Chapter 22 Mysterious Conversations
The next day was filled with preparations for the festival. Eloise had lent Tess to Tilly, who was now in the inn's kitchen working away on food.
"Hey, just checking in." Tilly poked her head through the swinging door to see Tess with a checkered apron on, gorgeous food covering the table and counters but most noticeable was the wave of relaxation that she felt.
"Great! I think we're looking pretty good," Tess answered looking over what her hands had accomplished. And the young woman was not wrong. Eloise had taught her well, but she clearly had a gift.
"Tess, this looks incredible. I'm," she shook her head and smiled at her, "so impressed. And grateful."
"I love this. I think this might be what I want to do."
"You're going to school for business, right?"
She nodded as she leaned down and piped a bright blue ribbon of frosting.
"Mhmm. To my father's delight. Though he doesn't know it's because I want to do something in the food world, which has a high failure rate.
He's just glad I'm not going for art," she added with a half smile.
The mural she'd painted for The Black Cat had been extraordinary.
"Parents are tricky."
She snorted.
Tilly thought of her evening shout at Fae and then coming in this morning to see she had indeed left without a trace. No call, no messages. She felt guilt, a niggling voice telling her she had been unfair and cruel. Maybe Fae hadn't deserved that.
Tess stood up straight again looking at her handiwork before bending down to another confection. "I think sometimes the family we are left with are the ones we spend our lives grieving over."
Tilly tilted her head at the words, at the new feeling of pain that was slicing through the wave of relaxation she had walked into. It felt like a papercut, shocking and frustrating.
"I don't know," Tess said with a sigh, "I lost my mom and she's not the one I spend my energy missing."
"Because your father isn't around?"
Tess nodded then got to another tart. "He's not around.
When he is, it's glaring how little he knows me, his daughter," she says with a mournful laugh.
"I don't think we're taught to mourn the living ones who abandon or hurt us.
I guess in a way we have to grieve them not being what we need, you know? " She looked up at Tilly.
A moment passed between them, shared and honest. Tilly touched her hand and she felt a wave of warmth fill her and Tess looked down at their hands and frowned. Tilly pulled back in apology, knowing Tess wasn't one for intimacy.
"Well, I'm glad you're here. Eloise is a great source for you to learn from and if you ever want to spend a weekend around the inn to learn what little business I have learned you are welcome. And clearly I could use your talent."
Tess smiled widely at her thanking her. But as the door swung closed she caught Tess frowning at the hand that Tilly had touched.
Tilly spent the rest of her day getting the outside ready, decorating, cleaning up, fixing up. Tess's words filled her mind all day. Mourning the family that had emotionally abandoned them was indeed a kind of grieving. Last night, perhaps that was Tilly's first step to a burial.
Then night fell quickly.
Freida still hardly made conversation with her, and after the threat left on the inn window, she didn't blame the woman.
If she quit soon, she also wouldn't be surprised, but she would need to find a replacement and with the way the town wasn't warm toward any of The Lost Souls Coven, she doubted she would be able to find a replacement anytime soon.
"There's an envelope for you," Freida murmured without looking up from a new mystery novel in her hands. She held out a green envelope, still without looking at Tilly, and Tilly took it and thanked her, to which Freida merely nodded as she sipped from her water bottle.
She wondered if she would ever get the woman to warm up to her. Probably not.
As she started her walk home, she opened the green envelope and smiled at Portia flying low, keeping just under the treeline in front of her.
As her finger slid under the lip of the envelope, a sense of something cracking filled her, making her pause. She stood still for a moment blinking, then shook her head and pulled out a small note that said,
fortes fortuna adiuvat
She frowned at the Latin words, her mouth moving gently over them.
A chit-chit sound from Portia made her jump. She felt frazzled energy buzzing through her. But then the bird took flight again and she let out a deep, shaky breath as she tucked the odd note into her back pocket.
The rook would land on a branch every few minutes to check that she was close behind, then gracefully take flight again.
She'd come to look for the black bird, knowing she wouldn't be far anytime she left the house.
