by Raven Snow
***
The cafe was settled amid a bunch of offices. It was a popular lunch spot with workers. Finding a seat was difficult, but Rowen managed. She got there fifteen minutes before eleven and settled in at a circular table that stood isolated from the others. It was a bit chilly out, but the sun was bright. Rowen was actually a bit warm beneath her coat. She was on her own this time. She’d reasoned that bringing Eric along would spell trouble for everyone involved. Eric had readily agreed. He didn’t care to have lunch with the guy Margo had cheated on his brother with. Besides, he needed to get back to work. He couldn’t just avoid clients for another one of Rowen’s mysteries, after all. He’d told her to call him if any big developments came up.
Flint and Jasper arrived right on time. Jasper looked nervous. Granted, he had every reason to be. At least Rowen could deal with timid. She wasn’t sure how she would have handled a cocky Stonewall in this situation. She already had Flint to deal with.
“Thanks for coming,” Rowen said with a strained smile. She didn’t rise to greet him. It felt like that would be a bit much.
Jasper didn’t seem to resent her for it. He matched her strained smile with one of his own. “No problem. Thanks for the invite.” He looked smaller than usual standing next to Flint. He was stouter than his brother; his shoulders were much broader, but he still gave off a much more submissive vibe. Rowen wondered what Margo saw in him. Her personality would totally dominate his. Maybe that was what she liked.
Rowen grabbed a couple of menus from the stand in the center of the table and passed them to the Stonewalls now seated across from her. “You order at the window. Tell me when you’re ready. I already know what I want.”
Orders were placed, fountain drinks were filled, food was received. They all sat at the table just kind of picking at it. No one seemed to have much of an appetite. Everyone was waiting for the real conversation to start.
“So, Margo broke up with him last night,” said Flint, getting right to it. Rowen could have stood for him to be a little less direct but, hey, it worked. It was better than sitting around and waiting for someone to break the ice.
Jasper went pale. He was already a pretty pale guy, so that was saying something. He looked at Rowen, like he wasn’t sure what her reaction would be. He didn’t even look like he was sure she knew already.
“Margo told me,” said Rowen. “I was kind of surprised, to be honest. I didn’t think… I mean, I figured whatever the two of you had was just a physical thing.”
“Oh, no,” Jasper said, immediately. “I mean, at least it wasn’t to me.” He looked down at his food. “I guess I can’t say how she felt, but I thought she felt the same. I thought we really cared about each other.”
“You didn’t think she cared about David?” Rowen couldn’t help it. Maybe that had been in poor taste, but she couldn’t help but be a little unsympathetic with this guy.
Jasper’s face colored this time. He went pink. “Sorry,” he said, quickly, like he had said something wrong in suggesting Margo’s interest in him had been genuine. “She must have. I mean, I’m sure she did—That is, I’m sure she does.”
“You can love more than one person.” Flint forced himself into the conversation by playing the devil’s advocate. “And love for one person can fade, especially if there’s enough distance between them for other options to present themselves.
Rowen fixed Flint with what she hoped was a glare that communicated just how much she wanted him to stay out of this. He had a point, though. She went with it, looking back at Jasper. “Margo was with David for a while. She was even married before that. His name was Terry. I imagine she loved him as well.” She left out the part where she had never even liked Terry. She’d tolerated David a bit better, but she couldn’t say she was a huge fan of him either. It was more that Eric loved him, and she hated seeing Eric upset.
“She told me about him,” said Jasper. “She told me about a lot of things.”
“I’m not sure what you want me to tell you here.” Rowen came right out with it. “I can’t set you back up with my sister, and this isn’t high school. I’m not going to pass on messages. All I can do is tell you what she’s like.”
Jasper actually frowned at her when she said that. Rowen hadn’t seen him angry yet, but it looked like she had finally coaxed that sort of reaction from him. “You’re her cousin,” he said. “She thinks a lot of you. She talked about you all the time.”
“She does?” That came as a total surprise to Rowen. Either that or it was a lie to appeal to her ego. “Only good things, I hope.”
“Not really good or bad,” said Jasper with a shrug. “She seems to think you’ve stationed yourself as the head of the family. Your aunts and uncle might be the oldest members of the household now, but ever since you came back to Lainswich, you’ve been running things.”
Now that really surprised Rowen. She wasn’t even sure what to say at first. “You make it sound like we’re some kind of gang.”
Jasper glanced at his brother like he was waiting for a second opinion. When he received none, he looked back at Rowen. “We’re the oldest families in these parts. I know your family functions a bit differently from ours, but you still have a lot of influence in Lainswich.”
Rowen could have laughed at that. Instead she just focused on eating her sandwich. “Yeah, right,” she said between bites. “They hate us in this town.” Maybe “hate” was a strong word, but they certainly weren’t well-liked.
“They’re afraid of you here,” Jasper said, a statement that held quite a bit of truth. “When something happens around here, your family is normally behind it.”
