by Dianna Love
“Did you take the job?” There was no way his uncle Jordan was going to hear of him leaving the Locust Grove police department.
“Not yet.”
“Did you tell Jordan?”
“Nope. No need to just yet.”
Now who was being aloof?
“Are you really thinking about it?”
“What if I am?” His blue eyes narrowed speculatively. “I’m a big boy.”
Chapter Three
Last night before Oscar left, he gave me directions to Whispering Falls. They didn’t seem particularly hard to follow. And since the flea market was only open on the weekends, and my lab had burnt down, and I didn’t have anything to do with myself, I jumped in the Green Machine, my two-toned green ’88 El Camino and headed toward Whispering Falls.
I’d never been this far out of Locust Grove. The roads twisted and wound around bends, making me drive much slower than I and the Green Machine were used to.
Oscar was right. About thirty minutes of swerves and curves, a clearing popped up as if it had magically appeared.
I pulled over to the side of the road to get a better view of the town. A calmness came over me, something familiar, like I’d been there before.
Nah. I shook the notion out of my head. This didn’t look like a place that was forgettable.
“Welcome to Whispering Falls, A Charming Village,” read the old beat-up wooden sign. I smiled. It did have a ring to it.
Mewl, mewl. Mr. Prince Charming crawled from underneath the seat and jumped next to me.
“What are you doing here?” I picked him up, looked him square in the eyes, and warned him, “You are going to have to stay in the car.”
But I knew better. Many times I’d tried to sneak out of the house over the past fifteen years, but Mr. Prince Charming always either followed me or mysteriously showed up.
The old Green Machine crept down the main street into Whispering Falls. Almost everyone on the sidewalks took time to stop what they were doing and wave at me. The town was just like Oscar described it.
It was as though someone came in and carved the town into the side of a mountain. The moss covered cottage shops were nestled deep in the woods, and had the most beautiful entrances I’d ever seen.
Each shop had a colorful awning, displaying its name over the top of the ornamental gated doors. It had a magical feel.
Mr. Prince Charming’s paws were planted on the windowsill, and he stared out the window as if he knew this was a special place.
I pulled the Green Machine into the parking space in front of Mystic Lights, the shop Isadora Solstice owned. I couldn’t wait to see what was inside. The outside was definitely mystic. The hunter green wood door was encased in the most beautiful stone archway. The heavy black metal door handles added to the old world charm.
“You stay here,” I told Mr. Prince Charming as if he understood me. I rolled the windows down a little to let some air in, not like I was going to be in there for a long period of time, but just in case.
With my purse strapped across my chest, I grabbed the cardboard box of homeopathic remedies from the bed of the El Camino and walked up the stone steps. I turned around to make sure the cat was okay, and he seemed to have found a nice sunny spot on the dash to curl up and nap.
“Excuse me.” A petite round woman used her elbow to push me out of her way, and then opened the door. She looked back at me, gesturing with her stubby fingers. She snarled, “Well, are you coming in or just going to stand there in everyone’s way?”
“I. . .yes. Thank you.” Tightly, I held onto the box as though it was my comfort and followed the woman inside. If my intuition was right, and generally it was, she was not a happy soul.
I decided there was no way she could be a member of the Whispering Falls village. She certainly wasn’t friendly. This woman was short and her yellow turban didn’t look great perched on top of her short bleach blond hair. The green and purple cloak perfectly covered what seemed to be a plump-sized woman.
“Izzy, you have company!” The woman ran her eyes up and down, taking in every inch of me. “And she’s not from here!”
“I’ll be right out,” Isadora hollered from the back of the building.
I smiled politely at the woman and sat my box of remedies on the glass counter. With my hands in my pocket, I walked around to see exactly what Isadora’s shop sold.
“Are you from another spiritual village?” There was a pensive shimmer in the shadows of her eyes.
“A spiritual what?” I laughed. The only spiritual anything I ever got was going to church with Oscar and Uncle Jordan and from Darla’s little tidbits of Karma wisdom.
