“Welcome back.” I smiled. “I set up that area over there with some more items you might like.” I motioned to my brand-new teen corner I had worked on for over an hour that morning. Both girls’ eyes lit up from the sleek lines of the displays I had arranged to appeal to the younger crowd. They both reached out their hands, ready to touch everything, and the boys trailed along after them. My chest swelled; I had this enchanted object shop under control.
When I turned towards the chiming door again, my heart suddenly pounded. If I thought my jaw had laid on the countertop before, now, it hung down to the floor.
The clicking of the notorious next-door neighbor’s heels on the linoleum floor drowned out the music playing over the speakers. A cute yellow purse, which matched her shoes and the sunflowers on her dress, swung over her arm in a menacing way. Behind her, cowered the child I had given the baseball-improving charm to yesterday. But in spite of all this, the most attention-getting part about her was the deep scowl on her face as she marched right up to the counter I wanted to shrink behind.
Her voice nearly echoed throughout the store. “How dare you curse my son!”
A lump formed in my throat as everyone in the shop turned around. “Beg your pardon?”
“Don’t play dumb with me! You cursed him. Didn’t you give him this charm?” She tossed the little talisman I gave Matt onto the counter.
“That’s not a curse. All it does is helps with hand-eye coordination.”
“Bull crap!”
By now, everyone else in the store had stopped shopping and stared at us standing nearly in the center of the room. The woman took her son by the shoulder with a jerky movement and spun him around. She lifted up the back of his shirt, revealing…a bushy tail climbing up his back.
Her accusatory eyes pierced through any protective exterior I could muster. “If you didn’t curse him, how do you explain that!” She pointed at the tail. “Reverse it. Now!”
I shook my head. “I—I—” I didn’t know what to say. How was that possible? Had I messed up the talisman spell? I had performed the enchantment myself, but my magic had never been strong enough to disfigure anyone, much less have them grow a tail. “I didn’t do that.” Stupid, Ettie, stupid. Certainly, I could have thought of something a bit cleverer.
“No? Then how do you explain it. You and your husband are the only witches here in Watersedge. You gave him that.” She pointed to the little charm. “And the next day he grew a tail! Reverse it! Now.”
“I—I can’t.” I swallowed a lump, knowing even if I didn’t cause the tail, I might be able to help. “I need some time.” Without knowing the exact spell it came from, reversing magic could be impossible…but if I could figure out how he grew a tail, I might be able to help.
“We don’t have time. My son is turning into a dog!”
“Actually, he’s turning into a fox,” I said, but then I mentally berated myself.
“Excuse me?” the neighbor shrilled.
“A fox. A red fox, in particular. See the coloration and the white tip to the tail? That’s specific to a red fox.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like you know quite a bit about this creature my son is becoming. Fix it, or I’ll call the police.”
“You’re going to have to call the police then, because I can’t fix it at the moment.” Or maybe not at all…and was it even my responsibility to fix her problem? “What other magic have you encountered? Potions? Other enchanted objects? Who’d want to do that to him?”
“Nothing,” she snapped, pulling out her phone and typing in a number I recognized as 9-1-1.
Fudge.
Double fudge.
Door chime after door chime drowned out all other sounds in the shop as my customers quickly escaped. Even the teenagers who had been thrilled only moments ago, scattered like leaves on a windy fall day. Once all the patrons were gone, you could have cut the silence with a butter knife as we waited for the police to arrive. My neighbor didn’t want to discuss anything further until law enforcement was present, so we stood in the center of the shop with nothing but an evil stare coming from the church-going woman—the same woman shooing out each of my customers with nothing more than a glare. This entire thing was a nightmare!
Perhaps running a shop was not what I was cut out for. I was a social worker, not an entrepreneur.
My tense muscles relaxed when two uniformed officers arrived.
“Mrs. Fleming, what’s this about…a tail?” The older of the two officers asked, holding a clipboard in her hand and silencing a walkie-talkie on her belt.
I waited patiently while the neighbor spilled her complaint, showing off Matt’s fluffy tail. I stated my innocence to the stoic, unmoving faces of both officers.
The male officer who looked like he was fresh out of the academy rubbed his baby face. “We’ll have to consult the witch division about this. Until then, don’t leave town, Mrs. Sunward.”
Leave town? Why would I do that? I was innocent in all of this.
“And Brittany,” the female officer said to my neighbor, “I know you’re not happy Ettie is here, but don’t you think that sign is a bit over-the-top?”
The sign?
When I arrived at work today, her changeable letter sign over the church door still read: Witchcraft is not the answer.
Had she changed it today?
I headed out the door, through the crowd that stood waiting for something. For what? For me to dip into the dark magic they thought existed?
Or for me to fix the boy’s tail?
Or was it the neighbor’s handiwork that had them pause? Brittany had changed the words on the sign to now read: You’re never too old to try something pointless. But it wasn’t the saying that made it stand out. It was the giant red arrow right beneath it, pointing at the store.
My fingernails dug into my palm.
This town was against me. The reporter. The neighbor. Even the mayor made it clear I wasn’t welcome here.