“We’re not behind it. We’re the ones who are typically solving it. There’s a difference.” Rowen sometimes worried that their presence in the town somehow precipitated these occurrences of strangeness and murder. She wasn’t going to bring that up right now, though. “And we work together. I hardly think I’m the one in charge.”
Flint spread his hands. “You’re kind of the one in charge.”
Jasper’s angry expression fell from his face. He took a deep breath and proceeded to try and appeal to Rowen’s better nature again. “Can you just tell her that I miss her? She’s skipping my phone calls. I’m not going to seek her out myself. That would be weird. I’d appreciate it if you just sent her a message for me. Tell her that I love her. I’m sorry I never said it before now, but I really think we have a shot at something special.”
“Because that’s no less weird,” Rowen mumbled, earning herself another angry look from Jasper. “How did you two even hook up anyway? I know you met at the prison, but how did that… escalate?”
“We sort of sought each other out.” The beginnings of a smile came to Jasper’s face at the memory. “Or she sought me out, rather. I was leading a meditation class. That drew her after she was finished with visiting your grandmother. She was kind of wandering the halls since it was storming pretty bad outside. Anyway, she waited for me to finish. I could feel her standing there the whole time. When the class was finally over, I went to see what she wanted. She said my group had a good energy.”
As far as pickup lines went, that sounded like a pretty lousy one. Rowen hoped Margo had meant it literally. She didn’t like to think that Margo had been shopping around for a new guy while David had been away. She wouldn’t put it past her, but she hoped it wasn’t the case.
“I knew she was a Greensmith. I thought she was up to something at first, but she was just saying hi,” Jasper continued. “That really stuck with me. It made me feel kinda humbled. It made me wonder why our two families hate each other so much.”
“Her saying hi to you did all that?” Rowen asked, skeptically.
“I’d wondered about it before. This time, I just had a Greensmith in front of me.”
“And she was hot,” Flint added, earning himself a glare from his brother.
“So, I took some initiative,” Jasper pressed on, pointedly. “I asked her out to dinner.
I didn’t know that she was seeing anyone at the time. She didn’t say anything until our second… date, I’d guess you call it. We were parting ways at the movie theater. I walked her to her car and leaned in to kiss her. She stopped me just before I could and told me she was seeing someone.”
“And you kept seeing her anyway?” Rowen was angry with Jasper, but this was also renewing her anger with Margo quite a bit. She had let it go on for two dates?
“We talked about it. She said her boyfriend was away on business. We talked about her leaving him when he got back.” Jasper bit his bottom lip like he was ashamed. “We weren’t going to do anything until then, but one thing led to another and, well, here we are.”
“Here you are.” Rowen didn’t think “here” was a terribly respectable place to be. Frankly, this was too much drama for her. If she didn’t have ulterior motives, she wouldn’t be speaking with Jasper at all. “So, what do you do for a living?” Rowen asked, like someone trying to determine whether or not he was “good enough” for her cousin.
“I work from home.” Jasper sat up a little straighter, like he was actively trying to not be ashamed of what he said next. “That is to say, my parents want me to be the next head of the family. It’s very important that I learn all of the spells and rituals that go along with that. Sometimes I volunteer like my sister, but mostly I’m hard at work at home.”
“That used to be me,” Flint said with a sly smile, like he knew Jasper was exaggerating how much “work” he had to do on a daily basis. “I’m a bit of a bad seed what with being a lawyer. How scandalous.”
Rowen remembered. It was why Flint had wanted to leave this town with her back when they were young. He was sick of how boring it was. He was sick of more of that boringness being set in stone as his future.
“I like to think it was destiny,” Jasper said quickly. “Flint was meant to be a lawyer. I was destined to take over as the patriarch of the family.”
“Important stuff, no doubt. If you and Margo got married, that could even unite the families.” Rowen could just picture the rest of all their relatives finding that out. The scandal would be legendary. “Whose last name would you take?”
Jasper’s eyes went a little wide at that, like he hadn’t been prepared for this line of questioning. “It’s a little too soon to say, though… I mean, I do think it’s customary for the wife to take the husband’s surname.”
“Not really anymore.” Rowen took a sip of her drink. “My husband took my last name. He’s even a Stonewall! Did you know that? He’s a distant relative to you.”
Jasper’s face went a little red again. He shifted in his seat, like that bothered him. He was a hard guy to read. He had that Stonewall family pride, but he did seem to care deeply for Margo. It made Rowen second guess herself a bit. Was she absolutely positive that a love spell hadn’t been used on this poor guy?
***
The rest of the meal was standard fare. Half of it was spent in silence, the other half in stilted conversation. The food was good, at least. When they were finished, Jasper excused himself to go to the bathroom. Rowen was thankful for a moment alone with Flint before they all parted. She had a general idea of what he was going to say before he even said it.
“Sorry you didn’t find a whole lot out.” It wasn’t a genuine apology. Flint was smiling like a cat that got the cream when he spoke. He wanted very much to be right about this. He wanted his family to be innocent and Rowen’s newest murder mystery to be nothing more than a snipe hunt.
