Chloe shrugged. Liza watched in amusement as Chloe lowered her crimson face and gazed down at her cheap flip flops. People were so ready for the change of season they’d brought out the summer clothes as soon as the temps hit sixty. “It’s just, you know, I met this guy online and…”
“Have you only met him online?” Liza asked gently, trying to keep the concern in her voice light. She wasn’t exactly full of motherly instincts but she’d watched a lot of Lifetime movies and Law and Order: SVU episodes.
“Well, yeah, but he just lives an hour from here. He’s in high school too,” Chloe explained. “We’re talking about meeting up and doing something.”
“In a public place, Chloe,” Liza warned her. “And tell people, especially your parents, where you’re going.”
“Yeah, like, I know. We were going to go fishing or horseback riding or something. Maybe hiking.”
“But in a place where other people can see you,” Liza pressed again.
Liza had a sudden vision of Chloe sitting in the glow of her computer light late at night, giggling and typing when she should’ve been asleep. Her excitement and anticipation were palpable.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. My cousin owns some stables up in Lexington. We might meet there and go riding. I was just kinda hoping that you could give me some potion or something and help me out before I meet him,” she finished lamely.
Liza patted her on her shoulder. “I’ll see what I can do, okay? You just stay safe.”
Chloe bit her lip and nodded. As she turned and all but pranced towards the door, Liza called out her name again.
“Yeah?” Chloe paused and turned on her heel.
“Aren’t you meant to be in school?”
Chloe shrugged. “I’m homebound.”
“What for?” Liza asked, puzzled. The girl certainly didn’t move like she was sick; she had more energy than Liza Jane.
“Social anxiety,” Chloe said with a shrug. “I don’t do well with other people.”
With that, she turned and sauntered on out the door, leaving a confused Liza staring after her.
Social anxiety? And she wants to meet a random stranger she met online? Liza’s thoughts were scattered. Then she shrugged. Give it up, Liza. It’s a whole different world out there now.
Still, she planned on giving Chloe a good luck charm. And a protective one as well. The last thing she needed was to feel responsible for a young girl’s disappearance.
* * *
“BRYAR, I CAN’T UNDERSTAND a word you’re saying.”
“But he mmyptha…and then he sirjejirreea and then I ahehehehe,” Bryar Rose sobbed hysterically on the other end of the line.
“Okay, you’re going to have to try that again,” Liza said as she popped a piece of bread into her mouth. She wanted to give her sister her undivided attention, but she’d just heated up a loaf of French bread and it was so good when it was warm. She didn’t want to waste it, especially when the butter was all nice and melted.
“He’s been sleeping with Nicole Murphy, the lead singer from Kitten Nation,” Bryar moaned.
“Sounds like a You Tube Channel.”
“It’s not,” Bryar sniffed. “It’s a pop group. She’s twelve.”
“What?” Liza straightened on her couch, the fire in the hearth crackling from her sudden surge of energy. “Jayze is cheating on you with an underage girl!?”
“No,” Bryar replied with a watery sigh. “Not really. She’s twenty-one. But she doesn’t have an ass at all and her chest is flat. She might as well be twelve. She’s ten years younger than me, Lize!”
Liza Jane did not think it wise to point out that the age gap between her sister and the twelve-year-old Kitten was greater than ten years. It wasn’t the time, and Bryar’s math skills had never been strong.
“I can’t believe he did this to you the night before the awards’ show,” Liza said, starting to feel the first burst of anger on her sister’s behalf. “What are you meant to do now?”
“I don’t know!” Bryar wailed. She blew her nose nosily and Liza cringed at the sound.
“Can you get out of it?” To be honest, Liza wasn’t sure if her sister was suffering from a broken heart or just upset that someone had broken up with her before she got the chance to dump him. Bryar Rose did not get dumped.
“No. I tried. They said they’d ran too many promos. I am not even supposed to mention the breakup on social media or anything until after the show. They want us to keep acting like we’re together. Said it would be good for our images.”
