Magic and Macaroons

by Bailey Cates

  “She’s . . . overprotective of me, and, yes, perhaps a bit jealous. I teach them the same, or at least the same according to their own strengths and abilities.”

  “But your great-granddaughter is only what? Twelve?”

  “Thirteen just last month. Poor Tanna. She has no family left, and her husband passed several years ago.”

  But she’s the grown-up, I wanted to say. For once I kept my mouth shut.

  “Shall we go inside?” Eulora said, changing the subject. “It’s cooler today, but I’m still a bit overheated.”

  I sprang to my feet. “Of course!”

  “Bring the little dog, too.” She rose, examining him as she did so. “He’s more than your little dog, though, isn’t he?”

  Nodding, I asked, “How did you know?”

  “Because you are a lightwitch. You are bound to have a strong familiar, and small though he might be, that one is strong indeed.”

  Chapter 17

  Holding her elbow, I helped her inside. She seemed frailer than the day before, and I wondered how much our visit had taxed her health. Maybe Tanna wasn’t overprotective after all. I ran back outside and retrieved the empty glass and pastries from the porch and brought them into the kitchen, then began looking through the cupboards for a plate.

  “Next to the refrigerator,” Eulora called from her perch on the living-room sofa.

  “Got it,” I said. Moments later, I brought in a plate piled with the Honeybee baked goods and the pitcher of lemonade I’d found in the refrigerator. “I changed my mind about something to drink. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Heavens, no,” she said, a smile crinkling the skin around her eyes even more. She reached for a fig muffin. “I see you’re wearing the bracelet. Good. Have you had a chance to look for the gris gris since yesterday?”

  I sat in the same chair I’d chosen the day before. “Yes, but not with the best of luck. We—my coven and I—tried a location spell last night. More than one, actually. I found a likely possibility.”

  She leaned forward with an eager expression. “And?”

  “It was where Franklin rented a room. But he hadn’t paid his rent, and his room has been cleared out and rented. The landlady wouldn’t let us look at what he’d left behind. She’s not feeling very trustful.”

  She tipped her head to one side. “Did something happen to make her feel that way?”

  “There was a break-in last night. Nothing seems to have gone missing,” I said. “But the timing seems a bit, er, coincidental. She agreed to give Franklin’s possessions to Detective Quinn, however. I have a call in to him.”

  Eulora’s took a bite of muffin, looking thoughtful. “I agree that break-in is suspicious, especially since only last night you discovered the location of the gris gris with your spell. Could anyone have observed you?”

  My fingers crept to my lips. “You think someone was watching us cast? The blinds in the Honeybee were all closed.”

  Her eyes flashed purple. “There are many ways to watch someone. Not all are literal.”

  The enormity of the enemy I was up against settled in my stomach. “Mother Eulora, I don’t know what to do.”

  She shook her finger at me. “Of course you do. You might not realize you know yet, but you do.”

  I stared at her. What the heck?

  “Eulora,” I said slowly. “Franklin said I was a lightwitch, but other than telling me I was unable to engage in black magic, he didn’t tell me what being a lightwitch is supposed to be all about.”

  Her eyes went wide. Shaking her head, she looked toward the ceiling. “Franklin, what were you thinking?”

  I stood. “What?”

  Eulora pushed herself to her feet. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  Obediently, I followed her down a back hallway with Mungo trundling along at my left heel. But I was fuming. Had Franklin lied to me?

  We passed a neat, austere bedroom. “Tanna’s,” she said. “She moved in a few months ago. To take care of me.” She breathed a small sigh.

  We moved farther down the hall to what must have been Eulora’s own bedroom. Stuffed hedgehogs were piled on the neatly made bed. More overflowed the top of the dresser, the deep windowsill, and a small bookshelf. When she opened the walk-in closet to reveal a recognizable altar, it threw the collection of fuzzy, sweet toys into sharp relief.

