by Tegan Maher
She was right. "Okay, but we need to wrap the candy apples before they start to get sticky. They're kind of a pain to get in the bags."
She raised a brow at me. "Honey, that's why the good lord gave me wrists." She no sooner flicked a hand toward the shiny red globes than they were all wrapped and twist-tied. For the most part, I enjoy cooking and doing things with my hands—and so does Rae—but there's definitely a time when magic comes in handy.
I hefted the steam pans and the box of Sterno cans out of the pantry and hauled them to the tables I'd covered in the salon earlier. The public activities would take place outside, but the private party would be in here.
In addition to several different themed finger foods, I'd made spiced peach crisp. My boss, Bobbie Sue, was bringing pulled pork and coleslaw for sliders. Rae, who's an amazing mixologist, made mulled cider for us big kids to enjoy after the little kids crashed from their sugar highs.
I finished wrapping lights around the banister and looked around at my handiwork. Even if I did say so myself, it looked pretty darned good except for the hearth; it was still way too cheery. I didn't want to cover the front of it in case we decided to build a fire later, but I had to do something with it.
I was draping crepe paper off the corner of the mantle when a picture caught my eye. I did a double-take. It was a photograph of the reopening of the courthouse after a fire gutted the building in 1975. Pretty much the whole town had attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
I'd looked at that snapshot a thousand times—it had been on the mantle since before I was born—and I'd never noticed the woman standing beside Uncle Calvin. Of course, I’d never paid much attention to it, except to marvel at how young some of the local old-timers were in it.
I didn't recognize her though. I snatched the picture up to get a closer look, squinting to try to make out her features. She was wearing a tie-dyed bohemian skirt and a white peasant blouse, and had a daisy chain in her hair. And she wasn't just a woman—she was the woman, the one I’d seen in the window of Rae’s shop, and she was wearing the turquoise crystal.
I flipped the picture over and clawed the cardboard back off; Addy was a stickler for labeling and dating pictures, and this one was no exception. She'd scrawled the date—September 15, 1976—and a list of the people in the photo. In addition to her and Uncle Calvin, the mayor was there, along with Belle, Angus, Rae's mama and daddy, and a man apparently named Robert Kingsley, whom I'd never met. But there was no name for the girl.
"Aunt Addy!" I bellowed, grasping the picture so tight it was almost cutting my hand. "Where are you? Come to the front salon right now!"
She appeared before me with a loud pop. "What? Did you burn the crisp? Please tell me you didn't forget to buy the Sterno cans. It's just not the same cold, and Bobbie Sue is counting on us!"
I rolled my eyes. I could seriously have been standing there with blood gushing from an artery, and she wouldn't have noticed. "No," I snapped. "The crisp is fine. I haven't even put it in the oven yet, but it's made and in the fridge. And I didn't forget the stupid Sterno."
"Then why on earth are you standing in here screeching for me? Those boys are making a mess of everything. Angus is out there trying to help, but those teenagers are running amok with their phony face gashes and fake chainsaws."
I ran my tongue along the front of my teeth, reining in my irritation. Every year, I forgot what a basket case she became over this party. For the fall equinox and the winter solstice, we hosted fifty or so temperamental witches, and she didn’t skip a beat. But this innocent little get-together, the sole purpose of which was to show people—mostly little kids—a good time, completely unhinged her. I didn't get it.
"I'm sure the boys are doing just fine." I held the picture out so she could see it. "I need to know who the girl is in this picture. The one standing beside Uncle Calvin."
She looked utterly befuddled. "Why, that's me, Noelle." She lowered her eyebrows. "Have you already been in the cider?"
"No, of course not! And I'm not talking about you; I mean the girl standing on the end, on Cal's other side."
Raeann, who had come running when I had yelled for Addy, peered at the picture I was still holding up, then back at me, concern etched on her face. "Honey, nobody's standing beside Cal. He's at the end of the row, like he has been since the first time I laid eyes on that picture."
