Enchanted, A Paranormal Romance / Fantasy (Forever Charmed)

by Rachel Wells

  “I went out with Lucas once,” Mandy cut Stephen off. “And believe me, that was nothing compared to this! Lucas is nice, but I like you,” Mandy said squeezing Stephen’s hand again, but this time for emphasis.

  “Well, shucks, you’re making me blush,” Stephen teased, but Mandy could see he actually was turning a rather pretty shade of pink.

  “Finally, someone else besides me!” Mandy exclaimed. They were at her car now. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at school Monday then?”

  “Yeah, actually want me to pick you up? You know, so you’re not lost and alone on your first day?” Stephen poked Mandy in the ribs.

  “Um, yeah, that’d be great.” Mandy felt secretly relieved at not having the whole school know she drove a boat around in her spare time.

  “7:30 ok?”

  “Sounds good,” Mandy nodded. She looked at Stephen and he seemed hesitant for a brief second, and then his face was suddenly serious again. He leaned in towards Mandy and kissed her on her cheek, but not because she turned her head. He was just being a gentleman. The grasshoppers in Mandy’s stomach felt like they were having a long jump contest. “Bye,” she managed to squeak out as she slipped in the door to her car. Stephen waved, his ever present smile back on his face. He stepped back and watched as Mandy drove away towards home. The grasshoppers flung themselves endlessly around, showing their approval. Mandy sighed from satisfaction and for once felt warm and happy in York.

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  The remainder of the weekend flew by as Mandy had known it would. That was the way it always worked-if she was dreading something it always seemed to arrive that much quicker and if she was looking forward to something, time dragged on. Mandy supposed that was true to everyone.

  Mandy had to work Sunday afternoon. She had been feeling ambivalent about going in for her shift. She was really itching to talk to her grandmother about the letter she had found, wondering what her Nana had planned for it. On the other hand, for no reason at all, she had a nervous knot in the pit of her stomach when she even thought about asking Nana about its fate.

  Nervous or not, Mandy decided she couldn’t put it off any longer. She needed to know what Nana was planning on doing with the letter, and the others for that matter. Mandy would ask her right away, she decided as she cut the engine to the boat. If she put it off at all, she knew herself well enough to know that she might be able to talk herself out of it or just flat chicken out.

  Mandy pushed open the door to the shop. Her entrance was announced as always by the pleasant tinkling of the copper bells on the door. The noise was quite a contradiction to the tension Mandy was feeling at the moment. If she had a soundtrack to her life something more ominous would be playing right now. Mandy sighed and forced herself to trudge into the back of the shop, where she knew she would find her grandmother. “Hey Ally,” Mandy shot a quick greeting at her friend who was covering the counter. No customers were in the shop and Ally was lounging against the counter flipping through some celebrity gossip magazine.

  “Hey,” Ally returned the greeting. “Hope you brought something to read. This place is boring central today.”

  “Huh. Well, I’m gonna go say hi to Nana. I’ll be out in a sec.”

  Ally nodded absently in acknowledgement and went back to her magazine lazily. Mandy pushed open the door to the back where she found her grandmother arranging bouquets. “Nana, I…” Mandy stated to say but was quickly cut off by Nana.

  “Oh, Mandy, I’m so glad you’re here! I’ve got some exciting news!” Nana’s eyes crinkled up until they were just little crinkly semi-circles.

  “Um, ok, good. But then I need to talk to you,” Mandy forced out.

  “You remember Doris, don’t you?” Nana started.