“Um, hmm. I didn’t think so,” she replied with a heavy sigh and walked into the other room.
I stood in the middle of some kind of light shop. Above our heads were all sorts of hanging lights with all sorts of crazy shade designs. Some with stained glass, some with globes, but mostly chandelier type. I wondered if most of the houses in Whispering Falls had these types of decorative lights.
I noticed a few snow globes in a glass case, but saw nothing to do with pharmaceuticals or remedies. They weren’t like any snow globes I’d seen before. A few were sparkly and the water was black, not clear like most of the snow globes I had seen. There was one snow globe that lit up every time I tilted my head to the side. I leaned in closer, to get a better look.
Ah! I jumped when a face appeared.
“Boo!” The globe radiated purple with yellow lines rotating around like there was static in it and then went black.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and then opened them. It had to be one of those fancy musical snow globes with a Halloween theme.
“Do you think I like being cooped up in here?” a voice came out of nowhere.
I pinched myself. I had to be in the middle of a nightmare. “Ouch.” I shook my arm in the air to shake off the sting. I looked into the globe because it appeared to be dark again.
“Still here.” A woman’s face appeared. She threw her head back and cackled. Her turban fell off. Did everyone in Whispering Falls wear a turban? I rolled up on my toes to see where it went. Her face appeared, taking up the entire globe, making it hard for me to see. “What? What are you looking at?”
“I. . .I,” I scratched my head. If this wasn’t a nightmare, what was it? I looked around Mystic Lights. The fake blonde was nowhere to be found. I looked at the round glass ball and asked, “Who are you? What are you?”
“I’m Madame Torres, voice to the spirits. Who do you seek? Or shall I say who seeks you?” She continued to babble more and more. I continued to stare, not able to wrap my head around what I was hearing.
“This is not happening to me,” I repeated over and over, though my intuition told me it was. “This is not happening to me.” The more I repeated it, the brighter the globe got.
“Silence!” she screamed, causing her head to spin around and around. “Whom do you seek, June?”
“No one!” I shook my head. Madame Torres was demanding. “I seek no one. How do you know my name?”
“A devil’s curse seeks to destroy you. Lift us, lift us up to the light and guide June through this stormy life.” Her globe illuminated a bright purple and in a flash went to black like when I found it.
“No, no. Don’t you wish any evil spirits on me!” I picked up the globe and shook it.
“What are you doing?” The mean woman approached. She stood stiff, her muscles tensed. The blood seemed to have drained from her face. “Did you see something?”
“I. . .” I looked at the snow globe again, but nothing was there. I put it back in its place. Obviously my mind was playing tricks on me.
“Ah, welcome to my little part of the world, June.” Isadora walked out a door in the back of the shop and held her long skinny hands out. This time they weren’t covered in gloves. She had a huge ring on her middle finger that looked like a sleeping cat.
She must’ve noticed me staring at it.
; “Isn’t it fabulous?” With her long fingernail, she flicked the cat’s back open to reveal a tiny mouse with diamond eyes. “I did notice you had a cat.”
“Yes. Mr. Prince Charming.” I tried to glance out the door, but couldn’t see the Green Machine from here. My eyes wandered back to the snow globe. A light flickered.
Mewl, mewl. Suddenly Mr. Prince Charming was doing figure eights around my ankles.
“You brought him with you.” Isadora clasped her hands together, bent down, and picked him up.
“Oh, no you don’t want to do that,” I warned her. “He doesn’t like to be picked up by anyone but me…” and apparently her. He was purring so loud, I was sure the woman in the snow globe could hear him.
“I’m so sorry. I left him in the car.” I took him from her, and he bounced out of my arms. “Mr. Prince Charming, how did you get out?”
“He’s fine. We love cats, don’t we, Ann?” Isadora looked over at the other woman. Ann was bent over rubbing her back.
“You do,” Ann snarled. She made her way behind the counter, sat down on a stool, and continued to knead her back with her fist.
