Chapter Seven #2
‘I said we’re having a family meeting! You guys didn’t even set the table?
’ Blair put the pizza on the dining table.
Eating pizza during a family meeting was an old Briarwood family tradition.
Once a week, on a night when the whole family would be home, their father would pick up a pizza, and they’d all eat together while discussing how each of the girls were doing in their spell training and then talk about issues concerning witches worldwide.
It was a tradition that their mother had continued after their father died, but after their mother also passed, as hard as Blair tried to keep up with the habit, the tradition fizzled.
If she could even wrangle her sisters to the table, Bianca would crack snarky jokes, and Belinda would either be reading under the table, or off in some fantasy land in her head, only paying attention to half of what Blair said.
Blair had pretty much given up on it, but she thought that this time, when there was clearly something big to discuss, her sisters would take it seriously. But Blair simply wasn’t her parents.
She went to the backyard and yelled at Bianca through the greenhouse window that the pizza was here and they were starting their meeting soon.
Bianca gave Blair an annoyed face and wiped her hands on her garden apron. ‘Give me five to clean up.’
While Blair brought three plates and lots of napkins from the kitchen to the dining room, Belinda still stayed on the sofa with her book.
Blair sat at the dining table alone, opening the box of pizza and putting a slice on each plate.
‘Come get it while it’s hot!’ she called out, trying to keep her annoyance from her voice.
‘Be there in a minute,’ Belinda said.
It was still another ten whole minutes before Belinda and Bianca were at the table with Blair.
Blair had already made a list on her phone of all the weird things that had happened.
She read it to her sisters. ‘Okay, so there’s the blight on the pumpkins, the electrical issues and books falling off shelves in the bookstore, the dead roses in the florist, my key not working on my lock a few days ago, my new plants smashed outside the café, and then my sign being taken down and somehow losing a letter today. Am I missing anything?’
‘The cats,’ Belinda said. ‘All three of us saw them, but only when it was raining. I asked, but Kass doesn’t know what it means.’
‘Literally raining cats and cats,’ Bianca added.
It was so strange. ‘Kass should be here,’ Blair said. ‘This is a family meeting and Kass is a member of the family.’
Belinda shook her head. ‘He passed out in front of the radiator upstairs after eating an entire can of turkey paté. Leave him be.’
Blair nodded. Kass was quite grumpy when someone woke him from a food coma. Blair wanted to avoid more negativity at this meeting.
‘Why did you add the issues at the café to the list?’ Bianca said. ‘You said Luke did those things.’
Blair shrugged. ‘He denied doing anything to my lock or plants, and I assume he’ll deny taking my sign, too. But I can’t trust him. Not after what he did with my painting today.’
Belinda frowned. ‘What painting? What are you talking about?’
Blair told her sisters about Luke’s promise to sell her the painting in the flea market but then going against his word.
She didn’t mention him saying that Blair looked the same but better.
Or say anything about how her body still reacted to being near him.
And she definitely didn’t mention the kiss.
If she never spoke about it, she could pretend it hadn’t happened.
Bianca’s nose wrinkled. ‘Just like a man to make fake promises. He was probably never going to sell you the painting and felt entitled to your time.’ She paused. ‘I can’t decide if Luke being back is a good thing or a bad thing.’
‘It’s a bad thing.’ Blair paused. ‘And I know the painting thing wasn’t magic, just bad luck that he got to the flea market before me. But the other things . . . the lock, the plant pots and the sign? I really don’t know if they were Luke or magic. Or both.’
Belinda frowned. ‘You don’t think Luke Caldwell is a witch, do you?’
Blair huffed a laugh at that. ‘No, of course not. He grew up here. We’d know if he was, right? Dad was so good at sniffing out other people with witch abilities, even when they didn’t know they had them. But I still feel like there is something Luke’s not telling me.’
‘I agree that the rest – the roses, the books, the pumpkins and the cats – is magic,’ Belinda said, ‘but I can’t figure out where it’s coming from.
I was reading a book on Celtic symbolism just now to find a connection between pumpkin blights, electric surges, roses and cats, but I haven’t found one yet. ’
Oh. That was what Belinda had been so engrossed in reading. Belinda had been helping.
‘Why Celtic?’ Bianca asked.
Blair had the same question. All cultures had witches, or people born with abilities that fell outside scientific explanation, but since cultures around the world were so different, how each culture treated these different abilities varied enormously.
The Briarwood family came from a very old line of witches originating from what was now western India, but their people had been quite nomadic, living in East Africa before settling in small-town Canada.
It was quite common for witches to change their surnames when they moved to make it difficult for witch hunters to track families and their descendants.
‘Most of the early European witches in this area were Scottish,’ Belinda said. ‘I don’t know why, but I had a feeling this was coming from witchcraft of European origin. If I don’t find anything, I’ll look at local Indigenous, Asian and African witch traditions next.’
There were many immigrants in the area, so if a witch was behind this, they could be from anywhere. Which would only make it harder to find out what was going on. But Belinda’s gut instincts were usually right – it was related to her soothsaying gift.
‘I’ve got samples of the roses and the pumpkins,’ Bianca added. ‘I’ve been running tests in the greenhouse to figure out if the disease was natural or unnatural. Takes a while, though.’
This was great. Blair was worried that her sisters weren’t taking this situation seriously, but they’d both started researching on their own.
‘We should go to the town council meeting Monday,’ Belinda added. ‘Gladys is planning to bring up the electrical issues; maybe others will mention their problems. We could learn something.’
That wasn’t a bad idea. Whatever was happening was clearly happening all over Moonbeam Hollow.
‘Okay.’ Blair paused. ‘I think we can safely say that all this stuff can’t be coincidental.
It’s either Luke or magic. I’ll see what I can find out about Luke and the bakery while you two are looking at possible magical causes. ’
Belinda and Bianca both agreed. Blair felt good. She and her sisters had a plan. They were going to get to the bottom of this mess.