Chapter One:

Hope:

"Delia, help me. I can't lift him by myself," I said to my best friend.

Delia Hendrickson and I had just come to her hometown of Haven, Maine. Her only living relative, her twin brother, Dwight, thought she was dead. The only family I knew lived in Haven was who we were trying to lift from the ice cream truck. He was dead. Yes, we were stealing his body, but I needed to do what I came to Haven for and it was time sensitive. Not only that, if I didn't move his body his friends were planning on giving him a burial at sea.

"Remind me why we're doing this?" Delia asked.

"I need to time the ritual right. If it's done too soon or too late, the results could be catastrophic for the town… not to mention me."

She just looked at me and helped me move the body into the back seat of my SUV. From there, it took us a bit to figure out how to find his ship. Once we had him below decks in his bed in the state room, I prepared the body for the ritual while I had Delia clean up. When she came back, I took a shower and left her with the body, going up to the deck of the ship so I could make sure my timing was right. While I was up there, I started thinking about when I found out that I had a destiny to be here at this time, for this purpose.

"Hope, dear, we need to talk," Grams said to me, sitting down on my bed.

Gramps came into the bedroom with her and sat at my desk. As a fourteen year old being raised by her grandparents, being approached by both of them made me wonder what kind of trouble they possibly could have found out I'd gotten into. I had just started my senior year of high school. Teenagers were jerks in general, but when you're the youngest in your class, you're the easiest target. I didn't always keep my calm.

"What is it? Is something wrong?" I asked, trying to play innocent.

"We need to tell you about your destiny, Hope. A destiny that your mother foresaw before you were born," Gramps replied.

"Mom saw my future? Why haven't you told me this before?" I asked.

"We wanted to give you time to grow into your own person, Hope. We wanted you to understand responsibility and caring before we tried to explain this to you," Grams said gently.

"What did she see?"

"One day, she said you're the only one who will know when, you will leave us. You will leave us to find your brother…" Gramps started.

"I have a brother? I thought I was Mom's only child," I said.

"You are, Sweetie," Grams continued where I had cut Gramps off. "The brother you're meant to find is on your father's side. He's your older brother and he lives in a town called Haven, Maine. While Penny was pregnant with you she foresaw that one day you would leave Massachusetts for Maine because you will need to save your brother. She said that you will need to learn strong magick in order to do it, which is why we've always pushed you to advance in your magickal training harder than the others your age. We're not sure when you're going to go, and we want to give you as much magickal knowledge as we can in the time we have with you."

I just looked at my grandparents for a minute. They had taken care of me since I was born. I could see it hurt them to know that one day I was destined to leave, they weren't getting any younger, after all. These two had loved me as their own child, taught me everything I knew about magick, taught me about my mother, taught me about my father and why my mother chose not to find and tell him she was pregnant, and dealt with a fairly headstrong child even though by the time I was ten they were in their sixties. They weren't trying to hurt me.

"Do you know anything about how I'm supposed to help this brother?" I asked.

I noticed the sign I needed to look for that signaled the start of the time I needed to work with. I rushed back to the state room and began, asking Delia to keep physical contact with me the entire time to ground me. The ritual was tough, even though I had been taught all the elements I needed to perform it. I had just never performed it before. As I had been taught, I had also been warned this type of ritual took thorough concentration and preparation or else it could kill the person performing it.

As I focused on my objective, not sure of how long I had actually been working on my brother, I heard Delia gasp. Careful to continue concentrating on what I was doing, I opened my eyes and saw why she gasped. There were black orbs pouring from my brother's body, and I finally understood why the timing of the ritual needed to be so precise. The sign that I was to begin was a mass exodus of these black orbs to one point in town. I needed to run the ritual coinciding with that so that any of these orbs in my brother would also be pulled out of him.

My energy was ebbing away as I continued the ritual. I could feel his energy, feel it responding to mine. My energy was connecting to his because of our blood bond, but I was also pouring a lot of myself into him making sure the ritual a success. I didn't realize that I started drawing on my energy that had been in Delia since everyone thought she had died until I felt him start to wake. At this point, I had Delia let me go.

"What the hell is going on? Who the hell are the two of you? Why the hell are we on my boat? How the hell did I get onto my boat?" he asked in quick succession as the ritual completed and he woke.

As he sat up, startled and confused, blackness took over. I felt myself start to fall.

