“And you?” Grandma Winnie asked.
“What about me?” I pondered.
“This is obviously connected to you,” she said. “Otherwise, whatever killed Fallon wouldn’t have had all that to say to you back in The Lunch Pale.”
“How’d you even hear that?” I asked.
“You think anything goes on in this house without my knowledge?” she asked with pursed lips. “This is about you, and I’d bet my false teeth that the figures depicted on the cards represent people’s relationships with you,” Grandma Winnie said.
“Don’t do that,” Charlotte said, her mouth turning down distastefully. “You need those teeth. I’ve been told the soup I make is less than stellar.”
“The word inedible has been thrown around a lot in reference to it,” Dallas added.
“Fallon is represented as the Handmaiden, the servant, because she was serving you at the time of her death,” Grandma Winnie said, ignoring my cousins’ outburst.
“That would also mean that the family card would mean—”
“Us,” Dallas said, finishing my horrifying thought.
“Setting the obvious family card aside for a second, we need to find your Ace of Cups. That’s the only way we can stop all of this before it reaches the family,” Grandma Winnie said. “I have lived right near a century, and in that time, no one has been able to hurt my girls. That won’t stop today. We just have to get to the bottom of this.”
“But I don’t have an Ace of Cups,” I said. “That’s a new relationship. I haven’t had any relationship since my engagement went down the drain.”
“You also said it could mean an old relationship, right?” Charlotte asked. “A rekindled one? It just had to make you feel giddy, like you were a high school kid. Now, who could do that? Who could make you feel like you did back in high school?”
Just then, the door swung open. It was Savannah. “Sorry to butt into whatever’s going on here, but there’s a cop at the front door, says he needs to talk to Izzy. I think he said his name is Riley Davis.”
My eyes instinctively shot back over to the tarot deck, and the Ace of Cups still faced toward us.
“Oh,” I muttered. “Oh, crud.”
9
I pushed past Savannah just a little, looking out the door and straight down the staircase. Though he didn’t see me, Riley was standing there. He was pacing around the lobby and seemed to stop in front of a photograph of Charlotte, Savannah, Dallas, and me from years ago. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. I had never been the kind of witch to snoop around in people’s heads like that. Still, if I knew Riley the way I thought I did, I’d bet it was something snarky and uncalled-for. I mean, what else would you expect from a guy who leaves a girl hanging on her one and only senior prom night?
I pulled my head back inside before he had a chance to look up and spot me.
“Tell him I’m not here,” I said, shaking my head. “I have no interest in talking to him.”
Savannah furrowed her brow. “The thing is, I already told him you were here.”
“Well, tell him you were wrong,” I shot back.
“She’ll do no such thing,” Grandma Winnie said, pointing a wrinkled finger in my direction. “Even if that man weren’t obviously who the tarot cards were talking about, he’s still a police officer, and I can’t have the fuzz sniffing around our lobby. It’s bad for business.”
“The fuzz?” Charlotte asked. “Bad for business? What are you, in the mafia or something?”
“What?” Grandma Winnie shrugged. “I can’t use lingo?”
“You can. You just probably shouldn’t,” Dallas agreed.
“It’s weird as H-E-Double Hockey St—”
“Stop with the hockey stick garbage!” I yelled, my hands balling into fists at my side. “And you don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Grandma Winnie gave me a look that quite literally might have rusted metal if she’d have thrown an incantation in with it.
I shuffled nervously. “I mean, with all due respect, Grandma, Riley isn’t the Ace of Cups.”
“Yes. He is,” Charlotte balked. “You said it’s someone who makes you feel like you’re in high school. You were obsessed with that dude in high school.”
“Obsessed is a strong word,” I hedged.
“Actually, if I remember correctly, she’s being a little generous with you,” Dallas said. “I mean, we all talked about it.”
“You did?” I asked, biting my lower lip nervously.
“We were afraid you were going to get his face tattooed on your chest or something,” Charlotte added.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, shaking my head. “You know needles scare me, and besides, he’s got an ugly face.”
I knew that was a lie. Riley was a lot of things, but ugly wasn’t one of them. What I didn’t know was how quickly my entire family would jump to his defense.
“No. Not ugly,” Dallas said.
“He’s actually really hot,” Charlotte said.
“A dreamboat, even,” Grandma Winnie added.
“Alright!” I shouted. “So he’s Brad Pitt. I get it. That doesn’t mean the Ace of Cups is about him. The Ace of Cups is about someone I’m supposed to love. Or, you know, at least like. This guy, Riley Davis, I absolutely don’t like him. In fact, I would say I almost hate him.”
“God, it’s true. She’s in love with him again,” Dallas said, looking at me nervously.
“What?” I started, my eyes wide. “Did you not hear a word I just said?”
“Oh, I heard,” Dallas said, glaring at me. “That’s how I know I’m right.”
“You are not right,” I said, pointing a finger at my oldest cousin. “You might be the smartest person in this room, Dal, but you’re wrong about this.”
“She’s right, Dallas,” Charlotte said, surprising me.
