by Tess Lake
“Laugh it up, Torrents, but I’ve seen the way your men look at you. You’ll be next! Wait until you get a message asking your ring size and then we’ll see who’ll be laughing!”
“Ollie already knows my ring size,” Molly said with a shrug.
“How did he acquire that little piece of information?” I asked.
“Just came up on our second date.”
“It just came up? In what conversation does it ‘just come up’?” Luce said.
“I can’t remember, but it did, and so I don’t have to worry about any messages, do I? You really need to have a plan if you want to get married.”
“So you lured Ollie into some conversation that eventually led him to discover your ring size on your second date?” I asked.
“I don’t consider it luring. Certain topics naturally led in a certain direction. There are books on this kind of thing, you know.”
When she said books, I suddenly remembered something. I whirled on Luce and pointed my finger at her. A piece of dried mud dropped off my hand to the floor.
“Your wedding scrapbook you made when you were fifteen! Where is it?”
“It’s gone! I threw it out!” Luce squealed.
I didn’t believe her for a moment.
“Oh goddess, we have to find it! Better not let Will see all those pages where you wrote Mrs. Luce Hollingsworth, though,” Molly said.
“Hollingsworth! I forgot about him! Didn’t he marry that cheerleader?”
“She was a backup cheerleader, and yes, he did,” Luce said. She looked at the phone again.
“I haven’t told him I’m a witch,” she said in a quieter voice.
That put a quick stop to our teasing (which admittedly could have gone on waaaay longer). My cousins had been watching how Jack had reacted to the news, and although we hadn’t discussed it, I knew telling THE BIG TRUTH was on both their minds.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. We all chose good men,” I said. I couldn’t give Luce a hug, not with the amount of mud on me, so I gave her a wave instead and then took myself to the bathroom. As I walked out I heard Luce say, “I think I prefer a spring wedding, actually,” to Molly.
I stripped off my muddy clothes and stepped under the luxurious hot water, unable to stop myself from smiling. Although Luce was freaking out, it was a good kind of freaking out.
As I washed the mud off myself, my mind naturally drifted to the topic of the hour. Jack knew my family and I were witches, so that particular barrier was gone. He definitely hadn’t asked me my ring size, but at the same time I’d stayed at his house plenty of times and he had stayed here many times too. He would have had ample opportunity to measure up a ring that I would have left sitting around. As a former cop, I wouldn’t put it past him to get that done without me knowing.
Not only that, but when Jack had bought his wreck of a house, he’d shown me what was to become a writing room.
My writing room.
I got out of the shower and dried myself off, feeling a rush of goose bumps as my mind flicked through various proposal scenarios. On the beach, walking through a park, maybe even up on the bluffs overlooking the ocean…
I shook myself out of these daydreams and looked at myself in the mirror.
“Keep it together, Torrent. Don’t go engagement crazy,” I told myself.
I got dressed and went back to the living room to find Luce and Molly poring over Luce’s wedding scrapbook she’d made when she was fifteen.
“We are not wearing any of these dresses, they’re horribly out-of-date,” Molly said, tapping her finger on a page that was mostly bright orange.
“Orange was in back then,” Luce said.
“Looks like foofy dresses were too,” I said, grabbing my bag.
“You know, Will is friends with Jack and Ollie. I’ll bet you they’ve been talking,” Luce said and looked sideways at me.
“You better keep that sort of talk down in case the moms hear and then our lives as we know them will be over,” I said.
“Just saying. My boy maybe has proposals on his mind and that type of thing is contagious,” Luce said.
“You think so?” Molly said, suddenly serious.
“I’ll bet that librarian has been researching engagement rings for sure.”
“Oh my goddess,” Molly said, putting her hands over her mouth, “I think I saw he had a book on ancient wedding traditions next to his bed!”
“I gotta go before I’m late. Don’t go too crazy now,” I said, twirling my finger near my temple in the universal crazy gesture.
