by Tonya Kappes
“You aren’t a tad bit jealous are you, June Heal?” His lips were so close, I had to force myself not to cling to them like a magnet. I didn’t move. It was like I was hypnotized. He lifted a hand and rubbed it down my check. “Oh June.” He threw his head back. His blue eyes danced with amusement.
Meow, meow. Mr. Prince Charming jumped off the counter and darted around my ankles, causing me to step back. He wasn’t happy with the closeness but I was. I pushed him aside with my foot. He wasn’t pleased. He jumped back up on the counter, threw his leg in the air and started to clean himself.
“Stop it!” I shooed him off and glared at him. That whole cat grooming thing was nasty and I didn’t want it on the counter of the store and he knew it.
Rowl! Mr. Prince Charming showed his teeth and ran out the cat door.
“That was interesting.” Oscar had moved away, taking his smell with him. I sniffed a little harder to try to soak in all that I could before he left.
“You drove all this way to see someone you don’t know?” I had to get back on topic.
“Arabella wanted some information about security. I told her I could install a system for her. She said that sounded great and we could talk about it over lunch at The Gathering Grove.” He looked at his wrist watch. “I’ll get to see you for dinner.” His brows rose.
I snapped my fingers. “Oh, I forgot I have a meeting tonight so I won’t be able to make it for dinner.”
“Oh.” He gave me a smile that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “That’s fine. I guess a witch has got to do what a witch has got to do,” he joked.
“Not funny.” I held up a finger for him to hold on while I went behind the counter and grabbed a mojo bag filled with dream sprinkles. I slipped it into the pocket of my jeans so he didn’t see. “I’m actually hungry, so I can go to lunch with you.”
“You have a shop full of customers.” He made a good point. “Pretty. Arabella’s work?” He poked at the flowers.
“Oh, I forgot to thank you for them.” I hooked my arm into Oscar’s. My whole being seemed to be filled with joy when I was with him.
“You are welcome.” His gaze sent chills all over my body. “But I didn’t send any flowers.”
“Really?” My entire romantic idea of him dropping to one knee had just flown out the window.
“June has a secret admirer,” Oscar teased.
I bit my lip. There were no secrets around Whispering Falls. Now I had to find out who sent me wildflowers. Pretty ones too.
“Come join us if you can. And I’m taking a rain check for dinner.” Oscar walked out. The bell of the door dinged. My breath caught. My stomach dropped.
“Can I get this in a bigger size?” A customer pushed a bottle in my face.
“Hold on one sec,” I pushed it out of my way and walked over to the window. I parted the curtains to get a better view of the street.
Arabella had already hooked her arm on Oscar’s elbow. The image of her tall, thin body and swinging long hair next to my hunky dark-haired Oscar in his uniform brought tears to my eyes.
“I’m sorry. I’m in a hurry.” The customer stood next to me holding the bottle in the air. “Are you going to help me or not?”
Chapter Nine
With a hop and a skip, I mixed up a few remaining potions for the other customers in the store. Nothing that required a lot of time which was exactly what I needed. I had to get over to The Gathering Grove Tea Shoppe to see what Arabella had up her magical little sleeve. Plus I wanted to ask her about the flowers. If Oscar hadn’t sent them, who had? I grabbed a protection mojo bag to give Oscar. He was in definite need for protection against Arabella and her good-smelling flowers.
“Off and running again?” Chandra stood outside of A Cleansing Spirit Spa with Petunia, Clyde perched on her shoulder. She had Petunia’s hand firmly grasped in hers; getting a good look at the ring Gerald had given Petunia.
There was no time for chit-chat or gawking of the ring. I pulled the shop door closer to me and jiggled the handle after I locked the door.
“You have been on the run all morning long and it’s just after noon.” Petunia had clearly noticed my comings and goings of the morning.
Don’t get sucked into their conversation, I repeated to myself. It was so easy and not out of the norm to drop everything to find time for idle chit-chat in Whispering Falls.
