A Charming Secret (Magical Cures Mystery Series Book 6)

by Tonya Kappes

  “Do you think I will be here that long?” The realization hit me like a brick.

  “The autopsy might take a few days and you need to keep busy.” He picked up the egg roll and held it to my lips. I took a bite. “I will put a note on A Charming Cure telling them of your temporary location.”

  I chewed the egg roll and chewed on his idea. Which wasn’t bad.

  The businesses there were your typical flea market finds. Antique jewelry, pottery, children’s clothes, children’s toys. I couldn’t forget the Indian family who sold all the Buddhist items. Darla had kept the rose Buddha in the kitchen window. His happy, laughing face had greeted her every morning and she loved it.

  There was the Deep In the South booth where you could buy anything with the Kentucky stamp on it. The big belt buckles in these parts were a symbol of pride worn by most men. After they purchased their belt buckles, they could slide on over to the knife booth. There was every type of knife anyone needed plus the accessories.

  It was true that all men, other than Oscar, carried a knife attached to their belts. The knife booth was the place to go. The cell phone booth was on the rise when I left the flea market. I was sure it was booming now. I sighed happily. It was familiar and it was after all, home.

  “I will support you with money. I’m just worried about you keeping yourself busy and not snooping around the investigation.” His eyes warned me.

  “You know me all too well.” I put my container of vegetable fried rice on the bedside table next to me.

  He put the flattened sack on the bedside table closest to him.

  “Mmm.” He pulled me back in his arms. “Let me show you how much I know you.”

  And I let him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  No, no. The sweat dripped down my face. The heat was what I imagined hell to be. I was stuck in hell. I waved my hands in front of me, fanning the smoke. Cough, cough. There had to be a way out. Out of the corner of my eye, Mr. Prince Charming’s tail swayed in the smoke. Madame Torres was in his mouth. Yes! Yes! I’m coming! I tried to yell, but there was tape across my mouth. I lifted my hand to rip the tape off, but it wouldn’t. I took my fingernail to peel the edges back. Nothing. I’m coming, my eyes screamed. The sweat had turned to salty tears. The smoke filled my lungs. I dropped. My hand landed on something. I pulled the object to me. A June’s Gem?

  Meow, meow. Mr. Prince Charming smacked his paws around on my face, waking me up from the nightmare I couldn’t seem to get out of.

  Gasp, gasp. I sat straight up in the bed, remembering where I was.

  Locust Grove.

  I patted my hand next to me. Oscar must’ve gone to work. The bed was empty and the clock read it was morning and time to get up. And the sunlight dotted through the window blinds.

  Mewl. Mr. Prince Charming stood on the edge of my bed looking at me before he turned away and darted out my bedroom door.

  I lay back on my pillow and stared at the faded glow-in-the-dark star stickers Darla had put on my ceiling.

  “This will help your nightmares.” Darla stepped up on the stepstool and peeled each star one-by-one placing them in smiling faces and in different shapes. After the stars were up, she turned out the light. The ceiling lit up like the night sky, only brighter. “And this.” She pulled out her bottle of sleeping potion and shook it around my bed telling me the dream fairies would send me to dreamland and not nightmare land. And I believed her. Although the nightmares had never gone away.

  “Oh, Darla.” I groaned and rolled over to my side. The pain of the dream and the realization of a lost mother were almost too much for me to bare.

  A tear trickled down my cheek. Something had to give.

  Madame Torres glowed. The words were coming fast and furious. Time, space, love, genes, DNA.

  Madame Torres was right. Taking pity on myself was not going to get me anywhere. I had my mother in my heart and in my head. Darla wouldn’t want me to take pity. She’d force me to move forward. It was time I picked up and tried to move forward. Mac and Oscar would let me know what was going on.

  I threw the sheets back and pulled on a pair of sweats and a tee before shuffling down the hall. The smell of fresh coffee drifted down the hall, leading me to the kitchen where Oscar had a pot of wake me up juice ready for me.

