by Bailey Cates
Then it had happened again. Luckily, that time Connell had helped save our lives.
Declan said he was okay with it, but it turned out he wasn’t—not really. Every time I brought it up, he got defensive, and that led to enough tension between us that we ended up arguing about something else entirely.
So I’d stopped trying.
Now as we spoke, he seemed to shrink into himself, growing somehow smaller and tentative. I saw something in those eyes I loved that saddened me: fear. My big, brave firefighter was downright scared of the paranormal aspect of my life—and now his. Or maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe he was afraid of the not knowing, of the inevitable mystery of magic. I felt the same way sometimes. A lot of times. But I knew at least some of his trepidation had been sparked by the things he’d seen since getting involved with yours truly, as well as some pretty frightening stuff he’d experienced himself.
Like that time when I’d almost killed him.
Anyway . . .
Then the fear was gone—or overcome—and my old Deck was back. Relief coursed through me as he stood and pulled me out of my chair. He drew me to him and held me close for several seconds in silence.
“It’s just that I worry about you,” he finally said, stepping back. “But I also love you and love who you are. The whole package. Got it?”
I felt my lip quiver and clamped it between my teeth. I nodded.
He grinned and ran his thumb along my cheek. “Okay. Now, what are you going to do to get to the bottom of this latest mess?”
“You really think I should get involved?” I wanted to hear him say it.
Declan laughed. “You were thinking you might just sit this one out?”
“It’s closer to home than Quinn’s other cases,” I admitted. “And I want—no, I need—to understand what the heck is going on.” I turned to gather the plates from the table. “After all, whether or not Taite was really dead when Ursula passed on his message to me—something I’m going to be calling her about, believe me—it seems that now he sent me another message, this time truly from beyond the grave, via his niece.”
“The stuff about the talisman.” Declan gathered the half-full bottle and wineglasses.
I nodded and started toward the kitchen with a stack of dirty dishes. “Apparently I’m supposed to find it, whatever it is. And it’s not an ordinary talisman, like Lucy gave me when I first came to Savannah.” And later Steve Dawes, I thought, mentally fingering the metal ring resting near the hollow of my throat. “It’s a voodoo gris gris. And whatever that is seems to have upset Cookie.”
“Voodoo.” He put a lot of warning into the single word. “So, what’s the first step, Detective Lightfoot?”
We’d reached the sink, and now I bumped his hip with my own. “Very funny. But without more information about what happened to Taite, I think the obvious thing to do is find the voodoo queen Dawn mentioned.” I started loading dishes into the dishwasher.
He frowned. “I don’t like that part of it. Not at all.”
Straightening, I wiggled my fingers in the air like spider legs. “Spoooooky voooodoooo.”
Declan grabbed my wrists without smiling. “Do not take it lightly. Just don’t. You remember the fire on the Southside last year.” A glimmer of that fear I’d seen during supper crossed his face again.
I sobered.
“A woman died in that fire, Katie, and in the end, the police proved it was a voodoo ritual that started it.”
“I remember,” I said. “But, honey, that fire wasn’t started by voodoo. It was started by an overturned candle. An accident. Something like that could happen during one of the spellbook club’s rituals.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Or if the wind were to whip up right now? We left those tapers burning on the patio table.”
“Oh!” His eyes widened, and he ran out of the room.
Of course the candles were fine. Mungo, who was still lounging in his patio bed, would have let us know if anything had gone even slightly awry during our few minutes inside. But it did speak volumes about my firefighting boyfriend’s state of mind that he’d forgotten the basic rule to never leave a candle burning unattended.
Hopefully, my words would put his mind to rest. However, I wasn’t taking anything about the voodoo element of this situation lightly. I didn’t know much about that flavor of magic, but I’d seen the expression on Cookie’s face, and remembered Lucy’s admonition.
I don’t know what happened to her father, but it had something to do with him being a voodoo priest.
Cookie’s father had died when she was nine, right before the rest of his family had moved to Savannah.
Chapter 5
“Mmm. Those smell like a Caribbean vacation,” Iris Grant said, leaning close to the macaroons I’d just removed from the oven. Her eyebrow ring glinted in the sunlight shining through the window that looked out on the alley.
“You just gave me a great idea,” I said, glancing over at my aunt. She stood at another of the stainless-steel counters in the Honeybee kitchen, carefully slicing hummingbird sheet cake into luscious squares. “There’s still some pineapple left, isn’t there?” I could smell it in the still-warm cake, along with the scents of ripe bananas and vanilla bean. This morning the Honeybee really did smell like a tropical paradise.
Lucy looked up and nodded. “Quite a bit. You know Ben always buys things in cases.”
“Yes, I do,” my uncle called back to us from behind the register. “That’s why you always send me to the bulk stores to stock up.”
“You’re right, Ben. Very efficient.” I turned back to Iris. “Let’s boil some of it down to make a nice, concentrated, sticky jam,” I said.
“Like you did with the pomegranate juice yesterday?” Iris asked.
“Well, that’s more of a jelly, but I want to use it for the same thing. You can see these macaroons are thumbprint cookies, as well. So we want to fill—”
“Macaroons?” Iris broke in. “Those don’t look anything like the cookies my stepmother brought me last time she went to Atlanta.”
