Fine. You’ve managed to prevent one of my asthma attacks for the moment, but I maintain the right to have one later for absolutely no reason.
“I’d like to know why you’re not still out searching for Count Cuddles,” I asked with suspicion. “Why did you come back to the teashop?”
I got thirsty. It was probably all the blueberries in my premium organic catnip treats.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten, although the practice technique utterly failed to acquire more patience.
“Then it’s a good thing that I’ve come up with a plan,” I said, pushing off my knees so that I could stand.
Raven, your picture has been banned from the dictionary on all pages with anything regarding a plan, strategy, idea, scheme, desi—
“It’s a solid plan,” I said defensively, grateful when I finally heard the door to the pet shop open by the faint sound of a bell. “We’re going to cast a locator spell on Count Cuddles.”
Here comes that asthma attack…
“Will this do?” Liam asked, holding up what looked like a stuffed animal. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was one of those small baby blankets with a blue bear’s head on one end and tiny blanket on the other. “Janice thought it would ease the little guy’s anxiety.”
Let me get this straight—Mrs. Doolittle-wanna-be in the pet shop gave a hairy-legged demon with fangs a blue bear blanket to ease his anxiety about bringing doomsday ever nearer to Paramour Bay?
“It’s perfect,” I exclaimed in victory, ignoring Leo’s summarization of the situation. In retrospect, he’d recapped Count Cuddles’ arrival to town in a pretty accurate manner. On the other hand, the poor thing was injured. We needed to find him to prevent an epic diversion that could possibly hurt someone, but we also needed to make sure that he was okay. It wasn’t humane to let an injured animal remain helpless to the hazards of nature. “Let me know what you find at the church.”
I quickly gave Liam a kiss at the same time that I took the small bear blanket from his hand. It didn’t take me long to reach the teashop, but I was brought up short when I stumbled into one of my dreams—there had to be at least fifteen customers milling about the store.
“Wow,” I whispered underneath my breath as I took in the sight before me. Beetle was keeping them all entertained by giving them a demonstration on how to steep tea leaves in the appropriately heated water that he’d poured from an electric kettle. “This is…amazing!”
Why does your dream get to come true and mine doesn’t? Mine has me on a throne in the middle of town square with Skippy and his band of ninja minions serving me copious amounts of premium organic catnip…of the blueberry variety, like Beetle gives me. Not that nasty garlic stuff that we have at home. It clearly had no repelling properties after my encounter with Count Fangs-A-Lot this morning.
“I think Beetle might have eaten some of your edibles,” I muttered in awe as he said something that had the small crowd laughing. He began to pour the tea from the cup into smaller sample cups, garnering a round of applause from the patrons. “Look at this crowd. They’re eating out of the palm of his hand.”
That’s not very sanitary. They better not be touching my blueberry premium organic catnip treats. I know for a fact that my BFF still has a few in his pocket.
“This is simply delicious,” a woman exclaimed after having sipped the sample that Beetle had given to her in a small cup. Others began to nod their heads in agreement. “I’ll take two boxes, please.”
Beetle had now secured several orders, so it looked as if my locator spell was going to have to wait until the majority of the crowd dispersed subsequent to them making their purchases. I waved toward Beetle to let him know that I would cover the cash register while he began helping the other customers pick out their flavors.
Thank the catnip heavens!
Leo’s butt wiggled quickly in time with his rather hasty retreat over to the display window.
I’m retiring to my bed for my union-authorized nap time. It’s not up for debate. My soulmate can find your mother, the good ol’ sheriff can search for Count Fangs-A-Lot, and we can have an hour of peace. Ohhhhh, the warmth of this cushion from the sunshine is just divine…and it still smells like blueberries!
Chapter Eight
“Any luck with reaching Mom?” I asked Heidi after handing off one of the last shopping bags to a customer from the early afternoon rush. “She still hasn’t texted me.”
Beetle was still helping an elderly couple decide if they wanted loose tea leaves or the teabags of the same flavor. I motioned to him that Heidi and I were going into the back room. He was used to me taking some private time when I was working on my so-called holistic blends, and he was always careful not to interrupt me.
