Chapter 8 Prey Circle
PREY CIRCLE
Mother goes sneaking, but she’s not very good at it.
Lucky for her, she has Gus to supervise,
but, wait, where is she going now?
— gus
Welp. That was the plan, at least.
I had every intention of finishing up my closing duties, feed Gus dinner, grabbing something quick to eat myself, then taking a trip across Moonburrow. Right after those two customers left, I checked to make sure no one else had entered Dough You Believe in Magic before reaching for my phone.
I try not to keep it out when I’m working. I’m a one-female show here. I joke that Gus manages the bakery, but it’s pretty much the truth. He supervises; I do everything else. I’m already so busy. If I distract myself with my phone, I’ll never get it done.
Of course, that means that my family knows that they can’t reach me during the day. That doesn’t stop Mom from trying, and when I saw she called me three times and checked in by text, I resigned myself to the inevitable.
I usually talk to my parents at least once a week. Anything more has me wanting to bash my head into the nearest flat surface. Anything less and Mom starts getting the idea that I’m avoiding them, that maybe it’s time I give up on living by myself and return to Onancock.
Pass. I bet there are at least four opossum males she was ready to introduce me to as a prospective mate. She wants me to return to the clan, settle down, start a family. I told her jokingly once that I have. That Gus is my son. She wasn’t amused.
Hm. I wonder how she would react if I mentioned that Max got the ridiculous idea that Gus is my mate…
We’ve come to a small compromise. I let them know that I’m alive and well, Mom and Dad don’t hop in a car and drive from Virginia to Maryland.
It’s not that far of a drive, but I much prefer loving my parents from a distance.
Even if that means that I get stuck on the phone with her for over an hour, doing mental gymnastics to keep from blurting out: I found a dead predator who was killed with one of my cupcakes.
Somehow, I manage, though I’ll tell you that it got a whole lot longer when, suddenly, she put me on hold and, when she came back on the line, she had Grandma Jean with her.
You think an Alpha is an excellent lie detector? Max has nothing on a witch who mated an opossum shifter and watched her daughter do the same.
Of course, that just meant that I couldn’t lie to Grandma Jean. That was easy. Everything I told her was the truth. About how successful the bakery has been since I took over, how I’ve met some of her old friends… I even reluctantly confess to the Can’t Resist Cupcakes fiasco.
Pro-tip from you to me. If you don’t want to get in trouble for a big thing—like, I don’t know, getting yourself involved in a murder mystery—then you should take the knock and admit to something less worrisome.
Mom was horrified, but Grandma Jean just laughed in that husky way she has, warning me to read all the fine print when it comes to the recipes in her book.
She did offer to cut her trip to Europe short. If Moonburrow needed her… if I needed her… she’d come back tomorrow.
When I jumped up and hurriedly assured them both that I was fine and Grandma Jean shouldn’t have to change her plans for my sake, my words rang with absolute truth. I’m already in this mess. I don’t need to get my family caught up in it, too.
By the end, Mom agreed to stay in Virginia, Grandma was getting ready to visit Spain, and I had to swallow my disappointment that it was probably too late to go to the apothecary.
I looked it up earlier. I didn’t even know Moonburrow had an apothecary, but considering there were more than a few witches who made up their small coven in town, I guess it made sense.
Witches ‘n’ Things was about a ten-minute ride to the east end of Moonburrow, in a decidedly more…
witchy side of town. There was a coffee shop with skulls in the window on one side of it; a hattery with a tendency to the more pointed kinds on the other.
Saturday was out. However, after another busy day at the bakery, I decided to take the drive over after we closed Sunday night.
The day was full of customers, but not leads.
Roxy was MIA, and I didn’t hear anything from Max.
A few customers were still eyeballing the bakery as though they expected I had a murderer behind my counter, only to be slightly disappointed when all I was harboring was an opossum who was crunching noisily on a dish of peanuts I set aside for him.
After closing, I pocketed my phone without looking at it. I didn’t even stop for dinner, and with a belly full of peanuts, Gus didn’t hiss in annoyance when I told him we were going to the car.
Gus is the perfect passenger princess. He likes to curl up on the passenger seat, chirping at me until I engage the seat warmer. I just plugged in the address and hoped for the best.
It’s five-thirty in the evening on a Sunday.
