by Tonya Kappes
“Eloise?” I called when I got to the end, near the gazebo. The smell of freshly-brewed tea along with two cups sat on the table along with a tiered tray of pastries.
“There you are.” Eloise popped up from a row of Drowsy Daisy which happened to be Darla’s favorite flower. Eloise rubbed her hands together and spread her arms out over the sides of the path as she walked up to greet me. Hot pink sprinkles of fairy dust fell from the palms of her hands over the garden rows bringing every single flower and herb to life. “I’ve been expecting you.” She pointed to the gazebo. Her short red hair glistened in the colorful arrangement of flowers as she sped down the pathway to greet me. Her long black cloak floated behind her. The green in her emerald eyes sparkled with glee. “I thought I would have something prepared for our little visit this morning.”
Eloise always knew when she was going to have company. She was always prepared and a gracious hostess.
“Tell me,” she picked up the floral teapot and poured some in each cup. “What’s the pleasure that brings you by?”
Twinkly lights dripped from the ceiling of the gazebo adding to the already magical effect Eloise’s garden had on me and the fact she was able to bring any dead flower back to life. She was nothing short of amazing.
“Oh Eloise.” There went the waterworks and I buried my head in my arms that were resting on the table. The more I wanted to talk about Mr. Prince Charming, seeing her made me think of Oscar. “Will he ever love me again?”
“June, you mustn’t cry.” Eloise walked over to me and stroked my hair. “He does love you.”
“I mean really love me like Gerald and Petunia?” There it was. I had finally said it out loud. Everything I had ever wanted for all of my life and to see someone else get it was truly hard.
“You are happy for Gerald and Petunia, aren’t you?” Eloise asked a very good question.
I dragged my head off the café table and sat up.
“I…” I had to think about her question again before I answered. “I’m jealous.”
“Yes, dear, you are.” She proceeded back to the other side of the table and in one swoosh, her cloak was displayed around her as she sat in the chair. “Are you feeling a little…” She searched for a word as she waved her hand in the air. “Cloudy? Yes, cloudy is a good word to describe how you might be feeling.”
“Yes!” I snapped my fingers. I knew Eloise was going to help me. Feeling much better, I took one of the croissants and ate it in one bite. “But I have to say I’m blaming it on Arabella Paxton.”
“The flower girl.” Eloise nodded. “She’s a little feisty one, but harmless.”
“Harmless?” Shock covered my face. “She’s far from harmless. She sent me flowers making me believe they were from Oscar. She sent Petunia orchids with my name on it which I did not send. And she and Gerald were all secretive in a little conversation they were having.”
I left out the part about how she had talked Oscar into a lunch discussing security when Arabella knew perfectly well that Oscar was not a spiritualist anymore and he couldn’t put a security system in any shop with a ten-foot pole. That had to be approved by the council and the work had to be done by another spiritualist. She was just trying to get her claws into him.
“She is trying to defy all the rules.” I smacked my hand on the table.
“And what about you? Are you keeping up with the rules?” she asked.
“No! No she is not.” Mary Lynn floated above the Peking China Rosebed. She released her crossed legs and descended to the ground. Her pointy, black-heeled, laced-up black boots clicked when her feet touched the ground. “If I’m not mistaken, you have been using ingredients banned and from the ‘do not use’ list while creating an illegal potion.”
“I’m not creating an illegal potion.” I jumped up. Mary Lynn was going to take her granddaughter’s side no matter what.
“Oh?” Mary Lynn reached out and grabbed my hand. She held it up in the air. “What is this? These burns? Burns like these only happen when you are using ingredients from the ‘do not use’ list.”
“June?” Disappointment lingered in Eloise’s emerald eyes, just like it would have in Darla’s. “Is this true?”
“I…” I gulped and straightened my shoulders. “I am not making an illegal potion. Oscar is no longer a spiritualist.”
