Jackie saw us, waved, and came over. She too was wearing her witch’s cape, her shoes, and even her hat. She looked hot, and as she came near I noticed the sweat on her upper lip.
“Hi,” she said. “You going in?”
“Yes, we’re here to pay our respects,” said Bethel gravely. “As should every coven witch in town.” Despite the fact that we were barely still accepted in the coven, Bethel took the conventions seriously.
“Who are we paying respects to?” Lowe dared to ask. She hadn’t heard Bethel’s explanation this morning.
“He had a distant aunt who is receiving visitors,” said Jackie. “I should get going.”
“Okay, we’ll see you later,” I told Jackie.
By the time she wandered off the line had moved enough so that we were nearly to the front door. I could feel wafts of cold air from the air-conditioning, and the interior looked dark and a bit gloomy.
“Do you think Taylor or Hannah will be here?” I asked Lowe.
“They probably came earlier if they came at all. No way they stood in line. That’s so beneath them,” said Lowe.
“You have a point there,” I said, and sighed in relief as we entered the shade of the house. Even in late August the weather still hadn’t cooled down.
Once we were inside I could hear the whispers of voices. We were behind two ghouls, who kept turning around and trying to smile, but their effort to look less intimidating only made them look even scarier.
Finally we could see into the visitor’s room where Henry’s aunt was receiving the guests. The whole house was imposing, with everything of the highest quality. There was just enough decoration, all in lush dark colors, so that the place felt well-designed without appearing cluttered. It was the kind of house where I’d be terrified to knock something over or break something fragile.
“It’s our turn next,” said Bethel, turning to us as Lisa and Lucky went to say how sorry they were.
“I don’t want to be talking to the likes of you! You aren’t even in the coven!” came a shrill voice from inside the next room. Lisa and Lucky reappeared, taking a step back as the invisible woman raged on. “Get out! You don’t have any right to talk about my nephew Henry! Who invited you anyway!”
Lisa and Lucky hastened away out the side door, but I knew they’d wait for us outside. There was a stunned silence, and for a few breaths nobody moved. Then Bethel squared her shoulders, stuck her nose in the air, and started forward.
Still in shock, Lowe and I followed, Lowe fiddling with her hair. She had chosen to place bright pink ties all over her head today, and she was now trying to smooth them out and make them look normal, an effort that couldn’t actually succeed.
“We are so sorry, Gracious,” said Bethel, extending her arms to hug the large woman seated in the chair. Gracious wrapped her beefy arms slowly around my small grandmother. Gracious wasn’t just large, she was abnormally circular, so much so that the undertaker had obviously had to find a special chair to hold her. Even so, I couldn’t see her feet below her thick legs.
As she responded to Bethel, her mud-colored eyes flicked toward Lowe and me. “I see the Rhinestones are still hanging on in the coven, not for lack of trying to get you out, of course. Who knew you had a secret granddaughter up your sleeve, eh?” she asked, smiling slyly at Bethel and inviting my grandmother to join in the joke.
“As a matter of fact, I knew I did,” said my grandmother. “I spent years waiting for her to return, and now she finally has. We have a lot of work to do together as a family now,” she added.
“We’re very sorry for your loss,” I said.
Gracious shrugged. “Yes, as am I,” she said. “Henry was the last male in the family and now the name is going to end with him. His father would have been so disappointed. But I suppose that’s what you can expect when young warlocks turn to a life of crime.”
“Was he a criminal?” I asked.
“He was murdered, wasn’t he? Out in the woods, with his friend still missing and probably having sold him out? Yes, I’d say he was a criminal,” sniffed Gracious.
This woman was odious, and I could tell that Lowe thought so as well. My grandmother was just too well bred to give anything away, but I hoped she agreed with me on that point, even if she wouldn’t let on at the moment.
“You’re holding up the line,” someone called from behind us. Bethel said she was sorry one more time and started to move on.
“Do you have any idea what he was doing in those woods?” Gracious asked as we started away. “The sheriff’s office won’t tell me anything. If Henry was involved in something illegal, I’d like to know. I don’t want them to come after me next.”
“We have no idea,” said Bethel. “I’m sure everyone realizes that the two of you weren’t close. Where did he live?”
“Boarding house in Midnight. The place suited him. He could come and go as he pleased and that’s where he met a few other lads. No way was he ever going to be able to live with me, after all. I need my space. Besides, it wouldn’t have done him any good.” She shook her head as if Henry had been a lost cause. Sadly, he now was.
With that we were out of the uncomfortable conversation and the stuffy house and back into the heat of the day. Lisa and Lucky were indeed waiting for us, along with a handful of other visitors who were lingering. Several vampires had gathered around them to comfort them. Lisa looked angrier than Lucky, spitting out words as we walked up to them.
“This is why we shouldn’t have come! It’s always something like that! There’s always disrespect. I want to go home and I want to go home right now,” she said.
“Don’t worry about that woman. You shouldn’t let her ruin your day,” said Lucky, who sounded fine. I did think that under her makeup she looked a bit paler than usual, but no one who didn’t know her well would have noticed.
