by Tess Lake
She touched me on the arm and I almost flinched away from habit but managed to stop myself at the last moment. Months ago during The Taming of The Shrew I had slipped and acquired a power where I would hear sounds associated with a person when I touched them. Sometimes it was benign or even good, such as when Jack touched me. I would sometimes hear him speaking about police matters from the past or hear the sound of wood sawing or hammering from the present. Other times it had been terrible, such as hearing the sounds of poisonous frogs croaking and people shouting Shakespearean insults at each other. That had been the murderer, Viola, who had attempted to poison the theater director and had actually killed an assistant. The strange slip power had only vanished about two weeks ago, much to my relief, but I still wasn’t back to normal. I kept holding my arms in at my sides and avoiding touching anyone if I could help it.
“I can do that,” I said, trying to think my way through all the possible problems that might arise. The current job I had was essentially a low-level assistant. Hence, I would be setting up chairs, folding up chairs, cleaning, opening doors, checking tickets and things like that. The pay was okay, but the job itself promised to be quite monotonous. Working as a personal assistant to one of the authors sounded much more interesting provided they weren’t some crazy horrible person which, knowing my luck, they would be. But still, an extra hundred dollars a day and a new rental car to drive? That sounded amazing.
“Excellent, here’s an itinerary plus I’ll message you a copy as well. You need to go around to Meredith’s - her address is on there - to pick up the rental and then you meet Red tomorrow. Let me know during the week if you need any help with anything and I’ll check in every now and again to make sure things are going okay.”
“Thanks, sounds good.”
Sophira had returned with ice-cold glasses of water, bringing a fourth one for Angela as well. She gulped it down in record time, waved goodbye to us and left.
“What was that about?” Sophira asked.
“Torrent got promoted up to the big leagues. She’s leaving us behind. We’re gonna be setting up chairs and checking tickets and she’ll be living the high life as an author’s personal assistant,” Kira said with a smile.
“It’s not Bella Shade is it?” Sophira said.
“No, it’s Red Forrest,” I said, checking the itinerary and information that Angela had given me.
“What does she write?” Sophira asked, clearly disappointed that I wouldn’t have the inside link to her current favorite author.
I rechecked the piece of paper.
“She wrote Better Red Than Dead, Red My Mind, Red Faced, Red Velvet, Red Wine and You, Seeing Red, Red Riot. They star a character called Red Herringbone who was a former journalist who ends up solving mysteries…,” I said, trailing off at the end.
“At least that’s better than setting up chairs in a hot hall,” Sophira said.
“Yeah, looks like it could be fun,” I said, reading through the itinerary.
One of the events later in the week was a panel discussion on Writing the Small Town Murder. Another one was called Getting Cozy with a Witch.
Definitely hitting a little too close to home.
There was also a free concert halfway through Writerpalooza that looked like it could be fun.
I was startled out of my reverie by a sudden rapping on the glass door. It was another vampire who I now recognized as Andreas from Bitten.
“Is Bella Shade here yet?” he called out.
“Nope,” Kira yelled out in return. He nodded and walked away, the hot sun blazing down on his black clothing. Just then we heard an enormous thunk from outside, something that sounded like a jet engine starting up, and then there was a burst of cool air from the ducts up in the ceiling as the air conditioning kicked into gear.
“Yes, cold air,” Kira said and gave Sophira high-five.
I grinned at them. A new job, more money, hanging out with a published author, and a rental car to drive around—everything was looking great.
Chapter Two
I awoke ridiculously early on Friday morning, hot and sweaty, alone in Jack’s bed. I rolled over and rubbed the sleep from my eyes and then smiled at the friendly sound of bacon and eggs cooking from down in the kitchen. Thanks to the hot weather, Jack had been getting up earlier and earlier in the morning to go to work, sometimes even working through the night rather than through the hottest part of the day. Since his brother Jonas had obtained permission to rebuild and develop the Governor’s mansion out on Truer Island, Jack had spent a lot of nights out there with the rest of the crew restoring the mansion to its former glory.
It had been to Jonas’s great surprise that he’d been finally approved to take over the development of the Governor’s mansion. He’d been facing off against Sylvester Coldwell, the slimiest real estate agent in Harlot Bay, and felt he was being blocked at every step by the corrupt developer.
Approval had unexpectedly come through and Jonas had immediately hired Jack to oversee the work crew out on Truer Island.
Jack going to work full-time on the Governor’s mansion was certainly good for his bank balance but not so great for the house he’d bought. He’d been working on it for months on end now, knocking down walls, making piles of rubble, and generally ripping out anything old and rundown, which to my eye was around about most of the house. He was actually getting somewhere though. There had been rubble everywhere then piles of rubble then piles of rubble carefully arranged. He seemed recently to have reached some kind of stasis point where he was getting rid of as much rubble as he was creating and now, slowly, the house was beginning to clean up, getting right back to its bare bones. When I had time I was often over there helping him, sanding, and knocking down walls, painting rooms. We did still go on dates and it was always great to go out to Valhalla Viking for a steak and beer or to get some delicious Indian take-out to eat on the beach but many times working on his old wreck of a house side-by-side chatting… it felt as though that was the real beating heart of our relationship. We worked and we talked, the conversation careening all over the place. The past, the present, and yes, sometimes the future.