Heidi had changed out of her business suit for a pair of jeans and a three-quarter sleeve pink blouse. Her shoes and purse matched, while I couldn’t even bring myself to look in the mirror. Not for the reasons involving a vampire, but more because I’d left the house at the yawningly early time of six o’clock.
“No, I haven’t heard a thing,” Heidi replied, her perfectly sculpted brows furrowed with concern. She slipped through the ivory-colored fairy beads with me, letting them melodically click together once we were out of sight of the customers. “I think it’s time for us to worry.”
“Leo,” I called out, knowing full well that he could hear me. The other patrons in the shop couldn’t due to the magical ward on the strings of beads separating the main shop from the back room. “Get in here right this minute.”
I set Count Cuddles’ blue bear blanket down on the table in front of the shelves full of various-sized mortars and pestles. It didn’t take me long to locate the detailed map of Paramour Bay, along with Nan’s special scry to utilize in the locator spell.
“Have we thought about what we’re going to do once we locate Count Cuddles?” Heidi asked, taking a seat on the stool behind me.
She often watched me work, especially since Mom and I were teaching her how to be a hedge witch. It could help us if we ever came up against a real threat. I waited for Leo’s witty comment about vampires being enough of one, but all I heard from him was silence.
“Once we find Count Cuddles, I’m hoping that he can somehow lead us to his fangy friend.” I finished setting out what was needed for the locator spell, including a lighter. I’d come to find that I could harness more energy through a flickering flame, which would only strengthen the incantation. “Would you please go and get Leo? We’re going to need him to go and find Mom. I should have sent him sooner, but I really thought the she would have been back by now.”
“Especially considering how many times the two of us have tried to reach her.” Heidi hopped off the stool and poked her head through the ivory-colored fairy beads. When I finally saw her face, she was biting the pink lipstick off of her bottom lip. “We might have a problem.”
“Might?” I asked, sliding myself over to join her in front of the numerous strings serving as a door. I parted them gradually, truly afraid of what I might find. I was picturing Leo stuffing more blueberry edibles into his mouth or even find that he was still in a deep sleep that would render it hard to wake him. I didn’t expect to find an empty cat bed. “You’re right. This is definitely a problem. You stay here.”
I never, ever left anything out in the back room that might be inadvertently discovered by Beetle. Granted, he was still busy with the elderly couple, but I would never take any chance when it came to the Marigold lineage or one of our numerous spell books.
“Excuse me a moment,” I said softly, clasping my hands together when all three of them turned toward me. “Beetle, have you seen Leo?”
“Why, he’s right in his—” Beetle had turned around to look at the display window, but he cut off his reply upon realizing that he was wrong. The wisps of his white hair moved with the air. “He was right there, Raven. Right there in his bed!”
“Oh, he probably followed me in the back without me even realiz
ing it,” I covered for my familiar, wiggling my fingers in appreciation. “I’ll go double check. Sorry to interrupt.”
I crossed back through the teashop and through the ivory-colored fairy beads to find Heidi anxiously waiting for me. She could easily tell from my facial expression that we had another problem to add to the growing pile.
“Do you think he went in search of Skippy?” Heidi asked tentatively, obviously not even able to convince herself of such a thing when Leo prized his afternoon nap over everything else. She then tilted her head as if to say that she may be wrong, even putting her hand over her heart. “Didn’t you and I agree that maybe Skippy had—”
“Don’t,” I warned, whirling my hand around to indicate that Leo could be anywhere. The last thing we needed was him grieving over his nemesis. “I meant to have Ted ask Ivan about that possible scenario, but Leo was in the vicinity when he and Justine began to walk to the cemetery.”
Heidi nodded her understanding, but she then followed up with another question that I couldn’t answer.
