by Raven Snow
Seeming to recognize the glint in my eyes, Cooper said, “Counterfeiting is a federal crime. My dad wouldn’t want you to get involved.”
His chest puffed out at the mention of Wyatt, like it always did. Unlike me, Cooper saw law enforcement as heroes, and his dad was king among those heroes. Wyatt never had and never could do anything wrong in Cooper’s eyes. It was two parts endearing and one part annoying.
When we returned home, Sarah was sitting on the porch to her house, hanging up a bunch of wind chimes. She smiled and waved, and I couldn’t resist asking, so I headed over.
“I don’t think there’s enough wind in the state of Florida for all of those,” I told her, eyeing the collection.
She laughed. “They’re not for the wind. They warn me when magic besides my own is near.”
Just then, the chime nearest me started shaking, making a horrible racket. I hastily stepped back, and it fell silent. There hadn’t been an ounce of wind all day.
“You’re a witch,” I repeated unnecessarily.
“And so are you,” she said, hanging up another ornament. “But I knew that already. Your husband said you don’t practice.”
“He−never mind.”
She was right about the non-practicing witch bit, though. Ever since losing control of my power when I was younger and hurting someone, I barely used magic. Now, only dire situations— usually tied in with my sleuthing hobby— could get me to whip out that skill.
“And your husband?” I asked, a sweat breaking out all over my body at the thought of living next to two witches. “Does he practice?”
A shadow passed over Sarah’s pretty face, but it was gone before I even had time to properly register it. “Ours is not an equal pairing.”
“Oh.” Awkward.
Wyatt, still in his work suit—which was infinitely more highbrow than his everyday suit—was, strangely, sitting at the kitchen table when I got back inside. The last time he came home for lunch had been never. For some reason, he enjoyed sitting at his desk and filling out paperwork during lunch.
The moment I had cleared the threshold, he turned and grinned at me. It did funny things to my knees.
“Think I just made an enemy of our new neighbor,” I said as we tag-teamed the groceries.
“Quick work, even for you.”
I eyed him, trying to ascertain something about his mood from his face. “Did you know she’s a witch?”
Wyatt raised his eyebrows. “Sure. Everyone in Waresville read the book.”
“Book?”
Without a word, he pulled a dusty novel from a crevice below the sink. It had a water stain that obscured most of the cover, but I could make out the title and picture of the author clear as day.
Sarah Goodfellow, hair as cemented down as this morning, smiled at me from the pages. She was wearing an apron and was surrounded by perfectly prepared food and an immaculate house.
“Quick, Magical Solutions for the Everyday Housewife?” My upper lip curled of its own volition.
“My mom loves it,” he said. “Very little magic, as I understand it.”
“Demystifying the mystical,” I read from the back of the book, half amused, half horrified. “I can only imagine what Grandma would think of that.”
The line of his mouth became grim. “Don’t imagine. She set a display of these on fire just before you came to Waresville. That’s why bookstores don’t sell them within town limits anymore,” he said with more than an ounce of bitter. “Could never prove it was her, of course.”
I opened my mouth once and then shut it. Gran was a touchy subject for both of us.
“Why do you have a copy?”
He smiled again. “Mom gave it to me right after the divorce. Said I needed all the help I could get.”
Wyatt’s ex-wife had left town when Cooper was small. Neither of them had heard from her in years, a lack of care I knew hurt Cooper. Wyatt, on the other hand, would be happy never to mention her name again if it weren’t for his son.
Putting the horrible book back in its hiding place, I went to grab one of the new pizzas from the freezer. Wyatt put himself in my way—a dangerous place to be with pizza on the line.
“Move it, Bennett,” I said. “I’m grabbing a quick bite, and then I’m gonna go grill Gran about the new witch in town.”
Now, he looked practically remorseful. “That’ll have to wait. I said we’d have lunch with my parents today.”
