by Joyce
“You probably don’t want to know.” I avoided his question. Joe had only recently learned about magic. It was difficult for him to grasp most of it. I’d finally found a way to protect him from the Council of Witches’ ever-present watchfulness—my amulet—so he could safely know anything about witches. The council didn’t like non–magic users to know about us. The penalties were harsh.
“Hi, Uncle Joe.” Sunshine waved back to him. “How are you? I understand you know all about witches now.”
Joe turned his head toward Sunshine. “Are you—?” And then looked at me. “Is she—?”
“A witch,” I filled in for him. “Yes. Abby is a witch too.”
His dark eyes were full of questions. “And Danver? Is he a witch too?”
“No.” Sunshine laughed, the painful mark on her face causing her to put her hand to it. “Dad’s not a witch, but he’s not protected like you either. Please don’t tell him what you know.”
“Wait a minute.” Joe walked closer to the bed, his eyes narrowed. “I know this woman. We were on a joint task force together a couple of years ago. Detective Sharon Malto from Norfolk. Why is she here?”
“It’s a long story, Uncle Joe,” Sunshine said. “But she’s gonna be fine, right, Aunt Molly?”
I checked Detective Malto’s wounds. “Yes. I’d say she’s going to be just fine.”
“What happened? I mean, why didn’t she go to the hospital in Norfolk?”
“Healing is best done by family members where possible.” I tucked my arm through his to get him out of the bedroom as I explained. “The detective isn’t part of our family, but she’s a friend of Sunshine’s. How has your day been so far? Did you get the cell phone replaced?”
Joe stopped walking and kissed my cheek. “In other words, leave it alone because I don’t understand. Okay. I get it. I am a detective, you know.”
“I know.” I smoothed back a strand of his hair.
“We caught a homicide this morning. It’s down by the docks.” He shrugged. “Reminds me of Olivia’s death. Anything going on in your community that I should know about?”
We’d never had talks like this before in the more than thirty years we’d been married. I had protected Joe and Mike by not telling them about magic until something had come up that could have endangered Joe’s life if I hadn’t told him. Mike still didn’t know. I didn’t plan to tell him either, even though he was also protected from the council.
“No. Everything is quiet except for the storm coming toward us,” I told him.
“Check the weather again, Molly. They say it’s going to pass us by this time.”
“It won’t pass, not without some high winds and flooding.”
“You know that for sure, huh?” His voice was still husky even though he’d given up smoking years before.
“Yes. All the witches are stocking up for it. Are you going to eat lunch, since you’re home?”
“I have some time. How about if you and me get some lunch out? It’s kind of crowded here. Or do you have to stay with Sunshine and Malto?”
“No. They should both be fine. What did you have in mind?”
I said good-bye to Sunshine and wished her well, quietly adding a protection spell to shore up her own defenses as we hugged. She promised to come back as soon as she could to get her face healed. I was worried about her, but there wasn’t much I could do until she was ready to allow herself to be taken care of.
Joe and I went to lunch at one of our favorite places, a small Italian restaurant that was in an older building. We’d both always loved this place and came here for anniversaries and other special occasions that didn’t include Mike. It wasn’t a good place to bring a child, and we’d just never included him as he got older, thinking of it as “our place.”
“I’ve been thinking about the whole retirement thing again.” Joe took my hand in his across the white linen tablecloth. We each had a large glass of water while we were waiting for lunch. Joe was technically still on duty.
“Still thinking about giving up the job?”
“Yeah. Things have gotten a lot worse here in the past few years with drugs and gangs. Now there’s magic too. I don’t just have to watch out for guns and knives. Now I have to wonder who’s a witch and who isn’t. I can’t even explain that to Suzanne. Sometimes I think she wonders if I’m crazy the way I approach a case.”
Suzanne Renard was Joe’s ex-wife who’d moved back here from Savannah after they’d worked a case in Wilmington together last year. If I was one sliver less certain of my relationship with my husband, I’d insist that he had to have another partner. They worked long hours together, sometimes gone all night. But I trusted Joe and had even come to like Suzanne, almost despite myself. After all, their marriage had only lasted a short time, more than thirty years ago. I couldn’t allow myself to be that insecure.
“I understand. I could help with a protection spell.”
He kissed my hand. “I think if I’m too nervous to work without that, I should retire. Have you given any more thought to what you want to do? You said something about selling the shop to Dorothy when we were ready to go. Is that still happening?”
I had mentioned that to him when we had first recruited Dorothy to be one of the three witches who would take our places and our spell book when Olivia, Elsie and I “retired.” Not that a witch ever truly stopped practicing witchcraft.
All that had changed with Olivia’s death. Dorothy still needed a good deal of training, since she hadn’t been raised to be a witch. Brian was part of the coven now too but still needed guidance. Things were different now, at least for me.
And the amulet had made my magic stronger, more vibrant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to cut back on something I had only just begun to explore. Elsie seemed to be feeling the same way since her relationship with Larry the werewolf had blossomed. We didn’t make as many mistakes, and we were evolving into different witches than we had been. I knew Elsie wouldn’t want to move to Boca without Larry, and it seemed unlikely to me that he would leave his escape route that protected him from people during his “monthly.”