Rowen knew better. “What are you talking about? I found out plenty.”
Flint’s smile faltered. “Like what?”
“I’ll tell you,” Rowen promised. “But first you have to get me into one of Amber’s group meditation sessions.”
Chapter Ten
To say that the Greensmith’s family meeting had gotten derailed would be an understatement. Things had gotten off to an immediate bad start when Rose, Willow, and Peony had all failed to show up. There was a lot to do with the Lainswich Inquirer, Rose said. She had spent too much time mourning and now everything was woefully behind. They were losing tons of readership to Channel 2 by the hour. Besides, the meeting was just about how the Will was being divvied up within the family. She didn’t care about that.
This was all according to Rose, of course. It wouldn’t have been so bad had she not recruited Willow and Peony. Rowen didn’t see the big deal. She didn’t care a whole lot about the inheritance either. She trusted her family to split it according to Grammy’s wishes. Willow and Peony had said they felt the same. Apparently, that was when they let slip a little factoid Rowen would have much rather they kept to themselves.
“Peony said that had Grammy wanted the Will done any differently, she would have said something when you tried to contact her using the Ouija board,” said Nadine, her thin lips forming a tight line.
Rowen could feel her skin burning under the eyes of everyone in the room. She was sitting on the sofa between Eric and Margo. Her aunts, uncle, and Clarence were all staring at her. Tiffany and her Uncle Norman looked unsurprised. “They missed their Grammy. How can you blame them for wanting to say goodbye?”
“I did the same thing when Dad died,” Norman said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You remember, Lydia. You were there.”
“That was different,” said Aunt Lydia, though she didn’t say exactly how it was different.
“You can contact people right after they’ve died?” asked Clarence, his eyes huge. “Seriously?”
Tiffany put a hand on her boyfriend’s arm. “Yes, Sweetie.” She pointedly glared at her sisters. “And it’s a perfectly normal thing to do, especially while you’re still mourning.”
“That’s wild.” Clarence shook his head in disbelief. “That’s just wild. Hey, does it work for dogs? I have a dog I lost a month ago.” The room paused to frown at Clarence, but he wasn’t dissuaded. “I get that he probably couldn’t spell, but I figure he could do yes or no answers.”
“You should have spoken to us first,” Lydia insisted, continuing as if Clarence hadn’t even said anything. “We should have been there.”
“She didn’t answer,” Rowen told them, in case it changed anything. It didn’t.
“That’s beside the point. You still should have told us.” Lydia looked to Nadine for backup. Nadine nodded.
“Let’s just get to what we’re all here for.” Norman stepped in. Rowen couldn’t be sure if he was doing so for Rowen’s benefit or if he just wanted his cut ASAP. He had a tendency to spend money he didn’t have on things he didn’t need.
“All right,” Aunt Lydia relented, frowning at the room. “But first, does anyone have anything else to tell me? Is there anything else going on that the family needs to know about?”
Rowen bit her tongue. Literally. She had, at least, three things she didn’t want her family finding out about. Eventually, they would need to know about Eric’s heritage and Grammy’s murder. Right now, she definitely didn’t want to deal with the fallout from that. And it wasn’t her place to talk about Margo’s love life. Not that she could stop her aunts from figuring this stuff out on their own.
“Where’s David?” asked Aunt Lydia. “He hasn’t left town already, has he?”
Margo shifted in her seat. She glanced at Rowen, like this was somehow her fault before she spoke up. “Not yet. He was feeling sick.”
Norman frowned. He must have known his daughter well enough to sense when she was lying. Aunt Lydia’s eyes narrowed. She had a knack for sniffing out when her nieces were lying to her as well. “Is everything all right between the two of you?”
“I’d rather not talk about it right now,” said Margo, which almost worked. Aunt Lydia nodded like she was satisfied with that answer. It was obvious that she and Norman were both going to question her at length later. That had to be obvious to Margo as well. Rowen could see the worry in her cousin’s eyes. That, in turn, worried Rowen. Margo had a tendency to throw people under the bus when
she was feeling cornered. “Rowen and Eric have something to share with the family.”
“Oh?” Tiffany turned to her daughter and son in law, smiling brightly. “What’s that?”
Rowen would have glared at Margo but all eyes were on her. She needed to handle what came next delicately. “It’s not anything major,” she told them, trying to play it down. “We just found out something interesting about Eric is all. As it turns out he’s distantly related to the Stonewalls.” She forced a laugh like that was an amusing little piece of news. “That’s crazy, isn’t it? Who would have guessed?”
The room was bizarrely quiet. All eyes were on Eric. “I had no idea,” he said, sinking down against the cushions a bit like he wanted very much to escape the situation. Eric wasn’t usually nervous around her family, but there was a first for everything. Even someone without any magical instincts could sense the change in the room.
“Ferris and Diane Stonewall are his great grandparents,” said Rowen, before anything else could be said. She wanted to treat the situation like it was no big deal, like sharing it with her family had been an afterthought. “He recognized them at the funeral. He barely remembered them.”
