Now there were only a few of the old wharves left down here-Derby Wharf, where the Friendship was docked, and Pickering, where Mickey’s store and Ann Chase’s witch shop were.
These days Derby Street was an endless array of tourist traps. Costumed pirates and monsters handed out flyers for haunted houses and wax-museum tours. Though the main attraction was still the witches, any unrelated but marginally frightening side business was fair game. The real witches, who didn’t exist at all in Salem back in 1692, thrived here in great numbers now.
A number of shops and tours belonged to Uncle Mickey, whom the locals referred to as the “Pirate King.” Mickey had seen the tide turning in Salem way back in the seventies and was entrepreneurial enough to take great advantage of it. For the most part, the witches kept a lower profile, selling their wares for cash but practicing their religion quietly, as if they were never quite certain that their new elevated status would last in a city that sported images of witches riding broomsticks on the doors of their police cars while at the same time it launched a campaign to “Ditch the Witch” in favor of Salem’s less famous but in many’s opinion more significant maritime history.
But for now that campaign had not taken hold, nor had the ordinance that someone had proposed to limit the number of haunted houses per city block, a proposal that Mickey had vehemently opposed, owning so many of them himself.
Zee started her search for Mickey in one of his many haunted houses. Summer hires from Salem State College worked the counter as they munched on Wendy’s takeout. Their fake scars looked disturbingly real alongside their piercings and tattoos from the Purple Scorpion down the street. Screams echoed from behind the hanging curtain, followed by demonic laughter that Zee recognized as Mickey’s recorded voice. Cackling and trying to frighten one another, a group of tourists exited through the gift shop.
“Oh, my good God, what was that!” A woman in her sixties giggled nervously and tried to catch her breath.
A man with a crying child was less impressed. “That is extremely frightening,” the man said. The kid, who wouldn’t let go of his father’s hand, seemed equally frightened by the teenagers behind the counter. “You ought to have an age limit. Post a sign or something,” the father said. As he stepped down into the brighter lobby, the kid tripped, the father dangling him by the arm until he righted himself.
“Wimps,” the tattooed girl said under her breath.
“It says right on the door.” A kid sporting a Frankenstein half-head extension with bolts glued to his neck pointed to a sign: THE SCARIEST HAUNTED HOUSE IN SALEM. Frankenstein reached for one of the girl’s french fries, and she slapped his hand.
“Is Mickey here?” Zee asked. She didn’t know any of these kids. Mickey had a new crop every summer.
“He’s at the other store,” Frankenstein said.
“No he isn’t. He said he was going to the Friendship,” the girl said.
“One or the other,” Frankenstein said.
Zee thanked them and exited as a large group of tourists crowded through the door. They all wore red T-shirts saying DON’T MAKE ME CALL MY FLYING MONKEYS! Zee navigated her way through the crowd, crossing the street in front of their silver tour bus, heading for Pickering Wharf.
She could see the masts of the Friendship in the distance, but she figured she’d stop at Mickey’s shop first. Then she saw her Auntie Ann.
Ann Chase stood in the doorway of her store, the Shop of Shadows. Its name was a reference to the Book of Shadows, a well-known journal used by real witches to record spells, rituals, and philosophy, plus recipes for herbal potions and teas. Ann was in costume today, her black robes rustling in the early-evening breeze. “Hello, Hepzibah,” she called when she spotted Zee. “I heard you were home.”
“Hi, Auntie.” Zee smiled and walked over. Ann was not Zee’s real aunt, but she’d been Maureen’s best friend. Zee had called her Auntie for as long as she could remember.
They hugged each other.
“So great to see you,” Ann said, looking at her. “It’s been a while.”
Zee thought back. It had been over a year. When she came home to visit, she always stopped by the shop to see Ann, but the last time she’d been here, Ann’s shop had been closed, and there was a sign on it saying that Ann had flown south for the winter along with the other snowbirds.
“How was Florida?” Zee asked.
“Warmer than here,” Ann answered, laughing. Then, more seriously, she asked, “How’s Finch doing?”
“Not great.”
“I heard he broke up with Melville.”
“Word travels fast,” Zee said. Salem was more small city than small town, but people still had a way of knowing one another’s business. “Does Mickey know?” Zee asked.
“He’s the one who told me.”
On some level Mickey would be glad. It was no secret that Mickey blamed Melville for his sister’s death. Though Ann had loved Maureen, she held no such grudges. Everyone who knew Zee’s mother well also knew how sick she was. Mickey had always been in denial about her illness, and finding someone to blame was easier for him than looking at the whole truth.
Zee believed that her Uncle Mickey had always been in love with Ann Chase. For Ann’s part, she seemed uninterested and barely tolerated his constant flirting. Every once in a while, she would get annoyed, especially when his rival but bogus witch shop advertised something that she found personally offensive, like the time his aura machine broke and he made coupons sending a bus full of tourists from Cleveland over to Ann’s shop advertising that Ann Chase, one of Salem’s most famous witches, would tell their fortunes by reading the bumps on their heads for half her normal price.
“Group rates!” he said when she yelled at him. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about-I sent you forty-five brand-new customers.”
Mostly, though, Ann and Mickey got along well. To their credit, most of the witch and horror shops in Salem got along. The only exception had been a recent issue about a psychic street fair that came to Salem every October. Almost everyone agreed it was a good thing, but some of the witches, particularly those who paid rent all year long down on Essex Street, where the fair was held, resented the itinerant psychics who came in to make a quick buck during the peak tourist season, then left town. The witches said they were afraid some of the traveling psychics might bilk tourists out of too much money or give them bad advice, thereby sullying the reputation of the year-round fortune-telling community.
For this reason the town had recently begun to require all practicing psychics to be licensed if they wanted to tell fortunes in Salem. Though Zee had wondered exactly how one goes about licensing a psychic (Salem, in the end, had adopted San Francisco’s policies, which included a fee of twenty-five to fifty dollars and a record of permanent address along with a valid Social Security number), she nevertheless thought it was a good idea. She remembered a horrible incident that she and her mother had had with a psychic named Arcana not long before Maureen committed suicide.
AS SHE WAS WRITING “THE ONCE,” Maureen had become convinced that she was not only the writer of one of the great love stories in history but that she was its heroine as well. She began to believe she was the reincarnation of its main character, Zylphia Browne. So absorbed was she in the story that she’d started searching for someone who could confirm her belief.