Chapter 8
The interior of the local coffee shop, Coffee Time, was homey, with walls of pale wood and breakfast nook–style tables arranged throughout.
One wall was covered in a lush growth of plants from pocket-style planters that some hidden watering system was currently misting.
Blue-and-white Hanukkah decor overlaid everything, but there was also an unlit kinara sitting in the window with candles of red, green, and black.
Stephan gestured toward the bathrooms as he took a place in line. “I’ll order while you’re in changing if you let me know how you take it.”
“Oh,” said Hayleigh, digging in her purse for cash, “tall caramel macchiato—skim milk, one pump sugar-free vanilla syrup, and light caramel drizzle.”
Stephan looked blankly in her direction before saying, “I’ll see what I can do. Any food?”
“As long as they have something that isn’t too rich or sugary.”
He snorted. “It’s the holidays—pretty sure that’s against the law.”
“Right, because diabetic shock is the reason for the season,” she muttered, then shoved a ten-dollar bill into his hand.
“You don’t need to—” he began.
“I insist.”
When she emerged freshly changed, he was sitting at a table with an older Black woman wearing a shining green and silver headwrap.
The cash she’d handed him sat beside her macchiato and an English muffin sandwich, but before she could admonish him for that, he said, “Hayleigh, this is Pastor Ava Matthews of Elk Ridge Presbyterian. Pastor, this is Hayleigh Gray.”
The woman had nothing of the aura of Pastor Gary, head of Victorious Life—the church her parents, Jack, and Grayson all attended.
That she had attended, until she’d ended the engagement, and the church community had made it clear that there was no room for both Grayson and the woman who had spurned him.
There had always been a sense that the head of VL stood apart, above all the rest, and from that position commanded authority. Pastor Matthews, on the other hand, seemed like someone who walked within her flock, not above or before them.
“Morning, hun,” said the older woman, who radiated a warm, maternal energy and smelled pleasantly of shea butter. Despite that, something in Hayleigh stiffened.
Why did the two of them look ready to ambush her?
“Her wife, Mel, owns this place.” Stephan gestured behind the counter, where a woman of similar age with a head full of wild dark brown and gray curls was ordering around the rest of the staff.
There’d been a picture of the two of them in the bathroom hallway, dressed in Star Trek uniforms in what looked like a themed bar.
“I was just on my way out,” said Pastor Matthews. “But Stephan told me a little about your troubles. Our church has resources for women if you need them—”
“I’m fine,” said Hayleigh, her smile thin as she cut the woman off. “But thank you.”
“Okay,” said the pastor, eyelashes fluttering in surprise as she exchanged a glance with Stephan. “But if you change your mind, our doors are always open. Have a good day, you two.” She rose with a nod and headed to the exit in a rustle of fabric, calling toward the counter, “Later, lovey!”
“See you, hot stuff!” called back the woman behind the counter.
Hayleigh watched as the pastor left. For the second time that morning, she was left with a lingering sense that maybe she had just messed something up.
Stephan stared hard as she finally took a seat, and when she reached for the coffee, he put a hand on it, blocking her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He looked her straight in the eye, and for the first time, there was a spark of disappointment in his eyes. “You were rude.”
The blunt accusation caught her by surprise, and her mouth flapped. “What was rude was telling a stranger about my private business. You had no right to do that.”
He hesitated before saying, “Maybe I should’ve cleared it first, but it’s not like I was going around telling anyone who’d listen. She helps people like you all the time.”
Hayleigh finally understood what it meant when people said their hackles rose, because every single one of hers jumped. “What do you mean, ‘people like me’?”
“Women having a hard time. Who need help getting back on their feet.”
She crossed her arms. “That is so not what’s going on here. Any moment now, my bank account will be flush with more cash than I’ll bet her organization hands out in an entire year.”
He leaned closer. “You’re wearing clothes from a lost and found.”
“Because mine were ruined! By a powerful spell that took away everything I worked hard for, everything I earned. It took an act of magic to bring me low. I’m the sort of person who gives to charities. Not the kind who takes from them.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You think it’s only certain ‘kinds’ of people who need charity? That if you live and work a certain sort of way, you’ll never need them?”
“Obviously.”
