by Nancy Warren
I reminded myself that I was twenty-seven years old and my mom couldn't make me do anything I didn't want to. Theoretically.
"To answer your questions in order, I do have a social life. I'm starting to make some friends. And, while I'm not exactly dating, I’ve met a couple of interesting men." Immediately, the images of both Ian Chisholm and Rafe Crosyer rose up in my mind. “I'm not in a rush, Mom. It hasn't been that long since I broke up with The Toad."
She nodded, still looking concerned. "Todd turned out to be a real disappointment. But I hope you won't let his behavior stop you from living a rich and beautiful life."
Why did she think I didn't live a rich and beautiful life, now? Some people would think digging in sand all day, searching out remnants of civilizations that had been dead for thousands of years might not be the most exciting use of a person’s time, but did I throw that in my mother's face? No, I did not. Because, it would be impolite. So, why was running a knitting shop in a beautiful city like Oxford not as worthy as digging in sand for dead things? I felt a little irked on behalf of my adopted town.
As though she'd read my mind, Mom said, "It's not that I don't like Oxford. I was very happy here and, of course, it's where I met your father, when we were both studying. But I know what a pleaser you are, Lucy, and I don't want you to feel obliged to follow your grandmother's wishes." She looked out of the window and tapped her fingertips on the table top. "Not that I would ever speak ill of the dead, especially not my own mother, but your grandmother could be a little high-handed."
I raised my eyebrows at her. "Pot? Kettle?"
She had the grace to laugh. "All right. I appreciate that you want to live your own life. Just make sure it's your life you're living, and not your grandmother's."
"How to make a girl feel really good about herself, Mom. Thanks."
Fortunately, our tea came up at that moment, giving us both a chance to think about something else besides my mother's opinion about my life path. Or lack of one.
Mary was doing all the serving herself, I saw, not that I blamed her. The last time she’d hired help, it hadn't ended so well. But the Watt sisters were not young women and I had to repress the urge to get up and help her.
Mom said, "I wish you could sit and join us for a cup of tea, Mary. I'd love to have a visit with you."
Mary gave her a distracted smile. "There's nothing I’d love more. But I'm a prisoner of this place until we close. The only day we have off is Monday."
"Why don't you both come for dinner? Come tomorrow? We've got nothing on, have we, Lucy?"
Apart from trying to prevent myself from being killed by some ancient monster, no, I didn't have a thing on my agenda. Normally, the vampire knitting club met Thursdays in the shop’s back room, but with my parents staying upstairs, and Gran and Sylvia gone, we’d cancelled tomorrow’s meeting.
Miss Watt looks quite pleased at the invitation. "I'm certainly available. But it would probably be best if you asked Florence yourself if she's free."
"Of course," said my mother smoothly.
As we poured tea and helped ourselves to tiny salmon, cucumber, and egg sandwiches, Mom said, "It's really sad that those two aren't getting on better. Isn't there something we can do?"
"I honestly don't know. Getting them together over dinner will help. They'll have to be polite in front of us, and, maybe once they start interacting, they'll naturally fall back in into their old ways." I wondered if I might find something in my grimoire that would help. Was there a reconciliation spell?
"Now, what should we give them for dinner?"
I wish she’d thought of that before issuing the dinner invitation. My mother has many wonderful talents—cooking is not one of them. I am more of a throw everything in one pot and hope it turns out, and if it doesn't call for pizza, kind of cook. There wasn't going to be a lot of time for cooking tomorrow, with my mother working on her research projects, and me in the shop all day.
I said, "I'll look on the Internet this afternoon for some simple recipes. We'll think of something." And I could always run down to the pub and get food if we were desperate.
I knew Mom and Dad were here because of that mirror, even if they didn’t know it themselves, and, since that witch had said she was drawn to the energy of other witches, and it was my mother who’d unwittingly connected us, I was full of questions.