“He might not be a practicing spiritualist, but we could never erase his blood.” Eloise shook her head like the news of my potion blew her away. “June, you are going to get yourself into hot water if you don’t follow the rules of your village.” She let me know without saying how I was the example because I was the President.
“I told you about little Miss Flowerpants.” I rolled my eyes. “She is evil! Pure evil!”
Mary Lynn opened her mouth to protest, but Eloise put her hand out to stop her.
“Does your intuition tell you that?” Eloise asked.
“No.” I looked away. “But what about all the stuff she has done? All the flowers and stuff?”
“What about you distributing mojo bags all over the village?” Mary Lynn had a point.
“How is your intuition?” Eloise tried hard to bring the conversation away from Arabella.
“I guess it’s fine.” I shrugged. I hadn’t thought about it. “I haven’t made anything special but for a daughter of a customer.”
“Daughter of a customer?” Eloise didn’t seem to be buying the story I was selling.
“Yeah, she came in. I couldn’t read her needs to see if she had an underlying issue for me to make a cure for and she told me about her daughter.” I could still see the look of sadness in the woman’s eyes. “That’s when I had the flower delivery I thought was from Oscar.” My mind wandered into his deep blue eyes that I longed to have stare back at me like they had a few months ago.
“I bet you blamed them on Arabella?” Mary Lynn crossed her arms.
Eloise hushed her again.
“What about the delivery had to do with the woman?” Eloise brought me back from my thoughts.
“Oh. I had a weird vision instead of a smell that normally comes to me when I’m making a potion.” I stopped for a second to recall exactly what had happened. “I was making her daughter’s fertility cure and got the delivery. After the delivery I was finishing the cure when a weird vision of this greenery stem with small pink berries on it. It was needed to finish out the potion.”
“Thickeris Plant?” The words left my mouth putting panic in my throat like I had never known.
“Thickeris plant?” Mary Lynn’s lip pursed. “Do not use!”
“Please don’t tell me it was a Thickeris Plant.” Eloise words frightened me more than Mary Lynn’s. “It’s a banned spiritualist herb. It will cause grave harm to whoever it is intended for.”
“Grave…,” I swallowed the lump in my throat, “as in ‘six feet under’ grave?”
“When you are so jealous of something, your spiritual side will be overtaken by fear, anxiety and lack of intuition. This means that in your spirit you do not wish Petunia and Gerald great happiness.”
“That means that I’ve got a mean spirit.” I frowned. I did think I was happy for them.
“You aren’t hearing me.” Eloise pointed to her heart. “When you are not truly able to be happy because of jealousy, you are inflicting harm onto them subconsciously.”
“So when that woman came into the shop, she needed a fertility drug for her daughter and I gave her the plant not knowing it was going to harm her?”
Slowly Eloise nodded.
“That means I have to find the woman.” I felt panic rush through my bones as the woman’s face appeared in my mind.
“If her daughter takes the potion, she won’t have children…ever.” Eloise lowered herself into the chair, her hands tense in her lap. “Plus the Thickeris Plant is full of the Vermillian Spider.”
“Vermillian Spider?” I quivered. The images of the dead spiders in the jar and all the things dying around Petunia ran through
my mind like a movie.
“Vermillian Spiders are the most deadly of spiders. If you even touch one and get their bodily oils on even a tip of your finger, you could possibly go into a deep coma and die.”
“Who would have access to these spiders?” My mind wandered to Arabella. If the Thickeris Plant came from her, which I was sure it had, then maybe she slipped me the spiders.
“Anyone that has access to plants, herbs.” Eloise swept her hands in front of us, showcasing her beautiful garden. “But they have to be harvested. They don’t just show up like any old bug.”
My insides gnawed with anxiety. I wanted so badly to blame everything on Arabella if only for the fact that she was hitting on Oscar, but I knew as the Village President that I had to clear that from my thought process and give her a fair shake. Why would she give me a Thickeris Plant or the Vermillian Spiders? That was what didn’t make sense.