Isadora turned to me and tried to disguise her annoyance. “Were you looking at my crystal, er, snow globes?” She pointed to the glass case.
“I was. I, ah, have never seen snow globes like that.” The one that I had seen the face in was glowing. “They sure do make them fancy now. Sort of like those crazy eight balls.”
“Well, they are special. They work off of people’s. . .um. . .energy.” She chose her words carefully. “Now then, let’s go in the back and take a look at your homeopathic cures. Ann, do you think you can do your job and watch the shop?”
Ann’s eyes narrowed, and she snipped, “Of course I can.”
I took the box off the counter.
Isadora spun on her black, laced-up, pointy-toed, high-heeled boots and walked to the back of the shop. Mr. Prince Charming and I followed her. Her wavy blond hair swung side to side along her shoulder blades in step with her long black A-line skirt.
“Don’t mind her.” Isadora pointed toward the front of the shop, referring to Ann. “She only works here as a favor. She couldn’t keep a job in Whispering Falls for the life of her. Now it’s my turn to put up with her and her gimpy back.”
My brows lifted in amusement. I didn’t know Ann, or Isadora for that matter, and none of it was my business.
“I think Oscar might have misled you about what I really do.” I set the cardboard box on her desk and opened it up. I took out the prettiest bottle I had.
Gently I held the lime green glass bottle with the tiny lizard corked on top. The glass had a hint of swirly gold throughout the bottle.
“Stunning,” Isadora gasped, taking the bottle. She opened it up and smelled the contents.
“I. . .um. . .don’t have cures, just homeopathic remedies that might or might not help what ails you,” I stuttered. “No. . .um. . .not cures.” Darla’s recipes were never potent.
Her long lashes cast a dark shadow on her cheeks. With her eyes still closed, she wrapped her long thin hands around the delicate bottle, and drew in a long, deep breath. She smiled.
“We would love for you to open a shop here.” Her eyes popped open and she sat the bottle on the desk. She walked around the desk and sat down. Slowly she opened the drawer and pulled out a packet of papers. “We will need you to fill this application for the council. But don’t worry. You are a shoo-in.”
Mr. Prince Charming jumped into her lap and dragged his tail along her pointy nose and down her chin. I wasn’t sure, but he looked like he was grinning.
“Oh, now I know we have something backwards.” Open a shop? Where did that come from? I stood up and put the bottle back in the box. Talking snow globes, a grinning cat, open a shop. . .something definitely wasn’t right.
“What? Have I offended you?” She stood up after the cat jumped out of her lap.
“You don’t know anything about me. You don’t have any idea what I do or even the homeopathic remedies I have and how they help.” I wasn’t about to agree to anything.
I wasn’t a doctor or an expert in the field of homeopathic medicine. I relied on my instinct and Darla’s book. That was it. If I opened a real shop and gave someone the wrong dosage, I’d be in hot water. And that was something I tried to stay out of.
Shee said, “Yes, I do know what the berries from a Strychnine tree smell like and what they cure.” Slowly she crossed her arms in front of her, and Mr. Prince Charming did figure eights around her ankles.
Traitor.
“Helps with a sour stomach.” She grinned, her snow white teeth glistened.
Damn! I bit the inside corner of my lip. She did get it right.
“What does Belladonna cure?” I snapped my finger at her. Belladonna was an ingredient I had never had luck finding.
“Ah.” She planted her elbows on the desk and drummed her fingers together. “Are you trying to trick me, June Heal? You’re going to have to do a lot better than that.” She patted around her eyes with the tips of her fingers. She pulled a container out of her desk drawer. “Belladonna is the main ingredient used in my wrinkle creams.”
She handed me the container, which wasn’t as nearly as cute as my bottles, and I read the ingredients. Right again. “Where did you find this?” I had been looking for Belladonna for years. The women at the flea market would buy that like crazy.
“I will buy it from you when you open the shop.” She stood up, and then patted her fingers around her eyes. “It only takes a couple drops on your crow’s feet.”
