Pumpkins and Potions

by Tegan Maher

  I reached for the little white paper bag that I’d brought in with me. “Don’t worry,” I said as I pulled a box of chocolates from inside. “The products from Nikki and Earl’s Chocolate shop are soon going to be just as good as Celia’s, or maybe even better, because their intentions are so pure. And in the meantime, we have something here that you’re going to like even more than dark chocolate cocoa nibs.”

  I opened the box of chocolates and placed them on the center of the table.

  My witch sisters eyed them curiously.

  Penny spoke up. “They’re called Hecate's Honor Chocolates. They bring prosperity to whoever eats them.”

  “How exciting!” Annie said, reaching for one.

  I nodded. “Yes, exciting for us, and for Nikki. She had one earlier tonight, and already she had hundreds of orders come through her online store. She’s over the moon with happiness. She was going to give up on her factory, but now she doesn't have to!”

  “What good news!” Annie said, as she reached for a chocolate. “These must be awfully powerful.”

  “I suppose one won’t hurt,” Cora said. As the health nut in our group, she usually avoided sugar at all costs.

  Azure picked out her chocolate carefully. “Hecate's Honor, hm? This must be advanced magic. Amateurs don't mess around with Hecate. How did you learn the spell?”

  I let my hand move over the box until I felt an intuition about which one to choose. It was the smallest one in the box, and it had little gold-leaf flakes on top of it. “We followed the spell from Edna’s grimoire,” I told Azure.

  Annie chimed in. “Edna was a wonderful woman, bless her soul. I had no idea she was involved with magic!”

  “She was,” I said. “And now her daughter, Nikki, is, too.”

  Annie was happy about this. “We should invite her up for a coven meeting sometime!” she said. “Maybe she’ll even start her own coven, down in Melrose. If she’s going to be learning magic, I’m sure she could use the support.”

  “Yes, she did mention that she’d like to start up a group down there,” I said. “It’s so cool how magic has a way of spreading around, isn't’ it?” I looked around at my friend’s smiling faces.

  “To magic!” Annie said, as she held up her chocolate.

  “And prosperity,” Cora added.

  “To the goddess Hecate,” Azure said solemnly.

  “And midnight Halloween meetings!” Penny said with a grin.

  “And chocolate,” I said.

  With that, I bit into the candy in my hand. I’m not sure if it was because it was a magical chocolate, or because I was eating it so late at night, or because I was in such good company -- but for whatever reason, it was the very best chocolate I’d ever eaten.

  It was creamy, rich, and it melted on my tongue. I felt a sudden knowledge that prosperity in its many forms was coming my way -- friendships to be treasured, magical moments to cherish, and abundance in many shapes and sizes.

  I felt grateful, in that moment, that life was oh so sweet.

  Want to read more about Marley and the witches of Hillcrest? Click HERE to check out Amorette’s Marley the Witch Cozy Mystery series!

  Amorette Anderson writes fun cozy mysteries that star witchy characters. She lives in Colorado with her hubby and two pups. When she’s not writing or reading she’s dreaming up ways to make life a little more magical.

  Follow Amorette Anderson online:

  Amazon Author Page HERE

  Goodreads HERE

  Bookbub HERE

  Sign up for her mailing list and receive a free book HERE

  Halloween Hanky Panky

  Constance Barker

  What's a witch bookstore owner with a pig familiar do during Halloween? Search for a killer with her fairy and alligator shifter friends of course.

  Thursday, Oct. 15

  Nann pulled her car, Cricket, into the drive-through line. Pokey, her potbelly pig familiar, rode shotgun. “Sorry I didn’t have time to cut up some veggies.” Mail orders had gone through the roof at Greenpoint Books, the shop she owned in Amity Corners. She was late, packing up boxes for the mail tomorrow.

  Static came from the car stereo. Nann adjusted the tuner, and Pokey’s voice came through. “I don’t mind a couple large fries and whatever soft serve they have.”

  “You know you can’t have ice cream. If you get too heavy, you’ll have knee trouble.”

  Pokey gave her a look. “Maybe they have some kind of fried cherry pies. Those have fruit.”