Duke:

"Are you going to answer my questions? And what the hell just happened to her?" I asked the one woman who was still standing near my bed on the Cape Rouge.

"Fine, I'll answer most of your questions. Some, she needs to answer for herself. But can I please check on her, maybe leave her on your bed instead of the floor?"

"Do it," I said as I walked away looking for a bottle of bourbon.

A few minutes later, I sat at the table and gave this woman who had intruded on my boat a glass of bourbon as she sat down across from me.

"Thanks," she said before she drank some of the bourbon. "And thank you for letting me check her. I'm sure you're confused and trying to figure out what's going on."

"You're damn right about that. Let's start with you telling me who you are."

"My name is Delia Hendrickson. I was born here in Haven."

"Hendrickson? You don't mean Sasquatch… I mean Dwight Hendrickson's sister, do you?"

"Twin sister, but yeah."

"He said you're dead."

"Everyone thinks I am."

"Why aren't you?"

"For the same reason you're not. And the answer to that needs to come from the unconscious girl in your bed. I have a basic understanding, but I wouldn't be able to do any kind of justice to the explanation."

"So, before I ask about the boat, explain how the two of you remembered Haven if you were outside the shroud and how you got through the shroud into Haven?"

"After I supposedly died, I spent a lot of time with some extraordinary people. They taught me a lot. But they could also guard against things. Knowing that she needed to be in Haven for you, I believe they ensured that no matter what else happened, it wasn't forgotten."

"And getting into town?"

"Complicated. She can answer that when she wakes up."

"So why my boat?"

"You know she brought you back from the dead."

"Yeah. Last thing I remember was Nathan killing me. Audrey comforting me while crying. Gloria and Vicky crying in another part of the room. We were at Haven P.D."

"That is why she needed to be in Haven. Apparently, a lot of preparation goes into something like that, so as she learned more about you, she decided when it was time, your boat would be the best place to take you. It would be the place that you had the most connection to, where your most sentimental objects would be kept. She felt it would make what she had to do easier."

"How long has she be learning about me?"

"I'm not sure. But she knew about you before I met her as an intern at the hospital. That was nine years ago."

"Nine years?"

"At least."

"Who is she?"

"This is as much as I can explain. She needs to explain everything else. It's all… complicated. Not to mention it's her story to tell, not mine."

With that, Delia got up to check her unconscious friend. I was looking for my cell phone. I wanted to call Nathan or Audrey.

"I wouldn't do that!" Delia shouted at me as I pulled my phone out of my pocket, where it was when I died.

"And why shouldn't I make a phone call?" I asked her as she approached me again.

"You were dead, Duke. Not hurt, not unconscious, dead. Your friends all know you died. And since you've died, things have changed. I'm not exactly sure of the extent, but I know the Troubles are gone. I can feel that much. I don't feel like if I walk off this boat and someone shoots a gun the bullet will come straight for me. So please, at least wait until she's woken up and gives you an explanation before you decide it's time to call in your friends?"

"How long do you think she's gonna be out?"

"I don't know. But she's got a little bit of color in her and her pulse is steadier than it was when I first checked on her," Delia replied, before letting out a frustrated sigh. "Technically, if you had something I could use as a smelling salt, I could wake her now. I'm not sure how long she'd stay up, but possibly long enough to answer your questions."

I started to think about what could be used as a smelling salt. Then I remembered what Julia Carr had told me out at Carpenter's Knot on Audrey's Birthday. Ammonia could act as a smelling salt. I raided my cleaning supplies and found something that had ammonia. I gave that and a cloth to Delia. She took it and went in to the woman she had avoided naming throughout our entire conversation.

Hope:

There was a strong smell around me and I felt groggy. When I opened my eyes, Delia was standing over me with a cloth. I recognized the smell… ammonia. She had intentionally woken me after I collapsed. She helped me to sit up on the bed that someone had put me in.

"What happened?" I asked.

"He wants answers. He wants to call his friends. And he doesn't seem like he's going to let me keep stalling him for long."

I nodded at her and she slowly helped me to my feet and to an eating nook, where she slid me onto the bench seating before sitting next to me. Duke looked at the two of us and started walking towards us. I put my hand up.

"Before you sit, I think you should bring Roy Crocker's journal over here. I'll explain why as we talk," I said to him.

