Witch

by Kirsten Weiss

  She groaned. “You're right. I'd better come with you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, returning to the guest room and grabbing a second sage smudge. If I was going to risk a trespassing charge, bringing along the sister with the cop boyfriend made sense. And if he couldn’t keep us from getting arrested, we could always ask our sister with the lawyer husband to break us out.

  Centering myself, I made a gesture of protection over my ingredients. I filled eight bags with oatmeal, the black stones, dried St. John's Wort, and small iron nails for good measure. Fairies hate iron even more than burning sage.

  As I tightened the drawstring on the final, red bag, someone knocked at the door.

  I opened it to Lenore and handed her a fistful of bags and a hand spade. “Hold these.” I shrugged into a thick blue parka with faux-fur around the hood and jammed the rest of the bags and another hand spade into its pockets.

  We walked through town to Angela’s neighborhood. Our footsteps smacked loudly, echoing on the darkened street. Next door to Angela’s, her neighbor’s twinkle lights were the only illumination.

  We paused beneath a bonelike and barren aspen tree and stared doubtfully at Angela’s unlit ranch house. A smallish rental truck sat parked in the driveway. Was Angela moving? I couldn't blame her if she was, but what about her boutique?

  Lenore eyed the deserted house warily and pulled one of my cloth bags from the pocket of her white parka. “Where were you thinking of putting these?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute.” Shifting my weight, I handed her the compass.

  “You know there's an app for that?”

  “I know,” I said. “I've got the compass app, but you know what cell reception is like in the mountains. Though I didn't think you knew the app existed.”

  She grinned, tossing her long, pale-blond hair over one slim shoulder, but her expression was strained. “Becoming a small business owner has forced me to become more tech savvy.”

  We found due east and mentally reached into the earth, pulling it over us in a simple cloaking spell. The spell wasn’t a hundred-percent, but it reduced the odds of us being seen.

  “I assume we’re planting a bag at each compass point?” She lit her sage smudge with a match and handed the box to me.

  “Yeah.” I lighted the tip of my smudge. The tips of the leaves flared, burning brightly, and I blew out the flame. Smoke coiled in the air. “You go left, I'll take right.”

  Centering ourselves and calling in our protective spirits, we split up. I walked the circumference of the property. One handed, I used the hand spade to bury my bags in the cold, unyielding earth while keeping the smoldering sage from touching the ground. The last thing I wanted to do was set Angela’s dead lawn on fire.

  Lenore and I met in the backyard, open to the forest of pines beyond. I crossed my trail of sage smoke with Lenore’s to complete our circle. Uneasily, I glanced into the yawning darkness.

  “Do you sense something?” my sister asked.

  “No. But…” But my scalp prickled, my breath steaming the air.

  The cell phone beeped in my rear pocket, and we both jumped.

  I cursed. “Sorry.” I drew the phone from my pocket, and my heart jumped too. A text from Brayden. Grinning, I opened it.

  BRAYDEN: HEY, I DON’T THINK THIS IS REALLY WORKING. I’M BREAKING UP WITH YOU.

  Wind soughed through the tops of that dark cathedral. A branch groaned, breaking the spell.

  “Jayce?” Lenore asked.

  Stunned, I gaped at the phone. This had to be a joke. So why were my breaths coming hard and painful, my chest caving inward? Brayden wouldn’t joke about breaking up. He wouldn’t do it by text either.

  But there it was. My throat closed.

  “Jayce, what’s wrong?”

  Wordless, I showed Lenore the phone.

  Her face darkened with anger. “Are you kidding me?”

  Kidding. Of course! He had to be kidding. My thumbs flew over the keypad: HA HA. WHO IS THIS?

  Silence flowed from the pines, and in that silence, I hung suspended between the moment of love that was and what might be.

  The phone beeped. Another message popped onto the screen: SORRY. IT’S OVER. TAKE CARE.

  My head swam. It could still be a joke. A bad joke. I typed: IF THIS IS A JOKE, YOU NEED TO TELL ME NOW.

