by Tess Lake
There was a moment of silence then as the night had turned abruptly serious.
“Fabulous!” Molly blurted out, using the code word.
“So was I led to believe that there was some big news for tonight?” I said, trying to change the topic away from possible poisoning and attempted murder.
“Well, yes, there is actually,” Aunt Ro said. She interlinked her arm with Sheriff Hardy and everyone grew quiet, bringing their attention back onto the sheriff. He looked around the room at family members, boyfriends, half-brother, friends and our crazy guest Henry G, and then gave us all a soft smile.
“We'd like to announce that we are going to get married,” he said.
The sudden squealing and celebration from all the Torrent witches took all of the men by surprise. I swear Boris and Varrius and Art nearly fell out of their chairs. Only Henry G went with it, jumping up and clapping and yelling as though he had known us his whole life. Aunt Ro and Sheriff Hardy were enveloped by witches, hugging them and kissing, and talking all at once. I got around the other side of the table so fast I felt like I teleported there.
Eventually Aunt Ro and Sheriff Hardy fought their way free and we all returned to our seats, still talking at high speed.
“When's the wedding going to be? Have you set a date?” Aunt Freya said.
“It's going to be in two weeks,” Aunt Ro said.
This set off another explosion of conversation, Mom and Aunt Freya going between complete excitement and sudden terror because how could they possibly arrange a wedding within two weeks?
Aunt Cass was standing at the head of the dinner table grinning to herself.
“What are you so happy about?” I called out over the noise.
“This couldn't be more perfect. Exactly what I wanted,” she said, looking around it all the assembled guests.
We quieted a down a bit and kept eating. Aunt Cass dinged her wine glass to focus all the attention on her and then pointed a finger at Luce and Ollie.
“When are you two going to get married? Or are you going to go and get pregnant first and then get married like some other Torrents that I know,” she said.
“Aunt Cass!” Aunt Ro gasped.
“That is not true at all,” Mom said, talking to me, Molly and Luce.
“All three of us were married when you were born,” Aunt Freya said primly.
“Barely,” Aunt Cass said.
“Oh my goddess, really?” Luce said, staring at her mother.
“I’d check the marriage dates and the birth dates if I were you.”
“When were you married Mom?” Luce demanded.
“Oh, don't listen to her, she's just trying to stir up trouble,” Aunt Freya snapped.
“Perhaps we can get our librarian here to research some dates and see if they match up,” Aunt Cass said. She turned her attention to Molly.
“So is that your plan, pregnancy and then a marriage or are you going to get married and then get pregnant?”
“Well, why don't you tell me what you and Art are going to do. Planning on getting married? A spring wedding perhaps? Is it common that you marry your little piece of fluff on the side?” Molly sniped, the conversation careening off.
“Fabulous! Fabulous!” I shouted out.
This time it was Peta and Jonas who jumped in. “ Jonas is currently redeveloping the governor's mansion. He's been looking into that haven't you Jonas?” Peta said. Everyone looked across at Jonas, who was in the spotlight.
“Um yeah, we're looking into it, but we're being blocked. I… I think it's Coldwell actually,” he said. At the sound of his name there were a few scowls from around the dinner table, particularly from Jack, Sheriff Hardy and me. Coldwell was a bad man who did bad things but seemed to get away with it constantly. The last we'd heard of him he had been thrown out of control of Sunny Days Manor which he'd been apparently running down into the ground in an attempt to make a lowball offer to buy out the silent partners. A few men who’d been working for him had been arrested after being caught trying to burn part of the manor down to ensure the deal went through. But they'd all refused to speak or implicate Coldwell.
“How is he blocking you?” Molly asked, distracted from fencing with Aunt Cass.
“I think maybe he has contacts with people who are in power. Or something else is happening,” Jonas said, choosing his words carefully. I knew exactly what he wanted to say: “I think he's bribing people.”
Seeing his half-brother's discomfort, Jack picked up the baton.
“Harlow and I are going to Arlan and Hilda's wedding which should be fun. I heard the ice-skating rink has opened up again so we might go there as well,” he said.
