Spirits, Pies, and Alibis

by Nicole St Claire

  “Morning,” I mumbled. Clearly, what I’d witnessed the night before was getting the better of my imagination.

  Aunt Gwen smiled. “Waffles?”

  “Yes, please,” I answered, although there was hardly a need to since she’d already started to prepare my plate. I followed her to the dining room and took a seat at the long table. After tucking a cloth napkin into the T-shirt I’d worn to bed the previous night, I grabbed the jug of real maple syrup from the table and gave it a liberal pour.

  Aunt Gwen sat beside me, angling her chair to face me. “Well?” she asked as I took my first bite.

  “Mmm, so good,” I assured her, my mouth too full to say more.

  “It’s a family recipe, you know.”

  I nodded. My grandmother had made the same waffles all through my childhood, and my mother sometimes, too. When it came to the women in my family, I was the only one the cooking bug had failed to bite. My stepmother used to like to say I was the only person she’d ever known who could burn water. Contrary to how it sounds, my stepmother was not an evil woman. We actually got along pretty well. I’m just legitimately that terrible of a cook.

  “Speaking of recipes, Tamsyn, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  I swallowed my bite of waffle and washed it down with a sip from the mug of tea that my aunt had somehow not only managed to set beside me when I wasn’t looking, but had prepared exactly the way I liked, with milk but no sugar. “Recipes can wait. I want to know what was going on when I arrived last night.”

  Aunt Gwen laughed, which annoyed me just a little. I think I’d meant for my words to come out as a stern demand, but it turns out sternness is hard to muster when you have syrup dribbling down your chin.

  “It all goes together,” she assured me, though I didn’t see how that could be. What did family recipes have to do with a houseful of wacky women setting fire to the grass? “Tell me, dear, have you ever had strange things happen to you, things you couldn’t explain?”

  “Strange things?” I snorted. “You mean like showing up at my grandmother’s old house to find her sister and a bunch of strangers prancing around with torches, half-naked in the woods?”

  “Young lady.” Aunt Gwen managed to produce all the sternness I had lacked. “We were fully clothed.”

  “Trust me. From where I was standing, I saw plenty.”

  “Well, there were definitely no torches. It was a bonfire, to celebrate the solstice. You see”—she paused to take a deep breath—“I’m a witch.”

  “Cool.”

  She slumped a little, as if my response had stolen her thunder. “My dear, I don’t think you understand. I’m trying to tell you I’m a witch.”

  “Uh-huh.” I mean, what did she expect me to say? I’d kinda guessed that something witchy was afoot with the fire and the flowers and the prancing around to a drum. Besides, it was the twenty-first century. Even living in Ohio, it’s not like I’d never met a Wiccan before. “That’s awesome, Aunt Gwen. I’m really happy you’ve found a religion that works for you.”

  “You still don’t get it.” She twisted her lower lip and aimed a puff of air at some wisps of faded red hair that had fallen into her eyes. “Your mother was a witch. Your grandmother was a witch. Our mother before us was a witch… Are you starting to notice a pattern here?”

  “I…thought Grandma was Episcopalian.” As responses go, I’ll admit it was lame, but now that she’d gone and brought the whole family into it, I was even more confused than I’d been the night before.

  Aunt Gwen had the decency to chuckle before dropping the bombshell news. “Tamsyn, dear, you are also a witch. I don’t mean it in a New Age kind of a way. Not that I have anything against that, mind you, but this is something a little different. The Bassett family is one of the last guardians of magic in Pinecroft Cove.”

  “But,” I scoffed, “there’s no such thing as magic.”

  Aunt Gwen rose and walked to the kitchen, and for a moment, I feared I had offended her. I hadn’t intended to. Even though what she was saying was clearly nutty and hopefully her idea of a joke, I should have been more sensitive. I considered going after her to apologize, but before I was out of my seat, she’d returned. In her arms, she carried a massive book, and when she plopped it on the table beside me, dust rose from its pages.

  “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

  “The family recipe book,” I replied. I’d seen my grandmother cook from it many times as a kid, and even if I’d forgotten what it was, the word recipes was embossed across the battered leather cover in flaking gold script.