  Doris was one of Nana’s oldest friends. She wore her hair in an impeccable white pageboy cut. She had red cat glasses with rhinestones on the corners and her fingernails, more like talons, were always perfectly painted in a glossy red lacquer. She was outspoken and to the point. She was hard to forget. She was five years older than Nana and had a column in the little local newspaper, The York Weekly. People got a hoot from Doris, who may be wrinkled and old, but somehow hadn’t lost herself or her voice. As is the way with many older people, she got away with saying whatever came into her mind without a second thought. She was too old to be criticized or talked back to, and Doris knew this. Anytime anyone had tried to argue with her, feisty Doris would bark back to “Mind your manners, Sonny!” or “Respect your elders, Missy!” Her rants and raves had landed her this latest gig on the town paper. Her column was titled “Doris Dishes” and basically she had been given free run over it. Doris wrote about whatever or whomever she wanted to as her struck her fancy. And God help you if you were the topic, because there was nothing you could do to change whatever she might have to say. You had better just hope Doris liked you and had nice things to say, because if it was the other way around, your reputation would be done for quicker than a lone crab crawling across the beach against an army of seagulls. Yes, Mandy remembered Doris.

  “Doris? Yes, why Nana?” Mandy asked not sure as to what Nana was getting at. Did she finally croak or something? Mandy snickered to herself in her head.

  “Well, you know Doris has her own column now in the paper?” Nana smiled at this, clearly proud of her friend’s achievement.

  “Yeah, who’s she ripping apart this week?” Mandy snorted.

  “Not ripping apart, Dear. She’s putting back together, rather straightening out a little matter for me. And for you,” Nana winked at Mandy.

  “Nana, I’m not sure I’m following you,” Mandy shook her head at Nana.

  “Mary Nasson, Dear! I’ve been to see Doris. She had me over for a very nice little tea on her porch just yesterday. Mint tea, my favorite, you know. Her daughter was there visiting and made us some wonderful little sandwiches. It was all very fancy. I felt like I was back in my hey-day once again. But I digress…what I am trying to say is that I brought the letters you found in the trunk, all of them. And I told her the whole story. Mary Nasson needs her name cleared and I knew Doris was just the gal to take care of it!” Nana finished, palms up in the air, clearly proud of herself, beaming like a ray of sunshine. Mandy just stared at her grandmother, her mouth agape.

  “But Nana, what exactly did you tell her?” Mandy sputtered out.

  “The whole thing, Dear,” Nana said proudly, turning back to her flowers.

  “Everything? I mean, about us, being her ancestors and Lucas and his great great great however many grandfather?” Mandy said, not quite ready to think of the consequences of that kind of a confession in Doris’s column.

  “Mmm hmm,” Nana said, distracted now by the blooms. “What do you think Dear? Mums or carnations alongside these daisies?” Nana motioned to the bouquet she was arranging.

  “Uh, carnations. No, those are for death…mums,” Mandy shook her head, disgusted with herself for letting Nana sidetrack her like that. “Nana, do you know what you’ve done?”

  “Oh, sorry Dear, I left a stray carnation…”

  “No, Nana, I mean about telling Doris!”

  “I’ve cleared up an innocent woman’s name,” Nana stated, dropping the flowers and turning to face Mandy directly.

  “Yes, but Nana, did you have to drag us into this?” Mandy pleaded with her eyes for some understanding from Nana. “And Lucas? I mean, what do you think his family is going to say about this? Shouldn’t you have asked them first, or at least warned them?” Mandy cringed, not even letting her mind wander down that road.

  “First of all, I didn’t drag any of us into this. It’s part of who we all are. And secondly, I couldn’t have told only part of the story, Dear. That would have been like a lie by omission. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this right,” Nana declared.

  “Well, how bad is it? What exactly did you tell her about us?” Mandy urged.

  “Stop fretting, Mandy. It’s not like I took out a
half page advertisement touting our powers,” Nana frowned. “Besides the whole story and truth, I just said that she was our ancestor and that her trait had fortunately been handed down through the generation. That the least we could hope for was that Mary’s talents wouldn’t have been for naught, or lost, and they aren’t. They haven’t been forgotten.”

  “Nana!” Mandy wailed. “Do you have any idea what this is going to mean for me now?”

  “Now, now, Deary, calm down. It’s not like I mentioned you particularly by name.”

  “You didn’t have to, Nana. Everyone in town knows you, and everyone in town knows I’m your granddaughter. I’m done for. Forget fitting at my new school. I might as well just hang a cardboard sign around my neck …$1 dollar for a picture with a sideshow freak,” Mandy groaned. “When’s the article coming out anyway?”