When we were pleasantly full of little sandwiches, and had moved onto the equally tiny cakes, I said, "Mom, when I was young, did I do anything strange? Inexplicable?" I asked because it seemed so odd that I’d only recently found out I was a witch. I’d had odd feelings and vivid dreams my whole life, but I wondered if Mom had noticed anything extraordinary about me.
Her gaze sharpened on mine and she put her scone back down on her plate in the middle of adding jam to it. "What do you mean? Inexplicable? All children do inexplicable things. They cry for no reason, wake you up in the middle of the night thinking there are monsters under the bed, develop perfectly ridiculous aversions to certain foods. You wouldn't eat broccoli until you were twelve."
She was right, those were the things every kid did. “I meant, did I ever do things that seemed supernatural?"
She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. Her face was shut down, almost hostile. "Where is this coming from?"
I shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. I couldn't tell her about Gran, or the grimoire, until I was certain she would understand and be sympathetic. And, at the moment, she looked neither understanding nor sympathetic.
"I made your grandmother promise me she wouldn't spout this nonsense to you."
"What nonsense?"
"She was a wonderful woman, your grandmother, and I won't have a word said against her, but she had the oddest notions. Her people came from Ireland, generations ago, you know, and I blame them for filling her head with nonsense. They believed in fairies and selkies and ghosts and I know not what. She had the idea, well, it's ridiculous really, a grown woman, but she had the stubborn notion that we were from a family of witches.
“It's true that one of our ancestors was burned at the stake, but more than likely she was simply a midwife.” She stabbed her index finger on the table and looked right into my eyes. "There are no such thing as witches. Your grandmother was filled with superstition, but she was wrong. Your father and I are both scientists, and you must have inherited our rationality."
I was taken aback. I supposed, even as an adult, that I wanted my mother's approval, and her telling me there was no such thing as witches was like someone telling a singer there was no such thing as music.
I was a witch. I knew it. My gran knew it. My cat knew it.
"So, you don't believe in witches?"
"Certainly not."
I pressed on, I don't know why. "Vampires?"
She waved the notion away like a puff of smoke. “Creatures of folklore.”
“Ghosts?”
“Children with sheets over their heads at Halloween.”
I said, "So, if I told you I was a witch?"
My mother looked seriously worried. If I'd been ten years younger, she’d have leaned across the table and put a hand on my forehead to check for fever. Instead, she said, "I'd suggest therapy. And encourage you to go back home, where your friends are, and where you can live a more rational, orderly life.”
I looked out the window and there was Nyx, across the street, staring up at me. She might be staying out of sight now my parents were visiting, but I was comforted, knowing she was keeping an eye on me.
Mom said, “Lucy, I'm thinking about taking a sabbatical next year. You could come back and live with me, maybe go back to school and take a proper degree.” I’d managed two years of business college, but never had any desire for a university degree, which was difficult for my extremely educated parents to understand. “You're so young yet, you could do anything you put your mind to."
My mother was already writing grant proposals for funding for the next year. She had this new tomb she�
��d discovered. I knew perfectly well she’d had no intention of taking a sabbatical; she was offering to give up a year of her career to help me, which I appreciated, but certainly didn't want.
"Thanks, Mom. I'm just asking, hypothetically. I have a customer who comes into the shop. She’s a practicing witch. That's why I asked the question." That person was my cousin, Violet Weeks, who was insistent I join her coven for Samhain at the local standing stones, followed by supper.
"Well, don't you fall in with that crowd. Witchcraft is a cult like any other. Stick to the rational, the provable."
I wondered if that was why Mom had no recollection of finding that mirror she’d been impelled to bring it to me. Her mind so rebelled against the possibility of things existing outside the practical, rational world that her mind had shut down rather than accept it.
Which still left me stuck with that mirror and the curse.
