by Terri Reid
“Exactly,” Rowan said. “In Amish and Mennonite communities, there is a rite of passage for adolescent boys called Rumspringa. They often leave their villages and see what the world outside is like.”
“So, you’re thinking the Wulffolk men are doing something similar,” Hazel said. “And that’s where they lose them?”
“Either that or their rite of passage includes kicking the young men out of the town to find another place to live,” Henry added.
Hazel paused in her perusal of the books. “Why would they do that?” she asked. “Why would they kick them out?”
“Well, in wolf packs, when adolescent males reach maturity, they leave their home territory to search for a mate. This leaves the alpha male free to produce the litters in his pack,” Henry replied.
“Wait,” Hazel said. “Henrich is the alpha male in the pack? Then all the women in the village… Can I just say ew?”
“I’m not saying that’s what’s happening,” Henry inserted. “But, that’s one plausible explanation for the lack of men.”
“I’m sticking with ew,” Hazel said, and then she paused for a moment. “Oh, hey, here we go. An old journal that looks like it dates back to the eighties.”
“1880s?” Henry asked.
“No, 1980s,” Hazel replied. “Isn’t that old enough?”
Henry nodded.
“Henry, I can’t hear you nod,” Hazel said, her eyes still closed.
“Oh, sorry,” he replied, shrugging when Rowan chuckled. “Guess I need to get more used to this remote viewing practice.”
Hazel smiled. “It was great when Cat was on a date,” she said. “I could give everyone minute by minute reports.”
“I heard that,” Cat said as she walked in from the kitchen.
“Damn, why didn’t anyone warn me?” Hazel said with a smile.
“She snuck up on all of us,” Rowan replied. “So, are you going to send the book?”
She nodded. “Yep, incoming,” she called, and a book fell out of the air onto the coffee table in front of them. “How’d I do?”
“Perfect aim,” Henry replied. “Do you see anything else?”
Hazel started to look around again and then heard the library’s doorknob jiggle. “Hey, someone’s coming in,” she said. “So, I’m coming home.”
Henry and Rowan held onto Hazel’s hands until she took a deep breath and opened her eyes. Then they let go of her hands. “I’m back,” she teased. She rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck. “Sitting there like that takes a lot out of you.”
“So, why did you leave when someone was coming in?” Henry asked. “They couldn’t see you.”
“No, but when someone is intuitive or has any psychic abilities, they can sense me,” Hazel said. “And since Joseph said that his grandfather had some of Merlin’s blood, I didn’t want to take the chance.”
Rowan reached over and picked up the book. “I don’t think Henrich would mind us borrowing this journal,” she said.
“Unless they murder all the men after the age of sixteen in some weird ceremony,” Hazel countered. “Then, yeah, he’d probably mind.”
“Okay, if Henrich could sense you, then how did you get away with spying on Cat?” Henry asked.
Hazel grinned at her oldest sister. “Well, generally, her abilities were fairly muddled by the time I’d check on her,” she teased. “And the car windows were pretty steamed up too.”
“I’m going to get some work done,” Cat said quietly, quickly leaving the room. “Good luck with your research.”
“I’ve stepped in it again,” Hazel said, standing up and moving around Rowan. “I’m going to go talk to her. You two check out the journal. Okay?”
She started to walk away when Rowan reached over and grabbed her hand. “You didn’t mean to hurt her,” she said. “It was good-natured fun.”
Hazel nodded. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Thanks.”
Chapter Forty-six
The small office was tucked away in a cozy corner on the south side of the house. A little hallway in front of the office door offered access to a cute half-bath and a door that led to a small parking area for those who came to meet with one of the Willoughbys. Vintage floral prints were displayed on the walls, and a large bouquet of dried lavender sat in a tall, copper urn next to the door. Hazel balanced the tray she was carrying on her hip to free up her hand to knock on the office door.
“Come in,” Cat called from inside.
