Bedtimes and Broomsticks

by Amanda A. Allen

  “Tell Harper I came by.”

  “Oh,” Scarlett promised, “She’ll be hearing about it.”

  “You think you can keep her from me, you’re wrong.”

  “If you think she’s some sort of pushover for your hard luck story, you’re wrong. Harper has a family now. And she has a life. And she’s made something of herself. And you both started with the same bull…” Scarlett glanced over, saw old Mrs. Lovejoy and amended her comment to, “Crap story. You’re wrong. Be. An. Adult. Like Harper.”

  His eyes narrowed and he said, “You don’t know anything.”

  Scarlett paused, took a deep breath and said, “You’re right. I don’t know anything about being in foster care and having a hard life. But I do know that I can’t and won’t let you hurt my sister.”

  “You need to go now, kid,” Lex said. He took hold of Scarlett’s arm which was both irritating and kind of nice. It was nice to be backed up. It was irritating because she was a full grown, powerful woman. In fact, now that she was back in Mystic Cove her access to the power of her people had escalated intensely. Which—goodness, she was stupid sometimes. Druids knew things. She needed to meditate in a grove, get direction for her investigation. Find out who would hurt Luna—and perhaps how far she could trust Lex and Gus even though her heart was telling her she’d like to trust them both.

  * * * * *

  “Did you check me out?” Lex asked. He followed Scarlett into the bakery, where she closed the door and nodded to Henna. He was carrying chinese food bags from the restaurant down the way, and Scarlett was sure she smelled the scent of dry-sautéed green beans and something even spicier.

  Given the food, she doubted he’d be happy to see Gus. But when Lex walked into the apartment and found Gus installing the cabinets that her aunt had brought by, he didn’t even blink. He unloaded the food and Scarlett saw that there was enough for Gus too.

  “Did you two talk or…”

  “I figured he’d be here,” they both said.

  Scarlett glanced back and forth. Lex handed Gus a box of beef something or other. He gave Scarlett the green beans and the kung-pao tofu, and opened his own container of something or other. Scarlett sighed and took a bite.

  “I did look your site over,” Scarlett told Lex. “And Gus read a bunch of interviews and articles about you. We've decided to believe you.”

  “And do you believe Gus now?”

  Scarlett didn’t bother to glance over to Gus when she said, “I always did. I needed to get rid of the doubt. He helped me with that.”

  Lex’s brow rose, but neither Scarlett nor Gus offered any more information, and he didn’t bother to ask.

  “So what do you know?” Lex asked.

  “I don’t know,” Scarlett confessed. “Luna’s memory hex is fading…”

  Both men shifted dangerously.

  “She won’t be leaving Oaken property anytime soon and Harper has promised to stay with the girls full-time, but something has to give. I can’t keep on like this.”

  Gus grunted while Lex said, “You look like death.”

  Scarlett scowled and then took a long drink of the tea he’d brought her. She ate several more bites and as she did the exhaustion started to roll over her. It was ridiculous. She felt as though her feet had been dipped in cement, her fork seemed to weigh 100 pounds. Her…

  “Is she out?” Gus asked.

  Scarlett glanced over in alarm, and Lex snarled, “Clearly not, idiot. Now she’s afraid.”

  “Scarlett, it’s a sleeping drought. Don’t worry. You need to rest so you can think.”

  If his eyes weren’t so familiar, she’d have panicked. But the drought overtook her, she slumped down, and she was sure she’d be ok.

  When Scarlett woke, the sun was shining high, her body felt luxuriously rested. She stretched a long, beautiful stretch and felt the muscles along her legs and back pop and realign. She took a deep breath and filled her lungs with the scent of the garden outside and then the smell of nature.

  When she sat up, she glanced around and realized that Gus and Lex and worked around her sleeping form. The cabinets had all been installed, the flooring had finished being laid, and her talk with the wood had sealed it all together in a lake of the swirls and age lines of the wood that had been turned into her home. The windows had been lined with tape and the baseboard had been removed so the painting would go smoothly. She probably should have painted and then put in flooring, but she hadn’t been expecting any of this.

