Chapter 9
Nine
Everything seems more manageable with a cup of tea.
The scrapbook sits still on the coffee table in the living room, and I cast a glance at it as I busy myself around the kitchen, pulling out all the things I need for a decadent late night tea.
Imported British biscuits, my favorites dipped in milk chocolate, some toast and clotted cream, raspberry preserves made over the summer.
And, of course, one of the tea sets my grandmother collected, a fine porcelain and gilded floral teapot.
The scrapbook will wait.
My gaze drifts to it again.
“You’re stalling,” Gunner says, laying on the floor with his big block head on his paws.
“So I am,” I agree. “But the problem isn’t going to be solved tonight, and tea never hurt anyone.”
“It hurts a lot of people in Agatha Christie novels,” Gunner observes.
I sigh. “I want a snack. Posey and Rose are just getting off work. It’s a nice thing to do.”
“I want a biscuit.”
“You can’t have chocolate.”
“I’m also not supposed to talk,” Gunner says, giving me big eyes.
I break a digestive in half and hand a piece over to him. His tail thumps against the floor as his little lips delicately take the biscuit from me.
The resulting, tiny tidy crunching noises Gunner makes is almost more delightful than the cookies themselves, and seeing him so blissful makes me feel better just by extension.
I think maybe the simple pleasure of watching a dog enjoy something as banal as a British biscuit might be the universe’s way of telling me everything is going to be okay.
“You’re stalling again,” Gunner says, a spray of crumbs dribbling from his lower lip.
Ugh. He’s not wrong.
With the sassiest swish of my skirt as I can manage, which isn’t much, since my hands are occupied with the loaded tray of goodies, I turn on my heels and stalk into the living room.
The fireplace lights itself, another charm my grandmother put on the house, so that “we’d always have warmth.” It’s been misfiring for a few weeks, as it’s still slightly too balmy to really enjoy it… but I take my cardigan off and decide to pretend it’s fine. The sweat is a glow, or something.
The front door slams, and the sound of Posey and Rose bickering floats through the house.
“I’m in here,” I call. “I have tea and snacks.”
“Of course you do,” Rose says, flopping down on the couch, giving me an appraising look. “You have dinner with the long-lost love of your life, witness some kind of magical malfunction at the lighthouse, as well as… something ominous in the bay, and you make us a whole platter of stuff to eat.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say.
Gunner stares at me.
“It absolutely is like that,” Posey responds, folding her legs underneath her and sitting on the rug in front of the fire. She does, however, load up one of the gold-rimmed floral plates with a variety of the snacks I assembled.
Which settles a tiny part of my soul, just a little.
“What’s this book?” Rose asks, untying the velvet ribbon before hefting it into her hands.
“That’s Grandma’s scrapbook,” Posey says, then pours herself a cup of tea without a second glance.
Rose and I stare at her for a long moment.
“What?” She shrugs. “I used to help her glue stuff in. Cut pictures out, you know. Nothing fancy.”
“Maybe this isn’t what I think it was, then.” I purse my lips, disappointed.
“You thought it was a magic book, huh?” Rose says. She still hasn’t opened the scrapbook.
I look at Posey, hoping she can confirm or deny.
“It might be.” She scratches a spot behind her ear. “She let me look through it sometimes, but you know… I might not have listened as well as I should have.”
We all stare at the silky scrapbook still unopened on Rose’s thighs.
“If you don’t open it, I will.” Oatmeal darts out of the cargo pocket on Posey’s pants, grabbing a hunk of cheese as she scrambles across the table and sprints towards the scrapbook.
“Oatmeal,” Posey says, the tone exasperated.
Oatmeal twitches her whiskers at her before rearing up on her hindlegs.
“What? You three would sit here and discuss what might be in the book for a damned hour before deciding to go to bed and put it off until tomorrow. You know I’m right.
” It comes out slightly garbled from the hunk of cheese in her cheek.
“She’s right.” Fig chirps from the mantle, where she’s perched on an antique clock. “Open the book.”
Gunner makes a snuffling sound of affirmation.
Rose opens the book, and Posey scooches across the floor before giving up and getting on the couch next to her.
“Aw,” I say on an exhale. Rose’s knee bumps against mine, and we lean in closer.
There are the four of us, as little girls, so young I can’t remember this moment, grinning up at the camera in front of the pink magical house. Our names are written in tidy, familiar handwriting on small scraps of recycled paper, likely from the seed packets my grandmother used to save and reuse.
