Chapter Five
Ria
Ria stared at her phone in disbelief. When she posted the first video about destiny love spells two days ago, she thought at best she’d get a handful of likes, a few lewd comments from men who thought she was hot, and maybe one or two messages from bot accounts trying to sell her stuff.
She never imagined she would actually get a legitimate inquiry. She’d read and re-read the message probably twenty times.
LISSA: Hey Elixir Enchantress. Saw your vid. Sounds intriguing. Been single for a while now so I figure what the heck. Let’s give it a shot. I’m actually in Seacliff too.
Ria brushed the dirt off her hands and rose up from where she’d been working on a batch of yarrow that was flowering nicely.
Her thighs protested at being stretched after remaining in the squatting position for so long, but she’d been so shocked to see the message come in she hadn’t moved for probably ten minutes.
She couldn’t blame her legs for vocalizing their discontent.
Strolling through the raised beds that filled a large part of her mom’s backyard, she pulled up the account of the woman who’d messaged her. Aside from a few random pictures of glass sculptures, the page told her nothing of use. It didn’t come across as a fake account so maybe…
Only one way to find out. She pulled up the message and her fingers hovered over the tiny keyboard.
Crap.
She’d planned out an entire month of videos and posts to gather interest in her new spell offering, but at no point had she considered what to say if someone actually took her up on it.
Moving over to a grassy space, she sat in a sunbeam and let the warmth wash over her. She could do this. Just say something casual. Pretend like you’ve gotten a hundred messages. “Never show desperation” was Marketing 101.
ELIXIR ENCHANTRESS: Hi there, and thank you for your interest in my services. Since you are local, it will be even easier to cast the spell. What is your availability like?
There. That was equal parts laidback and professional. At least she hoped it came off that way. Maybe she should have waited longer to reply. How soon was too soon? She wasn’t asking her out on a date or anything, so ten minutes seemed reasonable.
Setting the phone down, she lifted her face to the sky, trying to focus on the relaxation that came from a warm sun beating down.
Most people assumed redheads avoided the sun, but Ria craved its comforting warmth.
She didn’t know the slightest thing about her father, but he was obviously the one to thank for her crimson curls and pale face, given her mom’s brown straight hair and slightly bronzed skin.
She wanted to despise the man who genetically forced her to brew an anti-burn potion every week during the summer just so she could enjoy her long days in the garden, but how do you despise someone you’ve never met?
A familiar twinkling sound drew her attention away from her thoughts and back to her phone. She tapped her screen to pull up the new message.
LISSA: I make my own hours so I’m fairly open. Coffee tomorrow morning? New place in town called Mixie’s is pretty cool.
Ria wrinkled her face. Hopefully Mixie’s sold tea as well. At least she knew their scones were good. She would have been embarrassed about eating three at the meeting if it weren’t for the constant nudging from the other witches about needing to put some meat on her bones.
ELIXIR ENCHANTRESS: Works for me! See you at 8?
She watched the little bouncing dots for a second.
LISSA: Uh, sure. See ya then.
Ria twisted a finger through one of her curls as she stared at the screen. Would she rather her first client be a little more excited? Of course. But she could work with “sure.”
She only needed one client. One person she could point to and say, “Look at her! I helped her find love.” After she had that, the rest would come flocking in by the dozens to buy potions.
If she was lucky, she could even sell enough to be able to move out of her mom’s house and back to the city.
She’d get another marketing job, this time for a company that wasn’t run by asshole men.
Maybe, just maybe, her dream of owning her own business wasn’t completely dead and buried under the begonias.
Now she needed to figure out how to do the spell. She’d been putting it off, assuming she would have time before she got a client, but delaying was no longer an option.
Climbing to her feet, Ria trudged into her mom’s house, all the earlier excitement fading from the fact that she really had no clue what she was doing.
“Mom,” she called out as the storm door slammed behind her.
“In the parlor,” her mom called back.
Susan Lewis loved using terms like parlor and boudoir. The small house had a cramped living room, a ridiculously small kitchen, and two bedrooms. It most definitely did not have a parlor.
She found her mom curled up in the recliner, legs tucked underneath her butt and hands outstretched with palms to the ceiling.
