“I’ll stay to help you get her changed for the night and longer if need be.” Betty’s large brown eyes narrowed to slits and lines crisscrossed her forehead.
“Did this just happen?” Larena asked. “I called you not long ago.”
“Yep. Came on quick. Hopefully this is just a phase and after a good night’s sleep she’ll be better.”
Larena raised the rails on her mother’s rented hospital bed, and one of Mom’s hands clutched the bar as if she, too, was frightened. Larena stood at the bedside speechless, struck dumb by the coincidence of what happened to both her and her mother at the same moment. Had the nemeton been so power-hungry it stole not only Larena’s witchcraft but also her mother’s life and breath? Why had Larena taken such a dangerous chance? So foolish.
Betty took hold of Larena’s hand. “Land sakes, what happened to your coat? And your skirt? They’re burnt.”
“I’m fine. The pyrography tool’s wiring sparked.” Numb with fear and blame, she didn’t know how to explain.
“Go change your clothes.” Betty urged. “I’ll stay here and keep watch.”
Larena gave a single nod. Her body moving with little awareness, she managed to peel off her coat as she glided to the basement and stuffed the garment into the washing machine. Although the coat was beyond hope with burns through the outer fabric, she couldn’t afford to buy a new one. Maybe she could still wear it around home. On her way back through the kitchen, the phone rang. She answered, unaware of picking up the receiver.
“Hi, Larena. It’s Reid Peterson. I hope you liked the flowers. I wanted to ask you to dinner sometime, maybe this weekend at the steak house. Does that sound like—”
Without a word, she hung up and looked up to his vase of flowers that had thrown off her focus and ruined her Troy pendant. And cost her everything. The bouquet hit the trash.
Chapter Eleven: The Forbidden Word
Dizziness overwhelmed Larena as she bent over Ben’s bookcase. The bells on the shop’s door jingled. No, they clanged unbearably inside her head. She lurched to her feet, her vision blurred. Somehow, she managed to focus on the entering group, led by Logan.
“Hi Larena, we brought dinner from Babette’s. Hope you’re hungry,” he announced with a grin and lifted two large sacks.
Keir, with his coyote, Councilman Tynewell Tynker, and a blonde young woman, who looked vaguely familiar, all spread from behind the high priest.
Larena gave a nod that challenged her balance and caused her to sway.
“Are you okay?” Logan placed the bags on a table, then put a steadying hand on her elbow.
“I’m fine.” She wasn’t. A trickle of sweat seeping down her forehead belied her statement. Attempting to swipe her brow, she found her hand still knotted around the tack cloth she’d used to remove final steel wool and dust traces from the bookcase. She stashed the rag in her apron pocket and dragged the back of her hand across the perspiration. What was happening to her? To her magic? To Mom?
“Why don’t you sit down over there?” Logan steered her to a dining set in the shop’s display area, then asked the blonde woman, “Aggie, can you get her something to drink?” To Larena he said, “This is Aggie Anders, my girlfriend, in case I didn’t introduce you two before.”
Aggie pulled a thermos from her pack. With nimble fingers, she quickly poured a cup of minty-smelling tea, which Larena accepted and sipped.
The jingling of the door’s bells persisted their sickening percussions through Larena’s brain. The shop teemed with faces, arms, legs, ears, noses, eyes. Her disoriented stare fixed on a pair of golden irises. The association with Reid Peterson made her twist away, but the eyes followed.
A cold, wet nose burrowed into her open palm. The coyote, Waapake.
Larena sighed, relieved the eyes belonged to Waapake, and allowed the tea’s soothing sensation to bathe her tongue and throat. After a few swallows, calmness spread from the pit of her stomach through her core. Tightness around her lungs loosened. Several deep breaths restored her senses. She sniffed the beverage. “Wintergreen?”
“Yes.” Aggie nodded, her fine light blonde hair flying around her shoulders. “Helps balance my sun energy when I can’t soak up enough from the moon, like lately with working long hours.”
