Chapter Nine
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
Garden-fresh cucumber Benedictine will keep tongues—and tempers—cool.
Just as I open the fridge on a morning a few days later, I hear the sound of utter disaster pulling up in the driveway.
I know that old, curious humming, like the beginning of a menacing, minor key hymn.
Buick motors.
Oh no. I bolt for the foyer. If I can intercept—I fling open the front door to find an entirely new kind of cyclone of chaos.
Too late.
Sure enough, the church ladies of Foxe Holler are wearing holes in the front porch. May the gods of neighborly duty spare me.
I tighten my apron, battle ready, and step out onto the porch, blocking the door. “Good afternoon, ladies,” I say, extra sweet while I scream internally. Maybe I can fake a plague.
What are they doing here? No one has bothered with the Warlock for twenty-five years, and now they pick the minute I arrive to work up the nerve. Their fear seems only as strong as it is convenient.
“I see you’re still wearing those clogs, Miss Frost.”
Seems I’m not the only one ready for a fight.
The older woman in front steps forward, her chin high in the air, red lipstick popping against her dark skin.
Her cane echoes each time it strikes the porch.
She’s known to wield the thing like a scepter, as much for style and show as support.
Forever in charge of church luncheons, she’s the unofficial monarch of the church ladies.
Even though she has no magic herself, her power over the Holler works like the most brutal spell. Or curse.
“Hello to you as well, Ms. Fudge. And I need the clogs for my job, since I stand and bake all day.”
Gertha Fudge and the ladies behind her drop their gazes in unison. It’s not Sunday, so their dress code is humble, but there are still straw hats and pantyhose for days.
“No good for the hips,” mutters one.
Another clicks her tongue. “Or the posture. Look at the poor girl.” Murmured agreement goes up from the cloud of perfume.
Just as I’m plotting how to warn the Warlock, Lazlo, Ms. Zeen—Run for your lives!—a bark comes from the back.
Beulah Buchanan pushes to the front, her poodle in tow. Beauregard sniffs around our feet, caring only for smells and not this sideshow. “You move like the dead, Gertha. Quit taking up the whole porch with your clucking and make room.”
Ms. Fudge leans away from the poodle. “Why you insist on bringing that hound everywhere, Beulah, Lord only knows.”
“At least he’s got bark to his bite.”
Most of these women have come to me for help with an ailment at some point, when Gertha Fudge wasn’t looking.
Nothing like pain to make a believer in magic.
What experience I do have with their memories tells me something nostalgic will encourage some needed calm before this gets out of hand and I’m refereeing a church-lady brawl.
Some of their strongest memories are Gertha’s church luncheons… An idea comes to me.
“If y’all stay right here, I can whip us up some Louisville Benedictine sandwiches.” I usually add bacon, but with this group, the pork fat might close one too many arteries and off someone.
Ms. Fudge strikes her cane against the porch once more. “This is no social call, girl.”
Now that’s almost more worrisome than anything. Guests refusing refreshments? But I can barely corral these women in my own shop. What makes me think I can thwart the Golden Girl intervention here, now? Not that Gertha Fudge visits my shop.
Fudge has despised magic for as long as anyone can remember, since the Widow Witch took her husband, but frankly, there’s not much she does like.
If she didn’t hate magic so much, I’d think she’s a Hedgewitch.
The woman practically lives off terror, and she doesn’t need anything more powerful than her own streak of meanness—that’s authentic.
“Why are we here again? Oh yes. We’re storming the castle.” Ms. Buchanan rolls her eyes at the other ladies, who are still stiff with apprehension.
“We’re here to see to your well-being, Miss Frost.” Gertha Fudge uses her cane to smack down the ragged doormat buckling around her feet.
“Don’t touch anything, ladies. This place reeks of rotten magic.
Y’all are afraid the Widow Witch will disappear your men, but this Warlock will corrupt you so fast, not even the Lord can help you outrun the sin. ”
The women mumble their agreement, their chatter growing.
“And don’t stare into any windows. That’s how the Warlock steals your soul.”
“That’s mirrors, Kitty.”
“I will say, I bet you the acoustics in there would be something else.”
“Oh hush, Blanche, you got plenty of space in the church.”
“Well, my mama’s great-aunt says the library isn’t the only thing in the Holler he’s burned down over the years. He’ll come for the church one of these days…”
Despite an oncoming headache from the perfume, I try to listen.