  A small table, waist-high and covered with a white cloth, snugged against the wall. It was covered with photographs ranging from old-fashioned sepia daguerreotypes to modern snapshots. A vase of silk lilies, the same dark aubergine of Mother Eulora’s eyes, dominated a back corner. A crystal bowl held water, and a white candle sat in a bowl filled with M&M’s. Another bowl held what looked to be plain old soil—only I remembered the vials of graveyard dirt in Marie LaFevre’s shop and doubted it was plain at all.

  The item that grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go was the two-foot length of dried snakeskin curled in the middle of the altar. The red, black, and yellow stripes were faded but still managed to look deadly.

  I pointed to it. “Detective Quinn said they found snakeskin in the warehouse where they found Franklin. Feathers, too.”

  She slowly nodded. “Voodoo of some kind is no doubt involved in his death, then.”

  I couldn’t help but shiver, recalling the slither of snakes in the depths of Mimsey’s shew stone.

  Mother Eulora saw my reaction and said, “In our legends, Damballa is the serpent god who created the world. His coils form the stars, his skin the oceans. He is married to the rainbow, Ayida Wedo. This brings me comfort, but not because it protects me or can keep me from age or illness. It is my heritage, and these things have meaning to me.” She took my hand. “I do not call myself a mambo nor a priestess, but a spiritualist. That is a choice.”

  Turning to look up at me with her sweet face and deeply knowing eyes, she said, “Franklin was wrong to tell you lightwitches can’t cast black magic.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. “But . . .”

  She patted the bed. “Sit.”

  I sat on the chenille coverlet. Eulora shut the closet door and sank into the chair by the window with a grateful sigh. Our knees were almost touching. Over her shoulder, I could see a tidy rose garden flourishing in the backyard.

  She reached for a stuffed hedgehog on the windowsill and placed it on her lap. “Lightwitches are more powerful than your everyday witch, or sorcerer, druid, mage, houdon—anyone who comes to magic to learn and develop the inherent power we all possess. You were born with power, deep power. One or the other of your parents was gifted through the generations.”

  “Both,” I said. “Hedgewitchery and Native American shamanism.”

  She clapped her hands, delight playing across her features. Once again she reminded me of Mimsey.

  “Of course! That explains it. You are, shall we say, supercharged from birth. All magic can be learned, augmented, improved over a lifetime. But you are a magical savant, if you will.”

  I looked down at my hands, clasped in my lap. “Sometimes I glow.”

  “You . . . ?” She gave a full-throated laugh. “Oh, yes. I remember Franklin telling me. It was what alerted him to the depth of your power in the first place. But, honey, don’t worry. That’s only when you’re under duress, I’m sure.” She absently stroked the stuffed animal in her lap.

  I looked up to find her looking at me with concern that belied her words. “Then why are you looking at me that way?” I asked.

  “Franklin lied to you, at least in a way. He had his own agenda, you see. To fight the dark. Once he discovered how powerful you really are, he tried to force you to do only good by telling you that you had no choice.”

  “I have no interest in practicing dark magic,” I said.

  She held up her hand. “I’m happy to hear that, of course. But
you need to understand that the gift of the lightwitch demands choice. Informed choice. Balance and intention are key to power. Even angels can’t be forced to serve the light.”

  A grimace crossed my face. “Well, I’m no angel.”

  A small smile touched Mother Eulora’s lips.

  I sighed. “But I haven’t been like this my whole life. The glowing and all.”

  “You’ve had magic in you your whole life, though. You know that, surely.”

  Slowly, I nodded. “It took me a while to realize that after my aunt told me about my witchy heritage a year and a half ago. But then I remembered all sorts of evidence of my latent abilities.” I folded my arms over my chest, and my voice rose. “Out of fear, my mother kept that knowledge from me, and now I find out Franklin lied to me, too. I’m getting pretty darn sick of other people trying to control me!”

  Mother Eulora’s eyes shone. “Good. Don’t allow that to happen anymore.”

  I blinked.

  “It’s your choice,” she said.

