As soon as he parked, sconces lit the porch, and Vika stuck her snowy head through the cracked door. “Rowe, is that you at this hour?” she croaked.
“Yes, Vika. It’s me,” he called loudly to be certain she heard. In the last few years, her hearing had diminished. He rounded the rear of the car and scanned every tree elbow and knot visible in the darkness for a sign of Busby.
She padded onto the wooden porch in her doeskin slippers and adjusted wire-framed eyeglasses on the bridge of her hooked nose. “What are you searchin’ for?”
“I…ah.” Not looking where he walked, his toe hit a root to the side of the path. He jerked and replied, “I’m trying to keep a familiar. A young male owl who’s the offspring of Edme’s bird.”
The old lady chuckled. “You? With a familiar? Hard to believe. Is that the owlet I met when I visited you six months after Edme passed? I haven’t seen that bird since.”
“That’s the one,” Rowe replied while keeping his gaze to the trees.
“And you still haven’t trained him? That was a year ago when I first saw him,” she chided him and turned in place, her nightgown wrapping around stumpy calves. The whiteness of the fabric caught the lamp light and shone like a beacon. She took several steps off the porch, and the wind lifted long strands of her wiry hair. Rowe paused at the sight of her. An angelic vision that matched the purity of her heart.
A sharp hoot sounded through the darkness, and Edme’s huge barn owl, Maeira, glided on silent wings to the porch rail. Her chest heaved. She rotated her head to look behind.
Moments later, Busby’s flat, white face appeared. Flapping as much as soaring, he spread his talons wide and clamped onto the railing beside his mother. Misjudging his speed, momentum thrust him forward, and he dropped to the floor. Tail tucked close, he hopped up beside his mother, who clapped her beak at him.
Maeira faced Vika. “While on my way here from the cemetery, I heard Busby’s hoot in the distance.” The magnificent owl rotated her head and blinked at Rowe. “Apparently, he failed to turn when you did.”
“Mother, Rowe offered for me to ride in his car,” Busby volunteered.
The female owl’s feathers ruffled, her gaze still fixed on Rowe. “Why is my son not trained to fly the coven?” Her esteemed position in the coven as a familiar imbued with the spirit of their deceased master or mistress required her own character to be restrained. Despite that, displeasure and concern stabbed at him from her black eyes.
Rowe tipped his hat to her. “I apologize, Maeira.” Realization that he was responsible for the advancement of her son hit Rowe like a splash of icy water in his face. He’d mourned the death of his own daughter, born without even the chance to enjoy one breath. All the pleasures and lessons she would never experience chased him daily. He now understood, in the same way, Maeira wanted the best for her son and entrusted him to Rowe. Prepared to right his wrong, Rowe stood taller and looked her square in the eye. “I allowed my grief to distract me from my duty to Busby. That isn’t fair to him. I will do better from this moment forward.”
That seemed to satisfy the great barn owl. She faced Vika. “The reason I came, which is likely Rowe’s as well, is that Dearg bewitched the statues. Their voices are lost. I do not wish to see the spirit of my mistress suffer in this way.”
Vika spoke up. “When the wind changed direction after nightfall, the tingle of Dearg’s shadow lifted the hairs on my arms. I knew what he set to do. So I got a ride from Herta and Tom, in the log cabin down the way, to take me to the cemetery on their trip to Bentbone’s K-mart.”
“I was just at the cemetery to talk with Edme.” Rowe followed Vika onto the porch. “I appealed to the gods, and they fixed your potion so Grant could speak. No others. Is it too late for you to help them?”
She stroked a bony finger along her temple, and the light radiating from her gown dimmed. “Maybe not. There’s a simple potion that might work. Haven’t made it in eons. I’ll need the strength of your spirit to spread the magic ‘round to all the graves.”
“Not a problem,” Rowe replied.
She moved to the door and motioned him to follow. “C’mon inside while I do my cookin’.”
He looked back to the two owls on the railing. Unsure whether Busby needed to be exposed to potion-making, something he himself rarely did, he offered, “Would you both like to join us?”
