“I’m fine. This isn’t a medical visit,” I assured him. “I remembered you said you liked blueberry pie, and I happened to be in the area…”
His face lit up as he noticed the box. “Your aunt made that for me?”
“Actually, I did, but it’s her recipe.”
“This is fantastic. I forgot my lunch, so I just might eat the whole thing.”
“So, Noah…” I continued to clasp the pie awkwardly to my chest as I tried to decide how best to raise the topic that was weighing on my mind. “Do you remember that DNA kit I found the other day?”
“The one you swiped from my cousin’s trash?” He said it jokingly, but I had to stop myself from cringing. “How could I forget?”
“Yeah. True.” I cleared my throat. “I was wondering, how long does it take to run one of those tests?”
“They get it back to you in about nine to twelve weeks. Why? You interested in your family tree?”
My face fell. “That long? Wow, it never takes that long on television to run a DNA test.”
“The test itself doesn’t take long, and some labs can get results the same day, but those ancestry places don’t exactly work with the same urgency as a state crime lab.”
“I guess not.” I took a breath, weighing whether to say more. “Can I ask you something?”
Noah cocked an eyebrow. “That sounds ominous.”
“No, it’s just…I was wondering if there have ever been any rumors about Curtis’s father not being, well…”
A deep line creased Noah’s brow. “Rumors about Uncle Jeremy?”
“Uh, you know…” I groaned inwardly. Why did this have to involve Noah’s family? It was obvious he had no idea what I was hinting at, and I dreaded being the one to break it to him. Luckily for me, before I could get the rest of the words out, the phone on the exam room wall rang.
“Hold on just a minute.” Noah pressed the receiver to his ear. “What is it? Wait, how many? I’ll be right there.” He snatched up his stethoscope, draped it around his neck, and raced toward the door.
“What was that?” I asked, hurrying to keep pace with him down the hall.
“Half a dozen people or more just walked in the door with injuries.”
“Car accident?”
“Brawl.”
My mouth dropped open as I surveyed the waiting area, which had been deserted when I arrived but was now packed with people. Some held bloody cloths to their noses while others pressed hands to heads or shoulders. The receptionist had begun triage, sorting those with minor injuries to the chairs while those who were actively bleeding formed a line next to her desk. I recognized Larry Sloane, second from the end, along with at least three other people I was certain had been in the Dockside just minutes before.
“How dare you say that about my wife?” yelled a man who was sitting in one of the chairs, shaking a fist at another man who stood in the line.
“It’s the truth!” the man in the line bellowed. At first, I thought the napkin he clutched to his mouth was covered in blood, but upon closer inspection I realized it was blueberry pie filling.
The truth? The lid of the pie box I still held rattled as a terrible thought made my hands start to shake. Surely, my pies couldn’t have been responsible for this. But in every corner of the waiting room, folks were bickering over secrets that had been spilled and other hurtful truths. Then it hit me. I’d licked a little of the filling off my fingers. Was that why I’d stumbled over that little white lie I’d tried to tell Larry? I doubled my pace toward the exit, in desperate need of fresh air.
“Tamsyn!”
I spun my head as Noah called my name, slowing down but not stopping.
“My pie!”
I gulped. “You know what, I’ll bring it another time, when it’s less busy.” I hurried out the door before he could argue, knowing there was no way I could explain just how big a magical screwup I’d managed to make this time.
Chapter Eighteen
Sybil stared at me in disbelief. “The entire diner was under the truth spell?”
“Don’t remind me,” I said with a groan, wishing I could sink into the overstuffed cushions of Sybil’s love seat and disappear forever. Our coven had gathered at Sybil’s home, a modern but cozy ranch-style house with a giant picture window in the living room that overlooked the cove, to discuss my latest magical predicament. “It took hours for the last remnants of it to wear off everyone.”
“What did your aunt say about it?” Cass asked.