  A door slammed somewhere on the other side of the house. Eulora rose to her feet, and I did the same. “Tanna has returned. I assume you want to keep this conversation private?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But please, before I leave, can you tell me just a little more? What does it mean to be a lightwitch? Is there such a thing as a darkwitch?”

  She tipped her head to the side. “I suppose there might be, since everything has its opposite, but I’ve yet to meet one. Lightwitches bring balance to the universe, you see. It’s very simple. Sometimes it’s a small thing—balancing the sadness, the anger or loss in someone’s life with a positive herbal remedy like you do in your bakery, or even a smile or word of encouragement. It can also mean going head-to-head with greater evil, if that is the choice you make. Large or small, it’s all part of the same calling. Anyone can do the small stuff—and should. But we often don’t take those opportunities to bring a bit of beauty or kindness or laughter into the world, do we? It all adds to the positive, though, and acts against the jealousy, violence, greed, and hate.” She paused, her gaze penetrating my mere physical body and seeming to look deep into my mind.

  Maybe even my heart.

  “You are able to engage with larger evil than most of us,” Eulora went on. “However, it’s not a gift you’re obligated to use. You must understand that.”

  I nodded.

  “However, if you don’t, it is a great waste.”

  We heard a rustling from somewhere down the hall. Closer now.

  Putting my hand on Mother Eulora’s arm, I rushed my words. “Thank you. Perhaps I did know this all along, but I feel a new clarity about being a lightwitch. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

  She patted my hand again. “Of course—” Her eyes widened and her head whipped toward the hallway.

  At the same time, Mungo went crazy, barking and bouncing, high and loud and fast. He ran to the doorway and his barking grew even more frantic.

  “What the . . . ?” The mother-of-pearl bracelet seemed to tighten against the pulse point on my wrist as I ran to join him.

  What I saw didn’t register at first.

  Fog seemed to be creeping along the ground, billowing along the wall-to-wall carpet from the direction of the living room, crawling toward us as if impelled by its own life force. I watched it in a trance, Mungo’s barking a strange background noise.

  Eulora shook me. “Katie! We have to get out of here!”

  I blinked, inhaled a whooping breath, and smelled the foulness of the air. The rustling sound grew louder, turning to a crackling, and, finally, though it only took a few nanoseconds, my brain put it all together.

  Fire.

  A quick glance confirmed the window was too small to crawl out of. No way could the older woman have hoisted herself up to that level, anyway.

  “Come on.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room. Mungo had fallen silent now that he’d sounded the alarm, and followed me like a wraith. I thought about picking him up, but instinctively decided he’d be better off near the floor. The hallway was full of smoke now, as it rose toward the ceiling, acrid and nasty smelling. The crackling grew louder. I veered into Tanna’s bedroom and pulled back the curtains.

  Yes!

  This window was much larger and lower to the ground. We could all get out! I reached for the latch and unlocked it.

  Mungo started barking again as sudden flames whooshed upward from the floor molding. What? Where did that come from? But it drove me back from the window.

  This isn’t a normal fire. This is something different. This is something very, very wrong.

  I grabbed the pillows off the bed, stripped off the cases, and ran into the bathroom across the hall. Quickly, I doused them both and wrapped one around my face and the other one around Eulora’s, muffling everything below her sharp, assessing eyes. At least we could breathe.

  But Mungo started coughing at my feet, and new terror winged through me at the thought of smoke getting into his little lungs. I swooped him up in my arms and nestled him against my shoulder so he could breathe through the wet fabric as well.

  Eulora and I stumbled down the hallway, hand in hand, toward the living room. I didn’t know how long the fire had been burning, perhaps several minutes before we noticed it, but it was accelerating at a dizzying pace. The smoke was making me woozy, too, and my throat ached from breathing the hot, harsh air even through the wet pillowcase.

  “Katie!” Eulora called through the roar of the flames. She pointed.

