Honey & Hexes (The Mead Witch #1)

Chapter 1

I

When I tell the bees that Warrick is gone, they perform a victory dance.

They twirl up around the garden, dancing over my overflowing flower beds, hopping between the borage patch and the last flowers of my hellabore before skipping around the downpipes like maidens around the maypole.

“We’re not celebrating,” I say sternly. “This is distressing news. My husband is missing.”

Missing.

I test the word on my tongue again. “Missing.” I know I’m supposed to feel a certain way right now. I know there’s a series of emotions that a wife must perform when her husband is missing. I know I’m doing it all wrong, the way I’m wrong about everything.

But I feel like I’ve been walking around in my most uncomfortable pair of heels for five years straight, and I’ve finally kicked them off and put my feet up.

I’ve just got back from making my report at the police station.

Warrick left three days ago for business in London.

His business is buying things from suppliers in Asia and India and selling them to stores here at a markup.

Once, we had eight hundred AI-powered hoverboards stacked in the front room of the cottage.

They kept randomly turning on and zooming about everywhere.

Another time, he filled the cottage’s one bedroom with demented-looking dolls with eyes I can only describe as having a ‘stoned frog’ vibe.

That was a particularly rough month. When I closed my eyes, I could feel them staring at me, so I put my foot down for once and slept in a tent in the garden until the creepy dolls were gone.

This week started normally – he went off to London to sell a shipment of sneakers from Hong Kong.

I got up at 6 AM to make him a thermos of coffee and pack him a lunch that he won’t eat, and I kissed him on the cheek as he flew out the door.

Warrick likes to have that kiss. It keeps alive his vision of the perfect family.

“I’m Willy Loman, off to make a deal!” he says with a grin every time he shuts the door behind him.

I haven’t told him that Willy Loman wasn’t the hero.

Warrick doesn’t like it when I correct him.

I haven’t heard from him since.

This is unusual, as Warrick doesn’t like to stay away from the house. He makes a point of coming home to me every evening. But if I’m being honest, I was too busy reading my book and pottering in the garden and not worrying about saying the wrong thing that I just let the days pass without comment.

This morning, his London warehouse manager rang to ask where he was, and that’s when I finally called his phone and got no answer.

Warrick never misses a business meeting.

He’s never late. He thinks that’s disrespectful of the other person’s time.

That’s when a sick, twisting sensation settled in my gut that I needed to call the police.

I sat numbly in the station while a stern-faced constable took my statement and brought me cups of lukewarm tea that I couldn’t convince myself to drink.

I felt as though I were standing outside of myself, watching this scared, mousey woman tell the police that her husband was missing.

I heard the words coming out of my mouth, but I don’t remember asking my brain to say them.

Two of my bees had followed me, and they crawled over my collar and hummed in my ear while I described what Warrick was wearing and how his business worked.

The bees made sure I said the right things, the things a wife should say.

The constable went through a detailed plan of everything they’d do to locate him, which I didn’t hear a word of over the buzzing in my ears, and she assured me that it was too early to panic, as if panic conforms to a schedule.

The hard part is done now, and it’s their job to find him. I’ve told the bees. I now have two choices – I can do what I always do, what Warrick would expect me to do: sit at home, put the dinner on, tend my garden and do my ‘little magical hobbies,’ and wait for him to come home.

Or…I could do something else.

“They might find him tomorrow,” I say to the bees as I open the super and brush the bees on top back into the hive.

Most beekeepers would need to wear a bee suit for this part, but I don’t need to.

As a honey witch, the bees and I have an understanding.

Part of me longs to dance with them, to spin and twirl through my bright garden and laugh as if I haven’t forgotten how.

But instead, I hold up each frame to look for caps.

If eighty percent of the honey cells in a frame are capped with white wax, it means the honey is properly ripened and ready for harvest. This is one of my favourite harvests – the bees have been feasting on the lavender garden borders, which smell absolutely divine.

This honey will be infused with lavender’s relaxing properties; it will help with sleep and to calm nerves.

Something I can definitely do with now. “They might find him, dead or alive, and our lives might change completely.”

