Witches' Diaries

by Morgana Best

  Apparently, Aunt Agnes had overheard our exchange because she added, “Not if you have a family like Demelza’s.”

  “Friends, then,” Lucas said. “You all are my family.”

  He leant over and kissed me lightly on my forehead.

  Chapter 21

  The remaining guests of Mugwort Manor now swirled around their luggage like seagulls around chips.

  The bus rumbled up the drive, a sad rumble of an adventure ended with no clue as to when the next adventure would begin. Really, it was unnatural for a woman to traipse around the place with no murder to solve, no suspects to investigate, and no moments of last-minute realisation to be struck upon.

  I kissed Finn goodbye once on the cheek, and Lucas turned up his nose. Back in my early twenties, I had been the one who felt that pinch of jealousy. I would watch Alice and Joe, my two best friends, flutter around each other as they smirked and blushed, and think about when I would find my Joe.

  I had found him now.

  “I hope you’ll be okay,” I whispered to Demelza, as I squeezed her hand. I didn’t know what else to say or do. She’d lost a mother, an ex-husband, and a daughter. Two were murder victims, and the other was the culprit.

  Demelza was now a very wealthy woman, but I expect that was furthest from her mind at the moment. Perhaps Aunt Agnes had been right all along about turning the cottages into rooms from Cluedo. No good had come of it at all.

  Demelza nodded. “I should have been suspicious of Moxie Maisie earlier, but she is my daughter, you know. I suspected Finn.”

  I nodded solemnly. “Of course.”

  “You don’t think she’s a homicidal maniac because I decided to name her Moxie Maisie, do you?” Demelza added all of a sudden.

  “It’s hard to say,” I replied honestly.

  Demelza sighed, resigned.

  “It’s strange to think,” Finn said, “that we arrived as a party of six and we are leaving as a party of two.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have time to think about it on the bus,” Lucas said. “Off you pop. Goodbye. Thank you for coming.”

  “Do come back and visit us again,” Aunt Maude said, “if you both can bear it.”

  “It is a magical little place,” Demelza said wistfully, “despite the hardship we have endured here. Still, I don’t think I could return. The memories, you see.”

  Demelza said goodbye to Aunt Maude and Aunt Dorothy, and to Lucas too. We watched as the pair, the solemn little duo, stepped onto the bus, which then rumbled down the drive and vanished beyond the horizon. No one spoke for a moment, the way no one speaks when there is too much to say. Then the aunts took each other by the arms and stepped into the glowing warmth of Mugwort Manor for a piping hot breakfast of toast and tea and sympathy.

  “You didn’t feel like joining him,” Lucas said.

  I turned, startled. “Joining who?”

  “Your new boyfriend.”

  “You’re cute when you’re jealous,” I said. I tried not to laugh.

  “I’m cute when I’m not jealous too,” Lucas added. He reached a hand into the pocket of his blazer. “You know, I like you.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. He was acting very strangely. “I like you too, Lucas.”

  “No.” Lucas had a strange look on his face. “I really like you.”

  He took his hand out of his pocket and handed me a note. It was written on thick card, the type of card on which one would write something important, like wedding invitations.

  “Don’t,” Lucas said as I went to open the card. “Wait until I’ve gone.”

  “What is this?” I felt a sudden twist in my stomach.

  “A scavenger hunt,” Lucas replied. He smiled. “What, you hate having no mystery to solve. So, why not give you a mystery.”

  “Is this a clue?” I said, excited.

  “It’s the first clue. Good luck,” he added.

  We kissed, a soft, sweet kiss, and I heard laughter coming from Mugwort Manor. Spinning around, I caught the aunts ducking away from the window. They really were a naughty bunch of ladies, even Aunt Agnes on the odd occasion she felt like relaxing, and I adored them. I adored their madness. I adored their magic. When I turned back, Lucas was gone.

  With a deep breath, I opened the card. It read:

  ‘For she is fair, and she is bright,

  This lady who enchanted knights.’

  “Too easy,” I scoffed to myself. There was a statue in the garden, an old statue, with a mossy face. I liked to call her Guinevere, after the Queen of Camelot. I had spent an entire summer as a seventeen-year-old obsessed with Arthurian legends. I’d made a friend who loved the legends too, Sarah, but we’d fallen out over a fight about who was the hottest knight, Lancelot or Gawain. Sure, we hadn’t had the most academic reading of the stories, but we were bored, and men with swords who go on quests seem very magical to teenage girls who are bored.

  I visited the statue. It wasn’t just a statue. I had not remembered. It was a fountain too, water tinkling from the statue’s jug, which she held with both hands. A card sat, tucked into the statue’s stone dress. My arms were not as long as Lucas’s, which meant I had to step into the fountain to retrieve the card. Returning to the grass with wet feet, I opened it and read:

  ‘A kiss, almost stolen,

  A reunion, almost golden.’