  She took her phone and found texts from Henna that told her not to worry about the bakery today. She found texts from Harper that were fiery with anger at what Scarlett had said to Jeddie and she found pictures of the girls happily sleeping and playing despite Harper’s anger.

  Her mom had said to come by for lunch and Scarlett rose and took a long bath, soaking her poor muscles and worries in the water as she thought about what she had learned and what she hadn’t. She dressed in sexy jeans instead of leggings and a pine green silk t-shirt, sliding it over her body without real thought though she knew it set off the brown of her hair and the green of her eyes. The shirt clung to her curves. Scarlett was a lot of things including uncomfortable in her own skin a lot, but she was also stacked and she knew it.

  There was a piece of her that was sure she’d be seeing Gus and Lex today, and for the first time in a long time, she wanted to feel pretty. Maybe even desirable. She wanted to be seen as something other than a stressed out mom, with a bun of tangled hair she didn’t have time to comb, and flour covered leggings. Her focus was still protecting Luna and finding the killer—but today Scarlett thought it would be ok if she also decided to spend a little time being Scarlett. That was a role she didn’t pick up nearly often enough and she reminded herself that one of the reasons she’d come home was so she could find peace in her skin and her soul once again—and maybe even this new version of herself which was druid, mom, and woman.

  She put makeup on and combed out her hair as she thought about all she had learned. Maybe somewhere across town, Kelly Wattsy was getting dressed and dealing with her children. Was she thinking about Lacey too? What did Kelly know about her best friend’s death? Or perhaps Kelly was thinking about that confrontation with Abby. Maybe stewing over the interchange and who had won?

  What kind of mother was Kelly? It wasn’t a role that Scarlett could envision on her, but she had known the teenage girl, not the adult. the stories were of Kelly shopping around downtown with no kids in tow. But what woman would have three kids when she didn’t have to. She must like being a mom, even if you didn’t see her with her kids very often.

  What about Abby? Was she already in her little office? Was she working? What did she do after work? Did she spend time with friends? Did she have any friends, outside of Lacey anyway? And had Lacey been a friend? Why had they spent so much time together? It didn’t seem likely for the Abby or the Lacey that Scarlett had known.

  And what was going on with Brad? It was weird how he lurked outside of the little shrine to Lacey. It was weird that he’d been so broken up. The way that Scarlett had projected her feelings for Gus onto Brad didn’t seem to ring true. Something else was going on there.

  And what about whoever Lacey might have railroaded out of office or not let into office. She was the mayor and she’d come out of nowhere to get that role. Speaking of, how did Lacey support herself? Did she work from home on something that didn’t have anything to do with Mystic Cove? But Scarlett didn’t think so. Henna would have known. Someone would have known and said so.

  Chapter 17

  Scarlett debated for a few minutes before she went to the Mystic Cove Grove rather than her families personal grove. If she went home and ran into her girls, she might spend the day playing with the chickens, riding horses, laying in the hammock and snuggling her daughters.

  She’d spent weeks and months wishing for a break from her girls and never gotten one. Now that it had finally come to pass, but not on her terms, she had to adm
it she wasn’t enjoying it as she should. And given that she’d told her girls to be naughty for Gram, Scarlett suspected that another break wouldn’t be coming soon.

  She got into her old, rusted SUV and drove it to the grove outside of Mystic Cove—the grove was older than the town, had been added to by generations of her people, and was a place of epic power. The family grove welcomed Scarlett back without a blink—but in tree terms. Scarlett wasn’t so sure of the town grove. The truth was—when you were a druid—that you could have full relationships with both trees and groves. They were like people in their way. Meaning that some were forgiving and some held grudges.

  She didn’t try to merge her abilities into the grove immediately. Instead, she hiked through the trees for several miles. As she hiked, she thought about what she’d learned about Mystic Cove, about Lacey, and about the people Scarlett had left behind. As she walked, she trailed her fingers along the grasses and then the flowers. She leaned over and tapped a fern and then let her fingers caress an ancient oak tree.