After Will had proposed to Luce both Jack and Ollie had spent some time playing the same practical joke on Molly and me. Jack’s version had involved a lot of bending down on one knee pretending he was picking up something off the ground or trying his shoelaces. Then he’d hold up his hand and say “Harlow Torrent, would you make me the happiest man in the world by… helping me up?”
The boys had obviously known that marriage questions would arrive the moment one of them proposed and they had, the moms becoming very interested in the topic. The jokes, as annoying as they were sometimes, certainly helped to take the pressure off. I wasn’t wondering when it was Jack would ask me to marry him. I was happy living my life, or at least trying to, given all the supernatural problems floating around Harlot Bay. See that’s the thing with problems. You can’t live in that tensed up anxious state all the time. It’s not possible. So despite the fact I found some rocks with Lost Witch Took Jack carved on them and we had no idea where they came from or what they were referring to, eventually, the fear and terror around that had faded and then one day I found myself with Jack on the beach eating an ice cream and laughing. Normality had a weight to it. It would always return, pushing away the darkness.
I got out of bed, pulled a skirt on, and then wandered down to the kitchen. Jack was already dressed in his work gear, which was essentially a very nice and well-fitting pair of tan shorts, a blue shirt, and some heavy work boots. He’d already covered himself in sunscreen to protect himself against the hot weather and so what did I essentially see as I wandered out to the kitchen? A somewhat shiny quite muscular man moving delicious crispy bacon around a frying pan.
In other words, love.
“I think the air conditioner’s dead for good this time,” Jack said by way of greeting.
Where Jack was living was a rental. At some time in the past t
he owner had renovated half the house and then stopped. So part of it was new and the rest of it was trapped in the 1970s. The aging air conditioner had been keeping up reasonably well as the temperature increased. But as it had been left on through more of the nights it had become less effective. It had broken down, which explained why I woke up to a room that felt like a slowly warming oven.
“How long until your house is move-in ready? Maybe you can buy an air conditioner?” I said and came up beside him to give him a good morning kiss.
He smelled like sunscreen which smelled like the beach and I had the sudden urge to grab breakfast and head down to the seaside so we could go for a swim.
Jack had already poured me a coffee, knowing my morning routine by heart by now. I took it and went around to the other side of the kitchen bench, taking a seat on one of the stools and sipping my delicious drink.
“Could be a couple of months, it depends. How much rubble do we want to live with?” Jack said.
I was still half asleep and no, I’m not some crazy teenager, but still I felt a slight flutter in my stomach as he said we.
Long ago when Jack had bought the house and had taken me there, he’d hauled me up a set of very unsafe stairs into an upstairs room and then mentioned that he thought one day it could be a writing room for me. I had blurted out completely the wrong thing, but then recovered and given him a kiss instead, which is always a good way to cover up when you’ve said the wrong thing. Jack hadn’t asked me to move in with him, nor to marry him, but it was a deep and abiding comfort feeling as though we were on a path and it was heading somewhere very good indeed.
“I could probably live with six piles of rubble, that’s about my limit,” I said with a smile.
I felt a furry shape brush past my feet and looked down to see Adams had stepped out of the shadow.
“Good morning, Adams,” I said, knowing already what it was he was going to say.
“They didn’t feed me! I’m starving to death!” he said. He threw himself dramatically on the floor but then started purring and rolling around.
“Both Molly and Luce forgot to feed you? I can’t believe it. How have you managed?” I said.
My sarcasm went straight over Adams’ head.
“I had to survive on the water I found in an old boot and then there was a dead bug. That’s all I’ve had for the past three days,” Adams said, clearly forgetting that in fact I’d fed him yesterday morning, and he was never bereft of food.
“You know, I think we should call the media, they need to hear your story,” I said.
“Maybe I could have some bacon or do you have any eggs?” he asked.
He stood up and sauntered around to Jack’s side of the kitchen bench before dramatically throwing himself on the ground again and beginning to roll around.
“All I need is a few pieces of bacon,” Adams moaned.
“How’s Butterscotch?” Jack said.
Butterscotch was a beautiful blonde cat with green eyes and thanks to me spending $29.99 at Adams’ request, she wore a shimmering diamante collar. She was, as far as we could tell, Adams’ girlfriend. It was hard to know with cats. They certainly didn’t think the same way we did. Questions about their relationship were often met with a blank stare from Adams. We’d met Butterscotch some months ago, coming back to our end of the mansion to find her and Adams watching a documentary on television together. This surprising development was eclipsed by another a moment later when Butterscotch spoke to us.
I’m not saying I expected to have the only talking cat in the world. I’m sure there were plenty of witches who did. Adams was the only talking cat that I’d ever seen however and then to find another one sitting on our sofa was quite a surprise.
