Playing With Magic

Chapter One

One

Few things in life are certain. I’m told those things are death and taxes, but I think the two certainties in life are this: death and rain in the Pacific Northwest.

Sure, the overzealous environmentalists of the world would tell me the latter won’t be such a sure thing a hundred years from now, but I was born and raised in Washington state. Standing in front of my tea and book shop, The Earl’s Study, huddled beneath an umbrella, I felt confident of my assessment.

“Phoebe, tell me again why we can’t look at this window from the inside ? This hair was not cheap.” My full-time employee and full-time friend Imogen Prater had pulled her long box braids forward, making sure her hair stayed safely under her own umbrella. She normally opted for a micro braid style with her signature color flare, but for the summer she had switched things up with thicker box braids that had hot-pink strands mixed into several of the plaits.

Rain poured down around us, practically obscuring the store’s huge front window, and I had to admit my hopes for a dramatic reveal of our summer window display were a bit of a letdown.

On the opposite side of me, Daphne Hendricks huddled beneath her own umbrella, shivering slightly in spite of the muggy humidity that made the air as thick as a winter sweater but nowhere near as cozy. Her blonde hair was damp, and little ringlets curled at the base of her ponytail. For some reason she had decided to wear a filmy, lilac-colored sundress today, and while it looked adorable, there was a good reason she was shivering.

“I think it looks really nice, Phoebe,” Daphne said sweetly.

“Thanks, Daph.”

Inside, perched on the window’s interior ledge, my chubby orange tabby cat Bob blinked slowly at the three of us as if wondering bemusedly what the silly humans were doing when it was so nice and dry inside.

The window did look great, in spite of the rain. It was a Raven Creek tradition to overdo things a bit when it came to seasonal decor, and while many of the other local shops were festooned with Americana to celebrate the upcoming Independence Day street festival, I’d opted to take a slightly different approach.

We had crafted beautiful mobiles with oversized papier-maché birds meant to depict the local species we saw most often in our neck of the woods. Robins floated alongside downy woodpeckers, and brightly colored American goldfinches bobbed next to the dainty Rufous hummingbird.

I’d spent hours poring over bird books—which we presently had in abundance—picking and choosing the best options, and Daphne had helped make them all, putting her in-progress arts degree to good use. She’d built them on weighted strings so their wings could flap independently, and whenever the door opened and closed, the whole mixed-up flock appeared to fly.

There were stacks of books on narrow tables inside the window, all written by Sebastian Marlow, a renowned birder, with a huge poster advertising his upcoming book tour stop and birding excursion with us.

My stomach cramped nervously, something it had been doing a lot this past month, ever since we’d locked in a signing with him. Sebastian had an enormous social media following, where he was best known as the Backyard Bird Man. He posted videos of himself going all over the world—though primarily in the United States—trying to find rare birds and teaching a new generation about the joys of bird watching.

A tinkling bell sounded, drawing my attention to the shop beside ours. A plump blonde woman in her early forties emerged from the Sugarplum Fairy and hustled over to us, blinking against the falling rain. She hadn’t brought an umbrella, so she tucked herself between Daphne and me.

“You girls look absolutely crazy standing out here,” Amy Beaudry scolded in a downright motherly tone. Amy wasn’t that much older than me, but she had a nurturing quality about her that made her immediately trustworthy and lovable. I was so lucky to have her shop right next to mine.

“I keep telling her we could see it just fine from inside,” Imogen said again, smoothing her braids as if to confirm they were still flawless. They were.

“Well, you take these and then get your butts back indoors. Storm watch was just upgraded to a warning.”

Up until now we’d just had days and days of rain but no thunder or lightning. It sounded like that was about to change. Maybe it would be what the bad weather needed to get over its foul mood and move on.

Hopefully before our book signing tomorrow.

Amy handed me a cardboard tray with three identical pink cups in it, and the scent alone was all I needed to know it was her famous Nutella lattes. Perfection in a cup. She was working on adapting an iced version for summer, but she hadn’t quite perfected it—according to her. According to me, and the dozen different samples she’d insisted on me trying, it was already incredible.

I planted a quick peck on her cheek. She smelled like sugar. “Thank you, you’re an angel.”

“Oh shush,” she said, blushing furiously. “That’s just what friends do.” She then darted out from under my umbrella, her baby-pink Crocs making little squeaky sounds as she hustled back to the dry comfort of her own shop.

“Okay, okay, you’ve both humored me long enough. Dual employees of the month. Best staff ever. Let’s go inside.”