I flipped it back around and stared at it. That couldn't be. But, sure enough, the girl who had been in the picture just moments before was gone.
CHAPTER THREE
AFTER THEY WERE SEMI-convinced I hadn't gone ’round the bend, Addy popped back out to find something new to complain about and Rae returned to the kitchen. I set the picture back on the mantle and dropped my head for a minute, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Yes, I'd been stressed for the last few days, but hardly enough to cause hallucinations.
I couldn't do anything about it right then, though, so I did what all good southern girls do: I had a glass of tea and postponed my nervous breakdown for later.
I still needed to ice the cupcakes and cookies, so I pulled everything I'd need to the end of the table and sank into a chair, savoring the iced tea and doing my best not to worry about the fact that I was losing my marbles.
I'd just picked up the icing bag and swirled black frosting onto a red-velvet cupcake when Rae and Addy swooped in. Neither of them said a word, but they stared holes into my forehead until I sighed and dropped the bag on that table.
"Look, I'm not crazy, okay?" I leaned back in my chair and ran a hand through my hair. "I guess it's been a rough day and my mind is messing with me." I didn't believe that any more than they did, but it was the best I had.
Addy—the real one, not the psycho, party-planning one who had tormented me endlessly for three days—hovered down so she was sitting in the chair to my right. Rae took the one on my left.
"Sugar, you know coincidences rarely happen in the life of a witch." My aunt's tone was gentle, but chiding. "I need you to tell me everything about the girl in the picture. You were way too upset for that to have been the first incident, and it's not good to let things like this slide. Start talking, from the beginning."
I pushed the cupcakes away and put my elbows on the table. "Well, I guess it started at Anna Mae's shop. I found this pendant." I held the crystal up so she could see it. “She said she bought it from a girl who found it on the beach by the boat ramp after the last storm. And it sort of got all warm and glowy when I picked it up. "
Raeann nodded. "I saw the glowy part, but I just thought it was a trick of the light."
I nodded. "So did I. Then when we were walking back to the truck with the boxes of candy—"
"Wait, what? What candy?" Adelaide's eyes narrowed. "I knew it! You said you had everything under control, but you forgot—of all possible things—the candy."
I huffed out an exasperated sigh. "Okay, yes, I forgot the stupid candy!"
She shook her head and made to swat me on the arm, except her hand passed through me. If you've never felt that, it's kind of creepy. The best way I can describe it is that it feels like somebody passes an ice cube through your bone.
"It's okay," she said, pursing her lips. "You've done your best, I reckon. And I haven't exactly been helpful, what with all my bossin'. Now finish your story."
"As I said, we were carrying the candy from Anna Mae's back to Brew because we'd walked from there. I looked inside to make sure Rae had turned off the espresso machine."
Rae glared at me.
"What? You leave it on half the time. Anyway, I looked at my reflection in the window, only instead of my reflection, this girl was standing there staring at me. She looked as surprised as I felt." I paused for a breath and a drink of tea. "Then, just now, when I looked in that picture, she was standing next to Uncle Cal. Then she wasn't. Oh, and she was wearing the pendant."
I picked up the icing bag and continued to work on the cupcakes. Rae pulled each one toward her as I finis
hed, and stuck a little plastic pumpkin or spider ring down into the icing.
"Okay." Addy was rubbing her forehead, a thinking habit she'd had for as long as I could remember. "So this girl first appeared in a reflection, then in a picture. Was she wearing the pendant in the reflection?"
I thought about that as I switched icing bags and started twirling orange cream cheese icing onto carrot cake cupcakes. "I honestly can't remember. I do remember she was wearing a bikini, and the style was pretty dated. If I had to say, I guess like the 70s because of the strings and the color."
"And was she wearing a bathing suit in the picture, too?"
I shook my head and described how she'd looked.
"Hmph,” Addy said. “If we can't narrow it down any further than a blonde dressed like a hippie in the 70s, we're pretty much SOL. Can you think of anything else that might give us a clue?"
