Chapter 6
Piercing the Veil: Fabrics and Notions read a dangling tavern-style sign that protruded from a building of rough-cut beige fieldstone.
Its windows were an explosion of color and texture, and a smaller sign featuring upturned hands cupping a crystal ball revealed that the shop doubled in psychic readings.
“Your friend is here?” said Hayleigh.
“Mmm,” said Stephan with a nod. “It’s her shop.”
Well, that made sense. If the local psychic hadn’t been a member of the witch coven, it probably would’ve led to some kind of sage-smudged turf war. The moonstones would be flying.
“And she agreed to meet me?”
“Oh, I didn’t call or anything,” he said with a wave of the hand, “but Birdie’s not gonna turn us away.”
Hayleigh put a finger to her temple. “You didn’t call? Did you text?” He shook his head. “What if she isn’t here? Or she’s busy?”
“It’ll work out—it’s chill.”
“No, you are chill, which is not the same thing.”
He shot her a cheeky grin as he swung open a glass door hung with remnants of mismatched fabric.
The second she stepped over the threshold, her arms erupted in prickling gooseflesh.
A smell tingled through her nose with clean, briny freshness, like standing at the end of a pier while dawn breathes in the tide.
It overlaid the usual mix of laundered cloth and tangy dye you found in a fabric store, as well as the general whiff of time that clung to all old buildings.
A bored-looking teenager with dyed black hair and a hard-to-place gender sat behind the counter. On recognizing Stephan, they expended no energy on customer service and went right back to browsing their phone.
“Kel, can Ozzy hang out with you back there?” asked Stephan, pulling the teen back into the real world.
“I guess,” said Kel, but though they tried to look disinterested, a smile propped up the corner of their lips as the hound bounded over.
The shop was a mass of heaped fabric reams amid racks of notions and patterns barely visible in the clutter. “How does anyone find anything here?” Hayleigh murmured aloud.
“Kismet, mostly,” said an old woman, who emerged from the back with hair like a swirl of whipped cream. She wore a crimson robe lined with white faux fur and looked every bit the part of “small-town mystic.” In Hayleigh’s experience, people who tried this hard to look a part were usually faking it.
“That’s one way of making chaos sound poetic,” said Hayleigh.
“Well, fate can be a tad chaotic. For example, I was expecting you a few hours ago, and a little less…”
“A little less what?”
The old woman looked her up and down. “Drenched in self-pity.”
Hayleigh turned to march right back out the door, but Stephan gently caught her by the arm. “Birdie doesn’t have much of a filter,” he said, “but I promise she’ll help.”
She let out a sound halfway between a grumble and a sigh. “Lead the way, then. I’ll try to keep the self-pity to a sprinkle.”
“For the red one’s sake, you had better,” said the old woman with a mysterious smile.
Her heart stuttered at the obvious reference to Red, and she followed as the old woman led them to a back room with shelves cluttered with items that looked mystical. Birdie lifted a pale gray stone with a perfect hole in the middle and peered directly at Hayleigh.
“Ah yes, there it is.”
“There what is?” asked Hayleigh, twitching under the close examination.
“The curse.” The old woman waved a finger around. “It’s swirling around you like a homing beacon, pulling in all kinds of mischievous magic.”
Hayleigh turned to Stephan, eyes sharp. “There—curse confirmed. Get Rowan on the phone. Tell her to break it—now.”
“I told you—it wasn’t Rowan.”
She let out a pitched sigh. “I’m having a really hard time accepting that mere months after I cross paths with a witch, who cast all kinds of spells on me—”
“That was self-defense,” interjected Stephan.
“Agree to disagree. Either way, I find it hard to believe an entirely new and different witch would decide to curse me. I mean, doesn’t that seem like a bit of a coincidence?”
“Coincidences or confluences,” said Birdie, “difficult to tell the difference when dealing with the extraordinary.” The old woman looked through the hag’s stone one more time and then squinted at Hayleigh with a look of disbelief.
The expression was swiftly replaced by one of amusement. “Now, that’s interesting.”
“What?” asked Hayleigh.
Birdie only shook her head and placed the stone back on the shelf. “A conversation for another day.”
“Well, can you break the curse?”
“Afraid not, dear. I see a spell there, and have a sense of its general flavor, but that doesn’t mean I know the details of the spell. And you need to know the details to figure out its counter.”
“Your best shot’s with the person who cast it,” said Stephan. “They at least know what the spell was.”
