Scarlett frowned. It was eerie how her aunt just knew things. It had always been that way. "Is it that obvious?"
"A blind man could see the bags under your eyes." There was a real concern in her voice. Scarlett raised a finger to her under eyes to pat them. She didn’t think they’d looked that bad when she did her makeup this morning.
Maybe she should talk to her aunt about what was bothering her.
Tabitha continued to potter, allowing the comfortable quiet space for Scarlett to talk.
Scarlett set the cup down to cool without tasting it. "Something seemed a bit off with my boss yesterday."
"With Karl?"
Scarlett nodded. "It was about my shovel, oddly enough."
Aunt Tabitha frowned, concerned as she settled down at the table with her. "The one you use when you help me on the allotment?"
"I only have the one," Scarlett teased lightly. "I've never been a collector of shovels."
Tabitha pursed her lips at that. She apparently didn't appreciate Scarlett's attempt at humor. Scarlett’s tone had probably been a bit too mocking. She hadn’t meant anything by it.
Scarlett regretted it instantly. Her chest tightened, and she wished she could take it back.
"Well," Tabitha said slowly. "I could really use your help in the garden this week. Some of the vegetables will need sowing soon. So we’ll need your shovel."
"That's just it," Scarlett said, wrapping her fingers around the teacup for warmth. "I don't have my shovel at the moment."
"Why not?”
“It’s at the shop. At work?”
“What for?”
“Well, that’s just it. I don’t know.” Scarlett could hear the anger in her own voice. It wasn't what she intended, but the words brought out the feelings.
She continued, "When I got to the shop yesterday morning, Karl was late, but I noticed my shovel was by his back door. I thought it was strange, because I didn’t put it there and Karl is no gardener. He would never sully himself with digging or get his hands dirty. But then when I saw him right before lunch, I asked him about it. He admitted borrowing it. Apparently, I had lent it to him…"
"Mystery solved, then." Tabitha waved her hand then sipped her tea.
"Not at all. He lied to me about it.” Her own words sunk in, and bothered her all over again. “Oh sure, he admitted right off that he had it, but then he said something that got me really mad. He said that we had agreed earlier about it. Like last week. He said I told him it was all right. I think he was just covering for having taken it without asking, and I wouldn't have been mad at all if he had just said that. If he had just told the truth. But he lied to me, and for no good reason. And I can’t figure out how he could have known which was our shed at the allotment. It’s all just weird. And then we got into this stupid argument about what was the truth of the matter, and it was like we were living in two different worlds."
Tabitha’s face hardened. "He was gaslighting you."
Scarlett considered it for a moment. "You think?"
"I don't think, I know,” she said firmly, clearly annoyed that someone was messing with her niece. “I don't know Karl, not well enough to be a judge of him, but I know that kind of behavior."
Scarlett shook her head, trying to shake the awful sinking feeling from her stomach at the same time. "But it's not like Karl to do that. At least not to me, and I haven't seen him gaslight others. But in the moment, I was just so confused and angry, and I didn't have anyone to talk to about it."
Tabitha’s eyes softened. She reached out her hand and placed it on top of Scarlett's hand, saying, "Well, you can always come talk to me."
Scarlett felt a wave of heaviness swell in her chest, and without being able to help it she felt her eyes get hot and fill with tears. "I know that," she almost whispered, her voice cracking through the emotion. "And I love you for it."
Aunt Tabitha smiled. "And I love you for everything, and for nothing at all." She wrinkled her nose sympathetically.
They both got up and wrapped their arms around each other. Scarlett felt a hot tear escape from her eye and quickly wiped it away on her sleeve. "I'm sorry I'm such a mess today."
"You're no mess at all. You just haven't been sleeping."
Scarlett sniffled. "I've been having nightmares that don't make any sense. And I've been forgetting things that have happened."
"Because you need rest." Tabitha moved a strand of hair from her niece’s face. "Now drink your tea. I made it specially for you. It's got some herbs from the garden. You can't buy it in a store, and it doesn't have a name that you would recognize. But I call it clarity. Get it? Clari-tea. Because that's what it does. It makes you clear. People should call things by what they do. And clarity is exactly what you need right now."
Scarlett nodded, and sat back down, wiping her face and then her hands on her jeans. Her tea was only lukewarm now, but she drank it while her aunt watched approvingly. It tasted more bitter than Scarlett had expected, and when she reached for the cream, Tabitha shook her head.
"Just the tea. Drink it pure."
As Scarlett finished, Tabitha got up and retrieved a plastic container with a dessert inside. "I baked this for you, too," she told her. "A custard tart for the barbecue."
"How did you—?"
Tabitha cackled with delight. "Oh, there's not much that goes on in this town that your auntie doesn't know."
Scarlett shook her head in amazement. "Amanda said I didn't need to bring anything, but I was going to pop into the shop on my way home anyway."
"Now you don't need to."
"And yours will taste a hundred times better." Scarlett hugged her aunt again, and everything felt much righter with the world.
+++
Slater Residence, Bicester, England
This time she knew she was dreaming.