  The line wasn’t long at this hour. A speaker on a bright menu screen welcomed her. “Hi, I’d like two orders of fries and a single cheeseburger.”

  “And a fried cherry pie,” Pokey said from the radio.

  Nann turned the radio down.

  “We don’t have cherry pie,” the speaker said.

  “That’s fine, just the burger and fries, please.”

  The speaker asked, “Would you like bacon for fifty cents?”

  Pokey’s tiny eyes bugged out. Nann reached over and pressed the off button on the radio. She didn’t need to hear the pig’s words. His expression said it all. She felt an overriding sense of guilt from Pokey’s expression. So much so that she ordered a cup of soft serve ice cream when she reached the pay window.

  It was the new moon, when Nann regularly visited Marquise Charlotte. The vampire was trapped on the third floor of Amity Center, the building that housed her bookstore. A church and cemetery once stood on the site. The church had burned down. Three times. People finally caught a clue. But while the building had been deconsecrated, the land had not, and thus, Charlotte could not leave the grounds.

  Nann’s late Great-Aunt Nancy, the unofficial Arch Druid of Upstate New York, had left her great-niece a nice house in Port Argent, the town directly west. It was Aunt Nancy who had begun regular tea-time with the vampire. Nann kept up the tradition, partly to honor her aunt, but also because Charlotte got lonely. Rarely was a visit with her less than interesting.

  She walked up the stairs that separated Greenpoint Books from her friend Zinnia’s art gallery. The second floor landing led to Zinnia’s apartment door on the right, and the landlord Tim’s door on the left. But Nann kept climbing, despite Pokey’s wheezing breaths.

  Two packages sat outside the door. One was from some science supply place, the other from Chewy.com. In the foyer sat a coffin on a dais. It served as the local Vampire Hunter Society meeting room, as well as Charlotte’s daylight resting place. The lid was askew. Nann pulled open a door that looked boarded up. Inside, the apartment was dark.

  “Charlotte?” Nann called out. The vampire’s appearance could be off-putting at the best of times. She really didn’t want Charlotte leaping out of the gloom.

  “Rrr.”

  She looked down to see Toast, Charlotte’s cat, circling her ankles. The cat had ugly brown, black and gray markings, and didn’t meow. Still, Nann got the message: feed me. She set the boxes on the kitchen counter and found a bag of cat food. When she dumped it into the bowl, Toast went to town.

  Pokey grunted.

  Nann had purchased a small transistor radio for just this purpose. She stuck a bud in her ear and turned it on.

  “If that cat eats too fast, he’s gonna go in the corner and barf,” Pokey said. “That’s what I do.”

  Alarm rose. “You do?”

  Pokey blinked. “Well, that’s what I would do, if you weren’t such a good familiar.”

  She reached down to scratch behind Toast’s ears, hoping to distract him. No soap. She filled his water bowl and set it down. The cat ate on.

  “Hey, Nann, you’d better see this.” She heard Pokey’s voice in her ear, although the pig was nowhere to be seen. She headed toward the living room.

  Charlotte sat in a recliner, eyes closed, looking very dead. Usually, the vampire wore her hair in an elaborate French Revolution-era up-do. Tonight, she wore a low cut, black dress like Elvira. (Or Vampira. Maybe Morticia Addams?) Her flaming red hair hung straigh
t down. She looked like a regular vampire cliché.

  Nann cleared her throat. Slowly, red eyes opened, and moved to focus on her. “Ah, Nancy Ann Szymanski. What brings you here?”

  “It’s new moon. We have a regular tea thing going.”

  Charlotte blinked. “New moon already?”

  “Yeah, your blood order was sitting on the landing, along with Toast’s food.”

  “Sacre bleu! Please don’t tell me the dry ice has evaporated.”

  Nann shrugged. “The package felt cold.” If the blood got warm, would it be bad?

  “Thank goodness. Toast loves it when I make a dry ice fog on the floor.”

  Okay…

  “Are you feeling all right, Charlotte?”

  From the kitchen came the uck-uck-uck sound of impending cat explosion.

  “Toast!” Charlotte raised a hand, pointing a finger with a long red nail. “Ne vomissez pas!”