“You’re really sure that wasn’t Rowan?” said Hayleigh, looking him in the eye as she asked—daring him to lie to her.
Stephan sensed her challenge and rose to meet it. “I swear it,” he said in a low voice that vibrated down her spine.
God help her—she believed him. She had no good reason to believe this man, but she did.
As certainty slipped away, it took every bit of energy she had left not to collapse.
Her certainty that Rowan was behind everything, and that this would all go away if she could just reach the witch and convince her to break the curse, had been what fueled her to drive three hours into the mountains on nothing but a cup of Starbucks.
Conviction had been her compass, and now that needle spun uselessly.
“Can you think of anyone else you might’ve crossed?” asked Birdie. “Someone who might blame you for something grievous enough to punish you?”
Hayleigh shifted in her seat, stomach swirling with discomfort. “I mean, it could be just about anyone, right? People are always trying to put the blame on someone else, or vaguely on ‘the system,’ instead of accepting personal responsibility for their lot in life.”
Birdie’s face looked deeply unconvinced—and unimpressed. “Well, if you can’t think of anyone, then I guess you’re stuck, and you’ll have to just go on living with the curse, won’t you?”
The old woman made as if to put everything away and end the conversation.
“Hold on,” said Hayleigh, raising her hand.
“I suppose there have been projects I worked on at Goshen where people felt…well, the same way you guys did last year. Like our developments would hurt their communities instead of helping them. Some of them have said some colorful things on the internet. There’ve even been some restraining orders. ”
“Excuse me, restraining orders?” said Stephan, leaning in. “Like, for threats?”
Hayleigh hesitated but then nodded.
“Why didn’t you start with that?” Stephan asked.
“The company dealt with it all. It was online comments. I guess I never really took it that seriously. I assumed it was people letting off steam. I mean, they can’t really hate us that much, right?” She laughed nervously, rubbing the back of her neck.
The look the two witches gave her said that yes, they could. It didn’t make sense, though. She understood why people saw corporate development as encroaching on their autonomy, but they offered stability and predictability in return.
It was no one’s dream to work at a Starbucks instead of owning their own coffee shop, but Starbucks didn’t run out of money in the lean season. They could still pay your paycheck because elsewhere around the world, they had stores that weren’t experiencing the same slowdown as yours was.
And while no one loved to hear that consumers didn’t want their own unique little take on things, Hayleigh had seen the data.
They mostly didn’t. They wanted to know what things would taste like, how much they would cost, on an app they already had loaded, ready at the time they expected, so their life could go on operating with as few bumps as possible.
People called small businesses a labor of love because that was what they were.
And when they closed, they broke your heart.
I’ve broken those hearts, she thought, and the idea lodged painfully in her chest.
“Hey.” Stephan’s voice pushed through her thoughts. She looked up from where she realized she’d been picking at her fingers again. “You went somewhere there for a minute.”
She shook her head, crossing her arms. “Oh, you guys just helped me realize how many people out there hate me. I’m not sure how I’ll even start narrowing it down. Thanks for the insight.” Her head spun as she pushed to her feet—a reminder that she still hadn’t eaten.
“Hayleigh—” Stephan rose, but she waved him off and shouldered her way out of the fabric store.
The night chill had deepened, and she was grateful. It was the cold plunge for the senses that she needed—shocking her out of her head and into her body, where it was easier to ignore the press of thoughts.
It was too much to think about. So she wouldn’t.
She would focus on the immediate—food, sleep, and how she would afford any of it—or even get to any of it without her car, which the woman who’d towed it to the local auto shop had called “beyond hope.” It was a long walk to the Icicle Point Inn, where she’d booked a room for the night.
Everything she’d been able to salvage from her suitcase—toiletries and undergarments that had been zipped in a pocket—hung heavy from her arm in her now overstuffed handbag.
“Hey.”
She glanced back and grunted. Stephan Midwinter was keeping pace, hands shoved into the pockets of his red-and-black-checkered wool jacket.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Thinking it’s cold as tits out here, and you don’t have a car.”
With a huff, she said, “I’m not your responsibility.”
He didn’t falter. “You got somewhere to stay tonight?”
She swept her hand in a Vanna White wave. “I am booked at what I’m sure is the lovely Icicle Point Inn, which I desperately hope has bathrobes, so I don’t have to sleep in my clothes.”
“Unlikely. That place’s a rat trap.”