“It only takes a little dose,” Darla would say when she squeezed the berry between her finger and thumb, letting the bitter liquid drip on my tongue. “Any more than that and it’ll kill you.”
“June, are you okay?” she asked. She stood over me. “We don’t have a doctor in Whispering Falls and could use some of your expertise in the homeopathic field.”
She and Mr. Prince Charming walked toward the front of the store and I followed them.
“Listen, I’m not a doctor.” I felt like I needed to reinforce my non-doctor speech. “I’m just a girl from Locust Grove trying to make a living selling stuff at a flea market.”
“As you could tell when you drove into Whispering Falls, we are a little, well smaller than your average village.” She twisted her arms and hands in the air, ignoring anything I had to say. “We rely on the earth, nature, the universe to guide us. Let’s say we are more on the spiritual side.”
For a moment, I felt like I was talking to Darla again. She used to feed me that line of bull when I was a kid. Even though I thought it was bull then, I had really grown A Dose of Darla since I took over. Somehow the remedies I had come up with really did work.
“Can I ask what remedy you were working on when you blew up your shed?” She stood still. But Ann’s stool creaked as she leaned a little closer.
“I have issues with nightmares. I’m trying to come up with a cure to help me,” I whispered, a little embarrassed to admit I was a grown woman who suffers from nightmares.
“Ah!” Ann gasped, throwing her hand over her mouth. “Torres said nightmares.”
Did she say Torres? I looked at the snow globe.
“Ann, can you please go to the back.” Isadora’s eyes suddenly darkened and she sent Ann away. “She suffers from nightmares, too. You could be such a help to us. Your friend Oscar said you were looking to expand. I guarantee you will not regret moving to Whispering Falls.”
She held the papers out for me to take.
“Move?” My eyes clouded over and I grabbed the counter.
“Yes. If you own a shop in Whispering Falls, you have to live here.” She flipped a couple pages in the packet and tapped Rule Number Two.
“I’ll let you know.” I took the packet. I needed to get out of here FAST. “Come on Mr. Prince Charming, let’s go home.”
“I’ll be waiting to hear from you.” Isadora chirped as I walked out the
green door.
“Excuse us.” A couple of grey haired women scurried to the side of the steps to let Mr. Prince Charming and me pass.
“Yes, excuse us.” The shorter one giggled and practically hid behind the other one.
“So, sorry.” I passed with the intent on reaching my car. . . fast.
“Are you sick? Know someone dying?” I heard one of them call after me.
“Yes, is someone dying?” the other one asked, almost hopeful.
Definitely an odd question to ask someone you didn’t know.
“Nope, not that I know of.” I brushed my bangs to the side so I could get a good look at them. No turbans. Unfortunately, Mr. Prince Charming must’ve thought two was better than one. He was doing double figure eights around their ankles. “Mr. Prince Charming, stop!”
He moved faster when I tried to pick him up. He was never this friendly to anyone other than me.
“We like cats,” the first one said, bending down and patting the ornery cat.
“Yes, we do.” Apparently the second one repeated everything the other said.
I picked him up anyway. I was becoming increasingly confused and the only way out was to get out.
“I’m Constance Karima.” She pointed to herself, and then to her twin. “This is my twin, Patience.”
“Yes, I’m Patience.” She giggled. Her green eyes sparkled as much as her teeth.
“Nice to meet you.” I noted everyone’s fantastic teeth. I ran my tongue along my front tooth that barely overlapped the other. You’d never notice unless I pointed it out.
Mewl. Mr. Prince Charming made his presence known.
“And this is Mr. Prince Charming.” I held him tight to my chest in case he decided to jump down. “Have a great day.”
Constance stepped in front of me, creating a sudden wind tunnel. Her red housedress swooshed back and forth from the breeze.
“Oh, my.” She picked at her short hair nervously. “So, are you sick?”
Mr. Prince Charming kneaded my arms with his back paws.
“Hello, Karima sisters.” The green door of Mystic Lights flew open with Isadora standing in the shadow. “Please let our guest leave.”
