Collards & Cauldrons

by Bella Falls

  “It looks like a bomb went off in here,” my advocate friend stated when he observed the chaos of necessary supplies to make us gorgeous scattered everywhere.

  “I think it doesn’t matter if the ends result in such beauty,” added Mason.

  “Detective, that sounds an awful lot like a compliment,” Lavender teased. “And may I say that the two of you look snazzy in your suits.”

  Ben fussed with his tie. “Yeah, but I’ll be dying to take this all off at the end of the night. It’s a little too warm to wear so many stuffy clothes.”

  “Would you rather wear my dress?” Lily lifted an eyebrow at her beau. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

  “Maybe later.” Ben’s cheeks turned pink and he winked at his girlfriend. “But for now, I’m here to escort you and your cousin to the mixer.”

  “And I have the honor to escort you and Blythe, Charli.” Mason crooked both arms for us to take.

  “Pfft. You go with Charli. I don’t need anybody to chaperone me anywhere.” Blythe brushed past both men and out into the hall.

  Mason turned his gaze to me. His eyes roamed up and down my body once. “That’s a beautiful dress. Have you worn it before?” he asked.

  It never came to mind that I’d brought the dress I’d worn the night he’d made me dinner and told me about his past. While the choice to wear it had more to do with the sunflowers and less to do with trying to recall a night that had changed things between us, it saddened me that he clearly didn’t remember.

  “I don’t think so,” I lied, looking down at the floor to avoid his gaze.

  “Hmm. I could have sworn…” His brow furrowed for a brief moment until he shook it off. “Well, it looks lovely on you. Shall we?”

  My hand flew to cover the spot over my heart when it seemed like he might remember our night. It occurred to me I wasn’t wearing my mojo bag. However, I doubted it would add anything to my look, so I chose to leave it behind.

  “Let’s go.” Wrapping my arm through his, I relished the warm strength his presence afforded, especially in the tense situation the mixer would certainly be.

  Between meeting my biological cousin and trying to keep Nana from hexing the grand dame of the Charleston witch community, I definitely had my hands full.

  Although we passed a side entrance into the venue, the staff of the hotel requested we go outside and enter through the grand entrance on Meeting Street. A fence of tall iron bars with long spikes at the top wrapped around the large structure.

  “Who do they think they’re trying to keep out? Giants?” Blythe asked, cocking her head back to take in the gate.

  We walked through an arch of decorative iron patterns and up the bank of stairs into the stone hallway. Once we entered, a double grand staircase weaved its way around the front hall. A general buzz of excitement spread through the crowd gathered on the first floor.

  “I so did not wear the right thing,” I admitted, noticing all the sparkles and fitted bodices surrounding us.

  Mason leaned his body against mine. “I think you look better than any of these ladies. They’re trying so hard to meet expectations that their hard work shows.”

  “And I’m just the easy-going country bumpkin, right?” I snorted.

  Mason stopped guiding me through the groups of people and faced me. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I think you’re beautiful whatever you wear. And that dress…I don’t know, I just like it.”

  The desire that he’d said he liked me instead of the dress rose to the surface. Grabbing a glass of champagne from a nearby waiter, I took a couple of swallows to tamp down the notion.

  “Is it hard for you to take a compliment? Or harder for you that it comes from me?” Mason asked, not letting me escape.

  I waited for the tickle of the bubbles to go down my throat before answering. “I don’t know. I guess both.” My cheeks heated, and I focused on the task of figuring out which woman in here could be Abigail rather than the complications of the man in front of me. “How am I supposed to identify my cousin if we’ve never met?”

  We perambulated with slow steps, weaving in and out of the crowd. I tried to grab the attention of any young woman of the approximate right age and give a little nod of my head. Not one of them did more than offer me one in return or a polite but cold grin.

  I backed into someone and apologized before even turning around. My grandmother’s kind face deflated my worry. “Oh, thank goodness. Do you have any good ideas how I should find Abigail?”