“Oh my God,” Liza said. “You mean you still have to be his date at the show, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Man, that sucks. I recommend heavy drinking.”
She heard the slightest hint of a giggle and hoped that she’d cheered Bryar up a little.
“Can you do a little spell for me Liza?” Bryar asked pitifully. “I’m not feeling real strong right now.”
Liza assured her she would.
Right after she did one for Chloe.
It was going to be a long night.
As she hung up, she figured she’d tell her about the tea cup later.
* * *
BY THE TIME she crawled into bed, Liza was hurting from head to toe. She’d done five massages that afternoon, including a deep tissue massage for someone who had, let’s say, an expansive canvas.
Her arms ached from all the movement and her legs were cramped from the standing. She really needed to invest in a good padding to put underneath the area rugs in her treatment rooms. She was no longer a teenager. Her body was starting to feel every creak and crack.
Her mind was exhausted, too. She’d done a longer ritual than normal, what with the number of people who’d requested her services. Rituals and spells could go either way–they either wound her or up drained her. Colt was especially grateful for the former.
With all the lights out in the old, ramshackle farm house her room was almost pitch black. She didn’t have a streetlamp outside so unless it was a full moon and a clear night, there wasn’t much to light up the house and yard.
Since it was overcast, the waning moon was hidden behind pale clouds. Only a little light filtered through them. Sunset had brought on a glorious purple sky streaked with hot pink streaks. She’d sat on her front porch in a white rocking chair and watched the big orange ball sink behind the nearby mountains.
She’d uncovered the rocking chair from the cellar; it had belonged to her grandmother and great-grandmother before that. It was missing one of the rocker thingies that made it rock and the wicker seat had a gaping hole in it. Colt had mended it and made it usable again, proving that her rugged, farmer boyfriend knew more than just his Douglas Firs.
Liza trembled now, a happy shudder, as the thought of Colt Bluevine sent sparks rushing through her. To her embarrassment, her tummy still flip-flopped when she thought about him. They’d been dating for awhile now and she still got nervous when choosing an outfit for a night out at the Pizza Hut.
Liza Jane had not been looking for a new man when she met Colt. In fact, she’d still been married to Mode. Of course, her ex-husband had moved on from her and was living with the trombone player from the pop opera group he managed. (Much like he’d moved on with the Starbucks’ barista, the pole dancer who went by the name “Bye Bye Birdie” (nearly ruining Liza’s favorite Ann-Margret movie), and the redhead who wrote out receipts through the water company’s drive-through window.)
Colt, with his easygoing attitude, country charm, and ability to catch dinner from the river and recite Shakespeare, had slowly won her over, however.
Chapter Three
“So have you met him?” Filly’s short cap of light brown hair was as smooth as molasses and sparkled in the glow of the fire that Whinny, Colt’s mother, had built in the hearth.
“Met who?” Liza asked absently, arranging the chocolate chip cookies on a serving plate.
She had two more cookie sheets baking in Colt’s oven. To serve the
m warm, she’d waltzed into his house laden with boxes of frozen dough and asked, “Where’s your baking pans and stuff? I’ve got homemade cookies to make!” She’d been at it ever since.
“Met the rapper?”
“Oh,” Liza paused, chocolate chip cookie in midair. Mare glided by and snatched it from her fingers and popped it in her mouth before Liza knew what was happening. “No, I’ve never met any of Bryar’s…people.”
Liza briefly entertained herself with the thought of hanging out with Bryar’s music industry friends and colleagues–with their designer clothes and labels, flashy cars, and diamond-encrusted jewelry. The two women might as well have lived on different planets. As far as music styles went, Liza Jane was more into her country men singing about dirt roads and trucks than she was listening to laments on street life and baby daddies.
“You’re so stuck in the 1990’s,” Bryar argued on multiple occasions. “My music isn’t all like that. You just pick a few songs and think they’re all like alike. Besides, it’s better than those redneck crooners who sing about Buds and cruising with their little women riding shotgun. In cutoff jeans.”
