I eyed the half full vial of Hope with disdain. It should be labeled ‘False Hope’ because that’s what it was, and I was having none of that. Hadn’t helped me this morning, wouldn’t help me now.
Rebecca and Sloane looked over at me nervously and I guiltily wished they weren’t here. They were leaving all of this behind tomorrow, going back to their mostly human lives without their annual blessing. With all the chaos this weekend, would they even bother to come back next year?
Maudrey forced a smile and started chatting with the granddaughters she saw so infrequently. They answered her in quick awkward yes’s and no’s and excused themselves immediately the moment Dot sat the steaming mugs in front of them.
“Goodnight, girls.” Aunt Maudrey stood and gave them both big hugs.
“’Night Grandma,” Sloane replied.
“We’ll have eggs and bacon in the morning for breakfast. Can’t have you two driving home on an empty stomach.” My cousins smiled and made their way to their room. “I thought they’d never leave,” Maudrey whispered, taking a seat beside me.
“What?” I asked. There I was feeling sorry for her.
“Oh, I love them dearly, you know that… This is just way outside their comfort zone! And I don’t want to say that they aren’t family, because of course they are, but… They just aren’t true witches.” Maudrey patted my knee. “Not like you are.”
“We need to keep this close to home,” Aunt Clea added. “Very close.”
“You haven’t drank any of your tea, Gemma,” Wesley said softly.
“I put extra mint in the mix just for you,” Dot told me.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, taking a sip. It was rather comforting.
“So…” Dot let out a deep breath. “I don’t even know which question to ask you. Where to begin?”
“It’s been a rough two days, that’s for sure,” I laughed. The neatly wrapped bundle of cards sat in front of me and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
“May I?” Aunt Clea asked.
I nodded, cringing when her weathered hand tried to pull up a corner of the fabric. It didn’t move a millimeter, as if the cloth had been soaked in plaster and only looked folded and soft. A spark leapt at her fingertip. She told us that the bite wasn’t more than a static shock in the winter, then cackled at her sister when she tried her luck.
“Ouch!” Maudrey cried out. “More like twenty static shocks at once!”
“I’m still trying it,” Dot declared, wincing as she reached forward. The fabric around the cards didn’t budge. “Yowza! Worse than when I accidently stuck my hand in the VCR when I was little.”
“Well, as long as we’re making it smell like seared steak in here…” my brother chuckled.
“Wesley, don’t!” I yelled at him as he took his turn.
He was the most surprised of all when the fabric pulled away from the deck. “Plot twist,” he said, gently pulling back each corner of the wrapping until the cards were exposed.
“They’re really quite beautiful,” Dot whispered as we all stared at them.
“Remarkable,” Maudrey said.
Clea closed her eyes and centered herself, breathing in the energy of the room. “Pulsing with power.”
“You won’t find anything like this at a book store. Maybe on eBay.” Wesley shrugged and plucked the top card from the deck, then shook his head. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
I didn’t even have to look to know it was Death. He turned the card to face the rest of us with a sigh. Everyone at the table except for me gasped when the card disintegrated, the dust carried away by a breeze that couldn’t be felt.
“Well, you don’t have to be so dramatic about it,” he said to the deck.
“It’s not for you, Wes.” I drew the same card from the top and showed him. “It’s the only card the deck has dealt out so far.”
“Oh, we can’t waste that.” Clea scrambled to her feet and got a jar to trap the remnants of the card as it crumbled between my fingers. “You next, Maudrey.”
“I’m not touching those cards,” my aunt replied. “The wrapping nearly took my finger off!”
“You can draw one,” I told her. “It won’t hurt.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I… I just know.”
Aunt Maudrey eyed me warily and picked up the top card. Death again. Clea trapped the dust in a separate jar and motioned for Dot to take her turn. Death of course. Same for Clea herself, and she dropped the card whole into a jar before it disappeared.
“How many Death cards are in that deck?” Dot inquired.
“Exactly one,” I replied. “Those were just shadows of the real card. There are still 74 in the stack.”
“You counted them?” Maudrey asked.
“No, I…”
“You just know,” Clea said.
“Yes.” I reached out and ran my fingers over the rippled edges of the deck. “But why? Why do I just know?”
“Because you must be meant to have them,” Maudrey surmised. Clea started chuckling beside her. “What’s so funny? This is serious.”
“I just thought about that uppity witch Eliza burning her eyebrows off when she tried to take them for herself. She’s probably spelling her eyelashes to grow back right at this very moment.” Clea shook her head. “While here we are on the wrong side of the road with Wonder’s cards, some painted by Hetty herself…” She began cackling louder. “And Wesley can unwrap the deck!”
