I withdrew my hand, freeing it from her cold touch.
“You can pay me after you hear from your father.”
My brows drew together at that, but I forced a smirk onto my face. “Well, that’ll be a long time coming. I don’t know anything about the man.”
Hazel smiled like a tall red-headed snake. “Oh, you will, Aria Whitmore. Not long now. Soon you’ll know all about your father.”
I stepped back from her again but she seemed to mirror that move too, moving at the exact same speed forward as I went backward. I shook my head in her direction, my mind feeling fuzzy and confused. I wasn’t sure what was going on or what she was getting at.
“Don’t forget, Aria Whitmore. Don’t forget. You owe me.”
I tried to glare at her but with an alarming swiftness she’d moved toward me, lurching to the side at the last minute to avoid crashing into me.
I whipped my head around and peered over my shoulder to see Hazel serenely walking away from me at what appeared to be a leisurely pace.
This time, I didn’t suppress the shudder that tore down my spine.
There was something about Hazel that was always off—something that didn’t sit right with me at all.
It was like half of her lived in this world and the other half in a strange, otherworldly dimension, jumping between them on a whim. Of course, Hazel worked hard to create her unsettling image; that’s the kind of witch she was. But magic-darn it if it didn’t work a little too well on me.
With some of the bounce drained from my step, I slowly carried on my walk, finishing the rest of the coffee along the way. A fair amount of the drink spilled out when I raised it to my lips, my trembling hands an aftereffect of talking to Hazel.
I kept replaying what she said to me in my mind. Obviously, she and Mom had worked out some kind of deal.
But why in magic’s name had my mother made a deal with Hazel Crane of all people? Mom must have gone to her to help reverse the effects of the spell, but at what cost? There was a fair amount of animosity between them and I had no doubt that Hazel wouldn’t have made any deal unless she thought she was getting the better end of it.
And according to Hazel, I’d been lumped in together with my mother in this deal too. Hazel thought I was in her debt as well.
When I arrived at Randi’s Candy Store, I felt older than when I’d left my shop just a few minutes before, and a whole lot wearier than I should have after such a relatively short walk.
My state of confusion wasn’t helped when I saw who was exiting the shop. It was Molly.
The same Molly who had been so adamantly against Sandra and her fudge. The same Molly we’d scared half to death the day before inside Sandra’s house. And what was Molly carrying? Why, if it wasn’t a bag of Randi’s ‘Sandra’ fudge.
“Hello, Molly,” I said by way of greeting. My tone was subdued because I still felt guilty for scaring her before, and Hazel had twisted my mind on its side and stomped on it for good measure.
Molly gave me a dark look before remembering her manners and offering me a polite, emotionless smile.
“Good morning, Aria,” she said with a curt nod.
“Is that… fudge?” I asked, pointing at the bag labeled FUDGE in her hands.
She looked at the bag as if reading the writing on it. Then she looked at me. “Yes, Aria. In the bag labeled ‘fudge’ is, indeed, fudge.”
Molly then unfolded the top of the bag, took out a piece, and dropped it in her mouth. After one chew, her manners made another valiant comeback and she reached out with the bag, offering it to me.
“No,” I said shaking my head. “I was just surprised. I didn’t think you liked fudge.”
She furrowed her brow. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
Was she serious?
“You didn’t like Sandra’s fudge,” I pointed out.
“Eh? I loved Sandra’s fudge. It was Sandra I didn’t like. Her, and her customers. I love fudge. I just hate everything that comes with it—the people, the traffic, the crime.” She was almost quaking as she went through her list of all the evils that came with the deadly fudge business.
“The crime?”
“Murder, for one!” she said, her tone dripping with disdain at my implied approval of the fudge business.
“It was only one murder,” I said before I realized how silly I sounded.
“Oh, I’ve heard about you and murders, Aria ‘Dead Bride in her Shop’ Whitmore. For some of us, though, murder is kind of a big deal.”
I nodded and opened and then closed my mouth. I’d made a right mess of this little chat and I didn’t think I could do anything but make it worse.
“Bye,” I finally offered meekly.
“Good day to you,” said Molly who promptly popped another couple of squares of fudge into her mouth and walked off chewing noisily.
Well, that was two bad conversations so far.
“Let’s see if we can make it a hat trick,” I said under my breath as I pushed open the door to Randi’s Candy Store.
Chapter 19
When I stepped inside, I had to stop and take a moment.
Although it wasn’t as busy as the day of the memorial, business certainly still seemed to be booming in Randi’s shop. There were at least half a dozen customers in there, and I could hear the telephone ringing in the background too.
“Not bad for a weekday morning,” I said to myself.
There were four people sitting down eating fudge, and at the counter there was one person being served and another waiting. Even from behind, I could see that the person waiting looked vaguely familiar to me—and then I remembered! It was the tourist I’d met at the memorial service. Her mop of curly hair was different from the hairstyles most of the women in town sported.
I stepped behind her, but as she was facing the other way, she of course couldn’t see me. I briefly considered tapping her on the shoulder for a chat, but after my last two conversations, I thought it best to leave it unless I was noticed.
