5 A Charming Magic

by Tonya Kappes

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  He might be right back, but his heart might not be. I lowered my eyes and glared at her. She didn’t take her eyes off of him. As a matter of fact, I swore I saw her look him up and down with a wanting look only another woman would know.

  “That’s amazing.” Oscar pointed to the design.

  Arabella had taken a body form and used hot pink flowers to make a flowing skirt. There were fabric butterflies strategically placed all over the bodice of the silhouette and in the flowery hair Arabella had created. It was beautiful, but I would have never told her that.

  “Thank you.” Arabella dragged her long fingernail down Oscar’s muscular arm, sending my gut into a fit of rage. I knew exactly what she was trying to do. “You must be Oscar.”

  Oscar blushed. I rolled my eyes.

  “I’m Arabella Paxton.” She spoke loud enough for me to hear her and held her hand out for him to take.

  Oscar did something I had never seen before. He took the tip of her fingers, like you would see in an old movie, bringing the back of her hand to his lips and he kissed it.

  “Nice to meet you.” His country accent sent her into a fit of laughter.

  “Aren’t you a true southern gentleman?” Arabella pulled her hand away and held it to her chest.

  Ahem. I cleared my throat raising both my brows.

  “I guess your girlfriend is summoning you so if you could help me get this up the steps and position it for the world to see and want to come in to check out our grand opening.” She turned and sashayed her way to the spot where she wanted Oscar to put the flowery arrangement.

  My mouth dropped. Disgusting, I thought as I watched her butt swing side to side and Oscar’s eyes follow.

  “June?” Oscar laughed. “June isn’t my girlfriend. She’s my best friend.”

  “Oscar does not live in Whispering Falls!” I hollered over to Arabella so she would know he wasn’t a spiritualist. Technically he was, but now he wasn’t. No. Thanks. To. Me.

  Mewl. Mr. Prince Charming shared my disgust. He stretched his paws out in front of him and shook each back leg before he darted up the steps of A Charming Cure.

  “I guess you are right.” I looked over at Mr. Prince Charming. It was time to open, but if I knew Mr. Prince Charming like I knew I did, he too wasn’t happy with Arabella’s sudden need when we both knew she was capable of handling a little mannequin of flowers on her own.

  “So where do you live?” Arabella’s soft sweet voice echoed down the street right into my ears. I cringed hearing her.

  “Locust Grove.” Oscar was being charmed by her sudden interest. “It’s just right outside of Whispering Falls. Where are you from?”

  As I walked up the steps to the shop, I glanced down sliding my eyes toward Oscar, trying to be sly like a fox, only Arabella was waiting for me to look at them.

  “I’m from another spirit…” she paused and bit her lip. “I’m from up north.”

  Oscar lifted the mannequin with one hand. Arabella stood behind him placing her hands on each of his shoulders as if she was steering him up the steps where she wanted the large floral arrangement to go.

  “You sure have some great muscles.”

  I nearly gagged hearing her flirt with him. Surely he wouldn’t fall for it and would see right through her. I put the coffees on the ground and jiggled the door handle a couple of times to prolong my painful torture of listening to Arabella try to woo Oscar. If she only knew, I laughed out loud. There was no way he was going to fall for someone like her.

  “I have to stay in shape being the sheriff of Locust Grove, ya know.” Oscar sounded smitten, but there was no way. No way. There had better not be a way. My eyes narrowed.

  God golly. Was he really falling for that crap Arabella was feeding him?

  “Sheriff?” Arabella squealed. “I love a man in uniform.”

  Oscar set the flowered mannequin exactly where she was pointing. He glanced over at me. I jerked my head to the side so he would know I was telling him to come on.

  “Speaking of work.” He rubbed his hands together before he pointed over to A Charming Cure. “Nice to meet you…” He searched for her name, apparently already forgetting it.

  “Arabella Paxton.” She put her hand out for him to take. Again, he did that thing where he kissed her freaking hand before he dropped it and skipped down the steps. She hollered after him, “Oscar, you are more than welcome to stop in anytime.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked under my breath when he trotted through the gate and up the steps of A Charming Cure.