  A pause. A reply: NO JOKE.

  “This is bullshit,” Lenore fumed. “Just call him.”

  Throat tight, I phoned. It went to voice mail.

  He’d rejected my call.

  That pissed me off. Drawing a ragged breath, I hung up without leaving a message.

  Icy stars blazed above the mountaintops, and I remembered something Brayden had once told me. It took millions of years for much of that starlight to reach Earth. We looked back in time when we studied the stars. I looked back in time now, trying to understand what had happened, where things had gone wrong. But like stargazing, we can see the past, but we can’t change it.

  My emotions tangled – denial, hurt, and anger spiraling conflicting thoughts through my mind. Anger felt the best. I let it simmer and tried to stop thinking about Brayden, to focus on something else. “He’s not kidding,” I choked out.

  “You two have been in love forever,” Lenore said. “And he breaks up by text?! It can’t end like this!”

  “I guess it just did,” I said roughly.

  Lenore swore long and colorfully. “I don't believe in hexing, but he totally deserves it.”

  Hot pride raced from my chest to my scalp. I raised my chin. No. I wasn’t going to beg. Wasn’t going to chase him. He’d broken up, and we’d both live with it. And dammit, I’d live well. I breathed roughly, deeply. “We need to finish the spell.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

  In answer, I grasped Lenore's hand.

  She stared somberly at me a moment then closed her eyes.

  “I call in the spirits of the directions,” I said, voice shaking. “Spirits of the east, of air, knowledge, we welcome you.” We turned to the west. “Spirits of the south, of fire, will and intention, we welcome you.” I called in the west and north, the above and below.

  There should have been a click inside me, like a lock being shut fast. But I felt nothing. No tingle of energy. No swell of power at the completion of the spell. “Lenore?” I asked and looked up at the house. Its windows stared back, impersonal and unblinking as Brayden’s text.

  Blistering fury darkened my vision.

  Lenore frowned, opened her eyes. “It's…”

  A rear window in the house cracked, a sound of breaking ice.

  A light flashed on inside.

  Lenore tugged my hand. “It’s time to go.”

  I nodded, too upset to speak. Had I broken Angela’s window?

  My magic was out of control – the spell I’d wanted had failed and that window… Lenore had been right, I shouldn’t have bothered with trying any spell when I was so angry.

  I hurried behind my sister, so she wouldn’t see the hot tears streaking my face.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Voila, your pumpkin latte.” Eyes burning, I carefully poured the milk into the espresso, creating a wreath of hearts in the foam. I handed the cup across the counter.

  “Cool,” Susan said. “Thanks!” The B&B owner raised her paper cup in salute and bustled out the door.

  I braced my arm on the high counter. My elbow slipped off the polished wood, jostling me, and I sighed. Maintaining a work rhythm didn’t take much concentration. This was a good-news-bad-news situation, because work wasn’t much of a diversion from Brayden.

  My head and heart alternately hated him and ached from the loss. I wanted to curl up like a dried leaf and float away. I wanted to stay in bed and cry. I wanted to turn back the clock and fix things. But where had they gone so wrong? How could I not have seen this coming?

  I’d broken my promise to myself and tried call
ing him again. He’d rejected that call too and hadn’t called back. I didn’t believe in trying to get closure from an ex. Real closure came from within. It meant moving on.

  I whirled to fill the next order. Two coffees, black, large. I poured and set the cups on the counter in front of Mr. O’Hare, dapper in his checked waistcoat.

  Smoothing his white hair, he studied me through rimmed glasses. “Are you unwell?” he asked quietly.

  I stretched my lips into a smile. “Fine,” I chirped and glanced to the table where the odd Mrs. Raven sat in her forties-era green suit. Think about the strange, vintage couple. Think about anything but—

  How could Brayden have dumped me so casually? Was this about Terry? Had she brought back his guilt over his wife’s death?

  O’Hare nodded. “Of course. You’ve got too many obligations to let emotions affect your work.”

  I started. That showed how little he knew about my emotions.