Maudrey did her best to keep a straight face, which broke on her sister’s last remark. Even Dot started giggling.
It wasn’t so funny to me. “And just when I was getting on Eliza’s good side,” I grumbled.
“How do you mean?” Maudrey asked.
“Well…”
“From the beginning, my dear.”
So that’s where I started, not skipping any details about the group of ghosts at the gallows I saw so often, the cop trailing me through town, my discussion with Zinnia, seeing Thomas’s ghost following Juno, who I knew was related to us. I told them everything that happened at the museum that I wasn’t supposed to tell, because I knew that Eliza would have it in for me now. I needed backup, and the only place I was getting that was from the witches sitting around this table with me.
Even though their knowledge would be immensely useful, Ariadne and the other museum curators were out, that was for sure. For all I knew, there was a clause in some inheritance code somewhere that family artifacts like this belonged to the museum. Eventually, someone could break the enchantment that kept everyone else from using them, it would only be a matter of time and research. Then all of Dewdrop could petition to take the cards out on loan.
I couldn’t really trust Luna and Soleil either because they told their mother everything, even when they were trying to keep a secret. Heck, especially when they were trying to keep a secret. I swear, Izarra felt outnumbered and spelled her twins at birth to make it impossible for them to deceive her. From her it would travel through the Airy grapevine to the whole town.
And Feather, no certainly not Feather, as much as I loved her. The Mercers would surely be pumping her for information about these cards in their eternal competition with Elements to carry the most powerful reagents. Although maybe when this was over, if this would ever be over, we could hold a bidding war for one of those jars full of Death card dust that Clea had just collected.
My family sat silently around me as I told them everything I could think of. It was better therapy than human money could ever buy.
I exhaled deeply, crossing my arms and dropping my head like a tired child at her school desk. “So…” I trailed off, finally out of things to say and looking to someone else to fill the quiet.
“So… it really wasn’t pixies?” Dot murmured.
“Dot, I’m going to—” I clenched a fist and shook it at her.
“No, I believe you, it’s just… Why would someone kill that kid?”
“And why here?” Maudrey added.
>
“Opportunity, maybe?” Wesley said. “I mean, there’s a town full of witches to pin it on. But whoever did it had to have a good reason to go that far.”
“It doesn’t have to be a character flaw. Perhaps the boy had a large life insurance policy,” Clea suggested.
“But he was so young,” I said. “And that probably would have went to his parents, not his friends.”
“He may simply have been a cheater,” Maudrey guessed. “Are you sure he wasn’t involved with one of those girls who he was visiting with?”
“Zinnia didn’t think so.”
“She does have a good eye for spotting romantic entanglements.” Maudrey took the last sip of her tea. “Owning the inn and all. I’m sure she sees a lot of comings and goings.”
“It’s a quaint bed and breakfast in the middle of town square, not a no-tell motel,” Wesley laughed.
“Oh, if those walls could talk, you’d be surprised.” Maudrey pursed her lips. “In our day—”
“Let’s just stick with the present day,” Clea interrupted her. Wesley, Dot, and I exchanged surprised glances. We’d try to get that story out of them another time. “Captain Blue Eyes thinks it’s the ex-girlfriend, so it probably is.”
“Did I really say that nickname out loud?”
“You did,” my brother teased.
“Personally, I liked Not-So-Secret-Agent Man the best.” Dot grinned at me.
I groaned and covered my reddening face with my hands. It was late and I apparently had no filter. “You were saying about the ex-girlfriend Aunt Clea?”
“Yes. If Captain Blue Eyes—”
“Captain Kavanagh,” I corrected her. “Let’s just stop this right here before it becomes a thing.”
“If the investigator had something on the girlfriend, surely he would have made his move by now. I suggest we, well mainly you, help him along.”
“How?” I asked. Clea nodded her head toward the cards. “These? It will take me months to be able to use them. Years, even. And…”
I gulped down air and picked up the cards. Death was on top of course, so I flicked that one into the air in a cloud of dust before I tried to fan out the rest. They wouldn’t budge, as if the cards were glued together. The deck was locked, just as I suspected. I saw a glimpse of the artwork and power within it at the cemetery, but I guess that was all I was going to get. I flipped the deck over and the real Death card was visible on the bottom, with the shadow on top.
“I have to earn it,” I whispered. “I can’t even begin to learn until I solve Thomas’s murder.”
“Is this one of those things you ‘just know’?” Maudrey asked.
“Yes.” I huffed and drew another Death shadow card. “It should have been Dot. She’s the one with premonitions.”
