A Witch to Remember

by Heather Blake

What had I gotten myself into?

  Setting a hand on my stomach to quell the queasiness, I took a deep breath. I could fix this. A little memory cleanse worked wonders.

  Her wobbly voice carried as she said loudly, “A blind leap of faith brought you and Harper to this village. My question to you, Darcy, is this: do you have enough faith in yourself and your abilities to keep on leaping?”

  Everything around me quieted while my head buzzed with the sound of the woman’s voice and the knowledge that she knew all about my life. I had no doubt she was aware that I was a witch, and I instantly suspected she was too. It set me at ease. Somewhat. This was all so very strange.

  Her question rang in my ears as I thought about everything I’d learned since arriving in this village, the people I’d met, the love I’d found for the enchanted world I lived in. The answer was easy. “Yes.”

  Hildie returned to me, a pensive look in her eyes. “In weakness, there is strength. Out of darkness, there comes light. From the ashes, there is rebirth.”

  Chill bumps raised on my arms. “I don’t understand.”

  “Take this.” She held out a closed fist, and the blue veins on the top of her hand fairly glowed through thin skin. “Keep it safe until you need it. You’ll know when the time is right.”

  Warmth radiated into my hand as she dropped a shiny silvery-green seed, a little bigger than a watermelon seed, onto my palm. She then rested her hand on top of mine, and a sense of calm washed over me.

  There was an air of benevolence about her as she steadied her gaze on mine and said solemnly, “You must trust your faith, because it will be tested. The first test is not telling anyone what I’ve given you until after you have used it. That includes your mother—or all will be undone. Understand?”

  “But—” I had so many questions that I didn’t know where to start. What was this seed? Who was this woman?

  “Darcy?” Harper called out, interrupting my thoughts. “Are you ready?”

  Keeping tight hold of the seed, I glanced over my shoulder. Harper had already eaten half the corn dog and was wiping her lips with a napkin.

  “Just a second,” I said, wanting to find out exactly how much Hildie knew. Did she know my mother was the Elder?

  The Elder, the governess of the Craft, was a role that could be held only by a witch who had already passed away and become a familiar. My mother’s reign had begun nearly twenty-five years ago, and her identity was top secret to all but a dozen or so witches. I hadn’t even learned the truth until a year ago. The rest of the confidants were mostly family members, trusted friends, and the Coven of Seven, her council of advisers.

  To my knowledge, Hildie was none of those. The truth of the Elder’s identity was revealed only at her discretion. If other witches spoke of it without permission, there were steep consequences. If Hildie knew the Elder was my mother, Deryn, then she knew because my mother had told her.

  I turned back to question Hildie further, but she was gone. The booth stood empty.

  Of everything.

  Only the banner remained, flapping gently in the salty sea breeze.

  Absently I heard sirens in the distance as I looked all around, wondering if I was going crazy. But no … my palm was warm. I opened my hand and saw the seed sitting there, plain as day.

  “Did”—I coughed—“did you see the woman I was talking to?”

  Harper’s eyebrows dipped. “I didn’t see you talking to anyone.”

  How was that possible? Hildie had been right here. The apothecary chest, the bits and baubles … My heart pounded. What was going on?

  Harper sniffed loudly and looked around. “Do you smell that?”

  As soon as she said the words, I caught the scent of something burning and scanned the horizon. Black smoke spiraled above a building in the distance.

  A building with a thatched roof and eyebrow dormers.

  “Is that …?” Harper asked, horror in her eyes.

  It was.

  Dealing with whatever it was that had just happened between Hildie and me was going to have to wait. I grabbed Harper’s hand and started running.

  Divinitea was on fire.

  Chapter Two

  By the time we reached the tea cottage on the other side of the green, the police were cordoning off the crowd with yellow tape as firefighters blasted the stone building with water from the hydrant on the corner. Acrid black and gray smoke darkened the skies and stung my nose and eyes.

  “Darcy! Harper!” Mimi Sawyer yelled, waving her hands above her head. “Over here.”

