She was being sassy, which didn’t surprise me. It was her nature, after all, and she was old enough to get away with it. As she liked to say, ‘anybody who could tan her hide or tell her what to do was either in the next life or close enough to it not to have time to worry about the likes of her.’
Still, there was an urgency in her voice that struck me as both odd and troubling. Plus, you know, I wasn’t going to get in trouble before I even made it back home. So, I did what all good granddaughters do when their grandmother is sore at them. I threw my cousin under the bus.
“It was all Charlotte’s idea,” I said. “You should have heard her. She was talking to me about bacon strips and secret sauce. I tried to stop her, but you know how she is.”
“Secret sauce? Are you at the gosh darn Lunch Pale, young lady?” Grandma Winnie asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered in a low voice.
“Well, get your sorry self over here and do it quickly. Something’s happened,” she answered. “It’s the cards.”
“The tarot cards?” I asked. “I thought you weren’t going to look at those anymore until I got there.”
“And if you’d have come straight here like you were supposed to, I wouldn’t have to,” Grandma Winnie scolded. “All that’s beside the point, though. I was wrong about what I was seeing, Izzy. I was looking at it sideways. They weren’t crosses. They were Xs, Izzy.”
“Xs?” I gulped. “Are you sure?”
“On every card, Izzy,” she said. “The Xs were everywhere. You know what that means. Death is coming, Izzy, and I think it’s headed straight for you.”
I took a deep breath. “Stay where you are. I’m getting Charlotte. I’m coming right now.”
I hung up the phone and rushed back into The Lunch Pale. Ignoring Riley, I grabbed Charlotte’s hand.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
“But I wanted dessert,” Charlotte sighed, pointing to Fallon, who was walking toward us with a tray of food in her hands.
I didn’t answer, mostly because I didn’t care about whether Charlotte wanted dessert, but also because the look on Fallon’s face tripped me out. The usually snarky woman’s features were blank. Her eyes were wide.
She walked right up to me, even though the food on the trays wasn’t for us.
“Izzy Lockheart,” she said in a voice a few octaves deeper than her own. “You shouldn’t have come back here. This is your fault.”
With that, she dropped the trays. The plates shattered and the food scattered on the floor. Foam started coming from her mouth, and just like that, Fallon fell dead on the floor. Charlotte screamed from beside me, but I couldn’t move. All I could do was look at the scene, at the food that lay beside Fallon, and at the bacon that lay on the floor, all crisscrossed to form perfect Xs.
5
“I don’t want it,” I said, shaking my head at Charlotte and the mug she was offering me. We still sat in The Lunch Pale which, at this point, had caution tape around it. The paramedics had come and taken Fallon away, though the vitals they got—or didn’t get—told us she would be pronounced dead at the hospital.
“Just drink the coffee, Izzy. It’ll make you feel better,” Charlotte said, shoving the cup into my chest. I grabbed it, even if the idea of coffee making me feel better after what I’d just seen was about the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. Still, my cousin was just trying to make me feel better, and that meant the world to me.
“You saw the Xs, didn’t you?” Charlotte asked, plopping herself down on the seat next to me. “The ones made from the bacon. They wouldn’t have just fallen like that, not all of them. It was a sign, like from those cards that your mom always read from, the kind you used to be able to read so well.” She swallowed hard. “What does it mean, Izzy?”
“It means death,” I answered, taking a deep breath and bringing the coffee to my lips. “More aptly, it means an unnatural death. It means someone or something is going to kill a person who wouldn’t otherwise die. It has to do with the balance of things and that balance being thrown out of whack.”
The coffee was hot and sweet against my lips. Three sugars and one cream. Even after five years away, Charlotte remembered how I liked my coffee. Still, it didn’t do much to calm my mood. How could it, though? It was just a beverage. It couldn’t change what was. It couldn’t undo what I’d just seen, what I knew to be true. Unless . . .
“Did you spell this coffee?” I asked, glaring at Charlotte with a set jaw.
