“Aren’t real. Your mom told me some of the women in this town like to pretend to be real witches, and it helps the town’s tourist economy. I understand that.” He smiled at me, as though thanking me for pretending to be a real witch.
And just like most of Mom’s “explanations” this one turned out to be the doozy I’d expected.
Look on the bright side, I told myself. At least she hasn’t made things worse. Now I can explain the truth to Jack in my own time.
Forcing a smile, I said, “So what can I do for you today? Got any weddings lined up?”
“Actually, yes,” he said.
My heart sank and my stomach dropped. He’d kept that quiet.
Stay professional, Aria, stay professional. “Oh? When’s the date? And when do we get to meet the lucky lady?”
“Lucky lady?”
“Your bride,” I said.
“Oh!” he said, “Oh no, that came out wrong. I didn’t mean I was having a wedding—‘cause I’m definitely not. There’s no lucky lady, at least not yet. What I meant to say, was, well...”
Raising my eyebrows at him I urged him to continue.
“Nina and Rick invited me to the wedding, and I don’t have anyone to go with. None of my colleagues will be attending.”
“So...”
“So, well, would you like to go together?” he asked.
Did he just ask me out? I think he asked me out.
“That would be wonderful! You can join our group—Mom and Donovan and I were going to go with Sarah...”
Did I just turn the date into a... not date? I think I did.
“That sounds great. That’s a... wedding.”
I snorted. He nearly said date. Nearly. Until I messed it up.
“Wedding!” screeched Kiwi followed by a cackle.
I knew what the annoying bird was implying but I wouldn’t be playing that game, not today.
“Great. I’ll look forward to it. I’ll see you on the big day, then. It looks like you’ve still got a lot of preparations to do,” he said with a nod to the table.
“Yep. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Oh! One more thing! Wait here,” he said.
Before I could ask what it was or how long I’d have to wait, he’d hurried out of the shop.
“Wedding! Wedding!” screeched Kiwi again.
“Shut it, you,” I said.
“Wedding?” said Sarah, popping her head out of the door.
“Ignore the bird,” I said.
Ding!
As one door opened, another closed. Sarah shut the stockroom door behind her as Jack entered the shop again, a brown parcel under his arm.
With an inquisitive look, I walked over and met him in the middle of the shop.
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“I don’t know for certain, but I can take a pretty good guess. And I bet you can too.”
He handed over the large package. It was a fairly hefty size and required two hands to hold it properly, though it didn’t weigh all that much. It was wrapped in brown paper and then tied up with string. In large but shaky handwriting on the front, it read:
Dear Aria,
I hope what’s contained within brings you and your customers even a modicum of the joy that it brought us.
Yours,
Fletcher Davenport
.
I said, “Is this...”
“Open it and find out,” said Jack with a grin. “When we went through the house again to collect evidence I found it in the living room.”
“In the living room? But I went in there and I didn’t see it,” I said.
“Me too, the first time. I suppose we must both have overlooked it.”
I gave him with a wry smile. “I guess so.”
I tugged at the twine and released the knot, and then ever-so carefully I undid the brown parcel paper.
“Wedding!” screeched Kiwi when Fletcher Davenport’s wife’s dress was finally revealed.
I lifted it up by the hem, letting most of it rest on the paper on the counter.
“That dress really is quite pretty,” said Jack, actually sounding as if he appreciated it. Not many men really seem to care.
“It’s one of a kind,” I said. “A real masterpiece. Fletcher was going to give it to me to put it on display in the shop. And I guess now he has.”
“I’m glad it got to you. It’s been a tough few weeks, Aria, and I’m sure this is no real consolation, but I hope it brings you happiness.”
“Thanks, Jack,” I said and before I knew what I was doing I leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
He immediately blushed.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “See you at the wedding.”
Unable to wipe the grin off my face, I was holding the wedding dress up when Sarah emerged from the back room.
“Wedding! Wedding!” screeched Kiwi again.
“Goodness!” said Sarah, “You did move fast while I was away! And he’s got great taste in dresses!”
Glaring at her, I laid the dress back down on the counter.
“This was the Davenport wedding dress. It’s going on display over there,” I said, pointing to the corner where I intended to place a mannequin atop a small wooden platform.
“I’m sure that’s why he brought it to you,” said Sarah with a wicked grin.
“Wedding!” screeched Kiwi again.
“Looks like it!” said Sarah with a laugh.
Before I could gather the words for a suitable response, the bell on the door announced yet another arrival.
Ding!
“It’s nonstop today,” I said to Sarah as I looked to see who it was.
“Cheese puffs!” screeched Kiwi.
“Can I come in?” asked Priscilla.
“Of course! We’re open!” I said.
I felt bad about having believed Mrs. Honeywell’s lies about Priscilla.
While Priscilla was a gossip, she wasn’t a mean gossip. I should have known that she wouldn’t have been going around telling everyone I was a murderer.
“I was wondering, Aria...” she said, voice hesitating all the while.