  Flames licked the walls, filling the arched doorway to the kitchen and roaring to a crescendo all around us. Looking back, I saw it had spread to the bedrooms we’d just been in. Then I saw something that made my pounding heart almost stop: Dark streaks reached through the flames, flickering with a life of their own. Antifire in the midst of fire, something I sensed was so cold, it only made the feverish heat hotter. With an eerie intelligence, it reached destructive fingers toward us.

  Seeking. Hunting.

  It nudged flames toward fabric and books and the more combustible items in the room. The wooden apples burned brightly within their ceramic bowl, a sinister centerpiece in the middle of the glass coffee table. Wisps of magazine ash swooped through the room, buffeted by hot currents of air. A whiff of burnt sugar reached my nose from the wreckage of the Honeybee pastries cremated right on the plate.

  The gauzy curtains went up in a flash, and a wave of heat tumbled over us. I bent down, hunching over Mungo as I moved away, then straightened to find the entire room engulfed in fire. Loud popping came from the direction of Eulora’s collection of ceramic hedgehogs, and a piece of superheated shrapnel struck my left shoulder. I cried out, and Mungo yelped. The caustic smell of burning upholstery filled my nostrils as the blazing sofa slumped in upon its springs, the polyester stuffing melting and giving off a putrid, yellow cloud.

  I held Mungo to my chest with one hand and squeezed Eulora’s hand with the other. “Help me fight it!” I cried, focusing all my panicked energy into clearing a path to the doorway. I felt her considerable power rush to meet my own, and there was the lupine energy I knew was Mungo’s essential wolfish nature that merged seamlessly with mine. I felt my skin grow oddly cool and saw white light like static pulse beneath my skin.

  Closing my eyes, I gathered all our energies together and pushed.

  I felt the dark flames retreat, try to surge back as if fighting me, but one more push and the fire died between us and the door. We rushed forward, and I reached for the doorknob.

  Eulora slapped my hand away. “Hot,” she rasped.

  I could barely hear her, but nodded. Stupid. Unwinding the pillowcase from my face, I wrapped it around my hand and used it to grasp the metal handle.

  It wouldn’t turn.

  A wall of flame like the one in Tanna’s bedroom flared from t
he bottom of the door, driving us backward.

  “Help!” I screamed in desperation.

  Eulora grabbed my hand again, and I felt our energies melding once more.

  “Baby dog, I have to put you down for a sec,” I murmured to Mungo. Fighting every instinct to keep him as close to me as possible, I set him at my feet. He leaned against my leg, still helping Eulora and me as we directed our attention toward the flames now obscuring the exit in front of us.

  The fire fought back. I gritted my teeth, summoning everything I had, ready for one last effort. But then Eulora’s grasp loosened in mine, and her other hand moved toward her chest. She leaned against me. Mungo whined at my feet.

  “No!” I screamed, my rage at whatever force was at work overcoming my fear. The word cut through the incinerating roar, and the flames seemed to pause.

  A sudden, cool calm descended through my frantic thoughts. There is evil in the fire, but fire itself is not evil. It is an element, and I am a witch. I work with the elements, not against them.

  Putting one arm around Eulora’s shoulders to help her stand, I closed my eyes against the blaze and smoke, concentrating. “I call upon Michael, archangel of the south, of fire, of protection and courage,” I whispered. “With gratitude and reverence I call upon Fire.” My voice was louder this time. “To help and not hinder, to warm but not burn.” I thought of all the magical associations of fire the ladies of the spellbook club had taught me, concentrating on the good and beneficial.

  Summer, sun, laughter and joy, playfulness, motherhood, the third chakra . . .

  I sensed a shift of energy in the room, as if the clean fire was listening, shrugging off the bitter power controlling it. Gathering itself. Offering itself to my will.

  “Thank you,” I said, my fear and anger draining away in a wave of gratitude.

  Holding the essence of fire in my mind, I wordlessly asked it to move away from the door. When I opened my eyes, the path had cleared. The charred wood of the door no longer burned. A sound behind us made me turn my head, and I saw that wasn’t all. The fire had turned away from the combustibles in the room, had turned upon itself, eating the icy darkness within.