There was no one in the coffeeshop but Victor and Morgan. Victor looked up from where he leaned on the counter, reading something on his phone. He pocketed the phone, stood up with a quick smile, said something I didn't hear, and retired to the back room of the coffeeshop.
Morgan leaned her elbows on the counter and raised a single eyebrow as she smiled at me crookedly, the corners of her mouth turning up and making her face lighten. She leaned a little lower on the counter and cocked her head to the side like a wolf.
“Hello,” I said, coming forward, pressing my hands on the counter, as I had at home, when I had felt so certain, when I’d known what I had to do. Faced with her eyes, faced with the smile that held the knowledge of last night, I felt weak-kneed. I took a deep breath.
“I have to tell you something,” I whispered, and I leaned forward and kissed her.
Morgan was all cinnamon today, and cardamom and clove, hot spices licking along the boundaries of my mouth like fire.
“Yes?” she said, gazing at me, her eyes soft and warm, her smile just for me. When she spoke that single word, it held the world.
“I love you,” I told her, the phrase sliding into the space between us, red and bright. “I love you,” I repeated, as I held her gaze. “I needed you to know that I love you.” I reached between us, gripping her hand tightly. “You’re amazing. I can’t believe I’m so lucky that I met you, that I fell in love with you, and I hope…” I swallowed. “I hope so much that you’ve been falling in love with you, too. You give me so much joy. Your very presence in my life…you…” I took a deep breath and rubbed at my eyes with my other hand as I felt tears prick the edges, grappling for the words in the book I'd borrowed from the library, the book that I'd gotten in secret, reading it in small snatches when I could. “You pierce my soul,” I told her quietly, leaning against the counter. It was a quote from her favorite book, from Persuasion, but in that moment, they were my words and only mine, and a great and powerful truth that I needed her to know.
Over the counter, she leaned again, drew me close, drew me to her like a moth to a flickering light. “I love you,” she told me, then, three words that held me as tightly as she did when I kissed her. And I did—I kissed her again; I put my arms about her shoulders and drew her close, holding her to me as if she were the most precious thing in my universe.
Which she was.
I sighed, pressing my forehead to hers, feeling the thrum of her blood, feeling the thrum of mine, how they intertwined in some sort of mythical harmony, music of flesh and stardust, merging.
“I…knew you were coming,” she told me then. And, completing the most solid, reassuring moments in my life, she handed me an already made latte with a wolfish grin.
I kissed her again, fiercely. Just for good measure.
---
My mom arrived at five o'clock exactly—as in, literally, on the dot. My phone dinged, because I—ever vigilant daughter that I am—had set an alarm for my mother's arrival, and she swept through the café’s front door, along with some autumn leaves and a big boost of wind that smelled like bonfires. She was wearing her witchy best, which included her best witch hat, the black tip grazing the ceiling in the café. The coven spread out behind her, also wearing witch hats.
Since it was October and so close to Halloween, with the Hallow's Eve Fair tomorrow, everyone in the Witch Way Café assumed these ladies were in costume and applauded their arrival, as if they were about to begin a play.
Completely undaunted by the applause and expectant looks, my mom, Nancy and Sandy began a scene from Hamlet, with double, double, toil and troubles occupying the customers’ attention for about five minutes. There was thunderous applause, then, a standing ovation from my packed diner, and then I was ushering the coven into the back room, where I could embrace them.
“The café is looking wonderful, sweetheart. Bette’s going to just be so happy with it, and you're looking so well, too!” said Mom, going from a hug to a shoulder-length eyeball of me, and then back to a hug again. “Oh, Nan, doesn't she look beautiful? She's positively glowing.”
“Of course, of course,” said Nancy, patting my mother's arm. “But she has customers to attend to.”
“We can help!” said Sandy, with a smile.
I shook my head with a grin. “You guys are wonderful, but don’t worry. I got this!” I smiled widely, pointing to the back door. “Why don't you go look at the carnival setup, and I'll be done before you know it, yeah? I close up in about an hour, so it won’t take very long.” They agreed, and I tightened my apron’s sashes.