He looked at me with a mix of confusion and annoyance, but grabbed the journal before sitting down. He just kept it by him, out of mine and Delia's reach. That was fine by me. I didn't really want to touch that until necessary, knowing the type of energy it was connected to.

"So start explaining. A good starting point would be your name and why you've been researching me for at least nine years."

I took a deep breath. That one statement gave me a good idea of what Delia had told him while I was out cold. I felt her squeeze my hand. She knew the truth, just like I had known about her family Trouble.

"Fine, but give me Roy's journal. I need to find something in it, something that will help explain some of this. Then I'll give it back to you and trust me, I will never ask to see that again unless it is a dire emergency."

Duke hesitated but handed me the journal. Not knowing where what I was looking for would be, I used a small spell that would open the journal to the exact entry I needed. Duke looked on with a mix of fascination and shock. The entry I needed was about "curing" the Tomlin family, who had run from Haven in the early 80s, from their Trouble, which was the ability to act as a grounding for electricity. They had run to Massachusetts.

"Now that you just did that interesting party trick, start explaining," Duke said.

"Alright, my name is Hope Corey. I'm a doctor from Danvers, Massachusetts. And the reason I've been researching as much as I could about you, Duke… it's because of this journal entry right here. In 1983, Simon Crocker hunted and "cured" the Tomlin family of their Trouble. On his way home, he had a one night stand with a woman named Penny who disappeared on him in the middle of the night. He didn't know it was because she had her own abilities that let her see the kind of man he really was. Regardless, In July of 1984, Penny died, right after she named me Hope and stroked my hair."

I gave Duke the journal back and he looked at the entry. After looking it over, he looked up at me. The shock on his face was clearly visible.

"Are you telling me you're my sister?"

"Yes, Duke. I am."

"My father never told me I had a younger sister."

"My mother and her family made sure that before Simon died he never found out about me. They were worried if he found out about the fact that I come from a line of witches on both sides of my mom's family, which can be traced back centuries, that he would come back and kill the entire family. But before, while my mom was pregnant, she saw me here in Haven, today, bringing you back. Her parents, who raised me since the day I was born, told me about this when I started my senior year of high school when I was fourteen."

"Wait a second, your mother was a witch who saw what happened today what, in 1984?" Duke asked with doubt in his voice.

"Yes, she was. As are my grandparents and every generation in the family before me," I started as I took my butterfly bracelet off my wrist. "As am I."

I focused on the bracelet. The spell wasn't overly complicated. It was something I'd done at least a hundred times before, as I helped train the younger witches being initiated. But my energy was basically depleted and I was conscious solely because of the ammonia Delia used as a smelling salt. After a little over a minute, my bracelet turned into a butterfly, which started flying around the boat. Everything started to spin a bit in my vision, but I had proven my point.

"Fine, let's say I'll take you at your word for being a witch. How do you know your mom and my dad…?"

"Because of my mother's abilities. When she slept with Simon that night she saw what the Crocker Curse made him, what he did to the Troubled. It's why she left before he woke up. My grandparents said that a few weeks later she told them about that night with him because she was scared. The future she had once seen for herself was gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"Before she slept with Simon, my mom knew she was meant to do things in her life, like she ultimately knew I was going to be needed to help you today. After they slept together, that future disappeared."

"Why?" Duke asked.

Delia squeezed my hand. She knew what happened to my mom.

"A few weeks after her future disappeared on her, she realized she was pregnant. I was the reason she no longer had a future. My birth was what caused her death. After I was born, she wasn't even strong enough to hold me. Hence, she stroked my head and named me before she flatlined," I said, looking at my hands. "While she was pregnant, she looked into Simon, kept track of him and told my grandparents everything she could find out. They made sure he would never know I existed before he died. Since then, I've lived mostly happily in the Danvers area of Massachusetts until I came here to Haven for you, Duke. My grandparents prepared me for what I needed to do, and I decided it was time for Delia to tell her brother that I saved her from her Trouble killing her."

"How exactly did you do that?" Duke asked. "And why does Dwight still think she's dead?"

"She left a golem ridden with bullet holes and covered in about a pint of my blood in the morgue," Delia explained why her brother thought she was still dead. "Just in case the shooter was someone from here hunting the Troubled that were outside of Haven."

"Okay, that explains the cover-up, but how?" Duke asked again.

