Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set

by A. R. Winters

  Kiwi chirped angrily.

  There were signs up ahead of the path widening into a clearing. As we approached, there was a sudden screech, and it wasn't from Kiwi.

  "What on Earth..."

  Another step forward revealed the source. An angry-looking black cat was glaring at us from its perch on an overhanging branch.

  "It's going to pounce!" said Kiwi.

  "Well if it does, I'll turn it into a frog," I said to reassure him.

  Actually, there was no way I could turn it into a frog while it was flying through the air, but Kiwi didn't need to know that. I was just going to assume that the animal wouldn't be stupid enough to pounce on a fully grown human and a parrot.

  I was right. The cat didn't pounce, but it did maintain a steady chorus of angry hisses as we passed underneath it toward the clearing.

  "Wow," I said, when we could finally see our destination.

  Kiwi yawned.

  Up ahead of us lay a fairytale cottage. The cozy-looking single-story home was painted white, with roses growing up the outside.

  "I bet there's gingerbread under that pretty white paint," I said.

  Kiwi didn't answer.

  To the right of the cottage was a series of twine lines set up between two rows of silver birch trees that stood ramrod-straight.

  "Look," I said, "herbs."

  From each of the lines there hung a series of a dozen or so bunches of herbs, plants, flowers, roots, and bunches of berries.

  The path to the front door curved around to pass right by the first of the lines, so I stopped to look closer.

  "Aha! Wolfsbane!" I said.

  Sure enough, the plant closest to us was the very one we'd come to find.

  "Let's take it and get out of here!" said Kiwi happily.

  I frowned. It was so close. I could touch it.

  I did touch it—just a light brush of my fingers. It was tied on with a neat little bow, with a hanging end which could so easily be pulled to release the prize we'd come to collect.

  "I don't think we should do that," I said, with some misgiving. It would be so much easier than having to talk to the wicked old witch herself.

  "No one will know," Kiwi said, playing the devil on my shoulder all too literally.

  "I will know", I said. "But also, I think she probably will too. And if she thinks we've stolen from her, maybe she'll turn us into a bowl of wriggling insects."

  Kiwi replied with an angry screech, which I took as agreement.

  "Come on."

  We walked down the rest of the path to the front door that was painted a pretty sky-blue. I reached out for the knocker but then immediately dropped it in shock as soon as I touched it.

  The whole place was infested with magic. It wasn't just a spell over the building. Magic was ingrained in every inch of it. Deep, dark, powerful magic.

  I cast a small spell of protection and readied myself to touch the knocker again. I was beginning to regret this visit immensely.

  Just before my fingers closed on the magic-infused brass of the knocker, the door slowly swung open.

  "Welcome, Aria," said Hazel Crane. "Parrot," she finished with a nod to my shoulder.

  Hazel looked much like she had when I'd seen her a year earlier.

  She appeared to be a woman in her late twenties, svelte and lithe with intelligent green eyes and burning red hair. There was always something alarming about her appearance and it had taken me a long time to figure out what it was. It was the fact that she had, contrary to her red hair, a deep, natural-looking tan.

  "Hello, err, Hazel," I said, surprised that she'd known my name. Hazel was famous in these parts, but I wasn't, unless you were planning a wedding, and as far as I knew Hazel hadn't done that for many decades—if ever. "You look well," I finished lamely.

  "I knew you were coming," she said.

  "Oh. You must have heard my parrot. He can be quite loud.”

  Kiwi dug his talons into my shoulder.

  "No. I saw you coming."

  My eyes widened slightly. "Oh! I didn't see you at the window.”

  "Not at the window, Aria. I saw you with my scrying mirror, last night. I knew you were coming and I knew why you were coming. That's why the Wolfsbane was hanging on the line for you."

  "Oh! Were we supposed to take it?"

  There was a strange glint in Hazel’s eyes. "Without asking? Of course.”

  "Oh," I said, not having expected that response.