“Um, what are you doing?” Ria asked hesitantly, not entirely sure she wanted to know. She had important things to work on and couldn’t get pulled into whatever craziness was going down in the living room.
“I’m communing with Hecate, of course,” her mom replied in a distracted voice without opening her eyes.
“Right. Well, um, I need one of your books.”
Her mom cracked one eye open. “One of my books?”
Ria smoothed down the non-existent wrinkles in her khaki shorts.
Of course this was going to be painful. If every wall in the room wasn’t filled with overstuffed bookshelves that claimed no rhyme or reason to their arrangement, she would have gone searching for the tome herself.
She didn’t have a week, though, nor did she have the desire to acquire six new paper cuts from flipping through a million pages to find the right spell.
The wound from her scissor accident still hurt more than enough for her liking.
“Yeah, I took the coven’s advice and offered destiny love spells.” Ria took a deep breath, preparing herself, then added, “I kind of have someone who’s interested.”
The squeal her mother unleashed in the tiny space was so high pitched Ria expected the neighborhood dogs to show up at their doorstep.
You’d think a woman pushing retirement age would have a little more decorum, but that word just wasn’t in her mom’s vocabulary.
Neither was restraint, given how tight the hug was that she found herself trapped in.
“Mom, I can’t breathe,” she choked out.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” her mom said, releasing her death grip on Ria. “I’m just so excited. I’ve been waiting forever to see you embrace your magic again. Hecate’s slippery shoes, this is a wondrous day.”
“It’s not really that big of a deal,” Ria replied, inching backward and out of her mom’s reach in case the crazy woman got any more hugging ideas. “It’s only one spell.”
“Whatever you say, my little twitchy witch. I know this is the beginning of a new chapter for you. I always believed abandoning your magic would bring you nothing but despair, and look at how things turned out in Portland? Now that you’re home and casting again, everything will be daffodils and moonbeams.” Before Ria could react, her mom lunged forward, grabbed her by the arms, and started spinning her around the room.
“Please stop,” Ria cried, when her stomach threatened to revisit the noodle soup she had for lunch.
Her mom let go mid spin, and Ria crashed into one of the bookshelves. She landed hard on the worn carpet, and ancient tomes rained down, half burying her under musty old books. When the cascade finally ended, she rubbed her head and glared up at her mom.
“Ouch,” Ria bit out. “You know these things are heavy enough to be weapons, right?”
“Oh, pishposh. You’re fine. And look, there’s the one you need.” Her mom swooped over and snatched up the half-open book covering her right foot. “It must be a sign from Hecate.”
“Or it could be coincidence considering I knocked at least thirty different books off.” Extracting herself from the pile, Ria climbed to her feet and dusted off her now very wrinkled shorts.
Her mom wagged a finger instead of offering her daughter any help getting up. “Ria, you need to stop dismissing the signs of the universe. You know Hecate won’t bless your magic if you keep sticking your nose up at her.”
“Right. Sorry, Hecate,” Ria mumbled. It wasn’t that she didn’t respect the Goddess who watched over her family line and fueled their magic. It was more she figured Hecate had bigger things to worry about than some minor league witch in Seacliff.
Her mom plopped back down into the recliner, assuming her favored cross-legged position as she thumbed through the book.
“Destiny, destiny… I know it’s in here somewhere.” She flipped through half the spellbook before finally announcing, “Ah-hah! Here we go. The Destiny Love Spell, when someone needs fate to give them a nudge in the right direction.”
Ria held out a hand for the book, but her mom ignored her, leaning back in the chair with a dreamy look on her face.
“You know, I remember when your nana used this spell on me. I asked her to, of course. I wanted so badly to be a mother. And sure enough, three weeks after she cast the spell, I had one too many sangrias at a Christmas party and met your father.” She let out a wistful sigh.
Ria shook her head. No use interrupting her mom when she got wrapped up in the past. Much like a head cold, she just had to let it run its course.
“It was love at first sight,” her mom continued.
“Or at least I think it was. I may have actually had four or five too many sangrias. Either way, we shared a magical evening, and nine months later you were born.” Her mom cradled the book to her chest as if it had been somehow directly responsible for Ria’s birth.
“You were the greatest gift the Goddess has ever given me. To see you finally emerging as the magical butterfly you are is a truly inspiring feeling.”