by Bailey Cates
I tried a laugh. “No, nothing like that. Tonight we had dinner with Ben and Lucy, but most evenings lately we’ve gone to look at houses after work. You know, Cookie Rios is working in residential real estate now.” With horror, I realized I was close to tears. Orla’s talk of sacrifice had brought home the reality of having to move more than all our house shopping had.
“It’s nice that you have a friend in the business,” Margie said. “But I hate that you’re leaving. Say! There’s a house over on the next block that’s for sale! Seriously, you guys should take a look. We don’t want to lose you,” she practically moaned.
Swallowing hard, I pasted on a smile. “How’re the kids?”
She rolled her eyes. “My God, Katie. They talk talk talk all the time. Even Baby Bart.”
“Baby Bart” was nearly three now and well into toddlerhood. He’d be Baby Bart to his mother until the day she died, though.
“And the JJs. Heavens. Thank God for first grade. If they didn’t go to school every day, I’d lose my mind.” Jonathan and Julia, aka the JJs, were the Coopersmiths’ six-year-old twins. “Chatterboxes, morning to night—heck, even in the middle of the night sometimes. I swear they talk in their sleep, too. I don’t know where they get it from.” But her eyes were twinkling. She knew exactly where they got it from, and it wasn’t from her husband. “Saw your car pull in and just wanted to say hey. I better get back, though. Redding’s orchestrating bath time, and he could use an extra set of hands. Bye!” She took off for her house at a jog as Declan’s truck turned the corner.
I waited while he parked at the curb and pulled a grocery bag of clothes from the passenger seat. Then we called to Mungo, and he led us inside. Flipping the switch by the front door turned on the floor lamp with the tasseled shade across the room. In its muted light, I paused to survey the postage-stamp living space.
When I’d moved from Akron, I gave away or sold almost everything I owned. I brought only my clothes, a few treasured possessions like books and family mementos, and my favorite cooking gear and cookbooks. Everything else in my abode had been acquired after the move, and almost all of it was used. The purple upholstery on the fainting couch opposite the front door popped brightly against the peach walls. A Civil War–era trunk served as a coffee table, and two small wingback chairs completed the seating area—and filled the rest of the room. The built-in bookshelves had been gradually filled in the last two years, their dark wood reflected in the worn planks of the floor below and the shutters on the front windows. A short hall to the right led to the bedroom and the bathroom. Near the couch, French doors led out to the patio and backyard. Mungo sat in the doorway to the kitchen on the left, staring at me with an urgent demand for food in his eyes.
Declan went into the bedroom to stash his clothes next to one of the armoires I used as a closet. His bag of dirty laundry that was already in that space would have to go under the bed until he hauled it to the firehouse to wash. He was free to use my washer, of course, but it was a compact, and he said he preferred to use the one at Five House in order to get everything done at once. It was one of many compromises we’d worked out in the carriage house.
Since my familiar was obviously on the brink of starving to death, I went into the kitchen, dropped my tote on one of the two vinyl café chairs, and opened the refrigerator. Minutes later, the terrier was delicately digging into a selection of leftover chicken salad, saffron rice, and honey-glazed carrots. An elite meal for a dog, indeed. But since the moment the little black dog had shown up on my doorstep and adopted me as his witch—it turned out that’s how it works; familiars find their witches rather than the other way around—he’d refused to eat a single bite of dog kibble.
Honestly, I couldn’t blame him.
My kitchen duties complete, I poured us some red wine and joined Declan out on the patio.
I handed him a glass and sank into a chair.
“So, you want to tell me what the famous—or is it infamous?—Orla Black said to you?” he asked.
“Not much,” I said, not yet ready to discuss how painful the thought of moving was. Besides, I couldn’t know for sure if that was what Orla had meant by sacrifice.
Tomorrow I’ll track her down and find out more. There. Decision made. I instantly felt better.
“It looked like more than that,” Declan persisted. “And I saw the dragonflies. That meant something, didn’t it?”
I half smiled and nodded. “Usually. I don’t know what, though. She said something about my gifts and helping people in the magical community. You know, stuff she might already know from Lucy or even Mimsey.” I was pretty sure the de facto leader of the spellbook club, Mimsey Carmichael, knew Orla better than my aunt and I did. “As for the dragonflies, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
“Well, we were there for less than ten minutes,” Declan mused. “Sure seemed to be a lot of drama in that short time.”
“Mm. Not to mention that Connell decided to show up right then.” I turned to look into his eyes. Their color had deepened to azure in the faint light from inside.
He looked away for a moment, then back at me. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
Stunned, I leaned forward. “Are you kidding? It’s really happening again?”
In the past, Declan’s ancestor had literally taken over his body, roaring out his opinions in a blazing Irish accent. It had first happened at a séance, and for a while, it had looked like Connell was around to stay. Declan, a solid, straightforward soul if ever there was one, was horrified and embarrassed. His buddies at the fire station still didn’t know anything about it.