  “This is exactly what I need.” I opened the cabinet door and the coffee mugs were exactly where I had always kept them.

  I pulled out Darla’s Ghost Buster’s mug, deciding to pour my cup. I picked up the Magical Cures Book she had also left me and took it over to the table. Carefully I sat it down on the table along with my mug and plopped down on the chair.

  I ran my hand over the leather-bound book. I smiled remembering how I initially thought it was Darla’s recipes for her homeopathic cures. Little did I realize it held a lot of secrets she couldn’t open because she wasn’t a spiritualist. In actuality, the book was handed down to me from my father’s side of the family and Darla kept it safe.

  Slowly I opened it, careful not to rip the binding and ran my hand over margins of the pages where Darla’s handwriting had left notes. Notes that were meant for me and now I was able to interpret her instructions.

  Like magic, my fingers tingled flowing into my blood. My gut knew what I had to do. Reopen the flea market shop. Just because I couldn’t work in my shop in Whispering Falls, didn’t mean I couldn’t make my cures here. Oscar was right.

  With my coffee in hand and Mr. Prince Charming at my feet, we headed out the back door and wandered over to the barely there shed.

  “What can we do with this?” I asked Mr. Prince Charming and brushed my bed head hair out of my face.

  Rowl. Mr. Prince Charming darted through the blown-off door and into the ruins. I didn’t stop him because I figured he knew what he was doing.

  Meow, meow. He appeared at the threshold, looked me in the eye and waved his tail.

  I followed him in; surprised some of the things were still intact. The cabinets where my herbs from the herb garden were stored was untouched and there were beakers and burners under there too. I looked up. Most of the glass ceiling was gone, shattered from the explosion. The water the fire department had used to put out the burning shed had long been dried up leaving a lot of the stuff on the counter molded and brittle.

  There was no time to think about what I was going to do, my intuition kicked in gear and I grabbed the trashcan on the side of the house, dragging it back to the shed. I found a pair of old winter gloves in one of the closets inside the house and an old broom. I was armed to clear out the shed and keep going with my life.

  “I see you just can’t stay out of trouble.” The voice startled me when I was picking up a large piece of glass.

  Luckily I didn’t hurl the sharp object at my aunt when I twirled around.

  “You scared the crap out of me.” I held my hand up to my heart.

  Aunt Helena Heal stood outside the shed, her long fingers wrapped around the shaft of a broom. She wore her head-to-toe signature black cloak and long dress. The tip of her black, heeled laced-up boots poked out from underneath the frock.

  Rowl! Mr. Prince Charming darted past her; she swept the broom after him, teasing him even more.

  Their fondness for each other was nowhere near fond.

  “I still protest how he is your familiar,” she growled, planting the bristles of the broom on the ground.

  “He is, so get used to it.” I rolled my eyes and went back to what I was doing. The last headache I wanted was for my only living relative to get on me for letting my shop burn to the ground and burning up a person.

  Burning? Images of A Charming Cure swirled in my head. Was Gwendolyn burned? She had to have some burns if she was in the attic because it was charred. I tucked the question in the back of my head. Maybe the Karima sisters had their autopsy report and are able to answer my question.

  I sucked in a deep breath.

  “Your new mode of transportation?” I referred to her broom and threw
a few more pieces of trash in the can.

  Her cheeks darkened when her eyes squinted, causing her lashes to draw down.

  “My, my.” She drummed her long red nails together. “Aren’t we ungrateful for the visit?”

  “I’m sorry.” I brushed my hair behind my ear with the back of my hand. I took the gloves off and sat them on the counter. “I’m a little stressed in case you hadn’t heard the news.”

  “Oh I heard.” She stepped inside the shed, looking around at the scope of the damage. “Why else do you think I’d risk leaving our safe spiritual world to come here?”

  She was right. She never left the confines of the world in which we were safe. Our laws were different than the mortal world, our powers were lessoned when not in our world, and it was hard to blend in with the mortal world.