We all started talking again and soon the moms returned to the kitchen and returned with dessert which was, again, absolutely exquisite. There was a triple chocolate biscotti, a soft coconut lime ball, and then a chocolate pudding served with a home-made vanilla ice-cream. As we were eating Jack touched me again on the arm and this time there was a burst of sound. I heard wood sawing, hammering, the sounds of building but then behind it I could hear Jack telling someone in a firm voice to lay the ground, to put their hands behind their head. I heard him talking to someone else, a male voice, saying that they had to keep up observation and that soon he would slip up. It came and went in a moment, leaving me feeling… comforted actually. It felt good to hear my partner's past, to listen to what he was now. I wondered if I could hear myself? Would it be me typing away trying to write the Harlot Bay Reader, or perhaps the noise of me getting involved in crazy supernatural things that seem to happen around Harlot Bay?
I was musing on this and listening to the chatter of multiple different conversations at once when I felt a furry presence by my leg. It was Adams and he had his bowtie in his mouth again. He dropped it next to my foot.
“Put it on and I want some cheese too,” he whispered. I took a quick guilty look around but everyone was too wrapped up in their conversations to notice Adams under the table so I reached down, clipped the bowtie around his neck, and then grabbed a chunk of blue cheese, which I gave to him. He took it gently in his mouth rather than gobbling it down, which was odd, and then carried it off, quickly stepping behind the darkness of the table leg and vanishing off to who knows where.
Was he just keeping that cheese somewhere? What was going on?
We kept eating and talking, Sheriff Hardy and Aunt Ro's wedding being the main topic of conversation. I noticed Aunt Cass kept looking down at something in her hand and when I glanced over I saw it was a small piece of fabric with a line drawn across it. When Art excused himself to go to the bathroom I moved over to his chair.
“What are you looking at that for, is it a spell?” I asked.
I already knew the answer, of course. The magic always swirled around us and I could feel it near the piece of fabric.
“I don't think it worked,” Aunt Cass said.
Her previous glee seemed to have drained away.
“What's the spell for?” I whispered.
“I was trying to catch something but it didn't work,” Aunt Cass said. Art soon returned and I had to move back to my chair but soon she called out to me.
“How many people are coming to Hilda and Arlan’s wedding?” she asked.
“We're sitting on table forty so I think it's a lot,” I said.
“Yeah that might work,” Aunt Cass said to herself. In any other moment, and perhaps if we didn't have so many people around I would have pursued that, but the wine and the chocolate and the meal were making me feel euphoric and not worried about too many things.
This lovely, joyful, feeling that had been spread across the table was broken by most horrible squawking and squealing noise outside. There was the sound of cracking and piercing shrieks.
We all rushed outside into the dark to discover about fifty birds swirling around in the air having an vicious fight. They were dive-bombing each other, pecking, and screeching at the top of their lungs. It wasn't just seagulls but o
ther local birds as well. There was even a duck in there, larger than most of them, viciously pulling smaller birds out of the air and flinging them to the ground.
“What is going on? This is crazy,” Ollie said aloud.
I saw Aunt Cass give the moms a look and then Aunt Cass pointed into the distance. “What's that over there everyone? Oh my goddess, is that causing it?” she shouted out. All of the men turned their attention to where Aunt Cass was pointing. From behind us I felt a surge of a spell from the moms and then a great wind came gusting around the corner of the mansion, picking up speed as it went, lifting up dirt and bits of stone. It hit the birds who scattered, squealing in protest. Within a few moments they were gone. The only sign that they'd been there was the ground littered in feathers and droplets of blood.
There were another one of those silences but this one seemed to stretch out forever. The night was definitely over.
“Chika cha!” Molly said and looked around at us but no one had anything to say that could rescue the night from what had just happened.
Chapter 6
“I think we should try the push-up bra,” Luce said, studying me with a calculated eye.
“No I think she has enough cleavage. I read an article that told me you shouldn't have more than a credit card size worth of cleavage or it's just too much,” Molly said. She grabbed her purse off the table and pulled out a credit card. I managed to fend her off.
“Stop it. You're not going to put that in my cleavage,” I said, pushing her away.
“This is science Harlow,” Molly said, but then put the credit card back in her purse. It was the day after our giant ridiculous dinner and Harlot Bay had put on spectacular weather for Arlan and Hilda's wedding. I was wearing a simple sundress with flowers on it but the way my cousins were behaving you would have thought it was my wedding. Luce was on the side of 'show some more leg, show some more cleavage.' Molly, although she wanted it more demure, was going crazy in her own way.