She was floating in a void of blackness, just as before. There was the memory of seeing a body on the ground. She focused her mind on that memory, until the image appeared fully again.
And there he was. She saw his shoes and pants and a jacket. The man was lying face down, with the head nested in the crook of an arm. But his face was hidden from her.
She strained to see better in the dark and haziness.
Scarlett could feel the ground now beneath her feet. Sensations were returning to her. The body on the ground had the shape and size of a full-grown man. He lay there as if dropped from a height. But she did not see blood anywhere around him.
She wanted to see his face. It seemed important. She knew a man who wanted to find him.
Tim.
A military policeman had come into her shop and asked about a missing person. This was rare in the village. The military kept their affairs to themselves. No wonder she felt the anxiety just thinking about it. And now maybe she had found the missing man, if only in her dream.
I need to see his face.
She walked to him through the murky air, the ground crunching beneath her shoes. With each step, the world around her seemed more solid. She heard a high wind skirl through distant trees but could not feel the wind nor see the trees. She perceived geometrical shapes, faint in the far distance. Buildings, perhaps, but too dim to discern.
I must see his face.
Identifying the body on the ground was the only thing that mattered now. There was a mystery to solve, and somehow she was entangled in it. She knew it was up to her to set the world right. It was all connected to this body on the ground, and this body had a face. She was getting closer now, so much closer that she could almost reach out and touch him.
It occurred to her that he might be sleeping. She had no reason to expect that he was dead. Tim said the man was missing, not that he was dead. It was possible this man was simply tired and chosen to take a nap where he was. Scarlett had often felt like that, especially recently.
She tried to call out to the man, to tell him it was time to wake up, but she found that she had no voice.
I'll have to give him a shake
, she thought.
But as she took the final step toward him and reached her hand down to grab his shoulder to jostle him, something knocked her sideways.
She landed on her hands and knees. The ground was cold and muddy.
She heard no footsteps, but just knew that a man had knocked her over.
As she struggled to her feet, she saw that the body was no longer there.
In its place she saw a coffee cup. It had been dropped on the ground. The plastic lid had popped off. The black contents had darkened and dampened the earth. It was a coffee cup from Costa, and she remembered that she had ordered it to go.
Cliff.
That was his name. That was the man who had run into her and knocked the coffee from her hand, but this time he'd kept running and now she was all alone in the darkness.
No, not alone.
She heard the sound of gnashing teeth. They were coming closer. Those teeth were coming for her again, but she couldn’t tell from which direction. The sound echoed around her, louder and louder. She looked this way and that, trying to decide which way to run. Her feet sank into the mud and the ground hardened around her ankles. She could not escape. The gnashing grew louder, mixing with the drumbeat of her racing heart, and it was only then that she found her voice.
And screamed.
+++
Scarlett woke with a start. She was in her bedroom. Safe. Back in her familiar habitat.
Another nightmare, she thought, wiping the sweat from her face. They’re getting worse.
She took a few deep breaths to calm herself, then tried to remember as much as she could about the dream. She'd seen the body again but there was more. Inside the dream, she had seen Tim, or had thought about him, remembering his questions about his investigation. And Cliff was there too. He had knocked Scarlett over and kept on running.
It's getting all mixed up, she thought. She was conflating the events of the previous few days.
But she felt better now that she had a working theory, a way to connect the dream world with everyday reality. There was a pattern there. And if there was a pattern, then maybe she could figure it out. Maybe there was a reason behind the strange things she had seen and felt these past few days.
Scarlett shuffled out of bed. Her head was clearer now. The tea she had drank yesterday seem to have done some good.
I'll have to thank Aunt Tabitha.
Her phone was on the nightstand. She checked the time. Eleven o’clock.
Slept in late again, she thought, then chided herself. That's what happens when you don't set your alarm, and have blackout blinds.
She crossed to the bathroom to get ready for the day, and for Ronnie's barbecue.
Chapter Four
Cliff Rogers’s Residence, Bicester
Cliff woke up thirsty.
Dangerously thirty.
He sat up in bed and recited his mantra.
I am strong. I am powerful. I am the master of my domain. I am the captain of my destiny.
He rolled out of bed, still wearing his dressing gown. He stepped into his slippers and made his way groggily into the kitchen of his expansive, salubrious house. It was a long walk from the bedroom to the kitchen, and he felt it in his morning grogginess. He opened the fridge and checked his supplies.
He was down to his last dozen packets of blood.
Running low. I’ll have to remember to arrange another hospital pick up with that poor schmuck.
He took one of the IV blood packets out and closed the door of the fridge. In the utensil drawer he found a clean straw he’d fashioned out of IV tubing. He spiked the tubing into the spiking port of the IV blood packet, and put the other end of the tubing in his mouth to suck blood from the bag, slaking his thirst.
After he consumed half the contents, his head felt much clearer.
He sat down on a stool at the kitchen counter. The kitchen was open to the dining room. The outer walls of the dining room were glass, to let in the light. It was already a bright new morning. Sunlight fell hard on the stone countertop, warming the surface under his fingers. Bright light glinted off the red gem of his ring.