“Nothing, because I haven’t had the heart to tell her what happened.” I nestled a little deeper into the couch. “She was so proud of me for finally getting the pie filling right, I think I’d die if she knew about the mess I made.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Sybil leaned closer, not willing to let me escape into her furniture without answering. “None of us knows what went wrong with your spell, why it didn’t work one minute and then the next it did. We need to get to the bottom of this, and I think we’re going to need help.”
I sighed in defeat. “I know. Just give me tonight to figure out how to approach it before you mention it to anyone at home, okay?”
With some reluctance they both agreed, and as soon as I’d returned to the inn and locked myself in my bedroom, I began pacing the floor, trying to come up with the least humiliating solution I could. Gus sat on his spot at the foot of the bed and did absolutely nothing to help, as was his usual routine. In fact, as he began to gnaw on his hind toenails, I started to suspect that he was actively working to drive me stark raving mad with the monotonous cracking sound of his teeth colliding with his claws. Finally, I’d had enough.
“Will you stop that?” I glared at him, and he did pause momentarily, but only, as it turned out, to maneuver himself into a better position to reach his other paw. Quickly, my approach shifted from anger to whining. “Seriously, Gus. Please?”
As if by magic, the cat stopped his chewing. He blinked once, then stood up, stretched, and hopped off the bed. It was then that I noticed he’d been resting directly on top of what looked like a tarot card but which I recognized as the business card the older witch had given me at the start of the summer. Madame Alexandria. I shook my head, laughing. I was almost getting used to that fluffy feline having all the answers.
I held the card in my hand and studied the address. She’d made me promise to call. Well, I wasn’t big on phone calls, but when it came to asking for advice, I had to admit it was time. I added the card to my bag and resolved to make a trip to the mainland on the first ferry in the morning.
It was my first crossing back to the mainland since my move, and the first thing I noticed was how much quieter it was than when I’d arrived. Tourists were always eager to get to Summerhaven, at any time of the day, but would hold off leaving until the very last ferry if they could. The passenger cabin was nearly empty, and as I grabbed a book from my bag, I was almost disappointed not to have the distraction of juicy, local gossip to entertain me on the journey. Gossip? Me? It was nothing less than shocking to realize the degree to which I’d started to assimilate to my new home, and how much like a native islander I seemed to have become. If the trend continued, it would be no time at all before I left all my doors unlocked or parked with the keys still in the ignition of my car.
The ferry docked at the terminal in Rockland a little past nine o’clock, and from there, it was a quick walk to the address on the card. The main street was already bustling with tourists and shoppers in even greater numbers than I’d grown accustomed to seeing on Summerhaven, and the sense of claustrophobia that overcame me as I pushed past them to reach the front door of Madame Alexandria’s shop drove home how thoroughly I had adjusted to the slower pace of island life.
My destination turned out to be a bookstore with bright yellow stars, moons, and suns painted on a display window filled with all manner of New Age and occult offerings. The pungent scent of incense assaulted me the moment I stepped inside. A young man looked up
from behind the cash register while two shoppers browsed a rack of crystals with a Buy One Get One Free sign on it.
“Can I help you?” the man asked.
“I’m looking for Madame Alexandria,” I replied.
“Through the curtain,” he said, inclining his head toward a doorway filled with strands of multicolored, iridescent beads. “She’s expecting you.”
“No, you have the wrong person. I don’t have an appointment,” I explained. “I was just hoping she could fit me in.”
The young man greeted my words with a half smile. “She blocked off this morning on her calendar a month ago, told me not to make any appointments because someone would come in looking for her, and when they did, I was to send them back.”
“Oh. I guess that would be me.” No matter how many times I was given proof that magic was real, I didn’t know if I would ever get used to it.
“Yes,” he assured me, his patience seemingly limitless. “Right through there.”
The cool, heavy beads clacked against my arms as I parted the curtain and stepped through into a small, square room. To my left was a massive slab of amethyst, nearly as tall and wide as the wall, which sparkled in the dim light of a row of votive candles that flickered on a shelf against the opposite wall. In the middle of the room was a table, slightly smaller than a card table and made of thick pieces of gleaming dark wood. The same silver-haired woman I’d met at the inn sat behind the table, shuffling a deck of cards in her hand. She faced the beaded doorway but paid it no attention. A chair sat empty across from her, pushed slightly back from the table as if waiting for my arrival.