  But he wasn’t completely wrong. I had employees to pay. Just because my life was falling apart, it didn't mean I had to turn everyone else’s upside down.

  I distracted myself with latte art, making pumpkins and oak leaves. Magic poured from my fingertips, and the designs grew more elaborate. Christmas trees and smiling dogs, suns that whirled slowly in their cups, entire cornucopias, spilling with fruit. A pilgrim’s ship crossing the ocean, its prow nudging against Plymouth Rock. A dragon that opened its jaws, and a phoenix flew out.

  The magic shivered my skin, and the crowd grew, clamoring for more lattes, and I started to get requests. A child’s profile. A skier flying down a mountain. A skull-and-crossbones for a goth teen with a pierced nose.

  At six, Darla shot me a desperate look, and I nodded for her to close the door. The people lined up along the covered sidewalk groaned but trudged away good naturedly.

  We served the last customers. Since we were closing so much later than usual, I let Darla leave without helping me clean.

  Alone beneath the twinkle lights, I lingered over mopping floors and wiping counters. But cleaning didn’t rid me of the dull emptiness inside. It was too easy to think when I was cleaning. Should I confront Brayden? I shook my head. What good would that do? He wasn’t the sort to change his mind, and I wasn’t the sort to beg.

  Finally, I grabbed my silvery parka and purse off the wall hook and strode out the front door. Main Street was a cascade of Christmas cheer, colored lights draping the false fronts of the old mining town.

  I locked the door behind me, giving the key an extra hard twist. “Stupid Christmas cheer.”

  My phone rang in my pocket, and I glanced at the number. Karin. Had she already heard about my latte magic at Ground and called to scold?

  I declined the call and stuffed the phone into my pocket.

  Aimless, I stopped in front of Angela's boutique. Its windows gleamed with fairy lights. Behind them, a few customers milled between racks of clothing.

  Angela stood behind the counter and wrapped what looked like a scarf in tissue paper for a customer.

  She'd lost her brother. Her brother. I was not going to feel sorry for myself over losing a boyfriend.

  I glanced down the street at Antoine's, light cascading from beneath its batwing doors. The old Jayce would have run straight to a bar and partied away her depression. The new Jayce really wasn't feeling it.

  My stomach rumbled, and I walked across the low stone bridge. A pair of tourists in sleek ski wear posed in front of a squat stone turret covered in pine boughs and twinkle lights. Potted poinsettias lined the brick path to the Visitors’ Center door.

  I ducked into Alchemy. The restaurant was packed with red-cheeked skiers on their way higher up the mountain, but I spotted an empty seat at the bar.

  Perfect. You never ate alone at a bar, not when there was a bartender. I beelined for the high chair and shrugged out of my parka, adjusting it over its curved iron back. On the gold-veined bar, sprigs of holly decorated mercury glass candleholders. Plastic tea lights flickered inside.

  “Ms. Bonheim?” Eclectus Hood sat on the stool beside mine. The lawyer wore an elegant pinstriped blazer. Gold cufflinks winked from the sleeves of his white dress shirt. He'd loosened his tie, and a glass of beer waited on the gleaming black counter before him.

  Crap. “You can call me Jayce.” My cheeks burned at the memory of our last encounter. “Um, do you mind if I sit here?”

  “No, of course not,” the older man said.

  I settled in, ordering a glass of local Cabernet, and the waiter dropped off the dinner menu.

  “Eating alone?” the lawyer asked.

  I smiled. “Not with you here.” I didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to talk about death and sorrow.

  Idly, he turned his glass of beer on the counter. “So, Candace is gone.”

  “Yeah.” I stared into my wine.

  “You were a friend of hers, I think?”

  Dammit. We were doing this. I sighed. If we were going to talk murder, I might as well do it right. Maybe I’d learn something about Alex and Candace I didn’t already know. “Not as close as you two.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked sharply.

  “Because she was a client of yours. She and Alex.”

  “Oh. Right.” His brow furrowed.

  “I'm sorry for your loss,” I said.

  “Thanks, but we weren't that close.”