"I've known Delia for nine years now. The day everyone thought she died, I woke up with a bad feeling before my shift at the hospital. So I performed a powerful protection spell on her, one that would protect her from anything, even death."

"You can do that?"

I nodded at Duke.

"So when the shooter showed up and pulled out the gun, I knew what would happen. Delia had already told me about her family's Trouble. A doctor here in Haven named Gloria Verrano told her what happened to her brother and his daughter. I knew that the bullets were all going to hit Delia. So I made sure I was down in the morgue when she woke up. By the time she did, I had the golem ready, not active, but it looked and felt exactly like Delia. It would easily pass as her. The hospital contacted Dwight as soon as the chaos from the shooting died down, so I had to leave the golem as a decoy. Then I took her into hiding. I set her up in a place my family owns closer to the shore, in Salem, where she would be safe."

"Why did you hide her?"

"There was an equal chance the shooting was an attempt to draw me out as it was someone from here hunting the Troubled."

"What do you mean?"

"There really are witch hunters out there, Duke. And if they suspect someone is actually a witch, they will do something to force them into exposing themselves somehow… like what happened at the hospital. It could have been a ploy to expose any practicing witches and if they realized that I helped Delia get up and walk out of that hospital after the injuries she sustained… these hunters stalk their targets, track their families to see if it's a blood tie to the magick. If it is, they'll wipe out entire lines. If it's not, they'll take out their target and move on to the next."

"How do they know where to look for witches?"

"Believe it or not, most active, practicing witches are in the medical field. Most of us use our abilities to help others heal, not to hex and attack like so many people assume."

"So you couldn't hex someone if I asked?"

I gave a slight laugh.

"I didn't say I couldn't. It's just a matter of weighing the karmic costs. Everything we do comes at a cost, so ultimately I need to decide whether or not that hex is worth the price I'll pay for casting it."

The world tilted some more. I grabbed the table discreetly to steady myself. Delia started rubbing my back.

"So are you two lovers or something?" he asked.

"No," Delia replied to him. "Hope was one of my interns and we've become close friends. We look out for each other."

"How did you two get into Haven?" Duke asked me, letting the subject drop.

"The shroud of mist that was surrounding Haven? I don't know why, but I knew that I could get through it. Maybe it's my connection to you, but I knew that myself and anything I was touching at the time I hit the shroud would safely cross into the town."

"Nobody else but me has been able to get in or out of Haven since the shroud went up. At least not without my assistance," Duke said. "Why did you have to be here today? Why was it so important?"

"The Troubles are gone, Duke. For good," I started. "It was important that my ritual be timed today because as I brought you back, the essence in you, what manifested the Troubles that were still inside you that had been collected, were pulled from your body as they were from every Troubled person before being taken back to where the essence originated from."

"Wait, so you're saying that all of the Troubles I've collected, the Crocker Curse… it's all gone? It's never coming back?"

I nodded at him.

"That's why everything needed to be done with precision," I said.

He stared at me in shock.

"So I'm finally free of the family legacy. I never thought I'd see the day."

"Do you still want to call your friends right now? I mean, Hope did just overload you on information," Delia said.

Duke:

"No, I need time to process this. Do you guys want to get out of Haven for the night? Not too far, we'll stay at a motel nearby, get cleaned up, eat, rest, and come back to face everyone tomorrow?" I asked.

"That sounds good to me," Delia said, before looking at Hope. "How about you?"

"Sounds fine. Whatever you guys want. I've done what I needed to for today," Hope said.

"Then let's go," I said before realizing I had no idea where my truck was. "Wait, how did you guys get to the Rouge?"

"My SUV. Why?" Hope answered.

"Because I don't know where in Haven my truck is. We're gonna have to take your ride."

Hope threw me her keys. Me and Delia got up before Hope slowly started to make her way to the end of the bench. The color that was in her complexion when she'd first come out was gone and she looked unsteady. Sure enough, as soon as she stood up, she collapsed into unconsciousness again.

"I guess you're carrying your long-lost baby sister to the car?" Delia asked.

"Is this normal?"

"She just used her energy, her life force to resurrect you, then prove to you that she wasn't delusional about being a witch. The resurrection itself took a lot out of her. She actually started draining my energy to do it. She needs rest, so this time, I'm not forcing her awake. We'll check into the motel, leave food and a note at her bedside, and go get food for ourselves. We let her sleep as long as she needs to."