“Yes?” I asked.
“That order. The one we made before. That we canceled. Is it too late to have it reinstated? We’d need it by next week...”
“I thought you ordered some different party favors online?” I asked.
“We did. But they’re, in a word, horrible,” she said.
I stifled a giggle. Of course they were horrible. I’d tested just about every supplier out there and I could have told her that most of the photos she saw online were, at the least, highly misleading if not downright fraudulent.
No, if you wanted something decent, you needed to find the right suppliers, and that’s just what I had done.
“You’re in luck,” I said.
“Oh?”
“With all that was going on, I forgot to cancel your order. I have it sitting in the stock room right now! And your timing is perfect. I was going to send it back this afternoon.”
“Oh! That’s great news!” said Priscilla with a beaming smile. “Not that you were going to send it back—that my timing’s perfect.”
After confirming that her daughter would be in to pick up the order the following day, she left the shop to get back to her café.
“So what exactly have you been up to while I was away?” asked Sarah.
“It’s a long story,” I told her.
“That’s good, because we’ve still got a couple of hundred of these suckers to wrap,” she said with a grin.
“Murder! Murder!” screeched Kiwi.
Sarah gave me a funny look.
“It all started with a murder...”
Designer Sales and Secrets
Chapter 1
Thump.
I peered across the shop to the front door, expecting to see yet another overeager bride.
Instead, I saw the familiar face of Sarah, my assistant and friend.
<
br /> She had tried to enter the shop but had instead thrown her body against the locked door. From her perplexed expression, the fact that the shop was locked up had come as a surprise to her.
I was still laughing when I opened the door to let her in. She already had a grin plastered on her face again.
“It’s like Fort Knox in here!” she said.
“I know! It’s so exciting!”
“Okay, where is it? Show me the good stuff!”
She let out a little squeal of excitement as she entered the shop proper, her eyes peering and darting around. She was looking for the same thing everyone else would be looking for—the wedding dress samples.
“They’re in the back,” I told her with a happy smile. “They were delivered early this morning. We can look at them while we set up!”
“Oh, yay!” She clapped her hands together, pleased that we would both be seeing the dresses for the first time.
She put her head right up against mine and whispered in my ear. “Is she here?”
“Not yet,” I told her. “She said she’d come in some time this morning though. So it won’t be long!”
Sarah clapped her hands together again.
“I can’t believe it really happened,” I said.
“Well, I can. You’ve got the best gosh-darned bridal shop within fifty miles!”
“Wait. Are there any other bridal shops within fifty miles?” I asked her with a mock frown.
“Within five thousand miles!” she said.
“That’s more like it,” I said, squeezing her shoulder as we both giggled.
“You can help me bring them out,” I said to her. “There’s a bunch of boxes in back, and Zola’s dress racks.”
“Let’s do it!”
We walked into the stockroom to get out the boxes. There were almost a dozen of them, each one packed delicately with beautiful wedding dresses, the unique designs of California’s hottest new wedding dress designer: Zola Cates.
“You don’t think it was the magic charm, do you?” I asked Sarah for what felt like the hundredth time.
“That’s the thousandth time you’ve asked me that!” she exaggerated. “She’s here because you are awesome, Sequoia Bay is awesome, and your shop is awesome!”
“You would say that,” I said to her with a grin, “you’re my best friend, and one of the only people who know that I’m a witch.”
“I’d say that if I was your worst enemy,” Sarah lied with a smile that you couldn’t blame for anything.
“Wedding! Wedding!” screeched Kiwi from atop a bookcase that was against one of the walls of the shop.
All of the lower shelves were filled with books about weddings, dresses, venues, and the like, while the top shelves housed books of a more magical nature. Perching on the very top, Kiwi loved to watch and comment on the goings-on in my store, which were often more exciting than you’d expect in a bridal shop.
“Yes, lots of weddings, hopefully!” said Sarah to the parrot.
Sometimes she talks to Kiwi like he can understand.
And sometimes he answers like he can understand.
But what she doesn’t know—what is mine and Kiwi’s little secret—is that he actually can understand. As a witch’s familiar, he’s far more intelligent than even the brightest Amazonian parrot, but while Sarah knows that I’m a witch, she doesn’t know that Kiwi is my familiar. Kiwi’s intelligence is his secret to share—and so far, he’s decided not to share that secret with a single soul, and to pretend to be a “normal” parrot.
Ding!
“Oh no!” I said.
Sarah’s perpetual smile contorted into a frown. “What! What’s the matter?”
“I forgot to lock the shop after I let you in!”
We hurried out of the stockroom to be confronted with just what I didn’t want to see today: an eager bride.
She was a well-dressed woman who looked to be in her late twenties or thereabouts, perfectly made up, with bright eyes and the look of a hunter on her face. She was flanked by two accomplices, each standing a step behind her, presumably her future maids of honor.