  “Name tags would come in handy now, wouldn’t they?” Nana chuckled.

  “Or having my talents back. If I could, I would use her note to me to try and make a connection.” I furrowed my brow, trying to recall how my special magic even felt when I possessed it. The longer I didn’t have it, the less I could remember.

  Mason spoke from behind me, “Have you even tried?”

  “And, what, be disappointed yet again?” I finished my glass of champagne and shook my head. “What’s the point? I guess worst case scenario, I’ll tap every girl on the shoulder and ask them their name.”

  A light and airy giggle interrupted us. “You can start with me. My name is Peyton, and I’m glad I found you before things officially started.” She offered a manicured hand as if she were royalty and we were meant to kiss the sapphire ring sparkling on her finger.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Peyton,” Nana replied. “May I ask why you were looking for us?”

  The young lady batted her long dark eyelashes with coquettish ease. “I have someone here who needs to speak with you. Mama, will you join us, please?”

  Priscilla excused herself from her current conversation and stood next to her daughter. The genuine smile on her face froze when she caught sight of Nana.

  “Now, Peyton, I feel as if you have some scheme or another planned. You know we both have limited time for games tonight.” Although Priscilla’s eyes regarded my grandmother, she did her best not to address her directly.

  “Mother, now, I told you how you behaved this morning was unladylike. And if there’s anything you taught me, it was that women never get as far in life as respectable ladies. I think you owe this fine woman, who is our guest here in Charleston, an apology,” pushed her daughter.

  “Peyton Ravenel Legare,” Priscilla exclaimed. After a moment of indignant reflection, she sighed and turned to speak to my grandmother. “I suppose after careful scrutiny that I may have been a tad bit…aggressive this morning. What my brother did, he did of his own will and against my advisement. It has always been a bad habit of mine to defend him.”

  “Okay.” Nana hardened her expression and waited.

  “There now. Everything is smoothed over,” Priscilla proclaimed.

  Peyton placed a hand on her arm to stop her from moving away. “Mother, you didn’t actually apologize.”

  “Didn’t I?” Priscilla waited for someone to let her off the hook. When she felt the pressure of all our stares, she broke. “Oh, Peyton, you’ll learn that we ladies understand when an apology is needed or not. And in this case, perhaps Vivian is strong enough to not need the actual words. If you will excuse me.” Before finishing her statement, she sashayed away with a rustle of her formal dress.

  Her daughter’s face dropped in exasperation, and she ran after her mother. The two stopped at the side of the room and spoke in low voices until Priscilla pulled out of her daughter’s grasp.

  She erupted loud enough for her voice to reverberate off the walls. “Enough, Peyton. Not here.” The older lady stomped up the stairs while her daughter followed behind, both ignoring the spectacle they had become.

  “I think the daughter might be in trouble,” Blythe guessed, chewing on an hors d'oeuvre of some sort.

  Mason perked up. “Where’d you get the food?”

  My friend made a show of eating the last bite with a sly grin. “You’re a detective. Use those skills to find some.”

  He touched my arm. “I’ll be right back.”

&
nbsp; I watched him walk away, the figure of his body inspiring more than just me to stare and admire. One elderly lady went out of her way to pinch his behind as he passed. He turned to see if I’d noticed, and when he caught me looking, he shrugged.

  “You know, I think someone needs to talk to Priscilla. Maybe smooth things over before anything gets out of hand. You gonna be okay on your own, Birdy?” Nana checked.

  I slipped my arm around Blythe’s waist. “I’ve got backup. And when Mason returns, I’ll have backup for my backup.”

  Straightening with determination, my grandmother slipped upstairs to confront the mother and daughter.

  “There goes trouble,” I admitted, a little worried but knowing that when Nana set out to do something, she did it. Anyone who stood in her way tended to get injured in her wake. Better to let her say what she needed to and be done with it.

  Mason returned holding a plate filled with finger foods and three glasses of champagne. I caught that Hayden girl from earlier gawking at the detective. Narrowing my eyes at her, I placed my hand on his arm, rubbing it while I stared her down until she moved away.

