by Bailey Cates
“I did,” I said. “Though Lucy and Ben surprised me with the bed.” I led her into the bedroom where the scrolled ironwork headboard of their gift was silhouetted against the Williamsburg blue wall.
“It’s all lovely,” she said. Back in the living room, her gaze rose to the loft above, stopping on the secretary desk. The front lid was closed as usual, since I opened it only when I wanted access to the contents. “I remember that piece—and what Lucy used it for.” Her eyes flicked to me. “Your altar?”
“Yes.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her face.
It didn’t take long to point out the bathroom and kitchen. Then I led her through the French doors to the small covered patio. She paused, but I took her hand and pulled her out to the backyard, past the new fire pit to the curving gardens I’d designed with love and created with sweat. Mungo ran ahead of us, turning to wait by the blooming Daphne bush. Its sweet scent filled the air.
“In the summer this area is planted with vegetables, with a few herbs thrown in. Right now only hardy greens, alliums, and brassicas are doing well in the cold.” I pointed to the cold frame. “I’ll be putting starts in there soon, though. And over here is the real herb garden—medicinal plants as well as culinary.”
“And magical,” she said.
“And magical,” I agreed.
“You have natural water on your property?” She pointed to the stream that ran for a few feet across the back corner of the vegetable garden.
“How lucky is that? I never knew how handy it would be for casting.”
She pressed her lips together, saw me watching, and forced a smile. Turning, she began walking toward the gazebo. “This looks new.”
“I had it built. The carpenter wanted to paint it, but I wanted to be able to see and touch—and smell—the bare cedar.”
Stepping up to the interior, she ran a finger over the smooth wood of the broom handle leaning against the wall. Then she looked down and raised her eyebrows. I’d painted a purple star in the center of the floor. It was about ten inches in diameter and outlined in white—not an obvious pentagram, but useful nonetheless.
“This is your sacred circle,” she said as Mungo ran inside and lay down smack-dab in the middle of the star.
“My favorite place to cast, outside with the elements but not, you know, in them. And no one notices me in here.” At least so far. “Though I haven’t been dancing around out here naked, either. I think that might garner some attention, circle or no circle.”
“Hmm. Witches have largely given that up since the advent of wooly sweaters. Still, on a hot summer’s night . . .”
I felt myself beginning to blush and turned away. Mungo bounded out of the gazebo and rolled in the grass. I laughed. “Silly bear.”
Suddenly he stood to attention, looked at the house, and streaked across to the French doors.
Yip Yip Yip Yip Yip!
What on earth? Alarmed, I ran across the yard and opened the door. He dashed inside, heading straight for the door.
“Is someone here?” I went to the shutter on the window and opened it all the way. There was no one on the front porch, no car at the curb. “What is the matter with you?”
“Katie,” my mother said in a strangled voice.
I whirled to see her pointing to the floor in front of the door. “What . . . ?” And then I saw the paper.
The dark red paper folded into a bat.
While Mama and I had been in the backyard, someone had walked right up to my house and slipped it under my door. So much for that rosemary topiary.
I yanked the door open and ran out to the front yard, looking wildly around as if I’d missed someone standing there when I looked out the window. Out on the public sidewalk, I checked left and right, but there was no traffic, and I didn’t see any vehicles that seemed unfamiliar. Mungo ran out into the street, and I called him back.
The hinges next door creaked as Margie came out to her porch, Bart clinging to her leg. The JJs ran down the front steps and out to the mailbox. Reaching above their heads, they managed to open the front. Hopping up and down, they tried to reach the mail inside, but the carrier must have shoved it to the back. My mother, who had followed me as far as the driveway, hurried over to help them before I had the chance.
Waving, Margie called, “Thanks!”
Striding past my mother and up the Coopersmiths’ front path, I grabbed the railing and stood on the lowest step. Mungo stopped by my heel and sat down.
My neighbor looked surprised. “You’re white as a sheet, darlin’.”
“Did you see anyone come to my door?”
She craned her neck around to look at the front of the carriage house. “No.”
“Anyone on the street in the last ten minutes?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t looking.”
The one time Margie wasn’t keeping tabs on everyone. What good was a nosy neighbor if you couldn’t count on her to be nosy?
Bless her heart.
I swore to myself at the same time I pasted a smile on my face. “Just wondering. I thought I heard a knock at the door when we were in the backyard.”
Relief erased the worry from her forehead. “Whew! I thought something must be awful wrong.” She eyed Mungo. “You ever find out what the deal was with this one?”
“I think he just didn’t want to be left alone today.”
She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Oh, brother. You’re a spoiled one, aren’t you?”
Yip!
“He is,” I agreed, itching to get back and take another look at the bat. “Sorry he made such a ruckus.”
Margie waved away my apology.
Mama came up then, Jonathan skipping on one side and Julia on the other, their sticky hands firmly enveloped in hers. Jonathan broke loose and ran to give his mother the mail.
She flipped through it one-handed. “As usual—bills and bull.” She grinned at my mother. “Thanks for rescuing them. They do love to bring it to me.”
