With two checks for the week’s catering in my pocket, I zoomed home. I’d just arrived when my phone rang and Sheriff Hobbs asked me if I had a friend named Evangeline Rhodes.
Uh-oh.
“I know Vangie,” I confirmed. “Why do you ask, Sheriff?”
“Can you come on over to Delaney’s?”
I raised my brows. Delaney’s Furniture wasn’t open at eight thirty in the morning.
“Sure thing,” I said, starting my car and swinging around.
When I arrived in the parking lot, the sheriff stood next to the massive inflatable bouncy castle that was between the store and the grocery market. I hurried over.
There was a plastic sign that said the bouncy castle opened at ten a.m. with the store. There was a theater-type rope between two posts blocking the entrance to the play area. Over the castle’s doorway there was hanging fabric.
“Talk to her, Tammy Jo. See what’s what.”
I looked at the sheriff, who nodded at the castle.
“She’s in there?” I asked, brows shooting up.
He gave a nod.
I stepped around the rope barrier, swept aside the fabric, which was a pair of silk scarves, and peered in. She was lying on her back under a blanket.
“Um, hello?”
Vangie sat bolt upright, her hair falling around her face and shoulders, and pushed up a puffy eye mask. She blinked.
“Hey,” I said.
“Come in,” she said.
“I think it would be better for you to come out. What the heck are you doing in there?”
“Trying to sleep, but there have been a number of interruptions.”
“Vangie, that castle is for kids to play in. You can’t sleep in there.”
The mask slipped down so that her eyes were half-covered. She looked like a bohemian Batman.
“It doesn’t open until ten a.m. The children can’t use it now. And I don’t want to waste time driving back to Dyson when I have arrangements to make here later.”
“What arrangements? Did you talk to Bryn?”
“He doesn’t believe that I’m in danger,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I guess I’ll have to die to be taken seriously.”
I clucked my tongue. “Now that’s—”
She flopped back, causing the floor to bob and for me to almost fall over since I was leaning in with my palms on it.
“Vangie, what arrangements?”
“Hair and makeup. I don’t care about those things normally, but for a wedding . . . well, I guess it’s such a big occasion that I should. And I’ve heard really good things about the hairdresser here in town. I hope I’m still alive at ten thirty. He managed to fit me in. I wouldn’t like to be a no-show.”
My eyebrows threatened to touch my hairline. “Vangie, tell me why you think you’re in danger. Who’s going to try to kill you?”
“Them, of course. Madame Lycra and her weasel of a son. I’ve got protection charms on my ankles and wrists,” she said, her arms shooting up so I could see her bangles. “But it won’t do any good. My father had a protective amulet and they managed to kill him.”
“Why would they want you dead?”
“You’ll have to ask them.”
“Well, how do you know they want to hurt you?”
“I heard them whispering. And they’ve snuck into my apartment.”
“How did you hear them whispering? You don’t live with them.”
“I have my ways.”
“Did you catch them in your apartment?”
“No, I didn’t need to. I know they were there.”
“How?”
“My dresser. The hairbrush was moved two point five inches. And the lines in the carpet were disturbed in the living room. I had them all exactly parallel. When I came home the center lines were off.”
“So you think they came in and moved your hairbrush and on their way out used your vacuum to cover their footprints in the carpet, but didn’t get the lines right?”
She sat up, causing each of us to bobble.
“Precisely,” she said.
I cocked my head. “I’m not too sure about that.”
“Well, I am.”
“Although,” I said. “Hair can be used for spells.”
“They won’t be using mine! I don’t allow any stray strands in my apartment. I burn them all so they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“Hmm—”
“Tammy Jo,” Sheriff Hobbs said.
“Hang on a sec, Vangie,” I said, straightening up and turning to face the sheriff.
His arms were folded across his chest.
“Get her out of there right now or I’m going to arrest her.”
“All right,” I said, pushing the scarves apart. “Come on out of there.”
