by Nancy Warren
Impulsively, I reached out and grabbed her hand. “It will happen for you, you know.”
She looked up at me sadly. “Will it? Sometimes I think it’s this town. If you’re not some freakish genius, you don’t really fit in in Oxford, do you?”
“Well, I’m no freakish genius. I do okay.”
She snorted. “You’ve got Rafe. And this shop. What do I have?”
“You’ve got friends. Family. You’re part of this shop. You have your witch sisters.”
She began to straighten up the magazines. “I just feel restless. That’s all. Don’t mind me. It’ll pass.” Then she jutted her chin in the direction of the door leading up to my flat. “You’d better get going. Unless you want unsupervised vampires in your attic.”
Immediately, I headed toward the door. “Good point. Bad enough having them in the basement.”
Luckily, two customers came in then, so Violet had something to do. I slipped through the door that connected the shop with the stairs up to my flat. I ran lightly up the stairs and found no one in the living room. I stopped and listened. They hadn’t waited for me. I ran up the second set of stairs and found them in the guest bedroom.
I’d never paid any attention to the hook in the ceiling all the times I’d stayed here, but it turned out that there was a tool inside the cupboard that hooked onto a metal ring. By pulling it, Gran opened a door in the ceiling that pulled down a ladder that unfolded in sections.
“That’s so cool,” I said.
“Lucy, dear, you really must get to know this house better,” Gran said.
Of course, she could have told me about the entrance to the attic. I suspected she’d forgotten about it, too. She said, “I’ll go first. Just in case the floor’s rotted away with age.” I didn’t think she was worried about rotting floors. She was eager to be the first one up there. And, since she’d presumably tucked away whatever was stored up there, it seemed fair she should go first.
Now that Gran was a vampire, she wasn’t at all frail, as she had been when an elderly mortal. Her legs were strong and sleek, and she went up that narrow ladder like a twenty-year-old.
“There’s a light up here somewhere.” Her voice came down to us muffled. There was a rustle and a bang and then, “Ah, here it is.” And then, sure enough, an electric light glowed through the attic opening.
“You go next, Lucy,” Sylvia said, shooing me forward. I was certain she was dying to get up there too but was being polite. I didn’t scamper up as quickly or smoothly as my grandmother had, but I managed. The attic wasn’t that large. It had a peaked roof that appeared to be in pretty solid shape to me. It was cool and dry in here, which seemed good. There were boxes, a couple of trunks, some old, broken furniture, and a few old paintings dotted around.
If we stayed in the middle, we could stand.
While the others climbed up behind us, Gran went straight to a dust-covered trunk, unlatched the brass latch and opened it up. She got to her knees, and I joined her, kneeling down beside her. A faint smell of lavender and a smell like wood chips wafted up.
“It’s lined with cedar,” she said. “It should have kept the moths out.”
I felt like a little girl playing dress-up as we looked through the various items in the trunk. There were old photographs, theater programs and menus, old fashion magazines and commemorative newspapers about Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.
She sighed over a broken watch. “That was the first gift your grandfather gave me.”
The clothing was fun. A velvet coat and an early Chanel suit caught my eye. I imagined I’d come up again when I wasn’t jostling for space with nosy vampires.
“Where’s the dress?” Sylvia demanded. She was much less interested in Gran’s trip down memory lane than I was.
Gran dug down. Her wedding dress was in a linen zip-up bag, carefully folded. She eased it out, and I helped her unzip the bag and remove the garment within. “My wedding dress.” Gran held it out on its padded pink silk hanger. The dress was tight-fitted in the bodice and flared out, coming probably to just below her knee. It looked like something Audrey Hepburn would have worn. I was glad Gran wasn’t planning to lend me the whole dress, because I did not see myself in this. Instead, she turned it around and showed me the back. At first I thought she was showing me the bow, and then the light shifted and I caught the gleam in the buttons. I leaned closer to study them.
“Are they moonstone?” I asked her.