“You’re gonna be next,” Luce warned as I bolted out the door into the cold.
I shook my head as I got into my car, as though trying to dislodge marriage thoughts from my head. No matter the bad things that happened, like your aunt blowing up an island, time still flowed on and good things came with it.
Chapter 4
By the time I got to Jack’s house that night, I was freezing cold (thanks a lot, heater in my car that was barely working) and I was aching from head to foot. Turns out being magically levitated out of a hole, flung through the air, and thrown into wet slop isn’t good for you, and my body was certainly letting me know that. In the last ten minutes, a whole bunch of physical symptoms had decided to show up and make themselves known. At least the ache had helped push away all those crazy thoughts about marriage.
Jack’s door was locked and the lights were on, so I used my key to open up and slip inside.
Yes, I have a key!
Jack had given it to me about six weeks ago with absolutely zero fanfare. I know getting a key to your boyfriend’s house is probably supposed to be some Big Moment, and I guess it was in a way, but in reality we’d simply been having breakfast and about to go our separate ways when he’d slipped me a key, given me a kiss goodbye and then off we’d gone. Molly and Luce, of course, had nearly squeed themselves to death over it, and I guess in some moments I may have joined them, but in others, it occurred to me that those big obvious points of a relationship are really just like the tips of an iceberg. The real stuff is deep and hidden and private. It’s laughing together in the shower or sitting on the sofa in warm silence. It’s these moments in time that build up to a peak and then a key appears, or perhaps an engagement ring or something else on the checklist of “my relationship is advancing.”
Oh goddess, I was thinking about marriage again! Stop it, Harlow, stop it!
Inside Jack’s house, it was warm and I could smell a delicious stew cooking in the kitchen. I slipped off my shoes, which were somewhat muddy, and placed them next to Jack’s work boots, which had started out brown but were now splattered with so many different types of paint they looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. In my socks, I padded down the corridor, hearing the shower running in the back of the house. In the kitchen, there was a crusty loaf of bread sitting on the counter along with some bowls ready for serving and a pat of butter. On the counter, there was a slow cooker quietly burbling away to itself. I lifted the lid and gave the delicious beef stew inside it a sniff.
I know that Jack is a builder, and so I most often see him with wood shavings in his hair or paint on his clothes or surrounded by rubble, but most of the time when I imagine him, it’s standing in this kitchen behind the counter, dicing up something with the super sharp knife I got him for Christmas on the handmade chopping board I’d also given him. Dating and dinners out and running down the beach are all extraordinarily fun and wonderful, but this here, the quiet warm comfort of the kitchen, this was the part of our relationship that I absolutely adored.
“Harlow!” I heard Jack say from behind me, and then I was hugged by a very wet and very naked man. He spent a good ten seconds kissing me before he suddenly started tickling and I was squealing, trying to get away. I finally managed to extricate myself and turned around to see my very naked boyfriend grab the towel off the counter where he’d dropped it and rub the remaining water droplets off himself. It was then I saw a long new scratch running down his should
er that looked quite red and sore. I stepped forward and ran my finger over it.
“What happened here? House again?”
“Part of the kitchen had some very strong opinions about whether it should be pulled out or not,” Jack said. I followed him down the corridor as he went to his bedroom to get dressed.
Before Christmas, Jack had bought a house to renovate and live in. To describe it as a run-down wreck would be an insult to all the other run-down wrecks out there. The house he bought was so far gone that the best thing for it might have been a bulldozer. But since he’d bought it, Jack had been working on and off there as much as he could in any spare time when he was off from running his business working as a carpenter around town and working with his brother. The place was still filled with rubble, but after two months, I guess you could say that some of that rubble was looking like it was coming into organized piles, so there was definitely some sort of progress being made. Jack had knocked out walls, shored up sagging beams, and was currently demolishing the kitchen. As a result, he often came home with bits of plaster and sawdust through his hair and clothes, and a number of cuts and bruises on his hands and arms. Jack finally got dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a black T-shirt, and then came and hugged me again, wrapping his arms around my body. As usual, I sank into his embrace, putting my head against his chest and listening to the slow beat of his heart.