“No,” she answered quickly enough that I knew she had.
“Are you lying to me?” I asked.
“No,” she answered.
“Would you tell me if you were?” I asked.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes at me. “Is there any way for me to win this game?”
“Not usually,” I answered. “Now ‘fess up.”
“It was just a small spell, Cuz, just something to calm you down,” she answered.
I slammed the mug down on the counter hard. “Darn it! Don’t do that, Charlotte. You know how I feel about being spelled against my will.”
“I do,” she answered immediately, nodding so emphatically at me that I was sure her tower of red hair was going to spill over into her eyes. “But you looked so out of sorts, and come on, can it really be against your will if you don’t know about it in the first place?”
I blinked at my cousin. “I’m not even going to answer that question.”
That’s probably for the best,” she said. Then, as she started tapping her fingers against the counter, she moved the conversation back to the cards and the Xs that had accompanied poor Fallon’s demise.
“So the Xs mean death?” Charlotte asked.
“That’s right,” I confirmed. “They stand for an unnatural death.”
“Well, that’s anticlimactic,” she complained. “We already know there’s an unnatural death, what with the woman falling over in front of us. Seems like the signs should have been a little quicker.”
“Uh . . . right,” I said, turning away from my cousin and hoping she didn’t notice the dodgy nature of my answer.
“What are you hiding from me?” Charlotte asked, pursing her painted lips together.
“What?” I asked, feigning shock. “I’m not hiding anything from you.”
“Really?” she asked, standing from her seat. “Because I know you, Izzy Lockheart. I know the look you get when you’re lying, and you just got it.” She threw her hands open wide. “So come on!”
“Come on and what?” I asked. “What are you doing?”
“Playing chicken,” Charlotte said. “If you’re not hiding anything, then hug your favorite cousin.”
“I would, but Savannah isn’t here,” I said, glaring at her and bringing up her little sister, who was almost certainly back at the B&B with Grandma Winnie.
“Oh, you take that back!” Charlotte said, pointing at me. “You take that back right now, or I am hugging the crap out of you! Don’t think I won’t do it! I will hug you right here and right now! Then, we’ll see what’s up.”
I stood, looking Charlotte over and sighing. “There were three Xs,” I said, defeated. “On the floor next to where Fallon fell, there were three Xs. An X means an unnatural death. Three of them means—”
“Three deaths?” Charlotte asked in horror, dropping her arms, and with them, her threatening promise to hug me.
“Right,” I said. “Fallon is one, but that means that two other deaths are coming, and judging by the way Fallon died and the things she said right beforehand, I don’t think we’re dealing with mortal causes here.”
“Oh, fudgesicles,” Charlotte answered.
“Really?” I asked. “Fudgesicles? You already said ‘crap’. You might as well go for broke.”
“Can’t,” Charlotte said, shrugging. “I only have two bucks in cash on me. Grandma Winnie gets really upset when you go in the red with the swear jar.”
“Well, that’s probably going to be the least of her wor
ries,” I said. “This is our town, Charlotte. Lockhearts built Spell Creek Mountain. If some supernatural force is attacking the people here, not to mention name-dropping me in the process, then it’s up to us to put a stop to it, and that means circling the wagons.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Charlotte asked, her eyes brightening up. “Does that mean Izzy Lockheart is about to rejoin the family business?” She winked at me.
“I guess desperate times call for desperate measures,” I muttered.
“Speaking of desperate measures,” Charlotte said, motioning to the front door and at Riley, who was walking through it. “Didn’t he say he wanted to have a word with you?”
“He did,” I answered. “Though I’m honestly not sure how I’m going to explain anything. There was no reason for Fallon to say the things she did before she died, and they make me look really bad.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Charlotte said. “Like you said, this is up to us to do, and we don’t have time for him, anyway.”
She raised her hands and snapped her fingers. Suddenly, Riley stopped in his tracks. In fact, everything stopped in its tracks, everything except for Charlotte and me.