I racked my brain, but couldn't come up with anything. I shrugged, frustrated. "Just the crystal."
Addy scooted closer to look at it and laid her arm on top of mine, which meant her wrist was actually through mine. I yelped and pulled my arm back, rubbing the warmth back into it. "Hey! A little consideration for the non-living-impaired, please!"
One side of Addy’s mouth tipped up. "Sorry, honey. Sometimes I don't think." She leaned forward again, this time being careful to avoid shoving her limbs through mine. After a few seconds, she leaned back. "I feel like I've seen it somewhere before, but that could just be because I've seen a million turquoise necklaces. It's pretty, but it's not much different than any other crystal. If anything else happens, you let me know straight away, you hear me?"
I bobbed my head. "Yes, ma'am."
We finished the cupcakes and started on the cookies. I smeared a layer of orange icing on the pumpkins, then added candy-corn facial features, while Rae decorated the ghosts using white frosting and M&Ms. Addy disappeared, probably to torment the boys some more.
We were finishing up when boots thunked across the front porch, and the screen door creaked open then slapped shut. "Hey, hot stuff! Where you at?" a warm, buttery voice called.
Rae smirked. "Hey yourself. I'm in here, with your girlfriend."
Hunter, my very own slice of tall, dark, and handsome, crossed the room and leaned down to peck me on the cheek, then flicked Rae's ear. In the short span of time since he’d moved here from Indiana, he'd managed to make himself part of the family rather than just some guy I was dating. Of course, nearly being murdered with someone makes for a unique bonding experience.
He flipped a chair around backwards and had the head bitten off a ghost cookie before I could smack his fingers. He winked at me and grinned, making his dimples pop. There should be a law against those. Of course, since he's the sheriff, who'd arrest him? Though, the handcuffs...
The dimples didn't do anything for Rae. She swept the cookies away from him—but not before grabbing a pumpkin one for herself.
"Dang, Noe," she mumbled with her mouth full, “I always forget how good these are until I bite into one. It's a good thing you don't make them very often, else I'd need to drive a pickup to haul around my backside."
I gave up trying to save them and grabbed one for myself, too, before Addy blew back into the kitchen and lit us up for slacking again. Well, lit me and Rae up; for some reason, she believed butter wouldn't melt in Hunter's mouth.
"So what else do we need to do?" Hunter asked, taking a swig of my tea to wash down his cookie.
I licked the icing off my fingers and flipped on my phone to check the time: almost four.
Addy swept in right at that moment. "I'm glad you asked. The horses still need fed and those young’uns can't seem to get the lights working. It's just the breaker box, but lord help me, molasses moves faster than they do."
He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Ms. Addy, are you flustered? You never get flustered," he said in wonder. "I had no idea it was possible. You live through death, but a few Halloween lights have your feathers all ruffled."
I smiled to myself; in just a few short months, he'd gone from stiff-shirted city slicker to down-home country boy, language and all. Or at least he was as close to countrified as I wanted him to get.
Addy frowned and pointed a gnarled finger at him. "Don't you go gettin' too big for your britches. Take that smart mouth and get on down to the barn. I expect those lights to be fixed by the time I get back down there. And do it without burning my barn down."
He smothered a smile as he got up and headed toward the door. “Yes, ma’am. I’m all over it.”
Belle popped in and watched out the window as he ambled down the yard. "I declare, Addy! Leave the boy alone. Poor Noelle hasn't had the best luck findin' herself a good man; don't run off the best chance she's got."
I raised my brows and waved at them. "Hello? Sitting right here!"
"Of course you are, dear." Belle cleared her throat. "I didn't mean anything by it, you know that. It's just that you two are so cute together, and seem to have such a ... promising future. I'd hate to see that ruined."
I narrowed my eyes at her. "Do y'all have a pool going on how long we'll be together?" I'd only recently found out the old hens at the Clip N Curl kept running wagers on everything from when somebody was going to mow their overgrown yard to when—and how—somebody was going to die.
She averted her eyes. "No."
