So, all in all, it wasn’t the best trip.
I was back now though, back where I belonged, and ready to resign myself to a life of not quite happiness in a place where everything was wonderful.
“Oh, my word! Is that poor little Malady Norwood?”
Well, almost everything.
I didn’t need to turn around to know who was addressing me. I would recognize that nasal voice if I heard it at the top of Mt. Everest. Besides, there was only one person in all of Cat’s Cradle who still addressed me by that horrible high school nickname.
“Allison,” I said, turning around, putting on my best fake smile, and preparing myself for a mess of fanged, fake politeness. “Like I've told you before, my name already means something bad. You really don't have to add to it.”
Allison Talbot stood there, looking every bit the prom queen she had been five years ago; same perfect blond hair, same form-fitting style of dress, same "I’m so much better than you" look in her eyes. The only thing missing was the sash and crown.
“I heard you were back in town,” she said, settling in front of me and cocking her head to the side, staring at me as though she had already sized me up and found me lacking. “I was so sorry to hear about your engagement. Can’t say I was surprised, but I was sorry.” She shook her head. “You know what they say about traveling salesmen, sweetie. You just can’t trust them.”
“It was more of a mutual decision,” I said, recalling the horrible night in New York when my engagement ended.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she replied, placing a condescending hand on my shoulder. “It always is afterward, isn’t it?”
I huffed, letting my smile grow bigger as I pushed my growing anger deep down into my gut.
“What can I help you with today, Allison?” I asked through only slightly clenched teeth. I needed to get home, not because there was anything waiting for me there other than the requisite Thursday night dinner with the family, but because this woman had singlehandedly managed to take my solo pity party and turn it into a group activity.
“Me?” she asked, her eyebrows lifting as though she was stunned that I would even ask such a question. “Oh, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not like the poor unfortunate souls who come sniffing around your offices looking for the sort of things you people do.”
“You people?” I asked, watching the way her lips turned down in disgust she wasn’t even bothering to try and hide. “I don't suppose there's any chance you're talking about lawyers.”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” she said, swatting me on the arm like we were friends, like she hadn't spent every day of high school trying to make my life unlivable. “I don't really want to say it out loud. That sort of thing just wouldn't be nice, now would it?” She leaned in, like the thing she was about to tell me about my own life was a secret, and she was good enough to let me in on it. “Everyone in town knows your family has a particular set of skills. I'm just not the type to be tempted by that sort of thing. I'm a church goer, you see.”
Tempted? I thought. I didn't remember my family ever trying to tempt anyone into anything. They certainly hadn't earned enough of a reputation for this "church goer" to equate them to a banana split (just about the most tempting thing I could think of).
“Funny,” I chimed in. “I’ve been to Sunday services every week since I’ve been back and I don’t remember seeing you there.”
She balked just a little, her eyes growing wide. Then, just as quickly, she regained her composure. She wasn't new to the art of Southern wordplay.
“Well, to be honest, I've been a little too busy for my own good lately, what with the wedding and all.” Her hand flew quickly up to her mouth. “Oh dear, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to pick at any scabs. I imagine hearing about my soon-to-be wedded bliss might be too much for you to take right now, especially given the fact that it's Mason I'm marrying.”
Mason Blanchard, my first boyfriend, the guy who sent my heart to fluttering not soon after my sixteenth birthday, and set my hardship curse into overdrive for the first time. He'd asked me to the prom senior year, and though I really wanted to go, I knew a blissful night like that would mean disaster for the people I cared about.
So I said no, and he took Allison instead.
Now, apparently they were getting married, and here I was (much to the relief of my family, I’m sure) as miserable as ever.
“I’ll be just fine,” I said, dug my hand into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out a wisp of hollow clove. “And I’m sure you will too,” I said, looking her square in the face. Well, in the nose to be exact. The hollow clove started to make my hand itch and I knew it was doing its job.
One massive pimple on your wedding day, coming right up.
Let’s see how snooty she is when she sees Mason’s reaction to that as he lifts her veil.
“Well, I’d better get going,” I said, nodding at her and stuffing the clove back into my pocket. This time, my smile was all too genuine. “You know us people. We’ve always got something to keep us busy.”
3
By the time I made it to the farmhouse my family had called home for generations, I was more than ready to be there.
Walking up the long and winding cobblestone driveway which led to the house, I was thankful I had decided not to wear heels today. Grandma Misty always looked her best when at work. Her hair was done to perfection. Her makeup was on point, and she always wore heels. She also had a car, though, which meant she didn't have to worry about taking on the quarter-mile stretch of cobblestone leading to Norwood place on foot.
As I rounded toward the end of the drive, huffing as I made my way up the slight hill that signified the end of my journey was near, the old homestead came into view.
Norwood place was an enormous white plantation house. With its swooping arched peaks and windows shaped more like threatening, angular eyes than the traditional bay or square variety, some might say Norwood place had a gothic flair to it.
As I wasn't around two hundred plus years ago, when Audrey Norwood spelled some of the handier men in town to build it for her, I can't say if that was an intentional joke. I always took it as a winking nod to the fact that witches lived within these walls. Of course, it might have just been an aesthetic choice. Either way, I felt instantly lighter as my eyes took in the place.
