Fiery Gemstones (A Heston Witch Novella)

by Cassandra DeBrown

  The slime ball must still be oozing himself into one of his shiny suits.

  He was late and didn’t even have the decency to call and say he’d be late. She knew it was deliberate but she also knew he’d be on his was as she hadn’t seen anything to the contrary since her vision of him with Burt.

  She waved over one of the waiters and asked for a refill of her lemon, water and ice. She needed to be well hydrated if she was going to keep her cool. She needed her wits about her if she was going to follow through on the plan her sisters had come up with.

  “I can always hope that I get to handle him my way,” she consoled herself under her breath.

  “Ms Heston?”

  Preston had arrived, sans his usual entourage of flunkies which was unusual. Edna thought he went everywhere with them and found herself mildly disappointed not to see Burt again. He was dressed casually in a pair of khaki coloured slacks and a pale blue shirt. The attire made him seem a little more human but Edna knew she would never warm up to the guy. Something about him just rubbed her the wrong way, even the pompous way he called her Ms Heston.

  “Preston,” she said coolly, deliberately calling him by his first name.

  She could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t like it and she couldn’t care less. Still, Evie had taught her some manners at least. She gestured to the seat across from her.

  “Please, won’t you have a seat?”

  Making no apologies for his tardiness, he picked up a menu and scanned what was on offer for the day. The Happy Place served a set menu for each day with three alternatives for each course, one of which was usually vegetarian. He took his time ordering his dinner then laid aside his menu with an air of accomplishment.

  “Well, Ms Heston, I can’t say that your call wasn’t a pleasant surprise but what made you change your mind? Did I finally come up with the magic number?”

  He looked up at Edna expectantly.

  You wish, she thought snidely.

  He smiled at her as if he’d heard her thoughts and they amused him somehow. She still couldn’t get a fix on his mind and all her attempts to plant positive suggestions in his thoughts did not seem to be getting through. She couldn’t even influence his menu choices. She’d tried to make him order the salmon dish but here he was chomping down on his medium rare steak with relish. Something was definitely strange about this guy.

  “Err, not actually, but you certainly caught my attention.”

  “Really? I would have thought I’d done that ages ago.” He leered at her.

  This cannot be happening, she thought, starting to panic a little.

  “Preston…, Mr William,” she started.

  “Oh no, Preston is just fine, little lady. I have a feeling we are going to be real good friends, you and I.

  Only in your dreams buster, and my nightmares.

  “There is no easy way to say this. Red Rock Haven…”

  “Is a wonderful piece of property and its location is perfect for what I have in mind.”

  “It’s not for sale,” she said bluntly. “We’ll never sell it. I think you should find another property, preferably as far away from Silverline City as you can find.”

  She accompanied her words with one more mental push but even before he opened his mouth, she knew that it wasn’t working.

  “Ms Heston. I don’t know what you might have heard about me but I am not the kind of guy who takes no for an answer. I have a very good feeling about Red Rock Haven. I know I am destined to own it. What I do not know is why you are trying so hard to fight the inevitable. I am trying to be fair here, to give you a reasonable price for your home, but I will not be averse to taking it by force if I have to. I warn you, you may not like my methods very much.”

  As he spoke, Edna was surprised to find her natural response to tell him ‘Hell No’ was being suppressed. She found herself considering what he was saying.

  He had been fair, the price he was offering was actually far above the market value for the property, the money would come in handy for her and her sisters. Would it be so bad to sell the property and travel somewhere nice? Get away for a change?

  The restaurant seemed to have faded away and all Edna could see was the promise of life once she was finally rid of that monstrosity called Red Rock Haven that was hanging round her neck like a millstone. There would be palm trees, sunshine and beaches. She’d have a lovely time once she was free.

  What? Free from what? I love Red Rock Haven, it’s not a burden. It’s my home, our home.

  She glanced over at Preston. His eyes were narrowed and he seemed to be muttering something under his breath as he stared at her closely.

  Something is wrong here. He’s messing with my head. Messing with me. But how?

  “Mr Williams,” she said frostily. “I can see that we have nothing left to discuss. It is obvious I can’t make you change your mind.”

  “No, but I almost got you to change yours, didn’t I. Pity it didn’t work but no matter. There are many ways to skin a cat.”

  He reached out almost casually and emptied the remains of his vegetable soup over the front of his shirt, then made sounds as if he was retching. To the casual eye it would appear that he had just vomited all over himself. His choice of attire made more sense to Edna now. He’d planned in advance. She had underestimated him. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  “Ms Heston, I know we‘ve had our differences, but did you have to poison my food?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You know I didn’t poison you.”

  “Then maybe it’s the food. Your restaurant must be serving spoilt food,” he said loudly as he got to his feet.

  He was attracting the attention of diners near them and Edna noticed a couple turn and leave instead of taking their seats at their reserved table. Other patrons were looking concerned and she caught some whispers about stomach flu and other bugs.

  “It’s a scam, don’t mind him. He’s lying,” she protested desperately at the top of her voice. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with the food, I promise.”