Hazel turned the knob, pushed the door open, readjusted the tray in her hands and then entered the room. She pushed the door closed again with her foot and walked over to the large table in the center of the room. Cat was seated at a counter along one wall, her eyes glued to the display before her.
Hazel set the tray in the center of the table and waited for Cat to turn away from the keyboard. “Just a second,” Cat said slowly, concentrating on the screen in front of her.
“Take your time,” Hazel said, sliding into one of the upholstered chairs that surrounded the table. She picked up the teapot on the tray and poured herself a cup of tea. Its fragrance filled the room.
“Not fair,” Cat complained as she continued to type. “That smells really good.”
“I’ll pour you a cup,” Hazel offered. “Two sugars, right?”
“That would be great,” Cat replied.
Hazel poured the tea, added the sugars and then walked around the table to Cat’s side. She looked down onto the screen and shook her head in confusion. “Why are they cancelling their order?” she asked, looking at the online correspondence from one of their loyal customers.
Cat sat back in her chair. “Well, it seems that somehow the shipment of lavender and calendula face lotion had fecal matter in it,” she said tightly.
“Well, it’s organic,” Hazel replied. “I mean, everyone knows that you can expect up to one percent of fecal matter. It’s only goat poop. It’s not going to hurt you.”
Cat looked up at Hazel. “This was more like 99 percent fecal matter,” she said. “And it smelled more like swine poop than goat poop.”
“How did that…” Hazel began and then stopped. “Wanda!”
“Or someone from the coven,” Cat said. “If they can’t destroy the store, they will destroy our business.”
Hazel turned and perched on the end of the counter. “So, how many boxes did the customer open?” she asked.
“Just one,” Cat replied. “And they opened six jars in a 24-pack case.”
“So, where is their warehouse?” Hazel asked.
“What are you thinking?” Cat asked.
“Well, the only rule is an harm it none, right?” Hazel asked. “So, there’s no harm in putting back what we originally put in. I could just transform the poop into the lotion in the rest of the boxes. And, I can also change the labeling on the outside of the opened box to read something like lab samples. Then we can apologize that shipping sent them the wrong thing.”
“You have a dangerous and creative mind,” Cat said with a smile. Then she nodded. “Okay, do it.”
Hazel looked at the shipping address on the invoice and then closed her eyes.
What we shipped to beautify
Was altered to become swine pie.
Reverse the spell with all due speed.
As I ask, so mote it be.
“Swine pie?” Cat asked.
“You know, like cow pie,” Hazel replied.
“Yes, I know,” Cat said, shaking her head. “But swine pie?”
Hazel grinned. “I’m a witch, not a poet,” she said.
“Give me a second,” Cat said, taking a sip of the tea. “I just need to call the customer and tell her about the mix-up.”
“Yeah, lay on some of that Catalpa Willoughby charm and sophistication,” Hazel said.
In a few minutes, the customer was not only delighted but also laughing about the mix-up.
“Once again, I apologize,” Cat said. “Thank you so much for your understanding. And le
t me take five percent off your invoice for your trouble. No, that’s fine. Have a great day.”
She hung up the phone and picked up the teacup. “Now, this is just what I need,” she said, then took another sip.
“I brought cookies,” Hazel said.
Cat’s eyes widened in delight when Hazel lifted the cover from the platter filled with an assortment of cookies. “What’s going on?” Cat asked. “It’s not my birthday.”
Hazel went over and hugged her sister. “No, it’s my way of saying I’m sorry for hurting your feelings.”
Cat hugged Hazel back. “Oh, honey, you didn’t hurt my feelings,” she said. “You were just teasing. I was just a little tender just then.”
“Donovan?” Hazel asked, levitating the plate so it hovered right next to them.
Cat picked up a cookie and bit down with a snap. “Yes,” she said. “I saw him in town.”
“Men suck,” Hazel said, biting into her own cookie.