“I’m quite comfortable here. It’s just for an hour.”
“The sheriff will arrest you.”
Vangie tilted her head. “I don’t see why. I’m not hurting anything. When I’m gone, there will be no sign I was ever here. I leave things undisturbed. Unlike some steprelatives I know. Crooked carpet lines! As if I wouldn’t notice.”
“Oh boy,” I said. I crawled in and walked to the corner to get her bag. “Hurry up now. You have to get out of here.”
“I don’t see why,” she said, giving her covers a snap. Her sudden movement made the spot under my feet push up. I lurched forward and landed hard, making the whole floor bounce and causing Vangie to fall over.
We exchanged a look and started to laugh. “Like walking on marshmallows,” I said, getting back to my knees. “Come on. I have plenty of room at my house. You can stay there until your appointment.”
“Oh,” she said with wide eyes. “That’s very kind of you.” Her shy smile widened. “All right, I accept. You’re a lovely maid of honor.”
“Um, well,” I said. Was I actually going to stand up in this odd girl’s wedding? I had a sneaking suspicion that I probably was.
Vangie collected her blanket, cell phone, and pillow and we wobbled out. She retrieved her scarves that were taped over the opening of the castle and rolled them under her arm with the pillow and blanket. Then she shuffled toward her car after murmuring, “Good day, Sheriff.”
I gave the sheriff a sheepish smile and a shrug.
“You sure have strange taste in friends lately,” the sheriff muttered.
“I know it,” I said, because he wasn’t wrong.
• • •
ONCE I GOT Vangie settled in, I began the daily baking. She came down to the kitchen after an hour and didn’t seem to have combed her long hair because it was tangled and slightly fuzzy. Her clothes too were rumpled from being slept in.
“You need to borrow a hairbrush and an iron to press your clothes?”
“Nope.”
“You have a hairbrush in your bag?” I asked when she picked it up.
“Nope. My brush is where it belongs, on my dresser, four point five inches from my jewelry box and at a forty-five-degree angle with respect to the edge of the dresser.”
“Hmm, that sounds like a very specific place for it. But wouldn’t it be better to carry it with you? So you could brush your hair whenever you needed to?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Everything in its proper place.”
“Sure, sure,” I said, offering her a slice of warm brown bread with butter and honey. “But you’re going to see Johnny Nguyen, right?”
“Exactly,” she said, eating the bread. “Delicious!” She drank the glass of milk I set at the edge of the counter for her and then put her dishes in my sink. She smiled. “Thank you, maid of honor. Just out of curiosity, what kind of gemstones do you like?”
“I—you don’t need to buy me anything.”
She glanced around like the walls might have ears. “I was just curious,” she said. “Hypothetically? Sapphires?”
“Vangie,” I said, pointing to where her shirt had fallen partway off her shoulder. It was too large for her. “Do you have an
y clothes in your car?”
“Emeralds? Rubies? Tanzanite? You would look very good in tanzanite.” She gave me a twinkle-eyed smile and strode to the front door.
“You have to comb your hair!” I called.
“Don’t be silly. I’m going to see an acclaimed hairdresser. I’m sure he’ll want to see my hair as it is.”
“Disheveled?”
She snickered as she opened the door. “No, in its natural state.”
Good lord.
• • •
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, on my way back from dropping off a mince pie in Old Town, I turned up the radio. Listening to the request hour on the new Duvall-Dyson station had become a local pastime. Who was sending out “I love you” songs? Who’d requested “I’m sorry” and “Let’s not break up” or “Get out of my house” songs? We were all curious to find out. For my whole life and probably longer, gossiping’s been the number one hobby in Duvall.
Red Czarsak’s mellow baritone made him my favorite DJ. “And here comes some Lonestar,” he said. “This one goes out to Tammy Jo. The song’s called, ‘Let’s Be Us Again.’”
