by Nancy Warren
I was glad I hadn’t quibbled when she sighed with relief. “That’s very good news. I had no idea he had so many books.”
Oh, great.
I was getting ready to tell her I couldn’t pay a lot for his old books. If they were anything like the junk that was in plain view, they’d be tattered old paperbacks nobody would want. But while I was trying to find a tactful way to say so, she said, “I wouldn’t want any money for them. I simply want to get rid of them.”
Well, that was a relief. Now my biggest worry was getting rid of the junk once she’d passed it on to me. But at least I lived here, and I had the time.
“I’ve got to get back to Dublin. I’ve a busy practice, and this is the worst week to have to take time off.”
She sounded like her father dying was a real inconvenience. But I knew grief took people in different ways. Some shut down; some got very busy. Clearly Brenda O’Donnell was one of the latter types. She glanced around, and I followed her gaze. “Trash and treasure. Poor Da could never tell the difference. I know he’s got some expensive things, but how am I ever going to find them underneath all this rubbish?”
I had no idea. I was just glad I wasn’t the one tasked with sorting it all out. I wished her good luck and then, as a couple was coming forward to pay their respects, I slipped away. Dr. Milsom and Father O’Flanagan were standing by the window in deep discussion. Since Dr. Milsom, a cynical Englishman who’d left a busy London practice to come to this sleepy Irish village, didn’t strike me as a religious zealot, I wasn’t particularly surprised when I grew closer to hear them talking about fishing. I smiled and kept walking, and then a nervous-looking young guy with bright red hair said, “Excuse me, Father O’Flanagan. I’m not sure about that tree.”
The old priest stopped in the middle of his fishing story and turned. “What’s that?”
“I know ye asked me to cut back that yew at the edge of the graveyard, but I don’t think I can.”
The priest looked shocked and then suddenly annoyed. “You’re not going to spout some foolish, old superstition at me, are you?”
The young man shuffled his feet and looked abashed. “It’s not me, Father. It’s the neighbors.”
“I’m not asking you to cut down the tree. But we must prune it back. Its roots are disturbing the graves, and the branches reach out so far, they’re a danger to the church during a windstorm. We’re in the middle of a capital campaign to improve St. Patrick’s. It’s important maintenance.”
“I’m sorry, Father. It gives me a bad feeling.”
“I’m disappointed in you, Archie. I won’t pretend otherwise.”
He hung his head. “Yes, Father. Sorry, Father.”
As the young man walked away, Father O’Flanagan turned back to Andrew Milsom. “The graveyard is in decay, and I’ve got my hands full trying to raise money to restore it and the old church tower without my own parishioners refusing to lift a finger.” He shook his head. “In this day and age, wouldn’t you think people would have more sense than to believe in witches and ancient curses?”
Chapter 2
I thought Father O’Flanagan might be quite surprised if he learned that two witches were at the wake even now. I moved out of earshot, knowing I’d be asking Kathleen what this curse was all about and how it related to a tree bordering the local graveyard.
All around me I heard the condolences and the oft-repeated phrase, “I’m so sorry about your dad.”
I wondered where my own dad was sometimes. Dead, probably. He’d been unable to cope with the fact that his wife was a witch, and he’d left us when I was twelve and began to come into my power. I hadn’t seen him since.
My eyes drifted back to the casket, and I was thrown back in time to my mother dying of cancer. I’d begged her to save herself, but this woman who could make the house tidy itself and light my birthday candles without the aid of a match said she couldn’t. Mother had smiled and said Fate was stronger than anyone.
Sometimes I still wanted to kick Fate where it hurt, as it had done to me.
Rosie now stood beside her husband, Sean Higgins, both studiously avoiding me. I did feel guilty, though I really didn’t know why I should. I had, in trying to find a man’s killer, revealed that Rosie was cheating on her husband, the butcher. Neither of them had killed the man, but at the time, I hadn’t known that.