“Where could Leo have gone to, Raven? Maybe you should do a locator spell on him,” Heidi suggested, glancing over at the items on the table. “I’d say that a vampiric threat means all hands-on deck, so we should also do one on your mother,”
A light throbbing began to pick up tempo in my temples at the fact that we had four missing crucial elements from this puzzle—a vampire, his hairy-legged rescue bat, my mother, and now Leo.
“Now I know how Leo feels when he goes into one of his asthma attacks,” I muttered, walking over to the table. I carefully picked up the scry and held it in my hand. “I don’t like any of this, Heidi.”
“Neither do I.” She reclaimed the stool before crossing her arms defensively over her chest. “Doesn’t this remind you of a horror movie where everyone starts to disappear, leaving you the only one to face the—”
Heidi snapped her teeth together when I spun around, throwing my hands into the air with exasperation.
“You’re supposed to help me keep things together,” I argued, doing my best to keep my composure. Having Leo disappear was wreaking havoc on my nerves. “We should have eaten lunch like we’d planned.”
Heidi quietly slipped her hand inside her pink purse and pulled out a granola bar with—of all things—blueberries.
“Let’s see if we can’t find Count Cuddles first,” I said in resignation, turning down the granola bar. I’d had a handful of mints while I was waiting on customers, and that should tide me over until dinner. At least, I hope that we were able to enjoy a nice meal this evening. “I already have his blue bear blanket, so his location should be easily revealed.”
I lit a long match and set it in the ashtray to burn slowly as I held the scry above the detailed map of Paramour Bay. I then held the tiny blue bear blanket above the curling smoke so that the energy of the flame was absorbed into the fabric. With slow and deliberate circles, I allowed energy and gravity to do the rest with the help of a small mantra from the family grimoire.
Heidi had munched on the granola bar throughout the spell, though she always let out an itsy-bitsy gasp when the scry inevitable came to an abrupt stop and connected with the fabric of the map like a magnet.
“Well?” Heidi asked excitedly, hopping off the stool now that I no longer needed one hundred percent concentration on the spell. “Where is the little rascal?”
I had to double check that I was looking at the map right, because the scry had literally landed on the one place that I never would have expected—the teashop.
“That’s odd,” I murmured, leaning down to double check that the map was correct. “The scry is definitely pointing toward—”
Heidi and I both startled when Beetle let out a high-pitched scream of terror. It didn’t help that the elderly couple must have still been in the store. Their voices of alarm joined in, and it sounded as if they were all being chased by the devil himself.
“Oh, dear!”
“That’s not good,” I exclaimed over Heidi’s declaration, both us hurrying through the ivory-colored fairy beads in unison.
Sure enough, the three of them were literally running in circles around the various high-top tables. How the delicate china teacups and teapots didn’t crash to the floor was beyond my comprehension. In my peripheral vision and over by the sale item table, I saw something swing from the corner while giving off a chittering sound.
It was hard to reconcile how a hairy-legged vampire bat could be cute and cuddly, but now I completely understood why Janice had named him Count Cuddles. I glanced over at Heidi to ask her if she’d go and collect a carrier from Janice, stunned to find that she now had her pink and cream scarf overtop her blonde curls.
“Oy vey,” I muttered in Leo’s absence, suddenly sympathetic to his position. “I’m not even going to ask how you put that scarf over your hair so fast. Look at him, Heidi. He’s adorable.”
“If you say so,” Heidi grumbled, edging a little farther away so that I was closest to Count Cuddles. “What’s the plan? Do you have a box big enough to—”
I quickly made my way back through the ivory-colored fairy beads and collected what I knew to be the very item that might get Count Cuddles to calm down enough so that the elderly couple didn’t have heart attacks.
Having an ambulance arrive out front would definitely be bad for business.
“Here, Count Cuddles,” I said softly, holding out the tiny blue bear blanket for him to see as I walked closer to the table. Beetle was anxiously ushering the elderly couple out the door, most likely wanting to follow them. To his credit, he stayed just inside the door. “Hey, there. You’re just a little fellow, aren’t you?”
“I think I like this new, brave Raven,” Heidi whispered from behind me. “You know, he is kind of cute.”
