the yard chilled the house further.
“Gram, there’s...something in the house. I’m no stranger to ghosts, but I’m not sure if this is something that can even be banished.”
Her grandmother sat up straighter. “You saw something while on the tour? Did the agent know about it?”
Juniper made a “so-so” motion with her hand. “She was a witch as well. She had been dodgy the whole time. She didn’t so much as lie or hide anything as just... waited until we had seen the rest of the house first and let us make our own decisions. There was... something in one of the bedrooms.”
“What did it look like?” Her grandmother’s eyes were alight with curiosity. She had a passion for creatures both animal and supernatural. Whether it was a feral cat, a beetle, or a ghost, she treated them all with the same amount of respect and care.
“Nothing at all.”
Dana leaned in so that her face could be seen on the call. “We didn’t see anything, or hear anything, we just knew that something was there.”
She heard the sound of her grandmother’s fingers tapping against the table under the phone. “Was the room chilled? Did it remind you of anything we’ve encountered before?”
Juniper shook her head. “It didn’t remind me of anything at all. That was just it. It felt like there was a rip in space and time under the bed in the shape of a person. It was like a vacuum, or the ringing in your ears when you stand up too quickly.”
Her grandmother swallowed hard, jaw set. Juniper knew her grandmother well enough to know that she recognized what she had just described.
“You know what it is,” Dana said, filling the silence.
“It isn’t anything at all,” her grandmother said, looking into the distance and scratching absently at the table. “It’s what’s left behind when magic of the heart goes wrong. It can be caused by a number of things, but the end result is always the same. In the terrible aftermath, among everything else, you get The Empty.” The way she spoke told Juniper that in her mind she had capitalized the last two words. It was the same thing Dana had mentioned in the car a month prior.
Juniper’s gaze hardened. If this thing was knowable, it could be dealt with. And if it could be dealt with, she could move out of this house and not have to deal with people she’d rather not be around at the moment.
“How do we get rid of it?”
Her heart sank like a rock as her grandmother shook her head. “It’s not something that can be banished or sent somewhere else. It’s going to sink its claws into that house like a cat grabbing onto the doorframe on the way to the bathtub. All you can do is live with it and work around it.”
“Can it be done?”
Her grandmother laughed, a sound full of confidence and mirth that came from years of facing so many trials that very little fazed her anymore. “Anything can be done. You just have to decide if this is something you’re willing to deal with. Tell you what, if it puts your mind at ease, the three of us can go back to the house, and I can take a look and tell you how concerned you should be. Empties are nasty things, but it’s no different from living with an incredibly intelligent, feral, rabid possum.”
Dana snorted and Juniper barked out a laugh. “Sounds charming. When should we go?
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