The following is a chapter from the follow-up to Hunting For Witches — Salem’s Burning
Since arriving in Boston, Morgan would start each morning with a run through the city. She'd begin in Chinatown, heading east on Kneeland St. to Washington, and from there, she took Boylston St. to Boston Common—the park right next door to Boston Public Garden. Council Chapter Nine may have been within spitting distance, but there were much more terrifying things to face during her daily workout than a bunch of secret society drips. When she reached the section of the park where the trees were at their thickest, she would experience flashbacks and find herself back in the forest, reliving her confrontation with McAllister.
“Hiya. Fancy seeing you again.”
Tyler wasn’t the only one who felt like he never left Little Salem. Morgan’s encounter in the woods remained just as traumatic and life-changing as a brush with the Mysterious Ones. A visit to the woods had granted Ada unbelievable powers and helped secure the Ghost Bros a shot at celebrity. But for Morgan, there was nothing to be gained other than years of self-loathing and mental anguish.
“You didn’t come all the way out here looking for little old me, did you?”
Morgan could still remember the excitement she felt. The rush that overtook her and those heady feelings that swelled up when she initially felt his hands on her.
“Easy, tiger.”
And the fear that took over when she saw the gruesome knife he was holding.
“Do yourself a favor. Forget you ever met me.”
Morgan would run through the park in her white sports bra and black leggings as these haunting images paraded through her head. All the while, a single thought consumed her: how the next time she ran into anyone like that maniac, she would be ready.
A lot had happened in her life since that fateful run-in in the woods five years ago. After she fled from her encounter with McAllister, she abandoned her initiation with the Sisterhood and returned home to South Carolina. She had enjoyed a quiet life of comfort and privilege up to this point; her mother was a nurturing stay-at-home mom, and her father was a successful contractor who didn’t leave his three daughters wanting for anything. The family lived in a large home in a well-to-do neighborhood where smiles and dependable “Southern charm” were abundant. Southern charm was something Morgan once prided herself with having in spades. But being polite and hospitable went straight out the window upon her return.
When Morgan returned from Little Salem, she was months away from graduating high school. She was one of the most popular girls in her class and had the reputation of being a total flirt. Still, she wasn’t willing to give up her chastity to just anyone, and so far had only let the lucky boys she snuck into her bedroom after-hours get to third base. This was something that was a source of pride for her; she identified as a spoiled “daddy’s girl” but seemed to have dodged all the baggage that came along with this. But in the days following her traumatic encounter in the woods, she wondered if the fact that McAllister was much older than her was one of the reasons she felt drawn to him. She sat up wide awake many nights contemplating whether she would have allowed him to take her precious chastity if he hadn’t revealed himself as such a scoundrel.
Morgan used to idolize her father, but her perceptions of her life and family changed completely upon her return. Her trust in people had shattered, and she started searching everywhere for signs of the duplicity that was hidden in people’s hearts—especially with men. She no longer found the smiles of her parents comforting and felt they must be hiding something beneath their cheerful dispositions. The amount of wine her parents drank before going to bed each night had her convinced that the romance they shared was only superficial. Watching them more carefully, they seemed to have reached a point in their sacred union where they both had to be drunk to stand one another.
After taking a more thoughtful approach to her parents’ behavior, Morgan suspected that her mother was secretly miserable and her father was having an affair or several. She started noticing certain looks he'd give her when she was showing a lot of skin or sunbathing in the backyard. These looks could have been harmless, but for Morgan, they served as proof that her father wasn’t the man she thought he was. Her eyes were now open to how unreliable a smile and a friendly attitude could be.
Morgan’s relationships with boys also suffered during this time, and so did her schooling. Once she was in college, she enrolled in counseling for a brief spell but didn’t feel like it was helping. As a substitute, she put her focus into kickboxing and running track. She also started offering daily prayers to the goddess, Artemis, and to her amazement, her petitions seemed to do wonders. As she continued training, she found she could do things with her body that a girl of her stringy build and stature shouldn’t have been able to accomplish. She took this as a sign that she was wasting her life with schooling and had strayed far from the path that she was destined for.
Late into her first year at the university, she was still a virgin and considered going out and scoring at a party to get that particular milestone over and done with. A vision of a burning arrow compelled her against this; instead, she pledged an oath of chastity to Artemis and dropped out of school to put all her focus into training for combat. She worked a series of boring service jobs, all while surrendering herself to learning more about witchcraft in her remaining spare hours. When she finally tired of dealing with people and receiving the types of glances from male customers that set her hairs on edge, she went searching for employment where she could avoid all social interaction for the most part. Eventually, after several nights of praying to her preferred deity, she found her dream job. She was hired as the assistant to an elderly mortician—a deeply religious Southern African-American man that everyone called “Old Joe.”