  “What?” He picked up the coffees as I unlocked the door. “It took you a while to open the door,” he observed. “Or were you being nosy?”

  “Me? Nosy?” I scoffed and felt for the light switch just inside the door.

  Mr. Prince Charming darted into the shop once the lights illuminated the space and jumped on the counter, his favorite spot.

  “Yes, nosy you,” Oscar joked and made his way back to set the coffees next to Mr. Prince Charming. “Interesting.” Oscar picked something up off the counter next to Mr. Prince Charming’s paws. “I see your crazy cat is still up to his old ways.” He held something in the air for me to see. “One of these days someone is going to catch him for stealing and he will be out of lives then.”

  Oscar’s voice was white noise. My eyes zeroed in on the shiny thing dangling between his finger and thumb.

  Normally I would rush around the shop and straighten the red tablecloths on all the round display tables, or refill and reposition some of the potion bottles that held my homeopathic cures, but not today.

  I ran back to see exactly what Oscar had picked up. Yes. Mr. Prince Charming was good at giving me a charm. But only when there was going to be some sort of danger.

  I took a deep breath and held out my hand for Oscar to drop the shiny item into it as I tried to tap into my intuition. Nothing. Nothing alarmed me that there was something bad going to happen.

  Rowl! Mr. Prince Charming hopped off the counter and darted underneath one of the round display tables, nearly toppling a few of the bottles over.

  It was another charm. Another charm to add to my ever-growing charm bracelet.

  A dove sitting on a round thin piece of gold. The round piece looked an awful lot like a wedding ring. Wedding ring? I glanced up at Oscar. I smiled. A wedding ring.

  Was it a sign? Did this have anything to do with my past history with Oscar? The romantic history he didn’t remember?

  It all happened on my tenth birthday. Darla, my mom—a single mom—spent all her time running her homeopathic cure shop, A Dose of Darla, out of a booth at the Locust Grove Flea Market and she didn’t have a ton of money to spend on my birthdays. Cake, card, and a candle from the flea market was as good as I was going to get. After all, it was my tenth birthday, not some big milestone like sixteen. And the cake…it was a “manager’s special” cake that read Happy Retirement Stu. Darla didn’t bother scraping it off or pretending it wasn’t a manager’s special. Don’t get me wrong. It was a treat. Sugar snacks of any kind weren’t allowed in the Heal household except on special occasions.

  It was that same day that Darla was at work and I was at home hanging out with Oscar—yes, he lived across the street. Even then I was in love with him. Like any stupid boy, he didn’t notice. Still, that day, was a day I will never forget and probably the best birthday I had ever had.

  The pristine white cat jumped up on the porch wearing a worn-out collar with a turtle charm dangling off it. He had to belong to someone. A stray cat would have never been that clean, especially a white one. It looked like he was from a fairy tale, so I named him Mr. Prince Charming.

  Oscar and I had spent countless hours trying to find Mr. Prince Charming’s owner, but no one claimed him.

  To beat the band, no one but Oscar knew that I had prayed so hard for a charm bracelet from Darla. There was a girl at school who had one. Every time I heard the jingle of her c
harms when she raised her hand and saw the beautiful silver slither down her small wrist, I grew green with envy. After school I would check my face in the mirror to make sure I wasn’t green. I was so envious.

  Oscar had even given me his mom’s old bracelet for a birthday gift. It was the only thing he had left of her. Oscar’s parents had died in a car wreck, leaving him orphaned like me.

  Technically I wasn’t orphaned because I had my mom, but she worked so much, it was like I was orphaned.

  Anyway, since no one had claimed Mr. Prince Charming, I knew he was mine and so was that turtle charm. Oscar fastened the charm on his mom’s bracelet with a bread tie and put it on my wrist. It was the best birthday ever, until every year after Mr. Prince Charming always brought me a charm to add to my bracelet. It was like he was magical.

  It wasn’t until I grew up and moved to Whispering Falls did I realize Mr. Prince Charming was in fact magical. Sort of. He was sent by the Whispering Falls Village Council to keep an eye on me. After all, I was a spiritualist and didn’t know it. So the charms he gave me were protective charms.