  “Not just a recipe book,” she said solemnly. “This is a grimoire.”

  I frowned. “A grim what?”

  “A book of magic, Tamsyn—our secret kitchen magic—which has been passed down from the Bassett family women for centuries. You see, the Bassetts are kitchen witches. This means we work our spells in the kitchen.”

  “No offense, Aunt Gwen,” I said, eyeing the pleather binding skeptically, “but that book doesn’t look much older than the seventies, and I’m talking nineteen seventies.”

  “Hmph.” She fixed me with another one of her stern looks. “Even magical books need to be rebound from time to time. It doesn’t mean the contents aren’t mystical and ancient. As are these.”

  She placed two wooden spoons on the table beside the book. The handles were carved with an unusual design. I reached out to pick one up for a closer look, but her hand was on top of mine, lightning fast, holding it back. I frowned. “What? I just wanted to see.”

  “Not without proper instruction, my dear.”

  “I’m twenty-eight years old. I think I know how a spoon works.”

  “They’re more than spoons, and until you’ve had some training, you mustn’t touch them. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt or cause anything to explode.”

  I drew my hand away, not sure how a spoon could make something explode but also not wanting to ask. My front teeth dug into my lower lip as it struck me that my great-aunt was one hundred percent serious about all of this. My heart sank. Had she suffered a stroke recently or possibly dementia? I was going to need to call Dr. Caldwell to find out. In the meantime, I weighed whether it would be better to humor her or nip this craziness in the bud, but the look on her face was so sincere I didn’t have the heart to tell her flat out that she was off her rocker. “Let’s suppose for a moment that I believe you. What does this mean for me? You said I needed to be trained. Are you going to send me off to some sort of wizarding school?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t a movie.” She rolled her eyes, and I half hoped the next minute she would laugh the whole thing off as a practical joke. “You’ll do your studies right here, of course, with the other members of your coven.”

  “My…what, now?” I knew what the word meant, and a new understanding began to dawn. “Is that who all those dancing women were, your coven?”

  Aunt Gwen smiled. “That was more like a convention. Our guests have traveled here from all over New England to celebrate the solstice. No, a coven is more personal. That’s the small group of witches you spend your time with and really get to know. You need at least three witches to form a proper coven. As a Bassett, that usually means teaming up with the Wolcotts and Hollings.”

  I knew the names well. Sue Ellen Wolcott and Bess Hollings had been my grandmother’s closest friends ever since they were little girls. “You mean you think Aunt Sue Ellen and Aunt Bess are—”

  “Witches. Yes, dear.” She gave an indulgent nod, and suddenly, I felt like the slow kid in class who finally got an answer right. “Their granddaughters, Sybil and Cassandra, are just about the same age as you.”

  I thought for a moment, sifting through my hazy childhood memories of the summers I’d spent on the island. “I remember Sybil. We used to play together. I don’t think I knew a Cassandra, though.”

  “No, she’s a few years younger than you, so you might not have met. Anyway, both she and
Sybil started showing undeniable signs of having the gift a few years back.”

  “Signs? What kind of signs?” Even through my considerable doubt, I gave a surreptitious glance to my bare forearms, as if the sign she was talking about might be visible, like a birthmark. I had three little moles on one shoulder that sort of formed a triangle. Could that be it?

  Aunt Gwen placed a hand on my arm, as if she knew what I was thinking. “It’s nothing you can see. Remember how I asked you before if you’ve experienced strange things, like knowing something before it happened?”

  I shook my head. “But I never have.”

  “You’ve never picked up the phone before it rang or thought of a friend and a minute later they were standing at your door?”

  “Never.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Trust me, Aunt Gwen. A week ago, I was fired from my job, and my boyfriend broke up with me. On the same day. If I was going to be seeing the future, you’d think that would have been a good time to start.”

  “A week ago?” For some unknown reason, Aunt Gwen’s eyes sparkled.

  “Yeah…” I paused, suspicion niggling at the back of my mind. “The exact same day your letter arrived. You didn’t put some sort of hex on me to make that happen, did you?”