Morgan actually liked Joe a great deal. She may not have shared his enthusiasm for the Christian pantheon and subscribed to a much more unconventional belief system, but this was never an issue between them. Their relationship was always strictly professional. Joe never questioned her habit of staring at the cadavers she was working on for an inordinate amount of time once she was finished with them. It seemed he found it only natural for this type of curiosity to come with the profession. As long as she was doing her job, he would forgive any of her bizarre eccentricities.
Life was almost perfect, but Morgan didn’t know what was missing until her reunion with Ada. She was working late when Old Joe told her she had a visitor and couldn’t have been more surprised when she discovered who this visitor was. She hadn’t seen Ada since they were rivals at the Young Witches Retreat and immediately sensed a powerful transformation in the young prodigy. She felt the presence of special abilities that were gained through highly unorthodox means, along with changes that had resulted from an encounter with great loss and tragedy.
Ada was very straightforward about what happened to McAllister and the special bond they shared. She knew all about Morgan’s encounter with the platinum-haired hellraiser but made it clear that it wasn’t her mission to try to change her thoughts about him. Her real business was of a much more dangerous and deliberate nature: she wanted Morgan to join her new coven and assist in destroying the Scarlet Council forever.
Morgan was startled by how quickly she was able to rationalize giving up everything to join in Ada’s crusade. If it was already too late to get her revenge on McAllister, she could accomplish the next best thing: taking out the organization that had created such a monster. All those years of training, of working to make herself stronger—what was she doing wasting her vast potential in the world of normals when she could be out there kicking Council ass and changing the world for the better with other witches like her?
The only real conflict, aside from the annoying devotion that Ada harbored for her dead stepsibling, was the other girls that would be fighting alongside her. This proved to be the biggest hurdle of all to overcome. After accepting Ada’s offer, Morgan said a fond farewell to Old Joe and her time living in southern comfort and moved into the coven’s new HQ: a former handbag factory in Boston’s Leather District. The place was an all-white four-story building with mirrored windows to hide all the goings-on inside. The refurbished factory space on the top floor was where they lived, and where arguments and catty bickering seemed to be routine.
That day was no exception when Morgan returned from her daily run. She rode the freight elevator to the top floor of the unassuming venue and exited the lift to enter the Star 69 loft. The spacious living quarters occupied the entire floor with a corner dedicated to each of the four girls who lived there. Each corner contained a bed, dresser, and side table, with colorful curtains and screens that were set up to give the girls a bit of privacy. Morgan’s corner had a cold and simple Spartan quality, while everything in Z’s corner was black and sleek. Across the room, Agatha’s corner had an artsy bohemian vibe with lots of red and gold, and Lucy’s corner had a DIY teenage punk look. The center of the room contained several colorful Afghan rugs, and on the concrete wall opposite the windows was a collage of the Star 69 girls and paparazzi photos of the Scarlet Council candidates, the words “Sad Boys” and a frowny face in black spray-paint right above their heads.
When Morgan lifted the protective gate to enter the space, she arrived to the sound of an argument. Z, dressed in a baggy black T-shirt and black athletic shorts, was following Agatha across the room. The voluptuous redhead was dressed in only a bath towel and using a second one to dry her fiery hair.
“I don’t know who you’re used to living with, but this type of behavior? This attitude of yours? Is not going to fly around here.”
“Oh, just blow me already.”
Z gestured to the pile of clothes trailing from Agatha’s corner and infecting all the other living spaces. “Your clothes are everywhere! The other day I found a pair of panties drying on the dish rack!”
“If I can’t dry them on the dish rack, where else am I supposed to put them?” Agatha countered.
Z was rolling her eyes while Agatha slipped on her undergarments and Morgan glided across the room.
“Anyone using the shower?” Morgan asked.
“Your shower will have to wait,” Z grumbled. “Agatha used up all the hot water. Again.”
“Ain’t nothin’ gonna wash the bitch off you, honey,” Agatha muttered quietly.
Morgan glared at Agatha’s corner, where she had disappeared behind the curtain, hiding from view. “Excuse me? What did you say?”
“Hey! Back off, ponytail!” Lucy snarled. The punky blonde was sprawled out on her bed, listening to a song by Gothboiclique on her laptop when Agatha reemerged, wearing only an expensive bra and panties.
Temper flaring, Morgan glared daggers at the scornful teenager. “Settle down, mall-punk. You don’t want to see me angry.”
“Oh yeah? Try me.”
“Morning, everybody.”
The girls all turned in unison to spy Ada standing at the entrance to the stairwell. Their fearless leader was looking effortlessly stylish as usual in a black hat and long black coat worn over a black tank top and floor-length black skirt. Sanchez stood dutifully beside her, dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform and his token half-mask, ready to step in at a moment’s notice if everything wasn’t up to his lady’s approval.
“Everyone’s getting along famously, I see,” Ada dryly observed. “No matter. I’ve planned a little group exercise for this evening. Something to help us get better connected.”