Appearing to not yet be in her twenties, Aggie seemed wise beyond her years. A sun witch? In Coon Hollow Coven? Then it hit Larena that she recognized the girl from Shireen’s Dress Shop. Aggie had recently moved in from a different coven. Larena thought of Grandpa Henry coming here as the only forest sage, facing a new world. She admired Aggie’s grit at doing the same thing.
“Long hours and Yuletide rush. Know them well.” Larena groaned, then downed more of the healing brew. “Thanks for this. It’s helping.”
“Thought it might since you look overheated. You’re flushed.”
Tilda McCormick, a regular customer who’d been milling the store for nothing in particular other than to silently pressure Larena to complete spell updates on her dining chairs, leaned in. “Hope you’re not comin’ down with the flu bug that’s been goin’ around.”
Larena thought Tilda meant, I hope you won’t be unable to finish my chairs on time. Whether the concern was sincere or for the sake of her furniture, Larena tried not to care since she’d failed all day to add even the simple spell to the bookcase. “No. I don’t have a fever. It’s just been a crazy day.” Out of habit, she panned the show area, saw two other customers, and rose to help them.
“I’ll take care of them. That’s why I’m here.” After handing the thermos to Larena, Aggie trailed after a shopper examining a rocking chair.
“Thanks lots, but let me know if you need anything,” Larena called after her and motioned the three men toward the back doorway. “I cleared a table in the workroom for us to use.”
Logan stayed by her side to the planked table. Surrounding it was an assortment of stools, all distressed by years of encounters with tools, festooned with daubs of a rainbow of paints and stains.
Mr. Tynker set the dinner sacks in the middle, while Keir unloaded Aggie’s backpack and a canvas bag of his own.
Better, but still a bit unstable, Larena sank onto a stool, supported by her forearms against the table. “I placed a clean rag rug under the table for Waapake. The cement floor back here can be pretty cold in winter.”
“That’s kind of you.” Keir grinned. Beneath cropped coal-black hair, the feather earring in his left ear dusted the thickly padded shoulder of his double-breasted suit coat. He pointed the coyote to the rug and settled himself on the seat beside.
The male seer’s eclectic manner of dress didn’t end there. In place of a necktie, he wore a tangle of amulets, more today than usual, against his white, French-cuffed dress shirt. Curious if his adornments had any relation to what he knew about her situation, Larena studied them but couldn’t grasp their meanings. Suspended flint arrowheads, which connected to his Native American shamanic training, interlaced with a mirror-like black hematite and several knotted thongs strung with what looked like ordinary river pebbles.
Logan spread out the selections of Babette’s food, his own tie loose at the unbuttoned shirt collar. “There’s fried chicken, country-fried steak, mashed potatoes, buttermilk biscuits, cranberry sauce, and, of course, her famous red-eye gravy. Everyone, go ahead and eat while we talk. I’m starved.” Although he always looked a bit scruffy, with his blonde curls in wild disarray and suit sleeves deeply creased, Aggie was a lucky girl to have Logan. He worked his own share of long hours to help needy coven residents. Conditions for the elderly and less fortunate had improved during the short three months since he’d become high priest. More modernizations had been approved for coven businesses, though not yet permitting Larena’s wish for present-day vehicles to be used locally. She hoped he’d found ways for her to stop the eminent domain proclamation.
“You guys go ahead. Share with Larena what you know.” Logan passed a paper plate to each. “I’m just here as a facili
tator until you need me.”
After the seer and Councilman exchanged glances, Keir said, “I prefer to do my divination after the meal when we’re more relaxed, so why don’t you speak first.” He briefly closed his eyes and mouthed a silent prayer before giving his coyote a chicken leg and serving himself.
Logan filled a plate, then stood. “Going to take this to Aggie. Be right back.”
After he left, Larena filled her plate and sampled the crispy chicken. As always, the first bite popped with a predictable cavalcade of flavors: cayenne mellowing to sage and bay, then ending with delicate thyme and sea salt.
With graceful fingers trembling on the sides of his empty plate, Mr. Tynker straightened his thin but nearly ageless frame. Although in his seventies, he looked almost as he always had, neatly but simply dressed in a conservative gray suit, still trim with his muscles only a bit slackened, hair worn in the same short, slicked-back style, only now it was a little sparser. Larena had known him forever; she couldn’t remember not knowing him. As the sole local expert on magical tools, he’d been a long-time associate of the Lockwoods and a close friend of her father’s.