Her eyes were soft with sentiment when she turned to me. “That’s right. And they’re carved—can you see?—with tiny suns and moons. One of my witch sisters gave them to me. I was thinking we could incorporate these buttons into your dress. They’re very meaningful.”
I knew a little about crystals. I had been doing some of my witch studying in between knitting lessons and running a business and traveling with my soon-to-be husband.
I tried to remember what I’d read. “It’s a relationship stone.” Not a bad guess, considering a witch had used the stone on a wedding gown.
“That’s right. Among other things, it should help you have smoothness in your communication.”
I thought about some of the strong opinions both Rafe and I could hold and appreciated that smooth communication could come in handy.
“And the suns and moons are like Rafe and me. A creature of the day and of the night fitting together.”
“Exactly,” said Gran, looking pleased.
Sylvia put her head to one side. “But there are only five remaining buttons. The sixth one seems to have dropped off.”
“Well, can’t we make five work?” I asked. I really liked these buttons and loved the idea that they’d featured on Gran’s dress too.
Sylvia said, “Not with the pattern we’ve chosen. You’ll need at least nine.”
Surely there had to be a way around this. And there was.
Clara said, “I know someone who can make them.”
We all turned to stare at her. “You know someone who can make carved moonstone buttons?” I had to be sure we were talking about the same thing.
“Yes. He lives in Wallingford. I had him do some lovely carved shell buttons for a cloak I made, several years ago now. He specializes in crystals. Herrick’s Crystal is a charming shop near the Sheep Market.”
“Wallingford’s not far,” Sylvia said. “Why don’t we all go? Make a road trip of it.”
I loved that idea. I felt like I’d been cooped up in the shop or buried in wedding planning for too long. The sun was out, spring was springing around the land, and I longed to take a drive. “Didn’t Agatha Christie live there?” It was one of those bits of trivia that I’d obviously read somewhere, and it had stuck with me.
“That’s right. Her house was called Winterbrook. We can drive by it if you like. Agatha and her second husband, Max, were happy there.”
“Did you know Agatha Christie?” I sometimes forgot how much of a celebrity Sylvia had been when she’d been alive and making movies.
Her expression was cool. “Darling, I knew everyone.”
Chapter 2
We decided to go the next day, a Friday. We set out in the morning, leaving Violet in charge of the shop. She gave a long-suffering sigh when she found out she’d be stuck in the shop while I was out. Honestly, most of the time she acted like an overworked slave, when in truth she was well paid. Overpaid for the amount of work she actually did.
Sylvia liked to have a male chauffeur. And, since it was her car, we tended to let her have her way. So Alfred was called into service to drive the Bentley.
Alfred politely opened the doors and helped us all inside. When we were settled and he’d headed on his way, Sylvia said, “By the way, Lucy, if you’d like to borrow the Bentley for your wedding, you’d be most welcome.”
“That’s really nice of you. But I think Rafe has the transport under control.”
She seemed to think about it for a minute. “Perhaps I should lend you my Cartier necklace, then, for your something borr
owed.”
I nearly opened the car door and threw myself out of the moving vehicle. I thought Sylvia had finally forgiven me for temporarily losing her most priceless possession, and I’d finally forgiven her for nearly getting me killed, and she was thinking about lending it to me? We were all staring at her, and a terrible silence filled the car. Then I caught the twinkle in the back of her eyes. I burst out laughing, and then, seeing the joke, the rest of us fell to giggling like, well, like a car full of women on the way to do some bridal shopping.
We were an odd bunch, but these crazy, undead women were among my closest friends.
Wallingford wasn’t that far from Oxford, and we hit the outskirts of the town in about forty minutes.
“Oh, dear,” Alfred said as the traffic grew hairy. “I think it’s a market day in town.”
“Market day?”
“Yes. Wallingford has been a market town since Saxon times.”
I was always amazed at these little bits of history. I imagined people trading grain and sheepskins and whatever else they swapped more than a thousand years ago. The traffic might be crazy, but I was excited to be here on a market day. I could play tourist. We decided to visit the button guy first and then wander around the market.