Ada glanced at the girls one by one. “So… I’ll meet you back here at sundown, yes? Don’t be tardy for the party, witches.” She forced a smile and turned to leave but spun back immediately. “Oh, your assignments for the day—Z and Morgan, have a look at those documents we obtained from Barton Green’s apartment. See if they contain anything useful. Agatha and Lucy? The usual. Ta.”
Once Ada made her exit, Z turned to Morgan, wearing a look of detached cynicism. “Group exercise, huh?”
Agatha rolled her eyes. “God, I pray it’s not an orgy.”
Morgan liked that Ada tended to pair her off with Z as opposed to anyone else in the coven. Being the last two members to join, they shared the role of outsiders and also shared in the hostility from Agatha and her devoted Mini-Me, Lucy. Getting along with Z was easy; Z was more of a tomboy than the other girls and the least prone to getting into an argument over trivialities. Her main interest lay in identifying problems and searching for solutions, which worked well for Morgan, who was less of a thinker and more of a doer and much more hot-tempered and mercurial than her calm and levelheaded counterpart. Z didn’t seem to mind these differences; she knew they both had each other’s back at the end of the day and was aware of her role in providing balance to the highly emotional group. Morgan was also impressed by how Z’s features and mannerisms were extraordinarily catlike. Knowing Ada’s predilection for felines, she wondered if this was what first caught her eye when she discovered her.
Hours after Ada handed them their assignments, Morgan stretched her limbs. The files they stole offered very little, leaving them not with much to crow about. “So...what have we got?”
Z was lounging on her bed with her eyes on her laptop and her half of the documents placed beside her. “Well, Barton Green’s client list wasn’t suffering from any shortage of scumbags, that’s for sure.”
She pulled three printed photos from a desktop printer and laid them on the bed next to her. The first was of a simpering celebrity type, the second a glowering businessman, and the third was of a greasy-haired man with a smile like an alligator whose presence screamed “mobster” louder than anything.
“Celebrities, bankers, criminals…” Z glanced shook her head and returned her eyes to her computer. “Looking for evidence of shady activity to pin these guys to the Council? It’s like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.”
Baffled and restless, Morgan flipped through her stack of documents, fanning them like a poker hand. “Pick a card, any card.”
Z smiled and turned away, inspiring Morgan to sigh loudly, her eyes narrowing at something of interest. “Hey. What’s this?”
Morgan displayed the document for Z, noting the strange design that accompanied the client’s signature. Scribbled below was a doodle that looked like a cryptic symbol. Maybe even a creature, like a frog or an insect.
Z shook her head, completely stumped.
“No clue. Think it’s important?”
Morgan frowned with ambivalence.
“Check if there are any more. I’ll go grab us some brunch.”
“Going to the deli?”
“You got it.”
“No onions this time, all right?”
Morgan crossed her heart before stepping onto the lift, looking positively angelic in her sincerity. But she couldn’t resist getting up to some mischief once she had reached the destination.
“Yass. Just pile them on,” Morgan purred as the deli worker slathered onions all over the sandwich. Moments later, she was out the door, smiling brightly when a man pulled her into an alley.
“Gimme your money!” the man yelled, a knife held to her neck.
For a sliver of a second, Morgan had let her guard down. All of her prayers, all of her training hadn’t been enough to keep her in a constant state of alert. In her mind, she was suddenly back in the woods with McAllister; only this time, it would be different.
In the blink of an eye, Morgan adjusted her stance, placing her in complete control of the situation. She gripped the man’s arm and kicked out her leg so that it snapped the mugger’s shin like it was made of matchsticks. She elbowed him in the face, forcing him to release his weapon, before spinning around and kicking him in the chest. Flying backward, his head slammed against the wall and he dropped to the ground, incapacitated.
But Morgan still wasn’t finished.
Dragging him to his feet, she slammed the man's head against the wall again, breaking several teeth in the process. When he toppled over, she started pummeling him mercilessly, her eyes mad with unbridled violence and hate.
The man had long slipped into unconsciousness when Morgan finally let up. As she slowly regained her sense of awareness that she was no longer in the forest and McAllister wasn’t anywhere present, her breathing started to slow, and she saw that her hands were covered with blood.
When Morgan returned to the loft, she tossed the bloody deli bag on the floor and made a beeline to her corner.
Z took one glance her way and intercepted her. “Hey! Morgan! What’s wrong? What happened?”
Morgan avoided the gaze of her companion, her eyes welling with tears. The whole room was spinning like a hellish amusement park ride and she felt sick to her stomach.
“It’s OK,” Z said, hugging her close. “It’s OK.”
With the arms of her fellow sister in the craft grasped around her, Morgan broke down and sobbed into her shoulder. Sobbing at all the rage and hate that was consuming her and the distressing realization that as much as she tried to outrun her demons, they always had the habit of catching up to her.