“Really?” I asked, looking over at the woman. “I appreciate that. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me too quickly,” Charlotte answered. “The reason Dallas is wrong is because she said you were in love with him again. Truth is, we both know you’ve never not been in love with him. So, you couldn’t fall in love with him again. It would just be redundant.”
“You’re redundant,” I muttered, anger rising in me.
“Listen to me!” Grandma Winnie said. “You say you don’t like this guy? Fine. You’re a grown woman with a good head on her shoulders most of the time. I have no reason to believe you’re not telling me the truth.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Now, it’s time for you to hear some truth from me,” she said. “I’m your grandmother, little witch. Until they put my wrinkled backside into the ground, I’m the head of this family. And that means you do what I say. I don’t care whether you like him, love him, hate him, or even if you can’t remember his gosh darn name. The cards spoke, you told me what they meant, and then this guy shows up on our doorstep like a walking, breathing sign from fate. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think we’re in any position to turn down signs from fate.”
“Especially when they look like that in a uniform,” Charlotte said, smiling widely and shaking her head.
“Bite me, Charlotte,” I muttered.
“I would, but I think Riley’s got first dibs,” she answered.
“Stop!” Grandma Winnie said. “Look here, Izzy. I know you’ve got problems with this man, and that’s fine. But we’ve got trouble. Something has come to this town and killed a woman. And worse than that, it threatened you while it did so.”
“That’s not worse, Grandma,” I said.
“It is to me,” she said mournfully. “I lost your mother. I’ve lost enough of my girls already. I’m not losing anyone else. So, I know this isn’t what you want to do, but I’m going to need you to go down there and talk to that man. I’m going to need you to smile, to be nice, and spend enough time with him to make sure you’re right about his not being the Ace of Cups.”
“But, G
randma,” I started.
“This is what I need, Izzy,” she said. “You’re a Lockheart witch. You’ve been out of the game for a while. It’s time to get back in. Can I trust you to do that?”
I looked at her, then at my cousins, then back down the staircase to the police officer standing at the bottom. I hated this. I really did. Still, Grandma Winnie was right. When family asks you to do something, there’s only one answer.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said in a soft voice, and then I headed down the stairs to face fate and its super-irritating walking, breathing sign.
10
“It’s been years since I’ve been in this place,” Riley said, looking up and catching sight of me as I descended the staircase toward him. A slow smile crept across his face, and it made me feel weird. What was he smiling at? What did he have planned? Maybe he was just being a jerk. Yeah. That was probably it.
“Same here,” I answered, looking away from him as I exited the stairs and settled beside him in the lobby. When I was a kid, this room was my favorite in all of Lockheart Estates. It wasn’t that it was fancy. If anything, the lobby held a homier feel than the rest of the B&B, which featured rooms that were themed to almost any occasion. We had the honeymoon suite, of course. There was the anniversary annex, the mountaintop mirage room, and in case people had heard the whispers about witches owning the old bed and breakfast and wanted to celebrate that, we had the Salem room. It was decorated like a one-bedroom house from colonial Massachusetts. Sure, it was exploitative and squeezed lemon into one of the most painful cuts of our personal history, but it went for three times the rate of a normal room. And like Grandma Winnie always said, even a witch knows a good deal when she sees one.
“It’s a little weird,” he said, looking around with the same grin on his face. He was taking this entire place in, and as he did, I thought about the reason I loved this room so much. Ever since I was a kid, the lobby had served as the hub of the entire grounds. It was the beating heart of not only this establishment, but sort of my family in general. I couldn’t think of a day of my youth that didn’t involve this lobby just a little, and all the good memories I had of Riley—as far back as I’d managed to push them in my mind—seemed to happen here too. “I remember the night we worked on our eleventh grade science project out here,” he continued, his grin widening into a huge smile. “I never thought a model volcano could be so much work.” He turned to me, his bright eyes practically shining. “We worked on it until three o’clock in the morning. Do you remember that? I was just about to give up, but you pressed that button on the side and the whole thing started to work. You know, to this day, I could have sworn I had pressed the same button the same way you did, and I got nothing. I guess some people are just luckier than others.”
Of course, I remembered that night. I replayed that night in my head a thousand times after it happened. I had almost kissed him that night, and I would have if I wouldn’t have been such a chicken back then. Instead, I cast a small enchantment to get a model volcano, which honestly belonged in a trash heap as opposed to on a table in the science lab, to work when nothing else we did had done the trick.
“I honestly don’t remember that,” I said, lying straight to his face.
“Oh,” he said, a flash of something like hurt passing through his eyes. “That’s too bad. It was a good night.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” I said quickly. “Now, what can I help you with, Riley?”
He blinked at me, straightening his stance as he realized I wasn’t here for his small talk. If he had business with me, then he needed to get to it and he needed to be on his way. But as I thought that, my grandmother’s voice filled my head, reminding me of what she’d just said. And when I say it filled my head, I don’t mean I remembered the exchange and was replaying it in my mind. Nope. I mean my grandmother’s voice literally filled my head. That’s the fun of being a witch, I suppose.