  Now when he gives me a protective charm, it’s a good indication that something was going to go haywire. This was no ordinary charm. It was a wedding ring with a dove.

  “June? Earth to June?” Oscar waved half of a June’s Gem underneath my nose. I blinked, bringing myself back to the present where I now lived in Whispering Falls after finding out I was from a spiritualist family with an uncanny talent of being able to concoct crazy ingredients to heal people, not to mention my talent of an amazing intuition.

  Oscar too moved to Whispering Falls the same time I did after taking the open sheriff’s position, but denounced his wizardry talents when I got myself into a little hot water and the only way he could help me was to denounce his gift, leaving him with no memory what-so-ever of spiritual nature or more importantly, when he told me he loved me.

  “I...,” I stuttered and held the charm closer to my eyes. “I don’t think this is like any of the other charms he has given me.”

  Slowly my eyes moved to the bottom of the table where Mr. Prince Charming’s tail swept the floor in a back-and-forth motion. It was true. Mr. Prince Charming and Oscar had never been the best of friends. Even after eighteen years of being around each other.

  My breath quickened. My eyes widened.

  “Are you okay?” Oscar asked taking another bite out of the chocolaty treat. “All of the sudden you got pale.” He stuffed the rest in his mouth. “You aren’t going to faint, are you?” he asked with a mouthful.

  “No.” I smiled. Images of me in a wedding gown made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “Far from it.”

  Meow. Mr. Prince Charming peeked his head out from underneath the tablecloth.

  Yes. A wedding ring. No wonder Mr. Prince Charming was mad. Oscar and I were going to finally be getting together. Especially now after Oscar finally accepted he was a spiritualist.

  Eloise Sandlewood, Oscar’s aunt and a local in Whispering Falls, and I told Oscar about his memory loss. We left out the part about our romance because I wanted him to fall back in love with me, not feel he was obligated. He was upset at first, but he has grown to accept it and that I too was a spiritualist. Luckily it didn’t hurt our friendship.

  Like I said, Mr. Prince Charming was a little jealous of my relationship with Oscar, which led me to believe the charm was a protection charm for marriage. After all, Mr. Prince Charming was my fairy-god cat and he was not allowed to discriminate on who or what he protected me from, even if his judgment was off, way off, on this one.

  Chapter Four

  Oscar flipped the open sign around when he left. Happily I took another sip of my coffee and walked behind the small partition on the other side of the counter where I flipped on my cauldron.

  A wedding. I sighed. I looked up at the framed picture that hung on the wall of me, Darla and my dad and wished they were here to share in my good fortune. I rubbed the little dove charm while images of my dad walking me down the aisle played over and over in my mind.

  They would have been so proud.

  Bubble, bubble. The rapidly-boiling green frothy mix bubbled to the top of the new cauldron I had picked up from Wands, Potions, and Beyond while visiting my great-aunt Helena who was the dean at Hidden Halls, A Spiritualist University. My father’s aunt. At least I had one relative still living.

  In fact, I was still getting used to my new cauldron. It was like everything else. New and improved.

  My last cauldron—my first cauldron—had a bad potion that shattered the darn thing into a million little pieces, leaving me without my magical pot to keep working on my love…um …memory potion for Oscar.

  I reached over and rubbed my finger on the dove charm, making a metal note to take it to Bella’s Baubles so Isabella Van Lou, Bella for short, could put the charm on my bracelet. Even more so, I couldn’t wait to see her face, though I was sure that was where Mr. Prince Charming got the charm in the first place.

  Sigh. With the new turn of events, it wasn’t that I needed Oscar to remember, but it would be awful handy. I continued to stir the potion that I had started; a potion I was relying on to give him his memory back.

  The thought of his dark hair and hot, hunky, well-built chest under Oscar’s cop shirt were enough to get my inner cauldron boiling. Lazily I stirred the bubbling substance eagerly awaiting KJ to bring my beehive husk, which happened to be the one ingredient I didn’t have on hand. The last ingredient I needed to finish my little concoction.