My heart rate did dangerous things, and I felt a sickening, nervous feeling spreading throughout my stomach. “And I’m guessing you’ve had these plans for weeks.”
“I didn’t want to give you a chance to run.”
A few minutes later, the two of us were on our way to Charlotte’s, Wyatt’s mother’s restaurant. I fidgeted in my seat, thinking of a woman who disliked me, and her husband, who was pretty checked out. Mr. Bennett didn’t have anything against me, but I couldn’t count on any help from the man, either. He was more preoccupied with the local sports’ scores.
Nancy, on the other hand, practically loathed me. I was unsophisticated, silly, and had the horrible misfortune of being a sleuth and a witch. While she no longer sought to destroy me, body and soul, she didn’t make it a secret that I wasn’t good enough for her son.
Charlotte’s, a little restaurant sandwiched between two brick buildings in the middle of downtown, was actually where Wyatt and I had had our first date. I came for information on the murder of my accountant and stayed for his bewitching eyes and heart-achingly handsome smile.
Nancy stood from the little table that Wyatt and I always sat at. Like me, she was tall. Unlike me, her hair was light brown, not black, and she had a certain grace about her, while I always looked like I was on skates.
I shook hands with her and got a surprise hug from Wyatt’s dad—a carbon copy of both Wyatt and Cooper. While my eyes were still wide with the shock of it all, everyone sat down, and he went back to watching the game on the big screen.
No one needed to look at the menu, so we ordered, and then I lapsed into silence. Wyatt, usually a quiet man, was forced to make chit-chat with his mother. I couldn’t work up even a smidgen of sympathy for him; he’d forced me to come here, after all.
“…you have new neighbors,” was all I caught from Nancy’s mouth before I realized she was staring at me, waiting for me to answer.
“Oh, yeah,” I said lamely, shoving a forkful of noodles into my mouth. “They’re great.”
“I just love her book. Don’t you?”
Nancy the Impaler was smiling at me like I was one of the girls in her book club, and it was a little like facing down a king cobra. I didn’t know what prompted the sudden—and probably temporary—change of heart, but I didn’t like it. Hard to believe I was nostalgic for the days she used to passive-aggressively gut me.
When it became clear I had no safe answer, she continued. “And I’ve heard such wonderful things about her husband. He’s moving into those old offices Mr. Gibb used to own—another accountant in town.”
“Let’s hope I don’t find him on the floor of my disco skate with a bullet in his head.”
Wyatt and I beamed at each other, remembering the case that had brought us together. I only looked up when I realized I didn’t hear any scolding from Nancy’s corner. She smiled at me, indulging.
“Oh, Harper, you are just too much. I’d hate to see Sarah without her husband. Witches and humans make such cute couples; don’t you think?”
Now, I was pretty sure she was getting one over on me. She’d just made a parallel between her favorite author and Wyatt and I—to my favor! I whispered to Wyatt, asking him if he was aware his mother had been replaced with a kind look-a-like.
“You sure know a lot about people who just got here,” I said instead of what I was thinking.
“We had tea yesterday,” she said as if that was a declaration of life-long friendship. Maybe it was to these women. “She thought you and Wyatt were married.”
More like
she couldn’t imagine anybody moving in with someone she wasn’t lawfully bound to. I was used to the old-fashioned thinking, but I usually wasn’t confronted so up-close or on multiple sides. Instantly, I missed Vic.
“Silly,” I said, meaning it. I loved Wyatt too much to saddle him with me for eternity. I had no plans to leave, but I wanted the option if one day I woke up to find I was doing Cooper and him more harm than good.
She bristled for a moment, but before I had time to get readjusted to her normal manner, she was back to being all smiles. I wondered idly if she was practicing to wow the judges at the town dance.
“Not too silly,” she said. “It’s the logical next step.”
Wyatt’s hand was on my shoulder in the next instant, pushing me back into my seat before I even realized I was going to stand up.