As he continued sucking blood through the straw, clearing his head and revitalizing his body, he thought back on yesterday.
Scarlett.
She had given him her number.
He got up from the stool and went back to the bedroom, this time with more bounce in his step. He found his cell phone on the nightstand beside the bed and took it into the living room. Confidently he planted himself in a sofa with a view out the window to the green fields of Oxfordshire, but his interest didn’t lie in the view today.
He found Scarlett’s phone number in his contact list, then copied and pasted it into Facebook. Her number wasn’t listed on her profile, so he had to dig a little bit more, but she had told him the spelling of her name. Two Ts in Scarlett. That helped.
According to Facebook, there were two Scarletts in Bicester. He was able to find the right one easily enough.
That’s her.
Scarlett Slater.
Her Facebook profile was private, but some of her information was public-facing. She did indeed live in Bicester, England. Although she did not list her workplace, but he already knew that. Her profile picture was even taken inside Karl’s wine shop.
But that was about all he could get from her Facebook account without sending a friend request or hacking into it. He decided he would friend her later, after their lunch, assuming things went well. Best not to look too desperate. Besides, too much was riding on this.
He did a Google search.
Scarlett Slater also had a Twitter account, but it was old and unused. She only had a few dozen tweets, all of no apparent importance. She might have another account under a fake name. Either way, it was obvious that Scarlett Slater was trying to keep a small footprint on social media.
Not one for the limelight, is she?
He did find one popular social site where she was still active: Goodreads.
“Ah, a bookworm!” he declared triumphantly. “You little minx!” he said to her profile picture.
Apparently, Scarlett read hundreds of books, and she had rated and reviewed a good number of them. Her profile offered few personal details, but it was from her reading list that he began to get a sense of her personality and interests. She liked to read mysteries of all sorts, but mostly classics and a good selection of cozies. For example, she had read and rated all of the Agatha Christie books, and voiced her opinions about the relative merit of Christie’s works in some of the forum discussions.
Thrillers, especially legal thrillers, drew her interest. Scarlett appeared to be a harsher critic when it came to that genre. Plus, she came off as intelligent. He made a mental note to check her educational history.
He kept scrolling through.
Cliff discovered another pattern: travel books. While she hadn’t reviewed any travel books, she had read a lot of them and rated a few without commenting. These were mostly books on backpacking in Asia and in the Middle East. Maybe she’d actually travelled. He didn’t think that people read those kind of books unless they’d actually spent time in those places.
Aside from travel guides, Scarlett had also read some history, art, and architecture books specifically related to famous cities in Asia and the Middle East: Hong Kong, Beijing, and Istanbul in particular.
At the very least she has a wanderlust, he thought. And a sense of adventure.
Cliff wondered if she had traveled alone or with a girlfriend. Or boyfriend. He couldn’t tell from his searches whether she was in a relationship or not. That was clearly by design. He knew that her relationship status was really none of his business, but the more he stalked her online, the more he wanted to make it his business.
Don’t fall down the rabbit hole, he warned himself. With a few lifetimes worth of experience, he knew his obsessive tendencies, and this was no time to lose control. He needed to play this one cool.
Next, he did a Googl
e image search and found a bevy of photos of Scarlett Slater with Amanda Green, who appeared to be her best friend, roommate… or maybe her lover?
Scarlett was much the prettier of the two, he thought.
Amanda Greene’s Facebook profile was quite public, which gave him a treasure trove of information about Scarlett. There were a lot of photos of them together. They definitely seem to be friends and roommates. They had known each other at least since college. College. That explains the education.
Plus, based on the backgrounds in the photos, they were both Bicester locals, possibly born and raised.
A car horn in the distance rattled his reverie. He checked his phone for the time and realized he’d spent more than an hour stalking his new… quarry.
She wasn’t even that, really. He hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to her. But now somehow their friendship already seemed intimate. He had to remind himself that it was just an illusion. No, more than illusion – a trap.
He also realized he was still in his bed clothes.
He hauled himself out of the chair and hurried back up to the bedroom to get ready.
He showered and dressed quickly. He had a polo game scheduled for three o’clock. He put on his jodhpurs, team polo shirt, and slipped on a comfortable pair of sneakers. His boots were still in the car from last match. He’d change into them once he was there. Driving in riding boots wasn’t the most comfortable, or safe, thing to be doing, not matter how fast his reactions were.
He texted his stable manager. “Be there at quarter to. Meet you on the event field, not the yard, mate.”
Cliff realized he had left his blood packet half-finished on the counter. He’d completely lost his thirst while hunting for Scarlett. His blood thirst, at least. His thirst for this woman was something different, something new. He was finding himself intrigued by her and he didn’t know why. She was certainly pretty, but pretty girls were never in short supply. She was pleasant to look at, but it was her eyes that had drawn him in.
He thought about her eyes, and wondered what those eyes had seen. She had held his gaze and he had felt some sort of connection. It was undeniable. A strange feeling.
A Very British Witch Boxed Set Page 5