Chapter 2
Ms. Vine, my former English teacher and one of the driving forces behind Willowmere’s thriving community spirit, arrived an hour early.
She’d volunteered to take care of the library while I was gone, and to watch over Cosmo.
Since she’d been one of my aunt’s closest friends, I had absolute trust that she could handle both tasks.
It would also give Cosmo a good chance to see if she spiked his witch-o-meter.
So far, the jury was out on deciding if she was one of us, which in itself was weird.
I’d not picked up any suspicious vibes, but she’d dropped hints that made us wonder about her.
It also made me wonder about my familiar’s abilities.
Cosmo had easily figured out that I’d inherited my aunt’s position.
My two cousins had also been in the running (all Merriweathers had a small magical bent, he’d told me, but the real inherited powers were not passed down in a straight line).
He’d confirmed that Reina Fox, a jazz and blues singer with an enchanting voice, had a drop of siren blood, and that dedicated Wiccan and fellow artisan Ange Gale was as good as a witch, as attuned to healing and nature as she was.
Ms. Vine chuckled as she saw the long list with instructions I’d put in the checkout counter in the library. I’d replenished the jar with the non-magical cookies and relocated the enhanced treats to the safety of my pantry upstairs.
She adjusted her funky red-rimmed glasses and read aloud, “Three treats may be given after every meal, to be served in the handmade ceramic bowl. Ideally placed between the dish with wet food and the water bowl. If children pet him during story time, he likes to be brushed afterwards. The soft brush is for every day, and if someone had sticky fingers, he prefers the one with natural bristles.” She stopped, although the list went on.
“It seems His Highness has you firmly under his paw.”
“My aunt asked me to look after him exactly the way she used to,” I defended myself. Not that she was wrong, but I didn’t like to be labeled a pushover.
“And you’re doing a splendid job, with everything.”
There it was again, the unspoken hint that she knew a lot more than she let on.
I focused on my witchy sense. Did I feel the slightest tingle or rise in temperature that could not be explained by my going through The Change (an HRT patch on my hip and cooling pajamas at night took care of most symptoms)?
Any unusually strong hot flash was usually connected to someone using occult powers in the vicinity or planning evil.
Nope, no signs of witchfire going on. Or maybe it simply meant that she meant no harm? Oh, the joys of ambiguous pointers.
I looked at Ms. Vine. She’d lately embraced the freedom from judgement and decorum that retirement offered and replaced her sensible knitwear, skirts and slacks with embroidered jeans, sequins in all colors of the rainbow, and faux fur.
Next to her, I faded into the background, despite my blue hair.
Cosmo strolled over to us and pressed himself against my leg. He meowed.
Ms. Vine patted the counter. He jumped up, next to the list and stretched.
“He’ll be fine, I promise, and so will everything else. I appreciate your dedication, but you need to learn to relax a little. What’s the point of being free and single if you can’t let go of your duties for one single night?”
“I can, I mean, I do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t leave Cosmo alone in the house.” I failed to mention that he’d been the one who insisted on staying home instead of going with Ms. Vine, after it was clear he wasn’t going to be part of the trip.
I had no idea what a familiar did on his own, but we all deserved a little me-time, even a cat.
When Ange arrived to pick me up, Ms. Vine had settled at the desk with a cup of my Peace of Mind tea, a copy of Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, and an air of quiet competence.
I stroked Cosmo. He snuggled against my hand and nodded. I took this as his way to silently tell me he had everything under control.
“Freedom!” Ange punched the air.
I stowed my overnight bag in the trunk and pushed away all thoughts of cats, responsibilities, and Ms. Vine.
Harper and her wife Reina waited outside the Blue Moon Inn, Harper’s family business, which they ran together.
The neon sign pulsed in the mist which had crept in over the last hour.
I hoped it wouldn’t worsen. In my years away, I’d missed the drizzle and mossy smell of the temperate rainforest stretching toward the coast. What I hadn’t missed was driving in fog thick enough to swallow up entire villages.
Harper peered at the sky. “It’ll clear up again soon,” she declared.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t and people stayed home,” Reina deposited their luggage and settled in the backseat.
“Pilar and her brother can handle a crowd for one night. We’ll be back soon enough.” Harper leant against Reina’s shoulder.
The drive to Cannon Hill took us through densely wooded countryside. Harper’s forecast had been right: halfway through, the mist lifted, and I occasionally glimpsed mountains in the distance.
Where Willowmere was small and cozy, with a variety of architectural styles from A-frame chalets to clapboard villas and Victorian gingerbread mansions, and a plethora of artisanal stores, Cannon Hill had a well-developed commercial center.
