“I’m not going out to save the world. I’m just driving to the donut shop and back. Maybe ask around. Knowing Annette, she’s shopping for scented underwear.”
“I’ll drive,” he said, his tone a rather firm brook-no-argument.
My girl parts noticed. An illicit ripple of desire spiked within them. “You can drive into me,” I whispered to myself, about half a second before the excellent-hearing thing registered. Why did I keep forgetting that? Heat creeping up my neck, I pretended I hadn’t said that out loud and continued on my way.
He chuckled behind me.
I chose to ignore that too. Before I got to the stairs however, a knock sounded at the door. Naturally. “I swear, if it’s Vogel—”
“It’s not,” Roane said.
“Oh.” It was still frustrating. I walked to the door and swung it wide.
A brunette stood there, pretty, mid-twenties, her face the picture of panic.
She opened her mouth, but I was in a hurry. “It’s under the sink behind the towels.”
She blinked in surprise. “But I already—”
I started to close the door then paused. “Not that sink.”
“Oh. Why would it be—?”
This time I did close the door. Only to open it right back up. “Because you bought the thing for the guy, and then he came over early and you panicked, much like you’re doing now, so you stuffed it under the sink behind the blue towels—not the white ones—and in the process, your bracelet snagged on a towel and fell off your wrist.”
I’d apparently sent her into a state of shock. She stood unmoving, a little birdlike sound escaping her open mouth every so often.
“’Kay.” I closed the door and ran upstairs for my jacket, which was way more effort than I wanted to put into avoiding hyperthermia. I’d have to remember to utilize the cloakroom off the foyer. And the detour took too much time.
A knock sounded again before I could escape.
After rolling my eyes so far back into my head I almost seized, I opened the door again. Still didn’t have time for the explanation that was on the tip of the older woman’s tongue. She did have a spiffy blue ’do though.
“The neighbor kid stole it. It’s in a vent in his bedroom.” I pushed on the door but changed my mind. “You really shouldn’t leave stuff like that out in the open.”
I shut the door just as a third knock sounded. I gaped at Roane. “Nette clearly got the word out. Breadcrumbs, Incorporated is officially in business.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the banister. “She’s going to have a fit when she finds out you aren’t charging these people.”
“Oh, crap.” I winced. “I didn’t even think of that. Oh well. It’s kind of her fault.”
This time I opened the door to an older gentleman. A gentleman who did not deserve my assistance.
I pointed a damning finger at him. “Don’t even think about making a request like that.”
His jaw fell open, and he tried unsuccessfully to stammer an explanation that I had neither the time nor the inclination to hear.
Spearing him my best glare, I stepped closer. “Serves you right for trying to hide that kind of thing from your wife. Two words, buddy: habeas corpus.”
I was just about to close the door for the two hundredth time when two teen girls wearing far too little clothes and far too much makeup started up the walk. What the hell had Annette done? Hire a skywriter?
“Seven!” I called to them before they even got close.
They stopped in their tracks. “Oh. Are you . . . are you sure?” one of them asked, looking away from her phone for a precious few seconds. Not that I had any room to talk, but still.
I gave her my best deadpan and waited for my answer to sink in.
They looked at each other, emitted a high-pitched radio wave, and embraced while jumping up and down in utter delight. Then the one with the phone shouted over her friend’s shoulder, “Thank you!”
I waved and closed the door.
“What was that about?” Roane asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do, actually.” He led me to the back of the house so we could take his truck.
“Well, it involved stolen cherry schnapps, several rounds of spin the bottle, and ten visits to the coat check room at the country club.”
“And the number seven?”
“A secret admirer whose only clue was the fact that he fell in love with her under a sea of coats.”
He nodded.
“Coat check number seven.”
“Got it.” Dimples appeared on his cheeks.
“No accidents were called in,” Papi said as we strode past.
“Thanks. We’re going to drive the route now. I’ll call if—” My phone dinged before I could finish the thought. Relief flooded every bone in my body. “It’s Annette.”
Roane leaned close to read over my shoulder. He smelled like soap and morning mist. I wanted to turn into him and breathe deeply but figured that would be awkward.
“Um, so something happened,” Annette texted.
“What?” I texted back, my pulse picking up speed.
“I had a minor fender bender, but I’m okay.”
“Oh, thank the Gods,” I said aloud, wondering when her texts had grown from teen hearts and emoji’s to middle-aged sentences, complete with punctuation. “Where are you?”
“I had to get all of that taken care of, but I kind of did something else.”
I stilled for a moment as my mind raced. I texted back, “Call me.”
“That’s the thing,” she texted. “I can’t make any calls. I broke my phone. Screen is shattered. I’m barely able to text, but for some reason, it won’t let me call.”
Then why was she texting so much. A simple 9-1-1 would’ve done. “Is that the something else?”
“Yes and no. I’m at Gulu-Gulu now. Come meet me for breakfast, and I’ll explain. Alone. I’ll die if anyone finds out.”
What in the world could she have done? Then it hit me. “Oh, my God,” I said to Roane. “She really did go back into The Witchery. I have to go.”