Cat nodded. “Yes, they do,” she agreed.
“I sent Joseph a text this afternoon,” Hazel admitted, and when Cat looked aghast, she shook her head. “I only asked about Gabriella. Mom’s idea.”
“Okay, that was brilliant,” Cat said, finishing off her cookie and reaching for another.
“That’s what I thought too,” she replied. “Then he texted back, telling me that Gabriella was doing better, thanking me for asking, and then he said that he missed me.”
“He actually texted that?” Cat asked. “So, what did you do?”
“I texted, ‘same goes,’” she replied.
“And then?”
“And then nothing,” Hazel said. “Nothing at all.” She picked up another cookie. “Men suck. What did Donovan do?”
“He snuck into my car and told me that he could sense my presence without even seeing me,” she said.
“What, like a dog?” Hazel asked.
Cat spewed cookies across the table. “Hey, that’s not fair,” she choked as she laughed. “Besides, who are you to talk about men and dogs here?”
“Wolf. Joseph’s a wolf. Actually, according to Henry, Joseph is a cryptozoological bipedal lycanthrope.”
“That’s sounds impressive,” Cat said with a grin.
“It probably means that he has to turn around three times before he can lie down,” Hazel quipped.
“He probably sheds,” Cat added.
Hazel handed Cat another cookie. “This one’s on me,” she said. “See, we don’t need men. We have each other.”
Hazel’s phone alerted her to a text message, and she looked down. “Crap!” she exclaimed.
“What?” Cat asked.
“It’s Joseph. He’s on his way here to talk to us,” she replied, panicked. “How do I look?”
Cat grinned. “Wait, I thought we don’t need men,” she reminded her sister.
Hazel nodded. “We don’t,” she agreed. “But I want to make sure he knows what he’s missing out on.”
Chapter Forty-seven
Hazel jogged into the great room and hurried over to the couch where Rowan and Henry were studying the journal she’d filched from Henrich’s library. “Hey, I wanted to let you two know that Joseph is on his way over,” she said. “So, you might want to hide that journal. I’m going to run upstairs and change into something…”
“Hazel,” Rowan said, looking up at her sister with her face filled with concern.
“What?” Hazel asked, immediately sitting down on the coffee table in front of them.
“It’s about Joseph,” Henry said with a sigh. “Actually, it’s about all of the men from Wulffolk.”
“What?” Hazel repeated.
“We were right about Rumspringa,” Rowan said, and then she shook her head. “Well, not entirely right. But they do have a rite of passage when the men are in their teens and twenties.”
“Okay, so they go get drunk,” Hazel said, feeling a pit growing in her stomach. “No big deal, right?”
“No, it is a big deal,” Henry said. “And it has nothing to do with getting drunk or running around without rules. When the men of Wulffolk reach a certain age, they turn into wolves, and they don’t turn back.”
“How? How could that happen?” she exclaimed.
“It probably has something to do with intermarriage,” Rowan supplied. “Often when a small community keeps intermarrying within itself for generations, the less desirable genetic traits become dominant.”
“And turning into a wolf and staying there would be one of those less desirable traits?” Hazel asked slowly.
“One of them,” Henry said.
“There’s something else?” Hazel asked.
“Hazel,” Rowan said, reaching out and holding her sister’s hands. “From what the journal says, there are three options. One is they turn into a wolf. The second is that they remain in the werewolf kind of state and can’t change back to human form.”
Rowan glanced at Henry, and he nodded sadly.
“What?” Hazel demanded. “What is the third option?”
“Sometimes the final change is too much for their bodies,” Henry said. “And they don’t make it.”
“They die?” Hazel whispered hoarsely, her eyes filling with tears. She shook her head, the room turning into a blur. “No. That can’t be right. Maybe the journal writer is wrong.”
“The journal was written by a wise woman,” Henry said. “She took care of the young men. She was with them until whatever happened occurred.”
