She studied him head to toe and was caught off guard by the smile that made itself at home on her face. The teenage boy had removed his hat and held it in his hand. His coat was draped over his arm. He was wearing brown corduroys and a green sweater, and he reminded her of a plant. It wasn’t just his appearance—hair curling like tender artichoke leaves over his collar, eyes blue and bright like bachelor’s buttons, a strong, craggy branch of a nose, rose-colored lips—but also his presence. He was calm, and he made the air around him easier to breath.
He was a good man, or would be, if nothing got to him before he grew up.
“My name is Leo.” He held out his hand. “I’m in love with your granddaughter.”
Chapter 32
Katrine
Katrine was seeing Ren for the first time, the whole of him, as he strummed his guitar between his two singing daughters. The man was golden chords with sapphire eyes, the laughter of someone you love and fresh rain and a warm fire on a snowy day. She felt something tugging just below her heart, a pain so exquisite that it could only be healing.
Next to her, Tara gasped. Katrine looked toward her. The girl’s eyes were as wide as wheels and glued on Katrine’s chest. Katrine looked down. Could her niece see what Katrine was feeling?
A deep voice interrupted the singing. “Carolers!” It was the lead singer of the 32-20 Blues Band, a shovel over his shoulder, his breath coming in mighty plumes. Katrine felt a blend of excitement and shock at seeing him here, at the steps of her home. She hadn’t seen him since that night at the Rabbit Hole with Heather, hadn’t even known he lived in Faith Falls. Most of the singers broke away from the song, but Ren and his girls continued to the end of “Joy to the World” before turning their attention to him.
“Decided I’d shovel sidewalks for Christmas, but didn’t know I’d get music with it.”
Meredith stepped forward, her hand out. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Meredith Baum.”
“John Trempeleau, humble musician, trying to make up for some sins by doing a kindness on Christmas.” He looked up at the falling snowflakes, caught one in his hand, and offered it to Meredith. “I figure that’s the message this snow was sending me.”
“Would you like some cider?” Helena asked from the porch.
John turned his eyes toward her, but they hooked on Katrine. A broad, perfect smile transformed his face. “I know you. You came to one of my shows. I’d never forget a face like that.”
Katrine felt the tension between Ren, and Meredith, and John, and the house. Above all that, she sensed Jasmine trembling in her husband’s arms. Did her sister know John? Was she simply cold? “How many sidewalks have you shoveled so far?”
Did his smile slip for a moment? “This is the first. I was going to start at the end of the block and work my way down when I heard the music. I thought there must be angels here.” He winked toward the singers. Two of the women blushed. Velda, however, watched him with a rare intensity.
“Don’t let me stop you,” he said, dropping his shovel to the snow. “I have a lot of houses to get to tonight.”
“You’re a musician, you said?” Meredith was leaning toward John. “Maybe you’d like to sing a song with us before you shovel? We could use another deep voice to balance us.”
“I wouldn’t want to disrupt your style.”
“Please,” one of the female carolers said. Katrine recognized her from the Rabbit Hole the first night she’d gone there with Heather.
John pretended his shovel handle was a microphone and swiveled his hips like Elvis. Meredith jumped back, and the female carolers squealed in delight.
“A-one, a-two, a-one-two-three-four,” John sang in his gravelly voice, fingers in the air counting off, head tipped forward over his shovel-microphone, hips cocked suggestively. He launched into “Santa Claus Is Back in Town,” infusing it with such sexual rawness that the snow at his feet began to melt. Katrine couldn’t help the tug she felt toward him. He was magnetic. She found herself wondering what he was doing later that night when the house creaked, and a load of snow slipped over the side and onto his head.
“Whoa!” He laughed and jumped back, brushing the snow off. Several of the carolers, Meredith included, jumped forward to help. He let them, smiling into the eyes of each. “Guess that’s what happens when it’s snowing,” he said.