I made a U-turn to the front door.
Someone else was already there knocking.
Roane grinned. “Want me to drive you?”
Now that we knew what happened, kind of, there was no need. “It’s okay. I’ll sneak around the house and hop into the bug before anyone sees me.”
I passed Dad and Papi in the kitchen searching through the drawers.
“What are you looking for?”
“Paper,” Dad said. “You do not need people knocking on your door at all hours. You need official office hours. This is ridiculous. I’m making a sign.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, leaning in to kiss both of them.
When I turned to Roane, he stood there expectant, a challenge beckoning between his lashes. Since I was on a roll, I leaned in, albeit a bit hesitantly, and kissed his scruffy cheek as well.
He slid a hand to the small of my back and pulled me close, then let go and gazed down at me.
“I’ll be back in a few.”
After a quick nod, he went to find paper for my dad just as the knocking started anew.
Fourteen
I’m not saying I drink too much coffee,
but I do believe my body will keep moving
48 hours after my death.
-Meme
When I got to the café, the tourist crush had already begun, and it was barely nine a.m.
I couldn’t imagine what Annette had done to Love that would warrant such secrecy, but any excuse to eat at Gulu-Gulu, a local fave I’d been dying to try, was a good one in my book. I looked around at the people in the room. Curiously, she wasn’t here, so I got us a table and sat stewing in yet another conundrum.
Everyone who’d come to my door today had needed something. A question answered, a problem solved, an object found. And I’d known exactly what their need was before they’d even
knocked. How? Was that part of my calling? Was that what a charmling did? Help people? Like a magical PI?
Maybe I was more like Ruthie than I thought. A finder of lost things. Perhaps, because that was my ultimate purpose, I could read people and know instinctively what they needed most at any given time. Or perhaps I was simply losing what was left of my mind. It could go either way, because I couldn’t read a single person sitting around me. How was that even possible?
The waiter came by.
I ordered hot chocolate and asked for more time since Nette had yet to arrive. He sat it down a few minutes later, but before I could drink it, a woman approached the table.
Confident. Austere. Slender with long auburn hair, she had sparkly eyes like Roane’s, only I couldn’t tell what color they were. She wore jeans and a loose black sweater. “Are you Defiance Dayne?”
Seriously, Annette must’ve handed out flyers on the street corner with my picture one them. Or taken out one of the moving ads in The Daily Prophet’s wizarding news. Or filmed an infomercial.
“I am,” I said.
“Oh, good.” The woman sat down even though she hadn’t been invited.
After the onslaught at the house, I wasn’t feeling very invite-y. And when Annette finally got here, she’d tear this woman right out of that chair if she had to. The place was packed, and it was the only available seat.
“I’m Belinda.” She stretched out her hand. “You met my grandmother the other day. Serinda McClain?”
“Oh, yes.” I relaxed. “She’s a firecracker.” I didn’t want to assume she knew her grandmother was a witch—you know what they say about assuming—so I treated it like an unmentionable and well, didn’t mention it.
After a placating laugh, Belinda nodded. “To say the least. I’m glad I ran into you. My grandmother is . . . getting up in age.”
“Okay.”
“She seems to think your grandmother is still alive.”
Well, that was unexpected. “She told you this?”
“Of course not. She tells us kids nothing.”
Kids. Sheesh. Belinda was my age. “So, you eavesdropped?”
“My brother did. Anyway, he heard her talking to some of her cohorts. She and that ridiculous coven think you’re some kind of”—she leaned in and lowered her voice—“all-powerful being.”
“Ah. I wasn’t sure you knew about . . . the lifestyle.”
“I don’t.” She sniffed. “Not much. My grandmother swears I have talent, and I’m wasting it, but I don’t believe in any of that hocus-pocus nonsense.” She wiggled her fingers.
“I didn’t either until a few months ago.”
“That’s why I’m here. She’s told me a few things about you, trying to lure me back to the coven, no doubt. I need you to talk to her. I saw your grandmother’s body.” She leaned in again. “She wasn’t alive. I’m so sorry for your loss, by the way.” She covered my hand with hers for a split second before yanking it away, like she was afraid of catching something.
“Thank you.”
“It’s just, if my grandmother doesn’t stop all this nonsense, we will have to put her in a home.”
“Will you?”
“We’ll have no choice.” She picked up a napkin and dabbed at eyes so dry I thought about offering her some drops.
“Who does she tell all of this to?”
“Excuse me?” Belinda said from behind the napkin.
“Does she tell your brother?”
“Goodness, no.” She put it down. “He would’ve had her committed years ago.”
“So, she tells you.”
“Like I said, she thinks I’m . . . she thinks I’m a witch.”
“Are you sure you aren’t?” I took a sip of hot chocolate. “I never dreamed any of this was possible, either, but here we are.”
“Oh.” She folded the napkin and smoothed it on the table. “You’re one of them. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were a part of her coven already.”
“I’m not.” It hit me then. The thing she was searching for. And it certainly wasn’t what I would’ve expected.