“I don’t know.” I tried to think of some way to explain all that to Joe. Not being a witch, how could he relate? “It’s complicated. Dorothy could certainly afford to buy Smuggler’s Arcane, since she inherited Olivia’s house and money. Brian only makes our second witch to keep our coven going though, and we have no spell book to pass down, since it was stolen.”
“I see.” He said it like he didn’t see at all and drank some water. “I guess we have to put off retirement then.”
“You could still retire. They offered you that job teaching at the community college. That wouldn’t be as dangerous.”
“Nah. You’re the teacher in the family.” He grinned. “I don’t think I’m cut out to teach a bunch of rookies how not to get killed. I guess we’ll just keep going the way we have been. It’s not like I’m at mandatory retirement age or anything yet.”
Lunch arrived, but I could see the discussion was far from over. I knew Joe had dreams of packing up and traveling around the country in an RV. It was what he’d always wanted—me too, but mostly because he wanted it. We were still young enough to do it, but for my commitment to my friends and my magic.
The new magic I’d found in my amulet was too difficult to explain to him. We ate baked ziti and homemade garlic bread in silence as we both contemplated the future. They seemed to be two different futures for the first time in our lives. I didn’t like the way that felt.
As usual—particularly during romantic moments, birthdays, Christmas—Joe got a call about the homicide he was working, and we had to pack up the last of our food and take it with us. He dropped me off at the house with a grin and a kiss.
“Don’t worry about it, Molly,” he said. “We’ll figure it out. We always do, right? I’ll see you later. Don’t wait up.�
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I put my arms around him and hugged him as best I could through the open window of the SUV. “I love you, Joe. We can’t let this come between us. We’ve gone through worse, haven’t we?”
“We have,” he agreed, but his smile didn’t reach his beautiful eyes. “I love you too. See you later.”
The storm clouds heading our way from the Atlantic were beginning to get thick and dark around us. I crossed my arms against my chest as I watched Joe leave and wondered if the clouds were an omen of what was to come.
CHAPTER 4
Sunshine was gone when I went inside. She’d left me a note to say that she and Detective Malto were doing fine. She was going back to Norfolk, promising to erase any memories of what had happened from Malto’s mind. She was always such a clever girl. I wondered what she and her friends had fallen into.
Isabelle said there had been another caller while I was gone, but this one had stayed outside, leaving quickly when no one was home. Before I had a chance to wonder who it was, Dorothy, Elsie and Olivia were frantically knocking at my door.
“Did you get it?” Elsie asked with an excited smile plastered on her face. “Did you look at it?”
“Did I get what?” I asked as I put our leftovers from the restaurant in the fridge. “What’s everyone so excited about?”
“I’m not excited at all.” Olivia pouted. “No one cares about what happens to you when you’re a ghost.”
Dorothy held out a beautiful black invitation with gold embossed words on it. “I can’t believe he didn’t invite you too, Molly. There must be some mistake. Don’t worry. I’ll talk to him.”
“Talk to . . . what?” There was another person at the door. “Just a minute while I get this.”
Elsie and Dorothy giggled, holding each other’s hands. “I knew you’d get one too, Molly,” Elsie said. “I knew Brian wouldn’t just invite us.”
I opened the door, and there stood a servant in sumptuous gold and black livery. He was tall and beautiful—probably not really a person. Magic washed from him in waves.
“Molly Addison Renard.” His diction was perfect, but his dark eyes never moved and his expression was featureless. “Schadt and Yuriza Fuller invite you to a ball at their residence. Should you accept the invitation, a car will be sent for you. Should you decline the invitation, all is well. Good day.”
He vanished as he finished, nothing more than a messenger created for the purpose of giving out invitations in a grand fashion. It was impressive, I admitted as I closed the door with the invitation in my hand.
“It’s a ball at the castle,” Dorothy’s voice squeaked with excitement. “It’s Brian’s birthday bash, and he wanted us to be there. Is that cool or what?”
“It’s amazing!” Elsie was almost dancing with excitement. She’d been quite a dancer when we were younger, but I hadn’t seen her dance in many years. “I don’t know what to wear. I’m not sure there’s anything in my attic that will do. I wonder if I can take Larry with me as a date. It says bring a friend on the invitation.”
“I’m pretty sure the Fullers weren’t imagining you’d bring a werewolf or a ghost with you to the party.” Olivia sighed. Her familiar ghostly features sagged as she fretted. “I’ve never been invited to a ball at a castle. I guess I wouldn’t have to worry about what to wear, as I haven’t been able to change clothes since I died. But you all go on without me. I don’t want to hold you back.”
I glanced at the elaborate invitation. “I’m sure they aren’t talking about bringing a non-witch either if it makes you feel any better.”
“Forgive me, Molly, if it doesn’t make me feel one whit better that Joe can’t go either.”
“What about using the bottle again?” Elsie asked. “That sort of worked last time.”
“It would’ve worked if Olivia had stayed in the bottle,” I suggested. “We were lucky we weren’t caught with her. She was lucky too, or she might not be here.”