And anyway, I needed a moment to plan what I was going to say to Randi. This was going to be serious stuff—an accusation of committing a crime!
The person at the front completed their order, and Lara Fischer stepped forward.
“I’ll take half a pound of rum and raisin, please!” said Lara.
Randi frowned and pursed her lips. “I’m sorry. We don’t have any rum raisin. Would you like to try the—”
Lara was already shaking her head before she interrupted Randi’s sales patter.
“But I heard it was the specialty?”
Randi shook her head again.
“Oh, no. I’m afraid not. That was Sandra’s specialty. I haven’t had Sandra’s rum raisin fudge in my shop since… well, it’s been a long time.”
Lara let out a sad sigh, and in that moment, I realized I’d been given an excellent opportunity to do a little digging. I stepped forward so I was right next to Lara as I posed my question.
“I thought you said Sandra gave you her recipes?” I asked with my best quizzical voice. I didn’t want to hammer Randi too hard yet.
“Sandra’s recipe?” said Randi as if stalling for time. “Yes. That’s right, she gave me one recipe. It was her base, but not all the variations. She kept them in a scrapbook and I couldn’t—” She cut herself off abruptly, but it was too late. I’d heard enough.
“You couldn’t find it?” I leaned in toward her to make our conversation semi-private. “When you broke into her house? Before the memorial?”
Randi shook her head angrily at me. Her eyes wide and dark, she glared at me and spoke in a very low tone, cold with anger.
“I did nothing of the sort. Maybe your mother stole the scrapbook when she killed Sandra!”
“My mother did not kill Sandra!” I yell-whispered at her. We were both furious at this point. I pressed my hands right up against the glass cover over the display as I treated her to my very meanest look.
“Well, maybe your stupid parrot to
ok it! He ate enough free samples to KO a pig, and you didn’t even buy any!”
“My parrot? Stole a scrapbook? Are you out of your mind?” I had my hands up on the counter, and a lesser person than me would have reached over and grabbed her. She did have a point about Kiwi though. He loved fudge a bit too much. Was there any chance he had…
“Or that ditzy girl with the craft project. She kept harassing me for junk from Sandra.” Randi’s head was leaning right over the counter, dangerously close to mine and her cheeks had gone rosy red with anger.
“She’s not a…” I was going to say ditz, but had to adjust when I realized that actually, she was a ditz. “… girl, she’s a grown woman, and she was trying to do something nice for the deceased!”
“Well, I don’t think the deceased is going to care for a session of show and tell with a kindergarten art project.” Randi lowered her head and raised her eyebrows. “Unlike my memorial, which even the mayor attended.”
I narrowed my eyes and hissed, “You only did that to make money!”
Randi made a point of looking around the shop. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Unbelievable!” I slapped the counter. I was so annoyed by her I wanted to really lay into her, but I didn’t have anything left to say. “You give fudge a bad name!”
“Here,” said Randi, reaching under the counter and bringing out a box of fudge. “Take this.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the last box of fudge you’ll ever get from me. You’re banned!”
Never one to pass up a free snack, no matter how ungenerously it was given, I snatched the box out of her hand.
“Good day!” I said loudly, spinning around on my heels.
“Good day to you!” screeched Randi even louder.
Everyone in the shop was watching me as I walked out, my final box of Randi’s fudge clasped against my chest.
“Do you have any strawberries and cream…?” was the last thing I heard as I stormed out of the fudge emporium.
When I got back to the shop, Sarah was standing behind the counter and Kiwi was perched on top of it. He immediately spied the box I was still carrying. I’d been tempted to throw it away while I was walking back, but reason had prevailed.
“Fudge!” screeched Kiwi as soon as I entered.
“Hi, Aria! How’d it go? We’ve been having a blast here.”
“Disastrously,” I said with a sigh.
I opened the box of fudge and placed it on top of the counter. “Make it last, Kiwi. That’s the last you’ll get.”
His eyes blazed with panic at me, but he couldn’t speak in front of Sarah. Luckily, her thought processes and those of my familiar were in tune.
“Why? Is Randi’s shop closing down?”
“No. In fact, it’s busier than ever.”
“Did she jack her prices up? I bet she could, for that fudge.”
“No. I’ve been banned. And so have you, I expect. And Kiwi.”
“What happened?”
I let out a long, disappointed breath. “Today has really not been my day.” I went and slumped down in one of the armchairs. “I had a chat with Randi, and it didn’t go well.”
“Oh,” said Sarah, wincing. “She wasn’t very nice to me either, when I was asking for things for my scrapbook.”
“I accused her of stealing Sandra’s scrapbook—or at least a recipe card. I figured that was why the house had been turned over but nothing valuable seemed to be missing. The police wouldn’t know about something like that.”
“But she didn’t admit to it?”
“Nope. Instead, she said maybe Mom or Kiwi or you stole it.”
“Me? But I’ve got my own scrapbook!”
“Yeah, and Kiwi’s a parrot. He doesn’t exactly maintain a robust library of books either.”
Sarah giggled at the thought of Kiwi reading. Little did she know, he actually did read. Unfortunately, the only thing he was interested in was tabloids focused on celebrity gossip.