Sean Higgins happened to catch my eye, and his whole face hardened before he deliberately looked away. I’d caught a murderer, but that didn’t matter to him. I’d made a fool of him in a small town where he’d been an important figure. However, in reality, it wasn’t me who’d made a fool of him; it was his wife. It was no consolation that I could see he treated her with the same fury and contempt he was sending my way.
Declan O’Connor, the baker, had been intimate with not only Rosie Higgins but also Karen Tate, a single woman who owned a secondhand store called Granny’s Drawers.
Karen was close to my age and also single. It had seemed like we might become friends, but I’d exposed her secret affair with the baker as well—and our promising friendship had died on the vine. I sure knew how to make friends.
Would I have been better to have stayed out of it? I sometimes thought that’s how some of the people in the small town of Ballydehag felt. Now that Declan O’Connor was gone, O’Connor’s Bread and Buns sat shuttered and forlorn, and all our bread came pre-wrapped from Finnegan’s Grocery Store.
I’d tried so hard to fit in. All my life, I’d been different. Being a witch pretty much ensures that will happen. But coming here, I’d thought I was getting a new start. Sure, my American accent made me stick out, but I’d been so hopeful that I could live a normal life. It didn’t seem like that was going to happen.
To my surprise, Karen Tate came over to where I was standing. She nodded toward the open casket in the middle of the living room. “Takes some getting used to, I imagine, if it’s not part of your culture.”
I was so grateful to have someone appreciate how strange this was. “I’ve never partied with a dead guy before.”
She laughed. “You’ll get used to it.” I did not think that was ever going to happen.
Karen looked awkward for a moment and then said, “We talked about getting together for dinner, but somehow it never happened.”
There wasn’t any somehow about it. After I’d exposed her affair to everyone in town, I’d not been a bit surprised that I wasn’t showered with invitations from her or anyone else. If it weren’t for Kathleen, the only other witch in town, and the local vampires who met weekly in my shop for their late-night book club, I wouldn’t have any social life at all.
Karen continued, with false breeziness, “It’s just been so busy.”
She ran a secondhand store in a small village in Ireland, she was single with no children, and I didn’t even think she had pets. How busy could she be? But I nodded as though we were a couple of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. “I know. I don’t know where the time goes.”
“I tell you what, why don’t we go to the pub for dinner? I don’t know about you, but I get sick of cooking for myself.”
I was delighted to have someone to go to the pub with. If she was extending an olive branch, I was grabbing onto the other end with both hands. “Absolutely. I’d love to.”
She glanced over at Brenda O’Donnell, who had a glassy-eyed look, as she accepted condolences from Giles Murray, the town photographer, and his girlfriend, Beatrice. “Shall we ask Brenda to join us?”
What a goodhearted woman she was. I nodded enthusiastically. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must be for Brenda. “Tonight?”
“Not tonight. It’s customary to sit with the body until the funeral tomorrow.”
“I didn’t know that.” What a horrible thing to have to do. “And she probably won’t want to come out for dinner the day she buries her dad. Shall we try for the next day?”
She nodded. “I’ll see what Brenda says.”
When she went toward Brenda, Kate O�
��Leary took her place. Mrs. O’Leary was a local schoolteacher and one of my best customers. We chatted about books we were looking forward to, including the posthumous release of Bartholomew Branson’s last thriller. She was dragged away by her husband, and I looked around for another friendly face.
Andrew Milsom left Father O’Flanagan. I watched him walk up to the open casket and glance in. He said a few words to the dead man, and then he went up to Brenda and they chatted for a few minutes. He went to the sideboard where the drinks were set up and poured himself a whiskey. Drink in hand, he glanced around the room and spotted me and walked over to where I was standing.
“What do you think of the Irish wake?” he asked me. Since he was English, not Irish, it must be as peculiar to him as it was to me. Though, being a doctor, he was presumably more accustomed to dead people. He was also the local coroner and pathologist.
“I find it unnerving.”
