by Bailey Cates
“I know you dislike him. We were just having a bite.”
“In Johnson Square.”
“Yes.”
“A picnic.” Somehow he made the notion of eating outdoors sound sordid. And I could see the hurt under all that anger—long-held anger toward Declan for his part in a tragic accident that had killed Steve’s brother. Now it had been augmented by his feelings for me. One of those feelings was lust. It was sometimes hard to tell what else accompanied it.
He forked a bite of side salad into his mouth and chewed slowly. Swallowed. “What else?”
“Besides a picnic?”
“No,” he said with great patience. “What else did you notice about the man you found? What did he look like?”
“Oh. He was older. Thick white hair, old clothes with dirt on them, muddy boots, nice watch.”
Steve put down his fork and took a gulp of tea, blinking rapidly. Were those tears?
I put my hand over his. “You seem to recognize the description.”
“Not at all.”
I didn’t believe him. I pushed the drawing of the tattoo toward him. “You know what this is, don’t you?”
Composed again, he asked, “Now, why would you even think that?”
“A little witch told me.” After all, Mimsey had given me permission to tell him.
He sighed. “A little white-haired witch, I bet. With blue eyes and a parrot.”
“You know Heckle?”
Steve grimaced.
I pushed harder. “You know about the druids who wear this. I know you do.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“I’m practically whispering. No one can hear us. And I bet you know the identity of the man who had this on his arm.”
After not being able to take his eyes off me, now he couldn’t look at me at all.
“Tell me,” I urged. Without meaning to, I felt a little of my Voice infuse the words. I barely managed not to clap my hand over my mouth.
His eyes flared. “Knock it off! That crap doesn’t work on me.”
“Sorry. I just thought—”
“You just wanted to get your way.”
“Not my way! To know whose body I found today. And…why. Mimsey implied it might have something to do with my being a—a, you know.”
“What?”
“A catalyst.”
“Oh. Right. That.”
The tension rode there in the air between us for a long moment before he looked at me again. “I need to talk to someone before I tell you any more.”
“But you haven’t told me anything,” I protested. “At least you could…” Something in his expression made my words trail off. “Well, okay. I guess. Not that I have any choice.”
“No. You don’t.” He rose and took a few steps away from the table. Then he took out his wallet, extracted a bill, and threw it on the table.
“But I asked you to lunch,” I said.
“Under false pretenses.” He turned and walked away.
I watched him go. A knot of guilt twisted in my stomach. Why was he so upset? Who did he need to talk to?
Katie-girl, what have you gotten yourself into?
Indeed.
The blowsy waitress returned, frowning at all the uneaten food on the table. She held a bag with Mungo’s treat. “Is there something wrong with your order?” she asked.
“It’s fine. Good. My friend had to leave, though.” I felt my face redden.
“Well, I hope everything’s all right. Would you like boxes to take home?”
“Yes, please.” I couldn’t bear to waste such excellent fare. Maybe I’d be hungry later.
At least Mungo would appreciate the leftovers.
Chapter 5
Mimsey had left by the time I got back to the Honeybee to pick up Mungo. Cookie, finished with the day’s baking, was also gone. Ben was restocking the toffee biscotti and chatting with Lucy. A woman I didn’t recognize sat at one of the bistro tables. She wore a denim jumper and Birkenstocks, and her thick gray hair was braided into a single long plait down her back. I glanced down as I walked by and saw that she was filling out a job application. She looked up, her warm smile accentuating apple cheeks on either side of a slightly hawkish nose. Fine lines radiated from the corners of her eyes.
“Hi, there! I’m Nel.”
I smiled back, feeling unexpected gratitude. It had been a very odd day, and a wide smile from a perfect stranger was more than welcome. “Hi, Nel. I’m—”
“Katie? Can I talk to you?” Lucy patted Ben on the shoulder and said something, then hurried through the kitchen and into the office.