While we all stood around and talked, my mind wandered to Henry’s room in the boarding house. Quinn would have searched it by now, and I wondered if he had found a supply of black market goods. If he had, he hadn’t let on at dinner the night before.
But maybe Henry hadn’t kept his stuff in his room, knowing that it would be an obvious place for it to be discovered. It occurred to me that he and Kyle might have had another hideout; I’d have to think that over and talk to Kelly. She might know, or be able to think of some clues.
“I want to go home,” Lisa repeated through gritted teeth.
That was fine with me. The undertaker’s house gave me the creeps, and we hadn’t even seen the vampire himself.
Chapter Eighteen
Back home, I changed out of my formal witch clothing into some comfortable old jeans and a T-shirt. I hadn’t worn them for long and they needed a good washing, so I wouldn’t be upset if they got ruined by cauldron work. Then I set about cleaning my cauldron, a task that took longer than I thought it should.
Also, to my surprise, Bethel now wanted to help with the experiments that Lowe and I were going to conduct. I told her that Professor Burger had said we must do them one at a time, but Bethel said she’d use her cauldron so that we could have two experiments going at once. She agreed we should use a corner of the pasture, far enough away so that if something went wrong the unicorns wouldn’t be impacted.
She hastened to add that we didn’t have to worry too much about their well-being. They were virtually indestructible anyhow. Once my cauldron was meticulously cleaned—with witch hazel, of all things—I dragged it out to the pasture while Bethel watched in bemusement. I had the distinct impression that there was an easier way of moving it, but I hadn’t figure it out yet.
When I had come home that day, my purple crystal ball had been sitting in a corner of my room. Bethel must have approved the use of that as well, since she had turned it over to me.
We ate dinner quickly. Even Bethel seemed excited about the evening ahead. I felt guilty for not doing more snooping that day, then reminded myself that the hours of the day were finite.
As Lowe
and I were cleaning up the kitchen there was a knock at the door. “More guests?” Lowe asked Bethel.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” said our grandmother, already disappearing down the hall.
Lowe handed me another plate and I started to wash it. Spunk was sitting on the windowsill in front of me and appeared to be laughing at the menial labor we had to do.
Bethel came back into the kitchen a few moments later. “I was expecting this. It’s actually a little later than usual, but August is a quiet month. Jade, there’s a note for you.” She handed me a folded piece of paper
I rinsed off my hands, took the note, and opened it. There wasn’t much there, and I nearly crumpled it up and threw it into the fire. Then I thought I’d better not. What it said was:
You are cordially requested to present yourself at the dance hall tomorrow morning at nine for the Young Witches Coven Council Meeting. Please come prepared with ideas for improvement. We will also be doing our first ritual together.
Yours, Hannah Carlyle.
I read it out loud to my family, and Lowe rolled her eyes. “Is she already in charge of that?”
“It sure sounds like it. Her mother probably gave her the opportunity without offering it to anyone else,” said Bethel.
“So now I have to do that in the morning. To think I thought I was rid of Hannah and Taylor.”
“You will never be rid of them, and it’s a good thing. Someone has to act as a counterweight to their ridiculous notions,” said Bethel. “Now, put that card down. You know where and you know when. We have a lot to do tonight.” Without another word she headed for the field.
“What about your cauldron?” I called out to her.
“It’s already out there. The ingredients should be in the storeroom,” said Bethel over her shoulder.
I rolled my eyes. So she did have a way to move cauldrons that she hadn’t told me about. She probably thought suffering would build character. Well, fine. It also built resentment.
Bethel kept her stores in the unicorn dung hut. You would think the house was safer, but in fact it wasn’t.
“The safest place in town is probably this hut. Even the queens know it,” said Bethel proudly. “Nothing is going to get through those unicorns.”
Whenever Bethel ventured into the pasture, several unicorns broke away from whatever they were doing to come and greet her. Whenever I entered the pasture they did their best to chase me away. Since I was with Bethel this time, they left me alone. Their only acknowledgement that I existed was a few derisive snorts.
In one corner of the pasture were two cauldrons with a small table sitting between them, plus Lowe had dragged a chair out to sit on. She was going to be our note taker, and she couldn’t have been more excited about it.
“I have a collection of new notebooks in my room. I pulled this one out specially,” she explained, grinning and holding up a rainbow-colored notebook. She also had a special pen. I remembered that Bethel had given me a pen that had belonged to my mother, who had also liked to write. Maybe a love of notebooks ran in the family.
Bethel disappeared into her storeroom for more ingredients.
I decided that Bethel must keep her cauldron in her room, because I had never seen it before. It had a white band around the top and a thick black belly. A very pretty cauldron, it also had a number of designs on it that probably meant something, but I didn’t know what.
Bethel didn’t take long in the storeroom. She emerged with half of a cardboard box and set it on the table between us. “Do you have the packets?” she asked me.