Busby spread his wingtips away from his sides, but remained stock still when his mother snapped, “No, thank you. We have important issues to discuss.”
The small owl hunkered down onto his talons.
Rowe felt bad for what seemed like a stern parenting talk the young owl was about to receive when the incident had largely been his fault. He left them to their bonding time and caught up with Vika in her potion-kitchen.
Connected to the main kitchen but much larger, it looked like a room from a colonial farmhouse. Glass-shaded ceiling lamps cast brighter light in the potion room. A fireplace, wide enough to heat a cauldron, lined one outside wall. Across the back corner of the house, a door cut into the other outside wall. A long tavern tables filled the center of the room, crowded with books and jars filled with herbs and extracts Vika had made from her garden. As a young man, Rowe and his father had felled several trees in the backyard that blocked light from her patch. Those trees were milled for lumber to make her tremendous work tables.
Cabinets and shelves lined one wall. Vika hoarded and collected ingredients in case someone in the coven came to her with an unusual need. She often served as their doctor if their own healing salves and herbals failed. They repaid her with food and rights to gather from bushes and flower beds on their properties. Sometimes, townies came to her for cures, their eyes bugged out as they drove through the coven land. Rowe admired how Vika treated them all alike, with care and kindness. Many witches looked down on outsiders, only using them for a source of income.
At the long table, Vika flipped through one of her many grimoires and horticultural guides. After a few seconds of fluttering pages, she said, “There it is!” She grinned, and two large dimples appeared in her peach-blossom cheeks. Her knotted fingers moved with unusual dexterity. In less than a minute, she selected five jars of liquid from the storage wall and plucked a handful of leaves from one of hundreds of dried bunches hanging from the ceiling. Examining one jar, she said, “This one’s scarce as hen’s teeth. Glad I have some left.” She ground and sprinkled ingredients into a porcelain bowl, then looked up at Rowe while she stirred. “What’s troublin’ you? There’s a strong reason you needed to talk with Edme tonight. I can feel it.”
“It’s nothing. Really.” He pretended to study the contents of one jar, not wanting his problems to overshadow what was more important. Honor of the deceased witches needed to be restored.
She peered at him over the frame of her glasses, and her brown eyes narrowed. “Ain’t nothin’. I’ve known you since you were knee high to a grasshopper. Fess up.”
“I had a run-in with Adara this evening. Seems she’s set herself to possess me as her lover. I don’t know why. She and I aren’t alike, despite what she claims.”
“Land, no! I’m glad you see that much.” She paused and stirred the other direction. “Siddie, I see you under that bench. Count out a minute for me.” Her familiar, an enormous Maine Coon cat with ears that looked more like antlers, stepped out and stretched her spine and limbs. The cat, like a dog in size but more vicious, went everywhere with Vika, serving as a fearless protector to her aging mistress. More than once, the tabby’s teeth and claws had torn into bobcats that ventured too close while Vika did her gathering in the woods. Well-suited to each other, Siddie served Vika for over a decade.
The cat sniffed the air in Rowe’s direction, then relaxed the lifted hairs on her spine.
Vika glanced back at Rowe. “Adara is power-hungry. She won’t be denied. If you’re the prize she wants, you’re up the creek without a paddle, boy.”
“Don’t I know.” Rowe took a seat on a bench
across the table from her. “Because of her position, I can’t fight her with magic. According to coven rules, any claim against the high priestess must to go through the council. But she did harm to someone else to get closer to me, and I am allowed to fight for my friend’s welfare. She put Lenore under a seven-year chastity spell.”
The old witch nodded. “Vervain juice.”
“Time’s up, m’lady,” Siddie said in a soft, purring voice as though half asleep.
“Thank you, sweet one.” Vika poured the potion into a half-gallon amber bottle and capped it tight.