It was also the seat of a community college, a hub for small startups, and on the outskirts, we passed the site of the future Cannon Hill Retirement Village, which dwarfed Willowmere’s care home. Building had already begun.
We’d booked rooms in a hotel in a quiet back street, within a few minutes’ walk from the main street lined with restaurants and a karaoke bar.
I dropped my bag on the luggage stand, tested the springiness of the mattress on my queen size bed, and admired the thick wall-to-wall carpet with a swirly pattern in blue and grey designed to hide dirt, and the velvet black-out curtains. I’d spent complete vacations in much inferior rooms.
We met up again outside.
“Where shall we go first?” Ange asked in a deceptively neutral tone.
“We could grab a coffee and a bite to eat,” Harper suggested in an equally neutral tone. “Or—”
“Yes?”
I shook my head in mock despair. We were all close to 50, and here we stood, with Ange and Harper acting again like they had in high school, because we all knew what Ange really wanted.
Well, three could play that game. Or rather, four. I said to Reina, “We could check out that pottery studio we drove past. Their sign said they have taster sessions every afternoon.” I winked at her.
She caught my drift. “It’s very meditative.” Turning to Ange, she said, “You could bring back handmade bowls for Mrs. Miniver and Mr. Chips.”
Ange’s adored labradoodles whose apricot color matched her own curls, had stayed behind in the doting care of Ange’s husband Nick, one of the town’s doctors.
For an instant, she seemed to waver. Then she looked at us. “I know, I know. We already agreed to go to the antiques’ fair after breakfast tomorrow, but a quick glimpse now won’t hurt. Especially if Bex works her magic and finds what I’m after, before another customer snaps it up.”
The bi-annual fair attracted bargain hunters from all over the county. Ange, a professional glass blower, had recently rekindled her love affair with vintage Tiffany lamps, when she and I had helped turn a heritage mansion into a boutique hotel. Now Ange had a long wish-list for her own home.
Since classic Tiffany lamps came in price ranges from three to seven figures, Cannon Hill was a good place to start. Anything sold here should be either affordable or a hitherto unrecognized treasure.
We decided to stroll to the old warehouse that held the fair for three days. The soft air was perfumed with dogwood and magnolia (my botanical knowledge had evolved in leaps and bounds since my return), and sidewalks were wide enough for us to amble arm in arm.
The parking lot outside the brick building showed only a few available spots.
Several customers had arrived with trailers in tow or pickup trucks, although I also noticed a few convertibles.
One, a Corvette Stingray in a bright shade of tangerine, had just pulled in.
The driver jumped out in the exaggerated manner of a man used to attracting attention.
We snickered, but then we weren’t the intended audience.
That honor belonged to two young women in flowing dresses too skimpy for the season.
They both ogled the man, who smoothed his floppy dark hair back and flashed them a smile revealing the kind of perfect teeth that whispered wealth and needed a small fortune to achieve. I took him to be in his early thirties.
Ange said, “He’s a bit young for a man-o-pause car.”
“Maybe it belongs to his dad,” Harper suggested.
Ange’s voice had carried further than she’d intended. The two young women had heard us, because they broke into a giggle. Luckily, the Corvette driver had already entered the warehouse.
“Shall we split up?” Reina asked. “If we search in pairs, we’ll cover the ground quicker.”
“I’ll go with Ange, and she’ll tell me what to look for,” her wife said. “You stay with Bex and if one of us finds something promising, you and I will act as runners, so Ange or Bex can stay in place and guard the objects.”
“Great.” Ange took Harper’s hand and pulled her away, to the left side. The fair had been divided into six long rows of stalls, with large furniture in the two outer rows and smaller objects in the inner rows in a building the size of a football pitch.
“What do we do?” Reina asked me.
“Good question. Normally, my instinct will take me to things I connect with, on some level. In this case, Ange is the one with the emotional link.”
“But you’ve always used that gift to discover pieces for your clients. Maybe if you reframe Ange in your mind in that light?”
“Of course, you’re absolutely right.” I tuned out the chatter around me, the people who gave me the stink-eye for making them swerve, the smells of furniture polish, moth balls, perfumes, and frying onions and burger patties from the café at the far end.
I visualized Ange, running her fingers over colored glass pieces, held together with silver. A tingling sensation spread from my fingertips to my shoulders. Without thinking, I weaved through two stalls, to head for the next aisle. Reina followed me wordlessly.
The tingling increased. Whatever was luring me couldn’t be further away than five yards. I was concentrating so much on my instincts that I almost ran into a person who’d stopped abruptly as I came close.
“Sorry,” I said automatically, without really looking.
“Bex?” the person whispered in a voice I’d heard in exactly the same embarrassed tone, under very different circumstances, more than 700 miles away, canoodling with my now ex-husband in the stock room.