  Owen. My first murder mystery at Mugwort Manor. After I escaped from Owen the murderer’s basement, Lucas and I had almost kissed. Returning to Mugwort Manor, I grabbed my car keys and dashed over to Owen’s old house. I was surprised I remembered the way.

  There, in the garden, was an arch of red roses. Beneath the arch was Aunt Maude, who was beaming.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked her, shocked.

  “Lucas asked me to help. Here is your next clue.” Aunt Maude handed me the card. This one read:

  ‘An insurmountable rift,

  If you’d gone tumbling off that cliff.’

  I lowered the card, half-annoyed and half-delighted. “Lucas is making me return to all the places where I was almost murdered?”

  “Or maybe he is making you return to all the places where he rescued you, and all the places where you rescued yourself.” Aunt Maude chuckled. “It’s very romantic.”

  “Me almost being run off a cliff by Jack Murphy is hardly romantic, Aunt Maude.”

  Aunt Maude sighed. “It sounds good to me! At this point, I’d take what I could get.”

  Aunt Maude and I said our goodbyes. I drove over to the cliff, where Aunt Dorothy was standing in a field of candles. From a distance, the candles almost looked like fireflies, wild and beautiful in their glowing light. It was magic, even in the brightness of morning.

  “Your next clue,” Aunt Dorothy said.

  I took the card, but I did not open it. Instead, I stood for a moment, remembering how Lucas had rescued me, remembering how far we’d come on our journey. Then I opened the card.

  ‘Already you had me trapped,

  So, I felt sad when you were kidnapped.’

  “Hmm,” I muttered. “Not sure that Lucas put too much effort into this clue.”

  The clue referred to Scorpius Everyman, who worked for The Other. He’d kidnapped me and locked me in his beach cottage miles from Mugwort Manor. I’d managed to escape, because at that point I’d become accomplished at escaping. Not a trait a girl wants to have but one that came in handy, nonetheless.

  “There you are,” Aunt Agnes said. “Just in time. The mosquitoes are particularly bad in these parts.”

  She was at Scorpius’s old beach cottage, where wildflowers grew among the thickets of weed. “Another clue. I must say, I don’t see how it is romantic to make you run around the place like this. I would have thought a nice foot massage better.”

  “You and me both,” I said to Aunt Agnes, but secretly I was thrilled. No man had ever put such effort into romancing me. The clue Agnes gave me read:

  ‘What could be more beautiful than this—

>   Finally, a kiss.’

  Yes! The first kiss Lucas and I had shared. It happened after Lucas’s criminal twin brother, Lorcan, kidnapped me. Lorcan was in cahoots with a murderer I was trying to apprehend at the time. Lucas and I kissed after he found me, in a shearing shed, which was a fair way from the manor. Maybe Agnes was right, after all. Maybe I’d have preferred the foot massage.

  ‘A reunion with your parents,

  After their disappearance.

  We shared a secret,

  And I promised to keep it.’

  The secret was the tunnel. The entrance to the tunnel was in the secret room in the hallway that ran alongside our living room. I had to drive all the way back to Mugwort Manor.

  In the tunnel, I found another card. I’d kept them all, tucked them away safely in the pocket of my coat.

  ‘Another cliff,

  Another tiff,

  Another chance for me,

  To give chivalry a sniff.’

  Now Lucas was just showing off. Alec Aldon had kidnapped me in the hopes of exchanging me for my parents. Lucas had saved me just as Alex was threatening to throw me over a cliff. This happened at the lighthouse, which is where I headed next. Sure enough, there was another clue. The last clue, as it turned out.

  ‘To Pepper.

  Everyone around you dies,

  They really love to drop like flies,

  Poisoned, bludgeoned, pushed out to sea,

  That’s the reason you’re the girl for me.

  * * *

  You never waiver, you never scream,

  Unless there’s a big fat spider in your dreams.

  All this time, it’s you I’ve cherished

  When all your B&B guests have perished.

  * * *

  I feel so restless,

  You make me breathless.

  Don’t leave me in this world alone,

  Or the murder you will solve next will be my own.’

  It wasn’t so much a clue, but I knew where Lucas would want to meet me next. After discovering Hemlock was a murderer, I’d hit her with a lamp. Lucas returned after being away, and we had kissed on the beach near Mugwort Manor. That is where I would meet him now.

  I took a deep breath and turned the car back to the beach.

  At first, I thought some kids were having a bonfire, because the beach was radiant with flames. Then I noticed it was not one big bonfire, but a thousand little candles scattered like stars across the horizon of the sand.

  There was a pathway through the candles which I followed, my throat tight and my mouth growing increasingly dry. Was Lucas planning to propose to me? The thought of finally calling Lucas my husband made me tremble with hesitant delight. Surely, I was dreaming, however. Surely, a dream of wearing Lucas’s ring was just that—a dream. No, it would not do to get my hopes up.