“Hmm.” It was clear from his tone that he disagreed, but he did not press the issue. “You know, it’s not actually money she was offering.”
“What was it, then?”
“A safe place for people who don’t think they’ve got options. Somewhere to go. Support, community, with other people who know what it’s like. They’ll help see options you’re not seeing and get you on the road to taking ’em.”
She dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. “Well, I don’t need that. I just need this curse gone.”
He studied her for a moment and then leaned back in his chair. “Okay, then.”
It was clear from the way he faced away, expression flat, that he was still upset. Though she hadn’t known Stephan Midwinter long, it was clear he was the sort of man it was hard to find without a smile. But he wasn’t smiling now.
An uncomfortable feeling swirled in her stomach, and she picked up her coffee, giving it a sniff of appraisal. She lifted the cup to her mouth and sipped, wincing.
“I don’t think this is sugar-free.”
“Yeah, well, Mel’s got a thing about what she calls the ‘machinations of the diet industrial complex.’ ”
“Artificial sweeteners cause cancer!” came a shout from behind the bar.
Hayleigh sighed and swallowed the too-sweet coffee. “I can’t believe you guys still don’t have a Starbucks.”
“Because it’d put places like this out of business, and we like Mel.”
She rolled her eyes. “This is Washington. People here are basically born with a caffeine port. One extra coffee shop isn’t going to put anyone out of business.” She pointed at him. “And I’ve seen the data on that.”
The door opened with a jangle of bells, and Stephan perked up, waving at whoever had just come through. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to see the pastor back to try her case again. Instead, it was the designer witch they’d talked about earlier—Zaide Hak.
Her black hair was short, spiked, and threaded with electric green dye. Since last Christmas, she’d gained a lip ring and a neck tattoo that resembled a dragonfly spreading its wings, which peeked out of the collar of her black, artificially ripped sweater.
“Zaide,” called Stephan, “over here.”
The witch bounced over, her hands shifting on the straps of a backpack. “Stephan,” she said in acknowledgment, and then her eyes fixed on Hayleigh with a shake of her head. “Holy hell, it really is her.”
A smell like burning incense followed the witch, and the dragonfly tattoo on her neck shifted so that its eyes were peering down at Hayleigh. She put a hand to her mouth to cover a shriek of surprise, and Zaide smirked as she settled in.
When her heart stopped beating quite so hard, she narrowed her eyes at Stephan. “ ‘Didn’t go around telling everyone,’ huh?”
He looked a bit sheepish as he admitted, “Okay, I told one more person, but, again, she’s here to help. No charity, only curse breaking.”
Zaide leaned back in her chair as she pulled a laptop free from her bag, hooded brown eyes locked on Hayleigh the entire time. “I can’t believe you had the nerve to show your face here again.”
“Zaide, be nice,” said Stephan.
Zaide scoffed. “You didn’t have to wait on her, Stephan. My family did.”
Hayleigh remembered then that the Hak family owned the Crescent Inn—the biggest and nicest hotel in town. Which wasn’t saying much and was why a new hotel resort had been a key feature of Goshen’s plans for the town’s future.
“I left a significant tip on checkout.”
Zaide only rolled her eyes at that and started typing into her laptop.
“So, what is that we’re doing?” said Hayleigh, glancing between the computer and the witches.
“We’re looking for information about times you and your company might’ve screwed people over,” said Zaide. “Assuming there’s more than one, because I’m sure there is, we can cross-reference whether there’s an active coven or known hedgewitch in the area.”
“Hedgewitch?”
“Witch who casts alone full time,” said Stephan. “We mostly don’t do that, ’cause bigger spells can be pretty difficult to control without a full coven.”
“ ‘Bigger’ spells? What does that mean?”
“Big…is not a perfect way to say it,” said Stephan, “but it’s the best we’ve got.
” He leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard as he thought about how to explain it.
“If you think of magic as…a way of making something happen that probably wouldn’t, or couldn’t, have otherwise, then you can think of the size of a spell as how impossible what you’re asking is—how much needs to change for it to happen? ”
Hayleigh considered the explanation and remembered how Rowan Midwinter had claimed the reason the forgetting spell had wiped so many memories was because she’d cast it by herself and lost control of it. Hayleigh had figured it for a lie, but maybe the witch had been telling the truth.