I checked the time. Jack was a little late but we still had plenty of time to make it to the wedding, which was being held in the Harlot Bay Botanic Gardens.
Luce dashed off to her room and returned with a push-up bra. Before she could try to wrangle me into it Jack's truck pulled up outside so she stuffed it down the back of the sofa.
Jack's truck is a work truck. He's usually carrying around bits of lumber and inside it smells of old leather and wood shavings. So it was slightly incongruous to see him open the door and step out wearing a perfectly cut suit and white shirt.
The three of us gasped.
“Oh, Harlow, you need to put a ring on that,” Molly said.
“Do you think we can hire him to stand in the corner of our new café?” Luce said.
“Va va voom,” I said.
Jack walked up to the front door, gave a brief knock and then opened it to find the three of us standing there like stunned fish with our mouths open.
“Ladies,” he said by way of greeting and then winked at us.
“You look like a secret agent,” I said. Jack swept me into his arms and gave me a kiss that left my knees quivering.
“This old thing? It was just something I threw on,” he said. He checked the time.
“We've got to go or we're going to be late,” he said.
“Are you sure you don’t play the guitar Jack?” Molly asked, not for the first time.
“Still having trouble finding someone scruffy with blue eyes?”
“They’re just not scruffy enough is the problem,” Luce complained.
“I wonder if Ollie has a suit,” I heard Molly murmur as Jack grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out the door. We were driving down the hill and I just kept touching his arm, feeling the suit and the firm muscle beneath it.
“You look beautiful,” he said to me with a grin.
“Are you sure? Luce thinks I should have worn a push-up bra so I have more cleavage,” I said, shuffling things up a little bit.
Jack laughed and shook his head. “I think you've just got the right amount,” he said with a devilish sideways grin.
We bounced along down the road hitting a few potholes that had yet to be filled. Although I know my cousins were going a little bit crazy this morning and pretending this was my wedding rather than Hilda's, I had a very odd feeling that it kind of almost was my wedding. Jack was in a suit. I was in a dress. I was deeply in love with him and he was deeply in love with me. Would this be what it was like?
I went into ten seconds of daydreaming before Jack pulled me out of it.
“So did you find out what was happening with those birds? And what Aunt Cass might've been doing?” he asked.
“Nope, Aunt Cass wouldn't tell me, and after I asked her again she went storming down to the basement and magically sealed the door so no one could follow her. She's been in a mood all morning,” I said.
“So she went and locked herself in her ‘lair’,” Jack said, making the air quote marks with his fingers.
“Yeah, I guess so. I wish she'd just talk to us and tell the truth sometimes,” I said.
As soon as the sentence left my mouth I felt a stab of guilt. I'd sworn some time ago to tell the truth, to always be open, to not lie no matter how scary it was. But there had been one thing I simply hadn't been able to tell Jack. I hadn't been able to say to him that I had a “lair” of my own. Even when I went into it, it looked crazy. This gigantic wall of newspaper cuttings and maps and bits of string. Another wall with notes about John Smith. He'd taken me and my family being witches incredibly well, taken it in his stride you might say, but it felt like a crazy cottage might be a step too far. Sometimes I realized that my reluctance was perhaps the spell that was potentially cast on me pushing me not to tell him, and although I had moments where I'd resolved to tell the truth, to say it out loud, they always passed quickly. This was one of those times.
We arrived in town just in time for me to see John Smith hurl himself off another tall building in the center of town. As usual, he hit the ground and then stood up, looking disappointed.
“Do you see something?” Jack said.
“ John stuck in his loop doing the same thing over and over again,” I said.
We drove through town which was reasonably busy for this time of morning and a weekend. It was between seasons where the tourist numbers were slowly building up, heading towards summer when the streets would be so clogged it was sometimes better just to park the car and walk rather than drive around Harlot Bay. As my mind strayed off the lair that I was keeping secret, I realized I hadn't told Jack about my new slip witch power.
“Quickly changing the topic, I think I'm hearing things about people now,” I began. As we drove through town I quickly described what happened when I touched Henry G, the sounds I'd heard of a frog and Shakespearean insults and someone shouting. I told him how I'd listened to the sound of sawing and hammers and then conversations about police matters when I touched him. Jack listened to me with a slight look of amazement on his face.
“That's an extraordinary thing,” he said. “Did you go downstairs to touch your grandma to see if you could hear anything?” he asked.
