Come to think of it, Mason’s mood had picked up since they’d arrived. He’d seen and heard him flirting with Jade, a dangerous prospect, but on the other hand, he hadn’t mentioned Aruba in, oh, hours, so he might not be a flight risk anymore.
“She’s a widow, you know,” Tricia said. “Next couple days, she’s going to be a millionaire. You know if she’s doing anything special to celebrate? Throwing a party? Inviting famous people? I always wanted to write for the society section, but nothing big ever happens here.”
“Haven’t heard about any party,” Anthony said. “But it’s not a story. It’s research.”
“Oh. Will it be a best seller? Maybe I should interview you now.”
On second thought, Mason was doing just fine on his own.
Courtney strolled into Mystic Manor on Saturday morning to find Weezy holding court, cleaning, and cooking all at the same time. The atmosphere in the kitchen was bar-friendly, as usual when guests were in residence. Jade didn’t mind, and Weezy and the clients seemed to love it.
Noah was standing at the open refrigerator, personally replacing aged dairy products with fresh. Not his job, but everyone in West Bluff knew the third-generation milkman had a thing for Weezy.
“Brought you a pound of fresh butter, Weezy.”
“Good Lord, what’ll I do with a whole pound?”
“Sour cream, too. I remember you make a mean stroganoff.”
“Have you ever heard of cholesterol?”
“He thinks fiber protects him from cholesterol.” Buzz, the mailman, ate over the sink so he wouldn’t have to bother about coffee cake crumbs. When he saw Courtney come in, he held up the coffeepot with a question in his eyes.
“Oh, yes, please,” Courtney gushed, hugging herself against the winter chill. She’d had enough of winter, the snow, the long, hard freeze. At least the sun was peeking out today.
Weezy plucked a recipe book off a shelf, muttering, “Butter, butter,” as if it would help her find what she was looking for.
Then again, in this house, it might.
“I got aged cheddar, too. Five years. Can you imagine that with a good bottle of wine?”
“You delivering wine, too?” Weezy asked, her back to him as she turned pages.
Noah looked at her hopefully and said, “I could,” but Weezy didn’t pick up on it. Or if she did, she ignored it.
By the time Courtney’d peeled off her coat and all the winter accouterments that went with it, regulars plus one were in stitches over a story about one of Weezy’s granddaughters, and a mug of hot coffee was waiting on the counter. She blew on it and sipped it, turned to the newbie sitting at the long plank table, and said, “Hi, I’m Courtney.”
“Mason.” He stood up and offered his hand; very impressive. Dead ringer for Brosnan, too. Damn, Jade was good.
The only thing Jade had ever wished for that she hadn’t gotten, as far as Courtney knew anyway, was the safe return of their husbands. When the guys had gone missing, and the officials were doing their own search, she, Annie, and Jade had tried everything magical they could to find them. When they’d given up on that, Jade had cast spells for information on what had happened to them. Again, nothing. It was almost as if someone was working against her. But that was just silly. This anniversary thing had her imagination running wild.
It was one of the few times Courtney shook hands with someone where she wished she could read the vibes. Wouldn’t it be great to know if someone was good or bad just by touching him? But nooo, she had to be stuck with the other side of the coin, leaving her vibes all over every gosh darn thing she touched.
“I’ll bet people ask for your autograph a lot,” Courtney said.
“I recognized him first,” Buzz said.
“Did not,” Noah objected.
They both whipped out fresh autographs, whereupon Courtney grinned at Mason and said, “You didn’t.”
“Can you believe he tried to lie his way out of it?” Noah stared at Mason and shook his head, as if to shame him.
Mason just grinned unapologetically and shrugged one shoulder, and Courtney thought if Jade didn’t want him, she wouldn’t mind talking to him for a while and see if he had an emotional block against single mothers.
“Someone just pulled in the driveway,” Buzz announced, meaning he didn’t recognize the car.
“Probably that damn reporter.” Courtney rushed one last sip before she set her mug in the sink and prepared to get very busy. “She’s been following me. If she comes to the door, don’t answer it.”
“You want us to take her out on the playground and give her a noogie?” Noah teased.
“Why don’t you just slip her a…gift?” Weezy’s glance in Mason’s direction was fleeting.
“There’s a thought,” Courtney muttered. “Is Jade in the conservatory?”
“Try the study.”
Courtney caught up to Jade going from room to room, pulling snowmen from a dusty box, placing them on shelves, hanging them on walls. It was an eclectic collection, from Old World to whimsical, figurines to needlework.
“Hey, these are cute.” Courtney picked up a salt-and-pepper set, enchanted by their carrot noses and corncob pipes. “Did you get them at that little antique shop on Main?”
“You never saw them? They come with a story.” Jade unwrapped a snowman ornament and set it in the china cabinet. “My great-great-great-grandmother Jade—I’m named for her, obviously—was married here, at Mystic Manor, in the dead of winter. There was a storm that evening, so they couldn’t leave on their honeymoon, and guests had to stay over. The next morning, all the trees were dripping with icicles, which I’m sure was very beautiful, but that kind of got eclipsed by what the wedding party had done during the night.”
“Wait. Is this some kind of legend or something?”