“We should probably get moving,” Ren suggested, avoiding Katrine’s eyes. “We have a lot of other houses to get to tonight.”
Meredith took her hands off of John’s coat and blinked. “Of course!” She clapped her mittens. “On to the next house!” The carolers followed her down the sidewalk, dazed ducklings, many of whom glanced longingly over their shoulders at John.
“I’ll probably follow the music,” he said to the Catalains left on the porch. “As soon as I finish your sidewalk.”
***
“He had eyes for you.”
“Who?” Katrine asked. She and Jasmine were sitting on the couch in front of the roaring fireplace, their legs twined together just as they had been when they were children. The table and kitchen were cleaned up. Everyone had long since gone to bed, including Dean, who had taken Tara home. Katrine had talked Jasmine into spending the night with her at the house, for old time’s sake, and it felt like the greatest gift she’d ever received when Jasmine agreed.
Jasmine didn’t tell her she was staying because ever since the carolers had left, the words were firing too rapidly in her head to silence them without Katrine’s presence. I will take your power when the snakes rise. Your children will pay for this, and their children. “The shoveler. What was his name? John?”
“John Trempeleau, he said. I saw him play at the Rabbit Hole last fall.”
“He made me feel funny.”
Katrine laughed. “Those funny feelings are perfectly normal, honey,” she said, doing her best imitation of Mrs. Diego, their nasally health and home economics teacher.
Jasmine swatted her sister’s foot. “Not like that, dummy. There was something off about him. And he looked familiar, though I’m sure we’ve never met. It was creepy. And did you see how Velda was looking at him? Like she’d rather see him dead than happy?”
“Yeah, you’re exaggerating, but I think he’s trouble, too. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. You gotta admit that he’s pretty cute, though.”
Jasmine raised her eyebrows. “Cute? Did you look at Ren Cunningham? That’s cute.”
Katrine sighed. “He is cute. And far too good for me. I only date losers, remember? Besides, I’m not even officially divorced yet.”
“Hey, Katrine?”
“Yeah?”
“What happened?”
Katrine thought of their childhood, her weak magic, the series of troubled men she’d dated, her husband cheating on her, her attraction to both John and Ren even though she knew better, the spell Jasmine had cast to banish her before she’d forsaken her beautiful cooking magic, this house that felt like a living thing around them.
“Who the hell knows, Jazzy? At least we found our way back to each other.”
The Catalain Book of Secrets: Sisters
Nothing multiplies your power like a sister.
Spring
Chapter 33
Ursula
Spring weather visited the first week in March—prematurely, for Minnesota—arriving as yellow as daffodils and lightning. The backyard of the Queen Anne was thick with gangs of robins pecking at the thawing lawn, drunk on winter-fermented berries, chattering and chirping. Teenagers who held hands and walked the streets were dusted in hormones as thick as pollen.
Yet, something was on its way, and you didn’t need to be a witch to sense it. People jumped at memories. Dogs growled for no reason, and all creatures smaller than a cat disappeared, gone into hiding.
Ursula was not immune to the scratchy feeling in the air, but she always grew tender to the world as the anniversary of her father’s murder neared. She buried herself in work to escape the circli
ng memories. Today, she was nose deep in an ancient botany book the library had tracked down for her, the one she’d tried to read the night the cowboy had visited, a musty treasure with gold flaking off the edges of the page, when something outside the cottage door drew her attention.
She knew Michael was coming to visit her. They’d set the date at the end of their last one, but this was too early to be him. Would he stand her up if he came and found her busy with clients? She yanked open the cottage door. Dean stood on the other side. Impatience turned to alarm. Dean had never come to the house on his own and certainly never set foot into the cottage.
“What’s wrong?”
He wore his cap low over his eyes. His hands hung at his sides almost like a child’s. “Can I come in?”
Ursula stepped aside, allowing in the man and the clean scent of spring. Her relationship with her son-in-law had been superficial. That’s how Jasmine wanted it, and Ursula supported every one of Jasmine’s decisions, whether or not she agreed with them. She found Dean to be dull, but stable. She hoped she wouldn’t discover anything else on this visit.