“Did you just stop time?” I asked, glancing over at her.
“Sure did,” she beamed, her red lips spread into a proud smile. “Learned how to do it last winter, and I’ve been dying to try it out.”
“Nice,” I said, nodding at her as we headed toward the door. “Let’s be quick though. If what Grandma Winnie taught us about stopping time is true, then it never lasts too long.”
We passed by Riley as he stood by the door, motionless and frozen. He was like a statue version of himself, which was to say, he was a really hot statue. Not that I was going to mention that. Heck, I wasn’t even going to admit that I still thought he was attractive or that the police uniform he was wearing made him look even hotter. Nope. Not me. Totally not going to say it.
“He really is cute, isn’t he?” Charlotte asked, looking Riley over as we passed. “Such pretty lips.”
“The problem with his lips is that they move, and when they move, stupid stuff comes out.” I grabbed her arm and jerked her forward. “Now would you stop ogling my ex-crush for a minute? We’ve got a crisis to avert.”
6
Pulling past the gate and up the winding drive that would lead me into Lockheart Estates and toward the B&B that had been in my family for years now, I felt a sense of calm come over me. I wasn’t sure whether that was because of the fact that after all these years, I was finally back home, or because the flowers planted along the edges of the twisty, turning driveway were cultivated and enchanted to produce comfort, calm, and a general sense of easiness, all good things when you’re about to check into a bed and breakfast. Either way, I felt better, and I was happy for that.
We circled through the driveway and up the mountain where the family homestead sat, and the old house finally came into view. It was a large thing with big gothic peaks, rounded windows, and a fence of shrubbery around it. It looked like a place from out of time, and in a lot of ways, it was.
This house, as family lore told, was an exact replica of the house the Lockhearts lived in back in Salem. Some of our family even believes that it is the same house and it’s just been transported magically from one place to another. That sort of magic is awfully hardcore, though, and I’m not sure any witch would be able to swing it. Whatever the truth, this house was my home, and my heart was singing to be back here.
To look at this place, one might think the people who lived inside it were wealthy. They’d have to take into consideration the fact that every member of my family lived here. All of us, every generation, was jam-packed into this huge house and its outer buildings, all crammed onto this big estate. We lived on top of each other, in a way. And, as such, privacy was more of an illusion than any glamour I could have created with magic.
“Welcome home, Izzy Lockheart,” Charlotte said, smiling at me as we pulled into one of the defined parking lot spaces that were meant for guests. There would be no guests, though. Not right now. Grandma Winnie told me that she had closed the B&B until we got all of this straightened out, telling Charlotte and the others that she needed to do some remodeling in an effort to keep the secret.
I smiled at my cousin, opening the door to the car. As I did, something slammed against the hood.
“Stars and garters!” I yelled, jerking backward.
“Well, that was suave,” Charlotte muttered.
Looking forward, and completely ignoring her, I saw that the mass that had landed on the hood of the car was a sleek black cat, and not just any black cat. He was my cat.
“Randolph,” I said, my already full heart expanded to make room for even more. I rushed out of the car and scooped up the first—and only—pet I’d ever had. Not all Lockheart witches had familiars, enchanted animals that imprinted on you, sort of followed you around, and helped you out in ways that you didn’t always understand.
In fact, only a few Lockhearts throughout the generations got familiars, and when I was seven years old, I became one of them. I was walking home from school one day, ignoring the taunts and teasing from students like Fallon Fulcrum who had spent most of the day laughing at me and calling me a witch. Like I said, rumors of our magical heritage ran rampant in Spell Creek Mountain, especially back in the day. And I had yet to develop the thick skin that enveloped me now.
Anyway, as seven-year-old me was trudging her way home from school and feeling six different kinds of sorry for herself, a cat started walking behind me.
I tried to wave it away at first. While I had always been an animal lover, even back then, I was in no mood for furry friends at the moment. That didn’t stop Randolph, though. He paid no attention to my desires. He just kept following me. As I got to what was usually an empty street, the cat rushed out in front of me, blocking my path.