  Nick’s daughter Mimi was fourteen going on forty, and in two short weeks she’d officially be part of my family—which was only a technicality in my eyes. When I’d first become acquainted with Mimi, I’d thought of her as a little sister, but for a long while now I’d considered Mimi my daughter. I almost burst into tears when I saw she was safe. Thank goodness.

  Harper threw elbows to clear a path as we wound our way through the crowd. She was small and mighty, but I thought it was the sight of her belly that had people giving her a wide berth.

  Recently drenched, Mimi, Aunt Ve, Starla, and good friend Glinda Hansel Chadwick stood under a tall oak tree, watching the firefighters work. There were three trucks in front of the building, lights flashing. Two ambulances were nearby, and a half dozen police cars dotted the street from one end to the other. I didn’t see any flames coming out of the cottage, so I hoped the worst of it was under control.

  “Where’s Cherise?” I asked, fighting a wave of panic when I realized she wasn’t with the others. I glanced back at the smoldering Divinitea. Curecrafter Cherise Goodwin, Dennis’s mother, was like an aunt to me.

  Aunt Ve said, “Not to worry, Darcy dear. Cherise called earlier. She’s delayed in traffic on her way back to the village from a shopping excursion in the city—she wasn’t with us when the fire broke out.”

  I let out a relieved breath and nodded. Everyone who’d been invited to my bridal luncheon was safe and sound.

  “What happened?” Harper asked. “How did the fire start?”

  Clumps of the thatched roofing disappeared before our eyes, caving in under the weight and force of the water. It was surreal to watch what was happening to Divinitea while listening to peppy music and smelling fried dough. It was out of sync, this tragedy mixing with the jovial atmosphere of the festival.

  “We’re not sure.” Ve wrung her hands. Inky mascara tracks streaked her plump cheeks and strands of her coppery hair were plastered to her forehead. She wore a soaked knee-length blue shift dress embellished with colorful beads that was probably beautiful when dry but was currently puckering and sagging in all the wrong places. “We were drinking tea and laughing it up, and the next thing we knew, the fire alarms were blaring and the sprinkler system went off, soaking us all.”

  I counted my lucky stars. I was so grateful they’d all made it out unharmed. Aunt Ve was my mother’s older sister, and she had become like a second mother to me since I’d moved to the village. I couldn’t imagine life without her in it. She’d taken me in without batting an eye, taught me of my heritage, showed me how to manage As You Wish—the personal concierge company I now owned—and loved me unconditionally.

  “Did everyone else make it out okay?” I asked.

  “Everyone’s accounted for except Leyna.” A fancy camera hung from a strap around Starla Sullivan’s neck. Her golden hair lay flat to her scalp as her bright sky-blue eyes sized up the scene. Her cotton sundress was almost dry as she lifted the camera to snap a few shots.

  “Unaccounted for?” I said. “You mean, she’s still inside?” I threw a look at the building and swallowed back another wave of panic.

  “No one knows for certain,” Ve said, her worried gaze focused on the pluming smoke. “But we assume so.”

  “From what we know talking among ourselves—and what we’ve overheard here in the crowd—Leyna was last seen around twelve fortyish,” Glinda said. Her crystal-clear ice-blue eyes were studying th
e surroundings as if she was mentally assessing whether this fire had been an accident. “She had been scheduled to meet with a client at twelve forty-five in the reading room and didn’t show up. The alarms went off at twelve fifty or thereabouts.”

  Only Glinda could get absolutely drenched and still look flawless. Her white-blonde hair had been finger-combed off her face, and it didn’t look as though any of her makeup had so much as smudged. I wanted to believe she’d used some sort of spell to look that good, but she was just naturally beautiful.

  That Glinda was evaluating the scene wasn’t surprising to me in the least. She’d once been a village police officer, but now she ran her own private investigation agency. Assessing situations was second nature for her.

  But I suspected Glinda’s interest in this fire wasn’t solely because she was a highly trained investigator. As Dorothy Hansel Dewitt’s daughter, Glinda had to know this fire didn’t look good for her mother.

  Black smoke billowed from the remains of Divinitea’s roof, and unnatural-sounding pops crackled ominously from within the building. I spotted Amanda Goodwin, Cherise’s daughter-in-law, speaking to one of the firefighters, and the naked worry on her face made my chest ache. It was her cousin, after all, who was missing.