  Normal woods around here would not have near the diversity of trees and plants as a druid grove did. Scarlett didn’t attempt to find her way into the heart of the grove. Instead, she found a stand of friendly trees, laid down in the dappled shadows and sunshine, and let her spirit feel their spirits.

  It took more than hour before she said, “Outside of London is a little grove of…”

  And she talked about the groves she met, she told them of her travels, of swimming in the ocean, of the feeling of the sun on her face when she hiked the alps. She told them of the way the sun felt on your skin in Hawaii, the way the sand smelled in the desert, how it felt to fall in love, and then to fall out of love. She was crying as she told them about Grant. And then again, with a different kind of tears, as she told them about Ella and Luna.

  When she fell quiet, the trees—they weren’t complicated enough to have held a grudge or to have forgiven her—but the feel of them in her head had changed from standoffishness to acceptance. So Scarlett changed the story to Luna. To the look of the sun on her hair, to the placement of the freckles on her cheeks, to her ability to talk to Max without even trying, to what she’d heard her Daddy say and how she’d curled into herself. And then on to how Scarlett had found Luna hexed near a murder scene and how Scarlett now struggled to protect her baby and find a murderer before it was too late. As the story turned to the murder, Scarlett slowly sat up. Over the course of minutes, she straightened her spine and her shoulders, projecting her memories of her daughters to the trees as she put her body into the lotus position.

  Finally, Scarlett focused on a single leaf. Her gaze was fixated on the leaf until she could feel the veins of that leaf on her own skin, the warmth of the sun as it hit parts of the leaf seemed to hit her exactly the same way. She could feel the way the light breeze quivered the leaf from her position on the ground.

  Eventually, a path unfolded in her mind and her worries faded into memories she couldn’t quite grasp. She was on the path fully and knew she was looking for something. She needed something, but she wasn’t sure any more quite what. She glanced around.

  The trees were pressed in close on either side providing no escape from the path. She took a tentative step forward and immediately felt something focus on her. She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, but she felt something. She felt…hunted. In her mind, she glanced to the right and the left and all she saw was shadows and darkness. The path was encased in the night—then she heard something in the trees, a rustling that couldn’t be explained away by the wind she felt on her skin.

  Whatever she heard, it was hidden by trees or darkness or maybe it hid. Scarlett ran—at first she ran out of fear, but then she ran to draw it out. In her mind, there was something near her that needed to be protected. Some shining light that was threatened—she couldn’t remember what it was, but the need to protect it—it infused her.

  And as she ran, she felt something different—she bounded into a tree and a branch reached down, lifting her. She knew it was a friend—it was someone she could trust. And then she was lifted higher and higher and higher until she found herself freed from the darkness by hand after hand of friendship.

  With the last reach upward, she took hold of a hand—there was something about it that was familiar, but as she took hold, the long nails dug into her wrist. Scarlett shrieked and she fell and fell and fell and before she landed she snapped off the path and back into the grove.

  Scarlett paused thinking for long minutes about what she’d seen. It had been so very ambitious she felt like it was worse than before—all this had done was confirm that Luna was in danger.

  “It’s not as easy as it seems, is it?” Gram asked.

  Scarlett started and turned, finding her grandmother sitting next to an oak tree a few feet away. Scarlett shrugged.

  “I didn’t teach you to do that,” Gram said, sniffing.

  Scarlett took a moment and then said, “I stayed for a while by a grove in Scotland. I mentored with a druid there.”

  She knew, of course, that it would hurt her grandmother’s feelings to learn that she’d bypassed what Gram could teach for the knowledge of some random druid thousands of miles away.

  “Did you ever think,” Gram started…

  Scarlett raised a single brow and stared her grandmother down.

  “Your girls don’t like me,” Gram said and her sadness gave Scarlett instant regret.

  She licked her lips and pressed them together, searching in her mind.

  “You don’t like me either.”

  It was such a stark statement, and it wasn’t true, but Scarlett could see why Gram felt that way.

  “I…love you,” Scarlett said. “I like you.”