Seated beside Larena, he placed a hand gently on her forearm. “Larena, I’m so saddened to learn of your predicament.” His flat-lipped mouth quivered. “No, I’m horrified and outraged that a family I’ve worked alongside my entire life could be treated in such an unthinkable manner. Does your Grandpa Henry’s spirit know?”
Larena pulled her hands into her lap, fingers fidgeting with the hem of her wool skirt. She looked away from his gaze to see Logan return. Voicing her failures around remarkably talented witches, like Mr. Tynker and Grandpa, made her jittery. When Logan took a seat and filled his own plate, she replied, “Yes. I told Grandpa. He’s trying to help me use the neme—sorry—sacred grove’s power to help me solve my problems.”
“That’s Henry.” The old Councilman dabbed a corner of his eye, then awkwardly attempted a smile. “He accessed the grove in some mysterious, wonderful ways, benefitting loved ones and many others through the years. You’ll do well to listen to his advice.”
“I’m trying.” She chanced facing him again. The kindness she found in his expression encouraged her.
Tyne’s green eyes shone with not the slightest sign of age, gleaming and vigorous.
“Grandpa tells me to put a lid on my hot head so the grove will grant me its power.” Words, brimming with emotions, poured from her as her voice grew reedy. “But with people in my face cajoling me to sign a deal I don’t want and Mom dying a little more each day, it’s hard to keep my thoughts altruistic or even positive. If I could just make Mom a little better, a little happier. It doesn’t happen for more than a minute or two.”
“You have a lot to deal with. Too much,” Mr. Tynker said.
“I hate the dementia,” she spat the words, wanting to injure the illness with them. “And the vultures trying to take our land. I feel angry all the time, at everyone. Well, not with Mom or Betty, but it makes me short-tempered with customers, with my work projects, with the mounting bills. All that negativity locks me out of the grove. Is there another way I can stop those people from using eminent domain?”
“Legally, no,” Logan answered. “I checked with our two coven attorneys. The only action I have available is to delay Peterson Corp.’s mall project since it’ll require authorization from the Coven Council. Buying time, I might be able to put off your loss a year or two. Peterson Corp. intends to take action upon your mother’s death, which isn’t a time you need to be making big decisions.”
Larena nodded but thanked him and resumed her meal, forking the cranberry sauce into her mouth. Expecting the familiar burst of fruitiness that oscillated between sweet and tart according to the magical recipe, the taste seemed off, bland.
Mr. Tynker’s delicate fingers fidgeted with his utensils, his voice soft and gentle. “May I ask how Irene is doing?”
“Not good.” Larena shook her head. “She took a bad turn last evening. She can’t keep her balance to sit up. She’s losing strength. I hope it’s just a phase. We have a doctor’s appointment next week to find out more.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Mr. Tynker’s hands trembled. “I’ll be honest. I don’t have any solutions, but I did discover a way for you to earn more money, which will alleviate one worry you have.”
Larena’s brows lifted. “That would be a real help.”
“Sounds good to me,” Logan said through a mouthful. “With less stress over bills, you should be better able to follow your grandpa’s directions and get the grove’s power on your side.”
“Well, what I know,” Mr. Tynker hushed his voice to a whisper, “and keep this quiet, is that there’s a vacation rental property just off the southern edge of the coven due to open soon.”
Logan’s gaze, focused on his plate, flashed up to reveal darkening irises, while Keir motioned to his coyote, who padded to stand at Larena’s tights-clad knee.
Mr. Tynker continued. “I was approached by the owner. He wants his resort to provide magical experiences for guests. He’s purchased the entire deserted town of Fable for this venture—nine vintage buildings built circa 1850, which his staff is restoring to their original charm with modern updates.”
“No way! The whole town,” Logan leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. “We need to get with him right away to see what can be developed for mutual good between his business and the coven. Have things ready for the spring and summer when tourist season picks up.”