  “Of course not.” To her credit, her indignation seemed genuine. “We never do harm with our magic. But as it happens, I had a strong feeling the day I sent the letter that it was the right time to invite you.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  Aunt Gwen blinked. “Disappoint me how?”

  “By not being a witch, like you’d thought.”

  To my great surprise, she laughed. “Oh, don’t you worry. You’re definitely a witch.”

  “But…” Even if I were willing to grant, for Aunt Gwen’s sake, that witches were real, there was one thing I still knew for certain, and that was I was not one. How could I convince her of this? “You said the Bassetts are kitchen witches, right?”

  “That’s right.” She gave the recipe book—excuse me, grimoire—a loving pat. “We work our spells in the kitchen, using food to create our magic.”

  There was one bite left of sweet potato waffle on my plate, and I popped it into my mouth. “I won’t argue that you make a magical waffle, Aunt Gwen. But that’s your proof, right there. I’m a lousy cook.”

  “No Bassett woman has ever been a lousy cook.”

  “Technically, I’m a Proctor. So maybe that’s the issue.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re a Bassett.” She picked up my plate and carried it to the kitchen. I followed behind her, still clutching my half-finished tea. “I was there when you were born, don’t forget. I saw your mother fill out the birth certificate myself. Bassett women are always Bassetts. We never change our names for anyone.”

  “Maybe so,” I argued, “but when I went to live with my father, he sorta changed it for me. Tamsyn Proctor. It says it right on my driver’s license.”

  “That will never do,” Aunt Gwen informed me with a sniff as she set the syrup-covered plate down in the sink. I hoped she would elaborate, but instead, she turned her head, shifting her attention to the makeshift pajamas I’d thrown on the night before, looking me up and down with an expression that said my taste in clothing, like my last name, was another thing that wouldn’t do. “You did bring a nice dress, didn’t you? There’s a party at Doug Strong’s house tonight, and we’re expected to attend.”

  “Expected? But I just got here.” The last word ended in a yawn, as if to highlight how tired I still was from my travels. A party sounded like sheer torture.

  “Everyone from Pinecroft Cove was invited. It would be rude not to attend.”

  “I don’t even know Doug Strong,” I countered, though as soon as I said it, I realized I did know his name. I’d overheard it on the ferry. “Isn’t he that real estate guy, the one with the condos?”

  “Yes, that’s him. He lives directly across the cove, at Cliffside Manor.”

  “Cliffside Manor?” As much as I had no desire to socialize, I’ll admit, the mention of the massive estate that lay directly across the water from our house piqued my interest. I could see its roofline from the third-floor bedroom window, but as far back as I could remember, the old mansion had always been empty. The chance to see inside was tempting, but… “I still don’t see why I have to go. It’s not like I’m friends with him. We’re not even acquaintances.”

  “No, but I believe you know his nephew Noah.”

  “Noah Caldwell?” My cheeks prickled with the remembered mortification of the Polly the Parrot incident. “Haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Well, you’ll see him tonight.” There was a certain twinkle in her eyes that made me think she’d misunderstood the reason for my scarlet cheeks.

  My hand shook as I set my mug on the counter. Just how many of the people I’d known as a child were still around, and what exactly was I getting myself into by returning? “I’m surprised he’s still here. He always swore he was going to leave this island and never look back.”

  “He’s Dr. Caldwell now, the island doctor. He took over the practice when his father retired.”

  Noah Caldwell, writer of angsty poetry, with his crooked bowl-cut hair and Coke-bottle glasses, had become a doctor? I swear to you, the lightest breeze would have knocked me over on the spot. “He used to have the biggest crush on me,” I admitted, without giving any thought to the consequences.

  “Did he? He’s the most eligible bachelor on Summerhaven Island, you know.” My aunt had one of those cat-who-caught-the-canary smirks on her face when she said it, which made me realize she’d missed the epic eye roll that had accompanied my statement. I recognized the look immediately as the one older relatives get when they stumble upon a matchmaking opportunity for an unsuspecting young person, and it didn’t take a witch’s mind-reading powers to figure out what she was thinking. Heaven help me.