As for what, exactly, Connell was? Well, that was still up in the air. He’d been married to a distant aunt in the McCarthy family in Ireland more than a century before. Old photos had revealed him to be six inches shorter than his bride, but they’d looked happy. Then the photos showed her getting older, and older, and finally she wasn’t in them at all, while Connell still looked as spry as ever as time went on. Given his green garb and tall hat, his sprightly, bearded appearance, along with a few hints that he’d dropped since barging into Declan’s life . . . He might have been a . . . leprechaun.
I’d refused to believe it, but it had been pointed out that someone who practices magic should be careful about where to draw the line regarding what was believable and what wasn’t. I had to admit it seemed likely that leprechauns—if they did exist—didn’t look like their tiny caricatures any more than witches looked like warty hags who rode brooms. Connell himself had told me he wasn’t really a ghost because he wasn’t really dead. Or alive. Instead, he seemed to exist in a kind of no-man’s-land with the sole purpose of helping a chosen McCarthy each generation.
This time around it was Declan.
For me, it was disconcerting not to know whether Connell might show up in, shall we say, intimate circumstances. But he’d agreed to behave himself, and I’d taken him at his word. He’d convinced me that he had good intentions, and he’d helped out in a couple of dangerous situations, too. Then a few months ago, Declan told me he’d gotten Connell to agree to never take over his physical self like that again. I thought that had been the end of it.
Now Declan shook his head. “No, it’s not like before. He doesn’t actually take control of me like he did. But I’ve become used to his presence, you know? There in the background. And he’s started . . . Well, I guess you could call it nudging me about certain things. Like subtle advice.”
My forehead creased, and I sat back. “You mean like intuition?”
My fiancé’s face brightened. “Yeah, I guess it is like that. I mean, everyone gets gut feelings, right? It’s just that I know exactly where some of mine come from. So I really trust them. And you know what?”
“What?”
“I like it.”
I felt a grin spread on my face. “I know exactly what you
mean.” My intuition had grown exponentially as I’d studied the Craft and practiced spell work over the last two years. It made me glad that Declan shared that—and that he appeared to be at ease about it.
He grinned back at me. “I thought you might. There have been a couple of times it’s come in awfully handy. No big world-saving type stuff, but when we were called out to that house fire last week? I knew exactly where to look for the owner’s dog before it succumbed to smoke inhalation.”
Yip!
Mungo had followed us outside and now voiced his approval.
I showed mine by reaching over and squeezing Declan’s hand. “That makes me happy. How long has this been going on?”
He shrugged. “A couple of months.”
I drew my hand back. “That long? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked embarrassed. “I guess I didn’t know how you’d take it.”
I considered that. “Has Connell ever given you any, er, advice about me?”
“Other than telling me you were in that fire last year, no. I think he’s kind of intimidated by you. After all, you were pretty rough on him those times he showed up unannounced. Raked him right over the coals.” He grinned. “Still, he thought it was important that you know whatever Orla Black told you was real. You’re sure there wasn’t more?”
“Not much,” I hedged. “She stopped herself. I thought it was just a way to get me to pay her for a reading, but I’ve decided I don’t care. I really want to know what else she was going to tell me.”
“I’d like to know, too,” he said as he stood and stretched. “I’m putting in some overtime doing building inspections tomorrow, so I think I’ll head to bed now. Care to join me?” He raised his eyebrows in invitation.
I grinned. “Yessir, I do believe I would.”
Chapter 3
I put a piece of cornmeal sheet cake on the table in front of Jaida French. “Here you go. On the house.”
She glanced up from the brief she was working on. “What? Oh! Thanks.”
“Or I could get you something from the lunch menu,” I said. “It’s after noon.”
“Already?” She sighed. “You know I love this place, but if they don’t get our office finished soon, I’m going to gain ten pounds.”
I laughed. “Would you rather have a fruit cup?”
She snorted. “God, no. This stuff is amazing. Light and fluffy, not at all like what I think of as corn cake. Er, and if I could get another mocha . . . ?” She looked at me hopefully.
“Of course.” I left her to her work.
Jaida was a defense attorney in her early forties. She worked—and lived—with another witch named Gregory, who was her partner in every sense of the word except that he practiced the Craft solitary rather than belonging to a coven. While their office was being renovated, he was working in their apartment, while she had claimed a corner table in the Honeybee.
She was one of the original members of the spellbook club, and her magical specialty was tarot. A vivacious African-American woman with a quick and wry intelligence, she wore a casual skirt and blouse rather than her usual business suit. And, as always, she smelled of cinnamon.
Ben was working the coffee counter, so I asked him to deliver her mocha and went into the kitchen. Lucy was chatting with a customer at the register and gave me an absent nod as I walked by. We’d had a run on the daily special, so our part-time employee, Iris Grant, was mixing up a new batch of cardamom orange muffins to pop into the oven. She turned as I approached, the multiple rows of piercings in her ears flashing in the light that angled through the alley window. Her short hair was parrot green, pink, and blue, in celebration of the upcoming Easter holiday.
“What’s next, boss?”
I drew closer and spoke in a low voice. “Did you remember the spell?”
She leaned toward me. “There were people at the register, so I just whispered it. That will still work, right?”