“Welcome, Tamsyn.” Madame Alexandria’s voice was low and soothing as she continued to fan through the cards without so much as an upward glance. “Come sit down.”
“How did you know—?” I swallowed the rest of the question as I realized that whatever the answer, I wouldn’t really understand. “Never mind.”
She chuckled knowingly as she held out the tarot deck. “Cut the cards.”
I did as I was told, then watched her shuffle them a final time before dealing them face up into a configuration I didn’t recognize but that clearly held some sort of meaning. She set the rest of the deck down and studied the upturned cards in silence, with the exception of the occasional wordless murmur.
“Tell me about the man in the rain,” she said.
I breathed in sharply. I hadn’t expected her to know anything about that. “The man was Douglas Strong. I believe his ghost appeared to me right after he died, and I’ve been trying to solve the mystery of the plane crash that killed him ever since.”
“Dark and stormy.”
“Yes. There was a freak thunderstorm the night he died. When I saw his ghost, he was standing, drenched, in the rain.”
She nodded slowly, her eyes closed, and I wasn’t certain whether she was acknowledging what I’d said or was responding to some otherworldly entity I could neither see nor hear. “Ravens?”
A lump formed in my throat, and I had to swallow before I could speak. “The next time I visited Cliffside, a big blackbird landed on the spot where his ghost had been, and I saw one later in my backyard. I thought it was a crow, but it might have been a raven. I don’t really know the difference.”
“Ravens are harbingers of misfortune and death, tricky shape-shifters that transform from man to bird and back again.”
“Do you mean to say that blackbird that’s been following me is actually Douglas Strong in the flesh?”
“More like in the spirit, but yes, it might very well be.”
“But why?”
“He needs your help.”
“But I’m just a kitchen witch,” I argued. “And a bad one at that.”
“No.” She shook her head vigorously from side to side. “You’re something else.”
“Something else?” My heart raced. I’d already considered the possibility that I might not be a kitchen witch at all, but hearing it from someone else’s lips still sent a frisson of nervous anticipation through me.
“Yes. You’re something different, something more. I’m not certain what. It’s cloudy, unclear. May I see your hands?”
I stretched them out in front of me, trying to keep them from shaking as I rested them on the table. Madame Alexandria held them in hers, running her thumb over the links of the silver bracelet I’d nearly forgotten I was wearing.
“Have you found her yet?” Her thumb had come to rest on the link that was engraved with the initials LB.
I gave a tentative nod. “Lillian. Lillian Bassett. At least, I think that’s who it belonged to. She seems to be tied to the house in some way. I think she might’ve lived there back in the nineteen twenties.”
She nodded. “The letter L and an airplane.”
I stared at Madame Alexandria, dumbstruck. “That was her the whole time? You mean, what you told me had nothing to do with Douglas Strong’s crash at all?”
“Apparently not.” She said it in such a matter-of-fact way that I nearly yelled at her for misleading me, but she continued speaking, not giving me the chance. “Her spirit is twined with yours, two sides of a coin. Salvation or destruction, you understand?”
“No. I don’t understand.” Anger waned as fear gripped my heart, squeezing my chest as I gulped at the air like a fish who suddenly found itself outside the safety of its tank. Whatever this Lillian Bassett had to do with me, I didn’t care to know.
“You will. Soon.” Still clutching my hands, Madame Alexandria closed her eyes and took several slow, deep breaths before opening her eyes and releasing my hands so she could point to one of the cards in front of her. “The seven of cups. It means searching for purpose. Three of pentacles—collaboration and teamwork. And finally, the world card. It points to harmony and completion.”
“So, that’s good, then?” Though my fear had abated, I found myself more confused and uncertain than I’d been when I first sat down. “I mean, it sounds good.”
