Chapter 6
Aunt Rowan placed a steaming cup of dandelion tea in front of Helena. ‘Drink.’
Dandelion tea had cleansing properties. It might flush out whatever blocked Helena’s gift. Aunt Rowan had sweetened the mixture with honey and a dash of her own healing powers. Helena blew on the surface until it cooled, then sipped.
‘This has never happened before.’ She couldn’t hide her worry as Hamlet bumped his head against her leg. She reached under the table to rest her hand between his ears.
‘What is wrong?’ Ellie swept into the kitchen, her snow-white ferret, Ophelia, wrapped around her shoulders like a living stole.
‘Something is blocking your cousin’s powers.’ Aunt Rowan never spoke around a problem when she could just as easily rip right through the centre.
Ellie’s blonde brows, only a few shades darker than her bright hair, creased over bluebell eyes.
‘Hel, that’s awful.’ She plunked herself on the bench next to Helena and put her soft hand on Helena’s arm.
Ophelia perked up, blinking her pink eyes as she scurried off Ellie’s shoulder to find her one true love, Hamlet.
That a ferret and a fox could never be together meant little to the familiars who doted on each other.
‘Your aura is a little…’ she scrunched her nose, ‘off.’
Helena stiffened her spine. ‘What do you mean, off?’
Ellie shrugged. ‘Just shimmery. No, that’s not right. Murky… or what’s another word for muddy, but not so unpleasant? Foggy! Your aura is a little foggy.’
Helena was used to Ellie’s meandering conversations, but a foggy aura was incredibly unhelpful at this juncture. ‘Wonderful. My powers are failing, and my aura is foggy. This certainly bodes well.’
Ellie flapped her hand, as if she could shoo away Helena’s dire mood as easily as a bad odour.
‘Oh, don’t be such a grump. A foggy aura never killed anyone.
At least, I don’t think it ever has. Have you ever heard of a witch dying from a foggy aura, Aunt Rowan?
’ But she didn’t pause to hear an answer.
‘At the worst, you might trip in the fog and fall, but sometimes, falling is the best thing, don’t you think?
I mean, how are flying and falling really that different? And I’ve always wanted to fly.’
‘I imagine it’s the resounding crash at the end that separates the two,’ muttered Helena, trying not to imagine herself splattered on the ground with her foggy aura and blocked powers.
Ellie smiled as though Helena had said something quite lovely. ‘What can we do to help?’
‘I’m not a grump, you know. Just because I see rain clouds when all you notice is the rainbow doesn’t make me a grouch. It makes me a realist.’ Helena cringed. Because she sounded like a grump.
‘As a woman endowed with magic, realism hardly seems a wise perspective, does it?’ Aunt Rowan’s dry observation didn’t help.
Ophelia scurried up the leg of the table to wind once more around Ellie’s shoulders. She chittered at Helena, taking offence on behalf of her mistress.
Helena took a deep breath and tried again. ‘All right. Maybe I am a little bit of a grump. But you would be too if your magic was malfunctioning.’
Ellie tapped her finger thoughtfully against her chin. ‘Are all of your abilities affected?’
‘No. I can still control my element.’ To prove her point, a swirl of water appeared between them. With a flick of her eyes, it swept through the room, distributing dew on all the plants.
Aunt Rowan tsked. ‘You always overwater them.’ She waved her hand and the dew disappeared. Every leaf, frond, and petal in the kitchen collectively shivered with pleasure.
‘I’m just proving my powers still work. I can read people’s thoughts.
Just not hers.’ Helena said the last word like a curse.
Because Cynthia was becoming a hex Helena couldn’t shake.
An overwhelming plague infiltrating her senses until all she could smell was honeysuckle and vanilla.
All she could see were the striations of green and brown in Cynthia’s pixie-shaped eyes.
All she could hear was the low melody of Cynthia’s voice.
It was maddening. And distracting. And intoxicating.
No wonder she couldn’t concentrate on her craft.
Ellie raised a brow. ‘Her? Exactly which her are we talking about? Certainly not my new sister-in-law. You haven’t liked that particular her from the start.’
‘I don’t care enough about the woman to dislike her.’
Ellie’s delicate snort begged to differ. Liar.
Helena ignored her and continued. ‘But I do take exception to the vexatious woman blocking my powers. Especially as she most recently found her husband in a pool of his own blood and my skills would be very helpful in determining who killed him. Rather convenient that I can’t read her thoughts when they could implicate Cynthia in his death. ’
Ellie shook her head, her lips turning down in a sad frown.
‘I should have peeked into the poor man’s future.