Granted she was a little snotty and not very nice when I went to welcome her to Whispering Falls, but like Darla always told me, “We are different. Not everyone is as friendly as we are June. Be nice to everyone regardless of how they treat you.” And that was exactly what I was going to do. I was going to be nice to Arabella Paxton if it killed me.
“You need to find that customer using whatever means you can come up with.” Mary Lynn’s sweet edge turned high-pitched and reedy. Her eyes clouded with sadness.
Without her telling me, I knew she wanted me to use my spiritual gifts to find the customer.
“I told you not to do that potion,” Madame Torres blazed tightly from the bottom of my bag.
Eloise and Mary Lynn shot each other a glance. Their eyes stirred with a depth of anger.
“You are the Village President,” Eloise scolded. “How many times are you going to get leeway, June, before they make you step down?”
Mary Lynn swiveled her eyes upward, making it obvious she didn’t want to know what was being said because she was one of the Order of Elders who would impeach me.
“I…I,” I stalled for time and pinched my lips together while rubbing my tongue along the backs of my teeth. “I will take care of this. No one got hurt. I smudged the village. All will be good. Just let me take care of it before you do anything.”
The plea was more for Mary Lynn than Eloise. If she didn’t buy my apology, she would have to go to the Order of Elders telling them I’m accused her granddaughter of sabotaging me and that I used an illegal herb.
“I’m my defense.” I put my hands in the air. “I did use my intuition to use the Thickeris Plant.” My mind snapped shut and so did my mouth.
If my intuition was told to use the plant, it was solely because I was reading the client. The short-blond-haired woman who was styled so cute not to mention the fabulous pair of emerald teardrop earrings she wore popped into my head. She did know a lot about herbs and she did ask about Luna Moth Wing. Plus she knew exactly what she was there for…infertility. If she wanted to help her daughter and the Thickeris Plant hit my intuition…
“I’ve got to go.” I jumped up and grabbed my bag, strapping it over my shoulder. The woman didn’t want to help anyone with having a baby. She wanted to prevent someone, but who?
Mr. Prince Charming was waiting by the gate ready to go.
“June! You better take care of this before something really bad happens,” Eloise warned. “You can see the weather pattern is feeling some sort of effect and I can’t help but wonder if it has to do with this illegal potion.”
I waved my hands in the air. I didn’t have time to sit here and discuss my punishment. I had to get back to Whispering Falls and figure out how to find that customer. Not to mention plan an engagement shower.
There were at least a few spurts of sun dotting through the grey sky which sent a little hope that all was not lost and I was going to be able to get back the potion.
The faster I walked, the more things didn’t make sense in my head. Who was the woman? Why did she want to harm someone in such an evil way? Did this have anything to do with the weather pattern like Eloise thought? If so, was the customer a spiritualist? More importantly, why didn’t my intuition clue me on the evil she had deep inside of her? What about Arabella? She had a hidden agenda and I had to figure that out too. Especially since my relationship with Oscar seemed to rely on it.
Chapter Fifteen
“Hey!” Raven wiped her floured hands down her Wicked Good apron leaving white skid marks down the front of it. “Are you needing a June’s Gem fix already?” There was a twinkle of excitement in her deep eyes.
“Actually, I’m here because I wanted to see if you could come up with some party goodies pretty quickly. Like for tonight?” There was a hint of begging in my question.
“I already knew it.” She pointed over to a stack of pink and green Wicked Good boxes. “It was written in the dough that I was going to get a big request this morning. I just didn’t know it was for the party.” She winked and went over to retrieve them.
“You can just leave them here because,” I bit my lip, “I was wondering if we could do it in your little café party room after hours?”
“I’d love to.” She smiled and brushed her long black hair over her shoulder.
“What’s up?” Faith came around the corner with the cleaning rag and bucket in her hands. She was good at cleaning the café tables as soon as a customer got up.
“I’m planning Gerald and Petunia’s engagement party.” I rubbed my hands together. The clock on the wall read nine o’clock which meant A Charming Cure was supposed to be open. “Faith, do you mind working at the shop for me today so I can get all of this together?”