"Wait, she used her own life force to fix me. Isn't that dangerous?"

"To someone who doesn't know what they're doing? It's fatal. But her grandparents and other magickal instructors have been teaching her all of the different components and facets of this ritual for 17 years. She was prepared on what needed to be done. She just never did it before."

"But she could have died trying to bring me back. Why do it? She doesn't know me."

"Hope has never had any tie to her father's side of the family. She doesn't show any emotional pain, but I'm sure it's there, having her mother die in childbirth and being hidden from her father and any siblings she had through him. Not to mention, if the universe decided she needed to be here to help you, there had to be some kind of greater purpose… even if none of us know it," Delia explained. "Let's go. The longer we hang around Haven, especially here at the marina, the better the chances are that someone will see us or we'll get picked up on one security cameras here. I think you're right, we should get outta dodge for the night, figure out how we're going to face the people we need to face, and then come back to Haven."

I nodded at Delia as I easily lifted my long lost sister. She looked so fragile in my arms, but what she had done for me, and even what Delia said she had done for her were powerful things. As we got onto the docks, I noticed that the shroud was gone. Delia and Hope had told me the truth, everything tied to the Troubles was gone.

When Delia showed me to Hope's SUV I carefully put her in the backseat before getting behind the wheel and taking off. Not long after leaving Haven I checked us into a motel while Delia went to get Hope food in case she woke up and we weren't there. By the time she got back to me, I was pulling Hope out of the backseat to take her to one of the two rooms I'd paid for. I placed her gently on one of the two beds and Delia put the food down. As Delia wrote the note letting Hope know where she was and where we had gone, I turned on the light furthest away from her so she wouldn't wake up in an unknown place in complete darkness. Then Delia and I left to go to the diner across the street.

"So, why did you call Dwight Sasquatch earlier?" Delia asked me as we sat down.

"When was the last time you've seen your twin? He's freaking huge. I mean, I'm tall, but he's taller than me."

Delia giggled at my description of her brother.

"Actually, I haven't seen Dwight since we were 18. He left for the army. I left for college. Neither of us came back to Haven… at least not until Dwight's Trouble kicked in. Somewhere in between we lost contact. We just stopped talking. Gloria was the one who kept me up to date with what was important for me to know."

"You kept in touch with her?"

"She's a worrier. When she heard that Dwight and I lost touch, she tracked me down to make sure someone knew what was going on with me."

"But she didn't know you were alive either, did she?"

"No. I felt bad about that, but Hope and I already told you why nobody could know that I was alive."

"I get it," I said, understanding that sometimes, not knowing was important. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah. What is it?"

"Do you know how much Hope actually knows about me?"

"Enough. She knew that, while never proven, you were suspected of smuggling among other illegal activities."

"And she still came and helped me?"

"You'd be surprised at Hope's ability to forgive sometimes. Besides, you're her big brother. I don't think she would judge you, even if you had been convicted, without meeting you first. Hope forms her own opinions on everything. She doesn't just accept society's opinions on anything, innocence or guilt included."

"So, you're both doctors?"

"Yup. I went to medical school in New York. I think Hope stayed closer to home. I believe she got into several Ivy League schools, but decided to go to Harvard from bachelor's degree through med school so she could stay home and commute. It made it easier for her to continue her training, considering what she knew was coming eventually."

"Wait, do you mean that Hope, who apparently was some kind of gifted kid, has never strayed far from home until now?"

"That's exactly it, Duke. She was never sure when she was gonna have to pick up and come here to Maine, so she stayed close to her grandparents and coven. She worked as hard in her magickal training as in her medical training to succeed in both."

"But she's never had a life before, never taken a vacation?"

"Not really. She's always been focused on doing her family proud, carrying on the tradition, making sure she didn't fail at this, considering her mom literally died so she could be alive to do this," Delia replied. "Maybe now that she's actually done this, she'll relax a little more."

"I will teach her there's more to life. I can't be the reason she doesn't live hers," I told her.

Delia and I talked some more as we ate. When we finished eating, I paid the bill and we walked back across the street to the hotel. I checked in on Hope, she was still sound asleep. Delia checked her pulse and told me that it was stable so she was okay. So I said goodnight to Delia and went to the other room, leaving the two women who mysteriously came into my life in one room.