“Enough hinting, Mom,” he said, voice more even than I would’ve been able to manage. “Harper and I will get married when we’re ready.”
“Or not at all,” I added.
He shot me a look that seemed to say, “are you trying to give my mother a stroke?”
Nancy opened her mouth, but just then, the surprises kept rolling and Wyatt’s dad spoke up. We all watched in awe as he rumbled at us.
“Leave the boy alone, Nancy.”
Short and sweet. I liked it.
Wyatt made me wave to his parents as we pulled off in different directions. My mind was moving too fast to bother with such niceties. After that, he left me to my thoughts for the rest of the drive.
When we pulled up to the Victorian, I turned to him and broke the silence. “We’re not getting married.”
He raised his eyebrows and kissed me on the nose, saying nothing. Knowing I was being dismissed and feeling annoyed about it, I left the car in a huff.
While I watched him drive off, my new neighbor appeared in her front window. She looked like she might have tried to come talk to me, so I hopped into my beaten car and sped off.
That was probably considered rude, but I was sure she’d come to expect a lack of propriety from me. The rest of the town did.
Getting back on track with my plan for the day, I headed up the hill toward Gran’s house. If I was going to take on the counterfeiting case—still an “if” at that point—I’d need to grill Wyatt about it. Before I did that, I needed more information to give me the upper hand. Wyatt, like most cops, was pretty closed-lipped.
Besides, it seemed everyone had the inside scoop except for me.
Chapter Three
Gran’s house sat at the top of the hill, an old, faded plantation-style home that you just knew had skeletons in every closet. All the houses nearby were boarded up, abandoned by their owners who had either died, left town, or—in the case of the crazy, old witch who had tried to drain my youth—had been turned into frogs by my grandmother. I still wasn’t sure if she’d done that for me, or because she’d never really liked her neighbor.
I didn’t knock, because Gran was touchy about having people on her property—especially me. It was better to ask for forgiveness than to be shot down by lightning on the front porch.
Most of the lights were off, so I headed first into the kitchen where Gran spent most of her days. Sure enough, like so many times before, I found her sitting at the counter, swirling her tea and glaring off into space.
She didn’t look up as I came in, but said, “You smell like magic.”
“And lilac,” I said, grabbing myself a cup of tea without permission. “It’s the finest perfume the grocery store sells.”
Following the trend of people acting strange today, she didn’t snatch the tea from my hands or threaten me with bodily harm. Her eyes went a little unfocused, staring at things I couldn’t see.
“You sound just like your father.”
Clearing my throat, I let that one pass by without a comment. Gran didn’t like to talk about him, but in times like these, I knew she missed him. Seeing his features in me must’ve been hard for even a soulless bat like her to tolerate.
After my mother died, I’d run wild in Miami, barely surviving on my own until I got the call that my father had died. His death—which I still didn’t know the specifics of—had robbed me of the chance of getting another parent. Then, I’d received the notification that I’d inherited the Funky Wheel. Things weren’t going so well in Miami, so I packed up and decided to stay in Waresville until I could sell the Wheel.
That was almost a decade ago, and I owed my dad for this new home I’d made. I didn’t know what I’d be if the Funky Wheel hadn’t saved me.
“Sarah Goodfellow,” I said, watching her come back from her nostalgia. “What do you know about her?”
Her red bathrobe swirled around her ankles as she got up to refill the teapot, muttering the whole time. “I heard that she moved back to town.”
“Back?”
“Born here,” Gran said. “Too long ago for most to remember, and she didn’t stick around for long.”
“Did you know her?”
“No, just her mother who wasn’t magical in the least, so she must have gotten it from her father. Whoever that was.” Gran snorted. “Not that she got much magic, if that book is anything to go on.”
Gran and I had an unspoken agreement not to talk about her age. I knew she’d been alive far longer than the eighty years she looked, but that was as far as it went. From what I’d gleaned from her over the years, witches’ life spans were seldom typical.