  I followed the path through the candles, and I arrived at a small white tent that had been decorated with hundreds of roses. No, not hundreds, it seemed, but thousands. The same number as the candles which flickered on the beach. Inside the tent stood Lucas, in a white suit, a red flower pinned to his blazer.

  He was trembling, just the same as I was trembling. He took my hands, and he wiped the tears from my cheeks. I had not realised until then that I was crying. In hindsight, I had started to tear up when I had first noticed the candles.

  “Valkyrie,” Lucas said, and we both took a moment to laugh at the name my three batty aunts called me.

  “Lucas,” I tried to say, but the sound came out as more of a terrified whimper.

  Surely, this was a dream.

  Surely, this was too good to be true.

  “I love you,” Lucas said, “I love you more than any man has ever loved any woman, and I love you more than any woman has ever loved solving a murder.”

  “That’s quite a lot,” I said quietly.

  “It is,” Lucas said. He looked so noble in the light of the candles which flickered into the tent, his brow handsome and furrowed. He was taking this seriously.

  “Three days ago, I asked Maude, Dorothy, and Agnes for your hand in marriage,” Lucas said then.

  I shrieked.

  It wasn’t a delicate reaction. I was nothing like the ladies who, a hundred or so years ago, pretended to faint so that a dashing gentleman might catch them in his strong arms. No, I shrieked, and then I burst into tears so suddenly, so ferociously, that tears flew off my face. These were not the delicate tears that he had smoothed off my face but a moment or two ago. No—these were a flood.

  Lucas took off his blazer, and he wiped my face with the hem of his sleeve.

  “Pepper.”

  “Ajhfjakhf,” I said.

  “I feel the same,” Lucas said.

  “Argh!”

  “I know.”

  “Ajkfha ajfdaljfd fajksfjas,” I said. I think it made sense in my head.

  “Pepper,” Lucas said now, “would you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage? I don’t have a lot to offer you. I am but a wealthy, gorgeous, ridiculously intelligent man with big arms and a butt that would make the world’s finest peach jealous. But what I do have, I offer you here, on the beach where we once kissed, after you’d yet again escaped the jaws of death.”

  “Yes,” I said at once.

  Lucas shrieked.

  It wasn’t a masculine scream. He was nothing like the men who, a hundred or so years ago, had charged into war with a battle cry on their lips. No, he shrieked, and then he burst into tears so suddenly, so ferociously, that I thought he would pass out.

  “Lucas,” I said.

  “Ajhfjakhf,” he replied.

  I nodded. “I feel the same.”

  “Argh!”

  “I know.”

  “Ajkfha ajfdaljfd fajksfjas,” he said.

  After we had regained use of the English language, Lucas slipped the sparkling engagement ring on my finger.

  It was a gorgeous pink diamond, shaped like a heart. “I give you this heart,” Lucas said, “the way I have given you my heart again and again, time after time, in the hopes you will give me your heart in return.”

  “Silly old Lucas,” I said. “My heart is already yours.”

  We kissed then, a kiss hungry and gentle and ancient and young. A kiss that somehow managed to be all those things at once.

  A kiss which only my fiancé, Lucas O’Callaghan, would have ever placed on my lips.

  Pepper, Lucas, and the aunts will be back in the next book in this series in 2022, but for now, have you read A Midlife CatAstrophe?

  When Nell Darling moves to a small Aussie mountain town after a messy divorce, she decides her life will be purrfect. But life has decided to be no such thing! Nell discovers a body, inherits a gloomy bookstore, and starts to suspect she is losing her mind--all because a local cat begins stopping by for a chat.

  Yet Nell has no time to paws and reflect. Soon she is chasing her tail to solve the murder. Hot on her heels is the dreamy Detective Caspian Cole, who seems to think Nell is mad fur real. But it doesn't matter what Detective Cole thinks, because Nell is about to discover that menopause doesn't mean her life is put on pause.

  In fact, menopause is a sign that Nell's has finally begun.

  Litter-ally a fun read for women who are coming into their power!

  You can get it here.

  A Note from Morgana

  G’Day from Australia!

  Thank you so much for going on yet another adventure with me. I love writing about Pepper, Lucas, and the aunts, but knowing my readers enjoy these characters just as much as I do means the absolute world to me.

  Cluedo—or Clue, as it is known in other lands—is my daughter’s favourite board game. I suppose she gets her murder solving genes from me! It is certainly not from my ex-husband, her father, who is an accountant.

  He likes to read books on ancient wars, which I never had the stomach for, to be honest. Cozy mysteries with quirky characters and a whole lot of heart have always been my speed.

&
nbsp; Until we meet again, my old friends, I hope you and your loved ones stay safe in these strange times.

  Brisbane

  Australia

  P.S. If you’d like to find all my books and reading order, check out my website. www.morganabest.com, and if you’d like to get emails from me (behind the scenes—plus new releases) click here to enter your email!