He glanced around the interior of the cottage, his face registering mild surprise. “This place looks smaller from the outside. And not so warm.” He unzipped his parka to reveal a dress shirt underneath. Ursula didn’t know whether to be charmed or worried that he’d dressed up for this visit.
“Can I make you some tea?”
He shook his head. “I came for a spell.”
Ursula’s throat tightened. She’d heard appeals over the years that had defied logical and morality equally—requests for leprotic poisons to drip on the genitals of exes, potions to turn enemies into bugs, a spell to make a cheater invisible. She’d thought nothing could shock her anymore. She’d been wrong.
“I can see what you’re thinking,” Dean said. “But everyone in town knows about the Catalain magic, even if we don’t talk about it at my house. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I figure the worst that can come of this is that I get your blessing.”
“What spell do you want?”
He closed his eyes as if he were gathering nerve, or remembering something painful. “I want Jasmine to find the courage to be happy. I want Tara to be safe. Things have been so good since Katrine came back to town, and I want to keep them that way. Can you give me something that’ll do that?”
Ursula hadn’t been aware that she’d been holding her breath. “I can’t stop time.”
“No, I’m not asking for that.” He clenched his hands, maybe in frustration. “I just want to protect them both. It’s foolish, but I feel something bad coming. Almost like an itch you can’t scratch, you know? But one that hurts.”
Ursula’s green eyes shone. She’d underestimated this man. She wouldn’t make things worse by interfering. “I can’t help you.”
He lifted his cap and ran his hands through his hair, a frustrated gesture. “Yeah, it was stupid to come. I drive truck. I don’t believe in magic.” He turned so quickly that he upended a burning candle, spilling wax all over the front of his dress shirt. “Dammit!”
“Take it off,” Ursula commanded. “If I get some hyssop on it right away, it won’t ruin it.”
He sighed, dipping his fingers into the hardening wax. “This is my best shirt. I got some on my pants, too.” Reluctantly, he stripped off his parka and then top. The hot wax had left a red streak over his heart. Ursula whispered a protection spell and went about mixing the tincture needed to bleed the wax from his shirt and the front of his trousers. Then she started to scrub.
She was so intent on her task that she didn’t see Michael glance in her window, witness her bent at the waist in front of a shirtless man, and leave.
Chapter 34
Jasmine
Jasmine was thinking how wonderful it was that she and Dean had grown closer. He hadn’t moved back home yet, but they were working toward that. Nothing could stand in their way, she was she sure of it. She stopped by ValuCo to pick up toilet paper and other groceries and was trying to balance them all on one hip and open the car door with her free hand. It wasn’t going well.
“Need help?”
She didn’t recognize the man wearing the cowboy hat right away. She just knew he made her feel unsafe. She glanced around the parking lot, seeking for help.
He laughed and raised his hands in the air. “I’m not going to steal your toilet paper, ma’am.” He squinted and leaned closer. “Hey, I saw you at that big ol’ house on Christmas. When I came by and shoveled? You’re Katrine’s sister, aren’t you?”
Jasmine nodded, the memory of him clicking into place. He appeared different wearing his Stetson. She grew ashamed that she’d judged him so quickly, or was it a different emotion she was feeling? Whatever it was, her blood was pumping fast enough to make her queasy. “Yes.”
He held out his hand. She reached for it. When they touched, her panic returned, this time so thick that it blinded her. I’ll come back with the snakes and take the power away from every one of you goddamned witches. You will never have a better man than me, not one of you Catalain women down the line. Not one good man. I will be back. Your children will pay for this, and their children.
She swayed, started to fall, but he propped her up. “Name is John.” His grip remained tight. “You okay?”
She yanked her hand back, and the nausea cleared. “Fine,” she said, running her hand over her face.