“I was just telling Chandra how lovely the orchids were that you had sent over,” Petunia said, totally sucking me in.
I skipped down the front step and out of the gate toward them. “I’m not sure what you are talking about.”
“The beautiful orchid arrangement.” Her lips twitched into a nervous smile. Her brows frowned.
She reached up and stroked Clyde. The diamond caught my eye. It was the same diamond I had picked out for Oscar to give me when he proposed. My mouth dropped. Arabella.
“You know. I pointed to them this morning while I was grooming Clyde.” She said in dazed exasperation.
“About that, I didn’t send you any flowers.” I put my hand out to touch her arm for a little comfort. Oddly, she slinked away. “As a matter of fact, someone sent me flowers too.”
“But the card stated they were from you, June Heal.” A sudden thin chill hung in her words. The tension could have been cut with Clyde’s talons.
“Well, they weren’t. I’ll see what the mix up is when I talk to Arabella.” I pointed over to The Gathering Grove where she and Oscar were at one of those café tables on the sidewalk.
“We did notice the two of them having lunch.” Chandra used her chubby fingers to push her turban a little further up on her forehead as if she wasn’t getting a good enough look with her gawking stare.
“Business. They are discussing security and stuff.” I smiled trying to hide my intuition that told me I should be fearful. The best way to not be fearful would be to ignore the gut feeling because I wasn’t sure if it was my emotions guiding the fear or if it was something I really did need to listen to. “Not that she doesn’t flirt with every guy she sees,” I muttered.
“Now you’re talking!” Chandra smacked her hands and rubbed them together so fast, I was sure there would be smoke coming from them soon. “I knew there was something with you today.”
“What? Nothing.” I put my hand in the air. “I swear.”
Lied again.
“Um hmmm. We’ll see,” Petunia added fuel to the fire when I walked away.
Arabella was leaving as I walked up.
“All yours for now.” She winked, tossing her long hair behind her.
“Hello you two.” Gerald rushed over with his pad of paper and pen in hand. He curled the edge of his mustache with one hand and lowered his eyes. “Might I get you a spot of noon tea, June?”
“That’d be great. Oscar?” I scooted the chair closer to the table. I noticed he only had a glass of water.
“Yea, sounds great.” He didn’t look up at me. He was too busy checking his cell phone.
Gerald hurried off, his fancy coattails flying behind him. He always was dressed so dapper, unlike his lady love and that bird’s nest hair-do of hers. My eyes slid over to A Cleansing Spirit Spa. Chandra and Petunia were both still staring.
Before Oscar and I could start a conversation Gerald was back with a tray filled with a tea pot and a tea cup with a saucer. The old smooth white Dalton tea cup looked awfully familiar. Silently Oscar and I watched Gerald begin his magic journey of pouring tea.
“This is an art form you know,” Gerald ground the leaves in a bowl using a mortar-and-pestle-type tool and then brushed powder into the tea pot where he let it steep it for a few seconds. The tea cup was never at eye level which made me even more suspicious. “The leaves have to be just perfect.”
Just perfect? Perfect for what? I eyed him warily.
Gerald put the Dalton cup on the table and held the pot high in the air dipping it forward letting all the hot steamed water pour directly into the cup. The bobbling leaf caught m
y attention.
Beep, beep. Oscar looked down and fiddled with his cell.
“Oops. Duty calls.” He jumped up. “I’ll call you to make new plans. Sorry.”
“But wait!” Gerald protested. “Just take a sip and tell me how you like it.”
“Ehehehenngh.” I pushed the cup and saucer away knowing exactly what Gerald had up his sleeves. His magical tea-reading sleeves. But why would he want to read Oscar?
Oscar didn’t wait around anyway. He was in his car with the lights and sirens blaring.
“What was that about?” Gerald plopped down in Oscar’s chair.
“You tell me.” Did he really think he was going to pull a fast one over on me?
“What?” Gerald shrugged giving a little smirk. “He’s not a spiritualist. I can read him in my own shop.”