“It’s the intention that counts,” I agreed, wiping my hands on the brown-and-teal paisley apron I’d selected to match today’s skirt and T-shirt.
When I’d first met Iris, I knew she had potential. Since she’d started working at the Honeybee, Lucy and I had introduced her to the tenets of hedgewitchery and encouraged her to participate in giving our baked goods the little oomph of something extra that set them apart—a deliberate sprinkle of spice here, or a scattering of herbs mixed in there, all with encouraging and benevolent results. The cardamom in the muffins promoted love as well as eloquence, and the candied orange peel inspired happiness and creativity.
“Well, we’re low on the cheddar sage scones,” I said, thinking out loud about what she could do next.
She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t seem to get the texture right.”
“Okay, we’ll work on that. For now, I’ll do them, and you can start prepping the rhubarb for tomorrow’s special.”
She did a little two-step. “Okeydoke, boss.”
“Katie?” Lucy called. “Do we have any more of the lavender basil biscotti?”
I turned and met her eyes. She gave a slight nod toward the woman at the register, who already had her coffee drink.
“For Sadie to sample,” Lucy explained. I knew that meant, Sadie’s husband is being a jerk again, and I want to give her a little extra psychic protection. Basil and lavender would nicely fit the bill.
“In the big glass jar, over by Ben,” I said.
She smiled her thanks, and I went back to gathering the ingredients for the cheddar sage scones. They’d been on the menu since day one and were the first cooking spell Lucy had taught me.
Sage for wisdom, memory, and to attract money . . .
Iris finished chopping the rhubarb for the next day’s crostini, then left for her afternoon class at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The muffins came out of the oven, and the scones took their place. As I was refilling the display case with cherry chocolate chip cookies, Declan and two of his buddies from Five House came in.
Scott was an African-American battalion chief whose hair was threaded with gray. He carried an air of self-possession and moved with an easy grace. Randy reminded me of my father, who was part Shawnee, except the firefighter was much stockier and kind of a gym rat. He was also a bit higher energy than Scott, who had taken the younger firefighter under his wing much as Uncle Ben had with Declan nearly a decade before.
They took the next-to-the-last table, and I waved from the kitchen. Lucy was the one who went over to take their order, though. When she came back to the kitchen, she was grinning.
“They want a pile of fried-chicken biscuit sandwiches.”
“Positively loaded with bacon gravy, I bet.” I echoed her smile. “Growing boys and all that.”
The fryer was already hot, so I breaded the chicken that had been soaking in buttermilk and a dash of Mo Hotta Mo Betta hot sauce overnight. Soon the smell of fried chicken edged into the usual spicy-sweet atmosphere.
I took their plates out myself. “How’s it going, guys?”
They wore dark blue T-shirts with the fire department logo on the sleeve. The shirts did little to hide the well-defined muscles beneath, and I had to make an effort not to trail my fingers over Declan’s biceps.
There’ll be time for that later.
Randy half shrugged. “Building inspections are pretty boring.”
“That they are, but catching violations early helps to keep the rest of our jobs a little more boring, too,” Scott said.
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Inspect away.” Not that most of their calls were to fires—most were to car accidents—but the fewer the better. I tried not to worry about Declan’s dangerous job, but sometimes I couldn’t help it.
The door opened, and Bianca Devereaux wafted in with two books under her arm. Tall, elegant, her long dark hair pulled into a complicated inside-out braid,
she wore a breezy handkerchief skirt in purple chiffon and a gauzy cream blouse. A four-inch-wide silver band clasped her wrist, and a single, giant pearl nestled into the hollow of her neck. Another member of the spellbook club, in her forties, Bianca concentrated on traditional Wiccan and moon magic. Her skill with numbers didn’t hurt when it came to her stunning success in the stock market, but some of her income came from Moon Grapes, her popular wine shop on Factors Walk.
“Holy crow,” Randy said, so quiet I could hardly hear him.
I turned to see him staring at Bianca, who sketched a wave to Lucy and Ben and made her way over to the table where Jaida sat.
“Who’s that?” For all his muscles and good looks, Randy looked like a stunned rabbit.
Declan’s eyebrow rose, and he exchanged a look first with Scott and then with me. “That’s Katie’s friend Bianca.”
“Bianca.” Randy rolled the name around on his tongue. “Beautiful. Tell me she’s not married.”
I blinked. “Um, no. Not anymore.” Bianca’s husband had left her and their daughter, Colette, when he learned she’d started practicing magic.
“Boyfriend?”
“Not at the moment,” I answered.
“That’s going to make it much easier, then.” His eyes were still glued on her.
“Asking her for a date?” Declan asked.
“That’s first on the docket,” Randy said. “But I’m telling you, man, I’m going to make that woman my wife.”
We all stared at him for a few seconds. Then Scott said, “Well, okay, then. Just let me know the date of the wedding, and I’ll be there.”
“Hang on,” I protested. “I think Bianca’s going to have a little something to say about that.”
Randy looked at me. “Duh. What kind of a guy do you think I am?” He grinned. “I might have some work to do winning her over, but don’t you worry, Katie. I’m up for it.”
