“No,” the Elder said. “I didn’t think you would once you spent a significant amount of time with her. Have you considered revealing yourself to her?”
“Every day. But no. I can’t do it. She misses me, yes, but she’s perfectly happy the way things are, and I’m happy enough to watch her grow from afar. What are my options for staying?” Melina asked.
“They’re limited. Perhaps we can somehow convince Darcy to let Missy live with Ve after all, or maybe Harper?”
“Both would be acceptable, except that would mean limited time with Mimi.”
“Perhaps a new form? Mimi is desiring a mini turtle.”
“And be stuck in an aquarium all day? No, thanks.”
“Well, there’s Cookie or the new donkey.”
“No and no.”
“Annie?”
“Then I am back to my original dilemma, no?”
“A bird, a fly, a dust mite.”
Melina sighed. “They just don’t feel right. Missy feels right.”
The Elder sighed. “Then I am at a loss.”
“You know what I need?”
“What?” she asked, a hint of humor in her voice.
“I need to have that animal morphing ability that Pepe told you Darcy had asked about. Or maybe animal hopping? The ability to enter the bodies of more than one animal, one after the other? Or perhaps simply the ability for my spirit to come and go from Missy at will.”
“A near impossibility.”
“But not entirely impossible?” Melina asked.
“Nothing is impossible within this village. It would, however, mean creating a new Craft.”
“You are the Elder, aren’t you? You could create a new Craft if you wanted.” Melina blew her bangs out of her eyes again, and wished a new groomer would be found soon. She very much hoped Darcy wouldn’t take on the task herself. The woman was a whiz with pencils and paintbrushes but a menace with scissors. Melina remembered quite well the mess Darcy had made of her own bangs. Plus, she might notice that the dark hair around Missy’s ears was missing, thanks to Ve reversing the Lunumbra spell. A spell that was going to come in quite handy in years to come. . . .
“I could,” the Elder said, “but switching Crafts, especially as a familiar, is highly risky. The danger that you’ll be lost forever is very real.”
The thought was terrifying, but she had no other options than to leave of her own will, which had the exact same end result, or to become an insect of some sort. No, thanks. “I’ll take the risk, because I certainly cannot stay as I am. I do not want to resent what I helped create.”
“I’d need approval from the coven of seven.”
“The next meeting is at the solstice. . . . You can broach the subject then.”
“You’re serious?” the Elder asked.
Melina nodded.
“Then I will see what I can do,” the Elder said. “It may take a while, however, so you must be patient.”
“I can wait.”
It would be months and months, maybe even a year or two before Darcy and Nick would move in together, not until after they were married.
Yes, Melina had plenty of time to be patient. During which time she’d keep an extra close eye on Glinda. Her growing friendship with Darcy was alarming, especially considering the coming Renewal.
During that time, Melina would also do anything she could to help Harper Merriweather change her mind about accepting her role as a witch. . . .
The future of the Craft depended on it.
Read on for a sneak preview of
The Witch and the Dead
by Heather Blake.
Available in October 2016.
It was one of those crisp New England autumn days that begged for hot chocolate piled high with whipped cream, a good book, and a cozy spot in front of the fireplace.
But beg as the day might, this witch didn’t have time to indulge. I glanced around at all the plastic bins and cardboard boxes that needed to be relocated from this space to my new home and pushed up my sleeves—my dream of curling up in front of a fire tonight was never going to happen if I kept dragging my feet.
Try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to get going. I flitted from one side of my aunt Ve’s garage to the other, accomplishing little as early-October sunlight filtered through grimy windows, spotlighting every dust particle in sight.
As well as my hesitance.
I wasn’t known for procrastinating, but today as I transferred all the belongings I’d been storing in this space to my new house two doors down the street, I was taking my sweet time.
My puttering had little to do with actually moving the twenty or so boxes and assorted bits of my previous life and everything to do with leaving behind Aunt Ve and the house I’d lived in since arriving in this village a little more than a year ago.
I’d eventually have to deal with the emotions, but for right now I fortunately had help with the move: My younger sister, Harper, and my aunt Ve had both volunteered to assist with the move.
“It should all go!” Ve said, tossing her hands in the air. “All of it.”
She wasn’t referencing my things, though I suspected the ghostly outlines of where my boxes had once stood were what triggered her desire to eradicate everything else in the garage.
“A yard sale! Tomorrow, just in time for the weekend crowd.” Spinning around, Ve faced me, her golden blue eyes alight with a spark of purpose. Her coppery hair was pulled back in its usual twist, but she’d accented the style with a red bandanna. It was tied with the knot at the top of her head like Rosie the Riveter’s. Round cheeks glowed with good health as she pushed up the sleeves of her white long-sleeve thermal henley and then bent to cuff the hem of her denim overalls. She was in her early sixties and had more energy than I’d ever possessed.