My heart practically melted when Count Cuddles’ chitter became excited at setting eyes on the tiny blue bear blanket. He reached out for the soft fabric, his big black eyes blinking rapidly as he climbed on top of the table and curled up smack dab in the middle of the remaining clutter to take a well-deserved nap.
We all stood still, wondering if maybe the little guy was faking it. After warily watching our fanged guest for what seemed like hours but was most likely mere seconds, we all breathed a sigh of relief.
“He really is adorable,” I murmured, inspecting the pudgy nose and long ears. There didn’t look to be anything wrong with his wing. “Beetle, was Count Cuddles flying around the shop?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but Mrs. Bartaletti was screaming and running around when our new friend here jumped on her back.” Beetle exhaled loudly now that all of the adrenaline was leaving his system. “It sure was a sight to see, Raven. It sure was.”
Tiny, high-pitched snores began to carry throughout the teashop.
“Good gracious, Raven!” Beetle exclaimed in a hushed tone. “You were so calm. So calm! What on earth do we do now? Should I go and fetch Janice? Good gracious, that was exciting!”
I’m not sure that I would have called the last few minutes exciting, but at least one of the many mysteries had been solved. It hit me out of the blue that maybe we were making things more difficult than they had to be in the grand scheme of things.
One of the puzzles could be solved with a very simple question.
“Actually, would you go let Janice know that we found Count Cuddles?” I asked Heidi, almost afraid to look away from our hairy-legged friend. “I’ll text Liam to let him know that we found the little critter, but I need to ask you something really important, Beetle.”
“Oh, you know that you can ask me anything, my dear Raven,” Beetle said in his enthusiastic manner. “Anything at all!”
“Do you know where my mother has gotten off to?”
Heidi hadn’t left yet, and we stood side by side as we waited for Beetle to answer the question. If he couldn’t provide a response, I was going to have to find Leo so that he could go searching for her. When a few moments of silence passed, with
the exception of a few high-pitched snores from Count Cuddles, the palm of my hand began tingle with piercing warmth.
“You can ask me anything but that,” Beetle exclaimed as he took a sudden interest in a box of tea leaves. “Anything but that.”
I’m back! Did you miss me? Of course, you did. Let me start at the beginning. You see, my BFF had a few of those blueberry edibles left in his pocket, and did they ever give me some inspiration! I’m telling you, Raven—mental antioxidants are the key to victory! They are definitely a thing, and you can’t convince me otherwise. Anyway, I found Skippy and a few of his ninja minions at the inn! He didn’t leave town. He only set up a temporary base to take advantage of Gertie’s squirrel feeder. See, I remembered that the old biddy said she found a corn cob holder during the annual neighborhood garage sale. It turns out that my nemesis decided to hole up in her back yard while…
Leo had feigned being under the tablecloth so that Beetle was none the wiser when my familiar materialized out of thin air. Without thought, he’d also hopped up on the sale item table and had settled in to tell me his story.
To Beetle, it was simply a bunch of meows strung together.
In Leo’s attempt to tell me all that had happened on his little side adventure, he’d completely missed the fact that Count Cuddles was curled up and asleep with his little blue bear blanket. What hadn’t slipped past him was the fact that the silence in regard to Beetle’s reticent attitude regarding my mother could be cut with a knife.
I should leave, shouldn’t I? Something dire has happened, and I’m not going to want to be a witness to whatever it is that’s going to get us turned into toads. Right? Be honest, Raven. Should I stay or should I go?
A high-pitched snore was emitted from our hairy-legged guest, and it had caused all four of Leo’s paws to come off the table. He now stood there with an arched back, tufts sticking out every which away, and his left eye twitching faster than his own heartbeat.
It’s behind me, isn’t it? Sweet angel of mercy, Count Fangs-A-Lot has come to suck the mental antioxidants right out of my super-intelligent brain. Do something to save me, Raven! Energy ball! Energy Ball!
Batty Blend (A Paramour Bay Cozy Paranormal Mystery Book 13) Page 8