The Witch and the Dead

by Heather Blake

  “And nights, too,” Ve mused with a wiggle of her eyebrows.

  Harper clapped a hand over her mouth and said through spread fingers, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “You and me both,” I added.

  “Oh, you two,” Ve said with a laugh. “He’s a good man.” She paused. “Mostly good.” Another pause. “He’s a man.”

  Charmcrafter Andreus Woodshall was the director of the Roving Stones, a traveling rock-and-mineral show that visited the village several times a year. Despite the fact that he was the scariest man I’d ever met, he and Ve had hit it off the last time he’d been here. Whether he was good or bad was one of those questions that had yet to be fully answered. From what I knew of him, it was a mixed bag. He was a complicated man.

  Ve frowned. “But he’ll be leaving again soon enough. He has only a week off before traveling to a show in Florida.”

  “Live in the moment, Aunt Ve.” Harper sounded more cheerleaderish than I’d ever imagined she could.

  Lifting her chin, Ve smiled. “You’re right, Harper. That’s exactly what I should do.” She moved aside a dusty bookcase and wiggled behind it. “And the first order of business is to get this garage cleaned out for that big yard sale tomorr— Oh. Oh dear. Oh my.”

  “What is it?” I asked, watching her face lose all color.

  “What? Did you find the veil that went with that hideous wedding dress?” Harper asked, chuckling. “I can only imagine what that looked like.”

  One of Ve’s hands flew up to cover her mouth as she stared at something deep in the recesses of the garage. “No. No veil.” Over her shoulder, she said in an unnatural high-pitched voice, “Darcy dear, would you please give Nick a call?”

  I glanced at my watch. “He should be here in fifteen minutes. . . .”

  “We need him now,” she said, still using that odd falsetto.

  “Why?” Harper strode over and leaned on the bookcase to catch a glimpse of whatever had caused Ve alarm.

  Harper’s eyes went wide. “Is that a . . .”

  “Yes, dear,” Ve said. “It appears so.”

  “It’s not fake?” my sister asked. “I mean, there are Halloween decorations all over this garage.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ve said. “You see, I recognize that hat. I’d know it anywhere.”

  Hat? Halloween? I marched over to see what was going on for myself. I shimmied against the shelf next to Harper. “I don’t see . . .”

  Ve pointed.

  I gasped. In a once-hidden nook created by a tower of boxes lay a skeleton fully dressed in men’s clothing. By the thick layer of undisturbed dust covering the skeletal remains, I guessed he’d been there quite a long time.

  Harper glanced at me, her eyes full of excitement. She was an exceedingly morbid witch. Then she said to Ve, “Who is it? You said you recognized the hat?”

  “That,” Ve said, wiggling back out from behind the shelf, “is Miles Babbage. My second husband. And hand to heart, if he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him myself.”

  Chapter Two

  Half an hour later, there was a small gathering of people inside Ve’s family room, a large contingent of law enforcement in her garage, and a big crowd of rubberneckers on the village green across the street from her house.

  Emergency vehicles tended to draw a crowd. Especially the van used by the medical examiner’s office.

  Voices from outside filtered in through an open window. We were waiting for Nick to come inside to tell us what to expect next, but we all assumed Ve would be under investigation. Her ex-husband had been found dead in her garage. If it was discovered that he hadn’t died naturally, it was logical that she’d become a suspect in his death.

  Harper had already called Marcus, the best lawyer in the village, on Ve’s behalf. He was on his way over.

  “Miles Babbage disappeared the night after we eloped,” Ve said as she sat on the edge of the stone hearth. She held a beautiful floral-decorated cloisonné chest on her lap. As she spoke, she began sorting the box’s contents, seemingly looking for something in particular. “I figured he ran off and that was that. Good riddance. Bon voyage. It took me forever to get a divorce granted since he was MIA, but it was the best time and money I ever spent.”

  “I never did care for Miles,” my mother, Deryn Merriweather, said from where she sat in an oversized, cushy armchair. “He was weaselly.”