“Ah.” I held up a finger. “Little round sandwich cookies? Slightly crunchy and light as air?”
She nodded.
“Those are macarons,” I said, then spelled the word. “Though sometimes it’s spelled the same as the coconut-based cookies we have here. Macarons don’t typically have any coconut at all. The cookies themselves are delicate meringue stabilized with almond flour and sometimes an additional flavor to go with whatever filling you put inside.”
Lucy laughed. “You sound like you should open your own pastry school.”
I blushed. “Sorry.”
“No!” Iris said. “I want to know.”
“Well, they can be a little tricky to get just right.” I reached for a number-two can of pineapple. “I had an instructor who challenged us to come up with all kinds of crazy fillings.”
Iris shifted position so I could reach the electric can opener. “What did you make?”
“Let’s see.” I thought back. “A sesame paste spiced with ginger, as I recall, and a curry cream with turmeric and chili. I seem to remember something with fennel, too.”
“For cookies?” Iris almost looked offended.
I shrugged. “Savory cookies, yeah.”
“Will you show me how to make macarons sometime?” Iris asked. “But filled with something chocolaty.” She got a dreamy look. “Dark chocolate with raspberries. Or caramel. Or both.”
Lucy put down her knife. “Sounds delicious, all right.”
Laughing, I said, “We can make some for a daily special next week. But right now I’m going to finish up these coconut macaroons. We can fill half the thumbprints with the pomegranate jelly and the other half with pineapple jam. They’ll taste like bite-sized piña coladas.”
“I approve,” Ben said,
turning to face us. He’d recently changed his rimless glasses for a pair with brown frames that nicely complemented his ginger hair and neatly trimmed beard. At the moment there were no more customers waiting to be served, and the brightly lit kitchen was open to the rest of the bakery.
“A piña colada without rum?” Iris frowned.
I poked her tattooed shoulder gently. “What do you care? You can’t legally drink for another three years, anyway.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. So what’s the deal with the pomegranate jelly?”
“You don’t like it?” I asked.
“It’s yummy,” Iris said. “It’s just that you made such a big thing about needing to use it in a recipe.”
“Pomegranate is popular right now.” I kept my tone mild, but my eyes cut to my aunt. I hadn’t realized Iris had picked up on how strongly I felt about using the fruit in a recipe. The truth was, one of our patrons was a bestselling author who came in each morning for a muffin and green tea, and stayed until afternoon, typing away on his keyboard. Lately, Martin—though he published under another name—had shown up less frequently. When he did, he sat and stared at his laptop screen with a woeful, almost bewildered expression. Ben, who had a practiced knack for relating to customers, had finally teased it out of him: Our resident scribe was suffering from writer’s block.
So Lucy and I had determined to do our best to help. We’d baked hazelnuts into moist fig muffins, a magical double whammy to increase his inspiration. We’d ordered bouquets of cornflowers and narcissus for the bistro tables from Mimsey’s flower shop, Vase Value, because those two flowers held creative power. I’d even slipped up his tea order one day, giving him jasmine green tea instead of the plain variety, along with a few muttered words directing the flower’s inspirational and intuitive powers to aid in overcoming his block. The pomegranate had been Lucy’s idea; my twist was to concentrate the juice into jelly with the intention of concentrating its creative, generative power as well.
“And then you got really weird,” Iris said, “standing over that steaming pot and talking to it.”
My eyebrows shot up. I really hadn’t intended for her to hear my incantations.
My incantations over a boiling cauldron. I suppressed a smile at the thought, still avoiding her gaze.
“Hey, Iris, do you have a minute?” Ben asked. He didn’t practice magic, but he knew what Lucy and I did in the Honeybee kitchen. Now he was trying his best to distract Iris from her current line of questioning.
“Um, sure,” she said, finally catching my eye. Hers were full of curiosity, and, I realized, hope.
I smiled. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”
She grinned in return. “Yeah?”
I looked over at Lucy, who nodded her agreement. “Yeah.”
“Cool!” She hurried out to where Ben had moved behind the espresso counter. “At your service, Mr. Eagel.”
“Stop calling me that,” he said. “If you don’t start using my first name, I won’t show you how to make a black eye,” he said.
“A what?” came her puzzled response.
“One of our regulars orders it, so you need to know how to make it. Start with a cup of drip, and then make a double shot of espresso . . .”
I grabbed two of the macaroons, went to stand by Lucy, and handed her one as she began loading a display tray with the slices of cream cheese–frosted hummingbird cake.
“Are you sure she’s ready?” Lucy asked in a hushed voice.
“More than I was.” I also kept my tone low. “She has latent talent. We all agree on that.”
She finished filling the tray and began to wipe down the counter. “Of course. All the members of the spellbook club have had a chance to meet her and . . . assess her potential. However, do you think she’s really open to the idea of witchcraft?”
I pressed my lips together in thought. “How about if we start slowly? Rather than talking about the Craft, we could begin by introducing her to some of the qualities of herbs and spices. A lot of people know lavender is soothing and relaxing, and citrus is invigorating. What we do is simply introduce another level, or perhaps aspect, of what herbalists do when they use plants as medicine. Or how aromatherapists use essential oils.”