“Katie,” I stage-whispered to Nel over my shoulder as I followed my aunt.
Mungo jumped into my arms when I walked into the office.
“Good thing you’re not very big,” I said to him. “Otherwise you’d knock me to the floor with those antics.”
“Where have you been?” Lucy said.
I turned. “Having lunch with Steve.”
Her eyes widened, and a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, really…”
“I had a question to ask him.” Mungo’s soft tongue lapped once at my neck. I frowned down at him.
“About that tattoo?” Her smile vanished. “Mimsey rushed out of here without saying a word to me, like dogs were snapping at her heels.”
Mungo whined low.
“Sorry,” Lucy said. “Bad choice of words. But apparently I missed quite an interesting conversation.”
I nodded. “She recognizes the tattoo. Said it was the symbol used by a group of druids in town, and that Steve might be able to tell me more.”
“Druids,” she repeated with a thoughtful expression. “I wonder why that would upset her so much. Druids are typically gentle sorts, with a deep respect for the goddess. A deep connection to nature, too. Was Steve any help?”
“Not really. He said he has to talk to someone.”
“Well, heck.”
Now I was the one smiling. “Since when are you so interested in obscure tattoos?”
“Since one showed up on a dead man’s arm—a dead man my darling niece found, by the way—and since my mentor had such a strong reaction to your drawing.”
“Yeah, that tattoo definitely disturbed her. I’ll let you both know if Steve decides to come through with any real information. For now, though, I’m going to take the rest of my day off, off.” I glanced on the clock on the wall. It was almost three o’clock. “I’m going home to play in my garden.”
“Good idea,” she said. “How are your spells growing?”
“The witch hazel is doing well, but the jasmine has still been kind of wilty. So this morning I took your advice and brewed a healing tea, then misted the plant with it at dawn. I want to get back and see how it’s doing.”
“What did you decide to use in the tea?”
“Lavender and nettle,” I said.
She smiled gently. “Those are good choices. I knew you’d figure out a suitable combination to heal and encourage growth.”
“I hope so.” I opened my tote bag. “Say, I saw that woman filling out an application. Do you really think we need another employee?”
Lucy shrugged. “Maybe down the road, but not yet. She came in and asked if we needed any help—apparently she has a lot of experience working in bakeries. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have her application on file. Cookie’s been here four months already, you know.”
I nodded. Cookie switched jobs—and men—every three or four months. “I’d hoped she might stick around,” I said. “Having the help is great, and we don’t have to be sneaky about our hedgewitchery.” The Honeybee’s baked goods often came with an extra dose of beneficial magic. A little sage here to encourage wisdom and attract money, a bit of rosemary there to encourage long-lasting love. Cinnamon for prosperity and cloves for healing and courage. It wasn’t just the herbs and spices that had magical influences, either. Apples promoted peace and happiness and lemon boosted health. Even the c
offee from the espresso counter helped people make decisions and clear deadlocks. Our customers might not know all that, but they sure kept coming back for more.
With Mungo safely ensconced in the bottom of my tote, I followed Lucy out to the front, kissed Ben on the cheek, and headed out to my Volkswagen Beetle. I received a doggy glare when I buckled the bag into the passenger seat with my familiar still in it, but he stayed there, head clearing the top so he could look around.
“I’m sorry, but you know how I feel.” I drove down Broughton and took a left on Whitaker. Soon we were buzzing out of Savannah’s historic district toward home. “I just don’t understand why Steve was so weird today,” I said once we were on our way. “He’s not usually secretive about magic, at least not with me.”
Yip!
“And who did he need to talk to before he could tell me anything? I have a feeling he knows at least some of the druids in that secret society.”
The terrier was silent. I looked over at him. His expression echoed my questioning tone.
“Right.” It wasn’t as if I could read his mind in anything like words; I just knew what he was thinking most of the time. Just like I’d known what my childhood dogs, Sukie and Barnaby, had been thinking when I was growing up. Some dogs are smarter than a lot of humans. Especially dogs who are connected with witches.
