by Nancy Warren
She broke into her evil cackle. “Really, Lucy, with you, it’s too easy.”
She might be teasing me, but I would be very careful not to let any puppies get near Margaret Twig. “Where is gossip central in this town?”
Violet said, “Well, there’s the coffee shop and the pub. And pretty much anywhere two people in this small town meet, they end up chatting to each other. There’s not much else to do.”
“Right. I think you and I should head to the pub. I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use a drink.”
We went in and, as I had expected, the place was packed. No doubt it would’ve been busy anyway at the end of a village fête, but today all benches and tables in the pub garden were full. When Violet and I went inside the pub, they were standing three deep waiting to be served at the bar and, again, every seat was taken. People were standing in groups talking quietly. The atmosphere was nervous and high-strung.
I said, “Why are people looking at us that way?”
Margaret Twig said in a very low voice, “Because they suspect that Violet and I are witches. You’d do much better if you weren’t seen with us, Lucy.”
I wanted to talk to the dead woman’s friend with Violet, but I decided that could wait for tomorrow. Margaret Twig was right. There was no point having townspeople close up with me if they thought I was associated with witches. Come to think of it, I wasn’t thrilled that it was an open secret that there were witches in the area.
I understood what Margaret meant, though. So long as the presence of witches here had been benign, no one much bothered. But, as history had shown, the minute things turned ugly, people liked to point a finger.
Chapter 7
Violet phoned me the next morning. Her voice sounded strained and near tears. “Lucy, you’ve got to help me.”
I was enjoying a lazy Sunday morning breakfast and browsing through a magazine while I drank my coffee. At her words, my laziness vanished and I sat bolt upright. “What is it?”
“Somebody threw a rock through my window last night.”
I told her how sorry I was, but I didn’t see why she was quite so worked up until she explained, “It had written symbols on it.”
I started to get a bad feeling about this. “Written symbols? What sort?”
She said, “Margaret Twig recognized them. She said they’re to ward away evil spirits and frighten away witches.”
“Oh my gosh. I thought you only saw things like that in museums.”
“Lucy, can you come over? I think people are on edge because of the murder yesterday.”
She was right, of course. Besides, I had been one of the last people to talk to Elizabeth and probably one of the first to arrive after she was killed. I felt a keen interest in finding out what had happened to her and, if possible, helping bring her killer to justice.
Not so long ago I would’ve gagged at the very idea of murder. But since I’d moved to Oxford, I seemed to be forever getting myself into one murder scrape or another. This one, thank goodness, was nothing to do with me. I’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And, sadly, so had Violet.
I agreed to stop by her house and then suggested that we go for coffee at Moreton-Under-Wychwood. The café would be the best place to pick up gossip. And, perhaps, get some idea of who was so angry at Violet.
I was irked when I arrived at Violet’s to find Margaret Twig there. Of course, I should have seen that coming. As the head of the coven, Margaret was the correct person to call, but still, my morning would’ve been brighter without having to see her. Violet’s grandmother, my great aunt Lavinia, was also there. She rushed up to give me a hug when she saw me. “Lucy, what a dreadful thing. I’m terribly worried about Violet. We’ve never had anything like this in our neighborhood before.”
Violet shot her a sideways glance, and she amended, “Well, not in the last century, anyway.”
Whatever horror stories of witch persecution had occurred locally, I really didn’t want to hear them right now. I was much more interested in present-day murder. I reiterated my plan for Violet and I to go for coffee, ask questions and listen to gossip. To my horror, both Lavinia and Margaret Twig decided to come, too. I didn’t know how to tell them they weren’t invited, so I made the best of it, and the four of us crammed into my small car and drove into town.
Every seat in the coffee shop was taken and the place was buzzing with chatter, but when we walked in, a sudden hush fell over the crowd. It was awful.
I felt every eye on our little group, and you didn’t have to be a witch to feel the animosity flowing toward us.
Violet said in a soft voice, “Maybe we should leave.”
“Absolutely not.” Margaret was looking feisty and irritable, which seemed like a dangerous attitude in this crowd.
I had to agree that we shouldn’t let ourselves be frightened away, but it was somewhat unnerving feeling so much dislike coming from people I didn’t even know.
A young couple with two children got up and left their table in the corner. I noticed that they walked around the very outside of the coffee shop rather than take the more direct route past us. I felt as though we were carrying some sort of plague and people were terrified they’d catch it if they got too near us.
We all ordered coffee and then settled around the table, or pretended to settle. Conversation began again, mostly in low voices, and the way my skin prickled, I was certain the topic of conversation was witches.
Peace was barely restored when, suddenly, a woman burst into the café. Oh, dear. It was Dierdre Gunn, the woman whose budgie hadn’t been too well. Violet had predicted its demise.
She looked around and then, when she saw Violet, pointed with triumph. I suspected somebody had contacted her on their mobile, as she’d come in already knowing Violet was in the café. She wiggled between tables until she was standing in the middle of the coffee shop. Then she pointed a shaking finger at Violet. “You killed my Billy.”
Violet glanced around as though someone might help her, but there was deathly silence. “I didn’t.”