  “I thought you and Alex went to high school together?”

  “We did.” He sipped his beer. “But that was twenty years ago.”

  The bartender returned, and I ordered strozzapreti with sage and butternut squash.

  “You know the history of strozzapreti?” Eclectus asked.

  I shook my head.

  “They say it was created in the 1600s as a protest against Italian priests, who were living high on the hog while the people suffered. That’s why it's shaped like a hangman's knot. It’s supposed to carry a curse against gluttonous clergymen, because the people were starving.”

  Great. Even my freaking pasta was cursed. I blew out my breath. “I guess it's true what they say. You really can curse with anything.”

  His thick brows rose. “Do they say that?”

  “One of my sisters researched curses and witchcraft in college as part of her history degree.” I wasn't exactly in hiding about my witchcraft, but I didn't see any advantage to advertising.

  “I guess people do all sorts of stupid things,” he said.

  I bit back my annoyance. “Especially when we're young.” I sipped my wine. “Like that old hazing incident.”

  “Hazing?”

  “Of David Senator.”

  He stared straight ahead, at the rows of bottles behind the bar. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Maybe that’s why David was sending poisoned pen letters. I guess he felt it was the only way to get back at people who'd long moved on while he'd been… away.”

  “Letters?”

  “Alex got one. The letters had been cut from old newspapers and magazines. Did David send one to you?”

  “If someone sent me a threatening letter,” he said shortly, “I'd tell the cops. And if something like that happened to David in high school, then the statute of limitations is long past.”

  I squinted. If? It wasn't exactly a denial. But Angela had been vague – she’d admitted she hadn’t actually seen the letters. Maybe Eclectus hadn’t received one.

  “What's it to you anyway?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I just thought you might be interested, since Alex got a letter, and he was one of your clients. He didn't say anything about it to you?”

  “If he did, I couldn't tell you. Client confidentiality. And besides, I'm not that kind of lawyer.”

  “Right, you practice business law.”

  “And estate. Is your sister still working as an estate attorney? I thought she might be selling her practice now that she's got a kid.”

 
; “I doubt she’ll give up her license.” Between her romance writing, legal work, and raising a baby, Karin was feeling the strain. But I didn't like the idea of her handing over clients to Eclectus. There was something about the man I didn't like, even if he was a dog person.

  A hand rested on my shoulder.

  My heart jumped, thinking it might be Brayden. I turned, recoiled.

  Wharton braced his other hand on Eclectus's shoulder. He smelled of sweat and sawdust. Shavings of golden wood flecked his curling, salt-and-pepper hair. “What do we have here?” he slurred.

  Eclectus shook free. “You've been drinking, and you stink.”

  “I haven't been drinking, and you're a murderer.”

  “Keep your voice down,” the lawyer snarled. “Or I'll sue you for slander.”

  “Sue me? You two were the ones who let me take the blame all those years for David's disappearance.”

  “No one blamed you, you idiot.”

  “Everyone blamed me!” Wharton roared.

  The restaurant stilled.

  Red washed from Wharton's plaid collar to his receding hairline. “Do you know what it was like in this town? You ruined my life!”

  The bartender hurried to us. “Sirs, I'm going to have to ask you both to leave.”

  “What—?” Eclectus shook himself and rose. He tossed some bills on the bar. “I'm not responsible for this guy.” He stormed from the restaurant.

  Wharton followed.

  The tightness in my muscles eased, and I slumped in the chair. Okay, there’s definitely tension between those two. How or why had Wharton been blamed for David's disappearance all those years ago?

  Shaken by his outburst, I sipped my wine. If the police had had any evidence Wharton had been to blame, he would have gone to jail, right? Or at least to juvenile hall. But maybe that was the problem – juvenile records were sealed, weren’t they? Maybe he had been punished. But that would have been in the papers, wouldn’t it?

  It had all happened so long ago. I had no idea what the laws were like back then. And then I realized I’d spent entire minutes not thinking about Brayden.

  And that got me thinking about Brayden again. I braced my elbows on the bar. “Dammit!”