As I wasn’t a witch who practiced magic often, I wasn’t sure how those genes would affect me. And I was too chicken to ask Gran about it. The thought of outliving Wyatt—or maybe even Cooper—made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t know how I’d exist in a world without those two, or any of my mortal friends, for that matter.
“I wonder if Mr. Goodfellow knows he’s shacking up with an old lady.”
Her face twisted, becoming faintly menacing. “It’s his own fault for getting involved with a witch, and hers for entertaining the union. Like should marry like.”
That was a far cry from Nancy’s talk of “cute” witch/human pairings. Considering her bias, I was a little more inclined to take Gran’s position on this one.
But I couldn’t resist asking, “What about Wyatt? I thought you liked him.”
“Like” was probably the wrong word, and it showed on her face. Gran and Wyatt had come to a shady agreement right after the two of us started dating. I’d been absent for the proceedings, but the outcome was that Wyatt came over here frequently to mow and to maintain the house. In exchange, he was allowed to keep breathing as a human being and not as a frog.
“You’ve forsaken your noble birth right,” she said by way of explanation. “You’re hardly better than a human now.”
“Oh, stop, Gran. You’ll make me blush.”
Like usual, she was barely listening to me. “And that book.” She shook her head. “That book is a mockery to true witchcraft.”
“Wyatt’s mom says the stain removal spells are life savers.”
She pointed a single, pale finger at me, pinning me with a stare. “No good can come from mortals messing with our forces. Not even for paltry household chores.”
“Concluding today’s cryptic message,” I said, “can you tell me anything about disappearing money?”
I told her about the incident at the grocery store. She listened without interrupting, scratching her chin occasionally. When I was done, she shook her head.
“I don’t know why any witch would bother with mortal money.”
“Well, it does buy us pretty things like cauldrons and designer purses.”
She said, “It sounds like a simple illusion spell. Even the least gifted of our kind could cast it without difficulty.”
“What about humans? Could one of them do it?”
She made a distasteful sound and swore in a very un-grandma-like fashion. I took that for a yes and took my leave before she could remember that I had invited myself in without notice. The key with managing Gran was t
o hit fast and then run.
My cell phone rang from the passenger seat, and I glanced over, reading the caller ID. Eyes widening, I swerved over into the turning lane and sped off in the opposite direction from home.
When I pulled up outside Cooper and Hope’s school, all the other kids had left, and it was just the two of them and a teacher standing in a deserted parking lot. The look Hope gave me as she slid into the backseat without a word was the definition of angst.
I got out of the car and ruffled Cooper’s hair. “Sorry for being late—again.”
The teacher frowned at me, resting her hands on her hips. “Mrs. Bennett, a pattern seems to be forming.”
“Call me ‘Mrs. Bennett’ again.”
Cooper made me drive off before I could settle things with his teacher. Dropping Hope off at the hotel where her mother was sleeping, we waved to the girl as she ran inside, spitting at us the whole way.
“I am sorry,” I said after a moment. “Maybe you should get your dad to trade me in for a less forgetful model.”
Cooper’s sunny smile was as sunny as ever. “You were significantly less late than yesterday and the day before that. Besides, I just got a head start on my homework.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Coop,” I said, “because we’re not going home for a couple hours more.”
Instead of taking my kid home to finish his homework, we prowled around in the bug in an expanding circle from the grocery store. Every block or so, I’d park the car, and we’d run into the nearest businesses, asking if any of them had been hit by the magical bills.
Mostly, the shops immediately confirmed or even showed me a couple bills they were afraid were going to disappear on them. Not everyone was so helpful, however. The most extreme interaction went a little something like this:
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” a snotty boutique owner told me, sniffing and straightening the clothes on display. He was wearing a sparkly, teal vest and white pants that ended just at his ankle. I wasn’t trying to lean too heavily on stereotypes, but his clothes and the way he was eyeing his cashier made me think he was gay.