Often, she found Portia sitting on one of the flower boxes on the largest greenhouse, nestled amongst the draping ivy and heather.
The bird brought thoughts of a certain roguish chief.
Thoughts of him had been haunting her for months now, ever since they first met outside the front of The Lost Souls House.
When his dark eyes took her in, it felt like a touch.
She'd felt a jolt inside of her, something she had never experienced with a man before.
She remembered thinking he was intense and broodish. She still thought that.
But now...
She found she could not go long without thinking of him kissing her. True, she'd kissed him first, a compulsion she swears she could not have stopped had she been ordered to. But the way he'd let her come to him, let her settle into it, and then took over had been perfection.
She didn't want to get too ahead of herself. She didn't want to put too much of herself in this fantasy.
She didn't want to hope.
But, there was a seed blooming inside of her, pushing its light green body against the cracks of solid rock that had formed from past pain. She could feel it there, trying to unfurl itself against all odds and maybe she would find a new way for life.
Maybe she could hope.
Suddenly an image of him holding someone else in his arms flashed into her mind. A faceless figure, but it was startling making her stop in her tracks again.
Anxiety could certainly paint detailed pictures, creating alternate realities to worry about.
Anxiety was an artist. It could take the colors of one's mind and heart and paint pictures and ideas of her deepest fears.
Maybe she feared that this solid, stoic man wouldn't be so different from her ex-husband.
Or too dissimilar from Ronnie's indifference.
It was a natural fear. But this felt, different. Like the fear was planted.
Her attention was pulled from her wandering thoughts at the caw-caw sound of Portia and when she looked up she saw the bird had planted herself on one of the low-hanging branches and was looking at her. She smiled.
"What's up, girl?"
When the black head swiveled to the right, she followed its eyes and froze.
She was standing on the sidewalk across from the police station, and there across the street underneath one of the antique street lamps stood the tall figure of Astra Harding speaking with hands gesturing, the most animated Tilly had seen the woman.
But it was the figure she was animatedly talking to that made her pause.
Theo stood, hands on his hips listening and nodding his head as she talked.
And then, to her absolute horror, Astra with her dark hair falling down her back instead of in its severe bun, closed the distance between them and pulled the chief to her for a kiss.
Tilly covered her mouth as she gasped.
She waited for him to push her away, but he didn't. No. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him, and kissed her back.
Tilly felt sick.
She was watching what she imagined she and Theo had looked like not too long ago.
And he was here doing the same thing with...with this evil woman.
She was going to throw up.
She doubled over, bracing her hand on an oak tree as she sucked in breath.
Portia started cawing loudly, the sound shrill and echoing, making her jump and look across the street to see that Theo and Astra were no longer embracing, wrapped up in a passionate kiss, and instead were staring at her.
Fear trickled through her.
And then anger.
A blazing anger. She couldn't think past her absolute rage. It felt like fire was licking her fingertips and the edges of her brain, like fire burning parchment.
Without second-guessing herself she stood up straight and stomped across the street to where Astra stood, her face holding a look of cunning pleasure and Theo watched her with a curious look on his face.
He looked curious. Not ashamed, not scared.
He must have been playing her for a fool this entire time.
"Hello Miss Nguyen," Astra purred. She looked like the cat who ate the canary.
Tilly glared at her. "Leave," she ordered.
And she felt a thrill. Tilly Nguyen did not order people about. She did not demand. She had written the code of who she was around the fear of being too much.
And then others had deepened it by making her fear she was not enough.
Women have had to contort themselves to fit between being too much and not being enough.
No wonder doctors found them out of their minds throughout history.
Witches, really, are just women who have found the courage and created alchemy by stepping out of that impossible space and simply becoming.
The world wants them contained between those impossible iron bars.
The world is far safer that way.
"Leave," she said again, her voice low and dangerous and later she would praise herself for her calm and for her brazenness.
Astra watched her for a moment, then finally said, "Fine. You'll think about what I said?" she called to Theo over her shoulder as she walked away in that practiced way she walked.
Theo didn't respond but kept his eyes trained on Tilly. She could feel him trying to read her.