And then an old voice, a voice I’d thought I’d long since buried down under trampled dreams, whispers, Maybe you don’t have to wait to change your life.

As I replace the frames – they aren’t quite ready for harvest – I find myself looking over at the front gate. The bees buzz in my ear. Isn’t it lovely out here? They seem to say. Out in the wide open air, with flowers and dancing and sweet treats. Why don’t you dance with us?

And then that voice again, dark and alluring. Warrick’s not here. He’ll never know. He can’t stop you.

They may never find him.

I don’t know if it’s the warm sun or the scent of lavender and honey kissing the breeze, or the kind voice of the constable as she assured me they were doing all they could to find Warrick, but I spin wildly, giddily in circles, my arms flung wide and my smoker trailing puffs like tiny clouds.

I laugh as I spin around the lavender and over the compost pile, as I stamp down with my feet, and I know with a certainty I haven’t felt in years that something has finally broken inside me.

I can’t go on like this.

I can’t keep pretending that I’m happy with a life that ends at the edge of the garden.

Whether the police find Warrick or not, things need to be different.

I need to make them different.

I lower my arms.

“I’m going for a walk,” I tell the bees.

Buzzz. Buzzzzzzz. They hop around me in approval, as if they’re excited children about to receive a treat.

I move away from the hives to my potting shed, set down the smoker, carefully peel off my gloves so I don’t accidentally touch any stingers, and without even looking back in case I lose my nerve, I march to the gate, unlock it, and step outside.

Six bees buzz lazily around my face – a little entourage of fuzzy black friends trooping after me as I make my way into the village.

He’s missing. I can do whatever I like.

I breathe in the fresh air. My chest expands as if my ribs have cracked to make extra room. The air tastes like summer, like cold drinks on the patio in the warm evenings, and fish and chips in a cone, and honeysuckle (attracts wealth and good luck).

Like magic.

“Stop it,” I snap out loud as I look over my shoulder again. No matter how many times I tell myself that he’s not going to appear suddenly from a privet bush, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m a misbehaving teenager who’s about to get caught.

I suck in a deep, summery breath. My bees buzz with encouragement.

I’m almost there now. I pass other cottages like ours with thatched roofs and gardens bursting with colour.

A tabby cat slinks down a stone wall, focused on a sparrow nest in an oak tree with malicious intent.

I borrow a little of that cat’s surety and stalk towards the centre of Argleton village.

The moment I step onto the village green – a round grassy park surrounded by quaint shops and the village pub, the Rose & Wimple – I exhale. I made it. I’m here. I went into the village by myself.

Now what?

I hadn’t actually thought this far ahead.

I stare up at the pub, wondering if I should get some lunch.

Warrick took me there for dinner sometimes – a rare treat.

He liked it when people noticed what a thoughtful husband he was.

“It’s not even a special occasion,” he’d say as he chose my drink for me – always a G&T even though I hate the taste of tonic water.

“I just wanted to treat my lovely wife.”

No, not the pub.

But maybe some food?

My gaze falls on Glazed and Confused – the bakery and teashop that occupies one side of a Tudor half-timbered building that was once the coach house associated with the pub.

Perfect. A little treat. I love treats and I haven’t had many lately.

Warrick’s been on a ‘wellness journey’ so he wants sugar-free, organic food from the garden, lots of eggs and protein, and occasionally a slice of gluten-free bread I get up early to bake fresh.

It’s not transgressive to walk into a bakery and ask for a cream doughnut, that sharp voice reminds me. It’s not a nuclear arms deal. It’s just carbs.

As I step up onto the stoop, I cast my gaze to the other half of the building.

There used to be a flower shop there – Old Widow Hardcastle sold stunning bouquets, potted plants, and greeting cards painted by local artists.

Like me, she was a hedge witch, and her bouquets were imbued with plant magic – snapdragons for protection, cowslips for bridal bouquets, foxgloves for secret grudges and revenge.

She used to buy plants from my Grandmother Mags, but they had some kind of falling out, so officially we don’t talk to each other, but she would occasionally show up at my garden gate when she was short of something, and I’d sell her cut flowers or herb sprigs.

We barely said a word to each other, but that wasn’t abnormal for me.