When I produced the three packets from my pocket she said, “We can only do two tonight. Do you have a preference?” she asked.
I blinked at her.
“You’re running this show, remember?” said Bethel.
“We shouldn’t worry about the dungs,” I said. “We know where that’s from and we know it wasn’t part of the trade.”
“The dung will form a component of the Michael feather ingredient set. We will enhance the potion that way. The others should be fine without it,” said Bethel.
“Then let’s wait and do the pearls later,” I said. “I’d like to do both feather potions together, so we can compare differences. That way we might learn something more quickly.” I remembered Quinn saying something about orange smoke in the woods. If either of these potions fizzed orange, that might give us the first clue that we were on the right track.
“Very well,” said Bethel. She held out her hand and waited for me to hand her a packet. I gave her the ingredients that went with Michael’s feather. To me that was the most important thing. Michael would be a formidable opponent should he be siding with the Vixens. Something told me he wasn’t, but we still needed to know. Just because he wasn’t on their side didn’t mean his feathers couldn’t have ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I took the packet that went with Kelly’s feathers, which I placed on the table between us after carefully unwrapping the contents of the handkerchief I had preserved them in.
Bethel did the same with her packet, working more quickly than I did. After reading the directions on the packet, I fiddled with the temperature of my cauldron for a long time. Bethel was already filling hers and waiting for it to boil.
I started to look at my ingredients nervously, but I was even more worried about what Bethel was doing as she moved around so efficiently.
Finally she noticed and said, “Just pay attention to your own cauldron and you’ll be fine.”
I sighed and tried to focus on my work. Lowe was already writing furious notes, probably recording every single detail of what she was seeing. She kept hopping off her chair and coming to peer into each cauldron. She had also produced a stopwatch from some pocket and kept jotting down times and durations.
The plain feathers Kelly had given me were the basis of this particular potion, so they went in first. The packet quickly followed. After that were a few other ingredients that Bethel had produced from her stores, including acorns, a particular favorite of hers.
Bethel had also found me a ladle for stirring, which was fraught with danger because stirring changed the heat of a particular potion. Bethel advised me to go slow and be careful.
I was so preoccupied that it took me nearly an hour (I know how long it was because Lowe kept calling time) to note that we were developing an audience.
There were more cats in the field than usual. They were perching all around us, many using the backs of unicorns as resting spots.
“Just a few more minutes until yours is done,” said Bethel, peering over my shoulder.
My potion had taken on a sort of purple color, and it kept belching. But the puffs of air the potion sent upwards were nothing like the color of the potion itself; the clouds were more pink than purple. Also, they smelled like lilacs. I was grateful that if nothing else, my potion didn’t smell bad.
“Is this something special or new?” I asked Bethel.
“No, not really. It’s easy enough to do, mostly aboveboard, I’d say. I’m a bit impressed by how quickly the potion is congealing, though. That’s probably a testament to Bara’s lab.”
Lowe and I exchanged impressed looks at the implication that Bethel was on a first-name basis with the renowned professor, though on reflection I realized that we should have expected it. Professor Burger would want to have good relationships with suppliers, and Bethel had a monopoly on one of the most precious potion ingredients.
“How is yours coming along?” I asked. Dusk was falling and the wind had picked up a bit. I was starting to feel chilly and was debating going inside for a hoodie or a hot cup of tea.
“It won’t finish until there’s a shooting star,” said Bethel, squinting upwards. “We’ll have to wait a bit yet. We can go in and come back out at bedtime. We just need yours to finish before we can go inside.”
“A shooting star is an ingredient?” Lowe asked, incredulous.
“Of course it is,” scoffed Bethel.
Hopefully it would cause no adverse effects, because we were almost bathing in it at this point.
“I think it’s finished! Turn off the flame,” said Bethel.
I quickly did as she directed. The steam had become so thick that I couldn’t even see through it. All three of us backed away.
“Color, good, thickness good,” said Lowe, taking notes. She checked the stopwatch. “Finished just on time. These are all good signs.”
“It has stayed pink and not orange, though,” I added.
“This wasn’t supposed to be dangerous to begin with. Maybe Kyle wasn’t trading in his own feathers, maybe he was just trading in pearls. We can try those tomorrow,” said Lowe.
“We don’t have Kyle’s pearls,” I said.
Then I realized my mistake. Bethel had gone over to pet the unicorns, and I wasn’t sure if she was still in earshot.
Would she ask where the pearls had come from? I did wish I had some of the ones that Henry had traded.
It didn’t appear as if my grandmother had heard me, but now she turned to us and said, “Let’s go in. We can check Michael’s feather packet later.” She was already heading for the house as she spoke.
Chapter Nineteen
While I waited for Bethel’s potion to finish that night, I nearly fell asleep, lying in bed with a book on my chest. The room still smelled like roses, and the more time I spent in it, the more I liked the blue with yellow accents. Right before I was about to doze off, Bethel came to get me. “The potion is done.” I glanced out the window. The sky was filled with an orange smoke.
The Rhinestone Witches Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 35