by Alt, Madelyn
She wasn’t there.
Frowning, I sat back on my knees and glanced around the room. Minnie, aka Mini Minx, was still lying all curled up in the middle of the unmade bed, completely zonked.
Something else was hovering where I had thought I had seen Minnie, though. I saw it now, thickening into a sort of nebulous mist. Small at first, but as I watched, it seemed to grow larger, so slowly that I wouldn’t have recognized the change at all if I hadn’t looked away to locate Minnie. My mouth fell open as I locked my gaze on the shifting mass of energy. I sat back on my heels, unwilling to take my eyes off it for even a moment.
“What are you?” I whispered. At least I thought I did. Or was it possible I only thought it?
Before the mist could answer, a second black shape, darker and more solid, launched through the air in a blur. It landed smack dab in the center of the looming mist blob, then spun around wildly, dispersing the energy that had been attempting to gather. The solid black blur flipped its body around again—I should have known, Minnie to the rescue!—and faced me, a delightfully mischievous look on her face. With a ferocious growl, she twitched her fully bristled tail back and forth, raced around the room in one complete circuit, then came about and very docilely climbed into my lap and began to purr.
I cupped her chin in my hands and lifted her face up to look into her eyes. “You are a very special girl, you know that? You just chased that spirit energy away. You did! You awesome, awesome girl!”
I guess Liss was right about the protective qualities of cats. I should have known she would be. My Liss was always right. Always.
I really liked that about her.
With the unexpected energy of the intruder successfully poofed, I was feeling on top of the world. Invincible. Ready to face the day and anything it might present to me. Given the events of the weekend, who knew what that might be?
I had a feeling it might include Tom. And not in a good way.
The thought sunk my confidence levels, just a tad, but it couldn’t be helped. Gathering up Minnie, her carrier, and my bag, I hurried out the door, giving a last considering glance at the light switch as I went. Naaah. I wasn’t feeling that gutsy. The lights would stay on today, just as they had since I first discovered the truth about the spirit world that touched our own with a little too much familiarity.
I had just enough time to stop in at Annie-Thing Good, Annie Miller’s hopping little café, to pick up the standing order the store had for her plate-sized apple fritters, raspberry ganache pie, turtle cheesecake brownies, and blueberry popovers. Baked fresh, just for us, bless her ever-loving baker’s heart. The woman was a veritable witch with a mixing spoon. Maybe even in more ways than one.
I parked Christine across the street, because all of the spots around the café were taken, seeing as how we were smack in the middle of the early morning rush. I rolled the windows down for Minnie, to be sure she’d be okay for the five minutes I’d be inside. “Mind things for me while I’m inside, sweet pea. I’ll be right back.”
I ran across the street, dodging traffic, and pushed through the glass door to the always delightful tinkle of brass announcement bells. Delicious smells wafted together throughout the outer limits of the establishment, the kinds that made you instantly think of buttery pastries and gooey cinnamon confections and instantly not think of the effects such items might have on your, um, bottom line. I was faced with these innocent little indulgences day after day—I knew how dangerously seductive they could be.
I considered myself a saint, actually, for every day that I managed to resist. St. Margaret the Resolute.
St. Margaret of the Growling Stomach was more like it.
“Hey, Maggie,” Annie called out as she bustled around behind the counter for the line of people in front of me. “How’s it going this morning, hon?”
“Peaches and cream,” I said breezily. Evidently she hadn’t heard about the situation at the Baptist church, and I wasn’t about to be the first to break it to her. It would get out soon enough anyway.
“Be with you in a mo’,” she said, assembling an order with all the grace and intricate movements of a choreo- graphed ballet.
“No hurry.”
I settled in for the wait, knowing it wouldn’t be long. It was never long. Annie was a whirlwind in the kitchen, a dynamo behind the counter, and a ray of sunshine to anyone who needed a lift. She would be breezing up with the pastry order before I even had time to yawn in boredom.
“I heard they have an engineer scheduled to examine it today.”
My ears perked up as I caught the middle of a conversation between two men in front of me.
“I heard something more.”
The first man quirked a brow. “More about the cave-in?”
“Beyond the cave-in. About a situation that went down last night.”
Two men chatting away like old hens might have struck me as funny. Trouble was, I knew exactly what they were talking about, and humor was not even an option. So people were already talking about it. I wondered which of the people involved last night had been spilling the beans.
“Let’s just say,” the second man continued, “that this town appears to be experiencing more than its share of non-accidents of late.”
Non-accidents. How very PC.
“What did you hear, Randy? And how?”
“Let’s just say,” he said again, “I have my sources.”
“Aw, come on.”
Randy smirked but didn’t relent. “You can read about it in today’s edition.”
Something clicked in my brain. A realization: Randy must be Randall Craig, editor in chief of the Stony Mill Gazette. He was also married to my least favorite person in the entire world, Margo Dickerson-Craig. And if he knew about the whole dead-girl-found-at-the-church (may she rest in peace) thing, I had to assume Margo’s sources were hot on the trail as well.