“And country music isn’t all like that,” Liza counter argued.
“Since when did you get into country anyway? You grew up in a subdivision. In Boston, for Chrissakes…”
Neither could agree on a radio channel when they rode together. Car rides usually ended in stony silences, each equally offended by the other’s judgement of their personal taste.
“I want to meet someone famous,” Filly grumbled.
“She got voted as ‘Person Most Likely to be a Basketball Wife’ in her high school yearbook,” Mare confided in a stage whisper. “We’re all so proud.”
Liza’s phone played the first line from “The Addams’ Family” theme song, an indication that she had a text from Bryar. “Oh, that’s her! I bet she’s texting from the limo,” she added, for Filly’s benefit.
The other women gathered around Liza as she brought up the message. Heads bent close, they peered at the screen together.
“Wuuzzz up bessstest sissy in whole wide world? Xxx Crappy azz day. Doc gave me zannies to help with stress. I go wheeeeee! Xxx,” Filly read aloud. “Uh…”
“Oh no,” Liza mumbled. “This is not good.”
“’Zannies?’” Mare asked, puzzlement creasing her brows.
“Xanax,” Bridle supplied as she adjusted the scarf covering the soft down of hair that hugged her scalp like a cap. “I have some. The doctor gave them to me when I started chemo, because I had a lot of anxiety and couldn’t sleep. I don’t take them often, though. They give me amnesia and knock me out like a drunk tabloid queen.”
“They do the same to Bryar,” Liza sighed, feeling troubled.
She remembered the last time her sister had taken Xanax. It wasn’t a pretty sight. She’d stumbled around like a drunkard, slurring her words and loudly professing her love to everyone in sight (including the waiter) until she’d passed out with her head falling into her salad plate–right in the middle of Ruby Tuesday’s.
Now, worried about her sister, she frantically dialed her number. Bryar answered on the first ring.
“Put it on speaker,” Filly hissed at Bryar’s slurred, “Helloooo?”
“Bryar, you okay?”
In the background, Liza could hear the steady thumping of an R&B rhythm. A man’s voice was rising and falling. It sounded as though he was on a phone as well. She wondered if it was Jayze.
“I’m goooodddd,” she sang. “I lurv you!”
Filly giggled. Bridle slapped her hand over her younger sister’s mouth to quieten her.
“Hey,” Colt’s voice rang out as he strolled through the living room. “Just brought Mama over and thought–”
“Shhhh,” all his sisters hissed in unison.
Colt threw his arms up in the air and backed away. “I’m quiet, I’m quiet!”
Liza mouthed an apology to him then returned to Bryar. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that I feel goooodd,” she giggled. “I need to take these all the time!”
“Uh, no you don’t,” Liza said. “Are you on your way to the ceremony?”
“Yep. And the loser who dumped me is right in front of me. Jackass. Say hello to my sister, moron,” she giggled again.
Liza thought she heard a bit of a scuffle and then the man yelp in what sounded like pain.
“Bryar, are you okay?” Liza asked with concern.
“Fine and dandy as candy!” Bryar hiccupped and the sound was followed by something that sounded suspiciously like a light snore.
“Bryar!” Liza snapped. “Wake up!”
“Huh? Oh! What did you say?”
“I heard a shout. Are you okay?”
“Yessum Mizz Daisy,” Bryar replied in a fake southern accent. “But I might have bit him. A little.”
This time Mare giggled, unable to help herself.
“Eat a cookie,” Bridle snapped, all but stuffing one in her sister’s mouth.
“You bit him?” Liza demanded. Oh no. This wasn’t good at all.
“Just a little. But he deserved it. Listen, we’re almost there. I gotta gooooo,” Bryar said. “But watch me on the telly. The telly, ha ha. I’m getting British!”
Liza rubbed at her temples and closed her eyes. She was about to reply but the phone went dead. Bryar had hung up on her.