“Get out of the way!” I remembered saying, trying to bypass the feline. As I moved, so did Randolph. Nothing could make the cat clear my path, and as I was about to spell it up a tree, a wayward car sped around the mountain bend. It screeched past me, going entirely too fast. In that instant, I knew that Randolph had saved my young life. I looked at the cat and felt a jolt of magical energy run from me to him and back again. I knew right then what was going on. He was mine and I was his. He was my familiar. That was all there was to it.
Now, you might ask why a witch like me, someone blessed enough to have a feline friend who would do anything necessary to make sure my life was a safe and happy one, would leave said friend when she moved to Chicago.
To you, I say . . . that’s a good question.
I tried to get Randolph to come with me. I even packed him a little kitty carrying case. When the time came, he wouldn’t budge. Randolph simply refused to leave, and in the end, I had to go without him.
As he leapt into my arms, though, it was clear that he didn’t hold it against me.
I squeezed him tightly. “I have missed the heck out of you, big guy,” I muttered, burying my face in his fur. “But what were you doing up there?’ I asked, looking up at the open sky he seemed to have fallen from.
“Randy’s gotten pretty thick with a flock of birds lately,” Charlotte said. “Sometimes, they take him for a ride.”
I looked down at my cat with narrowed eyes. “Seriously? You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
And just then, as I was beginning to forget the troubling reason I was brought back here in the first place, fate decided to remind me.
A loud boom came from inside the house. My eyes widened because that noise was unmistakable.
“Was that an explosion?” I asked, looking over at Charlotte, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah,” she answered. “Pretty sure that was an explosion.”
And with that, we rushed inside to see just what sort of freshly-baked nonsense was going on now.
7
“What in Hades’ half-acre is going on
here?” I asked, pushing through the door of the gothic home that witnessed every childhood memory I’d ever had happen within it. As I took the place in, the first thing that hit me was a wave of memories. It was like stepping back into the past, though not literally. Traveling to the past was a big no-no in the Lockheart household. Time travel was far too problematic to deal with, and even if it wasn’t, Grandma Winnie would tan your hide for that. And that was reason enough not to do anything.
After the torrent of memories passed, I saw all the minor changes that had occurred during my absence the last five years. First, the front desk was on the other side of the room. For most folks, something like that would have been cause for moderate construction work. For my grandmother, though, it probably didn’t amount to more than a few flicks of the wrist and a couple of well-placed incantations. The swear jar Charlotte had alluded to sat atop it, overflowing with nickels, dimes, and even some dollar bills. I thought I saw a fifty floating in there near the top. Charlotte must have been particularly feisty that day.
That wasn’t all, though. The wallpaper had changed too. What was once a serene landscape of trees and leaves had given way to paper that looked like faux wood paneling. I cringed looking at it. It wasn’t that it was ugly. In fact, the wallpaper had its charm. It was just that it was a little spot-on for my taste. It never would have flown if I had been in the house. I, of course, hadn’t been in the house. So, I guess what I thought of it didn’t really matter.
“That is no way to say ‘hey’ to a cousin you haven’t seen in a decade,” a voice said from the top of the stairs. Looking up, I saw Charlotte’s oldest sister and one of my favorite people in the world, Dallas, looking down at me.
I smiled at the sight of her. With her short brown bob and stylish accessories, Dallas was the member of our family who was most like me. Of all my Aunt Tula’s three daughters, Dallas was the one who seemed to be the most levelheaded. It probably didn’t hurt that she was five years older than Charlotte and me and a full ten years older than their youngest sister, Savannah. Why Aunt Minerva had insisted on naming all of her kids after cities was beyond me. I guess it was a good thing she’d stopped at three. Otherwise, she might have had to go above the Mason-Dixon Line for inspiration, and we just couldn’t have that.
Mountains, Mystery, and Magic Page 3