“More like vague hunches,” she scoffed. “People’s moods aren’t all that difficult to read. Anyone can do it.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. But if I’m taking over as the resident family barely-a-psychic, you’re taking over hyacinth delivery.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“Gemma can’t go into town tomorrow,” Maudrey said sympathetically.
“There will be too many questions,” Clea added. “I went for years and I’d do it, but…”
“You can’t walk that far!” Dot balked. “I’ll go. I’m getting over my shyness anyway. Kind of.” We all looked around the table at each other skeptically. “Maybe it was just a phase. A twenty three year phase. Those happen, right?”
We were all quiet, looking at our hands and the crackling fire, anywhere but Dot. Of all the mornings to take over. Half the town would be waiting in the square for me at dawn, and at least one in ten of them probably wanted my head on a stick.
“You know, there’s no rule that someone can’t walk next to her, right?”
Clea cringed. “Actually, there is.”
Wes let out an exasperated sigh. “Is this all actually written down somewhere?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you know it is!” Clea replied. “In the Third Book of Treaties, stored in the vault below the museum.”
“Signed in blood,” Maudrey added. “Well, a drop of blood mixed in India ink, but a blood bound oath just the same.”
“Whatever,” Wesley groaned. “How about driving really slowly ahead of her?”
My aunts mused on this for a moment. “No, I can’t see why that would be a problem. A bit of a technicality perhaps.”
“Then I’ll do that. The witches will point their pitchforks at me, Dot can deal with Feather and Faustine, and then we’ll hightail it back here.”
Clea got up and retrieved the wooden crate of Concentration potions I’d refused to sell yesterday morning. “We’ll release these to the masses as well. As a show of generosity.”
“But the sidewalk sale on Sunday…” I said.
“Now is not the time to let ego get in the way,” Maudrey told me. “It’s not as if we need the money.”
“Well, I’d better get some sleep. And some Valium.” Dot rose from her chair and lifted her arms high above her head in a yawn. “It won’t be that bad.”
Wesley grinned. “I’m rather looking forward to it.”
I hugged my aunts goodnight and we all headed off to our respective homes to rest. “So you know Captain Kavanagh?” I asked my brother.
“I know Blue Eyes, yeah.”
“Um… How exactly.”
“We played high school football together.”
Wait a second. “You didn’t play high school football. You didn’t even finish high school. And Brian has to be older than you.”
“Brian, huh?” my brother teased me.
“You didn’t even go to human high school! And he definitely didn’t go to school in Dewdrop.”
“That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.” Wesley gave me a mischievous grin and shrugged his shoulders. “Goodnight.”
“You can’t just leave it like that!” I yelled after him as he headed down the hall. “I need to know.”
“If it were relevant to your current predicament, I’d tell you.”
“You—”
“Goodnight, Gemma!” he called out as he closed his bedroom door.
What a turd! I’m the youngest, I was supposed to be the difficult one. At least I’d get to sleep in tomorrow. Which was a good thing, because it took me forever to actually fall asleep.
Chapter 15
I still woke up pretty early, either from force of habit or nervous energy. The house was quiet when I got out of bed and I reached the porch just in time to see Dot in the white gown carrying a basket of hyacinth as the gate at the end of the driveway swung open for her.
I refused to feel guilty. Okay, I felt incredibly guilty, but I knew it was undeserved. It wasn’t my fault that the entire town was blessing-less and probably livid about it. I couldn’t help that I’d received this amazing deck of cards instead of the dozens of Daughter’s Daughters that probably deserved them more and knew how to actually use them. And it certainly wasn’t my fault that Thomas had been murdered.
And that last bit was the only part that I could actually do something about.
The deck of cards was neatly wrapped on my desk, but they couldn’t help me. My laptop, however, hopefully could. I certainly wasn’t up to snooping around for clues in town today, but I had the world at my fingertips.
Social media.
Thomas P. Madigan wasn’t hard to find on Facebook. His Instagram was open for all to see, too. Since he’d passed, the accounts had become something of an online memorial. Whoever had the passwords was posting all sorts of old pictures, well as old as they could be considering his young age.
He was a nice kid. I knew that people only showed their best face online, but Thomas had quite a good side to show off. I spent a while stalking his post history and found that he always had a kind word to say and also did a great job smoothing over those heated debates in the comment section on controversial p
osts that people shared.
It’s not as if I wanted to dislike him. But I guess I was sort of hoping I’d find something that would make me feel like, well, not that he deserved it, but… I don’t know, maybe deep down that was what I was looking for. Plus it would be easier to narrow down who would want him dead.
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