The police escorted Brittany and Matt out of the shop, giving me the place to myself, but I didn’t want to be here. Because of me…or possibly a reason tied to me, that innocent child now had a fox tail to deal with.
My hands shook, and I wanted to hide, but I couldn’t do that with the entire front of the shop being glass and people still standing outside.
Were they watching the spectacle?
Or did they just want to come inside?
I didn’t wait to find out.
I flipped my sign to closed and locked the door.
Chapter Six
My knuckles had been white against the steering wheel the entire time as I drove to Roman’s work. What had just happened at my enchanted object shop wasn’t something I wanted to tell him over the phone. In fact, I didn’t want to tell him at all, but all I really wanted was a hug and a whisper in my ear that everything would be okay.
Four months ago, I’d have turned to my mother or one of my sisters, but now I had Roman. Who’d have thought how much of my life could change in a fraction of a year?
I rode the elevator up to Watersedge Architectural Group’s eighth floor and stopped at Bev’s desk. I had only met the middle-aged woman who was over-the-top into fitness once, but had heard stories from Roman about her crazy bouncing ball chair she sat on during work or how she’d sneak in a few sets of push-ups during her breaks.
“Is Roman available?” I asked, twisting on the side of my skirt like a nervous teenager.
Bev set a hand weight down that she had been doing reps with as I had walked up and clicked on a key on her computer. The monitor’s eerie blue glow reflected on her glasses as she typed away. “Let me bring up his schedule…yeah, he’s free for the next hour. Should be in his office. Want me to ring him?” Her hand fell on the phone receiver.
“No need.” I passed down a hallway to the office I had only been in once before.
Roman’s smooth and youthful face aged ten years when he looked up from his desk to find me standing in the d
oorway.
“Surprise,” I choked out while using every ounce of willpower I had to hold back the tears in my eyes.
Roman sprang from his desk, knocking over his cup of pens. Now who was the clumsy one? In minutes, he had me in his arms and the tears I had been holding back through sheer willpower fell. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you at Ettie’s?”
“Because…” I took a deep breath, calming myself enough to tell him what happened. “Because that neighbor’s son grew a fox tail!”
“What?” He pulled me out of his arms and looked into my watery eyes. That’s when I realized Roman had never seen me cry before. Our marriage had been all moonlight and enchanted roses up to that point…well, once we got through the first few weeks.
“The neighbor…Brittany Fleming…the one with the church…she came over to accuse me of hexing her son Matt. He grew a tail. She even called the police!”
Roman’s lips tightened, and his eyes flashed a storm I hadn’t seen before. He then grabbed his suit jacket off the back of his door and slipped it on. “Come on. Let’s go home and figure out what we’re going to do about this.”
“But you have a meeting. Bev said it was in about an hour.”
Roman shook his head. “No meeting is as important as you.” With that, he wiped the tears from my cheeks and planted two soft kisses in their place.
On our way off the floor, Roman stopped at Bev’s desk. “Could you reschedule the meetings I have this afternoon? I’ll be out the rest of the day.”
As Bev picked up the ringing phone, Roman took a step away from me. “I just need to go tell my boss. I’ll be right back.”
I nodded.
Soon, Bev was done with the phone call, and she assessed at me from behind her glasses. Hadn’t I wiped my tears enough? Were my eyes still red?
“I can’t wait to get down to your shop,” she said with a genuine smile.
“Well, that makes one person here in Watersedge.”
She waved her hand at me. “They’ll all come around. When I first met Roman, I was nervous about working with a warlock, but I’ve come to realize that he’s not much different from the rest of us. He’s not getting promotions because he can do magic. It’s all about the creativity of the projects he works on.”
“I hope everyone comes around. The way things look now, it seems as far away as a trip to Pluto.”
“You’ll win everyone over. Roman nearly glows when he talks about you. He has complete faith in you—even convinced the owners to give you a business loan.”
“Convinced the owners?”
Bev nodded. “They didn’t think the shop would do well here in Watersedge, but Roman insisted you could make anything work. He was so certain, he even put your house up for collateral.”
He put up our house as collateral?
My stomach twisted in a knot. How much was riding on the success of Ettie’s?
And the neighbor was still after me with a vengeance.
Not to mention the media.
If the few strong voices managed to persuade the town, Roman and I would be homeless. We’d have to move in with Mom and listen to her gloating over my failure. I knew my sisters were more successful than me, but they had had an extra five years or more to get their life in order and they didn’t dedicate years of their life to a charity that paid nothing like I did.
How could Roman risk all this? And take such a big chance on me?
I rocked back on my heels and my hands fidgeted with my skirt again.
I guess Roman taking a chance at me and my business was no different than me committing to be a mail-order witch. I married Roman sight unseen…and that worked out.
My thoughts were interrupted when Roman came out from his boss’s office.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded, not quite sure about how I’d handle the weight resting on my shoulders...or let Roman know that I now knew his secret.
Chapter Seven
Last night, I kept quiet about the business loan that was using our home as collateral. Instead, I focused on Roman’s encouragement and his positive words about perseverance. I still had to go back to Ettie’s tomorrow. I didn’t have a choice. Keeping the house Roman worked so hard for depended on me.