“Anyway, Steve does know a lot of people in town, so maybe…oh, my goddess—what if he’s one of them?”
The thought was so distracting that I almost missed the stop sign. I might have if Mungo hadn’t barked a warning. I stomped on the brake and the Bug shuddered to a stop as a huge king cab pickup went blaring past, right in front of my bumper. The container of soup flew out of the bag on the floor and spattered all over the passenger-side footwell.
Mungo whined.
“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.” Thank heavens I was dutiful about using seat belts.
The smell of shrimp and spicy sausage filled the interior of the warm car. Nauseated, I rolled all the windows down for the remainder of my shaky drive home.
Silly me. Steve wasn’t a druid—at least not one of the group Mimsey had told me about. He didn’t have the tattoo on his arm.
But maybe they didn’t all have them on their arms. Maybe he had a tattoo someplace else on his body. Someplace I hadn’t seen. Yet.
That thought was even more distracting than the first one, but I managed to get us both home intact.
* * *
Mungo and I lived in a tiny house that had once been a carriage house for a larger home. That estate was now gone, and middle-class homes and pleasant lanes lined with dogwood, crape myrtle, and live oak trees surrounded my little abode. There was a green space behind the houses on my side of the street, so my neighbors and I had room to breathe and a little more privacy. There was even a natural stream that ran across one corner of the yard. When I’d purchased the carriage house I hadn’t known I’d be doing spell work outside, but somehow I’d happened upon the perfect place for it.
Well, almost perfect. There had been a few issues.
Inside, I went through the tiny living room to the kitchen. I put some of Steve’s sandwich in Mungo’s dish, and he tucked in. The memory of the near accident hung about me like a fog. Pouring a half glass of wine, I wandered out to the backyard for some quick garden therapy before tackling the smelly mess in my car.
It was a day off from my Witchy 101 lessons as well as baking. The spellbook club had taken me under their collective wing. Jaida taught me about tarot magic. Bianca focused on Wiccan teachings and moon magic. Cookie was four years younger than my twenty-eight, so she didn’t mentor me as much. Still, I’d learned a few things about voodoo and the darker side of magic from Ms. Rios. Mimsey usually instructed me in how to use colors and flowers in spell work, as well as trying to hone my divination abilities. She was trying to teach me how to scry using a crystal ball. I was pretty bad at it, frankly, but she insisted on encouraging me.
Lucy, of course, focused on lessons about our family heritage of hedgewitchery. Mostly that meant working outside and with herbs and other plants. It included using them in cooking, too—at the bakery and at home. So I was learning kitchen and garden magic as well as brewing and herbal craft.
Those were the lessons I looked forward to the most.
I stepped from the small covered patio onto the lawn. When I’d first moved in, the whole backyard had been grass, but I’d carved out an herb garden along much of the back fence, and now all manner of culinary, medicinal, and magical herbs flourished within its curving border. To the right of the herb bed a small stone path led to the section of the stream that ran through my property, and along the right side of the yard a kitchen potager boasted vegetables planted with an eye to aesthetics as well as function. A profusion of heirloom roses climbed up one side of the house, and potted annuals on the patio augmented what I thought of as a kind of personal magical farm.
A recent addition was the small gazebo in the middle of the yard. It was round, and the man who had constructed it urged me to paint it. But the exposed grain of the cedar had a natural energy that calmed me. That was important, because the gazebo also served as my sacred garden circle. No one suspected that the candles sometimes flickering within the quaint structure were anything but festive decoration. As long as I didn’t get too rambunctious, the gazebo allowed me to cast in the open whenever I wanted to, in all but the worst weather.
I checked on the vegetables, noting that a few tomatoes were plump and ready to eat. I grabbed my harvest basket and filled it with the heirloom fruits once called love apples, red peppers, onions, carrots, and a head of romaine lettuce. Finally, I added a few late strawberries that I spied peeking out from under their leaves.