My mother smiled. “Those two are delightful. Just delightful.” She leaned over and ruffled their blond hair. “Wish I could tuck you in my pocket and take you home.”
I watched with a combination of fascination and surprise.
Standing upright, she said, “Come on, Katie. Let’s go have that tea before Lucy and Ben get here.”
“Uh. Okay. Bye, Margie.”
“See you,” she said, and went back inside.
“Seeee yoooouuu,” the JJs called in unison as we walked away.
Stepping carefully around the origami bat, I closed the door and grabbed my cell phone out of my tote bag. Mungo advanced on the piece of paper lying there so innocently. I mean, it was a piece of paper. But one sniff and he went bananas, barking and growling.
“Shhh.” I knelt beside him. “You’re not going to scare the thing.” But I was curious about what had set him off. Holding my hand above the bat, I waited for the feeling of sweet rot that Autumn’s bat had emanated.
There was nothing.
“Do you smell something on it?”
Yip!
Quinn’s phone rang three times, then went to voice mail. I left him a message about the unpleasant calling card I’d just received and went into the kitchen to find the kettle heating on the stove and my mother surveying the contents of my herb cupboard. She selected three jars and set them on the counter: chamomile for calm, basil for courage and protection, and lemon verbena for even more protection.
My mother might not practice formally anymore, but she was most definitely a hedgewitch at heart. The thought made my own heart warm. So did the fact that she was trying to protect me. I’d learned by now, however, that sometimes the standard magical protections didn’t always work when up against dark magic. When up against evil.
While the tea brewed, I locked the back door and checked a
ll the windows. Maybe the SUV had been aiming for Wren rather than me as Quinn had suggested, but now someone had threatened me, too.
Or was it a threat? What did those stupid bats mean?
“I wish Detective Quinn would call back,” I said, returning to the kitchen. “I hate leaving that thing on the floor, but I don’t want to touch it.”
“He will.” Mama poured our tea and carried it to the kitchen table. I put some peanut-butter swirl brownies on a plate, and we sat down. I was still hungry.
“How serious are you and Declan?” she asked, peering at me through the steam rising from her cup.
I shrugged. “Serious enough. Definitely exclusive. He’s trying to get me to go to Boston to meet his mother and sisters.” Part of me was thrilled that she was asking, and without the curled lip she had always used to ask about my former fiancé, Andrew. Another part of me remembered that curled lip and knew it could return.
“Does he know?” she asked.
“That I’m a witch? I didn’t tell him at first, but he’s known Lucy and Ben for a long time.” And his best friend, Steve’s brother, had been a druid. “So he wasn’t exactly surprised when I sprang the news.”
“And he’s obviously okay with it.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he really, you know, gets it, but that’s okay. I mean, how could he, not being of a magical persuasion himself?”
“You’re right, of course,” she said. “Look at Ben and Lucy. He just lets her be who she is. That’s a lot.”
I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms, but the thought made me happy.
“But it doesn’t sound like you two are serious enough that I can start thinking about grandchildren,” she said. “At least not yet.”
Stunned, I took another sip of tea, gathering my thoughts. “I noticed that you were pretty taken by those twins next door.”
She sighed, dreamy-eyed as a girl thinking about her prom date. Good heavens.
“So that has me wondering—if you like kids so much, why don’t I have any brothers or sisters? Or is it just grandkids that you want because you can send them home to their parents?”
“Oh, no. I love children. But as soon as it became so evident that you had . . . abilities, your father and I came to believe that the double whammy of hereditary hedgewitchery combined with a shamanic bloodline probably shouldn’t be repeated.”
I honestly didn’t know whether to be insulted or not, so I took another sip of tea and shelved her answer for later consideration. Luckily, my phone rang before I had to come up with a way to change the subject.
It was Quinn. “What’s this about another one of those blasted bats?” he demanded.
“Someone slipped it under my door, just like they did with Wren.”
“When did this happen?”
I looked at my watch. “About an hour ago.”
“You were home?” He sounded incredulous. “That’s ballsy. Sorry. I mean bold.”
“My mother and I were in the backyard. Mungo heard something and alerted us, but by the time we got to the door, no one was there.”
“What did you do with it?”
“Nothing. I left it right where we found it. Mungo might have nudged it with his nose—he definitely smelled something on it—but otherwise it’s still what I guess you would call ‘in situ.’”
“Don’t touch it. I’ll be right over.”
Chapter 18
Detective Quinn arrived with a crime scene tech, asked his questions, took a bunch of pictures, and bagged the origami evidence. As he was finishing up, Lucy and Ben drove up in the Thunderbird. They got out, opened the back door, and pulled out to-go containers that smelled amazing even across the yard. Moments later Declan arrived clad in his dark uniform slacks and a light blue T-shirt with the Savannah firefighter logo on it.
“I’m sorry, Katie,” Quinn was saying as everyone trooped over to where we stood on the lawn. “There’s not a lot I can do. I’ll make sure patrol drives by more often, same as for Wren.”
My mother pulled Lucy and Ben aside, and I watched as my aunt’s eyes grew wide and a thunderous expression descended on my uncle’s face. No doubt Mama was telling them why Detective Quinn was making a house call.