He chuckled. “It is that. But the Irish don’t pretend that death happens somewhere else. They embrace it. I suppose we could all learn something from that attitude.”
No doubt he was right, but there had to be a happy medium.
Karen Tate came over then and greeted Andrew Milsom, and the three of us made small talk until he was hailed by an older couple who said, “Now, Andrew, you must settle an argument between us.”
He excused himself and went to them. Karen said, “I don’t think Brenda’s up for it. Shall we just go ourselves tonight then?”
I didn’t have to consult my social calendar. I knew I was free. “That sounds great. Seven?”
“I’ll see you there.”
“Great.” We stood there for another awkward moment. I didn’t know what to say, and she didn’t seem to either. I hoped we made out better over dinner. Finally, she said, “I’ll see if they need my help in the kitchen,” and made her escape.
I’d been fighting a feeling of heaviness ever since I came into this house. No doubt it was the dead man lying in the living room and I was too sensitive. I felt the urge to get out as quickly as I could. I had made my condolences to his daughter. Surely I could go.
Kathleen McGinnis had been making the rounds of the room and now came over to me. “You’ve got a funny look on your face. Are you feeling all right?”
I pulled her out of the main living room and into the hallway. “I’m not big on this partying with the dead guy thing,” I told her in a low voice. “Isn’t it giving you a really creepy feeling?”
She seemed to think about it for a minute. “It’s probably because you’re not Irish. We do this all the time, Quinn. You’ll have to get used to it. I don’t feel any more dark than on any other sad occasion. Billy lived a good life. It was his time. The whole idea of a wake is to celebrate a life and send the soul on its way.”
“Are you sure he went peacefully? Because something doesn’t feel right to me.”
She lowered her voice even more and said sternly, “Don’t you be causing trouble, Quinn Callahan. He had a good life, and he died in his own bed with his loved ones around him. We should all be so lucky. If you’re being plagued by dark thoughts, no doubt it’s your own guilty conscience causing them.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Could she be right? The fact that I had messed with death and dragged my ex-husband back, even only for a couple of months, weighed heavy on my conscience. I shouldn’t have done it, and I’d been punished. Maybe every time death was close, I would get kicked in the gut. I put a hand to my stomach. “I think I’ll leave soon. I don’t feel so good.”
“Well, give it a few more minutes. It would look very rude if you left so quickly.”
I asked her where the bathroom was. Maybe if I splashed some cold water on my face and tried to pull myself together, I could manage half an hour of being polite to people I barely knew and pretend not to notice the open coffin.
“The family bathroom’s up the stairs at the end of the hall.”
I walked up the stairs. The banister was beautiful. Oak or mahogany or some very nice, rich wood. It could use a good polishing, and the carpet was worn and frayed. I was no home renovator, but I felt that this lovely old home could be very grand again given half a chance. I got to the top of the stairs and went down the hall. The doors on either side were closed, bedrooms, presumably.
There was no one up here but me, as far as I knew, but I had that itchy feeling between my shoulders as though eyes were watching me. I was conscious of an urge to turn and run back down where there were other people. I had to stop it. I found the bathroom and shut myself in. It was big and old-fashioned. More dated even than the one in my cottage. The toilet had an old cistern above it, and you pulled the chain to flush. I washed my hands and glanced up into the mirror.
But it wasn’t my own face I saw. A terrifying old woman stared back at me. She had scraggly gray hair, intense dark eyes and a sunken mouth. The image was wrinkled and faded like a sepia photograph, which somehow made it more scary. But while the image might be faded, the anger I felt was strong and clear as though the image had reached out and clutched my heart and was squeezing it in a scrawny claw. I gasped and jumped back and banged into the door.
I had to get out of here. I opened the door and nearly crashed into Tara, the young woman who ran the coffee shop, Cork Coffee Company. She took one look at me and put her hand on my shoulder. “Quinn, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I laughed, hysterically and weakly. “No. Just my face reflected in the mirror. I need to get more sleep.”