The witch hazel I’d planted near the stream glowed with vigor. I’d encouraged its health by burying a moss agate at each of the compass points around its base on the night of a new moon. Despite my rather lackadaisical attitude toward magical paraphernalia, I intended to make an honest-to-goddess traditional wand from one of its branches. As I watched, dozens of multicolored dragonflies drifted in to perch there. It was my good luck that dragonflies—mosquito hawks—were drawn to me. They kept the ubiquitous mosquitoes in Savannah at bay.
The jasmine I’d planted at one end of the herb garden was a little different, however. It was itself a spell. I’d planted it with the intention of increasing—and clarifying—my dreams at night. When it seemed to struggle after the initial transplanting, I’d felt discouraged and asked Lucy’s advice. I was happy to see that the nettle and lavender tea had worked so quickly. The jasmine’s glossy leaves had perked to attention and tiny flower buds were beginning to form on the vine.
Belly full, Mungo trotted out and joined me. In an abbreviated gesture, I moved my hand in a kind of blessing, from the east to the south, west, north, and again to the east, murmuring, “May the elements of air, fire, water, and earth bring strength and grace to this jasmine and what it represents.”
“Katie Lightfoot, don’t tell me you’re talking to yourself again!”
Startled, I turned to find Margie Coopersmith approaching the four-foot fence that divided my backyard from hers.
Did I mention there had been issues?
Not that I didn’t love Margie to death. Honest, I did. However, she not only kept a protective eye on her single neighbor, she also had the uncanny ability to sneak up on me. I didn’t know how she managed it, given the baby on her hip and the four-year-old twins who constantly trailed on her heels.
I waved away her words with a smile. “Just talking to Mungo here. He’s a good listener.”
He dutifully grinned up at our neighbor.
“Can he come over and play?” Jonathan asked.
“Yeah, can Mungo come over and play?” his sister, Julia, joined in.
I looked down at my familiar. “What do you think? You want to go play with the JJs for a while?”
Yip!
“That’s what I thought.”
Familiar or no, Mungo had a puppy’s heart, and he liked playing with the towheaded twins. I lifted him over the fence, and the three of them ran off.
“Haven’t seen you around for few days,” Margie said, brushing the hair back from baby Bart’s forehead. It was blond like hers, and he had her brown eyes and round cheeks, too. “Redding’s leaving tonight on a big loop up north, and I wondered if you might want to have dinner next week.” Her husband was a long-haul truck driver who often had to leave his family for a week or more at a time.
“Sure,” I said, “I’d love to.” Margie’s culinary talents began at take-out pizza and ended at hot dogs and macaroni and cheese out of a box, but she was such a nice, normal person to be around that I couldn’t have cared less.
She blinked, consulting an internal calendar. “How about day after tomorrow?”
I nodded. “What can I bring?”
She gestured at the basket at my feet. “How ’bout something from your spread here? I swear, girl, I don’t know how you manage to grow so many good things. Pretty, too. I can’t even keep our grass green.”
It was true: Margie’s gardening ability was on par with her cooking. Her strength lay in being a terrific mother, a feat she managed to make look effortless despite her husband’s being gone so much.
“A salad, then?” I’d bring a few extra veggies for them to eat later. As much as she felt protective of me, I always felt compelled to feed her. “Are you guys planning to come to the Honeybee Halloween party?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world! Wait until you see what these darlin’s will be wearing!”
“What?” I asked, amused.
She wagged her finger and looked smug. “You’ll just have to wait and see. Those two”—she indicated the JJs, still running around the yard with Mungo and giggling—“are so excited about the party. ’Course, I don’t know how much they remember about trick-or-treating last year, but it was pretty miserable. Rained like the dickens. Ugh!” She hitched Bart up on her hip and raised her hand. “This one needs changing. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“You bet. Monday if not before.”