So many of the best moments of my life happened under that roof or within the confines of the land surrounding it. Norwood place sat on a fifteen-acre forest which surrounded us on all ends. Even the cobblestone driveway looked as though it disappeared into the wilderness if you were looking at it from the outside.
Most passersby probably thought this was an abandoned property, one of the many out of commission plantation houses that had been left to sit and rot after the Yankees marched through during the Civil War.
The people of Cat’s Cradle knew differently though. They knew that anything was possible once you peered past this tree line. Or, at least, they knew there were stories of it.
I had known this place as literally the most magical of places growing up. My sisters, brother, grandma, and I used to dance under the harvest moon. We used to celebrate the solstice, and we even were known to cast a spell or two when time got away from us.
It was wonderful. It was peaceful. It was perfect.
“Oh no you don’t!” a woman’s scream cut through the air and found its way to my ears. “If you think I’m just going to stand back and let you walk all over me, you’ve got another think coming, sister!”
Did I say perfect? Maybe I spoke too soon.
Following the sound of the aggravated woman, I found my twin sisters Agnes and Abigail having a particularly terse stare off. Neither came out and said that their favorite black dress was at the center of the conflict, but given the fact they were tugging either end of it back and forth between one another, I figured it was a safe bet.
“Let go, Agnes!” Abigail said, pulling hard at the dress’s top half while her sister held sturdy to the
bottom. “I need this dress tonight!” she huffed. “You know it looks better on me anyway!”
That was patently untrue. It wasn't that Agnes looked better than Abigail. It was that neither of them had the capacity to look better than the other. They were twins, identical in every way. Both had the same raven black hair, the same olive skin, the same dark eyes and as evident by this conversation - the same hard head.
Abigail turned to me, her face flush with anger. “Tell her, Malady! Tell my sister to stop being a brat and give me this dress! It’s mine!”
Agnes shook her head no but remained completely silent. That didn't surprise me, given the nature of the twins' curse was that they were forced to share a voice. It was poetic really. Before their turning sweet sixteen, Agnes and Abigail used to argue like angry hens having a barnyard disagreement. You couldn't go a day without hearing them bickering back and forth to one another. All that changed after the curse took effect. They still argued, of course. The conversations were just more one-sided nowadays.
Agnes turned to me too, her large, expressive eyes saying everything her mouth couldn’t at the moment. She wasn’t giving this dress up without a fight, but after dealing with both Mrs. Abernathy and Allison Talbot, I didn’t think I had it in me to play referee.
“I don’t have anything to add to this little confrontation,” I said and started to push past them, toward the door.
“You have to!” Abigail said, stomping and shimmying just far enough to the side to block my path. Her sister happily followed suit. “You’re the lawyer in the family.” She shrugged. “Well, one of them. But it’s not like Grandma Misty is in the mood to help, not after what happened.”
“Wait!" I said, my eyes narrowing and my heart dropping. Did my absent minded stroll up the drive while reminiscing constitute enough happiness to snap the magical trip wire on my hard luck curse? “What happened?”
“I don’t know. Something about a new client. What are you doing home so early anyway?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I have a date. I have to have that dress!”
“You don't have a date,” I huffed, fed up with her self-centered antics. “This is Thursday. It's family dinner night. No way is Grandma Misty going to let you out of that.”
Agnes stomped, but it was (obviously) Abigail who answered. “Not anymore. Dinner’s canceled. New client stuff. Haven’t you been listening?”
“Let me inside,” I said, pushing my way through the twins.
“But what about the dress?” Abigail cried.
“Easy,” I said, turning back to her in a huff. “You can’t have the voice and the dress. Date or not, there’s no reason to be selfish. You can either look good or sound smart and - given what I know about you - I think your best bet is with the outfit.” I winked.
“Well, I never!” Abigail scoffed.
“Maybe that’s your problem,” I answered, and closed the door behind me.
My heart hit with a thud as I took in the inside of the manor. Abigail was right. This place was uncharacteristically quiet for a Thursday evening. None of the bickering, or laughing, or other noises that came with the preparation of our weekly family dinner was evident. In fact, the only thing to greet me as I watched inside was a bright blue jay, flapping his wings as he fluttered around me.
“Chris,” I said, recognizing him. “What’s wrong?”
Christopher, the only warlock in a family full of strong willed witches, had been cursed to spend most of his life in the form of a bird. It didn't matter what sort of bird. I suppose he got to choose. Sometimes, he was a blue jay, other times a sparrow. One winter, he toddled around like a penguin.
Whatever the fowl in question, Chris had to spend all but one hour a day in its skin. I suppose, whatever was going in, wasn’t severe enough to warrant him wasting an hour on.
He flapped in reply, whistling as a jay bird does, and frantically moving toward the kitchen.
I followed, my heart in my throat as I passed the oil paintings of all the past Norwoods hanging in our foyer. There were times, in my youth, when I spent hours looking at those paintings, admiring the women and wishing I could walk in their shoes.