“You did, you lying witch. He was perfectly healthy when I left for the village fête, and then you looked into your crystal ball. You said some words. I know it was an evil spell, and you said he was going to die. You killed him.”
Violet stood up to face her accuser. “He was old. He died of old age.”
A new voice entered the fray. The young woman who’d been told she needed to work on her self-esteem stood up and came to stand beside Dierdre Gunn. “And she told me that neither of my dates this week would work out. When I got home, there were two messages canceling dates. She put an evil spell on me, too.”
Violet looked stunned at this new accusation. “I told you that you needed to work on your self-esteem and that they were both losers. I never said they were going to cancel on you.”
The woman was not mollified. “You’ve cursed me. You’ve cursed me so I’ll never be lucky in love.”
Dierdre Gunn patted her shoulder and said, “There, there, dear. It’s not so bad living alone. What you need is a pet.” Her lower lip trembled. “Like my Billy.” And then she burst into tears.
I didn’t know if any of these people would believe witches had put spells on them normally, but people were on edge because of the sudden death at the fair, and mob mentality began to rule.
Violet looked around and then saw Nora, Elizabeth’s best friend, sitting in the corner with a man who was presumably her husband. Violet said, “You, in the back. Why don’t you tell them what I told you? That you’d come into a lot of money.”
But when Nora stood up, it wasn’t to reassure people that some of Vi’s fortunes were good ones. Instead, she cried, “What do I care about money? My best friend’s dead. Why didn’t you tell me she was about to be killed so I could have saved her?”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“What did you have against Elizabeth? We only went to the fair for bit of fun. Now she’s dead. Peop
le are saying you killed her.”
Violet looked around the table as though we three could help her, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say, and Margaret Twig seemed awfully quiet, too.
“Of course I didn’t kill her. Why would I? She seemed like a nice person. I was trying to save her.”
No, I willed her silently. Don’t go on. Don’t say anything more. Don’t say…
“I told her that if she crossed water she would die. And she did cross water.”
“But how did you know? How did you know that she would die if she crossed water?”
“Because I saw a vision!” I kicked Vi’s ankle under the table, but it was too late. She’d already blurted out the damning truth.
Several more people jumped up, and one man cried out in a hysterical way. “You see? She admits it. She has visions of death. Oh, we haven’t had a black witch here in a long time. But you know what we do to black witches, don’t you?”
I felt like we were in the Middle Ages and we three were about to be tried and convicted. Of course, there was real fear among the people of Moreton-Under-Wychwood, but I didn’t like the way that fear was turning into anger and blame toward Violet and Margaret. They didn’t know me, so I didn’t feel suspicion directed at me. Yet.
I rose to my feet, not even knowing what I was going to say. They all looked to me. Of course, I was a stranger in these parts. “My name is Lucy. Elizabeth Palmer was killed by an arrow shot from a building across from the green. If we all cooperate with the police, I believe we can find her killer.”
“Don’t listen to her,” said Dierdre Gunn. “She’s in cahoots with the other one. She pretended to be her assistant yesterday. But they’re both witches, I can tell.”
“How can you tell?” I asked with some scorn. I was sorry that her bird had died, but this was ridiculous. She glanced at me with a kind of triumph, and I saw a gleam in her small, dark eyes that I didn’t like the look of. She pulled out an opaque white crystal. It looked like quartz, only it had a slightly yellow tint. I’d never seen anything like it.
She was the one who looked like a witch, heading toward us, holding the crystal as though it were an instrument of torture. “If you’re not a witch, you’ve got nothing to fear. But if you are, this crystal will change color.”
Even as I scoffed, I heard Margaret say, in a very low voice, “Don’t go near that thing. It will give us away.”
So I laughed, scornfully, I hoped, and said, “This is foolishness. Lots of stones change color when you touch them. It doesn’t mean anything.”
I’d heard of mob mentality, certainly read about it, but never in my wildest dreams had I imagined being at the wrong end of so much suspicion. I did not like the way the people of Moreton-Under-Wychwood were looking at us. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the table we were sitting at was against the wall. The suspicion and malevolence coming at us from all sides had caused each of us to edge back so our four backs were to the wall. This was too much like facing a firing squad or a witch’s trial.
The espresso machine fired a burst of steam that startled me but also brought me back to the reality that we were in a village coffee shop in the heart of England, where they hadn’t had a witch trial in centuries. At least, not one I’d ever read about.
There had to be a way to defuse this tension, but I didn’t know what it was. I felt like one wrong move or wrong word, and these normally perfectly pleasant villagers might turn violent.
The woman was coming closer to us with the crystal, but the café tables were so jammed together that she was having trouble getting around them.
I was racking my brain for an idea and could feel my fellow witches doing the same. I thought that Margaret Twig was searching for a spell. If we could all disappear and then cause the villagers to forget we’d ever been here, would that work? Not that I had any idea how to cast such a spell, but I tried to toss the idea up in the air and toward Margaret.
It wasn’t Margaret who answered my quiet plea, however. I felt rather than heard the words stay calm in my head and looked around to find Liam perched on a stool by the bar. Our gazes met briefly, and then I deliberately looked elsewhere, not wanting to draw attention to the magic hiding in plain sight.