“It can be. It all depends on you, and how you manage your journey. You’ll need to branch away from the simple kitchen magic your aunt Gwen is teaching you.”
I gnawed my lower lip, lost in thought, until a sharp sting and the taste of blood against my tongue brought me back to the present. I quickly shared with her the story of my ill-fated truth pies. “If I’m truly not a kitchen witch, why did the truth spell work at all?”
“I don’t know for certain, but if I had to guess, I’d say it worked because, and only precisely when, you required it to. It was your need that made the magic work.” She clasped my hands again and looked into my eyes with the type of solemn intensity that seemed to bring the world around us to a halt. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d tried. “There’s more to your magic than you, or anyone around you, might know. It’s hidden deep, but it’s powerful. I can help point you in the right direction, but traveling that path of discovery will be up to you. Are you up for the challenge?”
“I…I think so.” As answers went, it wasn’t the most convincing or inspiring. The truth was, I barely understood what the old witch was telling me, and what I did comprehend filled me with apprehension. Yet her words stirred something deep within my belly, a longing to figure out who I was and what I was capable of doing. As timidly as it had been uttered, this was the first time I had truly accepted myself as a witch, embracing whatever destiny the future held.
I left the shop an hour after I’d arrived with two plastic bags looped around my wrist. One was filled with books, the other with candles, fortune-telling cards, crystals, and other magical accessories. Since Madame Alexandria had been unable to determine the exact nature and source of my powers, her advice had been to cast a wide net and see what came of it. I’d had no idea until I perused her shop just how many facets of magic there were beyond the realm of kitchen witchery that my aunt had introduced me to, but now that my eyes had been opened, I realized with some trepidation that it could take a lifetime to absorb all of what I didn’t know.
/> It was on my walk back to the ferry terminal that a familiar logo caught my eye, a blue anchor on a sign for a craft brewery half a mile outside downtown. On an impulse, I followed the signs until I reached a warehouse on the water’s edge, near the shipping docks. A sign above a nondescript glass door marked the entrance to what they called the company store. It was a space about the size of a large walk-in closet and was filled with bottled soft drinks and beers in a variety of flavors.
“Good morning,” said the man who was stocking the shelves as I entered. He was in his early thirties and sported a bushy, black beard and a T-shirt with the company logo. “Have you tried Blue Anchor before?”
“The ginger beer,” I replied. “I had it at Cliffside Manor recently.”
The cheer seeped from the man’s face, replaced by somberness. “Douglas Strong was one of our best customers. He and Audrey were not only fans of the products, they were among our earliest investors.”
Investors? Curtis hadn’t mentioned that part. “I hadn’t realized they were so involved.”
“Yeah, they’d both come in all the time, see how things were going.” He shook his head sadly. “I can’t believe I’ll never see Doug again, and Audrey hasn’t been in since the morning of the crash. Not that I blame her for keeping to herself. That had to have been such a shock.”
“She was here that morning?”
“Sure was. She’d stopped in the night before to pick up several cases of our handcrafted sodas for the party then came back in the morning for a bottle of ginger beer. I remember because we weren’t open yet. She came around to the warehouse door around six, and I gave her the bottle myself, on the house.”
“Just one bottle?”
“Yeah. I guess she was planning to drink it herself on the trip back.”
I frowned. “Six in the morning. Do the ferries run that early?”
“The ferries don’t, but she was on her way to the airfield.”
I’d seen her myself, taking the ferry to the island the night before. Or at least I’d seen her car. Either she hadn’t been the one riding in it, or she’d flown back to the mainland in the middle of the night. But why? My pulse pounded. Curtis may have had the airtight alibi of not having left the island in the weeks leading up to the crash, but with this new information, the same could definitely no longer be said of Audrey. I had no idea why the woman might have wanted to slip those sleeping pills to Douglas, but as I studied the neat line of ginger beer bottles lined up on the store shelf, how she could have done it and when were clicking into place.
Spirits, Pies, and Alibis Page 18