“Thanks.” I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t like I expected the police to post a guard on my house because of a piece of paper.
Declan closed the door of his truck with a thunk and crossed the yard to the driveway. He walked around the Bug, shaking his head as he examined the damage with a troubled expression. Then he strode over to where we stood. “Detective Quinn? Did you find the driver of the SUV?”
Quinn wagged his head no. “We’re working on it. One witness got the last two digits of the license plate, and we have reports of the vehicle being either a Porsche Cayenne or one of the BMW X series.”
“Then why . . . ?”
“He’s here because someone slipped an origami bat under my door.”
Quinn held up the evidence bag he’d tucked the folded paper into.
Declan frowned, and it occurred to me that he didn’t know anything about the bats. Since he’d been working the last forty-eight hours, our conversations had been relatively short and sweet.
Now I said, “Autumn had one of those in her hand when she died. Then someone left one for Wren—and after the hit-and-run this afternoon, we’re pretty sure it’s a threat. Right?” I asked Quinn.
“Better to be safe than sorry,” the detective said.
Mama drew in a sharp breath, and her fingers crept to her mouth as if she were trying to keep her thoughts to herself. Apparently she hadn’t taken the bat seriously before.
My boyfriend put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close. “Don’t worry, Ms. Lightfoot,” he said. “I’ll run off any evildoers.” He tried a smile but didn’t quite pull it off. His word choice bothered me. Evildoers, indeed. I glanced over to see my mother and aunt weren’t smiling, though both looked relieved that I’d have a guard.
“All night?” my mother demanded.
Declan looked uncomfortable. Quinn looked amused.
“All night,” I confirmed. I was a grown woman and I could have overnight guests if I wanted. So there.
Still, it was a good thing Mama was staying with Lucy and Ben. The day had been eventful, and by necessity we’d fast-tracked getting to know each other again—better than before, actually—but I still didn’t think I was ready to have her hang out at the carriage house with Declan and me all night.
“When will we be able to get into the Georgia Wild offices to work?” I asked Quinn. “We might need to replace some of the donation requests that were ruined after that crazy driver made us drop them.”
“We released the scene a little while ago,” he said. “You can go back anytime you want.”
Declan sighed.
“Have you heard how Wren is?” I asked my aunt.
Lucy grimaced. “She’s pretty banged up—she hit her head, and her arm is broken in two places. Mimsey took her home from the hospital—Mimsey’s home, of course—about an hour ago and is watching her like a mama bird.”
“More like a grandmamma bird. I’m glad Wren wasn’t hurt any worse and that she has Mimsey to look after her. She’s in the safest place she can be.”
I invited Detective Quinn to stay for supper, but he said he had to get going. He drove off, and the rest of us dished out the upscale comfort food Lucy and Ben had brought from Zunzi’s: simple hummus with pita bread, lasagna, meat loaf, and their Indian curry stew along with a big romaine salad. We loaded our plates in the kitchen buffet style and went into the living room to find places to settle in and eat.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I took a big bite of curry and rice and nearly moaned, it was so good. Silence fell over us all as we dug into the savory repast. Mungo lapped at the dab of hummus I’d put o
n a plate next to his lasagna.
Ben updated us on the bake sale for Georgia Wild. While Mama and I had been gallivanting around dentist offices and bars that afternoon, he’d had stickers made that announced the fund-raiser, picked them up, and then convinced some of the customers still hanging out at the Honeybee to help put them on the mailers that Steve and Annette had rescued from the street.
“I made it to the post office just before it closed. And as long as the print shop was making stickers, I asked the guy I work with over there to do a quick and dirty design for a flyer, which he did and then copied off a couple hundred of them for me.”
Mama looked pleased. “That’s wonderful, Ben. I was afraid we’d have to scrap the idea altogether after the . . . events this afternoon.” Her eyes cut to me.
Ben grinned. “As mellow as we Southerners sound, we’re really pretty good at getting things done down here, you know. I gave out a bunch of the flyers for customers to hand out to their friends, and Croft and Annette both posted them in their stores. I’ll e-mail the DBA members tonight and get the ball rolling there.”
“I’ll help tomorrow,” Mama said to him; then to me, “I’m going to fill in for you at the Honeybee tomorrow. That way you can sleep late.”
I finished chewing a bite of lettuce and swallowed. “I never sleep late. You know that.”
“After your day, I think you’ll sleep better than you think tonight. Either way, take it easy tomorrow. Heal up a little.”
“That’s a good idea, Mary Jane. We’re happy to have you,” Ben said.
Lucy smiled fondly at her sister. After all the hurt between them, it was an encouraging sign.
Declan looked alarmed. “Heal? Is there something I don’t know?”
I shook my head. “Just bruises, Deck. No big deal. But Mama? Are you sure you want to start your vacation by getting up at five in the morning and going to work?”
She snorted. “First off, it’s a visit, not a vacation, and it started by learning you’re involved in a murder and then watching you almost get run down in the street. Believe me, hitting the kitchen early in the morning will be a welcome change.”