“I read it in her diary.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What’d they do?” Courtney settled on a chair to listen.
“They made snowmen. Or more accurately, a snowman and snowwoman consummating their marriage. If that wasn’t scandalous enough, she was anatomically correct and on top.”
“In the 1800s?”
“Mm-hm. So you can see why her father built a bonfire and melted it. But not before the spectacle had drawn a lot of attention. So the next year, on their anniversary, my great-great-great-grandfather gave her a snowman as a reminder. And then one every year after that. But not always statues.”
“What a romantic. I can’t believe I never heard this story.”
“Then when I was, oh, I don’t know, five, I guess, Mom gave me the one that started it all. This one.”
Jade handed it to her, but Courtney was so afraid of breaking it, she set it on the table right away.
“I liked it so much, she gave me more of the collection each winter. I put them away when I got engaged to Doug, though. I guess that was right before you moved here. I thought it was the mature”—she emphasized with finger quotes—“thing to do.”
“Jazzy’d love to see them.”
“You should bring her over. I have two more boxes. Mugs, candles, bells, storybooks.”
“She’s asking about spells.”
“I swear, Courtney, I never—”
“I know, I know.” She sighed, making a decision. “Maybe you should. She watched a Harry Potter movie at her friend’s house, and I swear when she came home, I could see little witchy wheels turning in her head, remembering every little thing we’ve said over the years when we didn’t think she was old enough to understand. And there was that time she saw a wand on your kitchen table.”
“She was three.”
“She remembers.”
Jade patted Courtney’s arm, but she didn’t feel very comforted by it. Jade was comfortable being a witch, and someday when she had kids, she’d never hide the truth from them. But that hadn’t been Courtney’s plan. Wasn’t much she could do about it, though, when she laid down her hairbrush or a fork or a key, and Jazzy picked it up just to “fee
l” it.
“Better she learns it from you than Annie, I guess. Or worse, stumbles around in the dark on her own and sets the house on fire.”
“I’ll help her. Tell her to wait until you bring her over.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Jade stood back and assessed what she’d done.
Courtney did likewise and said, “The snowmen trivets show up really nice on the wood.”
“I don’t know. Do you think they’re too immature?”
“No, a collection is special. This one’s so romantic, and it says something about you. How tied you are to your family’s history.”
Jade chuckled. “Yeah, that’s exactly why I put away all the black cats and broomsticks.”
“But you’ve always wanted to keep that side private. I never understood why you put those things out in the first place.”
“They were gifts.”
“So?”
Jade’s sigh was wistful. “You’re right. I used to leave the snowmen out all year. I didn’t realize how much I missed seeing them.”
“There you go. By the way, I came in through the kitchen. Met Mason.” Courtney fanned herself and raised her eyebrows questioningly. “Sure you still want the talisman?”
“He has to go.”
“Ooh, positive thought; that’s good.”
“I tried to scare him away last night. Earlier this morning, really. I had a bunch of messages on the answering machine from Tricia Sherwood.”
“I know. She’s calling all of us.”
“Yeah, well, Mason heard them, and I wanted him to back off, so I sort of mentioned that she wanted to know where I’d buried the body.”
Courtney laughed. “What did he do?”
“Suddenly remembered something he needed to do. At three in the morning. I thought he was going to pack, but he’s still here.”
“He has a nice laugh.”
Jade shrugged as if to say it was nothing special, then a second later, the corner of her mouth tipped up, and she nodded in agreement.
“Noah’s in there,” Courtney said, “charming Weezy as usual, and Mason’s just sitting back enjoying the show. You’re absolutely sure?”
“He has to go.”
Courtney held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Just checking to make sure this is what you really want.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a small box, wood with an inlaid top, no bigger than the palm of her hand.
“That’s beautiful.” Jade admired it, but only briefly because she knew the box wasn’t the important part. “Now open it and let me see.”
“You don’t need to see it.”
“What?” she asked, affronted.
“You know better. I’m going to hide it in his room. You are not to go looking for it. I’ll pick it up after he’s gone.”
“I can take it up.” Jade reached for the box.
“Don’t make me slap your hand, girlfriend. And pouting won’t work either. Now, Jazzy’s teacher wants five dozen assorted treats by ten o’clock on Valentine’s Day. That’s A.M. for people like you who live around the clock. And Jazzy asks if you’ll please, please, please—that’s just how she said it—if you’ll please, please, please make a special one for her to give to a little boy she likes.”
Jade’s eyebrows arched. “She’s five.”
“I know, I know.” Courtney knew her daughter and waved away any concern. “Go ahead and do it, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Is she requesting a charm on it?”
“Over my dead body.”
Anthony was rummaging through Mason’s drawers, searching for the bartender’s phone number, when a knock sounded on the door. It was perfunctory, closely followed by a woman’s entrance. While he hadn’t met her, from her photo, he knew it was Courtney, the third widow.
Abandoned wife. Whatever.
Jade was raven-haired and mysterious, tall, exotic, with a penchant for stiletto heels. Annie was a blond pixie. Both stood out in their own way, while Courtney seemed to do everything to maximize normalcy, to try to blend in. Average weight, simple makeup, brown hair tucked behind her ears.