  She looked at Preston, exasperation in her every facial muscle. He just smirked at her, smug satisfaction written all over his face. He was careful to slant his face so only she could see. “You know what I want.” He said for her ears only.

  “You know what I will get what I want. There are no lengths I will not go to in order to get it.”

  “And obviously no depths you will not sink to.”

  “Sticks and stones, Ms Heston. Why don’t we just cut to the chase, huh? How badly do you want me to tell all these good people that this was all just a jest in poor taste?”

  “You bastard.”

  “You know, people always said I didn’t look much like my dad. Huh! Trust a witch” – he sneered the word – “to know what a wife can get up to.

  She hissed at him in annoyance.

  He laughed in her face then covered the sound of his mirth by groaning loudly. He took a couple of steps away, lurching and clutching at his abdomen.

  “Oh God, my belly, what the hell did you put in that soup? Ooh! I think I just shat myself.” He rubbed his hand across his mouth, smearing orange carrot shards across it. He aimed another evil smirk at Edna while she stood there helplessly, then very deliberately rested his soiled hand on the very expensive-looking suit of a well-dressed man sitting two tables over.

  “Oh man, do you know where there the toilets are? My belly’s killing me.” He glanced at the food on the table. “Did you get the soup as well?”

  The guy visibly shied away from him, eying Preston with distaste. He pointed in the general direction of the convenience and dropped some money on the table.

  “Come on,” he said to his date, “It’s past time we got out of this place.” Before we catch something too was left unsaid but Edna caught the thought as easily as if he had shouted it across the room. Along with thoughts about how he had wanted a quiet night in but had come to the restaurant in an attempt to impress his d
ate.

  “I’m sorry,” Edna said to him. “I’m so so sorry,” but it was too late. He wasn’t listening and all around the restaurant, the same picture was repeating itself. She looked around, The Happy Place was leaking clients faster than a sieve. She was too angry to cry or else she’d have been in tears. How dare that bastard come in here and try to destroy her family’s livelihood so carelessly.

  Her eyes met Preston’s where he lounged against the walls near the gent’s room, watching the effects of his handiwork. He gave her one last smile as he made the universal sign for call me’ using his right hand, then he turned and sauntered away.

  Edna was furious. She’d be calling him only over her dead body. Red Rock Haven belonged to the Hestons and there was no way they were going to sell up and leave to the first property developer that decided to stake his claim on it. Nothing Preston could do or say that would change that.

  #6

  Simply put, life sucks.

  “The insufferable jerk. The monumental jackass. There is something seriously wrong with that man.”

  Edna fumed as she yanked off the silver teardrop earrings that she had worn for the night. “And he had this,” she stuttered with rage, “this smirk on his face whole time. He just stood there and smiled liked a satisfied Cheshire cat.”

  “I take it the charm-and-confuse-routine didn’t go so well.”

  “Not even close, Eden. It was almost as if he could see right through me. Like he knew exactly what I was trying to do and he took perverse delight in letting me know that it wasn’t working.

  She struggled to get out of her gown and wriggled a little trying to grab the zipper. Her ring snagged in her hair and she gave a little yelp of pain. Things were not going well, even her wardrobe was conspiring against her. With an exasperated sigh she turned around and let Ethos unzip her. As the dress pooled at her feet she dragged on the oversized tee-shirt that she loved to lounge about in and slipped her feet into her fuzzy rabbit slippers. Feeling marginally more settled after the disastrous dinner she went to the en-suite to remove her makeup, trailed by both her siblings.

  “But how come? That has never happened before.”

  “I know, right.” She was genuinely puzzled. “My talents always work. They always have. Especially on townies.”

  Edna’s telepathic talents and her gift for planting suggestions in people’s minds had always been legendary. Even when she was a child, she’d been able to manipulate the minds of the town folk with ease. Her gifts worked on her sisters and mum but only to reinforce suggestions of things that they actually wanted to do. She couldn’t force them to do stuff against their will. Just like she hadn’t been able to manipulate Preston Williams into changing his mind about acquiring Red Rock Haven.

  “The rotten low-life!”

  She remembered what Preston had said when she had called him that in the restaurant and she gritted her teeth.

  The slimy, no-good …

  She broke off her internal rant when she realised that her sisters were still talking. She took a swig of the cool glass of white wine she was using to smooth her ruffled feathers and paid attention to the conversation.

  “Preston is not a townie.”

  “But he wants to be, quite desperately I might add. The question is, why? What could he possibly want with Silverline City and with Red Rock Haven?”

  “And who is he, I mean really,” Ethos queried. “Are you sure that he is just a property developer?”

  “Even if he is, there is definitely more to him than meets the eye. He has to have some serious talents of his own if he was able to block Miss Brainwaves over there.”

  Eden nodded her head in Edna’s direction. She didn’t miss the pissed off grimace that crossed her sister’s face. Yep, Edna was still smarting alright.

  “Still, a little humility is good for the soul.”

  “Oh, bite me.”