“But why aren’t the wolf people in the village?” Hazel asked. “Do they hide?”
“They leave,” Rowan explained. “They leave because they forget. They forget who they were. They forget their families. They become beasts of the woods.”
“But this isn’t going to happen to Joseph, right?” she said. “This can’t happen to him because he’s older than that.” She wiped the tears from her face. “And he told me that his mother was Native American, so that whole recessive gene thing doesn’t apply.”
“There were others who were only half Wulffolk that she studied,” Rowan said slowly. “Hon, it didn’t stop things. It only slowed things down. They were changed or…or gone by the time they turned thirty.”
Hazel took a deep breath and nodded her head. “Okay, well, they didn’t have a PhD in biochemistry or a professor like Henry or the power of the Willoughby family,” she said. “So, we’ll just have to find a cure. That’s all.”
“You’re right,” Henry said. “That’s what we need to do. But we have a small complication.”
“What?” Hazel asked.
“These changes occur at a full moon,” Rowan said. “And the journal had a record of Joseph’s birth. He turns thirty at the next full moon.”
Hazel jumped up and walked away from them. “No. No, you have to be wrong,” she said. “What about Henrich or the other older men in the village? Well, what about them?”
“The genetic trait didn’t start appearing until the seventies and eighties, so boys born in the early sixties were the first ones to exhibit the problem. Henrich was probably born in the forties or fifties.”
“There has to be a way,” she said, turning to Henry and Rowan. “There just has to be a way.”
Chapter Forty-eight
A knock on the back door startled Agnes from her reading. Unaware of what was happening in the other part of the house, she casually took off her reading glasses, placed them next her teacup on the small table next to her chair, and stood up to answer the door.
“Oh, Joseph,” she said with a delighted smile once she opened the door. “It’s so nice to see you again. Are you here to visit?”
Joseph, dressed in his uniform, shook his head. “I’m sorry, no,” he said, keeping his tone professional. “I texted Hazel that I need to speak with all of you about some information I discovered this afternoon.”
“Oh,” Agnes replied, her smile leaving her face. She stepped back and opened the door wider. “Well, come in, please. I think t
he rest of the family is in the great room.”
Joseph stepped into the kitchen. “Thank you, Agnes,” he said. “This won’t take too long.”
“Well, you go on in,” Agnes said, motioning in the direction of the great room. “I need to get my glasses and my tea. I’m sure they’re expecting you.”
Joseph walked down the hallway between the kitchen and the great room and stopped at the entrance, his focus on Hazel pacing across the room. He could see that she was visibly upset. He started to speak when Hazel turned back to Rowan and Henry, who were sitting on the couch.
“There has to be a way,” she cried. “There just has to be a way.”
The fear and agony in her voice spurned him to action. “A way to do what?” he asked, stepping into the room.
Hazel turned quickly and stared at him in astonishment for a moment. Then she ran across the room at him. “You!” she screamed, pushing her hands against his chest with all her might but not making any impact on him at all.
Her anger was seething. She stepped back and then flew at him again. “How dare you!” she exclaimed, pushing at him again. But once again, he stood his ground.
“Would you like me to step back?” he teased.
She lifted her eyes to his, and he was struck by the pain in them. She put her hand over her mouth to muffle a sob, then shook her head. “You can do whatever you damn well want to do,” she whispered. “I’m leaving.”
She ran around him, through the kitchen and out the back door.
He didn’t hesitate for a moment. He turned around and ran after her.
“Hazel,” he called, running down the patio steps after her. “Wait.”
He watched as she waved her hand behind her, and suddenly his parked patrol car rolled in front of him. He skirted around the car and continued to follow her to the barn. She stopped at the barn door, glanced over her shoulder, waved her hand again, and the tractor from inside the barn rolled out to block his access to the door.
He jumped up into the seat of the tractor and jumped down the other side, pushing the door open before she had the chance to lock it. “We need to talk,” he said.