I pretended to be engrossed in a piece of cat-fur fuzz on my shirtfront while I took a sneak peek at Margo’s husband from the corner of my eye. Funny—he didn’t look henpecked. Randy Craig was a good-looking man. Youngish in appearance, but I had heard from Mel that he had a good fifteen years on Margo. He also had a slick-ness to him that I associated with people on the make, and whether the pursued is money or power or women did not seem to matter. Maybe with newshounds, that just went with the territory. Even when said newshounds were very small potatoes indeed.
The two men went on to less intriguing conversation, leaving me to obsess about my fur-dusted shirtfront for real. Finally it was my turn at the counter. “Just picking up the regular,” I told Annie.
“Got it right here for you.”
Annie-Thing Good was a new establishment by Stony Mill standards, which usually meant a lengthy breaking-into-the-conservative-market period, but the café had found an immediate customer base because of one thing: Annie herself. Not only was she a fabulous chef with inventive ways of making everyday comfort food stand out with her signature gourmet flair, but she was also the perfect small-town café owner: friendly but not intrusive, bustling but not too busy to lend an ear, and when you needed a smile, her freckled face and wide grin could light up the world of even the most diehard pessimist. Annie was a great start to anyone’s day.
She slid the white cardboard box across the counter to me. “I don’t know how you manage to do this every day,” I said after making sure that there wasn’t anyone waiting behind me. “They must take hours to prepare.”
Even without makeup and with her fuzzy strawberry hair all a-frazzle, Annie was pretty in a mom-next-door, fresh-faced way. “I haff my vays,” she said with a wink.
Magick with a wooden spoon? I had to wonder at that. “I can only imagine.”
“I threw in a couple of pieces of lemon raspberry tart,” she said, putting a hand to her hip in an all-work, no-play kind of way. “Let me know what you two think. I’m considering adding it to the menu and I need a couple of guinea pigs.”
“Oh, hey, count me in when
ever,” I said with a laugh. “I can be a pig, guinea or otherwise, as well as the next girl.”
Annie nodded but fell silent. Which, in Annie’s world, was not normal.
“What’s up?” I asked.
It took her a moment to gather her thoughts together. Or was it her courage? Both impressions were coming through to me, equally strong. She glanced around the shop and lowered her voice to make sure that the few customers sitting at the tables wouldn’t overhear. “Maggie . . . you know that normally I wouldn’t butt in, and if you feel like I’m butting in then just tell me, because you know I hate that, and . . . gosh, I would hate for you to think that of me, and . . . but if it were me, I would want someone to bring it up to me, because . . . well, it could be nothing, and I know how sometimes it’s easy to misinterpret things, and I would hate for it to be that, I really, really would, and—”
“Annie?”
She looked up at me blankly. “Hm?”
“Why don’t you just tell me? It would make you feel better, I think.”
She nodded, but in truth she looked miserable about it, and it was starting to make me nervous. “All right.” She took a deep breath. “Maggie, how are you and Tom getting along?”
Why was everyone always asking me that? “Oh. Um, well, okay, I guess. We’ve both been a little busy, and, well, Tom’s been a bit preoccupied. With his job and everything. You know. Just life. Honestly? I haven’t seen much of him lately, but up until last week I was spending all of my evenings at my sister’s, you know, and we just haven’t had a chance to touch base yet.” And then, because my excuses were hitting sour notes on even my ears, I looked her squarely in the eye. “Why?”
She cleared her throat and dropped her gaze to the countertop . . . then grabbed a damp towel and began swiping away at the already spic-and-span surface before saying, “Well . . . I guess I just wondered, because . . . well, the truth is . . . I saw Tom last night.”
Was that all? I relaxed and felt my tension ease a bit. “Oh. I heard he was off last night, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him, with everything that happened out at the . . . with everything that happened. Where’d you see him?”
She stopped swiping. “At Casa D’s.”
“Casa D’s,” I repeated, I must admit, a bit blankly.
“Yeah. It’s that nice Mexican restaurant in North—”
“Yes, I know,” I said. Casa de Mil Sueños. It was one of my favorite places. Tom had taken me there on our second date, I remembered, and it had been a favorite of ours ever since.
That worried feeling in the pit of my stomach? It started up again with a vengeance.
One look at my face and Annie started scrubbing away with the towel again. “I stopped by there with a gentleman friend of mine for a late night appetizer fest. Sometimes you just don’t want to cook, you know? And, well, Tom was there. I don’t think he saw me. He was at a table toward the back of the restaurant, by the fountain, and we were in a booth toward the front.” Her hand stilled, and she bit her lip. “Maggie, he was with someone.”
I stared at her.
“A woman. He was with a woman.”
Chapter 9
I couldn’t do anything except blink. “I see.” Except I didn’t. Because Tom was so upright and straitlaced that he would never dream of seeing someone else while he was seeing me.
Would he?
You aren’t entirely innocent in all of this, Margaret Mary-Catherine O’Neill, Grandma C’s voice in my head whispered.
My thoughts flashed to Marcus and the kiss we’d shared a month or two back. The tension from last night, and what it could have led to, had I invited it? No, I wasn’t innocent . . . but I was trying hard to do the right thing. I just hadn’t found the opportunity to square everything away.