Wallingford was also familiar for another reason. “I think it was in Wallingford that the witch lived, the one who sold the hex that got put on Violet.”
Gran stared at me. “The Wicked Witch of Wallingford.”
I’d barely finished laughing from Sylvia’s joke about lending me her Cartier necklace. Now I was spurting with laughter again. “The Wicked Witch of Wallingford. That’s a good one.”
“I’m not being funny. If it’s the same woman, I’ve known her for years. She was a powerful witch and not the whitest.”
“She doesn’t really call herself the Wicked Witch of Wallingford, does she?”
“Of course not. It’s our nickname for her. Her name is Karmen. With a K,” she said, as though that in itself were unseemly.
I’d been wanting to have a few words with the woman who’d nearly killed my cousin. Seemed like fate was putting me in this Karmen’s orbit. “Perhaps we should drop in on her while we’re here. I really want to meet the witch who sold that hex.”
Alfred finally managed to find parking for the Bentley, and we all piled out. We must have looked like a very odd bunch. The female vampires all had large sun hats made out of sun-screened fabric, and Sylvia had added a parasol. Alfred made do with a fedora. I was bareheaded, though I always wore sunscreen.
The town was bustling, but even among the throngs of people I could admire the Tudor buildings and the quaint little shops that I was dying to dive into. Wallingford was on the River Thames, and I determined to come back one day when there was no market on and wander the path beside the river.
Herrick’s Crystal was on St. Mary’s, a pedestrian-only street crammed with gift shops, sweet shops, a wonderful bookstore and a couple of coffee shops. The little windows glinted with interesting treasures. Half eggs of amethyst geodes revealed the most gorgeous purple. There had to be every crystal imaginable from all over the world in there. Polished agates, spears of quartz, stones made into jewelry. I could feel their energy drawing me in.
We all crammed into the small shop, pretty much filling it up. Fortunately, we were the only customers. A tall, gaunt man with gray hair balding on top glanced up as we came in. He was stoop-shouldered, presumably from bending over all his life. He was inspecting a large aquamarine through a magnifying lens attached to a headband.
“Can I help you?” he asked. One pale blue eye looked inquiringly while the other was covered by the lens.
Gran took the box of moonstone buttons that she’d carefully snipped off her dress and showed them to him. He picked one up and inspected it. “Very fine work. I didn’t do it, did I?”
“I don’t think so.” She explained that she wanted him to make four more. He looked at each button in turn and finally said, “I can’t promise that my work will be as fine as this. It’s exquisite. But I’ll do my best. End of next week all right?”
We agreed that it was, and having executed our most important commission, we left the shop.
“Now shall we hit the market?” Clara asked.
“What a good idea,” I agreed.
The market was colorful and noisy. Sylvia turned to me. “Lucy, wouldn’t it be an excellent idea for you to start coming to these things? You could sell some of your knitting kits and maybe promote the classes. We could stock your stall with handcrafted sweaters, cushions, scarves and so on. It wouldn’t be too far to come and could add extra income.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said. “If I wasn’t kind of busy right now. Getting married and all.”
She grew quite fierce. “You must not allow your marriage to interfere with your business.” She gave a little laugh. “I never did.”
We took a moment to watch the hustle and bustle. I doubted whether this market had changed so very much since Saxon times. Sure, the people would be dressed differently, and the products would be mostly different, but at its heart, this was a place for people to trade goods. And I was definitely willing to take some goods off sellers’ hands.
I bought some beautiful beeswax candles at one stand. Most of my candles tended to be for my craft, but these I pictured on the dining-room table at Rafe’s house. I looked at pottery plates and hand-carved wooden bowls, and then I came to a table laid out with skincare products in beautiful dark blue glass jars and bottles. The table was decorated with crystals, no doubt from the crystal house we’d just left, and as they winked in the sunshine, I was drawn towards that table as though they had reached out little hands and pulled me there.