You’d think there would be street parking, but Luck is still having her fun, messing with me.
I ended up having to find a parking lot about four blocks away before I could find a spot.
I patted my shoulder, Gus climbed into his customary spot, and away we went.
The smell of hundreds of different powerful herbs warring with each other perfume the street.
I know we’re approaching before we even arrive, it’s that strong.
It hits me that this shop is probably where Grandma Jean gets most of the supplies for her charmed cupcakes.
Who knows, maybe if this lead washes out, at least I’ll know where to refill her herbs and powders whenever I start to run low.
It’s an idea, and it might even have been a good one—if the store wasn’t dark, the door locked, and the sign on the window saying:
Store hours: when the moon is high or the tide is full or the songbirds sing
Huh?
It’s closed. Obviously. But with hours like that, I have no idea how I’m ever going to have a chance to talk to this Joey.
I grab the door, giving it another frustrated tug.
“It’s best if you book an appointment,” comes a soft, gentle female voice.
I turn around quickly.
Someone had snuck up right behind me. And maybe I should be more on my toes if we have a murderer in Moonburrow, but once look at her, and I quickly dismiss her as a prospective suspect.
Seeing me look at her, she flinches, then straightens.
It’s an instinct response for some prey shifters.
Opossums play dead when they feel like they’re in danger.
Raccoons cause chaos. Bunnies hop away, and deer stand frozen for a second before deciding whether they should flee or stand their ground.
Everything about this female tells me that she’s a doe. From her wide dark eyes to her dusky skin and short bobbed haircut streaked with amber and brown, she’s delicate, yet willowy, and she’s wearing an apologetic expression at odds with her basic black business dress.
She can recognize that I’m no predator. I’m probably one of the least dominant shifters in Moonburrow so she had nothing to be afraid of. Add my opossum accessory, and she seems more at ease as the seconds pass.
“I’m sorry. Did you say something about an appointment.”
She nods. “I have my office right next door. The witch who owns it is… she’s a unique spirit.
She opens the store when she’s in the mood, but if you go online and book an appointment, she almost always will be in.
” She pauses for a moment, nose wrinkling a bit as she says helpfully, “She has an app!”
Right. A witch with an app. Of course.
But how do I get in touch with Joey the rat?
“Oh. Thanks. But I was actually hoping to see my good friend Joey. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him lately.”
If she knows I’m full of shit, she has the decency not to call me out on it. “In that case, come to the prey circle meeting tonight! I always go. Joey never misses a meeting. You’re a prey shifter, right?”
I nod.
“Great. You should come!”
I never thought I’d go to a prey circle meeting when Betsy mentioned it to me the other day. Then I said: never say never. Looks like I was right.
“So what time does the meeting start?”
The Moonburrow Community Center smells faintly of sawdust, lemon cleaner, and nervous sweat. It’s the unofficial perfume of prey shifters, and it irks me how much it reminds me of home.
It’s a handful of minutes before seven o’clock. The meeting starts promptly at seven, but I didn’t want to seem too eager—or give me the chance to wimp out—so I’m only just walking in now.
No Gus. I’ll have to make it up to him, but he’s a wild opossum.
While he’ll hiss and play dead when frightened, he has his size on his side.
Wild opossums have been known to capture and eat rats.
I don’t want to make Joey nervous. If he comes to the prey circle meetings, he’s probably the nervous sort, and it’s easy to look at me with my blonde hair and purple eyes and think I won’t try to eat his beast. But Gus…
it’s better to keep him safe back at the bakery.
Not saying my little sidekick is happy about that, but since I gave him a roll, some oats, a sliced apple, and let him sleep in the basket downstairs so he could watch over the bakery while I was gone, he’ll be fine.
Here’s hoping I will be, too.
The folding chairs in the otherwise empty room are arranged in a half-circle beneath bright fluorescent lights. A handwritten sign was taped to the open door. It says:
PREY CIRCLE:
Safe, Supportive, and Non-Predatory
Below that, in much smaller handwriting: Snacks provided. No sudden movements, please.
I take a seat near the end, clutching my purse like a life raft. Gus would’ve loved this—all the twitchy energy, the snacks, the gossip already passing through the others—but when I pick out one male out of the group of seven prey shifters, I’m grateful I left him behind.