“No, I hadn't even thought of that!” I said.
How could I have not thought of that? It seemed so obvious! My excitement was quickly dampened however when I remembered that this new power didn't have a hundred percent success rate and that I'd touched people and hadn't heard anything at all.
“I wonder what would happen if I grabbed Aunt Cass on the arm,” I mused.
We pulled up outside the Harlot Bay Botanic Gardens in one of last few free car parking spaces.
“Maybe you would hear her doing some roadwork around the town, or perhaps plumbing?” Jack said.
“What are you talking about?” I said as we got out of the truck.
“Have a look over there,” he said. There down the street on the edge of the Botanic Gardens in the distance was a familiar figure. It was Aunt Cass dressed in coveralls, a bright ye
llow hardhat, and it looked like she had a belt of tools around her waist. She also had that rock climbing rope slung over her shoulder again. As we watched, she knelt down next to a tree and did something before standing up and walking away, quickly vanishing.
“Do you think we should follow her?” Jack asked.
I checked the time. The wedding was due to start in a couple of minutes. Although I was burning with curiosity as to what exactly she was doing, I shook my head.
“No, let's go to the wedding. We can come back later and see what she was doing if it's still there,” I said.
We walked into the gardens and followed the sound of voices. We quickly found around three hundred people standing in a group, some of them milling around. Children were running and laughing and playing. There were rows and rows of white chairs set out on the green grass, leading to a floral arch and a dais where a priest stood wearing his gowns.
“Is this how you imagined it would be?” Jack asked, looking sideways at me.
“Hilda's wedding? Is that what you mean?” I said.
“No, I mean your wedding. Adams told me that you had a scrapbook you made when you were a teenager,” Jack said, teasing me.
“That little sneak needs to stop blabbing my secrets,” I said.
“What can I say? I'm used to interrogating suspects and Adams likes to hang out in the rubble and also enjoys tuna,” Jack said.
“Okay you want the answer, Mr. Fancy Suit – yes, I've considered a garden wedding, but I've also considered a beach wedding. I'm not sure yet. Perhaps when I find someone to marry, I'll be able to decide,” I said.
Jack flinched and put a hand up over his heart. “Ouch, oh that was cold,” he said, laughing.
I punched him in the arm and then as we stood there laughing the violinists at the front began to play. People quickly found their seats although there were a bunch of us that remained standing. Apparently, there hadn't been enough white chairs for every guest. We stood on the left-hand side of the aisle and watched the wedding. First, two adorable little flower girls, most likely great-granddaughters I assume, came running up the aisle scattering petals across the grass. They were followed by Eve, Hilda's granddaughter who looked stunning in a pale blue dress, her dark hair plaited and curled around her neck. She gave me a smile as she walked by. Next up the aisle came Arlan dressed in a black suit and beaming with joy. The last time I'd seen him, he'd been in hospital after jumping off the Harlot Bay lighthouse and breaking a leg. He'd done that because he'd been compelled by the Shadow Witch who had taken over his body. Now he looked healthy and happy, and there was no sign of the magical strife he had gotten into. I expected I'd be happy when I saw him, but I also felt a sudden prickle of tears. I'd saved his life with my magic, stopping him hitting the ground as hard as he would have and now it seemed an enormous, ridiculous thing. If I hadn't been there in time, this day would not exist, this moment would not be happening. For an absurd instant it felt like I was separated from a terrible alternate universe by the thinnest of bubbles, and if I pushed too hard I might accidentally slip into it, into one where I had failed to save him, and the park would be empty, with me just standing on the grass, looking around and feeling sad. The moment came and went, and because there were plenty of people around us with tears in their own eyes I blended in quite well as I wiped mine away. Following behind Arlan was his best man, another man in his late eighties with a shock of white hair and a roguish smile. Arlan and his best man stood at the front, and for a moment, I swear I could see what they would have looked like when they were young, grinning at the girls and winning all kinds of favors with their cheeky smiles. Soon, Hilda came walking up the aisle. She was wearing a white wedding dress, but much shorter than usual and there was no long train carrying on behind it. She was carrying a bunch of flowers with brilliant blue petals rimmed in red. I had no idea what they were but Hilda had worked in botany and science in her life, so I was sure that they were some unusual breed of flower that she had chosen just for this occasion. She reached the front and then there was that expectant pause, that divine moment with everyone waiting.