  Leyna Noble was an Emoticrafter, a witch who could feel what others were feeling, physically and mentally. A true empath. Unlike most Emoticrafters, who tended to be loners to protect themselves from emotional overload, Leyna had chosen to capitalize on her gift, using it in tandem with tasseomancy, tea-leaf reading, which allowed her to use her Craft in plain sight without suspicion. Paired together, her abilities were a force to reckon with, assuring accurate readings and client satisfaction. For the past ten years Leyna had traveled with the Firelight festival as one of their top mystics, before recently growing tired of the nomadic life.

  Which was proving to be quite a fateful decision.

  Mimi said, “I think I was one of the last people to see her. Right around twelve forty, I spotted her fast-walking through the dining room, heading for the hallway.” Dark, damp ringlets framed Mimi’s face. “She didn’t seem all that happy. Like she was forcing smiles for the customers.”

  I barely knew Leyna, but from what I did know of her, she wasn’t the friendliest person around. Most Emoticrafters, because they could actually feel the emotions and ailments of others, were socially awkward, and Leyna was no different. It was why pairing with the outgoing Amanda, a Vitacrafter, who could easily judge people’s moods—but not feel them—to open Divinitea had been an excellent idea. With Amanda’s innate people skills and Leyna’s fortune-telling abilities, the cottage was bound to be a huge success.

  Until this.

  I fought a sense of helplessness as I looked at the smoke, which seemed to be dying down. What had happened? Where was Leyna?

  Ve said, “I’m surprised I didn’t run into Leyna in the hallway. The time she went missing was right around the time I was in the restroom at the end of the hallway near her reading room and the office. But I didn’t see her at all today.”

  I knew from a tour of Divinitea earlier in the week that Leyna’s reading room was a small, private space at the end of a long hallway. Its location, far away from the dining area, enabled Leyna to focus solely on the energy of her client.

  “Was the smoke coming from the kitchen?” Harper asked.

  “Hard to tell where it originated,” Glinda said.

  “I smelled the smoke only a minute or two before the alarms and sprinklers went off. That’s when we all made a run for it,” Mimi said. “It was complete chaos for a few minutes.”

  By the sounds of it, Harper and I might have been inside Divinitea when all hell broke loose had it not been for her corn dog craving. I wasn’t sure whether I was grateful or not that we’d missed out on all the action.

  Starla’s chin jutted toward the smoldering cottage. “I’m going to circle around, get some shots from different vantage points. I’ll be right back.”

  As a professional photographer, she was always angling for great pictures—first for her village business, Hocus-Pocus photography; second as a freelancer for the Toil and Trouble, the local newspaper; and third, and most recently, as a travel blogger. She’d been roaming the world these last few months, taking a bit of a sabbatical from her work—and her life—in this village. She’d been a best friend since almost day one of my arrival in the village, and I’d missed her terribly these last few months. She’d come back for my wedding but would be leaving again in a few weeks for a trip to the Great Barrier Reef to scuba dive with manta rays. And I’d go back to missing her until she returned once again.

  As I watched her take a few more photos, I’d have bet a frozen peppermint patty I would see some of these photographs in the newspaper tomorrow morning. Just as I’d have bet she’d tucked that fancy camera under her dress to keep it dry when the sprinklers went off, her priorities being what they were.

  Mimi pointed at the police tape. “I’m going to get closer to Amanda, see if I can hear anything good.”

  Before I could protest, she darted forward into the crowd.

  “She’s a girl after my own heart,” Harper said, quickly rushing after Mimi.

  “Well. I suppose someone should keep an eye on them.” Ve blinked innocently before she followed their lead.

  I stayed put, wanting to talk with Glinda. “It could be nothing more than a grease fire that got out of hand,” I said to her, letting the words dangle.

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. And so do you,” Glinda said. “We both know this has all the earmarks of Dorothy, doesn’t it?”

  Except when speaking directly to Dorothy, Glinda rarely referred to her as “Mom” or “Mother”—or any other kind of loving endearment.