She nodded her head. “I know how you feel. I could use a couple of weeks at the beach with my feet up and a good book.”
I nodded.
She went in, and I waited outside the door for a scream. But it never came. Maybe she hadn’t seen the scary face in the mirror. Maybe hag face had only appeared to me. Oh, lucky me.
I walked back downstairs, feeling shaken. This house was seriously haunted.
I looked for Kathleen to tell her I’d find my own way back to town. I saw her standing beside an old woman who was watching Brenda with such an expression of pride and affection that I assumed it was her mother. But it couldn’t be, because her mother had died some time ago. Presumably that was why the house was such a mess, since the father had been living here all by himself before he passed away.
The woman was probably eighty, but she wasn’t going gently into that dark night. She was fighting old age every inch of the way. She stood straight and tall, her white hair was styled, and while her black dress and jacket weren’t new, they were stylish. The only concession I could see to her age was the flat shoes she wore. I bet she’d worn heels when she was young and hated to give up and go into the flat ones. Still, it suggested she was sensible in that she put away her vanity in favor of safety.
I managed to catch Kathleen’s eye, but instead of coming my way, she beckoned me over. I knew the ghost couldn’t hurt me, probably. I’d make nice for a few more minutes and then tell Kathleen my intuition was telling me to get out of here.
As I went up and said hello to the woman, she looked at me with her head to one side. “I never taught you, did I?”
Ah. Not mother but proud teacher. That made sense. Brenda would have been any teacher’s pet, I imagined, given how well she’d done in life.
Kathleen said, “This is Quinn Callahan. She’s only recently moved here. Quinn, this is Bridget Sullivan. She was one of my favorite teachers.”
Bridget Sullivan took my hand in hers. “Quinn. Of course. You run the bookshop. I’ve heard all about you, and I’ve been meaning to come in and have a good browse. Lucinda kept the shop well stocked with a mixture of high- and lowbrow titles. I hope you do the same.”
“I try to follow Lucinda’s principles. Please come by. I’ll wager my tea is better than hers.”
“My eyes aren’t what they used to be. But I do still love to read. I don’t suppose you get any large-print books in?”
“I have a few. But I could always bring in
something specially for you if you want me to.”
I was perfectly aware that she could order anything online, or with e-readers now, she could set the font as large as she needed to. Still, bookstores like mine kept going by offering personal service. At least that was my theory. If there was a book she specially wanted, I would get it for her.
“Did you teach Brenda?” I asked her.
And that started her off nicely. “Oh, yes. I taught English, you know, and she was always a bright, intelligent girl. With such a promising future.” And then her eyes clouded over. “It wasn’t easy for her. But she got there in the end. Started out at Cork University and then got all the way to the School of Law in Trinity College, Dublin.” She said the words as though reading them from Brenda’s degree. “Oh, yes, I’m very proud.”
I wondered if perhaps money had been the stumbling block. But I didn’t like to ask. Why else would a woman as clearly intelligent as Brenda have almost not made it?
The woman glanced around. “I taught most of the younger ones in this room. Nearly forty years I taught school here.”
“That’s a lot of years. And a lot of students. Do you remember all of them?”
She chuckled, and it was a husky sound. “I remember more than they wish I did for the most part. I can’t always remember everyone’s name now, but most of them. And the outstanding ones like Brenda I’ll never forget.”
As though she knew we were talking about her, Brenda looked over and smiled. And there was such a strong affection between these two women, I almost wished I’d gone to school here. Not that I’d had a bad time in school, but I was different, and being different in high school is social death.
Bridget Sullivan was hailed by another of her students, no doubt, and excused herself, and I quickly told Kathleen about the ghost in the mirror.
“That’ll only be Billy,” she said in a soothing voice. “He’s likely not passed all the way over yet. He always enjoyed a party, but he’ll be gone in the morning, I’m certain.”
I lowered my voice. “It wasn’t Billy. It was an old woman, and she didn’t look friendly.”