I didn’t have time for that sort of thing right now.
As I turned into the kitchen, I nearly ran into my wheelchair-bound Grandma Misty.
Her leg was broken in three places, the remnant of an accident she coincidentally suffered the same night I had a particularly romantic night spent with Nate in New York.
She looked at me with wide, surprised eyes, glaring at me through a mess of blond bangs. “What in all of the seven dimensions are you doing here, little missy? It’s not even five o’clock, and you’ve already closed the doors of the law office?” She shook her head and sneered. “On today of all days. Don’t you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Obviously not,” I answered, with Christopher flapping around my head. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
“Mason Blanchard is waiting for you at the police station. He’s called and requested our services. And look at you, daydreaming the afternoon away when you should be working.”
“I was working!” I answered. Then, shaking my head, I added, “Why was Mason arrested?”
“Because of his fiancée,” Grandma Misty said, leaning forward far enough in her chair that the thing creaked. “She’s dead, Malady. Allison Talbot has been murdered.”
4
I rushed toward the police station with the intensity of a hound dog chasing after a duck in the woods. Walking wasn’t an option anymore, not when Mason Blanchard was waiting for me at the police station. So, instead of that, I had Agnes drive me in the solid black Mercury Sedan that had been part of the Norwood family longer than I had. My palms were sweating. My heart was racing, and my leg was doing that shaky thing it did whenever I got too nervous to handle.
“Calm down,” Agnes said, looking over at me as we tore out of our cobblestone drive and headed toward the station. Abigail had taken my advice and settled on the dress instead of the voice, which turned out to be a good thing for me because I really needed someone to talk to right now. “Everything's going to be alright. It's not like you're the one the police suspect of murder.”
My heart sank.
“Murder? Do you really think Sheriff Dots thinks Mason is capable of killing anyone, let alone his fiancée?” My mind went back to the sweet boy I knew in high school, the star of the football team who used to pass me notes in study hall with hearts drawn where the dots of ‘I’s should have been. He wasn't a killer. I knew it in my gut.
“Have you met his fiancée?” Agnes asked, rolling her eyes as she made the hard right onto Main Street. We’d be at the station in five minutes max. My shaking leg threatened to vibrate off into another dimension.
“Actually,” I said, swallowing hard and looking over at my sister. “I saw her just a few minutes before I showed up at the house. It couldn’t have been longer than an hour. She was perfectly fine.”
“Well, she isn't now,” Agnes responded. “If my friend Dale is right, she was proclaimed dead before they even made it to Saint County Hospital.” Dale worked at the Sheriff's department. He got all the calls. He would have gotten the call about Allison, so I had little doubt he knew what he was talking about. “Though it is weird that you saw her,” Agnes added.
“Why’s that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her, and wondering what about having spoken to her was weird.
“Dale said she was found at the old Meyer’s barn, but that her car was still at home. They assumed she walked over there but--”
“But the old Meyer’s barn is on the opposite side of town. If I saw her outside the house, then she wouldn’t have time to walk all the way to the barn.”
“Someone picked her up,” Agnes said, as she skidded into the parking lot of the Sheriff’s Department.
“Someone picked her up,” I confirmed, opening the door before the car even came to a complete stop. I got out, spinning around, slamming the
door shut, and sticking my head in through the open window. “Which means if Mason has an alibi for the last hour or so, he's in the clear.”
“No wonder you're the lawyer of the generation,” Agnes chuckled, making (in my opinion) much better use of their shared voice than Abigail had earlier this afternoon.
“Thanks, cuz,” I said and started toward the police department. “Oh!” I said, turning around again and pushing my head back into the car before Agnes had a chance to pull away. “Mrs. Abernathy thinks she’s being terrorized by some German Shepard.”
“Oh no,” Agnes groaned, sinking down into her seat. “Mal, don’t do this to me.”
“I just need you to talk to him, Ag. She’s an old woman. She’s all alone. Just put her mind at ease.”
“But dogs are awful!” she squealed, sinking down so far that her head had settled by the seatbelt buckle. “All they ever want to talk about is sniffing butts and chasing cars.” She shook her head. “And bacon. They LOVE bacon.”
“Come on Ag. Do it for me,” I pleaded. “You know I’d do it if I could. I just don’t have that particular gift.”
“Some gift it is,” she scoffed. “Talking to animals is the absolute worst. I can’t even answer them half the time, seeing as how Abigail always hordes our voice.”
“You have to stand up for yourself about that, Ag. You can’t let her walk all over you,” I answered.
“And how would you suggest I convey that information, Mal? Given the fact that when she’s doing the walking all over me, I literally can’t speak.”
“Well,” I said, furrowing my eyes quizzically. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Just go see the dog, okay, and wish me luck,” I said, turning back to the police department. “Not that luck’s ever been my strong suit.”
“You’re not lying, sis,” she said, and squealed back off, leaving skid marks on the parking lot.
“And she’s the good driver in the family,” I mused to myself, shaking my head.
Cursed at First Sight: A Witchy Cozy Mystery (Cursed Coven Cozies Book 1) Page 2