  She wore a pristine white cashmere V-neck sweater and white slacks. Silver strands sparkled in long auburn hair that hung loose about her shoulders. Twin rosy spots of color had settled on her high cheekbones, and her Cupid’s bow lips pursed in dismay. Fine lines crinkled the corners of her golden brown eyes as they flashed with vitality.

  Which was rather an amazing feat considering she was . . . dead.

  And had been for twenty-four years.

  Every time I saw her, spoke to her, hugged her, I had to remind myself that this was real.

  She was real.

  My mother might technically be dead, but her spirit was very much alive and well here in the Enchanted Village. A place where magic made the impossible possible.

  As I’d learned only a few short months ago, when my mother died in a car accident all those years ago, she’d become a familiar, a witch who took on the form of an animal after death in order to live an immortal life. That day, my mom had taken the form of a mourning dove. And not long after that, she’d become the Elder, the governess of the Craft, which allowed her to use any form, including her human one. No other familiars had the ability to do the same.

  Two things had prevented Mom from telling Harper and me that she was still around. The first had been my father and her pledge to him that his girls would never know of their magical heritage until after he passed away. The second was her role as the Elder. No one—including family—was to be informed of her identity without having lived in the Enchanted Village for at least one year.

  This past June, I’d figured the secret out on my own, though I freely admitted I should have probably put the puzzle together much sooner. The pieces had all been there. We’d had an emotional family reunion and were still adapting to the change.

  Aunt Ve glanced up and raised a thin coppery eyebrow in her younger sister’s direction. “Fat lot of good that does me now. You could have warned me back then, Derrie.”

  My mother pressed her hands to her chest. Long, graceful fingers laced together. “I did. You called me in Ohio to tell me that you and Miles Babbage planned to elope as soon as possible. I reminded you that you were the first one to compare him to a weasel. Remember?”

  My mother had chosen to have her human form age-progress at the same rate it would have if she hadn’t left the earthly world. As far as I knew she’d keep on aging like the rest of us for as long as she held the role of Elder.

  And just how long that would be wasn’t known. I’d asked. In fact, I’d been peppering her with nonstop questions pretty much since I’d learned her identity, but I’d quickly discovered that some things never changed: There were still a lot of Craft secrets I wasn’t yet privy to.

  And might never be.

  I was trying to accept that fact, but it was proving difficult.

  Ve frowned and turned her attention back to the contents of the box. “I don’t remember any phone call, but of course I remember how I felt about him and the way he weaseled his way into the hearts of the women in this village, then left them high and dry. It was shameful.”

  Harper and I sat on the couch next to each other, bookended by furry friends. On my left lolled my cat, Annie, a black ragamuffin I’d taken in a couple of months ago after her owner had died tragically. On Harper’s right sat Tilda, Aunt Ve’s fluffy gray-and-white Himalayan.

  Tilda was usually a cranky puss, but today she was allowing Harper to pet her with nary a hiss. Missy was curled up on the floor in
front of my mother’s chair, looking as if she was asleep, but her ears were perked as though she was listening to every word being spoken about Miles Babbage.

  Looking utterly bewildered, Harper said, “You really didn’t like him, Aunt Ve?”

  Ve continued to sort through the box. “Honestly, I didn’t know him, other than by his reputation as a ladies’ man. I wanted nothing to do with that. If anyone was to do any heart breaking around here, it was me.”

  “And has been,” my mother said with a smile.

  Ve waved her off with a laugh. “One or two, here and there.”

  Or three, four, five . . . Ve had left broken hearts scattered all over this village.

  Bracing her elbows on her knees, Harper leaned forward. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her forehead furrowed. Finally, she said, “I don’t understand. Then why in the world did you marry him?”

  Ve adjusted her red bandana and sighed. “I wish I knew.”

  At the word “wish,” I bristled, ready to cast a spell. However, we could not grant our own wishes or those of other Wishcrafters. Not even the Elder had that ability, because she’d once been a Wishcrafter, too.

