Chapter Eighteen
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
Hands are a cook’s best tools. Keep them busy and they’ll stay out of trouble. Nothing like the bustle of a kitchen to shake off the demons of the mind.
Friday the thirteenth is a lucky day for Farewitches.
After all, a baker’s dozen promises an extra something special. Who’s mad at a bonus bagel, one more cookie?
It takes just thirteen minutes for Marigold Frost to prove me wrong.
From the hospital bed, my mom shakes her head, a bobblehead in one direction. “If he’s been cursed by the Widow Witch, he’s fu—well, you’re shit out of luck.”
“Stellar, Mom. Much appreciated.”
“That’s not an invitation to blame yourself. Curses aren’t easy magic. He’s got a better chance begging her to release him, and he should be prepared to bargain away a testicle or two. Or a treasured family heirloom, maybe his entire estate. Perhaps all three. Or four, as it were.”
I slump back against the stiff pleather of the hospital armchair. “I don’t think reasoning with her is his problem.” I leave out the part about the Witch nearly demolishing the farmhouse. “If appeasing her were an option, he’d have tried.” And the begging type, the Warlock is not.
Still, something has felt odd about the Warlock’s curse since he confessed, and I hoped my mom might be able to help me puzzle out the inkling. No such luck.
She looks me up and down. “I hear the nurses keep asking when Honey Frost’s next culinary class is.”
A bittersweet feeling settles in my chest. Teaching kids who don’t care if cookies have magic, only if they taste good—turns out, I don’t hate that part.
But the problem with being a Farewitch, whether at the Apothakery or Knight Manor, is that there’s never any time or space to think about becoming anything else.
I’m stuck in the life but trying to lead multiple lives, like some crumb-coated James Bond. Call me Double-Oh-Flour.
“Carolina said her niece Anna took home three tins of cookies, and you know what, now that girl is going around the hospital selling them for three dollars a pop!”
My mom has always been able to tell when I’m not myself, and bless her, she never fails to cheer me up.
“Entrepreneurial. I like it.”
“You certainly left an impression on the town, girl.”
“Good or bad?”
“Depends who you ask. The church ladies and Webb say you’re responsible for the miseducation of innocent children. But the kids think you live in a fairy-tale castle. A haunted fairy-tale castle, but the allure is there.”
The gossip feels like it should annoy me, but I can’t muster the energy. After little to no sleep last night (that did not involve fitful dreams of the Warlock), I jumped out of bed at dawn to answer a frantic phone call from Carolina.
Cardiac event—stable now but—she didn’t want you to worry. You and Silas need to…
Ears numb, I didn’t hear the rest, and my skin buzzed all the way into town, like I was wearing a jacket of horseflies. I didn’t blink until I parked, and I know I didn’t take a full breath until I saw my mom was upright in her bed. Shaken, but alive.
“I’m glad you’re engaging with the town,” my mom continues. “I trust Silas with the day-to-day, but there’s no substituting the relationship folks have with their Farewitch. The recipes aren’t as important as the conversations.”
“So you’ve told me.”
“Are you still hunting through grimoires?”
“The Warlock’s library is massive, Mom. If I can’t find something in there to help you, then I’m a disgrace of a Farewitch.”
“I was the Farewitch once, too. Trust me, if you’re not careful, you won’t get any time for rest or pleasure until you’re too old to enjoy it.”
“But—”
“That’s why I don’t want you to miss me. When the day comes, mourn me for five minutes, then get on with your life.”
My shoulders tense with a chill. The air-conditioning is on extra North Pole the closer we get to June. And the solstice. “Mom, leave the catastrophizing for the church ladies.”
But my protest is as weak as she is right now.
Her wild halo of hair isn’t even braided this morning, and her under-eye bags are a full set of luggage. An oily sheen hides her irises, like bad store-bought whipped cream, and the veins in her hands pop against her pale skin.
“I’m just being realistic,” she says, her mayor voice surfacing. “Magic has limits and costs. Witches can’t conjure what we want out of nothing.”
“But this time, I know I’m close—”
“We’re always close, Honey.” She slaps a weak hand against her blanketed thigh. “Listen to me. You need to start enjoying your life. Not trying to prolong mine.”
“I see we’re all cheer and pep this morning.” Silas strolls in with a huge thermos of coffee he brews at home. The only coffee shop in town is the diner. Or the gas station.
My mom huffs. “Being mayor means being honest. You have to know what you’re up against. Like your Widow Witch problem. She’s been a force of chaos since before your great-grandmother Meemaw Hazeleen Frost was in nappies.”