My heart missed a beat and then sped up. I pulled onto the shoulder. I licked my dry lips and listened to the words. It was about a relationship gone wrong. One that the man thought was worth saving.
While the car idled, I put my head back on the headrest and chewed my lip, anticipation thrumming through me. There was only one person who could’ve requested that song for me. Now what was I going to do about it? I inhaled a deep breath and blew it out.
For a few minutes after the song ended, I sat on the side of the road. I was really good at fighting with Zach and really good at making up with him. The one thing I’d never been able to do was ignore him.
I turned the car around and drove to his house. Keyed up, my heart pounded by the time I parked next to his curb. My arrival turned out to be anticlimactic since he wasn’t even there. Nerves jangling, I pursed my lips. The least he could do was be home to confront me when I showed up without warning.
I probably should’ve left, but I have a spare key and what else is that for but to get inside a house in an emergency? The emergency was that I couldn’t take it anymore. It was okay for Zach to be mad. It was okay for him to want to see less of me while I was involved with Bryn. It was even okay if he wasn’t in love with me anymore—all right, not really, at least not at first. But what was not okay, and never would be, was for him to cut me out of his life like we didn’t have almost twenty years of history.
It was wrong of him to talk to me through the radio station when he wasn’t talking to me in person. And I’d tell him that if he ever bothered to show up.
Because I cook when I’m nervous, or stressed, or pretty much any time I don’t have anything else to do, I went straight to his fridge and started dinner. Twice I stepped back from the stove and asked myself what the heck I was doing.
I turned off the burners and glanced at my right hand. I squinted to see through the concealment spell. The gold band on my middle finger had a row of blue-violet sapphires, symbolizing Orion’s Belt and Bryn’s celestial magic. The white gold band Bryn wore on his left middle finger had vines, a symbol of earth magic and me. When the bands touched, our magical connection intensified, a powerful reminder of our unbreakable bond.
I shifted, leaning against the counter. Zach and I had reminders of what we meant to each other, too. A certain keepsake came to mind. No matter how angry he was, I couldn’t imagine him throwing it away.
Check, I told myself. See if it’s still there. If he got rid of it, that’ll say it all. You can go on home.
I hesitated, then walked into the bedroom and dropped to my knees in front of his dresser. I opened the bottom drawer and dug under the socks. For a minute, I thought the card was gone. All the air seemed to deflate from my lungs, leaving me breathless.
When I felt the plastic Ziploc bag, my heart jumped. I fished out the bag, and there was the small card I’d given him for his fifteenth birthday. I didn’t need to take it out, but my fingers worked without any specific command from my brain. Opening the card, I saw my teenage handwriting.
For your present, meet me under the bridge.
Zach’s not a sentimental guy, but he’d saved that card all through the years. The bridge was where we’d had our first kiss when we were eight. And it’s where we met on the night we made love for the first time. I hear that the first time’s not good for a lot of people, but Zach and I had been together for years by then. We’d played around plenty, the way kids in a small town will on warm nights when school’s out and there’s nothing to do. By the time he turned fifteen, Zach and I had known our way around each other’s bodies and when we went all the way that night, we’d both liked it.
Afterward, I’d lain next to him and said, “So you’ve been asking me to do that for a year. I heard TJ say it’s not a big deal, and you should stick to everything else I’m willing to do for as long as you could.”
“You heard that? I told him to shut his damn mouth,” he said, frowning. His brother TJ had said plenty of crude stuff that night, drunk on cheap beer and revved up over a fight with the girl he’d eventually marry. “I thought you were asleep in the back of the truck. I don’t want you hearing that kind of filthy talk.”
I’d rolled my eyes. “He was just sore over the fight he had with that girl he’s in love with.”
“Who says he’s in love with her?”
“Nobody has to say it. I’ve got eyes. Whenever she won’t go out with him, he gets drunk and pretends he doesn’t care about women. Whenever she will go out with him, he spends twenty minutes brushing his teeth and half an hour digging through T-shirts to find the one that best shows off his muscles.”
