by Tonya Kappes
We worked very hard at keeping our real life on the down low and I wasn’t about to let one guy ruin it for us. Auntie Meme had been the target of many witch hunts in her life and she said she was too old to go through another one.
“Okay, I’ll give you Abram.” The memory was still too fresh in my mind. “But we must move on. The season has changed, the old have died, and it’s our time of the year for renewal.” I recited the words of a seasonal spell. “So we are all we have and we need to help each other out.”
“When did you get all high and witchy?” Lilith glared at me and ripped the hat off of her head.
“Really?” I tilted my head to the side. “I’m trying to keep the peace and keep our family secret safe.”
Mom lifted her chin and took a couple of deep breaths as if she were trying to keep from crying.
“Fine.” Lilith’s words stuck like a sword. “I’ll help but I won’t dress up.”
“Yes you will.” Auntie dragged her hand down her body. “But I’m going to be the big guy.”
I tried not to laugh when a Santa outfit appeared on her body. Her natural rosy cheeks and short red hair reminded me of the children’s Christmas cartoon Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. She looked like the young Kris Kringle.
“What?” She cocked a brow.
“Okay, Mom.” Lilith had completely decided to be a sexy elf, giving me sister envy. “What can we do?”
“I really want to try to put up a Christmas tree in all of the rooms, but by hand, and I don’t mean wave of the hand.” At least Mom continued to stay true to her word.
It would be so much easier to wave a hand, snap a finger, wrinkle a nose to do dishes, make a bed, sweep the floor, but Mom has always insisted we did the mortal thing. She took pride in fitting and blending in. Me. . .not so much. What was the point of having these great talents and not using them?
I did use them at SKUL when I could. Unfortunately, unlike what mortals thought, we couldn’t just get ourselves out of any situation with a wink of an eye. That’s the downside. It depended on the situation and that was why we had familiars, to help us out in tight situations.
“All the trees are in boxes in the family room,” Mom called over her shoulder and we followed her down the hall. “I have each box labeled for each room.”
The boxes were stacked high to the ceiling.
“Where did you get all of these trees?” I asked.
“Maybe I did a teeny-tiny bit of magic.” Her fingers mocked the teeny-tiny she was talking about. “I’m the mom. You can’t use magic. Only use creativity the mortal way.”
Lilith and I rolled our eyes before we each took a box. Instead of dragging a box upstairs, since Mom wouldn’t let me snap it up to my room, I decided to do the tree in the family room.
“How did the diner go today?” I asked Auntie as she dragged her finger down the boxes.
“Pleased to say that Gladys’s carrot cakes sold out.” She glanced over her shoulder, and then tapped the box, letting it float out of the pile and into the entryway.
“You are brave.” I smiled. “Not only decorating the tree the tourists are going to see first, but using a little magic.” I winked.
“Shhh.” She returned the grin.
Auntie Meme and I had a special bond. She was my guardian for my Life’s Journey, which wasn’t a surprise to me since we’d been close all of my life. Even as a child when Mom forbid her to help me with any chores. Where Mom made me do them as a mortal, Auntie Meme would appear and wiggle her nose or give a special wink to help me out. She was a lot of fun.
“I’m not going to try to sugar coat it, her cakes were a big hit,” Auntie said.
“You put the spell on them.” I recalled the little stunt she pulled when Mrs. Hubbard and I had gone to refill the condiments on the tables.
“I didn’t put a spell on them, I made them using my own cooking techniques.” She waved her hand at the box and toward the entryway, allowing it to float the path, of which I was in the way. When the box passed me, an elf hat appeared on my head. Auntie Meme giggled.
“You and I both know what that means.” I opened the box and was happy to see Mom had picked a snowman theme for the family room. I loved a good snowman.
There was a knock on the front door. Auntie Meme and I looked at each other. We weren’t expecting company. We never expected company. She shrugged, we snapped our fingers and had the rooms completely decorated before she opened the door.