You could have tried harder.
I bit my lip. Yeah. I could have.
He is a man.
He was, in fact, that. But that was no excuse, I thought, frowning.
And you haven’t exactly come to an agreement between you.
That was the truest statement of all. Neither of us had committed without the shadow of doubt hanging over our heads. Neither of us had been completely honest about what was holding us back, although we’d been coming closer to an understanding of it. And the whole thing with Mel had happened, and then the fire at the feed mill and Marcus there by my side, quietly offering me strength and protection, and everything had just . . . fizzled quietly on a back burner, waiting for one of us to get brave and open up the line of communication again. But I’d been busy with Mel and at the store, and when he phoned, it had seemed so halfhearted, and . . . and then there was Marcus.
You have to decide what you want.
I knew that.
Who you want.
Yeah, I knew that, too.
In theory.
I swallowed my misgivings and uncertainties and gave Annie a grim smile. “Thanks, Annie. I mean it. Thank you for telling me.”
She nodded. She understood me perfectly. “Anytime, honey. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here for you.”
My best friend, Steff, was even more accommodating when I called her from a quiet corner of Enchantments’ upstairs loft during a lull at the store later that morning. “You need someone to TP his house?” she asked. “I haven’t done that in years, but if you need a posse, I’m your girl.”
I laughed. A weak chuckle, but it was something. “It hasn’t rained in weeks. As payback, it wouldn’t be worth a damn. Way too easy to clean up with no rain.”
“Hm. I see your point. Dueling pistols at twenty paces? I could be your second.”
“You don’t like guns, remember? For that matter, I’m not too fond of them myself.”
“Guns are guns. I don’t care about them one way or the other. It’s people who use them for their nefarious ways.”
“True.” I sighed. “Besides . . . I really don’t think I have the right to say anything.”
“Marcus?”
“Mm.” My noncommittal way of affirming without actually saying anything.
“Maggie O’Neill, you hussy!” she teased, laughing.
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” I protested, my cheeks blazing. “It was just a kiss. And a little harmless flirtation. And a fair amount of hinting on his part that I for the most part have managed to downplay. Other than the fact that I am, um, feeling it more than I probably should. I mean, he is fairly . . . intriguing. And—”
“So, which one of them do you want?”
That was the problem. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, and making the decision I felt hovering on the horizon was going to mean someone was going to be hurt. “Steff?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m in trouble.”
“I know. It’s a bitch, deciding sometimes, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know. I’d never had the problem of deciding between two men at the same time before now. But based on the way I was feeling right at this very moment, I’d have to say Steff knew what she was talking about.
“For what it’s worth, hon, I think you’ve already made your decision. You just haven’t put it into words yet.”
Oh.
“So,” Steff moved on breezily, “while you’re deciding that, why don’t you also give some consideration to when you might be able to find some face time for your dearest, oldest friend? And when I say oldest, I say that in the most nonliteral way possible.”
Yet another thing to feel guilty about. “I haven’t exactly been the best best friend lately, have I?” I accused myself gloomily. Minnie stared at me from her perch on top of a glass counter, pawing at the air to get my attention. When I didn’t reach for her, she walked around in four concentric circles, then sat down where she could pout and watch me more comfortably.
“No, but neither have I. We’ve both been on the preoccupied side of things. Me with Danny, you with work and Tom and, well, Marcus, and your sister and—gee, Mags, no wonder you’re feeling co
nfused and pulled in different directions.”
“Well, if we can’t find time for our best friends, there’s got to be something wrong with that.”
“I completely agree.”
“How about next weekend?” I suggested. “I’m off big-sister duty now since Mel decided hiring a nurse-slash-nanny was the way to go. Thank goodness. I thought my nieces were going to run me ragged, but instead Mel was the biggest culprit. Boredom and a busy husband do not make for a happy bed-bound mommy. The girls were precious.” They were, too. That was the biggest surprise. I actually missed seeing them on a daily basis. The new baby was due in the next month or so, too. Another niece or nephew to ward off those pesky little longings I attributed most often to the advancing biological clock and a dose of the maudlin and hormonal.
“Next weekend sounds great! I work Saturday, but I’m off by three thirty.”
“Think Danny will let you out of his lecherous sights for an evening? If not, you can bring him with you, so long as you both agree not to paw all over each other in front of me. It’s embarrassing,” I teased.
Steff laughed. “Well, I guess we can control ourselves for a coupla hours. Assuming he even wants to crash an all-girl party. I have a feeling he might just demur.”
“Well, if he does . . . we’ll always have Magnum.”
Some days, I nearly convinced myself that Magnum was destined to be my only true love. But when you already had perfection, maybe it was greedy to want more. Even when said true love existed only in that form via the time-lapse magick of TV reruns.
Sigh.
“Maggieeeeeeeee?” Evie’s voice drifted up the stair-well.
“Whoops, gotta run. I’ll talk to you later, Steff.”
“Later, gator.”
I hurried over and poked my head out over the gallery rail. “What is it?”