“Sure.” She put the bucket down. I gave her the keys. “Thanks.” She smiled and headed to the door. “I love getting extra cash.”
“Great. I’ll be by later to check on you. There are plenty of potions ready to go,” I assured her. “If you need something made up, just holler for me.”
She made the “aye, aye captain” signal and headed out the door.
I wrapped up my business with Raven and made my way over to The Gathering Grove. It was time I asked Gerald about his little intense conversation with Arabella.
The morning rush breakfast crowd stood in line for Gerald’s amazing tea. I wiggled my way in the door and darted in and out of the line before I made my way to the front. All of Gerald’s employees were busy bees, but he wasn’t in the front. I was sure he was in the back steeping a tea cup to read someone’s leaves.
The door to the back room swung in a little when I pushed it to go through. When I stepped in, I heard voices. I stopped and did what I wasn’t supposed to do, but what any curious spiritualist would…I listened.
“You know you can’t go through with this.” The voice was Arabella’s. She sniffed like she was crying.
“I know.” Gerald sounded exhausted.
Can’t go through with what? I was all ears.
“I love you. Please don’t do this to me,” Arabella begged him.
I love you? Dirty old man. My eyes lowered. I glared in the direction of the voices trying to decide if I let myself be known. How could he be cheating on Petunia after all of this time?
“I love you too.” The sound of arms reaching around and hugging were loud and clear. “I think I’m so far into it that I can’t get out of marrying her.”
“I won’t let you do this to us.” Arabella was more threatening than helping.
Of course you won’t, you little tramp.
I tiptoed a little closer and peeked around the corner of the wall. My heart dropped when I saw Arabella in Gerald’s arms. Her face was nuzzled in his neck as he stroked her long hair and kissed the top of her head.
I put my hand up to my chest to keep my heart from beating out of it. There was no way I was seeing this. I blinked several times in an attempt to make the scene go away.
“You can’t marry her.” Arabella was crying.
“Shh,” Gerald soothed her.
I couldn’t tak
e it anymore. I rolled my eyes and disappeared back around the corner, slipping out of the back room before anyone saw me.
“Watch it!” Someone shoved me when I ran out of the shop, knocking into the front door.
“Sorry,” I mumbled and found myself standing on the sidewalk outside of The Gathering Grove gasping for air. My lungs felt like someone had put a vice on them.
My eyes slowly slid over to Magical Moments. I had never wished so much evil on one person, but Arabella was proving to be a little more than Whispering Falls could handle. Was it not enough that she wanted Oscar, but also she already had her claws sunk into Gerald.
“June?” Petunia stood in front of me. Her lips were a little cracked. Clyde sat on her shoulders. His feathers gave a little color surrounding her.
“Hey,” I said blankly and blinked my eyes.
“Are you okay?” She smiled. Given her appearance, I knew I had little time to figure out what was going on. She was losing her vibrancy which made me wonder if she knew about Arabella and that was why she had to get married.
“Are you okay?” I threw the question back at her. It took every ounce in my body not to drag her into The Gathering Grove and shove her through the back door so she could see her cheating fiancé for herself.
“Great!” She clasped her hands together. “Gerald has agreed to the engagement party tonight.”
“Oh.” I gritted my teeth. Maybe Gerald was breaking it off with Arabella and that was what I had witnessed.
“Ladies.” Arabella tugged on the bottom of her shirt and swung her hair to the side when she stepped out of The Gathering Grove. “Petunia, I have some lovely flowers for the party tonight. I can’t wait to show you.”
I bet you can’t. My eyes clung to hers, analyzing her every move.
“Wonderful. June, did you get all the other stuff together?” Petunia asked me.
“Of course I did.” I decided I wasn’t going to spoil anything for Petunia. I was going to give Gerald a chance to come clean, whether it was going to be to me or her. Either way, he was going to come clean and Arabella was going to be exposed.