  It was easy for me only because I was raised in the mortal world, but not Aunt Helena. She definitely would stick out like a sore thumb.

  She picked up a piece of glass and threw it in the trashcan. “I know you had nothing to do with the burning shop.” Her eyes popped open. Her nails dug into my palm when she grabbed my hand. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  I drew my hand back. Wincing from the scrap of her nails.

  “I. . .”I gulped. It had been a few months since I’d seen her.

  She was the dean at Hidden Halls, A Spiritualist University. The only way to see her was to go through the portal in the middle of the woods beyond Eloise Sandlewood’s tree house.

  “I know I should have come to see you.” As much as we bantered back and forth, I loved my aunt. She’d really been there for me since I found out about my gifts. In fact, I had studied under her when I moved to Whispering Falls; that seemed like a lifetime ago. Plus I did love the fact I had a blood relative on my side.

  “Colton and Mac didn’t give me much of a chance to gather my things before the lynching mob came after me.” I shrugged remembering seeing Petunia lead the group up the hill toward my cottage.

  “You have to go back.” Helena glared at me. “You have to save Whispering Falls from evil.”

  “You are crazy if you think I’m doing that,” I scoffed. There was no way on earth I would head back there.

  “I’m not kidding. It’s written in the stars.” Aunt Helena wasn’t taking no for an answer. “You’re still the chosen one.”

  “Why would I go back?” I put the gloves back on and began to pick up more trash. This place wasn’t going to clean itself and there was no secret potion to help me get it done. “I’m not the chosen one. Petunia is.”

  “You have to give up control as Village President or you will be banished if the Elders are called in.” Her words stung me. “After you give up your presidency, things will fall in line.”

  “You mean they can’t just hand over the gig to Petunia?” It seemed reasonable to me.

  “You are the chosen one,” she repeated.

  “Not if I give up the presidency.” I gulped.

  “The chosen one doesn’t mean you are president, June.” Her voiced boomed, giving the ground a little shake. My eyes popped open. I felt like I was being scolded. “I’m not comfortable talking out here.” She stepped back out of the shed, regaining her composure. “Do you have more coffee?”

  “Yeah.” The thought of going back to Whispering Falls while under suspicion that I killed someone didn’t sit well. I peeled off the gloves and threw them on the counter. “Let’s go in.”

  In silence, Aunt Helena followed Mr. Prince Charming and me in the back door.

  “Charming.” Aunt Helena glanced around. She leaned her broom up against the jamb of the door. “You know, Darla never invited me here once she moved you out of Whispering Falls.”

  “According to Eloise, it was for my protection.” I took out another mug and filled both of ours. “Besides, I had a great childhood.”

  It was true; there wasn’t anything I would change.

  “I guess I could’ve stayed in touch but it was almost too much to bear.” She lifted her hand to my face and gently rubbed down my cheek. “The thought of my brother’s child being fatherless was almost too much for me. That was when I threw myself into my job and started to climb the administrative ladder.”

  “It all worked out.” I sighed deeply, putting the hurt of the death of both my parents in the back of my thoughts. “Tell me this plan of yours.”

  “At midnight, I want you to slip in the cellar of Mystic Lights. There the village council, minus Petunia, will be waiting for you with the release ceremony.” She lifted the mug, the steam floated around her head. She took a sip. “Then you will come back here and wait for the trial.”

  “Trial?” I gasped.

  “I assume the autopsy report will show some sort of poison because I heard you had poison in the cauldron along with the remains of the IBS potion you had created.” Aunt Helena shook her head. Her voice held disgust, “You have got to learn not everyone is going to like you. You hold the power and it shows whether you like it or not.”

  “I don’t hold all this power.” I didn’t want to hear her words. They only frightened me. “I only wanted Gwendolyn to like me.”

  “Too late now. Remember my words, not everyone is going to like you. You hold too much power.” Aunt Helena’s words weren’t making me feel better. She got to her feet. “It’s time for me to get back.”