“He was a spiritualist and I’m trying to get him in that place again.” I patted the mojo bag buried deep in my pocket. My idea of slipping him some sweet dream mix and putting a little of me in his dream was also going to have to wait.
“Are you okay, June?” Gerald was always good at reading me without the leaves.
“Not really. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy for you and Petunia, but I really thought the headline was going to be about me and Oscar.” I picked up the tea and started to drink it forgetting about the leaves. “Mmm. This is really good.” I tossed back the rest of it and set the cup on the table.
Gerald looked down at the cup. His mouth dropped. Sheer fright settled in his little beady eyes.
“Gerald, are you okay?” Suddenly the question seemed to fit him more than me.
Slowly he shook his head. He held his finger in the air. It trembled. He pulled it back and balled his hand into a tight fist. “The…the…the cup,” his voice quivered.
I peered into it. The leaves were scattered all around the edges.
“Oh no.” My head dropped. Gerald had seen something.
“The headlines.” Gerald went into a fog like I had seen him do so many times before when he was reading someone’s leaves. “You have to break a few eggs before you make an omelet.”
“Does that have to do with me?” I knew better than to ask. Run, my mind told me. But I couldn’t. I sat there like my butt was cemented to the chair.
“Yes.” The fear had left his eyes and dripped all over his face. “They are evil. They will bring death.”
“Who? Who is going to bring death?” I asked.
Gerald looked out the window. He was looking into the future. I waved my hand in front of him, but he was not there.
Chapter Ten
I looked down at Mr. Prince Charming as we were making our way back to the shop. “What were Gerald and Arabella talking about earlier?” I asked Mr. Prince Charming, who appeared out of nowhere and like he was going to open his little mouth and tell me the big secret. “Do you think he picked up on my vibes about Arabella? How does he know her?” I continued to ask my fairy-god cat questions I knew he couldn’t answer, but it put deep suspicion in my mind.
As I recalled, Gerald and Arabella didn’t seem to be having a pleasant conversation. Definitely something to look into. Gerald said the evil was coming into my life. Was Arabella a coincidence? I thought not.
I wasn’t going to lie. The way Gerald reacted did give me pause which sort of made me want to run to my cottage where I could pull the covers over my head and not come out until the wedding was over, because somehow I felt all of this was tied to their day of wedded bliss. Really I didn’t need Gerald’s reaction as an excuse. I just wanted their wedding to be over and all the hubbub to go away.
“June!” Petunia waved her hand in the air from the front steps of Glorybee Pet Shop. An instrumental mix of all sorts of animals played like a symphony through the opened shop door. Petunia had it propped open with her foot. “I want to have my shower pretty soon because I’m going to tell Gerald I want to get married ASAP!”
“As in less than a week?” Stunned, I stopped dead in my tracks. Things were getting stranger and stranger as the day went on.
“Yes. As in a few days.” She greeted a couple of customers coming into her shop. “We will talk at the meeting! Oh, and I need a few spiders. Alive. One more thing.”
Spiders? Alive? Instantly I knew the jar of spiders KJ had left were for Petunia. I wondered what she needed with them. Mr. Prince Charming ran in front of me with his long white tail swaying in the afternoon sun.
“What is it?” I grinded my teeth together with the fake smile planted across my face.
“Arabella said she’d handle all the flowers and a wedding in a couple of days is no problem for her.”
“Of course she said that.” I glared and turned my attention toward Mr. Prince Charming.
He was on the top step swatting a few cicadas and eating them whole.
“What is wrong with you?” My face curled. The thought of eating a nasty insect was too much to bear. “Are you hungry?” I asked Mr. Prince Charming.
Mewwwl. His response was long and drawn out. His normal “I’m starving, feed me” response.
He darted into the shop when I opened the door, rushing back to the storage room door where I kept a small refrigerator and a small couch for those late nights. His bowl was there along with a few play toys. He never played. I don’t know what I was thinking when I had bought all the toys. He was a fairy-god cat…not a real cat.