I’d told him repeatedly he should read some of my magic tomes, but he just cackled and said they were boring. It was probably a good thing though. The thought of the mischief he could cause with some of those spells…
After I’d finished telling Sarah about my morning’s misadventures, she gave me a wistful, doe-eyed look. “It’s always the children who suffer when adults fight, isn’t it?”
“Children? What children?”
“Kiwi.”
Kiwi raised his head to look at her, though as soon as he realized she wasn’t talking to him he went back to pecking at the fudge.
“Now that you and Randi are fighting, he won’t be able to get any more fudge.” Sarah made a sympathetic, clucking noise. “Such a shame.”
“That’s the least of my worries,” I said, rubbing my head. It still ached from my confusing conversation with Hazel.
Once Sarah had finished work for the day, it was time to sit Kiwi down for a little chat.
“What did I do?” he asked, the umbrage clear in his little voice before I’d even asked him a thing.
We were still in the shop, and he was standing on top of the counter while I leaned against it next to him. I wanted him to feel relaxed, not reproached.
“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. I just need you to remember something,” I said.
“What?” He was standing just in front of the last remaining piece of fudge from the box I’d brought back earlier. It was like he was standing guard over it, protecting it from potential fudge-nappers.
“Do you remember the night we found Sandra?”
“I ate fudge!”
Kiwi looked positively delighted at the memory.
“Yes, you did. Do you remember I found you in that dining room, and you were trying to eat that whole tray of the stuff?”
He nodded his little head up and down happily.
“Well, do you remember you were reading something?”
He cocked his head and then dropped it down to his chest in a motion equivalent to a human frown.
“You do remember, don’t you?”
“Oh! The fudge book!”
I nodded at him, pleased that he hadn’t completely forgotten that day. Thanks to how much fudge he’d eaten, he’d seemed a bit woozy for a day or two afterward.
“Do you know what happened to it?”
There was only the briefest of pauses before he perked up, standing tall.
“Yep!” he said with a happy screech.
Sometimes Kiwi misunderstood what I was getting at, though I suspected at least half the time it was his willful misunderstanding rather than a fault in my ability to ask questions.
“Well? What happened to it? Where did it go?”
“I took it.”
I looked at the parrot. I thought back to that night. No way.
“How, exactly, did you take it? You’re tiny and that scrapbook was bigger than you.”
He chattered to himself in a kind of giggle, the shoulders of his wings shaking up and down in mirth. “You helped me!”
That wasn’t how I remembered it. “How exactly did I help you?”
“You did that magic. Remember? You made me, and that tray of fudge, and the scrapbook invisible.”
“And? Is it still there? That spell wouldn’t have lasted more than an hour or two.”
He shook his little head and gave me a parrot-grin. He loved it when he knew something I didn’t, especially when it involved my supposed area of expertise: magic.
“It’s not there. I took it. It had pictures of fudge. I took the fudge, and the book, and I brought them back home when you abandoned me.”
I arched my eyebrows and asked him simply, “How?”
He giggled to himself again.
“You’re so silly, Aria! When you make stuff invisible like that, it completely alters it. Everything became light as a feather. With my magic and yours, it was no problem to bring them back here!”
“Here? Here, here? In the shop?”
“Well?” I asked, getting exasperated with his roundabout answers to my simple questions.
“Upstairs. Come on! Let’s look at fudge pictures!”
“Sounds better than those celebrity articles you keep trying to show me.”
With an angry screech, he took off and flew to the door that led upstairs, waiting for me to open it.
In our upstairs apartment, apart from the living-dining room and my bedroom, there’s another room that I tell guests is a craft room, but is in actual fact Kiwi’s.
People would think it strange if I told them my parrot had his own bedroom, and luckily he neither needed nor wanted a bed, so the ‘craft room’ was given over to him. Each week, I’d dump the latest celebrity gossip magazines through the door, and occasionally I’d try to tidy it a little, but usually I’d be interrupted by Kiwi screeching about ‘moving his stuff.’
“Is it in your den?”
“I don’t have a den. Lions have dens. I’m a parrot,” said Kiwi with a snicker.
“Fine. Is it in your nest?”
He cackled again. “Silly Aria. I have a room, not a nest.”
Having enough of his smart parrot mouth, I proceeded without him, pulling down the handle—Kiwi struggled with twisting door handles—and pushing it open.
“Hey!” he complained. “You’re supposed to knock!”
“But you’re out here!”
“That may be, but you’re still supposed to follow the rules,” he said with a sniff.
Deciding to play along just a for a bit, I rapped my knuckles on the already open door.
“Come in!” said Kiwi as he jumped off my shoulder and flew into the room, landing on the large table that was on the other side and had my main claim-to-crafting upon it: my antique Singer sewing machine.
The floor was strewn with magazines and empty cheese puff packets. The walls had been scratched, and there were at least three different piles of torn-up paper which Kiwi liked to hide in.
“Okay then, dig it out, where is it?” I asked, surveying the mess.
Kiwi looked around the room. He hopped onto the floor and strutted up and down. He flew back onto my shoulder and peered down from there.
Wedding Bells And Magic Spells Box Set Page 48