“Adara said the vervain spell could only be undone by the gods. She coupled it—”
“That’s cruel! She enhanced the girl’s fertility with a mandrake charm, then followed with the vervain.” Vika rubbed her hands on a dishtowel for so long Rowe thought she was trying to remove that awful news. “I don’t know what I can do to help Lenore. Poor girl. Are you sweet on her?”
He shook his head, picked up the bottle, and met her as she walked to the end of the table. “Only friends. She’s a nice young woman. She doesn’t pass judgment like most coven folks.”
“You got that one right.” Vika faced him and patted his shoulder. “Let me study up on it. I might think of something. Regardless, count me as an ally if you need a hand against Adara.”
“Thanks, Vika. That means a lot.”
“I may pass word along to some in the coven I trust. When we appointed Adara to her mother’s position, everyone had high hopes. Since then, we’ve lost more coven members each year.”
He nodded. “I’ll talk to my friends, Logan and Keir, as soon as possible too. Logan has connections through his work with the coven’s elderly, and Keir’s insight as a seer is invaluable.”
She picked up the moonstone locket hanging outside of his shirt and studied it, then glanced at him with raised brows. “The energy in this is stirring.”
He shrugged. “That magic is so old, it doesn’t work in today’s world.” He often considered the pendant nothing more than a coven brand marking him as someone who grieved, like Hester forced to wear the scarlet letter ‘A.’ “It’s just a tale to tell visitors to lighten their wallets at our attractions. I feel like a hawker. Sometimes I don’t even charge, like today.” The image of the young woman, Jancie, he’d met today at the carnival flashed into his mind. “It feels wrong.” The ideas that he reeled off routinely to himself and now to Vika seemed hollow as they left his lips.
“Rowe McCoy!” Her exclamation startled him from his thoughts. “I’m glad your Daddy’s not alive to hear you.” She stepped back and glared at him with hands on her hips, white hair billowing up as her energy flared. “That magic is old, indeed. Stronger than anything we work today, you hear me?” She snatched up a shawl from the end of the bench, thrust out her chin, and marched through the door to the kitchen, the mammoth cat on her heels. The front door flung open with such speed that the owls flinched.
Rowe rubbed a hand over his forehead. Somehow he’d managed to upset a lot of women tonight, including his Edme who looked so pained being unable to speak.
Outside, he opened the passenger door of the coupe for Vika, despite her insistence that she preferred to walk. Solid like an oak, the old witch often walked the coven to do her gathering.
Siddie leapt into the storage area behind the seats, filling it completely with her long tail.
Vika clucked her tongue and took a seat.
Once seated on the driver’s side, Rowe called to the owls, “Busby, should I go slow or have you learned the way?”
“A-okay, no need to wait for me,” his owl called with a quavering voice that sounded like a forced attempt at confidence.
“Familiars need to have keen directional sense,” Vika said primly, pulling the shawl around her shoulders. “He’ll learn. His mama will see to that now, since you didn’t.”
As they drove, Vika’s silent disappointment allowed time for Rowe’s mind to wander. He ran a finger over the pendant.
At the cemetery, all tension melted as they worked together, paying respects to former coven witches. Those who’d achieved stature in their former lives were granted the honor of spirit voices. That ability needed to be restored. Vika sprinkled her potion on each statue, large and small alike, while Rowe repeated his appeals to the four gods of nature like before. His voice rang loud and clear, soon joined by a host of others.
Dearg flapped from a farmhouse roof toward the burial grounds, but Siddie took off at a tear with Maeira and Busby chasing the crow from the sky.
Vika joined Rowe in the center, tears staining her cheeks. “We’ve given them back their honor. Thank you.” She took his hand and led him to Edme. “She has something to tell you.”
He knelt at the statue of his former wife and looked up at her blank stone eyes.
“I now know the gift of speech is a treasure that can be lost, so I have something important to tell you,” Edme said with a voice more calm than he’d heard since before her death. “Rowe, you’ve come here to me, again and again. It is time for you to put yourself first, before me. Nothing would make me happier.”
Her words rang without meaning in his mind as he stood and kissed her cheek. “I’ll try.”