“That’s good, because you look a little pale.” He pushed his hat back to get a better look. “Probably this weather. It isn’t right for it to be so warm in March, you know? Say, speaking of your sister, can I ask if she’s single?”
Jasmine forced her stomach back down her throat. Her life had been so good since Katrine had returned. Why did it feel like this man was going to take that away? She was being ridiculous. It was a beautiful sunny day. She was in a public parking lot. This was not the man who had hurt her, could not be. That man would be in his 50s. “I don’t want to talk about her personal life.”
He laughed in a way that made her feel abashed. “I didn’t mean to pry. I just wanted to ask her out, that’s all. Can you blame a guy?” He looped his thumbs into his jeans and rocked on his heels. “How about this? How about you let me know if she’s still working at the paper. You can do that, right? In fact, I imagine that’s public information.”
Jasmine didn’t want to answer him. “She does.”
“And what’s her favorite flower? Gardenias, I bet.”
“Exactly. She loves gardenias.” She didn’t know what had provoked her lie.
He chuckled. “See? That wasn’t so bad. You sure you don’t need help with your groceries?”
She managed a smile. “I’m okay. Thanks.”
“All right, then. Have a good day, and don’t get too warm! It’s supposed to top 70 degrees today.”
Jasmine watched his retreating back, suddenly very much wanting to check on Katrine and make sure she was okay. Car loaded, she made her way to the Queen Anne. The entire town seemed intent on keeping her from her destination—every car in front of her drove ten miles under the speed limit, a stray dog crossed the road, construction rerouted her five miles and across the river—but finally, she pulled in.
Dean’s car was parked in the driveway. She was surprised, and then relieved. He was spending the day with Tara and so must be inside with her, which meant her whole family was here, and she could make sure they were all safe. She suddenly, desperately craved a protection spell. She’d never before asked Ursula for a potion, but now was the time. She raced to the back of the house, took the corner at the gate, and ran straight into Michael Baum with such force that she fell on her ass on the sidewalk.
He was so flustered that he almost didn’t offer her a hand. When he did, the words spilled out of him. “I wouldn’t go back there. Your mom’s with a new lover. Some things never change, eh? I don’t know why I thought they would.”
Once Jasmine was to her feet, he took off. His car door sla
mmed and his tires squealed, and still she stood in the sidewalk, glancing toward the front door of the cottage. Her organs felt dipped in an ice bath, and everything in her screamed to turn around and enter the Queen Anne rather than the cottage, but her feet propelled her toward the off-kilter workshop.
Each step forward pushed her through air that buzzed with warning, but she couldn’t stop herself. Step. Another step. She reached for the doorknob, the hair on her neck piercing her skin like pins. She thought better of it, almost turned around, but then she found herself at the cottage window.
Dean’s back was to her.
His shirt was off.
She couldn’t see her mother’s face, only that she was crouched forward, on her knees in front of Jasmine’s husband, her hands working furiously.
She reeled back, her mouth a perfect circle of horror.
Your mom’s with a new lover.
The ground rumbled underfoot.
She didn’t want the memory. She’d given up her power so she’d never have to fully remember it again. She’d distanced herself from her family as much as she could in this town, she’d cast a spell to push her sister away so she wouldn’t be violated as Jasmine had been, and she’d raised her own daughter without magic to protect her. She’d swallowed the anti-depressants. She’d buried the secret as deep as she could.
And then she’d let down her guard, and let Katrine back in. That had tipped the balance, and look what that had wrought. Her mother had seduced Jasmine’s very own husband. The bile pushed against her throat, a hot acid that brought with it the memory that she’d worked so hard to suppress.
Tart, creamy avgolemeno is simmering on the stove. It’s Xenia’s favorite. She’s got bread rising and will make a salad. The snakes are slithering outside on the ground, rasping like sandpaper in the too-hot spring day. She doesn’t know how Katrine can be outside in that, but once she had learned Jasmine needed saffron to make her favorite flourless orange cake, there’d been no stopping her.
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