I crossed my arms and let the silence do her in.
"Oh, all right," she huffed. “It's not on how long you'll be together, though. It's on when you'll get hitched." She studied her fingernails. "Spring weddings are beautiful, you know. The temperature is just right in April—"
"Did you know about this?" I asked Addy.
Unlike Belle, Addy had no shame. "Course I did. Since you're my niece, they didn't want to let me in. Claimed I had undue influence, but I sang every song I knew at the top of my lungs ’til they gave in. And you're having a June wedding."
If I hadn’t been so irritated to be the target of their gambling problem, I'd have felt sorry for the girls; Addy couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
"It's too hot in June," Belle snapped.
"It's still raining in April," Addy fired back.
I now had the two most hard-headed people in the entire county glaring back and forth between me and each other. I glanced through Addy out the window. "Is that smoke I see down behind the barn?"
She whipped around. "Oh, I knew this was going to happen! Now they've gone and done it for sure."
As she shot through the wall toward the barn with Belle right behind her, Rae grinned at me. "That was kinda mean, but creative. I'm proud of you."
I blew out a breath and pinched the bridge of my nose. "I swear, Rae, it's their fault the preacher drinks." I refilled my tea glass and grabbed another cookie. "I've gotta jump in the shower. Did you bring your costume?"
"Oh, crap! It's in the trunk of my car."
I smirked. "Yeah, now who's the one who'd forget her head?"
"Nobody likes a smartass, Noelle," she said as she plucked my keys off the table. "I'll be right back."
I headed upstairs and turned to get a bird’s-eye view of the salon while everything was neat, and was proud of myself for pulling it together—with plenty of help, of course—then went into my bedroom and began laying out what I'd need for my costume.
As I was pulling a couple of towels out of the closet, the distant rumble of thunder interrupted my thoughts. I peeked out my window and was pleasantly surprised to find blue skies. Weird. Hopefully there wasn't a storm blowing in.
I cranked the water to a few degrees below boiling and stepped in. The delicious feel of the water beating down on the back of my neck and pouring over my shoulders was like an instant massage.
You'd think that since Addy was still there in spirit—literally—things wouldn't have changed much, but they had. I was the one responsible for everything from these silly parties to Shelby's parent-teacher conferences. If she failed, it was my fault. If the lights got shut off, it
was my fault. If something broke, it was my place to either fix it or pay somebody to do it. Addy could offer advice—which was great, don't get me wrong—but she couldn't make money or do anything that required a corporeal form, including wrapping me up in one of her everything's-going-to-be-okay hugs.
That was the part that sucked the most.
Try as I might, I couldn't keep myself from running through my mental checklist one more time while I shampooed the dried cookie dough from my hair. Satisfied that I hadn't missed anything critical, I stepped back into the spray and just existed for a few minutes.
When the water started to turn cold, I shut it off and pulled my towel off its hook. Twenty minutes of hot water and peace had done wonders for both my body and my head; for the first time in a week, I was looking forward to the party.
I pulled the shower curtain back and flipped my head forward to wrap my hair in the towel. I was tucking another one around my body when I turned toward the mirror—and about had a heart attack.
I jumped back and my feet slid on the wet tile, sending me crashing into the door as I fumbled for the doorknob. The word TROUBLE was scrawled in the steam across the mirror, and rivulets of water were starting to run from the bottoms of each letter, as if they had just been written.
CHAPTER FOUR
AFTER A COUPLE OF ATTEMPTS, I managed to shove the door open and fall backwards into my bedroom, screaming bloody murder for Addy as I did.
She popped in, eyes darting around in search of whatever was trying to kill me. Being the big bad witch that I am, I was hyperventilating and crab walking away from the bathroom like a dingbat in a bad horror flick. All I could do when she got there was point and babble, but it was enough; she whipped around an instant before the last vestiges of the word evaporated along with the steam.
Rae and Shelby burst through my bedroom door just in time to see it, so at least this time they wouldn't think I was a donut shy of a dozen.