“What are you doing, Izzy?” my grandmother asked, her words pulsating in my brain and bouncing off my eardrums.
The whole thing was a little unnerving, as one might expect, especially given that I hadn’t had much dealing with magic in the last five years. Hearing my nearly century-old grandmother scold me in my own thoughts had me more than a little shaken.
“What the heck?” I yelped, involuntarily reacting to the shock in quite an inopportune way.
“What?” Riley asked, his eyes narrowing at me.
‘What the heck?” I repeated, this time in a more reasonable tone. “Are you doing here? I mean, like, what can I help you with? Come on. You’re just standing there, dude.”
“Fine,” he muttered, his jaw tightening a little. “I knew you were upset with me, but I didn’t realize my presence was this much of an irritant for you.” He shook his head. “I just need to ask you some questions about what happened at The Lunch Pale today.”
“Izzy, you had better fix this,” Grandma Winnie said. “If you can’t get on that boy’s good side, then we’ll never know if he’s the Ace of Cups.”
“He’s not the Ace of Cups!” I whispered in a rushed fury. “And what happened to your not being the type of witch to meddle inside other people’s heads?” I asked, reminding her of something she’d literally just told me.
“Desperate measures,” Grandma Winnie said. “If I could trust you to behave yourself, I wouldn’t be forced to violate my own personal constitution like this. But you make me do these things, Izzy. I hope you’re happy.”
“Ecstatic,” I whispered sarcastically.
“Well, you won’t be for much longer,” Grandma Winnie said. “Not if this boy dies on us.” I was going to point out the fact that regardless of how old she was herself, Riley was most definitely not a boy. I might not have liked him, but there was no denying that he was a man, and a strapping one at that. “If he dies, Isobel Lockheart,” she continued, using my full name for emphasis because, you know, that’s what grandmothers do, “That’ll be on your hands, on your head. Not to mention the fact that the next set of victims will be us. We need to nip this in the bud, sweetie. And for that to happen, I need you to pull that stick out of your rear and turn on some of that famous Lockheart charm.”
“I don’t have any famous Lockheart charm,” I said, continuing to whisper.
“I know, but I’ve got more than I can use, and I was hoping that you might have inherited even a whisper of it from me,” Grandma Winnie said. “Either way, it’s yours to do, and I expect it to happen. Now, get to it!”
With that, I could feel her presence leave my head. I sighed blissfully and then focused on Riley. The look on his face reminded me that I still hadn’t answered his question and had basically been whispering to myself for the last forty-five seconds.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I was trying to remember.”
“Remember what?” he asked with jutted eyebrows.
“What happened today, of course,” I said, giving him a playful pat on the shoulder which felt totally wrong the instant I did it. “That’s what you said you wanted to ask me about, right?”
“You need to focus that hard to remember what happened an hour ago?” Riley asked. “You wouldn’t exactly make a star witness, would you?”
“I guess we’ll see,” I said, folding my arms in front of my chest. “Fire away.”
“Why’d you leave?” he asked, glaring at me. “I told you I wanted to talk to you, and you left the diner before I had a chance to. In fact, you were there one second and gone the next. It was really weird.”
“So, you’re saying that I disappeared right before your eyes?” I asked, rolling my own eyes. “Now who wouldn’t make a good witness?”
Riley’s cheeks reddened which, while it made him even cuter somehow, it also let me know that he wasn’t happy with my little quip. That made me even more satisfied.
“That’s not what I said,” he answered, shuffling nervously. “Just tell me why you didn’t stay when I asked you to.”
“Be
cause I wasn’t under arrest and this is America,” I answered. “Plus, my grandmother got wind of what had happened at the diner and she was worried about us. You know how gossip travels in a town this small.”
“I do,” he answered. “Like it’s being carried by the birds.”
“Or carried by the cats who themselves have been carried by the birds,” I muttered, thinking of Randolph’s latest exploits.
“You got weird in Chicago, didn’t you?” Riley asked, biting his lower lip.
“No weirder than you got in Nashville,” I said, shaking my head at him. “I’m surprised you’re back, honestly. Last I saw you, I couldn’t tell where you stopped and your guitar started. I’d have figured you’d have stayed out there forever, looking for your big break.”
He blinked, turning away from me for just a moment and then turning back. “Life plays tricks on all of us, I guess. I liked it out in Nashville for a while. I even started making some headway. Got my demo in the hands of a real live country music producer.”
“So, what happened?” I asked, hating the fact that I was starting to feel just a little bit connected with him again. I quickly pushed that sensation down, reminding myself of the way I felt when I got stood up for prom.
“I realized the music wasn’t making me happy anymore,” he said. “Nothing was making me happy out there. So, I decided that I needed to go back to what made me happy, and when I think of happiness, this is what I think of,” he said, looking around.
“Are you talking about the town or this lobby?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the man.
“Look,” he said. “I’m not here to answer your questions, especially when they have nothing to do with this case. Now, can you tell me why Fallon Fulcrum might have wanted to threaten you the way she did before she died?”
Mountains, Mystery, and Magic Page 5