Chapter 6
For the rest of our tea, we talked about hair. I got my curly hair from my dad. It was all right for him, he could cut his close to the scalp and ignore it. I, on the other hand, was stuck with an unruly mess. If I wanted it to look like I’d spent hours at the salon, I had to spend hours at the salon. Otherwise, I showered and left it to dry and hoped for the best.
Mom had thick, smooth hair, but she bothered even less than I did and it was dry, brittle, and too long. She was trying to decide whether she should change the simple blunt cut she’d had nearly all her life and go for something with a bit more shape to it. "Now that I'm going so gray, I feel like I should put some effort into my hair." It was the first remotely vain statement I’d ever heard my mother make. Suddenly, she leaned forward. “I know. Let’s go this very afternoon and get our hair done. Then we can go clothes shopping. It will be such fun, just us girls.”
My mother was not the kind of woman who ever said, ‘just us girls.’ She had to have an ulterior motive. And in a second I knew what it was.
“We’ve got a few archaeology students coming over tonight,” she said, airily. “I hope you don’t mind. Of course, Dad and I would love you to meet them and give us your opinion. You’re such a good judge of character.”
In fact, I’d dated a cheater and been his dupe for two years. That’s how good a judge of character I was. But I was not fooled. Mom was hoping I’d fall for one of these archaeology students, and recreate the romance she and my dad had enjoyed. Because it was so sweet of her, and I did need my hair cut, I agreed that a trip to the salon, followed by a bit of shopping, was exactly what I needed.
“I need to run next door and make sure my assistant doesn’t need me.” In fact, since I was the least competent of the two of us, I felt perfectly happy leaving my shop in Eileen’s capable hands.
After we’d all but licked our plates, Mom paid a quick visit to the kitchen to speak to Florence. I declined to visit the kitchen since the last time I’d been in there I’d shared the space with a dead body.
Instead, I talked to Mary Watt. We’d become close when I was involved with the murder that happened in their tea shop and I’d become very fond of the sisters. “It’s so nice to see you, Lucy. I wish we saw more of you,” Mary said.
“Me, too. But we’re both so busy running our businesses.”
“I’ll look forward to a good catch-up tomorrow.” Then she took one of the vases of wild flowers they put on their tables and offered it to me. “I made one too many of our little bouquets. Why don’t you have it?”
I thanked her, warmly. They usually put together little bouquets of whatever was growing. Since it was October, there were a couple of orange daisies, a sprig of lavender, and, in this vase, a small branch of rosehips, fat and red. They had dozens of bud vases, but I promised to bring this one back anyway.
Mom returned from the kitchen to say that Florence was delighted to accept our dinner invitation. As we were leaving, I was in front and had my head turned, saying something to my mother, when I physically bumped into someone. I jumped back and so did he and we both laughed at the same time. "Ian. So sorry, I didn't see you." It was Detective Inspector Ian Chisholm, my on again, off again, crush. Today, he looked particularly attractive in a gray overcoat and my crush was instantly on again.
He had his hands on my shoulders where he’d instinctively put them when we crashed. And he left them there for a moment and his blue-green eyes smiled into mine. "Lucy. Nice to see you. I was just bringing some information to Miss Watt."
I nodded. She liked to hear updates of how the case was going against the man who’d murdered her fiancé, and I thought it was real kindness that caused Ian to take time out of his busy schedule to see her.
I introduced my mother, who shook hands with him, and then he went into the tea shop and we proceeded back to my shop. Before we went in, Mom looked at me coyly and asked, "Is he one of those interesting men you were telling me about?"
Trust Mother to ask. I said, "Well, he is interesting."
"Also young and good-looking which a man ought to be if he can possibly manage it."
I laughed. “You sound like a Jane Austen heroine. Anyway, he hasn't even asked me out."
"I'd say, based on the way he looked at you, that he's planning to."
I had the same feeling. And I did everything I could to prevent it happening. It wasn't that I didn't like Ian, I did. And, I was attracted to him. However, my life was complicated enough and the last thing I needed was a police officer finding out the many secrets hidden inside Cardinal Woolsey's.