A homegrown network of chitchat can reveal gems. These ladies have been around, and I need all the information I can get about the Warlock before his isolation.
But I’m realizing their gossip is unhelpfully biased, like they’re only familiar with the lore of a different, monster of a Warlock in their minds.
They’re vexed, though it sure as hell isn’t about my well-being.
“Ladies, let Pastor Webb say his piece.”
A man stands behind the church ladies and only now steps forward.
He’s wearing a polo shirt and slacks that must be the Pantone color Internal Revenue Service, and his round beige cheeks make him look ageless, a computer-generated profile.
His short hair is a dusty oatmeal, from gray or balding genes, I’m not sure.
His genes didn’t give him any magic, that I do know.
Pastor Oris Webb.
That headache finally surfaces.
His eyes, cold and artificially bright as lab-made blue raspberry, land right on me. “Peace be with you, Miss Frost.”
Now I see why the church ladies are so brave today.
“The town is disheartened you have placed yourself in the employ of the Warlock, Miss Frost, especially given that your actions reflect on our mayor.” As Webb speaks, he tosses a small golden apple from hand to hand.
“Not to mention your own grandmother succumbed to an illness even hazardous magic from greedy Warlocks could not cure.”
I squint against the morning sun but can’t feel any warmth.
The Warlock’s magic leaves something behind, thyme on my tongue.
The preacher man’s presence does the opposite: The air between us goes thin, and he sucks any warmth right into his bubble of cold, dead air.
I notice his slacks have no pockets and it’s more disconcerting than everything else.
Do servants of the Lord not need to carry a wallet?
“I’m the Farewitch. Everyone in the Holler has a right to my help.” But I’m glad that, like Gertha, Webb never visits my shop.
Ms. Fudge points a wrinkled finger at me. “Your real job is as Foxe Holler’s Farewitch. This whole charade is unacceptable. Deplorable. Improper. Reprehensible—”
I lean against the doorframe. There are plenty of synonyms for unacceptable. We could be here a while.
“Get to the point, Gertha,” Ms. Buchanan drawls, winking at me.
“Mind yourself, Beulah!” Ms. Fudge slams her cane on the porch once more, like a gavel. The other ladies hush, eyes darting everywhere. “Being on the books of a Warlock is one thing. But abandoning the Apothakery to do so is quite another.”
“I’m not abandoning anything. I closed the shop for three weeks. Three.”
And I’m already down one. While the rest of the Holler is praying for the wedding season and the Widow Witch to hurry up, I wish time would just stop so I can catch up. With the Warlock’s casual mention of dying, that window of time I gave myself seems silly.
In his library, I’ve already dug up handwritten recipe books, diaries, betting logs, financial records, grimoires, farmers’ almanacs.
Any kind of written text, his archives have it squirreled away.
It’s exactly what I hoped for. All that possibility.
Wonderful… and overwhelming. Now, the ten—nine!
—weeks until the solstice seem much too short.
“Three weeks, three years. It matters not to us. You are the Farewitch of this Holler, if a young and green one. After six years on the job, you should know better.” Fudge shakes her head.
“Especially after what poor Ambrosia went through. She would be the first to remind you of your responsibility to serve your real community.”
My ears run hotter than spellfire. I push down the rage simmering in my core. How dare she use Momaw to guilt me? Vultures, all of them. Thriving off heresy and wrinkle cream.
“My grandmother would tell me to treat everyone seeking help fairly.”
No fewer than four church ladies harrumph.
“An altruistic effort,” Webb adds. “But your neighbors are worried for your safety.”
I wonder if that includes him. Is that why Webb is letting Gertha Fudge take the lead here? Does he think I’ll be more likely to listen to grandmotherly church ladies? “Don’t worry, our neighbors have made their concern clear.”
“Then you’ll understand why we ask you to reconsider your choice. Warlocks invite powerful enemies. Don’t become another victim of a fairy tale.”
They’ve been here ten minutes and already assume they know everything. How can Ms. Fudge strike someone off her prayer list, a man she doesn’t know, with such vigor? Now that I think about it, she’s old enough to have known him before he became a recluse…
But my gut says there’s simply too much guilt in the Warlock’s eyes to leave room for the bloodlust folks believe is festering under his roughness. Whatever secrets he’s hiding… they’re locked away not because they’re dangerous, but because they’re painful.
Regardless, it’s clear Foxe Holler doesn’t know much about the Warlock at all. Maybe it’s best to keep it that way. The fewer questions they ask, the better.