“I think I could come up with something so you could go too, Mom,” Dorothy said in the voice of a child who wanted to appease her parent. “I hate for you to miss it. Since Brian is already going to be there, you could be my plus one.”
Olivia wrapped her mostly see-through form around her daughter to give her a hug. I hadn’t said anything about Olivia’s ghostly hugs, but they were more like being suffocated. She couldn’t help it, bless her soul. She just wanted to be alive again. She’d been working hard to have a better physical presence and control the many abilities that came with being a ghost. But as yet, she hadn’t mastered those abilities enough to fool an entire castle full of witches who intensely disliked ghosts and had the ability to banish her from our world.
“You’re the best daughter ever.” Olivia smiled at her and patted Dorothy’s dark, sleek pageboy hair even though her hand appeared to go through her head. “I’m sure we can come up with something. It’s so exciting, isn’t it?”
I shook my head, hating to be a killjoy. “I don’t think we should go if we’re planning to take Larry and Olivia into a castle full of witches—and not just ordinary witches. The entire Grand Council is bound to be there, since it’s the Fuller family. I don’t want to be thrown out, or worse, try to sneak inside.”
“Oh, that’s just fine,” Olivia said quickly. Too quickly. “I’ll just sit this one out. As Molly says, it’s too risky. I’ll be dandy. Don’t worry about me.”
Elsie shook her head. “I suppose that means we’ll have to think of something or Olivia will guilt us all to death.”
“Like I said,” Olivia reiterated, “I’m happy to stay home. I think we should be discussing how we’re going to hide Dorothy from her father right now instead of thinking about this stupid ball anyway.”
“I don’t need to be hidden,” Dorothy said. “I’m not leaving with him, but there’s no reason that I can’t get to know my father a little, is there? I mean, you did hide me from him all these years. It seems only fair to establish some kind of relationship with him now.”
“Honey, I know you mean well,” Olivia began, “but your father is an evil witch who will bend you to his will if he has half a chance. While that might be exciting in a lover, it won’t be exciting to you as his child. Besides, I worked too hard to see you become evil. You know I had to live with those awful witches in the Paris catacombs until after you were born. Sometimes I still get the taste of sewer in my mouth.”
“Oh great!” Elsie put her hands on her ample hips. “Now we have to hear all about it again for the hundredth time.”
“Mom.” Dorothy stared at her. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to be fair. How do we even know if Dad is still evil?”
“He’s still evil all right.” Olivia tossed her head in the way she always had when she was alive, but the effect on her ectoplasmic form was different. It gave the gesture a streaming quality that came close to making me nauseous.
“We really don’t know that,” I reminded her, looking away. I knew how terrified she was for Dorothy, but I also knew she wasn’t going to be able to protect her this time. Dorothy would have to make her own decisions and mistakes.
“Molly Renard!” Olivia’s shriek was piercing. “What are you saying? How could you betray me this way?”
“I’m not betraying you. You’ve done all you can to protect her.”
“Standing here,” Dorothy reminded us.
Olivia folded her arms across her chest. “I’d leave now, if I could. It’s stupid to discuss Drago not being evil. He’ll ruin your life, Dorothy. Mark my words. If you let him in, he’ll take advantage.”
“All right,” Elsie decided. “That’s enough about evil witches. Let’s talk about what we’re going to wear to the ball. I’m so excited to be invited. Oh! That rhymes. That was fun.”
“Maybe now isn’t the best time,” I suggested.
“If not now, when?” she asked. “It starts
at midnight. Didn’t you listen to the invitation?”
I glanced at the card again. “This is very little advance notice.”
“Witches aren’t known for their thoughtfulness.” Elsie laughed and spun around. “I’d like a black hat with sequins, please.” She loved hats.
To our complete surprise, an imaginative black velvet hat with sequins appeared on her head.
“What the—?” Dorothy wondered.
Mike chose that moment to come home. He was immediately followed by Brian. Brian’s shiny new red Corvette filled out the driveway behind Mike’s old Camaro.
“Hey, Mom.” Mike nodded at Elsie and Dorothy. He couldn’t see Olivia, because he hadn’t inherited being a witch from me. “Hey, Elsie. Love the hat. Hello, Dorothy.”
We all said hello to him. Dorothy asked how school was as Brian came up and put his arm around her—a very territorial move.
“Hi, Mike.” Brian shook his hand. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Hi, Brian. How’s it going?” If Mike had any memories of last year’s crush on Dorothy, he didn’t show it. His eyes, so like mine, were perfect with his father’s dark hair.
“Good,” Brian replied before turning his attention to us. “I’m guessing you got the invitations by now.”
“Yes!” Elsie kissed his cheek. “And we’re thrilled.”
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea. I’m not going. I hate those things.”
“But it’s your birthday,” Dorothy reminded him. “You have to go.”
He kissed the side of her face. “I never go to their parties. I’d rather just go out to dinner with you.”
“Oh.” She smiled softly, her usually pale cheeks taking on a pink hue. “Thank you. But I couldn’t do that and take you away from your family.”
“Please. Take me away. I haven’t celebrated a birthday with my parents since I was five. And if you’d ever been to one of their birthday balls, you wouldn’t want to go again either.”