Daphne and Imogen both let out delighted cheers in unison and did not need to be invited twice.

Inside the store we were greeted immediately by the warm scent of fresh sourdough coming from the compact kitchen in the back. The store wasn’t designed to be a restaurant, but it was more than capable of churning out a few signature baked goods every day. We took advantage of Amy’s wares to otherwise fill our bakery case.

The Earl’s Study was my aunt Eudora’s life’s work. She’d spent decades traveling the globe, learning as much as she could about tea varieties and how best to mix and blend her own unique creations. As a passionate and motivated book lover, it had only made sense to her to combine books and tea together in one perfect package.

And so The Earl’s Study was born. One part bookshop, one part tea shop, and one hundred percent charming. I hadn’t been certain I had the mettle to keep up her store after she passed, but she’d had enough faith to leave it to me, and I had spent nine months getting my feet under me. I was almost convinced I was doing it right.

Since I’d taken over, we had digitized the store’s inventory, started an online marketplace—which was doing gangbusters business, especially with our old first editions—and I was now in the process of adding in a cat adoption annex.

When I’d started bringing Bob to the shop with me every day, I’d been worried the locals would reject the idea of having a cat around. Instead, he’d become a bigger hit than I could have imagined. With Daphne’s efforts on our social media pages, I soon realized that Bob had a bigger following of fans than our shop did and that we’d start to get comments if he wasn’t featured often enough.

Daphne had even started a little vlog series told from Bob’s point of view, and he narrated—her voice-over with a modifier that made it sound cartoonish—the woeful shortcomings of our treatment of him. The videos had become a viral sensation, and now tourists would often come into the store just to see him. I’d had to add a small sign under the open light to indicate Bob is in or Bob is out , as sometimes I’d already taken him home for the evening or weekend.

This also meant I’d seen the willingness of our customers to embrace cats in the space. So, after many months of fighting tooth and nail with the town council—and more specifically one spitfire board member, Dierdre Miller—I had gotten approval to open Bob’s Place, a small section inside the bookstore where we’d be able to host adoptable kitties from the Barneswood Humane Society.

Barneswood was the closest thing to a “big” town we had near Raven Creek, with more specialty shops, a dedicated vet, and its own shelter. But that shelter had to deal with animals from an enormous chunk of the state and was often filled to capacity.

Taking between two and four cats wasn’t going to make a huge difference, but it would certainly help, and I was motivated to feature the cats who had been waiting the longest, hoping that a change of scenery—and quieter digs—would help them find the right families.

The grand opening to Bob’s Place was scheduled for the following Wednesday, a couple of days after Fourth of July, once all the excitement over Sebastian’s book signing and the outdoor excursion was over. I glanced over at the kennels, freshly constructed by my friend Leo Lansing. He had refused to let me pay him for his work—typical Leo—so I’d insisted on adding a little plaque to the kennels that read Donated by Lansing’s Grocery . He’d made a solid effort at declining even that honor, but there was no way I was letting him build me gorgeous custom cat kennels and not do something to thank him.

Leo was the kind of guy who hated to have any kind of attention directed at him, so I think the entire situation embarrassed him terribly, but I’d be a bad person and a worse friend not to show how much his work mattered to me.

The timer I kept clipped to my apron started to beep, letting me know that the sourdough currently in the oven was ready to come out. Both Daphne and Imogen had already resumed working, grateful to no longer be outside.

Things had been going so well with our online shop recently that I’d actually been able to increase Daphne’s hours, allowing her to work full-time. She needed the money to help pay for school, and I was grateful to have her around more frequently. Her social media skills and artistic eye were proving to be a genuine asset, and having an extra body in the store gave me time to work on fulfilling all our online orders.

I pulled the sourdough out of the oven and was hit with a blast of fragrant, warm air. Today’s savory offering was a new one for me and had been a special request from one of our regular customers. It was a rosemary and olive loaf. Normally I would have immediately declined making anything with olives—they just weren’t my thing—but I had recently tried a Castelvetrano olive for the first time and had to admit the buttery, light flavor almost made me like olives. So I had yielded and was trying something a little outside my personal comfort zone. Our sweet offering for the day was a blueberry lemon sourdough loaf with fresh blueberries I had picked myself.

I heard the bell over the front door jingle merrily and didn’t think much of it until a moment later when Imogen came into the tiny kitchen.

“I think I’m going to need your help, or someone is going to wind up dead.”