  Dorothy and endearments did not go hand in hand.

  Especially not from Glinda, who’d grown up under Dorothy’s narcissistic oppression. They were barely on speaking terms these days, after a huge fight following Glinda’s wedding this past February. “It definitely has the earmarks,” I said, wondering if the protection spell Amanda and Leyna had commissioned on the cottage expired recently. Otherwise, I couldn’t see how Dorothy could have done this. The spell should have kept her at least ten feet from the property.

  “Yet,” Glinda said, “I can’t help feeling that this fire seems kind of out of character for her. Dorothy usually isn’t so obvious.”

  I didn’t point out that there had been plenty of times when Dorothy had displayed her vicious side, loud and proud, from very public verbal fights to trying to push me off a ladder right here on the village green just a few months ago. And every witch in the village knew Dorothy had tried to torch my aunt Ve’s house and also our family friend Godfrey Baleaux’s house, even though those particular acts had occurred under the cover of darkness.

  “It’s reckless, even,” Glinda said. “Everyone around here knows how she feels about Divinitea, Leyna, and Amanda.”

  “And fire,” I added.

  “And fire,” she echoed, nodding. “She’s going to be the prime suspect if this wasn’t an accident.”

  “Do you know where Dorothy is this afternoon?” I asked. “Or was? Say, around the time the fire broke out?”

  As concern clouded her eyes, Glinda shook her head. “I actually haven’t seen her in a few days. Which is a relief, if I’m being honest. The last time I saw her was when I received a call from Sylar this past weekend to talk Dorothy down from a tree behind Third Eye.”

  “She climbed up a tree? Really?”

  “It was a sight, let me tell you. She was perched up there like she wasn’t planning to come down anytime soon. She’s lucky she didn’t fall and break her fool head.”

  Cheerful music floated through the air, and I really wished someone would shut it off for a while. The fried-oil smell had been overtaken by smokiness, and I wasn’t sure which was worse. “Why was she up there in the first place? Had she been spying on Sylar?” I asked, glancing over at Third Eye. It w
as busy for a Saturday afternoon.

  Sylar Dewitt was Dorothy’s soon-to-be ex-husband. That marriage had lasted longer than anyone in the village betting pool had guessed—a little more than fifteen months. As a mortal, Sylar had no idea Dorothy was a witch, but I would hazard the guess that he was now very well aware that she was all kinds of crazy. He owned Third Eye Optical, where Dorothy had been employed right up until the divorce paperwork had been filed three months ago.

  Glinda said, “Probably, but she claims she can’t remember why she went up the tree.”

  “Was she feeding you a line, or could she really not remember?”

  Glinda took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Dorothy had drunk her lunch at the Sorcerer’s Stove that day. She’s been doing that a lot lately. Months. I can’t tell you how many times the bartender at the Stove has called me or Vince to pick her up. Mostly Vince—he’s more tolerant of Dorothy’s behavior than I am.”

  Vince was Glinda’s half brother, a Broomcrafter like his sister and mother, Dorothy. And he was a dabbler in the dark arts, much to most everyone’s dismay. Though he was an all-around pain in the neck, I cared for him more than I should. He was the pesky brother I’d never had.

  I asked, “Is Dorothy drinking because of the divorce?”

  “I’m not sure. She seems … off. She’s acting more bizarrely than usual.”

  That was saying something.

  While I hadn’t seen Dorothy in quite a while, which didn’t have anything to do with happenstance and everything to do with me going to great lengths to avoid her, I’d heard of her unusual behavior of late. She’s been moody, unpredictable, and extra volatile.

  Dorothy and I were practically the personifications of good and evil. But I had to wonder if her recent behavior had anything to do with the upcoming Eldership renewal, the ceremony where the Elder’s reign would be reinstated for another twenty-five years. Technically, it was called the Renewal or Renaissance ceremony, because either the Elder would be renewed or a new governess would be inaugurated—a renaissance.

  There hadn’t been a renaissance in decades—not since my mother took over as Elder. But Dorothy had been plotting for years for another. Specifically, she wanted to alter the rules of the Craft to have Glinda sworn in as the next Elder.