Chapter 28
As I lock up the video store, I’m absolutely giddy.
Finally, he’s not running hot and cold.
Just hot.
Very hot.
Hopefully talking through the magic issues and coming clean with Joyce means there’s no more reason for the Blakelys to associate me with Maggie’s foul deeds. Maybe I’ll get more eye crinkles and fewer tightened jaws, more wood puns and fewer tempests. A girl can dream.
It’s almost five, and I have an idea, but I’ll need help. And maybe on the way to my destination, I’ll catch a flutter of pink amid the changing leaves and get the chance to talk Maggie into coming back home.
The downtown streets are beginning to feel like a place where I belong. Lindy waves as I walk past the restaurant, and Barb stops adjusting a scarf on a mannequin outside her boutique’s open door to ask me when my store will have peanuts again.
“When I learn how to make them right!” I tell her.
“Well, hurry up, then,” she huffs, like she has a peanut deficiency.
I haven’t been to Shelby’s bakery before, and I smell it before I see it. It’s very cute, with a white-and-silver striped awning and white iron tables out front. The lady at the counter calls for Shelby, who appears in an apron with colorful dye staining her hands.
“I do all the cake decorating,” she tells me. “Are you here for a snack or girl talk?”
“Can’t it be both?”
She won’t take my money for a donut, so I put a five in the tip jar and we sit outside at one of the sunny tables.
“What’s up?” she asks. “Is it Hunter?”
Part of him was up when he kissed me earlier, but that’s none of her business.
“Hunter’s fine,” I say, meaning it both ways. “But no. Do you have a printer? My cockatoo flew away, and Hunter said I might have better luck finding her if I put up signs.”
Her eyes fly wide in worry. “Oh, honey, no! I’m so sorry! That’s got to be so scary for you. I do have a printer, so if you just send me a doc, I’ll get a stack ready to go. What’s your number?” She pulls out her phone, puts in my number, and sends a text, and my phone pings in response.
Chamber emergency: Rhea Wolfe’s bird got lost. Please report any sightings.
She looks up. “A group text is honestly the quickest way to get anything done in town.” Our phones both immediately report several text messages as Chamber members express their concern and Colonel claims he saw a turkey pecking at something pink in the middle of the road today, but it turns out it was just an old sock.
“I wish we still had sp—Gurk!” I sputter.
Shelby waves as a pair of tourists exits the bakery. I feel like I’m choking on a live frog. They head up the sidewalk and out of earshot, and my throat is finally empty again.
“I wish we still had spells,” I say, much softer this time. “I bet there used to be a finding spell or something.”
Shelby looks at me like I’ve gone insane. “We still have spells. What are you talking about?”
That stops me. “Wait. What? Who still has spells?”
“Um, everyone? As far as I know?”
I am shocked, and the plot has thickened.
“But the Blakelys told me all the magic families had their grimoires ruined back in the nineties and nobody can do spells anymore.”
Her mouth snaps shut as she blinks ferociously. “Oh my God, that’s crazy! My mom and I still have our grimoires. My grandma did, too. We do spells all the time. I’d heard the magic was dying out, but…not like that.”
Mentally, I connect the dots and realize that Maggie must’ve told her best friend, Diana, what she was going to do at her ritual, thus allowing the McGowans to avoid the same predicament as the rest of the witches of Arcadia Falls.
I had suspected that Maggie’s grimoire was intact somewhere, and now I know that at least three other grimoires remain functional: Shelby’s, Tina’s, and Diana’s.
“How did you not know about this?” I ask. “About what happened to everyone else?”
She shrugs. “Witches are secretive. We never get together or talk about anything, outside the family. The only reason you and I are having this discussion is because you’re tacky enough to ask—no, I don’t mind, but it is tacky!
—and because all the women in our families have been best friends for generations.
It would just feel wrong not to be there for you with your mom and grandma gone, you know? ”
I’m half annoyed and half ashamed, and I don’t enjoy either emotion. “I don’t mean to be tacky. There’s just so much I don’t know.”
Especially with Maggie avoiding me.
“But I don’t have a sp—” Shelby smiles as some teenagers walk by.
“That thing that might help you. I haven’t heard of that sort of thing before, but it sure would be useful.
I lost my keys one day and it turns out I’d baked ’em into a wedding cake.
At least it was a bottom tier and not the one they’d put in the freezer to eat on their anniversary.
” She leans in. “Even a spell can’t make me less forgetful. It still rose beautifully.”
I shake my head. “It’s just bizarre to me. The whole thing. Each family hoarding their books. My grandmother trying to destroy them. Why wouldn’t people want to share ways to make their lives better?”
Shelby cocks her head. “I guess so nobody gets too powerful? Or maybe it’s like…specialization. Like, Edie can sell anything to anybody—that’s her knack—but she didn’t start another bakery to compete with me, you know? She started a soap and candle shop. We all do different things.”
“Well…” I’m thinking out loud now, trying to work through my feelings.
“It seems to me, as someone new to all this, that the old ways aren’t exactly working.
The magic is disappearing, the young people are leaving town.
One person tried to take control instead of spreading the wealth, and it caused ripples.
Wouldn’t it be better if people helped each other and shared resources? ”
Shelby looks utterly scandalized but also compelled. “Yeah, it doesn’t really make sense, does it? The only reason you wouldn’t want to share with me is because you want power over me, which would suggest you’re not that great a person.” She leans in. “So you don’t have a grimoire? Or any spells?”
I shake my head, because even if I did one spell, I didn’t write it down, and I forgot the details, and Maggie isn’t around to remind me. And she didn’t even tell me to write it down in the first place!
“Then,” Shelby says, “I’ll give you a spell for your toaster that ensures your toast is always perfect. How about that?”
Having lived with a terrible toaster for many years, I appreciate the bounty of this gift. “That’s really kind. I wish there was something I could do for you in return.”
She rubs her hands together. “You just keep those shelves stocked with rom-coms and have a generous used book return policy, and we’ll call it even.”
I hold out my hand, and we shake. “Deal!”
The cashier appears in the door to ask Shelby something about frosting, and she excuses herself to go fix the latest batch of cupcakes before an absolute baketastrophe can occur.
I finish my donut and make a proper purchase at the counter, and Shelby reminds me that I absolutely can’t miss Craft Night.
When I tell her I bought yarn just so everyone can see what a terrible crocheter I am, she squeals and does a little dance.
My phone pings again, and I look, hoping that maybe someone in the Chamber has found Maggie. But instead it’s a number I don’t know.
Rhea, this is Jemma on someone else’s phone because either you’re dead or you put us on DND again, and if you don’t text me back, I will send Officer Jimmy Wayne after you.
Not dead, I text back. Doing really well! But things are getting interesting. I’ll FaceTime you in an hour. Promise. Tell Cait.
She texts back a dozen exclamation marks and a skull.
Message received.
“Gotta run. Sister emergency,” I tell Shelby.
Back home, I make a salad using Maggie’s veggies and put together a Lost Bird flyer.
It’s pretty simple—just a picture of Doris, some quick facts, and my name and number—but it’s not like she’s going to be confused for any other random rose-breasted cockatoo running feral in the north Georgia mountains.
I text Shelby for her email and send the flyer over with my thanks for printing it.
I know I could ask Cait for help, since she’s a design whiz, but then I would have to tell her I lost my cockatoo.
I don’t need to give my sisters any more reason to freak out.
And that’s why I have to call them.
I went too long, and now I know…I’m going to pay.