As I’d guessed, Eileen was perfectly happy to run the shop without me. I was shocked to see how much tidier the place looked since I’d left just over an hour ago. The wools were perfectly stacked within their baskets and on the shelves, and she’d neatened the books and magazines so they all looked untouched. I put the tiny vase of flowers on the immaculate surface of the cash desk and told Eileen of our plan for the afternoon, if she was sure she could manage.
“Oh, yes, dear. You have a lovely time.” I gave her my mobile number, in case she needed me, but I doubted very much she’d need to call me.
I introduced Eileen to Mom and they said how happy they were to meet.
“We’ll be back by five,” Mom told her. Then she explained that there would be four or five students coming, who had expressed an interest in helping with the dig. “I told them to come about five,” she said to me. "That's when you close, isn't it?"
"Yes, but tell them to go around to the back and ring up to the flat. Dad can let them in. That way, they don't have to troop through the shop."
Mom looked confused. "It's just so complicated to explain how to get around to the back and down the lane. I find it easier to tell them to come to the shop. You don't mind, do you? Then you can send them straight upstairs."
"Fine."
As we were walking back out the door, Mom said, "I suppose we'll have to give them something to drink and perhaps a snack." She thought for a moment and said, "I'll send your father out."
I knew perfectly well that within five minutes of being upstairs with prospective students, both of them would be so immersed in talking shop they'd forget all about snacks, and all other practical matters. "I'll get them," I said.
When we left, Mom and I headed toward Cornmarket Street. “I should have made a salon appointment,” I said, realizing that getting two of us into a salon was going to be touch and go.
She giggled, a girlish sound very unlike my mother. “I took the liberty of making appointments for us when you came up to invite me for tea. I was sure that if you could take time out for afternoon tea, you could manage a salon visit.”
“That’s great, Mom.” I was pleased she’d taken the initiative. Even if she did have an ulterior motive, trying to set me up with an archaeology student, I was happy to spend an afternoon with my mom. Who knew how many more I had?
As we walked down Cornmarket, I noticed how many stores had Halloween displays. Halloween never used to be a UK tradition, but, like so many things, it’s an American c
elebration that’s become popular. Little kids dressed as goblins, going door to door to collect candy, what’s not to like?
Of course, for the witches among us, Halloween was the day before Samhain, one of the eight most important Wiccan holidays. My cousin, Violet Weeks, had been pestering me to come to her coven’s Samhain event, at the standing stones near Moreton-Under-Wychwood. I’d said I’d think about it, but if the demon hadn’t got me by then, I thought I’d go, and see if I could get some ideas in how to vanquish a very ancient and powerful dark wizard. And, as a side note, I’d really like to free Meritamun from her mirrored prison.
The day was cold and overcast, but Cornmarket was still thronged with tourists, students, and regular people who lived here. Oh, and a couple of vampires, I noted, catching sight of Rafe and Clara, walking in the same direction. They looked a bit like a son taking his mother out for the afternoon. And the way she looked up at him, hanging on his every word, she looked every inch the proud mother.
I was happy to have my undead protectors and enjoyed the way they manged to keep me and Mom under surveillance, without ever seeming to glance our way.
We got to the corner of Queens and Cornmarket and there was a tour group standing at the base of Carfax Tower looking up at the little figures around the clock that would come out when the clock chimed.
“Terrible waste,” Mom remarked as we walked past. “That was a medieval church, you know. And they knocked it down in Victorian times to make room for the traffic.” Mom’s not a fan of knocking old things down to make way for the new.
“I know. But at least most of the historic buildings are protected now,” I said, going for the positive.
We walked on, toward Oxford Castle, which had some of the city’s old Saxon walls on display. However, we weren’t getting our hair done in the old prison, I was happy to see. Instead, she turned down a side street I didn’t know, and led us to a salon tucked away in the old industrial section, where the breweries used to be.