  “Sometimes, maybe,” Gram said sourly.

  “Do you like me more than sometimes?” Scarlett snapped back, letting her legs relax out of the lotus position and stretching out her back. She didn’t know quite how long she’d been meditating, but the sun was setting, and a distinct chill had set into the air. The smell of woods, flowers, and earth pressed into Scarlett’s sense, and she felt the energy of the grove tripping around her, trying to tell her something.

  Gram was shocked as she searched Scarlett’s face. And then Gram quietly said, “Of course, I do.”

  Scarlett rose and then held out a hand for Gram. “It’s hard for me to forgive you for looking at my path and doing with that information what you and Mom did.”

  Gram was quiet for a moment and then she said, “We were so shocked and angry that you were going to leave. How could you?”

  “Did you see my daughters?”

  Gram didn’t answer and when Scarlett searched Gram’s face, she found the answer. Scarlett took Gram’s arm—she was getting older, and she didn’t need to break an ankle in a hole, but Scarlett was the one who asked this time, “How could you?”

  Gram swallowed and then said softly as they reached their cars, “Your mom didn’t know about the girls. I knew she wouldn’t have…she wouldn’t have tried to stop you, and I knew how much it would hurt her if you left. I was just…I was protecting my daughter, Scarlett. I was doing what Moms do.”

  Scarlett suddenly understood. But she also knew she’d have never done the same thing. Not ever.

  “I can’t pretend that…”

  “I shouldn’t have,” Gram’s voice was tight and controlled. It was flat and emotionless in sound, but Scarlett caught all the pent up emotion behind it. “I shouldn’t have. I regretted it the instant I spoke, but it was too late the moment I opened my mouth.”

  Scarlett nodded, flipped her keys, and then said, “I love you, Gram. But you’re going to have to win over Ella and Luna on your own.”

  “And you?”

  Scarlett opened her car door, got into the seat, and said, “Drive safe, Gram.”

  “That’s it?” Gram’s eyes weren’t shiny. She was far too controlled for that. She was far too hard. “You aren’t going to forgive me?”r />
  “Not today I’m not.”

  Scarlett paused and then said again, “I love you, Gram. I need time.”

  “You’ve had 10 years.”

  Scarlett sniffed and nodded, “Not here I haven’t. Not in the same town as me. Not day to day.”

  “That isn’t the druidic way.”

  Scarlett’s snort told Gram what Scarlett thought of that statement.

  “Your path isn’t finished, Scarlett Rebecca Dandelion Rowen Mikayla Hope Oaken.”

  Scarlett turned since her true name had been given and infused with power.

  “Your path is here and it’s full of love—both of your daughters and the daughters to come. You have true love ahead of you. Stop cowering from falling in love—you haven’t been in love with Grant for some time.”

  Scarlett swallowed trying to find a response but she didn’t have one.

  Gram stepped closer, jabbed Scarlett in the chest and ordered, “You find this killer, and take back your life. If you let someone steal your path from you, I will never, ever let you die. I want to meet those other granddaughters of mine. I want you to forgive me. I want to win over Ella and Luna, and I want to watch you faceplant into love.”

  Scarlett took a breath and not knowing what to say or how to even process what had been said she latched onto one phrase, “Faceplant?”

  Gram laughed wickedly. “Maybe karma would be nicer to you if you were nicer to your grandmother.”

  Scarlett’s look conveyed all the doubt she felt about that. She started her car and peeled away from her grandmother before the old woman decided to throw sons at Scarlett as well.

  * * * * *

  Scarlett parked back at the bakery in the non-crime scene side of the building. She took a long breath and then let her head fall onto the steering wheel. She had been thinking about running after she meditated. About giving up on this murder investigation and chasing some other fate.

  “How druid are you?”

  Was the universe currently laughing at her? She turned slowly to find Lex leaning against a black muscle car. Scarlett shrugged in reply. Druid enough to take back her path? Druid enough to trust someone again? Druid enough to become a mother again—thinking about it made her feel exhausted. But she also had these new holes in her heart where she was missing the children to come.