We’d seen Butterscotch on and off, and even tried to have a few conversations with her, but we didn’t know where she was from or where she lived when she wasn’t at our house. Questions such as “Who is your owner?” were met with a cold stare and Butterscotch saying, “I don’t have an owner.”
I know this might sound like she was some kind of ice princess, but Adams would say exactly the same thing. Both of them consider themselves practically to be humans in cat form.
I saw the crafty look come across Adams’ face as he sat up from the ground and looked at Jack.
“She’s starving too! She doesn’t get fed at all! Can you give me extra and I’ll take it to her?” he said and then rubbed his head against Jack’s leg. He pulled back a moment later when the fur on that side of his head slicked down thanks to the sunscreen that was all over Jack’s body.
I picked up Jack’s phone from the counter and used it to craft a lie from my devious cat.
“Molly and Luce say that you were fed this morning and last night, so I don’t think you need any more breakfast,” I said, pretending to be reading a message from Jack’s phone.
Adams frowned at me and then stuck his tongue out.
“Fine, you’ll be sad when I starve to death,” he said in a huff. He walked away from Jack around the end of the bench but then didn’t emerge, disappearing off to wherever it was he felt like going—likely our house and the sofa.
Jack was serving up breakfast when his phone buzzed in my hand and a message appeared. Coming for a surprise visit! Be there in two days. We’ll rent a hotel when we arrive XX J & J.
“What does the message say?” Jack said, carefully shuffling bacon onto a plate.
I’ve never seen Jack panic. He used to be a police officer and even in the face of some fairly hairy situations like being trapped in a magical room and me throwing a fireball, he still remained calm. But as soon as I read out the message he fumbled the bacon, dropped the spatula, and burned his hand in his effort to get the frying pan back on the stove before he grabbed the phone from me.
“What is it, what’s going on?” I said, somewhat alarmed at what he was doing and also that a piece of bacon had gone shooting off the plate and halfway across the bench.
“My parents are coming!” Jack said, tapping buttons on the phone.
It rang in his hand.
“Not me!” he said as he answered it.
I heard someone say something back and then Jack let out a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers.
“You have way more room at your place,” Jack said, obviously as a final defense but it was clear that he was losing whatever the conversation was.
“Okay, fine. They can stay here,” Jack said.
He hung up and then smiled across at me.
“Surprise… my parents are coming to visit,” he said.
“Didn’t the message say they were going to stay in a hotel?” I asked, eyeing the piece of bacon sitting in the middle of the bench. Despite the impending arrival of parental figures who I knew I would have to meet, my stomach was getting the better of me.
“They did say that, and as per every other time they do this they’re going to discover when they get to their destination that there are no hotels to stay at and they have to rely on the kindness of strangers, or their sons in this case,” Jack said.
He passed me my breakfast and some cutlery, retrieving the piece of bacon off the bench and passing it to me. I took a bite. It was salty and delicious. Mmmm bacon.
“What are your parents like?” I asked.
Despite the fact we’d been together for a while now this was one topic of conversation that hadn’t come up. I knew Jack’s parents lived back in Canada and were both American.
Jonas and Jack were half-brothers, sharing the same father, but different mothers. Jack was the oldest brother from the first marriage and Jonas from the second. There weren’t many years difference between them so it seemed that first marriage had collapsed quickly before the second had begun.
“They’re fine, great even,” Jack said, cutting into his eggs and taking a large bite. “You know how it is with parents—you love them. But you love them even more at a distance. Say, where they can’t just drive and turn up on a whim.”
/>
“Do they know… about me?” I asked.
It was only after I asked that I realized there was somewhat of a double meaning in it. Jack caught on to what I was inquiring about, however.
“They know you exist, yes, but not that you’re a witch, of course,” Jack said.
He stopped with his coffee cup halfway to his lips and then let out a low whistle.
“Oh… we’re going to have to introduce them to your family.”
I’d still been feeling somewhat calm about his parents arriving but then this new development made me stop like Jack did.
“The mansion’s full to the brim of people who have been coming down for dinner as well, so I think we might be able to avoid a big family dinner if we play our cards right,” I said.
“Maybe we could take them to Valhalla Viking and invite the family along. Crowded place, lots of witnesses,” he said, as though we were discussing a kidnapping victim being handed over rather than a dinner with my witchy family.
“If it’s full, there are still all those tables up in the forest behind the mansion left over from Aunt Ro’s wedding. I’m sure we could work out something there,” I said.
We finished our breakfast, moving as fast as we could off the topic of parents and on to other less anxiety-inducing topics such as my excitement over being an author’s personal assistant and my combined dread and hope that she wouldn’t be a terrible person. Soon we’d finished our breakfast and Jack kissed me goodbye before rushing out. It was still early, but the heat was already rising and he was anxious to get out to the ferry to get across to Truer Island to begin work as soon as possible so he could finish early in the afternoon.
I was left sitting at the kitchen bench, sipping away on my second cup of coffee. I was idly musing over a few things when I looked down at the notepad Jack had on the bench next to an unpaid utility bill. On it, Jack had written down the twenty-four variations of the four words carved in the stones that we’d found.