“Mick,” Auntie Meme put her hands together in delight. “Come on in.”
Mick? My mind reeled as to why he was there.
“Ho, ho, ho.” Joy bubbled in Mick’s voice. “Merry Christmas, Santa. Am I on the nice list or naughty?”
“We will see about that. Happy Thanksgiving.” Auntie Meme pulled the door wide open.
“It’s not quite Thanksgiving yet, but by the looks of it, you are just skipping it and going right on into Christmas,” he said with amusement and followed up with a sexy, deep laugh.
I walked into the entryway to stop him from coming deeper into the house.
“Mick.” I planted a smile on my face, but my insides were dying. He was already immune to any sort of spell because he was part of my Life’s Journey.
Actually, a spell I tried on him from me losing a friendly game of Truth or Spell between me and Lilith at The Derby, a neighborhood bar which sounded really good about now, had gone wrong. I was supposed to put a temporary cat spell on Mick when it bounced off of him and hit the wrong fellow. That’s when I knew my Life’s Journey had to do with Mick Jasper, only I didn’t know it was with SKUL until a few days later. Here we were today.
He was very good looking and pretty damn hot, but at a distance. I couldn’t put my heritage at risk for a fling with a mortal, not that he thought of me in that way.
“Book club?” He pointed to my head where I’d forgotten about the elf hat.
I dragged it off my head. “No book club tonight. Mom has entered the house into the Belgravia Court Historic Homes Christmas Tour.”
Auntie Meme had a group of witch friends called the Spell Circle. They got together and created new spells, or even just did cleansing spells in full witch regalia: pointy toe heeled boots, black dresses, hats and all. Mick always had the perfect timing of showing up when the Spell Circle was meeting and in order to explain their dress code, I lied and said it was her book club and they dressed to align with the book’s theme because he didn’t need to know who we really were.
“Oh, I thought you might be reading The Night Before Christmas.” He laughed and rolled back on his heels. “Hey, Maggie, can I talk to you?”
“Sure,” I moved past Auntie Meme and her prying smile, grabbing him by the elbow and dragging him out as fast as I could onto the front porch.
The nip in the late afternoon air tickled across my collar bones and I wished I had on a light jacket. October weather in Kentucky was a bit chilly in the mornings and nights but a bit warmer in the afternoon. It was a tad bit early for the breeze to hold a chill, which told me cold weather was coming and coming fast.
An twinge in my soul told me that we were being watched through Mrs. Hubbard’s binoculars, so I positioned us behind one of the pillars on our front porch.
“I wanted to make sure you knew that I didn’t kill those girls.” The corners of Mick’s eyes dropped.
“I know you didn’t.” Well, I didn’t know, but I had a hunch. “It really doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Sure it does.” Mick put his warm hand on my arm. He peeled off his black leather coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. “You’re cold.”
“Thanks.” I pulled the edges of the collar closer and kept it fisted. “I’m going to help out if Burt will let me.”
“No, I mean, I don’t want you,” he touched the front of his jacket on my chest, “to think I did this.”
My stomach twitched.
“I don’t date any and every girl that comes my way.” He stepped back and d
own a step. He cocked his right foot on the top step and leaned his forearm down on his thigh. He had on a pair of khaki pants and a blue-and-white-striped, long-sleeved polo with a pair of Sperry loafers. A typical southern outfit for a Kentucky man on a fall day. “I’m very selective about who knows me and who I date. They didn’t even know what I do for a living.”
“Okay.” Inside I cringed because I couldn’t come up with a better word than okay.
He straightened up when a group of people walked down the courtyard on Belgravia Court and turned right on St. James Street heading toward Central Park where the annual St. James Art Festival was in full swing.
“They must be going to the festival.” I didn’t recognize the group, which meant they didn’t live on Belgravia Court and were probably just looking around at our beautiful slice of heaven.
“I’m headed that way to see an old high school friend,” he said.