“I did already mention that to him on behalf of the Coven Council, and he was amenable. Right now, he’s dedicated to opening as soon as possible since guests are booked during the Christmas holidays.” Mr. Tynker addressed Larena. “He contacted me to help him locate magical artifacts and assorted charmed decorative items that will enrich his guests’ stays. I mentioned Lockwoods’ Antiques and the services your family’s provided to the coven for generations. He was more than impressed, said it was exactly what he had in mind.”
Larena’s hands flew to her cheeks, which still pulsed with heat. “Oh, that is an amazing offer.”
Waapake’s snout nuzzled her now unprotected hip, poking inside the apron’s tunnel pocket. He bit onto the wadded tack cloth, pulled it free, and deposited it around the other side of the table at his master’s feet.
Sight of the rag, covered with sawdust from the bookcase, smacked Larena with the day-long frustration of her failures in the shop. She hadn’t been able to apply the most basic charm on the bookcase, to have the books stored there beloved by the client’s daughter. She’d placed that spell on dozens, if not hundreds, of bookcases, curio cases, and jewelry boxes, since she was a young girl. She’d worked all day, only able to use the most rudimentary magic to improve manual woodworking skills, to saw with enhanced precision or sand more evenly.
Maybe tomorrow would be different. It had to be different. Time was running out. Clients were upset with projects overdue. She had to face the truth. These people here now, trying to help her, deserved to know the truth. She bit her lower lip and looked at Mr. Tynker. “It’s a great offer. But I can’t accept. I’ve lost my magic. I can’t work as a tree mystic. I tried yesterday to get into the sacred grove when I wasn’t prepared. It took my gift.” Moisture seeped into her eyes and her throat clenched. She dropped her gaze. “And that’s what caused Mom to get worse. It’s my fault.”
Mr. Tynker wrapped an arm around her shoulders and declared in a firm voice, “No. I refuse to believe that. The grove is not vindictive.”
“But Cyril said it takes magic from those who aren’t strong enough.” She blinked back tears.
“Cyril talks in riddles,” Logan responded. “Don’t take him literally.”
“Only a fool who tries to steal from the grove pays a price.” Mr. Tynker rubbed her shoulder. “And you are most certainly not a fool, Larena.”
“Let me see if I can sort out what has happened with my reading.” Although tension in the conve
rsation had ramped up, Keir spoke in his usual calm but resolute tone. “Waapake has already discovered something related that is amiss on your rag. My precursor journeying hinted at such a rift in your witchcraft, Larena. I think we have much more to learn. If you’ll all suspend your fears to clear the air, I may piece together threads I already can see.”
Logan took a long swig of elderberry juice and leaned forward onto his elbows.
The Councilman poured himself a glassful and drank it half down.
Keir pushed his plate aside. While removing supplies from his canvas bag, a drawstring pouch and an amber bottle of liquid, he addressed Larena, “Logan asked me Tuesday to work on your situation. That allowed me time to take a preliminary journey, which indicated the moon will play a major role in shaping your destiny. Knowing that, and because tonight’s moon has not yet risen, I prepared moon water to facilitate my reading. Faced with two complications—this dilemma involves at least two coven members, and Larena’s gifted magic is blocked from me—I feel compelled to call upon the collective energy of our gathered group.”
Logan lifted his chin. “Do you need Aggie, too?”
“Not yet, but please direct her to join us in about five minutes. I’ll need her to range with Waapake since they have developed a kinship.”
When Logan returned from passing along the request, the seer directed them, his voice strong but steady. “Please link hands around the table. Tyne, if you’ll lightly hold my shoulder, and Logan, if you’ll touch Waapake’s spine.”
Larena joined hands with Mr. Tynker and Logan. The initial disparity between the older man’s smooth, delicate fingers and Logan’s firm, sandpapery grip relaxed her tension. Reassured of their support, she sat up straighter, filled with hope. The witches’ diverse backgrounds and wealth of knowledge would guide her. Gratitude brought a smile to her lips. Repaying their kindness would be an honor. That was what Grandpa meant—keep your heart soft. She clasped the two men’s hands tighter.
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