“I’ll be with you in just a second,” I said to the customer coming in the shop behind me. “Got to feed the cat.” I gestured toward Mr. Prince Charming who was already scratching up the storage room door as if he was about to eat the wood scrapings his long claws carved out of the door.
The customer happily moved around the shop picking up different bottles and reading the labels which was what most customers did. There wasn’t a vibe nor did my intuition tell me the customer needed a special potion. All was good in A Charming Cure with the exception of a staring Mr. Prince Charming.
“What is your problem?” I asked the ornery cat. This was very unusual behavior from him. He darted to the small refrigerator where I made extra food for him. Since I was a homeopathic spiritualist I made his food and portioned it out according to what he was supposed to have. He wasn’t supposed to be eating in the afternoon. “You must be going through a growing spurt,” I joked.
No one really knew Mr. Prince Charming’s age. The only thing I knew for sure was that he came when I was ten, which meant I had had him for eighteen years and he hadn’t aged a day.
I put a little extra scoop in his bowl and before I could put the container away, he had eaten all of it and wanted more.
“No.” My eyes narrowed. “You can’t possibly be hungry.”
Did Mr. Prince Charming have something wrong with him?
I worried there was an underlying medical condition. Even though I had never taken him to the veterinarian before, maybe I should. Or I could take him to Petunia. I bet she would be able to tell me what was wrong.
“Looks like we need to call Richard Simmons,” Madame Torres lit up. A picture of the workout icon appeared in her glass ball. I grabbed her and shoved her underneath the counter, away from the customer’s ears. She did have a way with words. A way that grated on anyone’s nerves.
Rowl! Mr. Prince Charming shrieked and ran out of the storage room before I could grab him up and rush him over to Petunia.
“I will catch you!” I screamed after him. The customer looked up with wide eyes and watched Mr. Prince Charming. “Is there something I can help you with?” I kindly asked the customer one more time so as not to alarm her of the strange cat behavior. Mr. Prince Charming knew good and well if she wasn’t there I’d have ran out after him to nail down exactly why he was eating so much.
The customer shook her head and went on about her business as I looked out the window at Mr. Prince Charming darting into town making note of his erratic movements.
I grabbed my phone out of my back pocket and quickly dialed Oscar. If anyone k
new what to do with a cat, a cat that had something wrong, he would.
“Hey, June.” That deep, dripping with hunky voice answered the phone causing my knees to buckle and my heart to skip a beat…or two.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” truly I wasn’t, “but Mr. Prince Charming seems to be acting funny.”
“Well he is a funny…er …different cat.” He laughed probably trying to throw me off of what he had said because normally I would die at the fact he would call Mr. Prince Charming a funny or strange cat.
“No, I mean funny as in sick.”
“Is he throwing up hairballs? Or eating grass?” He spouted out the normal signs of a sick animal.
“No. He is eating all the time.” There were a million different diseases that went through my head and each one scared me to death.
“That’s what cats do. Eat mice, eat bunnies…”
“No,” I whispered into the phone. “He doesn’t eat any of those things.”
The thought of Mr. Prince Charming bringing home a dead mouse or cute little bunny was something I didn’t want to picture nor see.
“He’s scratching the door and leaving marks.” I glanced back at the door where Mr. Prince Charming had gone nuts ripping it to shreds and noticed the scratches made a perfect circle, like a wedding ring. “Oh my God!” I gasped and dropped the phone.
Mr. Prince Charming wasn’t hungry, he was trying to tell me something. I grabbed my phone off the ground, my bag with Madame Torres in it, and the jar of spiders.
“I’ll call you back,” I told Oscar before I ushered the customer out the door, then closed and locked it. I had a fairy-god cat to find.
The only place I knew to look first would be the pet store. He loved to go over there and visit with his other animal friends. I had never seen anything like Glorybee Pet Shop. Petunia had every single kind of animal and rodent living under the same roof in harmony, throwing the food chain right out the window. Mr. Prince Charming had a fond affection for one of the squirrels.