Mrs. Hubbard’s front door opened and King came charging out of the house yipping and yapping at the tourists walking on the other side of the black wrought iron fence on the side of Mrs. Hubbard’s house.
It was an ornamental fence that gave Belgravia Court a border between us and the outside walkway of St. James Street.
“Hi, Maggie,” Mrs. Hubbard called. There was a young man standing next to her. “This is my nephew visiting from New York. He’s a fancy art dealer.”
I squeezed a smile on my face and waved.
“I was telling him about the diner and he’s going to meet me there tomorrow for lunch.” Pride rolled across her face with each bounce she made on the balls of her feet.
I nodded again with the same stupid grin on my face. Auntie Meme was going to love this.
“Say,” Mick rubbed his hands together and turned my attention back to him. “Want to walk down with me?”
“Right now?” I asked.
“Yeah.” His blue eyes tugged at my heart.
“So we can discuss the case?” I asked.
“No. Just us going to look at the art,” he said. “And to meet up with my friend.”
“Sure.” My heart raced under his jacket. I took it off my shoulders to keep my trembling hands busy. I had no idea what was going on with me because no man had ever made me feel this way and it was new to me. I handed him his coat. “Let me get my coat.”
He stepped up on the step as if he were going to follow me. I opened the door.
“I’ll be right back.” I turned to him and held up a finger.
I leaned up against the shut door and closed my eyes trying to let the feeling pass.
“Ummhmmmm,” Auntie Meme hummed. “Yep. Your Life’s Journey is going to get you in trouble in more ways than one.”
I opened my eyes and looked at her. I hesitated, torn by conflicting emotions.
Chapter Four
Mick and I followed right behind the crowd on the sidewalk of St. James Street as we made our way down to the festival with the leaves crunching under our feet. The sun was going down and the brisk air nipped at the top of my ankle boots where my skin was exposed from my ankle jeans. I’d put a green waist-length cloak around my shoulders over my black turtleneck, which kept most of the breeze off of me.
The leaves on the hundred-year-old trees were turning into a canopy of yellows, oranges, and light greens. It was truly a beautiful sight and I wasn’t just talking about Mick.
“This thing gets bigger every year.” Mick cautiously looked around the street and into the park where there were rows and rows of white tents next to each other.
One after the other displaying their fine art to contribute to the festival.
“There does seem to be a lot of people here.” I lifted my hand and pressed on the red jewel necklace dangling from my neck that was tucked under my shirt.
The way things were going, I couldn’t be too cautious around Mick if someone was trying to set him up or if he really had killed those women.
We moseyed from tent to tent, trying to get a look at what everyone had to sell. Most of the items were crafted in Kentucky. There were many booths with canvas paintings of Churchill Downs, Keeneland, Kentucky basketball, along with handmade jewelry, shirts, and scarves.
I lingered a little too long at the homemade soap tent because when I turned around Mick was nowhere to be found and looking for him in this crowd would be virtually impossible. At least I thought that until my phone’s text alert rang from my back pocket. Mick had made his way over to the amphitheater where the headliners for the festival were located.
I took my time getting over there so I wouldn’t seem so eager to see him. If he was a killer, he was a mighty fine looking one and I didn’t mind the staring eyes of the women as we’d walked by and their stare ended on me.
Unfortunately, when I walked up on the stage of the amphitheater, he was in the arms of another woman. They were embraced in a more than friendly sort of way and I couldn’t tell from her long brown ponytail what she looked like because her face was buried against Mick’s chest. Chiseled chest. And the only reason I knew that was because I’d been to his apartment before when he’d changed shirts.