“Oh my God,” she moaned, as she put the phone down. “This is not good. This is not good at all.”
“Well, maybe it will wear off,” Bridle, always the optimist, suggested.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Colt said, “but I am sure those people see drug stuff all the time. Maybe someone will have something to counteract it.”
“Bryar isn’t an addict,” Bridle said. “She just took something for anxiety, which is understandable given the situation.”
“Sorry, wasn’t implying that she was. But no matter why she’s taking it, I am sure they’ve seen it before and probably know some way to mask it,” Colt said.
Liza Jane did not feel optimistic. They were in for a long evening.
* * *
“CAN YOU DO one of those future-seein’ spells and see that everything is going to be okay?” Whinny, Colt’s mother, asked. “Maybe do a quick little spell to ensure things don’t go haywire?”
Liza had felt the older, attractive woman studying her with concern all evening. She was a quiet woman, but people listened when she spoke. Now all eyes turned to her. Bridle nodded her encouragement. Filly, on the other hand, looked disappointed. Liza got the feeling that Filly was hoping for some drama. Then again, she was basically still a kid. The rest of them had lived through enough drama in their own personal lives and had a bit more sympathy for Bryar and her predicament.
Bridle, for instance, might have looked okay with her rosy cheeks and the little bit of weight she’d put on, but chemo had really taken it out of her. She’d only, in the past month, started recovering. Everyone in Kudzu Valley credited Liza Jane to Bridle’s “miraculous recovery” from Stage IV cancer, but while Liza had put some energy towards a healing ritual for her friend, she knew the doctors had done a lot of the work–with Bridle herself doing the majority of it.
The fact that Bridle’s lousy husband had left her when the sickness got to be too much on him hadn’t helped her mental health at all.
Bryar wanted to “put a whammy on his hiney” but Liza had talked her out of it. While Bryar had never met Colt’s sister, or Colt himself, she had a soft spot for women who were with, as she liked to put it, “frog turds.”
Whinny had lost her husband. Colt did as much for his mother and sister as possible; indeed, Bridle even lived with him so that he could help take care of her. Still, a son was no replacement for a husband (thank God). Liza knew Whinny was lonely.
Mare was the beautiful, level-headed, no-nonsense woman everyone needed in their lives.
Filly was the boy-crazy, loudmouthed, tem
peramental teenager. She might have been in college, but she hadn’t yet left high school.
“I tried a quickie premonition ritual,” Liza admitted, “but I couldn’t see anything. Sometimes it’s hard for me and Bryar to see into each other’s lives like that. It’s almost like we have one another blocked.”
“Did you do that here?” Filly demanded. “You said I could watch the next one! That’s not fair.”
“Chill out, Filly,” Liza laughed. “I did it in the bathroom after I was finished using your facilities. I didn’t think you wanted to be invited in.”
“So?” Filly shrugged. “I know where the air freshener is. Just a little squirt of that and the room would’ve been fine.”
Liza’s face reddened and the others laugh.
“You’re so crass,” Mare scolded her with a smile.
“I think a nice good luck charm would be useful, though,” Liza said, her voice still hoarse with embarrassment. “She’s meant to go on in about fifteen minutes. If we do it now then it should be strong by the time her part’s ready.”
“You mean all together?” Bridle asked, her pale hand clasping her throat with nervousness. “I don’t think I’d be good at that. I’ve never done a spell before.”
“Don’t think of it as a spell, then,” Filly snapped. Her eyes were lit up with excitement. “Just think of it as praying.”
Bridle looked at Liza Jane for confirmation.
Liza nodded. “It’s basically a prayer, Filly’s right. We’re all just using our collective energy to ensure things go okay for her.”
Bridle swallowed, still unsure.
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” Liza assured her. She sure didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.
“No, no, I don’t want to be the party pooper,” Bridle sighed. “I can get my witch on.”
“That’a girl!” Filly cheered. “So what do we do?”
Broommates: Two Witches are Better Than One! (Kentucky Witches Book 2) Page 2