“Okay, stew time,” he said. We went back to the kitchen, where Jack started cutting up bread and I sat down on one of the chairs across the counter, trying to stretch the dull throb out of my back that had come from being hurled through the air.
“You okay?” Jack said, giving the stew a stir.
I’d already told him earlier today that we’d found Aunt Cass. I’d adopted a new policy of don’t lie, but… that didn’t mean I had to entirely tell every single bit of the truth all the time. I’d told Jack I’d levitated through the air and then fallen to the ground. I hadn’t mentioned that I’d virtually been shot out of a cannon.
“Witchy business can be painful sometimes,” I said and rubbed my shoulder.
“So are you a magical detective now?” Jack asked.
“What?” I said, giving him a double blink before realizing what must’ve happened.
“Adams, that little sneak,” I muttered. “What did he tell you?”
“Just that you’re a magical detective now, apparently,” Jack said.
“Since when have you been talking to Adams, anyway?”
“He comes by sometimes. He likes to sleep in the rubble.”
Ah, more things were becoming clear. Adams had been coming home from time to time looking like he’d rolled in chalk dust. Turned out it was probably plaster from Jack’s house.
To say Jack had taken the news of me being a witch well was a massive understatement. He’d taken it so well, in fact, that sometimes I suspected he was still in shock from that night two months ago, and one morning he would wake up, look at me and shout, “Oh my goddess, you’re a witch!”
This hadn’t happened, of course, and it seemed that he’d even taken the fact that Adams was a talking magical cat all in stride.
“So are you a magical detective now?” he asked.
“No, I am not a magical detective, but… I guess I am possibly investigating something that could turn out to be magical…”
He served up dinner, and while we ate I told him about Eve Navarro’s visit at the Chili Challenge office and her grandmother Hilda Osborne, who had apparently been entering strange states where she left the nursing home and did odd things. I told him that Sunny Days Manor was owned by Sylvester Coldwell, and at that Jack’s ears pricked up.
“If he’s involved, you know there’s going to be something sneaky going on, even if it’s got absolutely nothing to do with Eve’s grandmother,” Jack said. Months back, when Jack had been helping investigate a series of fires around town, he’d investigated Coldwell and come up with a whole lot of information about his various nefarious activities. Jack had been a policeman in his former life, and although he never spent any time talking about Coldwell, I knew it rankled him that someone he knew was a bad guy had apparently gotten away with everything bad he’d ever done.
We finished up dinner, and soon we were sitting on the sofa drinking decaf coffee, soft music playing in the background.
Thus far I’d been telling the truth, relaying everything that Eve had told me, except I hadn’t yet told all of the truth. It’s because the next bit was something supernatural: the old man leaping over the wall. Despite Jack taking the fact that my family and I were witches incredibly well, there was always an anxiety that would creep up within me whenever I had to do something witchy or discuss something witchy. I know it’s probably absurd, but it felt like there was a line somewhere, and every time I brought to Jack’s attention supernatural things, we stepped inexorably closer to it. I pushed away the anxiety, smiled at my adorable boyfriend, and took a deep breath.
“There’s one more thing. Eve said that one night when she was dropping off her grandmother, she saw an old man, ninety-one years old, standing by a six-foot-high wall next to Sunny Days Manor. Then, apparently, he leaped over it in one go. He died a few days later of a heart attack, but it sounds like something incredibly supernatural to me,” I said, somewhat in a rush.
Jack pondered this for a moment between sips of coffee. I could almost see the gears working in his head. He was a former policeman, so when it came to matters of crime or strange things, he naturally started thinking about them, analyzing the evidence and working through the problem.