Rose sniffs, and we all ignore it, save for Fig, who flutters onto her shoulder and rubs her head against Rose’s neck.
“I miss Hazel,” Posey whispers, and Oatmeal snags a biscuit off the tray. Gunner stares at the ferret with sad doggie eyes.
“She’ll be back soon.” The words are hollow, though, because we all miss Hazel and we all know that she will whirlwind back into our lives and out again before we’ve had time to get used to her being home.
The next page is a picture of the four of us, up in the attic, Hazel and Posey moving so quickly that their limbs blur in the photograph.
Hazel’s riding the rocking horse like a wild woman, and Posey’s dancing around with ribbons while I carefully color with perfectly sharpened crayons.
Rose’s nose is stuck in a book, a child’s sized guitar tucked next to her.
“I remember that guitar,” she says softly. “We were so lucky, to have Grandma, you know? I miss her too.”
“We could go visit her,” I suggest, and neither of them look up at me or register the remark, because we all know that whatever is going on in Silverlight Shore right now very much precludes a visit to our grandmother on whatever Caribbean island she’s currently beach hopping.
The plastic wrapped pages crinkle as Rose turns them, the next two page spread showing something very different than the glimpse into the golden childhood we received when our grandmother took us in.
A pressed hydrangea, petals yellowed and brittle with age, the stalk still thick in spite of it, a newsprint clipping of a hurricane that blew through several decades ago, almost a direct hit, but somehow just missing the town.
The article details damage: roofs blown off a neighboring city, a boardwalk underwater, the Ferris wheel looming like a dystopian relic, three boats half submerged.
And next to it, on the adjacent page a menu from Nonna’s Table, and a hand-written recipe on the back of a napkin.
“That’s it.” I breathe, tapping a fingernail against the napkin. “That’s the symbol that was on the lighthouse lamp. It was glowing.”
Gunner shoves his face into the book, blocking our view of it and Posey lets out a little laugh before Gunner sniffs at her indignantly. “I was just checking.”
“I know, Gunner.” Posey gives him a cube of cheese, and Oatmeal chitters at her angrily before receiving her own snack offering.
Mollified, the familiars settle back down, and I trace my finger over the recipe.
“It’s a bread, right?” Rose asks. “Yeast, salt, rosemary… flour and a cast iron pan?”
“When the tide turns,” Posey reads the words at the top.
“I mean, it does look like a bread.” I squint down at the page. “I’ve never made a yeast bread in a cast iron though.”
“It’s a clue,” Fig says, then makes a noise that would be normal from a phone and is very strange from a bird. “I bet Nonna knows.”
“It might just be a coincidence,” I hedge.
Posey glares at me. “The same rune you saw tonight is in Grandma’s scrapbook on a napkin with a recipe that says “when the tide turns” after weird things have been happening all day is just a coincidence?”
“Even if it is a coincidence, Nonna might be able to help.”
“Nonna has been yelling at me for breaking up with Caleb for literal years.” It bursts out of me, surprising us all into a silence punctuated by the too-hot fireplace popping.
“Aha,” Posey says, unblinking. Oatmeal does the same, rubbing her tiny soft paws together like an adorable cartoon villain.
“That’s probably a coincidence too,” I grouse, not at all meaning it.
“What if it’s not?” Rose says, voice speculative.
“What if… whatever is going on has something to do with Caleb? With Watchmere Light? With whatever magic Grandma always said was rooted here in Silverlight Shore.” Rose shifts, mouth twisting while she thinks.
“A ward rune… that’s protective, right?” She glances sidelong at Posey, because that’s her specialty.
“It is… But why would the light need warding?” They both look slowly over at me. “And what the hell did you see in the bay tonight?”
I don’t know what I saw, so I just shake my head. “Something. And it might be something that needs warding against, too.”
“So we go to Nonna’s,” Rose announces in a no-nonsense voice. “We follow up on this, and we see about calling Grandma and see if she can give us some details. I might not have the same kind of helpful magic as you to, but if I can help, I will.”
I wrap my arm around her slim shoulders and squeeze.
“I’ll figure it out,” I promise her.
Rose’s chin juts up, and she narrows her eyes at me. “No. We’ll figure it out together.”
I refill our tea instead of answering.
For once, I’m completely sure I don’t have any answers.