This had become the busiest day I'd had yet in the café. Halloween apparently brought everyone and their brother to Wolf Town, and everyone and their brother had to eat, which was very encouraging for business. I sighed for a moment, leaning against the door as I watched my mother and her friends walk through the meadow toward the woods and the carnival that was halfway set up, and I felt my smile deepen. I’d missed them, and now they were here for the best day of the year: Halloween.
Content, I went back into the café proper and took another order for flapjacks.
As six o’clock inched ever closer, the minutes began to fly faster and faster, until I flipped the sign from “open” to “closed,” the glitter on the sign sparkling like never before as I said goodbye to my very last customers of the day. I closed the door behind them, hand over my heart, utter relief pooling down my spine and into the earth.
“Your aunt needs to hire someone else to help you,” said Winnie, as I began to stack the dirty plates on top of themselves, balancing mugs on top of those. I laughed a little, shook my head. “We’ll see about that,” I told her with a smile, pushing the kitchen door open with my hip and jerking my chin toward the meadow behind the café. “Hey—can you go see if some witches are wandering around back there?” I chuckled.
She gave me a captain's salute and went to peek. I stacked the plates ever higher and transported them to the gargantuan sink at a record pace. I wondered for a fleeting moment if adding roller skates to my ensemble would make things move a little faster.
“No,” said Winnie, popping her head through the door to the back room. “No witches.”
Huh. I gathered up the last of the silverware, deposited it into the sink, and took off my apron. I didn't want to ask the obvious question of “Where could they possibly have gotten to?” because it was my mother and her cohorts. The answer to that question was anywhere.
I donned my fuzzy sweater, and, hands deep in pockets, I ventured out into the town square.
Oh, October, I thought, glancing up at the trees that rocked back and forth in the chill wind, the lights in the windows of the houses, the strings of orange bulbs tacked up along the porches. Pumpkins grinned, edging the line of the sidewalk, triangle eyes seeming to watch me as I stalked through the crunchiest of leaves. My mother wasn’t out behind the shop, as Winnie had said. I wondered, for a fleeting moment, if the coven had ventured further into the woods, which I wouldn't put past them. But night was falling, the workmen were closing up shop for the day, and I didn't see my mother or her friends with them.
I stalked down the sidewalk and would have passed the Ninth Order, except that I physically couldn't pass it without stopping in to say hello (and kiss) Morgan. So I ducked inside the coffeeshop.
And Morgan was there, sitting at one of the larger round tables, surrounded by the coven. My mom and her friends were all chuckling at something Morgan had just said, sipping various caffeinated beverages and still wearing their witch hats. It is a truth universally acknowledged that, while average, non-Wolf Town witches can’t fly on brooms, we certainly do love dressing the part of the stereotypical witch in October.
“Mom,” I said, raising a single brow and placing my hands on my hips, “don’t you think I’m a little old for you to be interrogating my girlfriend of choice?”
“They opted for conversation instead of interrogation, I promise,” said Morgan, winking at me, eyes warm, m
aking my knees melt just a little.
“You know, she's absolutely wonderful! I approve!” said Mom, standing, giving me the biggest, warmest hug. “I can see why you like her,” she told me, nodding. And then my mother actually winked at me.
I'd just gotten her approval on a girlfriend—for the first time in my life.
I needed to sit down.
“Let's all go to dinner! Pizza! My treat!” said Morgan, magnanimously spreading her arms.
“Good catch on this one, sweetheart. And she's a feminist!” hissed Nan to me, as we left the Ninth Order. Her grin was as big as a sickle moon.
Chapter 16: The Fair
The next day, I knew it was time to close up the diner when I heard fiddle music.
It had been, by far, the biggest day of orders and cooking, and I was tired (well, exhausted, really), but all of that seemed to fade away when we heard music starting up outside about a half hour after six. Thankfully, the people that had remained in the diner paid their bills and milled out by themselves, listening to the fiddle player that began to walk through the town, listening to the woman who followed him, singing about Halloween.