I wasn’t the only one, either. It was quite a busy area. I glanced up to see who was running it and saw an astonishingly beautiful woman. In a village market full of everyday-looking people (if you ignored the vampires), she was like a storybook princess. She had black, curly hair that hung to her waist, big, dark eyes, flawless skin, and full lips painted red. She wore a lacy blue top over jeans and what looked like diamond and lapis earrings hung from her ears. She was wrapping up a jar of cream and saying to the older woman who was buying it, “Every night, remember. And I promise you, at the end of three months, you will see a difference.”
The customer gazed up and said, “Will I have skin like yours?”
The woman laughed. “You never know.”
She had a helper with her, a dowdy woman, much older, and as that woman helped the next customer, the dark-haired beauty turned to me. As our gazes connected, I felt a zing of recognition. It was odd. I’d never met this woman in my life. Her eyes narrowed slightly as though she’d felt it too.
“May I help you, little sister?”
So that was it. She was another witch. “I was just passing by. Your packaging is so beautiful.”
She laughed softly, a husky sound. Even her teeth were perfect. “It’s not the outside but what’s inside that counts.”
She reached out and picked up my hand, bringing it closer, and then from a pump bottle squeezed a little lotion onto my wrist. She rubbed it in, and I felt the delicious smoothness of the cream, breathed in a slight aroma that smelled like a garden in spring. No one scent stood out, but they mingled pleasantly.
“What is in this stuff?” I asked, amazed.
“My secret recipe.”
There were night creams, day creams, cleansers, and lip balms. She had sample packs containing a small bottle of each and a small zip-up bag to contain them all. As she saw me looking at them, the witch said, “Those make excellent bridesmaid gifts.”
Even though we were both witches, I couldn’t believe she could read my mind so perfectly. “How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”
She chuckled. “Your engagement ring sparkles with newness, and there’s no wedding band. Educated guess.”
“Well, you’re correct. I’m a bride-to-be.” Maybe that sounded corny,
but I didn’t care. I even liked using the word fiancé. No doubt some day in the future I’d refer to Rafe as my hubby. The thought of his face if I said it made me want to practice straightaway.
The other witch said, “If you give me the names of your attendants, I’ll have the bags personalized. We make them to order. I can have them ready for you by next week. Is that soon enough?”
“That’s fantastic. Thank you.” I gave her Alice, Violet, and Jennifer’s names. Then added Olivia as a thanks to Olivia Thresher, as she was doing the flowers.
And, since I was as vain as the next woman, I decided to buy some cream for myself as well.
“You don’t live near here,” she said with certainty.
I shook my head. “I’m from Oxford.”
Her gaze sharpened on mine. “You know Margaret Twigg, then.”
And if there was ever a connection that wasn’t going to make me warm to this woman, it was knowing Margaret Twigg. Still, the leader of my coven was certainly well-known in witching circles, so I couldn’t hold that against this woman.
“I do.”
She laughed again, that husky laugh. “I can tell from your tone that Margaret isn’t your favorite among our sisters.”
Now I felt mean. “It’s not that, it’s just—”
She patted my wrist. “No need to explain. And what is your name?”
“I’m Lucy Swift.”
“Ah. I have heard of you.”
“You have?” That did not sound like good news.
Her lips twitched. “You own a knitting shop, I believe. I’ve been meaning to get down there. I like to knit in the evenings while I’m watching TV.”
That sounded like such a domestic occupation for this glamorous woman. “You’d be welcome anytime,” I said.
“I’m Karmen.”
Her eyes widened and went to where her fingers were still resting on my wrist. My pulse must have jumped when I heard her name. “Do you know ill of me?”
Only that my grandmother had referred to her as the Wicked Witch of Wallingford, and I strongly suspected her of selling the hex that nearly killed Violet. I wasn’t going to have it out with her here in public. I drew my hand back and said, “May I come and visit you later? I’d love to see your operation.”