“Oh,” she said in surprise, immediately reversing, pulling the door behind her as she went. “Sorry. Wrong room.”
Anthony closed one drawer and tackled another.
“Ah-hah!” The phone number was jotted inside a matchbook cover, and the matchbook was from a bar. Had to be it.
He snatched his cell off his belt, giving no more thought to why Courtney would enter Mason’s room by mistake.
Annie grabbed Courtney in the kitchen before she could get out the door. “We’re meeting in the drying room,” she said.
Awareness and alarm skittered across Courtney’s face. “No…I have to…”
“You have to do this,” Annie said, combining empathy with a no-nonsense attitude that kept readers clamoring for more of Dear Alanna. “It’s time to help the guys transition properly. It’ll help us move on.”
“I’m fine. Really.”
“Then do it for Jade. She’s got a man right here who’s hot for her, and I think she needs us to show her that it’s all right to fall in love again. That her world won’t end if she does.”
“What about you?” Courtney followed, albeit reluctantly.
“I need this, too. I need to say good-bye, with my two best friends beside me.”
Normally Jade would work in the conservatory, but with traffic in the house the way it was, she’d elected to withdraw to the privacy of the drying room.
Unlike the others, Annie was short enough that she didn’t feel the need to duck the curved lintel into the drying room, which felt cozy and intimate with flickering white candles, soft music, and the spicy-sweet fragrance of burning frankincense for protection.
Jade looped an arm around Courtney’s shoulders and spoke with gratitude. “I’m glad you’re staying for this. It would feel incomplete without you.”
What she didn’t say, Annie knew, was that Jade worried about Courtney blocking what came natural to her.
There was a cushion on the natural stone floor for each of them, and they settled in, triangulated around a small portable altar covered with a white cloth. On that sat a silver tray with the incense, a photograph of their husbands on the deck of their cruiser, three small pots of earth, and a bowl of tiny bulbs.
“Tell me everything,” Annie said, eager as ever to learn.
“Psychopomps are the spirits who guide souls between the realms of the living and the dead,” Jade began. “We’re here to share a favorite memory of our men in life, then send them on their way in death so they can be reborn at another time. We’ll keep it brief so the spirits don’t think we’re asking to let them stay. Who wants to go first?”
“You,” Annie and Courtney said in unison.
Jade took a deep, calming breath, then smiled softly. “I remember the day they bought the boat. How proud they all looked, as if they’d built it with their own hands. How they wanted to share the moment with us and insisted we all sleep on it the first night.”
Annie liked the boat topic and decided to stick with it. It seemed appropriate, since it was going to check on the boat that took her husband away. She took a deep, cleansing breath, then chuckled. “I remember the champagne they bought to celebrate. I wasn’t sure if the boat was rocking or if it was me. And after that first night, I remember the stories they’d tell when they came home on Sunday evenings, mostly of the fish that got away.”
“I remember how they seemed closer than brothers,” Courtney said. “That first summer, they started finishing each other’s stories. And laughed at the same things. And trusted each other. How spending time together restored their energy and centered them. They made better husbands when they came home.”
They each took time to sit with private thoughts, and when no one said anything more, Jade proceeded. “We should add a few things to the altar. Let’s play to our strengths. Annie, you’re good with candles. If you lig
ht this one, it’ll symbolize a torch leading the way on their journey.”
Annie took a few moments to add her intention to the votive before she lit it and set it on the tray.
“Courtney, if you add a key, it’ll symbolize opening the door to the next realm.”
Courtney fished out a key, held it in her hand a moment, then laid it on the tray.
Lastly, Jade added a small knife and said, simply, “To cut the ties that bind.”
They reached for each other spontaneously, holding hands, completing the circle, each meditating on her own memories, her own hopes for her husband’s peaceful repose.
“I chose white daffodils,” Jade said, explaining the bulbs. “Floriferous seemed appropriate, because they produce several blossoms on each stem. We can each plant one now, signifying putting the men to rest, because we never were able to do that with their bodies. Later we’ll plant the bulbs in our yards, so every spring they’ll come up and visit with us for a while, and we’ll remember how close they were, and how they died together, doing something they loved.”
With only the soft sound of flutes floating on the air around them, each woman planted a small bulb in a pot.
They closed the circle together and, united with her sisters-in-craft, they embraced. Each went her own way, to place her bulb in a safe spot, to be nurtured until planting time.
By the time the moon finished its first quarter, Jade was beginning to think nothing would work on Mason. Nothing could be worse for a witch than to doubt herself. Negativity bred negative results.
But then she ran into Sarah at the gym. Once or twice a year, she asked Jade to cast a spell for her. Not always simple, but always successful. And Becca. She’d had a big problem with a mean husband until Weezy, who was her mother, had asked for Jade’s help. He was gone for good within three days.
When Jade finished her errands and returned home, she went into drying room and pulled out the diaries where she logged all the spells she did, for herself as well as for others, both locally and long-distance. She’d cast a lot of spells over the years. She’d helped a lot of people. She was good, damn it, so why wasn’t Mason leaving?
Witch in the House Page 13