  “I really shouldn’t, but I’m gonna.” I accepted one of the glasses and raised it in victory of my tiny personal win. “If I have to play referee with Nana at the same time as having the most important meeting of my life, I better get a little loose.”

  “Try one of these shrimp puffs to help,” suggested Blythe.

  “Don’t eat all his food,” I chastised her while picking up one for myself.

  Mason shrugged. “I brought enough to share.” He held up his glass. “Here’s to new connections.”

  “Amen,” nodded my friend, clinking my glass. “You have to make eye contact or you’ll be asking for bad luck.”

  I glanced at her while she clinked our glasses together again. Turning to do the same with Mason, I got caught in his gaze. So far, he’d been nothing but nice to me. Even walking a fine line as if somewhere inside of him, a part of him remembered where my place in his life had been. Confusion, awe, and something else I didn’t recognize rested in his eyes.

  “Cheers,” I managed in a weak voice.

  “To new connections,” Mason repeated in a rumbly intimate tone. He downed the contents of his champagne flute in a few gulps. “Another?”

  “Probably shouldn’t.” After finishing the second glass of the bubbly alcohol, the haziness of a buzz lightened my mood. “But we’re away from home and should do away with shoulzz…I mean, shoulders. Nope. Shouldn’ts.” A giggle escaped my lips, and I covered my mouth with my hand.

  Something tickled against my left shoulder, and I brushed it off with my hand, perusing the plate of goodies for something tasty. The annoying feeling returned, and I tried to bat whatever tapped my shoulder away.

  “Charli,” Mason called out, looking at something behind me.

  “What?” I turned around and found a slightly shorter young woman biting her lip and waiting to talk to me.

  “Are you Charlotte Goodwin?” she asked.

  My stomach clenched, and the buzz from the champagne fizzled from the adrenaline that shot through my veins. “Yes. But mostly people call me Charli.”

  She blew out a breath and smiled wide. I recognized her countenance of happiness. I’d seen something similar when looking in the mirror, although her hair was a few shades lighter than mine.

  “Abigail?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I don’t know if this sounds weird, but we look like we’re related. Should we hug or something? Or maybe it’s too soon.”

  I enclosed her in my arms without hesitation. “In my family, we hug.” Her body stiffened at the contact and I let her go.

  “I’m sorry. That was nice. And I guess some families do embrace.” She glanced at the floor in embarrassment.

  “And some don’t, like yours?” I clarified.

  Before she could answer, a gong resounded throughout the hall. Priscilla walked to the balcony in the middle of the two grand staircases and waited for the rest of us to quiet down.

  She held up a fluted glass in front of her. “Ladies and gentlemen, witches all, I welcome you again to our fair city of Charleston.” Her voice broke on her last word, and she brushed her fingers against her throat while she coughed. Taking a sip from her drink, she attempted to regain her poise. “Excuse me. Now, where was I?”

  “You were welcoming everyone, Mother,” Peyton called out from underneath the balcony.

  “Looks like the daughter made it out alive,” Blythe commented.

  “What?” Abigail asked.

  I leaned in to whisper, “I’ll explain later.”

  Priscilla grasped the railing and attempted to continue. “As cough I was saying cough cough. You are all welcome…” She gasped for breath, glaring out with widened eyes.

  Mason stepped forward. “I don’t like the color of her face.”

  The woman’s porcelain countenance morphed from pink to red to a deep purple in mere seconds. Murmurs of concern rumbled through the crowd. The detective burst into action, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

  The glass in her hand fell to the floor and shattered, its contents dribbling over the side of the balcony. Priscilla clutched the pearls around her neck, scratching the skin. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.

  With a loud grunt of effort, she cried out in a rasp, “Peyton!”

  Her body collapsed in a heap while her tight grasp broke the string of pearls, the small jewels scattering over the balcony and raining onto the floor.