I went to the café window, looked out as the fiddle player and singer passed, felt a chill travel up my spine. Her voice was haunting, his music doubly so. He was wearing a court jester outfit, cradling the fiddle to his chin lovingly, and the woman following him was dressed like a brightly-colored harlequin. The musician and singer seemed to dance around one another, the one playing, the other singing her heart out, like a Pied Piper of goblins, of ghouls. They lured the people of the town (mostly in costume) to follow them, out of Wolf Town proper, out into the forest. To the Hallow's Eve Fair.
My mother and her friends had spent most of the day exploring Wolf Town, and I could see them gathering together on the sidewalk outside. I waved to my mother through the glass and she smiled warmly at me, crooking her finger toward her. I held up my hand—five minutes, I mouthed—and darted upstairs to the apartment as fast as my tiredness allowed. I took the quickest shower of my life, and then slowed down, reverently donning my best witch things.
A tiered and lacy black skirt went on over spiderweb tights, and I pulled on a black sweater over a purple blouse. I grabbed my witch hat (I’ve had it since I was a teenager, when we had a “hat decoarating party” on my mother’s porch and I hot glued a bunch of spiders to it, because I was a teenager and spiders were apparently cool then), plopped it on my head and dashed downstairs.
We all met down in front of the Witch Way Cafe. The lights of the shop were off, but the streetlamps and the little orange lights draped around the street trees, cast us all in a relief lighting of fine witchery. We were dressed to the nines and looked quite picturesque together. We posed, linking arms, when Sandy brandished her digital camera.
“All right! Let's fly, girls,” said Nan winking, even as we all groaned at the terrible pun, and we were off, out into the cool night of a Halloween delight.
In two days, it would be Samhain. I could feel the veil between worlds thinning, could feel the spirits stirring along the edges of the world, as we walked down the street, ducking out between the shops, towards the woods, following the stringed lights that seemed to make a pathway, tiki torches guttering flame as other people fell in line.
The entire forest had been transformed. There were orange and purple and green lights everywhere, hung up so high in the trees, I wondered how anyone without wings had gotten them up there (and then realized that someone with wings had probably gotten them up there, and then stopped thinking about it, because that was going to be an odd train of thought). Grapevine orbs wrapped in lights were suspended from varying lengths of ribbon, shining down on the brightly colored tents and booths, interspersed across the forest floor. The tents were positioned in a large, rough circle. In the center of the created fair square, people in masks and elaborate costumes hula hooped with hoops that seemed to be on fire, women ate fire off of burning sticks and spat it back out into the air like dragons. More women and men danced with spheres of fire, poi, that swung from bright chains. It seemed that everyone swayed to the music of the fiddle player that rose all around us.
There were lovely things for sale in the tents (I spotted hand-knit socks that were luring me like sirens) and warm, mulled cider to drink, and puppet shows to laugh at and dancing to watch. I felt like I'd gone back five hundred years, but sideways. This was not a fair from the middle ages, but a fair from a middle ages that had actually had werewolves and magic and, you know, no Black Death. My mother and the coven were delighted, but I was bewitched, enchanted at the man in the cat mask who walked along the little paths on stilts, towering over me, the raven girls who wore masks over their faces, and—with long, black capes—were doing some sort of complicated, whirling dance that I felt in my stomach as much as watched with my eyes.
I felt a set of warm fingers along the skin of my arm and turned to look. A familiar, beguiling woman with long, red hair, and a crimson mask smiled wolfishly down at me.
“Hello,” growled Morgan, and we embraced and kissed as the raven girls began to circle around us, the fiddler weaving his bow so quickly across the strings, I thought he might set fire to them.
“Hello,” I told her, when we drew a little back, when the dancing had moved on from us, applause following them like little birds as they darted and whirled, impossible to watch without feeling vertigo. “This is magic,” I told her, threading my arm through hers, as she began to lead me along the corridor of tents. A woman walking in front of us wore fairy wings, and for half a heartbeat, I thought the wings actually moved, but then—I might have been seeing things.