  “It’s all a bit fuzzy around the edges.” Ve winced as though struggling to pull memories from a distant corner of her mind. “I recall that Miles came by As You Wish one Friday afternoon, completely out of the blue. It had been a year since anyone had last seen him.”

  My sister asked, “Wasn’t that cause for alarm? That he’d disappeared for a year?”

  “Not really,” Ve answered. “He was often out of the village for long stretches of time.”

  “Miles was a transient clay artist,” my mother explained. “He traveled with the Roving Stones, so he was in and out of the village a few times a year. He had no ties here otherwise.” She uncrossed her legs, shifted her weight, and then tucked her bare feet beneath her. She didn’t wear shoes. Ever. Her feet never touched the ground—she floated everywhere.

  Not wearing shoes was something she passed off as a quirk of the Eldership, but I had the feeling it held deeper meaning.

  Another secret I had yet to uncover.

  Ve added, “You never knew when Miles was going to show up. Or leave again. After a year passed, we’d all come to believe he wasn’t ever coming back, that he’d finally hooked up with some woman who hadn’t let him go. Served him right.”

  “What did he want with you, Ve?” Harper asked.

  “He wanted to hire me.”

  “To do what?” I asked. What could he have possibly needed Ve to do?

  “I can’t remember,” she said with a shrug. “I’m sure I took notes, as I do with all new clients, but I’ve never found a file with his name. It’s a mystery.”

  Harper scooted to the edge of the sofa. “What do you mean you can’t remember?”

  “Just that, Harper dear. I have no memories from that Friday afternoon after hearing him say he wanted to hire me until the next evening, when I woke up next to a marriage certificate.”

  My stomach dropped just imagining the situation. I couldn’t fathom having lived it. “Had you two been drinking?” I asked.

  “Not that I can recall,” she said with a smile, “though I don’t doubt there was alcohol involved at some point during that time period. Wedding nights often involve champagne. I had no hangover when I woke up, however.”

  “Do you think he drugged you?” Harper’s shoulders slid back, and her chin came up. Vengeance shone in her narrowed gaze.

  It was probably a very good thing Miles was already dead.

  “That’s always been my theory,” my mother offered. “There’s no other explanation to lose more than twenty-four hours of your life.”

  “Could it have been the Craft at work?” I asked. “Perhaps he cast a spell on you?”

  Using spells was something I still wasn’t wholly comfortable with, but I was slowly coming around. At some point before she had died, Nick’s ex-wife, Melina, who’d been a Wishcrafter, had penned a diary that listed dozens and dozens of spells, among other Craft secrets, and it had eventually found its way to her daughter, Mimi.

  Creating the diary had been a direct violation of the Craft laws, and I often suspected Melina had done so deliberately, her intent to teach her daughter her Craft from beyond the grave. When the diary’s existence was discovered, the Elder had graciously allowed Mimi to keep the journal but had appointed me to safeguard it. I’d been scouring those pages lately, learning things I never dreamed possible. All thanks to a woman I’d never known.

  Speaking of Mimi, the thirteen-year-old was going to be quite displeased when she was released from school today. She loved being in the thick of village happenings, especially ones that affected those she loved. I, however, was glad she wasn’t here right now. She didn’t need to hear these sordid details. Yes, Mimi was mature, but she was still so very young. I loved her, and I didn’t ever want her to know firsthand the ugly truths of the world. Honestly, if I could stick her in a bubble, I would.

  I wondered if there was a spell for that. . . .

  Ve still sifted through memories housed in that beautiful box. “Miles was a mortal, so he couldn’t have used a spell.”

  “I suppose that also rules out the possibility that he memory-cleansed you,” I said. A memory cleanse could have explained perfectly Ve’s missing day. But not if Miles had been a mortal. He wouldn’t have had access to the magical memory eraser.

  Ve said, “I don’t know what happened. And I couldn’t even question Miles about it. When I woke up, I found a note that said he’d had to run an errand and would be back later. I never saw him again. Until today, that is.”