“Thank you for your time.” She started to get up.
“You can ask me, you know.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The thing you’re searching for. You can ask me where it is.”
She scoffed and shook her head. “I’m not searching for anything.”
“That’s just it.” I leaned forward as though to confide in her, this utter non-believer. “You are. But I can’t figure out how I know that. I mean, isn’t everyone searching for something? Why can’t I see his or hers or . . . well, hers I can see.” I pointed around the room in a quick game of Duck, Duck Goose, stopping at an ebony-haired police officer a few tables down. “I think she recognized me. But for the most part, nada. And then there are some that I just know.”
She repositioned herself in front of me. “Okay, I’ll bite. What am I searching for?”
“The crystal elephant your father bought you at the state fair. You were in . . . the second grade, I think?”
She went deathly still.
“It was clear, the glass smooth, with blue around the ears.”
She swallowed hard. “My grandmother told you that.”
“So, your grandmother knew?”
She dropped her gaze to the table in thought.
“Didn’t think so. You were playing cars in the dirt with your brother. At the house on Elm? When you weren’t looking, he buried it. It’s still there.”
“That’s . . . you can’t possibly know that.” She looked up.
“It meant everything to you. You were clutching it after the accident as the first responders used the jaws of life to try to save your parents. You remember the smell of gas and burning plastic. The sound of running and shouting. The feel of the seatbelt as it cut across your waist, suspending you upside down.” I reached over and covered her hand. “They did everything they could, but it was too late for your parents.”
Tears of astonishment and disbelief filled her eyes. She jerked her hand back. “Stop,” she whispered.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to believe. But go find that elephant.” I took the napkin she’d used and drew a picture of where it was in proportion to the house. Although my elephant looked more like a dying beetle than a magnificent beast. I offered the map. “This is where it is. Just maybe ask permission before digging up the current owner’s yard.”
She took the napkin from me in a daze.
“And Belinda,” I said, “your brother knew what that elephant meant to you. Food for thought.”
The server came up. I went ahead and ordered something else, mostly because I felt bad for taking up the table when there was a line outside. In the process, I missed where Belinda hurried off to. Hopefully to dig up an elephant.
I checked my phone for messages from Annette. She was rarely late to anything.
A chair scraped across the floor, and I looked up into the face of James Vogel. He stole Annette’s seat, the burly man barely fitting, and offered me a sneer.
“Yeah, that seat’s taken, actually.”
“By your little curly-haired friend?” He slid his phone across the table.
The screen showed a shot of a woman laying on a dirty blanket, blindfolded and gagged, the restraint so tight it cut into the sides of her mouth.
Annette.
Fear immobilized me. I cradled the phone in both hands, gazing at the photo, when someone reached over me from behind and snapped something onto my wrists.
I frowned at the black rings, two individual bracelets, and then watched as Minerva, the skittish witch from my grandmother’s coven, walked around to stand beside her uncle.
She was young and pretty, even when she bit her nails, like she was doing now. Her dark hair hung in strings over her eyes, her clothes too big for her boney frame. “She can’t do magic in irons,” she said to Vogel. “Even the Puritans knew that.”
“They knew nothing,” I whis
pered.
According to Ruthie, discovering a charmling in the wild was rather like finding the holy grail in the witch world. We were often held captive by malevolent witches or even warlocks seeking to use us, to use our powers, for their own gain.
But if we were so powerful, if we were so capable, how were we forced to serve others? It made no sense. I glanced at the iron cuffs, wondering in the back of my mind if they would really work on me. If they’d really suppress my powers.
I turned my focus back to Minerva. She wore a look I couldn’t wrap my head around. Had I done something to her? Did her uncle want her to have my powers? Only a female could steal them. Maybe he wanted to control her, but he’d said something earlier about bringing someone back from the dead. Surely, he wasn’t serious.
I sat there, treading in a volatile sea of confusion. Her uncle didn’t have a magic bone in his body. But he did have a sneer that sent my ire skyrocketing to Defcon 1. I wanted to strangle him. I actually wanted to do him real harm. Not for me, but because my best friend, my sister for all intents and purposes, was at his mercy.
I decided to test the legitimacy of the iron cuffs until . . . until I saw what Minerva was searching for. Her fondest wish. Her deepest desire. Her need for justice.
She wanted revenge on the man sitting beside her. He’d killed her aunt. The only woman who’d shown her kindness growing up. The only person in her family who hadn’t made fun of her fascination with the occult. With witchcraft and magic books and spells.
She gazed at me from between her strands of hair. Fear consumed her. So much so, she bit her nails to the quick. Dried blood crusted her cuticles and stained her fingers. Her uncle had coerced her into to helping him, thinking she could bring back his wife from the dead, the wife he’d killed in a moment of anger. If witches had that kind of power, they’d be driving Mercedes and installing helicopter pads. They could name their price.
“You make one sound”—Vogel opened his jacket to show me the butt of a gun—“and your friend is dead. Hear me, girl?”
When I didn’t answer, he took my hand and squeezed it painfully.
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