“I think she means it,” Harper whispered to me, a trace of horror hovering in her voice.
“Oh, I mean it,” Ve stated firmly. “Think of the cavernous space I’d have in here if it were empty. I could turn the garage into a craft studio.”
“You don’t craft,” Harper pointed out as she wrestled a tall box into the middle of the driveway.
The box was almost as big as she was. At just five feet, twenty-four-year-old Harper personified Shakespeare’s quote of “though she may be but little, she is fierce.” Her brown eyes glinted in the sunlight as she looked back at us. “Well, not in a studio kind of way.”
Technically we were all Crafters, witches with a unique set of abilities. My family happened to be Wishcrafters, who could grant wishes, but there were dozens and dozens of other witchy varieties that lived and worked among oblivious mortals here in the Enchanted Village. This charming neighborhood of Salem, Massachusetts, was a tourist hot spot . . . and what I now considered home.
“Fine,” Ve said, relenting to the truth of the matter. “How about a yoga studio?”
Shooting her arms out to the sides for balance, she placed the sole of her right foot on her left inner knee, attempting, I presumed, the tree pose. Her arms windmilled wildly as she swayed to and fro. I resisted the strong urge to shout “Timber!” as I grabbed hold of her to keep her from tipping over.
Flicking me a wry look, she said, “Maybe not yoga.”
“Maybe not,” I agreed.
“Well, I’ll think of something.” With a sweeping wave of her hand, she added, “But first, this all needs to go.”
By all, she meant the decades of flotsam that had been stashed and stored in the massive garage. Floor-to-ceiling stacks of boxes, bags, and trunks. Christmas and Halloween decor. A tattered love seat and other assorted furniture, dust-covered bookshelves and side tables. Simply sorting through everything was going to take weeks, never mind pricing it all. “Maybe waiting till spring for a yard sale would be best,” I suggested.
By th
en this particular flight of fancy of hers might pass.
I hoped.
“No, no,” she countered as she strode over to a clothing rack stuffed with zipped dusty black garment bags. “An impromptu yard sale is just what I need to take—”
Abruptly, she bit off her words, and I swallowed over a sudden lump in my throat.
To take her mind off the fact that I was moving out.
I sent Harper a pleading look. She gave me a sympathetic nod and said, “You know what can occupy your time, Aunt Ve? Helping me figure out how to avoid having dinner with Marcus’s parents tomorrow night. The Debrowskis don’t like me as it is, and you know how I get when I’m nervous. I’m bound to spill or break something.”
“They like you,” I said, trying to reassure her.
“No, they don’t,” Harper returned, perfectly calm and absolutely serious.
I picked up a plastic bin. Its label said only BEDROOM. Sheets and blankets, I figured. “Of course they do.”
Ve unzipped a garment bag. “No, Harper’s right. They don’t. They don’t like any of us.” She said this as though it was common knowledge. “I’m sure they’re having a full-sized cow that Marcus fell for Harper in the first place.”
Harper looked at me with a smug smile. “Told you so.”
She loved being right.
Still disbelieving, I stared at our aunt. “Why don’t they like us?”
“That Penelope is a jealous prune.” Ve wrinkled her face, mimicking the dried fruit. “She fancies herself a free spirit, and was always most annoyed that I could grant wishes while she had to practice law. Don’t let her bother you,” Ve advised Harper. “Just focus on that man of yours and all will be well.”
Color rushed into Harper’s cheeks. “He’s not mine. . . .”
Ve met my gaze and we both burst out laughing.
Harper, who until she met Marcus had compared marriage to a prison sentence, shot us an annoyed look. She then picked up another box and carried it out to the driveway, stomping the whole way. She hated being wrong about anything. Especially about strong beliefs such as marriage and lifelong commitments.
Ve unzipped another garment bag and laughed as she pulled out the frilliest wedding gown I’d ever seen. “Well, lookie what we have here.” She held it up to herself, nearly poking her eye with a wayward ruffle. “It’s the dress I wore to my wedding to Godfrey.”
Godfrey Baleaux had been the third of Ve’s four husbands, the one she once referred to as a rat-toad bottom dweller. She didn’t call him that anymore. Not often, anyway. He owned the Bewitching Boutique, and I considered him family. An uncle of sorts, though he liked to say he was my fairy godfather.
“Did Godfrey design that?” Harper asked. “Because if so, maybe you shouldn’t let him be in charge of your wedding dress, Darcy.”
I couldn’t imagine the dress was one of Godfrey’s designs. He preferred classic, timeless fashion. That gown was . . . neither. “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? I’m not even engaged.”