  Today. When his skeleton was found in Ve’s garage.

  “Aha. Here it is.” Ve pulled a photograph from the box, then carefully set the box back on the bookshelf. She carried the picture over to Harper and me. “This was Miles, apparently on the day we married, in front of the New Hampshire courthouse where we eloped.”

  I had planned a few spur-of-the-moment elopements through my business, As You Wish, which was a personal concierge service, so I knew why Ve and Miles had crossed state lines. Massachusetts had a three-day waiting period from the time the marriage license was issued until the wedding could take place. New Hampshire did not, making it much more elopement-friendly.

  Harper eagerly snatched the picture from Ve’s hands, and I leaned in to study the photo as well.

  The man in the image certainly hadn’t dressed for a wedding. He leaned against a brick courthouse column, wearing ripped blue jeans, a white V-neck T-shirt, a black leather choker with a round white pendant, and worn biker boots. A tattered straw fedora with an emerald green band sat high on his head, while the ends of long curly brown hair brushed against his shoulders. He was broad chinned, with a long, crooked nose that had obviously once been badly broken. Intense eyes peered out from beneath the brim of the hat, and his half smile revealed a chipped bottom front tooth.

  He wasn’t what I’d consider to be attractive necessarily, but he wasn’t hideous, either. There was something compelling about his looks. Something that insinuated he hadn’t had an easy life. It was as though his outward appearance told me a story about what was going on inside of him. A story that didn’t have a happy beginning . . . .

  Next to Miles glowed a bright white starburst—Aunt Ve, I presumed. Until recently, Wishcrafters appeared only as white auras on film. Fortunately, we now possessed a wonderful spell that allowed our images to be captured. Though I imagined Ve was probably plenty grateful that she couldn’t be seen in this particular picture.

  Harper shook her head. “This man is . . .”

  We all waited.

  “He’s . . .”

  It was unlike my sister to be unable to come up with a word. Any word. Her vocabulary was impressive and extensive.

  “He’s . . .
haunting.” She handed the picture back to Ve. “That look in his eye . . .”

  “Haunting” fit for both his appearance and the shadows in his eyes. If the old saying about eyes being the windows to the soul was true, then we were looking into a very somber place.

  “I agree.” The buckles on Ve’s overalls clanked as she plopped onto the love seat with a hearty sigh. “His broken spirit appealed to a lot of women. Women flocked to him whenever he was here, lusting after him as though he was some kind of sexual Pied Piper.”

  I absolutely hadn’t needed that image in my head.

  But as she spoke, I was a little surprised Ve hadn’t liked him right off the bat, considering she had a tendency to be drawn to men who needed fixing.

  And Miles Babbage looked like he was a fractured mess.

  I asked, “When was all this?”

  “Thirty years ago.” She frowned. “Oddly, it was thirty years ago this very week. It feels like it was a lifetime ago, really.”

  Aunt Ve would have been in her early thirties. I’d have been a year old, and Harper hadn’t yet been born.

  Ve glanced out the window in the direction of the garage. “Do you think he’s been out there this whole time?”

  We sat in silence for a moment, pondering that scenario.

  “The bones certainly looked as if they’d been there for a while,” I finally said, “but wouldn’t you have stumbled across them by now?”

  Ve lifted her shoulders in a who-knows kind of way. “I can’t remember the last time I was in that corner of the garage. Most of the stuff that’s back there belonged to your grandparents. I’ve never had need to move it.”

  “Surely you would have smelled him decomposing,” Harper said matter-of-factly.

  I suddenly felt queasy.

  “Perhaps not,” Aunt Ve replied. “The garage is detached and solidly built. I hardly ever go in there. I spent the end of that month in Ohio with Derrie, so I didn’t need my Halloween decor. I wouldn’t have gone in there until Christmas, for my decorations. If I smelled something odd, I might have thought a mouse or squirrel had somehow been trapped inside. . . . It was so long ago that I can’t recall.”