  “Well, it will be in three parts, Dear. The first part will be the history of Mary, her grave and all that. Then the following week will be the letters, and the truth. And finally, just a little feature on yours truly. Oh, and Doris is also going to try to get Lucas’s father to interview as well,” Nana said, blushing slightly. “It will be good for business, you know.”

  “I thought this wasn’t an advertisement, Nana?! I’ll deal with that later. When? When does the first one come out?” Mandy pressed.

  “Soon,” Nana said appearing to address the flowers.

  “What do you mean by soon? Tomorrow? Next month? I need some sort of frame of reference to work with here, Nana,” Mandy said, clenching her hands into fists at her sides.

  “Well, truth is, I’m not exactly sure, Dear. I do know that Doris only just began working on it, and then of course it will have to be edited and finalized before it can go to copy. And we won’t be mentioned until the final article,” Nana smiled sweetly at Mandy as if this somehow made everything better. Mandy took a deep breath in through her nose. This was still her Nana, she had to try to control herself for the day. She could freak out later.

  “All right, I told Ally I’d be right out, I better get out there,” Mandy said, happy to end this conversation. She grabbed her apron off the hook. “But I’m not done talking about this, Nana. Maybe we can salvage this somehow.”

  “Oh, good, Dear. I’m glad you’re not done talking about this. I thought perhaps we could start some lessons. You know, in healing and such?” Nana nodded to the flowers, practically bursting with giddiness at the mere thought of this.

  She’s off her flipping rocker, Mandy thought. “Um, yeah, maybe, Nana,” Mandy shot Nana a close mouthed smile, her eyebrows high and clearly saying “Yeah right” but Nana didn’t see. Nana was putting carnations into a somber looking bouquet, one fit for Mandy right about now. Because Mandy was sure this was going to be the end of her in a sense. The end at any chance of normalcy anyway.

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully for Mandy. Work was dead and she was glad for the quiet reprieve. Ally kept her nose in one celebrity gossip magazine after another, occasionally shooting out an “Oh my God, you have to come look at this picture of…” once in a while. Nana buzzed around her flowers happy as a honey bee all day, completely oblivious by the looks of it to the mass destruction that would surely shortly ensue. Mandy alternated between staring out the window and watching the clock. Eventually her shift ended. She walked out the door happy to be free to go home. Her parents were going out to dinner with a couple of friends and she would have the house to herself for the evening. Her mother had apologized profusely for leaving Mandy to her own means for the night. It was something they hardly ever did. Mandy had tried to reassure her mom that she didn’t mind, and yes, she really did enjoy the occasional frozen pizza. Yes, she knew how to use the oven.

  Even so, Mandy found a note hanging on the refrigerator with a little ducky magnet holding it up. Scrawled in her mom’s messy handwriting were little reminders for Mandy: the pizza cooks at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes, but keep an eye on it, you don’t want to burn it…don’t stay up too late, you have school in the morning…dad has his cell phone on, if you need us don’t hesitate to call. Mandy pulled the note from the door to the fridge and crumpled it into a ball and threw it in the trash. It was like her mom forgot she was almost 18 sometimes.

  Mandy turned the knob on the oven to 400, but then after a bout of obstinacy she turned it to 425, popped the little pizza in the oven and walked away without setting the kitchen timer for 18 minutes. Hah, she thought contentedly to herself. She walked to the living room and sat in one of the overstuffed floral chairs and found the remote to the TV. She flipped around through a bunch of junk until she began to smell the pizza.