“Yet,” Ve and Harper said in unison.
I couldn’t help smiling. Police Chief Nick Sawyer and I had been dating for more than a year, and a few months ago we’d had The Talk. A proposal was just a matter of time, and thanks to a slip of the tongue by his teenage daughter, Mimi, I knew he already had the ring. The anticipation of what he had planned—and when—was killing me.
I grabbed another box and set it next to the others in the driveway, near a spot where my dog, Missy, lay stretched out in a puddle of sunshine, watching us with sleepy eyes.
She’d been extra sleepy lately, and I was starting to worry. I added making an appointment with the local vet to my to-do list. It probably wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t want to take any risks with her health.
Glancing at my watch, I noted that Nick was due here soon to help move these boxes to my new house, which had been recently renovated top to bottom, including its stacked-stone fireplace. I had high hopes that Nick would end up with me in front of that fireplace tonight. . . .
“No, no, this was all me, my design,” Ve said, looking at the dress. “The fact that Godfrey still married me despite this atrocity rather proves how smitten he had been with me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have divorced him.” She tsked.
“I thought you two hated each other by the end of the first year,” Harper pointed out.
“That’s true,” she said thoughtfully. “But I don’t hate him now.”
Aunt Ve had monogamy issues.
And loneliness issues.
With my moving out of her house, I had the feeling she was casting out a wide net to replace my daily presence in her life. “Don’t forget about Andreus,” I reminded her. “Isn’t he coming back to the village this weekend? He’ll have your days occupied in no time.”
“And nights, too,” Ve mused with a wiggle of her eyebrows.
Harper clapped a hand over her mouth and said through spread fingers, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“You and me both,” I added, putting a hand on my queasy stomach.
“Oh, you two,” Ve said with a laugh. “He’s a good man.” She paused. “Mostly good.” Another pause. “He’s a man.”
Charmcrafter Andreus Woodshall was the director of the Roving Stones, a traveling rock-and-mineral show that visited the village several times a year. Despite the fact that he was the scariest man I’d ever met, he and Ve had hit it off the last time he’d been in town. Whether he was good or bad was one of those questions that had yet to be fully answered. From what I knew of him, it was a mixed bag.
Ve frowned. “But he’ll be leaving again soon enough. He has only a week off before traveling to a show in Florida.”
“Live in the moment, Aunt Ve,” Harper said, sounding more cheerleader-ish than I’d ever imagined she could.
Lifting her chin, Ve smiled. “You’re right, Harper. That’s exactly what I should do.” She moved aside a dusty bookcase and wiggled behind it. “And the first order of business is to get this garage cleaned out for that big yard sale tomorr— Oh. Oh dear. Oh my.”
“What is it?” I asked, watching her face drain of color.
“What? Did you find the veil that went with that hideous wedding dress?” Harper asked, chuckling. “I can only imagine what that looks like.”
“No. No veil.” One of Ve’s hands flew up to cover her mouth as she stared at something deep in the recesses of the garage. Over her shoulder, she said in an unnaturally high-pitched voice, “Darcy, dear, would you please give Nick a call?”
“He should be here in twenty minutes . . .”
“We need him now,” she said, still using that odd falsetto.
“Why?” Harper strode over and leaned on the bookcase to catch a glimpse of whatever had caused Ve alarm.
Harper’s voice rose an octave. “Is that a . . .”
“Yes, dear,” Ve said. “It appears so.”
“It’s not fake?” my sister asked. “I mean, there are Halloween decorations all over this garage.”
“I don’t think so,” Ve said. “You see, I recognize that hat. I’d know it anywhere.”
Hat? Halloween? I marched over to see what was going on for myself. I shimmied against the shelf next to Harper. “I don’t see . . .”
Ve pointed.
I gasped. In a once-hidden nook created by a tower of boxes lay a skeleton fully dressed in men’s clothing. By the layer of undisturbed dust covering the remains, I guessed he’d been there quite a long time.
Harper glanced at me, her eyes full of excitement. She was exceedingly morbid. Then she said to Ve, “Who is it? You said you recognized the hat?”
“That,” Ve said, wiggling back out from behind the shelf, “is Miles Babbage. My second husband. And hand to heart, if he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him myself.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heather Blake is the national bestselling author of the Wishcraft Mysteries, including Some Like It Witchy and The Goodbye Witch, as well as the Magic Potion Mysteries, including Ghost of a Potion and One Potion in the Grave. She’s a total homebody who loves to be close to her family, read, watch cooking-competition TV shows, drink too much coffee, crochet, and bake cookies. Heather grew up in a suburb of Boston but currently lives in the Cincinnati area with her family.
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