3. Feliz Navi Don’t #2
“Duck confit, actually. I’m here now, okay? What’s going on with the magicians?”
But the witches’ voices were rising again. Conversation had turned in the direction of choreography, and some feelings were about to be bruised. “The dance of the holly sprites must be completely redone,” Candace announced. “They look like sugar-rushed toddlers playing Ring Around the Rosie!”
“There’s no need to be rude,” sniffed Belinda Chatterjee, who happened to be the pageant’s choreographer. “The children and I do the best we can, you know.”
“They’re supposed to be pagan manifestations of mortality and darkness, not the touring company of Frozen !”
“How dare you, Candace!”
“All right.” Mama Melrose clapped her hands. “My meeting seems to be spinning out of control. Delilah, we’ll speak later.” She briskly returned to the dining room. “Candace! I must insist you let it go , as it were. No more attacks on Belinda’s previous work, inadequate as it may have been.”
“ Hey !” Belinda protested.
Delilah turned to her younger sister. “Please, Scarlett, I’m begging you. What have the magicians done?”
“It’s, ah... it’s kind of hard to explain. You need to see it for yourself.”
“Well, fine, let’s go have a look.”
From the kitchen came a huge crash of pots hitting the tile floor, blended with Zahir’s voice raised in frustration. “Dammit to blazes!”
Long ago, Zahir’s parents had been co-head chefs at the Stargazer; as a consequence, Zahir had grown up at the hotel, practically a brother to the Melrose sisters.
These days he was the head chef, plus he had recently opened a pub in town, and the complexities of organizing it all had clearly pushed him to the edge of sanity.
“Scarlett, for crying out loud!” He burst through the kitchen doors and stormed over. “My presence is required for the dinner rush at the pub, but somebody also has to prepare for tomorrow’s breakfast meeting of the Yuletide Planning Commission! And on top of all that, I also?—”
“Psst!” Scarlett gave him a nudge. “Look who’s back.”
Zahir stopped short, arching an eyebrow. “Oh hello, Delilah. Your hair looks weird.”
She turned to her sister. “What’s everybody’s problem with my hair?”
“And hey,” Zahir continued, “thanks so much for all the help you’ve not given me these past months.”
“Yeahhhh, I knew that one was coming.” Delilah grinned. Her mother wasn’t the only one for whom a verbal jab was a form of affection. “Nice to see you, too, Z.”
“Scarlett!” He turned his ire on the younger sister. “You must hire me some help immediately.”
“I have done,” Scarlett said truthfully. “And you fire them all within a few hours.”
“Well, maybe hire someone competent for a change. Because I cannot be in two places at once!”
“Buuuuut... couldn’t you, though?” Scarlett asked. “We could take another whack at the doppelg?nger spell.”
“Don’t you dare! The last ones were drooling nightmare creatures from the galley of the damned.” Zahir stomped back toward the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, “They needed a recipe to make ice!”
Scarlett turned to her sister with a wicked grin. “I talked him into letting me try a ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ spell. I ended up with a dozen Zahir clones dancing around the kitchen like broomsticks in Fantasia . It wasn’t especially productive, but man, it was funny.”
“NOT! FUNNY!” Zahir’s voice boomed from behind the swinging doors.
Delilah’s head was starting to spin. It was too much.
Too many voices, too many childhood memories, too much everything.
She needed air. But as she turned to escape, a commotion from above caught her attention.
The ladder beneath Nate had begun to wobble precariously.
He’d lost control of the garland; his balance was off. Nate was going over.
From her inside coat pocket, Delilah removed a simple wand, carved from the branch of an ancient yew tree.
She raised the wand toward Nate, her eyes closed for concentration.
Just as Nate began to fall, an invisible force caught him in mid-air and gently lowered him to the floor, while the ladder clattered down beside him.
A hush fell over the lobby. Even the argumentative ornaments went quiet.
“God, Del! Thanks so much!” Nate jogged across the room to wrap Deliliah in a grateful bear hug. “I’m so glad you were here for that!”
“Holy shit!” Scarlett exclaimed. “Thank you! Since when can you do that?”
But Delilah only shrugged. “It’s nothing. Something I picked up with Luna, when we were in Australia. Just a goofy magic trick.”
“Um, sis? Telekinesis is super impressive. It’s not some goofy?—”
A harsh voice cut Scarlett off. A deeply unimpressed voice. The voice of Kelly Melrose. “What in the name of all the goddesses in creation is that thing in your hand?”
The thing in Delilah’s hand was, of course, a wand. In Oak Haven, a wand was a very unwelcome thing , indeed.
The power of Oak Haven witches sprang from a grove of oak trees that sits at the top of a hill, just above their little village.
Oak Haven’s young witches grew up playing hide-and-seek among the trees, drinking water from the same stream that feeds the grove itself.
Magic became part of their bones, their blood, their very souls.
As a result, no sacred objects were required.
No wands or cauldrons or herbs were ever necessary for Oak Haven’s particular brand of magic.
But when Delilah and Luna visited a coven in the Dartry Mountains of Ireland, a warlock had presented Del with a wand anyway.
It had been carved from a branch of Eó Ruis, one of his people’s Guardian Trees.
She thanked him but explained that no, wands were not for her.
The warlock demurred. “This is yours,” he’d said.
“It has always been yours. It’s been waiting for you here. ”
Alas, Kelly Melrose was taking a rather different view.
“I ask again: what is that thing ?”
Delilah sighed. She’d known this particular moment was coming; she’d just hoped to be home for more than ten minutes before it arrived. “It’s a wand, Mama.”
“The witches of Oak Haven do not use props . What, are you a prop comic now? Are you Carrot Top?”
Nate nudged Scarlett, whispering, “Your mom knows who Carrot Top is?!”
“It was a gift, Mama. And yes, of course I know that wands are not typically a part of our practice. But I’ve been surprised to discover that the wand actually does help focus whatever I’m?—”
“We do not use wands! Our magic thrums in our flesh and blood—leaning on some foreign object is an insult to your foremothers! Weak men with gout use walking sticks, and weak witches use wands.”
Scarlett tried to intervene. “Mama, it’s not a big deal. You’re acting like she came home with a face tattoo or something.”
“I would have preferred it,” Kelly snapped. “And not a big deal ? Betraying your ancestry with some phallic shortcut? Not a big deal? Delilah, I insist you put that cursed thing away immediately.”
“Mama, come on . . .”
“We do not use wands in Oak Haven!” She turned sharply away and marched back toward her meeting. “Do not let me see you with it again.”
“I need some air,” Delilah announced. Between her mother’s constant judgment and her father’s inescapable memory, it was all too much.
Before anyone could stop her, Delilah was heading out the front door.
She heard Scarlett call out, but Delilah didn’t turn back.
Whatever was happening in town, whatever crisis had brought her home, it had to be better than drowning in her family.