  KJ blew in with the wind and out with the breeze, bringing me all the things I had ordered. Only this time he was about two weeks late. Which was not common. Once I put in an order, he was usually at A Charming Cure within a couple of days.

  If I had to pick one thing about being a homeopathic spiritualist that kind of stunk, I couldn’t just drive to the Piggly Wiggly in Locust Grove, Kentucky, I had to put out a call into the night wind. Yes. I had to stand out in the night air, lick my pointer finger and try to determine which way the wind was blowing. Once I figured that out, I had to shout out into the wind the things I needed. Things like beehive husk, bear claw, charred skeever hide, Dwarven oil, Glow Dust, you know…the basics.

  Can you imagine me standing out in the midnight air in my bat pajamas with my chin-length bob pulled back into the smallest ponytail you had ever seen and my finger twitching around in the air? I was sure I looked like a fool licking my finger at least twenty times and putting it in the air. I definitely wasn’t good at finding the wind, but somehow KJ always got my order.

  The door of the shop flew open bringing in a couple of leaves rustling and dancing around before settling on the wood floor. The bell that hung over the door dinged back and forth several times before coming to a rest.

  Meow, meow. Mr. Prince Charming ran out from underneath the table, followed by some heavy footsteps. He jumped up on the countertop and took his rightful spot.

  “I see you are working hard back there.” The strapping young Native American stood in the doorway of the shop with a bundle of sage, grass root, and beehive husks neatly tied up in the crook of his arm.

  “KJ!” I took the ladle out of the cauldron and laid it down. I hurried around the counter to meet him.

  I put my arms around KJ, practically crushing the bundle. The crackling dried leaves crumbled between us as I pulled him closer when my eyes caught sight of Oscar standing next to his car with Arabella leaning up against his door in a very provocative pose.

  What the heck? He left a while ago.

  My eyes narrowed as I watched Arabella hand Oscar a piece of paper. My stomach knotted when Oscar looked at the paper and a big smile crossed his face. Arabella ran her whole hand down his arm before she said goodbye and jogged off toward her store. Her hair swung back and forth. Oscar watched her the whole way.

  KJ tried to pull away, but I grabbed him tighter. He patted me on the back. I could tell he thought I was crazy, but what homeopathic spiritualist was
n’t? Especially one that was getting railroaded by another spiritualist.

  “Good to see you too, June.” KJ placed his hands on my shoulders and pushed off of me. He closed the door behind him and held the bundle out for me to take. “Beehive husk is hard to get this time of year. If you would have asked for Luna Moth Wings,” he snapped his fingers, “I could have gotten it like that.”

  KJ continued to tell me the story of how he had to put several calls into the wind in order to get the beehive husk. And I only wished I had heard him, but I wasn’t paying a bit of attention to the feisty young man with long black hair and deep brown eyes. If only Arabella were as nice as KJ, I would have gotten some items from her. There was no way I was going to buy from her when she was bound and determined to get her thorns into my Oscar.

  The beehive husk was a must.

  I took a deep sigh and held the bundle close to my heart thinking about the charm and Oscar.

  “June?” KJ waved his hand in front of me. “Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Umm…” I shook my head. My short black bob swung side to side. “Yes.”

  “Yes, you do? Or yes, you don’t?” KJ stared at me. He must have read my blank look. “The Luna Moth Wing?”

  “Oh.” I looked over my shoulder at the row of ingredients on the shelf behind the counter to see if my supply was low.

  “It’s the harvest time and I’m picking some up. If you need some, tell me now. That way you won’t look so silly standing in the dark with your pajamas on trying to figure out how to get in touch with me. It’s a very busy time of the year so I might be a few days late.” An ornery smile crossed his tan face, exposing the most perfect set of white teeth I’d ever seen.

  “A few days?” I asked in a joking way.

  “Yea, yea. I’m sure you are mad that I’m a couple weeks late.” He picked up a couple of different potion bottles sitting on one of the display tables in the middle of the room. He glanced up. There was a twinkle in his dark eyes. “By the way, are those bats glow-in-the-dark?”