  Chapter Four

  In as many minutes as it took to eat a waffle, I’d been told I was descended from a long line of witches, I was expected to go to a party that night at a millionaire’s mansion, and the awkward kid who’d had a crush on me but was now a handsome doctor would be there, along with the two other members of the coven I was supposed to join. Was it any wonder the moment I’d put my dishes in the dishwasher, I went to my bedroom to hide?

  I did a belly flop onto my bed before realizing that the quilt was covered in a thin layer of long black cat fur that flew into the air upon impact and tickled my nose. If it hadn’t been for that, I might have started to believe Gus was a figment of my overactive imagination. I mean, come on, a black cat who keeps showing up and causing trouble right when you find out you’re supposed to be a witch? Talk about a cliché. Next thing I knew, he was going to start talking or something. I swept the corners of the room with my eyes, but the little devil was nowhere to be seen.

  I stretched out and pretended to read, but mostly I just tried not to think about all the craziness I’d had dumped on me. The only thing that kept me from losing it completely was that I was absolutely certain witchcraft was make-believe. Even so, I was rattled, and for good reason. My summer on the island was supposed to be a much-needed chance to relax and regroup. Instead, I was facing the very real possibility that I would have to have my elderly aunt committed. Was I getting in over my head?

  After a while, I heard the doors on the second floor opening and closing as the rest of the guests in the house began to stir. If I’d had any plans to venture back downstairs, they were quickly put aside. All things considered, the last thing I needed at the moment was to end up in the middle of a witch convention.

  Aunt Gwen seemed to understand because she left me alone until lunchtime, at which point there was a tap on my door. When I opened it, she stood outside my room, holding out a plate.

  “Thought you might be getting hungry,” she said. “It’s ham and Swiss.”

  “My favorite.” Of course, it was. She had
no reason to know that, yet she did, like she was some kind of witch or something. It must have been a lucky guess.

  “Oh, Tamsyn,” she said, stopping after she’d made it a few steps down the stairs. “Could you be a dear and check the attic for some extra blankets when you get a chance?”

  “Blankets?” I laughed. The heat wave was still going strong, and I had a sheen of sweat on my neck and brow to prove it. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Storm’s coming.”

  “Not according to the forecast.” I grabbed my phone from my pocket to double-check my trusty weather app but was met with the broken screen.

  “What happened to your phone?” she asked, holding out her hand.

  “A mishap on the ferry.” I handed her the phone with a shrug. “It fell in a puddle, and now it won’t work.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to fix it.”

  “How?” I asked, my insides growing jittery. What was she planning to do, cast a spell?

  “Rice.”

  I frowned. “Magical rice?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “No, Uncle Ben’s. You put the phone in a bag of uncooked rice, and it pulls the moisture out.”

  I cringed and felt the heat rise in my face. I should have known what she’d meant by rice. What was wrong with me today? There was nothing I hated more than saying something dumb.

  “Don’t forget the blankets,” she said as she headed down the stairs. “We’re going to need them.”

  I wasn’t sure about the temperature dropping, but the way she spoke about it with such certainty did send a chill down my spine. A case of the willies wasn’t quite as good as a blast of cold air-conditioning, but it was a close second. And let’s just say that venturing into the attic of a house that had been gathering junk since the 1890s did nothing to minimize my day’s creepiness factor.

  The attic door was just down from my bedroom, at the end of the hall. Now, as spooky attics went, I would say the one at the old Bassett house might score around a six out of ten. On the one hand, it was filled to the brim with all your basic Hollywood horror movie props: dusty steamer trunks, wicker baby carriages, and at least one dress form that, if you saw it out of the corner of your eye, looked like a floating body with no head. On the other hand, the space had a light, and it wasn’t one of those bare lightbulbs with a dangling cord hanging from it, but a proper switch that controlled an overhead lamp. Plus, all the newer items that had been stored there, including the blankets I’d been sent to find, were in clear plastic bins close to the door. There’s nothing scary about that. Also, there were none of those disturbing porcelain dolls that look like they’ve been possessed by a demon. You know the ones I mean. So, no, I wouldn’t opt to sleep in the attic overnight, but I wasn’t breaking into a cold sweat just by being there, either. Not quite.