  "Of course, if you wanted to be turned into a rat!" she said with a jab of her finger to my chest.

  Although we hadn't actually done anything, I immediately felt guilty. If we'd done as Kiwi had wanted... I felt him rubbing his feathered head against my cheek. His version of a silent apology, I supposed.

  "Come," she said beckoning us in with a curling index finger.

  I followed her into a kind of living room, though ‘witch’s den’ might have been a more appropriate term. It was decorated — or at least filled — with many of the accouterments of magic that I recognized, as well as some that I didn’t.

  On the walls were various stuffed animals with alarmingly lifelike expressions on their faces. One fox in particular seemed to be staring at Kiwi and me with a look of malice.

  There was an antique velvet armchair and matching sofa, a bookcase filled with tomes that looked to be older than our country, a variety of dream catchers hanging from the ceiling and, in one corner, an old-fashioned broomstick that looked exactly like the ones witches rode around on in children’s fairy tales.

  In the center of the room was a coffee table, and on it, propped up against a wooden stand, was a mirror.

  Hazel stood next to the coffee table and placed a loving hand atop the mirror.

  “This is how I saw you coming.”

  “Who’s a pretty boy!” shrieked Kiwi when he saw the mirror. He’d seen a parrot do it on television once and, annoyingly, had started doing it whenever he saw a mirror. He claimed it made him more believable as a parrot.

  Hazel glanced at the parrot and then gave me a strange look, one that seemed to say, I know your secret. Or maybe she just wasn’t used to seeing parrots.

  “This is my scrying mirror. It’s how I knew you were coming. It’s how I know many things, Aria Whitmore.”

  “I see. But we were here about—”

  “Don’t interrupt me!” she shrieked, making me jump.

  “Sorry, I thought you were done.”

  She smiled at me like a child beauty pageant contestant and I suppressed a shudder.

  “As I was saying, this is my scrying mirror. Do you have one?”

  “I have a crystal orb, but I’m afraid I don’t have much skill at scrying.”

  She stared at me for about a second too long to be comfortable before she replied again. “You could be very good at scrying, Aria Whitmore, with the right training. Would you like to look into your future?”

  I immediately shook my head.

  I know very well that looking into the future can lead to all kinds of trouble and make a point of not even attempting it. One of my mother’s love affairs—not Donovan—had gone disastrously wrong after a scrying incident went awry.

  “No, thank you. I’d rather not know my future.”

  “Very well,” said Hazel before turning to face the mirror again immediately, before the words had even finished exiting her mouth.

  She ran a hand over the mirror as if wiping away invisible cobwebs, and then stared intently into it.

  “Darkness is coming for you, Aria Whitmore,” she said, softly.

  “I said I don’t want to know my future,” I said in a very small voice.

  I didn’t. I didn’t want to know.

  I decided to ignore everything else that came out of the witch’s mouth that wasn’t directly about her giving me Wolfsbane.

  “Oh dear. Oh dear,” said Hazel, shaking her head, though from the tone of her voice it was like she didn’t really care about whatever it was she was seeing. The
‘oh dear’ was something that she was expected to say, like a ‘bless you’ after a sneeze. There was no empathy in the voice; it was more like a commentary.

  “We’d just like a little bit of Wolfsbane, please,” I said again loudly, finding my voice.

  “I know.”

  “Just a pinch will do. I don’t need a lot.”

  “I know exactly how much you need, Aria Whitmore.”

  “Then...” I shuffled my feet on the spot, hoping she’d interrupt me and tell me she was going to hand it over right away. She didn’t.

  “Wolfsbane! Wolfsbane!” shrieked Kiwi.

  Hazel turned her gaze back to the parrot. “Would he like some insects?”

  I shook my head no. “We ate just before we got here,” I said.

  “You eat together?” she asked, arching her eyebrows.