Lucy gave a decisive nod. “I like it. We can gauge her reaction and go from there.” She dropped the towel in the laundry hamper and put her hands on her hips. “Now, what are you going to do about Franklin Taite and his poor niece?”
I blinked at the abrupt change of subject, but we’d been busy ever since getting in that morning, and Iris had arrived early. This was the first chance my aunt and I’d had to talk about the Taites since she’d called me the previous evening. I glanced into the other room, then nodded toward the office. Lucy followed me in, and I shut the door behind us.
It was a small room lined with shelves. A computer desk and chair, one tall file cabinet, and the club chair where Mungo napped while I was working crowded most of the space where we performed the myriad of administrative tasks as necessary to running our business as the actual baking. I leaned my elbows on the file cabinet while Lucy sat in the desk chair, reaching over to stroke under Mungo’s furry chin. He wagged his appreciation, looking between us with avid interest.
“I’m not sure how much I can do, actually,” I said in answer to Lucy’s question. “The whole thing is so strange. How could Franklin contact a medium when he wasn’t even dead?”
“There’s no doubt he died recently?” Lucy asked.
“You know as much as I do,” I said. “Quinn hasn’t told me anything you haven’t heard.”
“What does Declan think?” Lucy asked. She knew he didn’t care for how I got sucked into murder investigations, especially those that involved magic.
“He says he wants me to figure out what’s going on.”
I’d thought my aunt would be surprised, but she only nodded and said, “Of course he does. He’s coming around. I told you he would.”
“Well, when he channeled his uncle Connell, it did seem to change his mind about what’s possible—and about what magic might really be about. He’s been quite curious about my spell work since then, asking questions about things he used to avoid, or, even worse, marginalize.”
“Hmm. Yes, I imagine having another consciousness speaking through one’s lips might have that effect,” she said.
“It frightened him, too. He doesn’t like to talk about that, but I can tell.”
“You’ve had your own share of frights,” she said, her expression an invitation to open up.
I swallowed hard. “I just wish I knew what, exactly, I’m supposed to do as a lightwitch. We don’t know what kind of evil might have taken an interest in Franklin—or Dawn.” And despite making light of it with Declan, delving into the world of voodoo was a big, scary unknown.
Lucy gazed at me with sympathy, but didn’t offer any stellar advice.
I sighed. “So, here’s the plan I came up with last night.” Long after Declan had fallen asleep. “Such as it is. I’m going to call Quinn and see if he knows anything more about Franklin’s death, especially whether they’re considering it suspicious now. Then I’m going to see if I can track down Ursula Banford in case she can shed any light on how Franklin could have communicated with her from the spirit world when he was still alive on this plane.”
My aunt nodded. “Both good ideas.”
“Then I’m going to track down the voodoo queen Dawn Taite referred to. She said Savannah voodoo queen, so it has to be someone here in town, right?”
A frown creased Lucy’s forehead. “Voodoo’s not something to be taken lightly.”
“No kidding. But at least I might have an in—or, rather, Cookie might have an in. I’m hoping she’s still in contact with some locals who could help, even if she doesn’t practice anymore.”
Lucy stood and gave Mungo one la
st pat on the head before reaching for the doorknob. “She turned her back on her upbringing for a good reason. She might not be willing to get involved with some elements of her old community.”
“All I can do is ask,” I said. Again.
“That’s true. She was in shock yesterday—we all were, of course. In the end, however, she’s a member of our coven. And she likes you, Katie. A lot. If she can’t—or won’t—help, at least she might be willing to refer you to someone who can.”
“I hope so,” I said, as Lucy opened the door. The sound of murmuring voices punctuated by Ben’s booming tone alerted us the Honeybee had gotten busy. We hurried out to help, and found the line to the register four deep.
My phone calls would have to wait for now.
* * *
When the rush was over, Lucy got to work restocking the display case beside the register, and Ben bundled up the garbage to take out to the alley. Our writer sat at a corner table, typing slowly, even hesitantly, but at least he was typing. Two women, similar enough in looks that they had to be related, sat at another table, lingering over sweating glasses of sweet tea and sharing a piece of Lucy’s hummingbird cake. A young man sat across from a woman of similar age, both hunched over their laptops and in their own separate worlds, defined by whatever was playing through their earbuds. Both were swigging black coffee, and she was drumming her fingers on the tabletop. Given the textbooks piled by her computer, I guessed they were college students studying for summer finals. Another woman sat on the sofa by the bookshelves, engrossed in a hardback volume with a brightly colored dust jacket.
It looked like a small bomb had gone off in the reading area. Two chairs had been moved next to the front window; plates and cups littered the top of the coffee table. Even the windowsill where Lucy’s Honeybee had been sitting last evening held dirty dishes. Apparently, the two self-bussing stations at each end of the bakery were invisible to our patrons. Still, business was business, and I wasn’t going to complain about a rush or a little cleanup. I returned the chairs to their places and gathered crockery to take into the kitchen, happy to see the customers must have enjoyed their goodies; only crumbs remained on the plates.