  Mason made it to her first, crouching down so I couldn’t see him. His voice rose above the din of concern. “Is there a doctor or a healer here?”

  Nana appeared from behind and joined the detective on the balcony of the second floor. A group of women mobbed up the stairs to check on the status of their queen bee.

  An unfamiliar touch on my arm jolted me and I turned my attention to Abigail. She watched the scene with morbid curiosity. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  Since I hadn’t even had time for a proper introduction, I had no idea what her level of comfort around a crisis would be, and we really didn’t have time at the moment to check. I kept my eyes glued on Mason, hoping he’d give me a sign of Priscilla’s recovery.

  When he glanced down at me, he shook his head once enough for me to comprehend.

  “What’s going on,” I said, “is that rather than enjoying the beginning of a new connection, we’re going to have to focus on the death of one instead.”

  Chapter Six

  The roar of everyone talking at once deafened me. Once Priscilla didn’t get back up, people speculated on what had happened. Although Mason wasn’t a native warden, his experience from being on a bigger force up North assisted him in maintaining a level of control over the body until the local authorities showed up.

  A commotion broke out when Peyton pushed her way through the nosiest of the onlookers at the top. She shrieked and wailed, trying to push the detective out of the way.

  “Mother, no! You have to get up!” Tears ran down her cheeks and she dashed the back of her hand against her skin, smudging her makeup. Even disheveled, she mimicked her mother’s perfection.

  Mason motioned for a few closest to them to hold Peyton back against her profound protests.

  One of the enormous wooden doors into the Hyperion Hall swung open with a groan, and a man wearing a suit walked in. “What’s going on here,” he yelled to be heard over the noise.

  A few other wardens followed behind him, jumping into action and herding most of us out of the way. One of them pushed me back with the flat of his hand against my body without an apology, and I debated what kind of first impressions I would make if I cast an itty-bitty stinging hex his way. Abigail supported my arm to keep me from losing my balance, and I decided not to do anything to jeopardize her first impression of me.

  The first warden stomped up the stairs and frowned down at Mason. “Who are you?”

  Our dete
ctive spoke in a lower tone so the rest of us could only hear his murmured explanation. Whatever he said provoked the local warden, whose mustache twitched in disapproval.

  “I don’t give a good spell in Hades who you are or who you’ve worked with before. In Charleston, we run things, and this is our crime scene.” He grabbed the lapel of Mason’s suit to forcibly remove him.

  Without Priscilla standing in front keeping everything in order, her community of witches scrambled to figure out what to do next. Frances, the moderator from the morning panel, stepped up to speak to the head warden, but no matter what she said or the hand gestures she used while speaking, his level of frustration grew.

  “That’s it!” he exploded. “Everybody shut up right now.”

  Reacting to his tone, a hesitant hush fell across the first floor of the hall.

  The warden in charge barked out orders. “You, Jenkins, close the door and stand guard. The rest of you, we’re invoking PAC-142 protocol. Nobody’s leaving the scene until we have some answers. Call in for reinforcements to take positions outside the hall.”

  A general ruckus rose from the crowd, but I agreed. The only way to be sure of what happened would be to stop who came in or out. That meant staff or guest, we would all be in for a long night.

  Relieved by the Charleston warden, Mason returned to stand with us. Others from Honeysuckle shuffled in our direction.

  “So, what do you think is going on?” I pressed.

  Mason’s eyes kept flashing to the upstairs area. “It’s hard to say. She seemed to choke on something based on what we saw before she collapsed. They need to place a warden’s shield around the body and the immediate area to preserve the evidence.” His hands curled into fists, and his frustration at being forbidden not to do his job rolled off him.

  “How long will we be held in here?” Abigail asked.

  Mason blinked at the newcomer until his busy brain caught up. “You must be Charli’s cousin Abigail. I’m sorry this is the circumstances of your first meeting.”

  “It’s fine,” I replied out loud, attempting to reassure more than just myself. “It’ll provide more time for us to get to know each other.”