  “Sorry, I have a delicate stomach. I’m not sure pissed off Heston will agree with me.”

  Despite her irritation, Edna found herself grinning at Eden’s quip.

  “You know I’m right,” Eden continued. “He must have a lot of hardware under the hood if he could block your mind magic with ease.”

  “Without even breaking a sweat, I’ve never seen anything like it. It was a bit humiliating,” Edna admitted sheepishly. “And quite scary. He was muttering under his breath at one point and I swear, he almost had me ready to sign over everything to him there and then. I just felt this overwhelming urge to give him whatever it was he wanted even though my mind was screaming ‘Hell No!’ at the top of its voice.”

  “Well, that proves it then. Whatever he is, he must have ties to the magical community and he must have been well prepared, which means he and whoever he is working with must have known about your gifts beforehand.”

  Ethos glanced at her sisters in turn and saw them nod as they pondered her words and agreed with her.

  “So what do we know?” She asked.

  “Not enough, obviously,” Eden said wryly.

  “Tell me something we don’t know,” Ethos shot back.

  “That’s the problem. There are too many variables, too many unknowns, too many things we don’t know about this low life.”

  “We know he wants Red Rock, we know you can’t see him coming and we know he has enough steam to block your gifts.”

  “We also know that he is despicable and there are no lows he will not sink to in order to get his way.”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

  “What do you mean?” Edna rounded on her sister. “Don’t tell me you are defending that creep.”

  “No, not defending or excusing what he did at The Happy Place.”

  Despite her sister’s obvious agitation, Ethos remained calm and collected. She had a sound and logical mind and was able to analyse situations in a way that would not have occurred to most people. She laid a soothing hand on Edna’s shoulder as she continued.

  “But think about it, Sis. Someone who has enough fire power to come after you didn’t need to pretend he was ill to empty the restaurant. He could just have easily made all the clients sick instead.”

  Edna paled as her sister’s words hit home. Ethos was right. Preston had just been toying with her. He hadn’t even unleashed his big guns. She shuddered to imagine what havoc he could have wrecked on the innocent customers if he’d chosen to.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know, but whatever it is, we better do it fast, because Plan A just fell to pieces and Plan B doesn’t sound like it has a chance in hell of succeeding.”

  “We could always skip ahead, pull out the big guns and settle on Plan E.”

  Plan E was their code for Emergency Plan and involved Evie and all the girls pulling on their collective heritage as Heston Witches. It took some powerful spell writing and required major utilization of their combined powers and it wasn’t something they did lightly. The ripple effect that resulted from the use of that much power could affect things in Silverline City for years to come. The last time they had run a Plan E, the Townies had been green -skinned for a month. It had taken a lot of magical tap-dancing to be able to keep the population from noticing their leafy skin tones.

  “A plan E,” Eden echoed. “Nothing so drastic, at least not yet. But we might want to bring Evie in on this. She was quite miffed earlier when you were heading out and read us the riot act about keeping her in the dark.”

  “Huh!” Edna scoffed. “As if there was a mouse that had the slightest chance of getting a single crumb in this place without Evie knowing about it.”

  “Yep. And she says that is the way she wants to keep it, so no more trying to keep her in the dark. Besides, this guy might be dangerous.”

  For the first time in ages, the Heston Witches were under threat and none of them liked the feeling.

  #7

  The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree.

  “So are you done? Is it ready?”


  Esther was almost hopping up and down in impatience. It was almost midnight and she and Elvira had met in the old store beneath the kitchen to assemble their props before they set off for their magical midnight rendezvous.

  “I think we are set. Not that I mean to brag but you do know that my spell writing skills will soon be the stuff of legends.”

  “Of course. Legends of what happened to the Heston witch who fell into a fairy tale and became a travelling bard writing sonnets for fair ladies.”

  “You only complain because there is no poetry in your soul,” Elvira retorted, her black eyes sparkling with amusement. “It takes a real wordsmith to produce the goods as you well know.”

  The ‘goods’ in this case was a powerful spell that was meant to allow the spell caster to borrow and magnify any magical ability so long as there was someone nearby who actually had that ability in the first place. They had thought it up when they had overheard their aunt Edna remarking that she would have liked to borrow Evie’s gift of conjuring stuff out of nothing at all.

  Though they all had a common ancestor, their magical gifts were inherited in a seemingly random fashion and some gifts like prescience had been known to skip a generation or two. The girls were hoping that if their plan worked, all the Heston witches would be able to wield all the gifts in their lineage. It was a heady idea, and would ensure that this generation went down in the history books as the greatest generation of Heston witches Silverline City had ever known.

  “Enough with the self-adulation already. Let’s have a look at the spell then.”

  “Yes, let’s all have a look at the spell.”

  Elvira gasped in horror and heard a similar squeak from her cousin whose blue eyes widened in mild alarm. On the other side of the room that had appeared empty when they’d first entered stood her two aunts, her mum and her grandmother.

  They must have used a cloaking spell. She thought desperately. We are so grounded we have become part of Planet Earth.