He had been sweet, curling up on the sofa and binging on all the Indiana Jones movies, all night long. It had given me an escape to get my mind off all that had happened with the negative press, Matt growing a tail, and the attack on Ettie’s written in black and white on the neighboring church’s billboard. The binge session also gave me time to build up the courage to return to the store.
On my drive to the shop that morning, my thoughts focused on something I had been too blind with anger to see the night before. Since getting married four months ago, Roman and I hadn’t had the “finances talk.” Maybe we weren’t as comfortable as I thought—both financially and relationship-wise? I had always thought we were doing well. He had a nice house in the country on five acres of land. That wasn’t cheap, but he had a good job.
When I struggled to find work, Roman had said not to push myself and that I shouldn’t fret. That we didn’t need the money.
But now, we were tied in tightly with the shop being connected to our home. Would we still be fine if Ettie’s Enchanted Effects went belly-up like a week-old dead fish during a southern summer?
I gnawed on my bottom lip as hundreds of possibilities played through my mind.
When I arrived at Ettie’s an hour before opening, to my surprise and delight, nobody was outside protesting. Maybe today would be okay. All I had to do was figure out how to reverse the fox tail spell or prove to everyone I wasn’t behind it. Actually, I had to do both. I couldn’t let Matt go around as half-a-fox for the rest of his life. I’m sure a tail above his bum wouldn’t go over well with the ladies.
Without knowing what kind of magic caused the fluffy tail, there was nothing I could do to reverse it, but the first thing I planned to do for the day was removing the spell I cast on the charm Brittany returned to me. I hated to admit this, but there was a slim chance I could have been the cause of the tail. Every witch had messed up a spell or two on occasion, and I might have screwed up a few more than that. Completely unintentional, of course.
The pendant was necessary to reverse the charm, but the police had taken it for evidence. Step one of my day was to coordinate a visit with the officers, admitting the fraction-of-a-percent chance I could have been behind the new appendage.
My hands shook as I dialed the number Officer Gates had left me, listening to the phone ring and click over into voicemail.
“Hi, this is Mrs. Ettie Sunward from Ettie’s Enchanted Effects. There might be a slim—very slim, almost non-existent—chance that the tail that Matt Fleming grew was from a wayward spell. If I could get my hands on that pendant you took as evidence, I could remove all its magic. If it was me, Matt will go back to normal…but again, I doubt I had anything to do with the curse, but I can’t take the chance.” I sat on the phone for a few seconds, trying to think of what else to say, but I hung up awkwardly instead. That was now out of my control. Time to focus on what I could control.
For starters, my attitude. I took a deep breath and practiced my best, fake smile. Fake it until you make it, my mom always said.
It was fifteen minutes before opening and out on my sidewalk stood Brittany. Her scowl told me she wasn’t here to apologize. Well, here went nothing. I unlocked the door and flipped the open sign around.
Brittany turned away, and as the first customer came towards the store, she handed them a pastel yellow piece of paper. The customer looked down, hesitated at my door, and finally turned around and left.
She was ruining my business!
Was that slander?
Was she allowed to do that?
If she truly thought I brought that tail upon her son, I didn’t blame her, but I also had to protect my business as well as Roman’s investment.
The door chimed as I stepped outside, an
d Brittany immediately stepped away.
“Wait. I want to talk,” I called after her. “What’s on those flyers?”
She kept backing up, and the few people who had parked in front of the shop were starting to get out of their cars, now seeing that the shop was open. I certainly didn’t need that audience when Brittany twisted whatever I was about to say.
“Wait,” I called. “What are you telling my customers?”
“It’s none of your business,” she shot back at me, standing on the front step of her church. “I’m entitled to freedom of speech, especially on my own property.”
I ground my teeth. Something inside me had to know what I was up against. I released my magic, waving my hand in the air to pluck a flyer out of her grip and to send out a gust of wind to carry it to me. The half sheet of paper hovered in the air in front of me with its unmistakable big, bold headline.
Witch magic is the work of the devil.
I laughed.
That’s been proven wrong over and over again, but the next lines as well as the image of her son were enough to make me halt.
Don’t believe that claim?
Take a chance at magic and you might grow a tail.
Even worse, your children might grow tails.
I plucked the flyer from the air and crumpled it in my hands. I spun around to see my audience of nearly a dozen downtown visitors staring at me with big eyes and gaping mouths. Had the citizens of Watersedge never seen real magic before?
If they wanted a show, I’d give them a show.
With a swipe of my hand, I used the wind to open the shop’s entrance door. Another wave and the soft music was turned up. I adjusted the lights to shine only the UV light spectrum, mimicking a black light that enhanced the innate magic present within each of my enchanted objects, making them glow a cool blue in the eerie darkness.
Next, I turned to that terrible bright white letterboard Brittany had been using above her church door to spread her message. It currently read, You’re never too old to try something pointless. With a quick snap of my fingers, the last word dropped off the board. Now, it read, You’re never too old to try something.
Hidden Magic Page 14