“Speaking of stubborn patients…” Silas looks in my direction. “How is the Warlock?”
“Stubborn as molasses,” I say. But with the right ingredients, could be made sweet.
“Any luck on the culinary side of things?”
“We’re apparently bankrupt in the luck department.”
I’ve brought them up to speed to brainstorm. Operation Save the Warlock. Save the Mayor. We’re doing a lot of saving. Who in the world gave me the wheel here?
As my mom launches into mayoral housekeeping matters, Silas pulls three ceramic coffee mugs from his satchel.
Matching, of course. But I lock the sass inside today.
I secretly appreciate this new ritual. It’s a sense of normalcy for my mom, who is probably tired of consuming everything via foam cups.
But when he pours me a cup, I can barely touch it.
I can tell my mom has lost more weight. That’s the most unsettling thing of all.
Moms and Farewitches are supposed to grow latitudinally with wisdom, love, and lots of birthday cakes.
Not shrink. What the hell is happening? Not for the first time, I wonder if the Frosts are just unlucky.
Wrong soil, sour grapes? Maybe the Warlock really didn’t get himself cursed.
Maybe he was only a man at an impossible crossroads.
His dour expression comes back to me, his reminders for me to eat something when he hasn’t even said Good morning yet. A sudden warm rush of appreciation fills my belly, confusing the hell out of me.
“Honey!” Mom’s voice whisks me out of my thoughts. “Pay attention. Did you hear Silas? He’s doing valuable, on-the-ground reconnaissance.”
“Sorry.” I force myself to be present. When you have limited time left with someone, it becomes impossible to live in the moment and treasure the days left together. The brain thinks only in befores and afters. Now that’s a curse.
“You make me sound like a spy, Marigold, and I don’t get paid enough for that.
” Silas arranges his suit jacket on the back of his chair.
New England blue today. “As I was saying, I’ve spoken with folks in town, and Mr. Knight still isn’t polling well, even among the cookie-bake parents.
It’s as if they’ve entirely forgotten he hosted them without a single murder.
If they were wary of him before, they’re wary of him still. ”
There goes any good mood I was trying to build. “But—how can a town even hate someone they only half remember?” Silas and my mom aren’t struggling to remember him right now, and we’re well outside the Manor, the Warlock far from their sight. Strange.
“While there are a few outliers with differing opinions,” Silas continues, “namely Ms. Buchanan—our efforts to reduce fear and mistrust of the Warlock in town weren’t lucrative.”
I force down a sip of coffee. “Is this how you sound on your dates? No wonder they end with biscuit dodgeball. I feel like we’re on the campaign trail.”
He points a finger at me. “We are on the campaign trail. To ensure your Warlock doesn’t get run out of town. Oris Webb would outlaw all magic in the Holler right now if he could.”
“The Kentucky fried coven could’ve told me that in half the time.”
“The what? Never mind, don’t tell me. Did you know more than half of the town council goes to his church now? He’ll break any tie.”
“And ever since Carolina’s mother retired, there hasn’t been a single Witch on the council, either,” my mom adds.
My gut pinches at the thought of what happens if enough incensed sheeple decide they’d rather be on Webb’s good side than the side of good. “And he’s not my Warlock,” I mutter.
Silas rolls his eyes. “Well, he is your employer and pays your salary, which is a much-needed infusion of cash for the medical bills here.”
My mom harrumphs. “If your good looks don’t win you my job, your bluntness will.”
He leans forward. “Ladies, we are so far past the time for Southern politeness, even Dolly Parton could not sugarcoat our situation.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” my mom sighs. “I hear Webb’s sermons are getting angrier by the week.”
“What’s his deal anyway?” I ask. “Why the urgency now? The Widow Witch has been around for ages. If Webb’s actually anti-magic, he’d focus his energy there. Not on a disgruntled gardener who doesn’t step off his front porch.”
“The Warlock is an unknown to Webb, and men are threatened by what they can’t control.” Mom looks to Silas. “No offense, dear.”
“None taken,” he says, raising his mug.
“You keep Webb at a distance, you hear? He’ll come after you when you’re the new mayor. He’ll think the changing of the guard is a good time to fight you for territory.”
“I’m no stranger to difficult men, Marigold.”
And that’s when I realize why the room is so stuffy, why my clothes itch, why the coffee tastes like watery beef broth, why everything feels wrong wrong wrong. Something drastic has shifted in my mom’s attitude. A tectonic-plate-level shift.
I send a glare the Warlock would be proud of right at my mom. “You’re talking like you’re already dead.”
The accusation hums between us.