  She hugged me before she grabbed her broom. With her free hand, she flung her cloak around her disappearing into a flume of orange smoke. That was power. The kind of power I wanted. Not this child’s play intuition.

  To keep myself busy, I decided to go back outside and get my head wrapped around a plan to get some potions made so I could go back to the flea market and make a living until this nightmare was over with.

  “Are you coming?” I opened the door and looked at Mr. Prince Charming who was on top of the kitchen counter staring out the window.

  He didn’t budge so I went outside without him.

  “What the heck?” My jaw dropped at the sight of my shed.

  The entire thing was back together as though the explosion never happened. The walls were there, the glass ceiling was not shattered, and the door was hung. Carefully I opened the door and peeked in before I dared step in.

  The counter was in place. The beakers and burners were in place and plugged in. All the ingredients were in the spice rack I had used to keep them sorted was in place. The sink was there. Everything was there.

  “You’re welcome,” Aunt Helena’s voice whispered into the air.

  I smiled.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The day was spent making new cures, keeping me happily busy, forgetting about the evil waiting for me in Whispering Falls.

  “A dash of skullcap and a pinch of ginger.” My hands moved around the shelves in front of me, tossing stuff in the boiler as though I hadn’t missed a beat in my little shed. Neither time nor space could keep me from my gift. “There.” I grabbed the wooden spoon and stirred the mix.

  It was the perfect combination for someone with stress issues over money. Unfortunately, money was a big part of Locust Grove residents’ stress problems. Whenever I was at the flea market, people would complain of stomachaches, acid reflux, headaches—all classic symptoms of stress. I would use my gift to hone in on their real underlying issues, which was mostly money.

  “Aww.” I grabbed a few of the old bottles under the cabinet I had collected from garage sales when growing up and picked out a couple to put the potion in.

  The bottles weren’t as pretty as the ones I used in A Charming Cure, but it would do for the flea market. Nor did they light up when I touched them. But I knew it was fine.

  “I see you got a lot done today.” Oscar was at the door. “You are so wrapped up, you didn’t even notice that I’ve been standing here for about ten minutes.”

  “Yes!” I quickly poured the beakers into the bottles and corked them up. Using a sharpie marker, I wrote on the bottle. “Herbal Remedy: Antacid.�
��

  I held it out and looked at the first batch I was going to take to the flea market. I could feel some sort of pride coming back, filling my spirit.

  “Aunt Helena came by to visit.” I stopped myself. I kept the little secret about the meeting at midnight to myself. Oscar didn’t need to know or he would discourage me from going. “She gave me a little pep talk and a present.” I twirled around before I landed in Oscar’s arms.

  “I couldn’t wait until I got home to see you.” He buried his head into my neck. “I thought we could head out to grab a bite to eat. Like a date.”

  “Sounds perfect. All of this work has got me hungry.” I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually eaten. Another thing Oscar didn’t need to know, or he would be hovering over me. I didn’t need a babysitter. “I’ll go get ready.”

  “I’ll get changed.” He pointed to his cruiser. “I got a change of clothes in the car.”

  He headed one way and I headed the other. It was odd how he didn’t mention anything about the fire or Gwendolyn’s murder. Maybe he was going to give me some information at dinner. Or maybe he was going to let me enjoy a night out, putting the stress aside for a few moments. The only time I didn’t seem to be stressed was when I was lost in my potions.

  I hurried in and grabbed an orange dress. Oscar always said I looked good in orange. I strapped on some black heels and ran a comb through my bob.

  “Are you ready?” I asked Oscar.

  He sat in the family room with a cute teal button down and dark jeans on. He had the sleeves rolled up to three-quarters length. He had the perfect amount of gel in his black hair. He looked adorable.

  “You look beautiful.” His eyes danced. He looked lovingly at me. “I’m so lucky. Smart, beautiful and sexy.”

  He reached out and I grabbed his hand. He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my mother’s ring he’d used to propose to me.

  “I’m the lucky one.” I laughed. “Do you remember when I sabotaged your date with what’s-her-name?”