Zach laughed. “He does do that. Asshole,” he said affectionately. “So what were you going to ask me?”
“I was asking if it was worth it? That didn’t have to be your birthday present. There’s still time for me to buy you that leather jacket you like.”
“To hell with leather jackets. This is what I want every year on my birthday.” He turned his head to meet my eyes and grinned. “And all the days in between, if it were up to me.”
I laughed and kissed him. “It’s your birthday. Should we use the L word again?” I asked. After everyone at school had started broadcasting that they loved each other after dating for a week, Zach and I had gotten fed up and decided we’d only say it to each other on special occasions. That night, I’d whispered it to him toward the end, and he’d held me tighter.
He nodded. “Hearing you say you love me while we’re together that way . . .”
“What?” I asked, leaning close to him.
He shrugged. “Anyone can give me a leather jacket. You’re the only one who can give me this.”
I kissed him and ran my hands over his body until we were both urgent for each other again. We’d made the most of that night and plenty of others. And over the years when we’d had terrible fights, eventually one of us would slip a note to the other saying, When you’re done being mad, send me a note to meet you under the bridge. Even after we had a house of our own, sometimes we’d meet under the bridge to make up before we came back to it.
I put the card back and returned to the kitchen, lost in thought.
When I was with Bryn, I was happy. But Zach could make me happy, too. If he hadn’t lost faith in me when he’d thought I was either making Edie up or losing my mind, our marriage might not have fallen apart. Now he knew I’d told the truth about Edie. He’d seen her. He’d accepted that magic existed and had even gone to train with people who’d tangled with the supernatural. So I wondered whether Zach and I could salvage things, if we could recapture the early days before he’d started treating me like I couldn’t be trusted to run my own life. I frowned. I could never go back to him being condescending to me. But I’d missed him when he was gone, like a piece of my heart had been stolen.
I had dinner almost ready when a face pop
ped up in the kitchen window. I dropped the skillet on the stovetop. Little splatters of butter stung my skin and I cursed.
I opened the window. “Vangie, what in the world are you doing here?”
“Providing moral support.”
“Come again?” I asked.
“It’s all over town that you came over here for a secret rendezvous with your ex.”
“All over town,” I sputtered. “Who blabbed?” I peered out the windows at the neighboring houses.
“Well, I heard it at that sports bar, Jammers. The hostess with the curly hair is a huge gossip. She stops by each table and talks for thirty minutes or more.”
“Jammers is loud. There’s no way you’d be able to hear half of what was said at the next table, let alone be able to follow Georgia Sue’s conversations all over the restaurant.”
“So you know her? Of course you do! Well, I feel like I know most of the townspeople, too, after listening to her for three hours.”
“Three hours!”
“Yes, people-watching is my favorite pastime. If I could be a fly on the wall or completely invisible . . . the best thing ever. And three hours isn’t that long. I had an order of hot wings, two glasses of wine that I suspect came from a box, and a slice of apple pie that you apparently made. Delicious, by the way. The way you elevate a simple fruit pie into something so heavenly—you’re the Michelangelo of baked goods. Seriously, a double oven is your Sistine Chapel.”
I was flabbergasted for a moment and started to gush my thanks before I remembered myself. “But I still don’t understand how you heard anything with the jukebox going full blast.”
“I used a spell.”
I blinked. “An eavesdropping spell?” Just like her daddy! I thought.
She nodded. “I also hex-bombed a couple of patrons who said nasty things about you.”
“People said nasty—wait, hex-bombed? You mean you put hexes on them? You can’t do that, Vangie!”
She wrinkled her nose. “I can and I will if they say unkind things about my friend.”
“What kind of hexes?”
“Something I picked up while eavesdropping on my stepmonster, Oatha. A minor curse she was practicing. The people will just think they have the flu for a couple of days. Nothing serious.”
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