At his car, he found a yellow maple leaf in his driver’s seat. He looked up at the tree ablaze with yellow in the moonlight, the first color change of this autumn he’d seen. He fingered the leaf, tucked it in his pocket, wondering if it was an omen of change.
Along the drive back to Vika’s and later to his own home, Edme’s message wove into each of Rowe’s thoughts. His hand moved to the moonstone, which now seemed to weigh more than he remembered. At least twice as much. Was he going crazy? How could it change?
Walking up the stairs to his bedroom, Busby sailed past him to the brass perch once used by Maeira. The pendant seemed to drag upon Rowe’s chest. He trudged up the half flight past the landing turn. Upon reaching his room, he peeled out of his clothes, yanked the chain of the necklace over of his head, and fell into bed. He tossed the locket on the rumpled blanket beside him. From that distance, the moonstone’s magic felt heavy on his eyelids and Edme’s words echoed in his dreams.
Chapter Four: The Fern Cafe
Jancie had avoided encounters with her father for two days after her visit to the carnival grounds. But her time was about to run out, since she was expected to be present for family dinners on Thursday nights.
Harley would be there for sure. Such a mooch, he never missed a free meal or a way to kiss-up to Jancie’s dad, his boss, who wanted her to get back together with Harley. Dad had plans to make Harley the body shop manager, along with a vision of his only daughter marrying Harley in order to keep family involved with his business. Since the couple’s break-up more than six months ago, Dad found ways to put Jancie and Harley in the same place, despite the fact she’d made her choice clear. Thoughts of her father’s manipulation, along with the idea of marrying Harley, formed a hard pit of anger in her stomach. She’d made a mistake dating him and wanted to put that past her. He was hot to look at, but that had worn off fast. She sighed, and a rush of regret flushed heat into her face. If only it’d been sooner, like after the first date.
Harley oscillated between trying to get revenge on her for leaving him and doing his best to win her back. Most days, Jancie didn’t know and didn’t care which bothersome tactic he was up to. She just wanted him out of her life.
She let out a heavy sigh. Armed with ammunition of having seen her talking to Rowe, how could Harley resist revenge mode. He’d likely tell Dad. During the past days, she’d wished on her lucky German coin, her rabbit’s foot, and favorite rock from her collection that Harley would pick the choice of reconciliation tonight. Tonight, an evening of his sweet-talk would sound like honey to her ears. But that didn’t seem likely. With no way out, she accepted meeting the consequences of breaking one of her ironclad father’s rules: no talking to witches.
At home after work, Jancie changed into jean
s and a t-shirt. She glanced in the full-length mirror on the bedroom door and wrangled out of the bottoms. Her roundish heart-shaped face made her seem younger than her age. Dressing down didn’t help. Looking like a teen would only give her father more power.
She searched one side of her closet, then moved the panel door and flipped through older garments crowded together on the other, things from high school that weren’t right for much now. Jancie thought of the glamorous coven leader she’d met at the carnival. Her style commanded authority. She had no problem interrupting Rowe from telling the moonstone story. Something about the way the woman spoke to Rowe made Jancie think the two were a couple. Or, maybe, she led the entire coven with a firm hand.
Jancie stared at her choices and settled on a navy short-sleeve blouse she usually wore to work and paired it with trim khaki pants. She picked out leather ballet flats from her limited shoe selection. While brushing her hair, she rechecked the mirror, happy to find she now at least looked her twenty-three years. Still, the new outfit did little to camouflage her long neck. She couldn’t wait for cool fall weather, so she could hide it underneath turtlenecks and cowls. Her mother had always said Jancie looked as graceful as a swan with her delicate neck, and thin arms. Somehow Jancie saw a giraffe in the mirror instead.
She peeked into her jewelry box, frowned, and closed it. She needed to get out and do more shopping, something she’d not felt like doing during Mom’s long illness and afterward. The last six months seemed like a blur. All Jancie remembered were daily chores and missing Mom. The simple silver hoops she still wore from work would have to do.
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