  The puking noise ceased.

  Speaking of, Charlotte grabbed a peanut butter cookie from a package on the table beside her. She tossed it to Pokey, who caught it in mid-air. Nann frowned.

  “I have never felt better,” Charlotte said. “I am merely gathering my energies. As a Druid, you well know that the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest this time of year. I want to look my best when I walk among mortals.”

  The vampire tossed her hair. Nann felt her stomach drop.

  “Walk among mortals?”

  Charlotte waved her hands. “It’s a regular thing. Ne mettez pas votre culotte dans un tas.”

  Nann really needed to take one of those on-line French classes.

  “I do apologize for not having tea prepared.”

  “That’s okay, I’m pretty bushed anyway,” Nann said.

  “Thank you for understanding. Could you do me a favor?”

  “What’s that?”

  The vampire nodded at the remote control. “Could you find ‘The Wire?’ on my streaming service? Binge watching helps me meditate.”

  Friday, Oct. 16

  “Sorry, I’m gonna have to break our date.” Deputy Keith Schwenk was on the phone.

  Nann set down the book catalogues she’d been looking through. “Again?”

  “Possible homicide.”

  “Again?”

  Keith sighed. “You know I don’t like to talk about ongoing investigations, but this one is kinda spooky.”

  Amity Corners, known locally as Calamity Corners, was ground central for spooky. “How so?”

  “Let’s just say I’m surrounded by members of the VHS.”

  The Vampire Hunters Society, or maybe the Van Helsing Society. Either way, Charlotte’s words popped into Nann’s head. Had she been walking among mortals?

  Keith said, “How about lunch?”

  She and Keith had been seeing each other officially for a while now. Given the town’s proclivity for paranormal crimes, it seemed their relationship had reached a plateau. If lunch was the best she could get, she’d cancel the regular schedule with Zinnia, who owned the gallery next to the bookstore, and Tink, a shop goblin who ran a garage. They’d understand. And probably tease her. Whatevs.

  “The victim was Ted O’Connell, a financial advisor, and president of the Amity Corners Chamber of Commerce.” Keith arrived with Italian take out from one of the new restaurants in town. Since Nann arrived in Calamity Corners, fortunes had turned. The little town was doing much better with the paper mill up and running again. At least, financially the town was doing better.

  Keith had brought cannelloni, her favorite. Nann tucked in. “He was murdered?”

  “Won’t know until the post. But there was a vampire sighting outside his house.”

  “What does a vampire even look like?”

  Schwenk was a spaghetti-and-meatballs guy. “Like Elvira, or Morticia, but with red hair instead of black. White skin, red eyes, the usual.”

  “Tight black dress?” Nann raised a brow. “Lots of cleavage?”

  Keith shrugged. “We just need to know if the sighting and the death are connected. The VHS says it is, but they’re a bunch of knuckle heads.”

  Nann had various run-ins with Calamity Corners’ vampire crowd. She had to agree. “Either way, you’re drowning in paperwork and you have to work all weekend.”

  “That about covers it.” His eyes apologized.

  Saturday, Oct. 17

  So she spent Saturday night curled up on the couch with Pokey.

  “Since when do they show nothing but monster movies all through October?” She heard his voice in her earbud.

  “I guess that’s how we celebrate Halloween now. You love scary movies.”

  “Yeah, but not all in a row.” Pokey said. “Speaking of celebrating, why don’t we grab that big bowl of Snickers?”

  Nann kept a bowl of candy high on a plant stand, out of Pokey’s reach. “Those are for trick-or-treaters. That’s too much sugar for you.”

  “You fed me French fries and ice cream the other day,” Pokey snorted. “You really think anyone is going to come all the way up that windy-ass road to get a snack sized candy bar?”

  The doorbell rang. “See?”

  Pokey squinted at her. “Trick-or-treat isn’t for two weeks.”

  Zinnia let herself in. The short, curvy blonde had befriended Nann ever since she arrived from Brooklyn. It was Zinnia who suggested the space where the bookstore now operated. “Hey, Nann, I tried to catch you, but you were doing Keith for lunch. Sorry. Lunch with Keith. Hey, Pokey.”