  Upon opening the oven door to peek in Mandy found the pizza that perfect delicious golden color. Her stomach rumbled. She realized she was starving. She slid the pizza onto a plate, grabbed a fork and knife, and took it to her room. Something else her mother would object to, Mandy was sure. She wolfed it down in a few minutes and put the plate on her desk with the utensils. She flopped back on her bed and looked at the clock next to her. It was only 6:30. She had to find something to do so she wouldn’t start thinking about the conversation with Nana and the inevitable doom that was headed her way. She was too restless to sleep. Mary Nasson’s old letters were flashing through Mandy’s mind, but she was only able to grasp snippets of them as they flew past in her muddled brain. Lavinia, Daniel O’Leary, Ophelia Jenks…Mandy stopped there. Ophelia. Her thoughts flashed back to that first week here when she had been wandering the town and had found herself at the psychic Ophelia. Too weird, thought Mandy. Two Ophelia’s in one summer from two completely different times. I wonder…Mandy didn’t even bother to finish the thought. She grabbed her car keys and headed into town, not bothering to lock the door to the house behind her just because her mother would have wanted her to.

  Mandy parked the boat in a space towards the front of the lot, locking the doors behind her. She had an uneasy feeling for some reason. Probably because the last time she had come into town and talked to Ophelia, it had turned out to be exceedingly weird and creepy even. She braced herself for more strangeness and walked down the sidewalk towards the little hole in the wall psychic.

  The sidewalks weren’t so congested with pedestrians at this time of the year. The summer was winding down and with it being a Sunday evening and the night before the first day of school, not many people were out and about. Mandy had been hoping for a way to scope things out unseen before actually confronting Ophelia, but with the street free of crowds, there wasn’t really a good way to do so. The only way she could think of accomplishing this was to start on the opposite side of the street from the little store front.

  Mandy crossed the street before reaching Ophelia’s and entered a little store selling sunglasses and sunscreen. Perfect, she thought. There was a large display of sunglasses right in front of the big picture window that faced Ophelia’s. She would just try on a few pairs of sunglasses while surreptitiously keeping tabs on Ophelia. Mandy didn’t really understand why she felt the need to watch Ophelia before talking to her. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but she felt like it was the right thing to do.

  Mandy twirled the rack holding the Ray-Bans around slowly, looking out of the corner of her eye at Ophelia’s. It was almost exactly the same scene as the last time she had visited. In fact, as far as Mandy could remember, it had always pretty much been the same scene. The only thing different at the moment was that that skeezy old guy was missing. Ophelia sat with her little dog, his leash extended as far as possible. He lay next to the sidewalk, muzzle on the cement, looking bored today instead of excited. Not too many people were walking by so he didn’t really have anything to sniff at or bark at.

  Mandy took down a pair of tortoise shell rimmed glasses and tried them on. She made herself look up at her reflection in the little rectangle mirror on top of the display rack. She put on the glasses and everything turned to different shades of gray. Of course, Mandy
thought sullenly. More gray. This is why she didn’t wear sunglasses, they took the color out of everything. Mandy pushed the glasses on top of her head, letting them pull back her hair gently and turned her head different ways, seeing how the glasses looked sitting there. Suddenly she caught sight of someone watching her in the mirror.

  “Lookin’ good!” Lucas called with a big smile on his face.

  Are you kidding? Mandy thought. This was all she needed right now. If there was a god, he had one sick sense of humor. “Hi Lucas,” Mandy tried to act natural. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, apparently. Looking for some new shades. Trying to start the school year off cool,” Lucas laughed. “What do you think? These?” He put on a streamlined black pair and mugged for Mandy. “Or these?” Now he tried on a small white pair with rectangular frames. He pretended to slick back his hair jokingly at Mandy like Joe Cool.

  Mandy knew it was mean of her, but she said, “Oh definitely the white,” because she liked those ones the least. She smiled encouragingly at Lucas.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Lucas said. “Great minds think alike.”

  Mandy gave a weak laugh. She put the tortoise shell pair she had been trying on back on the rack. “Well I better get going. School tomorrow, my parents will be wondering where I am,” she lied.

  “Aren’t you going to get those glasses? They looked hot,” Lucas said.

  “Nah, they’re not really my style,” Mandy said, hoping to be able to make a quick exit. She took a few steps backwards towards the exit. “Well, I guess I’ll see you…”

  “Wait, Mandy. Can I talk to you for a sec?” Lucas asked. He looked serious. He put the white pair of sunglasses on the counter. “I’ll be back in one sec, dude. Is that all right?” he asked the young guy behind the counter.