“I’m sorry,” I began, “but we—”
“Where are the dresses?!” the bride demanded, interrupting my polite explanation that would have told her exactly where the dresses were.
Now I was tempted to tell her where I wanted to put the dresses... though that would have been neither ladylike nor productive so I abandoned that train of thought.
I ever so politely tried to explain. “The Zola Cates sample sale doesn’t start for another two days,” I told her primly, “so if you could—” Until she interrupted me again, that is.
“What? No, you don’t understand!” said the woman.
“Huh?” I countered, with a confused blink. I was certain I really did understand what was going on.
“You see, I’m getting married,” she said, emphasizing the word married as if it was a term I might be unfamiliar with.
As if my whole shop, business, and basically entire life didn’t revolve around brides and their weddings. I did take time for other things occasionally—feeding Kiwi his beloved cheese puffs, for example—but most of my waking life was concerned with marriages.
“Right. You’re getting married. So then I’m sure you’ll make time to drop by when the sample sale starts on—”
“No.” The word was said with finality.
“No?”
“No. I want to see the dresses now. I’m getting married, so I need to choose the best one first.”
Sarah raised her eyebrows at me with one of her ‘Shall I kick this girl’s hiney?’ kind of looks. I half-shook my head no. Not yet.
“Actually, almost everyone who will be coming to the sample sale is planning on getting married,” I explained to the woman.
She blinked at me. She didn’t seem to quite comprehend that other people in the world might have weddings. There’s a certain kind of bride like this—the ones who think their wedding is The Most Important Wedding in the History of the Human Race, who become quite befuddled when the entire world doesn’t agree to their every whim and demand on command.
“My wedding—” she began.
But Sarah wasn’t about to let her keep going on like this.
“Your wedding will be treated with as much dignity and care as every other wedding we deal with,” said Sarah firmly. “There will be no early viewings of the dresses, and no early sales. That’s the way it is. The shop is not currently open. The door should have been locked. Sorry about that. But, if you could make your way outside now and please return in a couple of days, we’ll be glad to show you all the dresses and help you choose one perfect for your particular figure.”
The bride blinked at us and I could see her parsing your particular figure to try and work out whether it was an insult or a compliment.
“Figure! Figure! Figure!” screeched Kiwi helpfully from atop the bookcase.
The future bride looked up, startled. Startled turned to shocked, and then something akin to terror. Her eyes went wide and her mouth formed a big O.
“Argh!” she shouted, flinging her arms in front of her face as she continued to scream.
“Particular figure!” screeched Kiwi again.
The bride spun around, hands over her head and ran at the door. One of her friends managed to get it open just in time before she crashed into it.
The woman flew out the door and was gone in a flash. One of the girls followed her immediately, while the other turned to us. “Sorry about that. She’s scared of birds,” she said with an awkward smile before turning to exit in hot pursuit.
“Thanks, Kiwi,” I said. He screeched in response.
I quickly pulled the bolt across the door and checked that the sign in the window did indeed read CLOSED. Yep, it still did. Now to get people to believe it.
“Goodness,” said Sarah, “I guess people are really excited about this sample sale then?”
I nodded. “Yep. They’re dying
to get in and see all the dresses. Speaking of which, so are we! Let’s drag the boxes out here and have a look at them all before we put them on display.”
She nodded at me, sending the braids in her hair bouncing off her cheeks.
“Then after that, hopefully she’ll be here,” I said.
“I can’t wait to meet her. I’ve never met a celebrity before,” said Sarah with a glint in her eye.
“What about that actor you went out with?” I asked.
She hmmed and tapped her chin. “I suppose, but actors don’t count. They just pretend to be someone else.”
“He was on the cover of Vogue and Time magazine!”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Whatever. He’s nothing compared to Zola!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. That was the thing about Sarah—she had a very unique way of looking at the world and at people which frequently made my head spin, but in a good way. Unlike my mother, who also made my head spin, but in a much less enjoyable manner.
“Okay then, give me a hand,” I said and went into the back to begin carrying out the boxes.
“I’ll give you two,” she said with a wink.
“Two!” screeched Kiwi, following it up with a quick flying circuit of the shop before landing back on top of the bookcase to watch the proceedings.
The next hour was spent with us happily unboxing the dresses and holding them up to each other to mutual oohs and ahhs of appreciation.
“This one would suit you, Sarah,” I said to her, holding up one of the more unique dresses I’d seen.
She peered at it. “Yeah, not bad. But you know I’m not gonna have a white wedding.”
“We’ll see about that.” It was a point of contention that we worked in a bridal store, but Sarah had no intention of having the kind of wedding that we catered to.
At various times, she’d told me she intended to get married on a whim in Vegas, in a bikini on a Hawaiian beach, or on an airplane crossing the international dateline for reasons I could never quite get my head around—something about two anniversaries each year. But in a beautiful Blue Moon Bridal dress, though? She wasn’t interested.
Thump.
I looked at the door and tried not to laugh.
“That’s another one,” I said to Sarah.
Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set Page 20