She reminded me of a typical artist with a paint brush stuck through the band holding up her ponytail and her bohemian dress that flowed around her. They were locked in their hug in front of the exhibit for the famous painter, Angela Fritz, who was the headliner of the festival. I’d heard at our last Belgravia Court meeting that the St. James Art Festival committee had a hard time getting her to come because her schedule was full. Apparently the old woman had a lot of money because she lived in Paris, as in France not Kentucky, for half of the year. Much of that time was spent as a recluse. She didn’t do many interviews and was always able to avoid the paparazzi. In an interview she’d done for the festival, I read that she claimed her art spoke for itself and her image shouldn’t reflect that, which was why her contract was written that she was not to be photographed. Which in today’s society was probably pretty hard with cell phones and security cameras planted everywhere.
“Maggie,” Mick said as he and the amazingly beautiful brown-haired woman parted.
She was intimidatingly gorgeous and she didn’t need hair to enhance her features. Her eyes were slightly shaped in cat eyes and lined perfectly. Lilith would’ve loved to compare notes with this woman since Lilith worked for Mystic Couture, a very famous and popular makeup line.
“Don’t tell me.” The woman pointed to my face.
Did I know her? She was smiling so big that it was contagious. She snapped, pointed, and snapped again. I couldn’t help but be a little envious of the lipstick mark she’d put on Mick.
“Jockey Red. Mystic Couture.” She folded her arms proudly across her more than ample breasts, slightly tucking in the wavy dress to show off her petite figure. There was a bit of pride on her face.
“How did you know?” I asked in a little bit of a shock when she named my favorite color of lipstick that I always wore and never strayed from. I should’ve known someone who seemed as sophisticated as her would know Mystic Couture.
“It’s my favorite. But today I’m wearing Pumpkin Ginger from Mystic Couture because they’d left me a package in my suite at the hotel.” She untangled her arms and held her thin hand toward me. “I’m Angela Fritz.”
Apparently not an old woman. I had to work really hard to not have my mouth gape open.
“Where are my manners?” Mick shook his head like he had to shake off the lipstick marks on his cheeks. “Angela, this is my friend, Maggie.” He turned to me and pointed to the infamous Fritz painting called The Ville. “That is the painting which made her famous.”
“Friend?” Lightly we shook hands while she inspected me. “Why, Mick Jasper, have you been keeping something from little ole me?”
“Never, my love.” He wrapped her in his arms, pulling her hand from mine and giving her another big bear hug.
She giggled in delight and I tried not to puke on her right there. I desperately wanted her to look a tad b
it ugly or even a little smudge on the toe of her fancy black shoes would’ve helped. But Angela Fritz was almost as perfect as an eighty degree, no humidity summer day in the bluegrass state.
“We are just friends. In fact, Maggie lives on Belgravia Court.” His brows wiggled.
“Oh my gawd!” Her southern drawl dripped off her words. “Remember how we used to say we were going to live there, but we could never afford it.”
“I could never afford it and still can’t. You on the other hand.” Mick sucked in a deep breath. “Damn, it’s so good to see you.”
“Well, well, well.” A shifty male’s voice chimed in.
He stood about six-foot-three, his head bald from hair, but not from a complete tattoo that looked like a cowboy hat. Even though it was chilly out, this man didn’t seem to mind as his big, huge, muscled arms burst out of the homemade sleeveless white shirt that was so tight, I could make out the outline of his pecs. The tattoo sleeves left not even a speck of skin on his arms bare, instead they were colored up with bucking horses, lassos, cowboy boots and even a big-boobied woman with only a cowboy hat on her long flowing locks. He was stocky and big.
“I knew if I came down here, I’d find you two just like I did back in school. Always hanging out in the amphitheater trying to hide a forty-ouncer.” He hooked his thumbs on the belt loops of his skin tight blue jeans and rocked back on the heels of his authentic cowboy boots.
“Big Stevenson.” Angela quickly dumped Mick and held her arms out to the man. She put her hand flat on his chest and instead of a kiss on the cheek, she planted a kiss right on Big’s lips.
There was a bit of uncomfortable silence between Mick and me as we tried not to look, but it was difficult. There was definitely some chemistry between Big and Angela. Mick shifted uneasily on his feet from side-to-side.