  “Err, sometimes,” I stumbled. I guess it sounded strange, eating together with your parrot. Normal people ate with their boyfriend, or husband, or a friend. Not a pet.

  Hazel looked back at her mirror, and then turned to face me again.

  “Fletcher Davenport of the Cypress Estate. That’s who you want to summon, isn’t it?” she asked. Without checking for confirmation, she continued, “His poor, recently deceased spirit.” Then she giggled like a schoolgirl.

  Kiwi rubbed his head against my cheek again. Hazel was freaking him out. I knew this because she was freaking me out and he’s much more of a scaredy-parrot than I am.

  “You won’t find him!” she said in a voice that was so loud it was almost a shout.

  I jumped back from her and wished we were anywhere but this witch’s den. Even Fletcher’s basement would be preferable.

  “Evil! Evil will find you if you try to summon that spirit, Aria Whitmore.”

  I shuddered while Kiwi let out a moan-like squawk.

  “Give me your hand.”

  Before I’d even considered whether I wanted to give her my hand or not, I found my arm outstretched and her puppy-soft hands wrapped around mine. She pushed something into my palm, and then squeezed my fingers shut around the small package.

  “Good luck, Aria Whitmore,” she said, and giggled again.

  I took a step backward. Then another. On the third, I tripped over the head of a bear still attached to the rest of its hide, splayed out on the floor in a form of a rug. Kiwi flapped his wings to maintain his balance while I caught myself.

  “Be careful,” said the dark witch with a glint in her eye.

  I span around and hurried out the door, giving it a push behind me as I exited to swing it shut.

  The sun was blinding-bright outside, the air fresh and alive against my skin and in my lungs.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Kiwi didn’t utter a word of complaint. As we passed the strung up lines, I noticed the Wolfsbane that had been hanging had disappeared. I squeezed my hand around the package again.

  We half-ran, half-speed-walked back to the car, not talking the entire way. When at last we exited the woods, I breathed a deep sigh of relief, feeling the last of the air of the witch’s cottage exiting my lungs.

  Kiwi let out a squawk. No words, just a shriek of relief. He flapped in a circle around the car before landing back on my shoulder.

  “Let’s go!” he finally said.

  Despite having obtained what we had so nervously come to acquire, I left feeling more nervous than when we’d arrived.

  And that was only the beginning of the day’s disasters.

  Chapter 15

  At around the time most church-goers were heading to their brunch at the Black Cat Café, I was instead making sure I had everything I needed.

  “Let’s double-check we’re not missing anything,” I said to Kiwi who was sitting up on a perch in the corner of the room, watching me assemble the various bits and pieces required.

  I ran my finger down the list in the Book of Shadows. It was important to check again, because it may very well have changed since I looked at the spell the night before. The world of magic is always in flux, and so are the spell books that help us deal with it.

  “Check them off for me, Kiwi. Right, Himalayan rock salt.”

  “Here!” he shrieked, bobbing his head up and down in confirmation.

  “Wolfsbane.”

  “Here, here, here!” he said with another shriek.

  “Powdered rosemary, powdered laurel leaves, sage.”

  “Yes, yes, yes!”

  “An iron nail?”

  “Okay!”

  “My athame?”

  There was a pause. I glanced over at Kiwi and he had his head cocked at me. I guess he’d never heard me use the word before, even though he’d seen me use the athame itself a few times.

  “What?” he asked.

  “My athame. My magic knife.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” he asked, annoyed.

  “Well, that magic knife is called an athame. What kind of familiar doesn’t know that?”

  He shrieked in annoyance. “The kind of familiar with an idiot witch! A good mistress would have taught me that!”

  Hmm. I suppose he had a point.

  “Okay, that was the last item. So, we’re ready?”

  “No,” he said and fluttered his wings before burying his head in them.

  I muttered.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Hazel said it wouldn’t work. Let’s just stay here.”

  I sighed. “I told you, don’t believe everything you hear. She was using her scrying mirror, they don’t show you the exact future, they show you a possible future. Remember when Mom thought that guy was cheating on her?”