  Pokey backed up, falling off the couch. Slinking as best a pig could, he hurried out of the living room.

  “Oh, c’mon, I’m not gonna eat you.” Zinnia’s face fell. Zinnia turned into an alligator on the full moon. Pigs were a favorite of alligators.

  “Ignore him,” Nann said. “You want a Snickers?”

  “I’m fat enough,” Zinnia said. She wasn’t really fat, just overly curvaceous and underly tall. She grabbed one from the bowl. “Okay, what the heck.”

  “Hey!” Pokey said in the earbud.

  Nann turned off the little radio. “What’s up, Zinn?”

  “The Fall Festival. I’m hoping we could share a booth.”

  They sat on the couch, Nann with her own Snickers. “Bookstores never make money at those things.”

  “I know, but I’m kinda broke. My paintings usually sell at the festival, and I could use the money. I just can’t shell out five hundred bucks for a booth. You have lots of spooky stuff in the store. Your store is in the business district, so you’re a chamber member whether you like it or not. What do you say?”

  “Samhain’s on the thirty-first,” Nann said. “I need to light the bonfires.”

  “No, Halloween’s the thirty-first,” Zinnia said. “Oh, c’mon, there’ll be people from out of town, there’s a cool costume parade and contest—you could dress like a Druid.”

  Nann looked down at herself. “I’m dressed like a Druid right now.”

  “And… the other thing.”

  It took a moment for Nann to figure it out. “Oh, right. There’s a full moon on Samhain. Halloween.”

  “Please?” Zinnia’s expression looked much like Pokey’s when he wanted a Snickers.

  How could she refuse? “Fine, I’ll do it.”

  “Thanks, Nann!” Zinnia gave her a big hug.

  If nothing else, it would give Nann the chance to visit the Chamber of Commerce. If there was anything supernatural going on, she would find it.

  Monday, Oct. 19

  Nann wasn’t particularly crafty, but her Aunt Nancy had been. She grabbed a ball of yarn from one of her aunt’s knitting bags before leaving the house. At the store, she practiced a spell before heading to the CoC at lunch. She sprinkled the yarn with dragonfly wing dust (yuck!) and made a cat’s cradle with her fingers.

  Athena, Arachne, catch in your weave

  A slight of hand, a trick up the sleeve

  Any attempt to distort or deceive

  Or magically misdirect�
�I shall perceive.

  When she felt that she was good enough at the simple ceremony, she grabbed two hundred fifty clams from Zinnia and asked her to watch the bookstore. The Amity Corners Chamber of Commerce was “downtown.” It was located in a low building on Third Street not far from the sheriff’s substation and the Humane Society.

  There were a bunch of people milling around in the lobby. Nann snuck into a chair in the corner, eavesdropping. Most of the conversation was between various members, and a good-looking woman with close cropped hair and a snug black dress. Jeanette Knox, Nann read the nameplate on her desk—Chamber VP. Most of the talk centered around Ted O’Connell, the late CoC president, and how his death would affect the Fall Festival.

  Nann did her thing, pulling the skein out of her conjure bag. She whispered the incantation as she made a cat’s cradle with the yarn. As discreetly as she could, she surveyed the room through the strands. People came and went. Nothing magic-related appeared.

  But someone did—someone loud. “I need to know what’s going on with the Fall Festival. As I’ve said, this Chamber is too important to be led by a bunch of local business owners. We need to hire an executive. There are many new businesses in the district, and we can’t just fritter away those new resources.”

  The line in front of Jeanette’s office parted before a statuesque brunette. Nann squinted at her through the cat’s cradle of yarn. Regular person. But she recognized the woman. While Nann didn’t follow politics in Calamity Corners (she’d had enough of it in her own town), she knew Esme Swinehart. The woman recently swept an election to a seat on the town council. Rumor had it she was heading for the mayor’s office.

  This made sense, since everything she said sounded like a stump speech. Even as she stood over VP Jeanette’s desk, Esme seemed to address the waiting throng. “I’ve just come from town hall. None of the accounts for Public Works, Parks and Rec, police or fire services have been funded.”