“An old man jumping over a six-foot-high wall could be drugs rather than something supernatural. I wouldn’t put it past Coldwell to be running some kind of scam where he extracts the maximum amount of money out of old people and then tries to get rid of them. On the other hand, perhaps it is something magical and strange,” he said.
He turned to me and gave me what I’d started calling his police detective look. It was friendly, but he was definitely assessing what it was I was doing.
“So apart from the money she left on the desk for you, which was a hundred bucks, are you doing this out of the kindness of your heart?” he asked.
Jack knew about the Harlot Bay Reader and its lack of success, and I certainly wasn’t lying to him, but much like many other things, I simply hadn’t told him all of the truth, keeping my own thoughts and worries to myself. He knew, though, that it wasn’t going well and that I’d begun to drift away from it, searching out the next thing that I could do, hoping to find a career or something to fill my time. From the practical perspective, I needed money. It was also very disheartening to put so much effort into something and get so little in return. I wanted to do something that meant something. I realized I was thinking these things rather than speaking and Jack was still sipping his coffee and waiting for me to answer.
“I guess I just want to help her. She is worried about her grandmother and that’s something I can relate to. At least when things happen to us, we’re aware of the magical confluence and the various strange things that go on around Harlot Bay. People who have no idea that there are witches here and other odd things must feel so lost and alone. Incomprehensible things happen to them, and who’s going to help them? Eve can take her grandmother to as many doctors’ appointments as she likes, but unless medical science suddenly finds a way to detect strange supernatural things, it’s not going to be any help to her.”
Jack nodded, although I’m not quite sure to which bit he was agreeing.
“Do you want me to come with you tomorrow? I don’t have any jobs going on, so I was just going to be clearing out more of the kitchen.”
I hadn’t even spoken my plan aloud to myself, but I guess Jack had leaped ahead of me and knew that I would soon be visiting Hilda Osborne at the Sunny Days Manor.
“That would be great. I could use a former policeman’s opinion.”
“We could start a detective agency. I’ll be the serio
us no-nonsense policeman who only believes the hard evidence and what science can prove, and you’ll be my witchy sidekick who taps into the strange and supernatural and solves crimes with the help of her magical talking cat,” he said and tickled me under the ribs.
“Why am I the sidekick? I’ll be the magical detective and you can be my sidekick,” I said, laughing. Somewhere between tickling and laughing, we started kissing, and soon after that we were laughing our way down the corridor and into the dark warmth of Jack’s bedroom.
Chapter 5
The next day we sat in Jack’s truck, parked outside the Sunny Days Manor with the engine running and the heater going, waiting for Eve Navarro, who had messaged me to say she was running a few minutes late. The weather in Harlot Bay was being its usual deceptive self—the sky was blue, the sun was beaming down, and at first glance, it appeared it was the kind of day where you put on a pair of shorts and headed down to the beach as soon as possible. As soon as you stepped outside, though, you were hit with the bitter coldness, a chill in the air that seemed pulled from the heart of winter. I was still aching somewhat from yesterday’s fling into the mud, and although Jack’s truck was warm (and smelled of sawdust), the small amount of time we’d been outside had been enough to cause my shoulder to start hurting again.
“You know, it occurs to me that you didn’t actually go to France for six weeks, did you?” Jack said with a slight smile on his face.
My first impulse, that Torrent witch impulse honed by years of lying to the moms, nearly leaped in and took over my mouth automatically, but I managed to hold it back.
“No, I was magically frozen for six weeks,” I said.
Even as I told him, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t yet revealed why I’d stood him up with a sudden trip to France, as the lie had gone. I’d committed myself to telling the truth to Jack, but in that moment I wondered if I wasn’t holding back quite a bit of that truth. It wasn’t quite lying, but then it wasn’t exactly being honest either.
“Magically frozen for six weeks? I knew you wouldn’t stand this handsome face up for something like a trip to France,” Jack said, rubbing his stubble, his fingers making a scratching sandpapery sound.