I noticed that every time the woman with the crystal tried to come closer, the path was obliterated. A bag would turn out to be in the way, or someone would shift their chair, blocking her.
Liam.
He couldn’t keep her back for much longer, but he gave us a couple of minutes to come up with a plan.
I became aware of a new sensation, like chilled fingers at the back of my neck.
That meant that Rafe Crosyer was in the vicinity. Rafe was an extremely powerful vampire, and I could not see that bringing additional supernatural creatures into this standoff was going to help at all.
I felt more and more alarmed. Before I could figure out what to do, the door opened. But it wasn’t Rafe who entered, it was Sylvia, and with her was Clara. Both vampires were older women, but while Sylvia, who’d been a film star in the 1920s, always looked glamorous with her silver-white hair perfectly styled and wearing designer clothes, Clara looked like exactly what she had been in life: a comfortable, grandmotherly woman who loved to sit by the fire and knit. Both set down the umbrellas made with high-tech UV protecting fabric that they used as parasols.
I could see from their quick glances around the room that they’d taken in the situation immediately.
Clara walked forward as though completely unaware of the hostile atmosphere. Where the woman with the crystal was blocked, her path seemed magically clear. In a strong voice that easily carried across the entire café, she said, “Lucy, thank goodness. I’ve made such a tangle of my knitting, and I knew if I could find you, you would help me. It’s always so difficult when your knitting shop is closed, I’ve nowhere to go. Luckily, Sylvia told me I could find you here.”
No one in the world looked less like a vampire than Clara, but I knew her power would be fearsome if called upon. From the cold shivers still running up and down my neck, I knew that Rafe was close by, and if trouble started, he’d be here instantly. He wouldn’t care who he hurt if it was to protect me. But my goal and, clearly, that of Sylvia and Clara was to prevent any trouble or, heaven forbid, bloodshed.
Clara could, and had, knitted the most exquisite garments. She was also an expert at crochet and lace. She, like so many of the vampires, had attempted to help me improve my knitting and failed. So the idea of her asking me for help would be hilarious except that it was such a brilliant ruse.
Rising to the occasion, I stepped forward, also pretending I couldn’t feel the anger and tension that had been directed toward us four women. “Clara, lovely to see you. Of course, I’d be more than happy to help you.” I led her to the table and settled her down beside me. She said, in quite a loud voice, “It’s so good for my poor legs to sit down for a moment. Sylvia, dear, order me a cappuccino, will you?”
When Sylvia came over to the table with a cappuccino for Clara and an espresso for her, she said under her breath to the other three witches, “Go, now.”
They didn’t have to be asked twice. When I looked out the shop window, I could see the Range Rover with tinted glass windows that I now knew belonged to Rafe.
Lavinia and Violet and even Margaret Twig all obeyed Sylvia’s command, and while I held my breath with nervousness, they filed out of the coffee shop.
“Are we just going to let them go?” asked Dierdre, whose bird had died. She suddenly looked very foolish standing there waving her crystal about.
Somehow, Clara and her knitting had brought a sense of normalcy back into the charged atmosphere. Someone called out, “What are you planning to do? Tar and feather them?”
She looked suddenly confused and a bit sad. “I don’t know. But Billy shouldn’t have died like that.”
An older man stood up and put his hand on her shoulder. “Come along, then, Dierdre. I’ll get my shovel, and we’ll bury o
ld Billy in your garden.”
She dropped her chin to her chest and allowed him to lead her out of the coffee shop. As they reached the door, I heard him say, “There’s a nice pet shop I know of that’s got a good selection of tropical birds. When you’re ready, I’ll drive you over.”
“No one can replace Billy.”
“Of course not. As I said, when you’re ready.”
Chapter 8
The door shut behind them, and with it, a little more tension left the coffee shop. Honestly, if this had been the Wild West, and we’d been in a saloon instead of a coffee shop, there’d have been a gunfight by now.
Clara, meanwhile, pulled out a piece of knitting. I nearly burst out laughing, as much from nervousness as amusement, when I recognized it as one of my own pieces that I’d abandoned. I said, with a quiver of amusement, “Yes, that really is a mess.” I repeated to her what she’d said to me many a time. “Your tension is too tight for a start.” Once I’d said that, and very confidently, too, I ran out of steam. Now what? I had no idea how to fix that mess, which was why I’d given up on it. Inspired, I added, “Why don’t you unpick the whole thing and we’ll start over.”
If we began from the very beginning, I could pretend to teach her what I barely understood myself. And Clara, expert that she was, could pretend to fumble while actually knitting the piece properly. It seemed like a win-win to me.
They strongly disapproved, my vampires, of me using magic in my knitting. They were old-fashioned like that and very rigid. They believed I should learn the craft. Since I so enjoyed their company at the vampire knitting club meetings, I was trying very hard to improve. And I was getting better. I could knit and purl, and if I paid attention, I could even do them in the correct order. I still had a terrible time when I dropped stitches. And whenever anyone mentioned the soothing benefits of knitting, I wanted to strangle them. However, it was undeniable that I was improving. As someone who owned a knitting shop, that was a very good thing.