Mayhap I could have saved him from such a terrible end.
Although, if the gossip is true, perhaps not.
The fates have a way of balancing the scales, and I don’t think the marquess was courting their favour.
’ Ellie huffed out a contemplative breath.
She was well aware of Lord Burrows’ murder, as there were no secrets amongst the Blair women, but her particular powers would be of no help in the investigation.
Ellie was tied to the air, and that ephemeral element aided in her disconcertingly accurate visions of the future. It also lent her skill in reading auras. But Lord Hubert Burrows’ death had already occurred, so peering into his future was useless. And she could hardly see a dead man’s aura.
Instead, she had volunteered to cover Helena’s shift on the morrow so her cousin could accompany Uncle Lachlan to interview Lady Burrows. Which was incredibly kind. And Helena was acting like an ungrateful wretch.
She promised herself she would visit Barty’s Confectionery on her return from Cynthia’s interview and buy Ellie some boiled lemon drops as a thank you for all her help.
Her cousin was addicted to anything sweet but had a particular weakness for the lemon drops Barty sold.
As he was conveniently located three doors down from their shop on Savile Row, it would be no trouble.
Aunt Rowan opened All Things Bright and Beautiful when they fled Scotland and found a broader society in the bustling centre of London.
Her apothecary was now the city’s premier beauty shop.
Ladies of the beau monde paid exorbitant fees for the high-end products Clio and Aunt Rowan created, providing the Blair women with a lavish lifestyle they all enjoyed.
Unlike their main competitor, Madame Rachel, who preferred to blend arsenic, lead, and chalk into her toxic mixtures, All Things Bright and Beautiful relied on natural ingredients harvested at peak potency and prepared with the utmost care.
If a dash of magic aided in their effectiveness, that was neither here nor there.
‘Cynthia wouldn’t squash a spider,’ Ellie continued. She was loyal to a fault and wouldn’t tolerate anyone speaking unkindly about those she loved. With Ellie, that included almost everyone she met.
‘Yes. I’ve been told,’ Helena muttered. ‘But even good people are capable of dark deeds.’ Her mother’s face flickered like a distant dream.
She blinked and dispelled the haunting memories to focus on her present troubles.
‘Regardless of whether she is guilty of murder or not, she is certainly at fault for blocking my powers. If I could hear her thoughts, maybe I could clear her of this crime. Is it so hard to believe I might be trying to help her?’
Aunt Rowan narrowed her gaze over her own steaming cup of bergamot-infused black tea. ‘Are you?’
‘I am trying to determine the truth. How does this paint me the villain?’
‘Because you have already pre-determined that Lady Burrows is the villain.’ Aunt Rowan was annoyingly good at exposing uncomfortable realities. As long as they didn’t pertain to her own life.
Hamlet’s warm body leaned against Helena’s leg. ‘Fine! I don’t like her. Is that what you want me to say? She has taken Clio away from us. She is becoming Ellie’s new best friend. Even my bloody familiar is putting his head in her frilly lap.’
Ellie’s mouth fell open as Aunt Rowan’s gaze sharpened. Hamlet’s clicking growl could be heard under the table.
‘Hamlet did what?’
Finally, her aunt was beginning to understand Helena’s very justifiable prejudice against Lady Cynthia Burrows.
‘See? And now she is blocking my power. Maybe she isn’t guilty of killing her husband, but she is hiding something.’
‘If Hamlet trusts her, then whatever she is hiding can’t be all that bad.
’ Ellie absently stroked Ophelia’s body.
The ferret fairly hummed with satisfaction.
Ellie’s blue eyes brightened, as they were wont to do when she had a new idea.
‘Maybe you are blocking your own powers. Your dislike of her is stopping you from being able to hear her thoughts. Has a witch ever hexed herself, Aunt Rowan?’ Before their aunt could answer, Ellie continued.
‘Can you imagine a self-hexing witch?’ She giggled before pointing a finger at Helena.
‘Have you considered you might be the problem, Hel?’
‘Bollocks to that! There are plenty of people I don’t like, and I can read their minds just fine.
Lady Pestlewit for one. If I was going to hex myself to not hear someone’s thoughts, she would be at the top of my list.’ Lady Pestlewit was one of their most difficult customers.
She was also a duchess with blood bluer than the Adriatic Sea, so allowances had to be made.
Aunt Rowan tapped her finger on her lip. ‘Let me do some research. I have a friend in the Linlithgow coven who might be able to help. I’ll send her a letter on the morrow.’
Helena’s brow creased. ‘Isn’t that in Scotland? It’ll take ages to get a reply.’