“I'm so glad you like it,” she whispered into my ear, her breath warm, spiced like cider. She tucked her own arm about my waist, then, like we were Victorian ladies, strolling down a moonlit boardwalk. This was anytime and anyplace, as I felt the magic sharpen around us, delicious and full. The sky smiled down, a sickle moon drifting along the sea of stars, and all was right with this Halloween world.
Until I felt a pricking along the back of my neck. I shuddered a little, lifted my head. I saw nothing out of the ordinary for this Hallow's Eve Fair…children laughed and chased one another, the fiddler was plucking his strings, but—just the same—I felt a sensation along the back of my neck of a line of sight pressing along my skin, of being watched, and I turned in spite of myself.
“What's the matter?” asked Morgan, brows furrowed as she followed my gaze. I shook my head, composed my face, smiled up at her.
“Nothing,” I told her, but it didn't sound sincere. I coughed a little.
“I'll get you some cider,” she said, brushing her warm, soft lips along my forehead. In a heartbeat, she was gone, leaving a void of cold air where her warmth had been.
Again, I turned, looked over my shoulder. Again, the sensation of being watched sharpened until it was all I could feel. Admittedly, I was in the middle of a crowd of people—anyone could have been glancing at me, but it wasn’t that type of sensation that I felt along the surface of my skin. And, anyway, I could see no one actually watching me. The laughter surrounding me, the cacophony of voice, sounded far off, distant, as a tunnel formed along my vision.
For some strange reason, at that moment, I thought about the fairies.
And then, along the edge of the woods, I saw a woman with red hair bound into a loose ponytail, a woman wearing a mask. Morgan. She was walking away into the forest.
What? I took a couple of steps, glancing around. What was she doing? She’d said she was going to get us cider, and now…
But then, my stomach clenched as I saw what was ahead of her. The glimmer of what she followed.
An orb of light spun in the air, leading Morgan further into the woods.
Was she bewitched? What was happening? She walked stiffly, woodenly, as if she was marching. She walked forward as if she was under some sort of spell.
It wasn’t a good feeling I had as I stared after her,
debating what I should do. But as I glanced around in the crowd, I didn’t see anyone I knew, and anyway, everything was happening too fast. She was moving too quickly, and there wasn’t enough time.
I took off after her at a dead run, moving through the crowd as best as I was able to until I’d gotten out from the press of bodies and began to weave between the trees instead.
For a woman simply walking, Morgan was moving fast. Probably because the sphere was moving so quickly, too, but she was already far ahead of me when I went between the trees.
What was happening? I hitched up my skirts and pounded across the forest floor, intent on reaching her, on grabbing her arm, on stopping her and breaking whatever spell the sphere had over her. If it even had bewitched her. But I couldn’t think of any other reason for Morgan leaving the festivities and walking, oddly calm, collected, back poker-straight, into the forest for any other fact than something wasn’t right.
Were the fairies up to something? What was going on?
Twilight was slowly fading to full-on night, and I’m not exactly the best at night vision. When I tripped over the branch, it wasn’t delicate how I fell, and I landed with a very loud expletive and “oof.”
Morgan was only ahead of me by about ten feet at that point.
“Morgan?” I called out, panic making my word high-pitched. She’d had no reaction when I fell, when I made that sound, even though the woods were relatively quiet here, the distant festivities muted and almost silent as far out from the carnival as we’d come. “Morgan?” I repeated louder.
Nothing. She kept walking. She didn’t turn around.
Something was very wrong.
I got up, then winced as I put weight down on my ankle. Great. I’m not exactly a fainting damsel kind of lady, so whether my ankle was twisted or not, I kept going, gritting my teeth together at the pain that was radiating up from my leg. But I kept going, anxiety beginning to build in my heart, worry consuming me. Morgan strode forward so quickly, I’d never be able to catch up with her now.
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