  Kiwi replied with a meaningless shriek.

  A few years ago, when Mom and Donovan’s relationship had been at the off position for a long while, she’d started dating a recently divorced lawyer a dozen years her junior.

  When she scryed their future, she saw him with another woman; and not only that, the other woman had the gall to be his own age and thus many years Mom’s junior.

  When she confronted the lawyer, he of course denied everything, they fought, and they ended up breaking things off.

  A year later, what did she see? The ‘other woman’ had just moved to town and started dating the lawyer. They’d never even met when Mom started flinging her accusations around, and her scrying ended up being the cause of the end of her relationship.

  Since then, I’d never put much trust in visions of the future; even when they turned out to be true, they were often misleading.

  “Come with me, Kiwi. You’ll be a big help.” It was true. Since Kiwi was my familiar my magical ability was enhanced when he was around. With how reluctant—or restricted—Fletcher’s spirit had been, I needed all the help I could get to draw him out.

  Kiwi looked at me warily. “Treats after?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course.”

  There were always treats after. Treats after waking up, treats after going downstairs to work, treats after lunch, treats after treats...

  “Let’s get this over with then,” he said, and fluttered over to my shoulder.

  The Cypress Estate seemed different in the daylight.

  My two previous visits had been under the shadow of night and the place had seemed lonely and downright spooky. In the daylight, though, it looked a lot more welcoming. I could see why Nina and Rick were so keen to get their greedy hands on the property.

  Walking down the driveway, with the majestic old cypress pines on either side, I didn’t feel nervous at all. The trees were more welcoming in the daytime, and the heaviness they’d exuded before now felt more like strength than weight.

  The spare key was exactly where we’d left it on our last visit, and it didn’t look as if the house had been disturbed since. We quickly let ourselves in, and walked into the hallway.

  I paused for a moment by the door to the stairway that led to the basement.

  “We can turn around now,” Kiwi said. “It’s not too
late.”

  “We can always leave,” I said, hopeful that would be true. “Let’s try to talk to Fletcher’s ghost while it’s still daylight.”

  We headed downstairs slowly. I turned on the lights in the main room again, and left the second room that seemed to contain the spirit in almost-darkness.

  “Can you see him?” I asked, as we stood at the threshold of the darker room.

  “No.”

  Last time we’d been there, we’d seen the spirit’s dim glow in the corner, but this time there was nothing visible to indicate such a presence.

  But sight is only one of the many senses.

  The room still had the feel of the dead about it. There was something here, lurking, somewhere, and the spell we were going to perform would bring Fletcher out.

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  Kiwi gave a quiet, nervous caw.

  I began with the salt, casting a circle around us in the center of the room. Walking around, I spoke the words that would ask my ancestors to protect us from harm while I worked my magic.

  I took out the small cauldron that I usually used to smudge the shop with sage, and carefully set the small charcoal disc at the bottom alight with a hickory-wood match.

  Kiwi was squeezing his talons tightly into my shoulder as I began to sprinkle the other ingredients one by one onto the burning charcoal while murmuring the words from the Book of Shadows, being careful to make sure they weren’t too loud. For this spell, a quiet chanting was required.

  The air began to fill with sweet, cloudy smoke as the herbs burned around the iron nail. It swirled around me as I sprinkled the last item, the crushed-up Wolfsbane, into the iron cauldron.

  Kiwi made a nervous chattering in my ear. I slowly turned around, three more times, letting the smoke drift to all corners of the room, while the words continued to come out from deep in my throat in a chanting cadence.

  After the fifth repetition of the final line, I stood stock still for the count of one, two, three.

  “COME!” I shouted.

  The sound of my own voice echoing around the dark room startled me after the quietness of the murmuring chant.

  Kiwi let out a warning squawk and I peered into the corner where we’d seen the spirit on our previous visit.