“Maggie.” Abram’s voice rose when I walked into the kitchen. He stood up and nervously ran his hands down his jeans. His grey t-shirt tucked in the front. His blond hair curled to his head. His green eyes danced with anticipation.
“Hi, Abram.” I didn’t have time for Auntie Meme and her matchmaking.
“Isn’t it nice that Abram could stop by?” Auntie Meme began to busy herself by cutting up the parsley snips from Mom’s garden, making sure to keep her eyes down.
I knew her little game. She’d been trying to fix me up with Abram since we were kids. Abram’s family lived on Belgravia Court. He was Ronnie’s employee and Mom had gotten him the job after he had come back from some fancy university and couldn’t get a job with his degree.
Abram had always kept a close eye on me. It was me that had brought his cat, Boomer, back to life after it had used up its nine. . .well. . .thirteen lives. Yes. I had brought back the stupid cat that liked to play frogger with passing cars on St. James Street while following me and Abram from Central Park when we were kids. Yes. I was supposed to keep the whole witch thing a secret, but I was a kid and Abram pinky promised he wouldn’t say anything. Still, we never spoke of it again, nor did he ask me questions about being a witch. Needless to say, Boomer was still kicking and spry as ever. And I never told him I put a life spell on Boomer. Plus Abram thought it was cute that I had a “nickname” for my car. If he only knew.
Getting Abram a job cost Mom a dinner date with Ronnie and a lifetime of unannounced “drop-ins” like he had done tonight. Only Mom had a hard time turning him away with a fistful of bright orange, deep yellow, and ruby red Gerber daisies, along with accented green leaves and salal; which happened to be Mom’s favorite.
“I appreciate the invitation.” Abram rocked back and forth on his heels, ignorant of him outing Auntie Meme.
“I’m sure you do,” sarcasm dripped out of my mouth along with a long sigh and a slight eye roll when Auntie Meme glanced over at me under her furrowed brows. She grabbed a big pot from underneath the cabinet and filled it with all sorts of stuff, topping off the mixture with fresh parsley.
“It was a wonderful day.” Lilith twirled into the kitchen. She had on a black and white polka-dot mini-dress filled with crinoline around the bottom. The waist was cinched with a wide red belt, her height extended with red high heels. Her lips dripped in a thick coat of Jockey Red.
“You!” I pointed to her lips. “You stole my Mystic Couture!”
“I didn’t steal it.” She shrugged. “Simply borrowed it for today. I had them match the fingernail polish to it. Voilà.” She wiggled her fingers up near her mouth.
“Lilith! Where is it?” I held my hand out for her to give the lipstick to me.
“A dare is a dare.”
“I did the dare. It doesn’t include stealing my crap. And it’s not.” I stopped myself. I couldn’t tell them I had sort of taken it. I refused to confess to stealing it like Mick had accused me of.
“It’s what?” Lilith’s voice lowered, her Jockey Red lined lips curled up at the edges.
“It’s what?” Auntie Meme chimed in.
“Not yours.” Abram spoke up from the kitchen table.
“Thank you, Abram.” I grabbed the floating black tube of lipstick out of the air between us where Abram couldn’t see. The fancy red lettering scrolled along the outside read Mystic Couture.
“Seriously Abram?” Lilith cocked her head to the side. “This is none of your business.”
“What is going on in here?” Mom scrambled into the kitchen, rushing to the boiling pot on the stove. “I don’t have time to listen to your bickering today. Here.” She smacked Lilith in the chest with the bouquet of flowers. “Put those in a vase.”
“God!” Lilith spat, snarling her nose and glaring at Mom. Lilith and Mom had a short fuse with each other. They acted more like sisters than mother and daughter.
After all, Mom and Dad had her when they were in their late teens, early twenties. It was thought the fertility Gods were lingering around during those ages.
“Ronnie,” Abram looked like he had swallowed a fly. “What are you doing here?”
Mom, Lilith, and I stopped and waited to see what Ronnie had to say.
“I just came by to bring Fae some flowers to go with her summer decorations because I knew she’d be hard at work in preparation of the garden tour.” Ronnie’s cheeks reddened. “I’m sorry. I had no idea you were about to sit down for supper.”
Right. My brows lifted. Ronnie knew we ate dinner every night around five p.m. I didn’t have to use my witchy senses to tell me he wanted to be invited, but it wasn’t my place to do the inviting.
“Thank you so much. I really appreciate you stopping by,” Mom’s words dripped with southern charm as she took Ronnie by the elbow and led him out to the front door. She wasn’t about to extend him an invitation, after all, it was cleansing night.
“Where are your keys, Maggie?” Abram asked with his hand out.
“Why?” I asked.
“I need to make sure Vinnie is good with his pistons. Last time I checked on the car, you had about worn him out.” Abram scratched his head. “Which is weird since you don’t drive him that much. But that’s what you get with old cars.” He shrugged. “Has it been driving all right?” he asked.
“Driving fine.” Unless he wanted to count the little hiccup today when Vinnie put us in a bind at the parking lot down on the docks.
“Keys?” Abram asked again, shoving his hand toward me.
I dragged my clutch off the table and pulled my keys out, handing them to him.
“Thanks for checking on that for us, Abram,” Auntie Meme called out just before the screen door smacked after Abram jogged down the back steps.
I sat down at the table, with the lipstick still in my grips, and looked out the window. Vinnie had already driven himself behind the brownstones and up the alley to the garage. I watched Abram disappear under Vinnie’s hood before I decided to open my mouth.
“You know I’m in no way attracted to Abram Callahan,” I informed my matchmaking auntie who was doing her hardest to ignore me. “A witch and a mortal?”
“You do know that you and your sister are about out of the fertile phase.” Auntie Meme lifted the ladle to her mouth, sipping whatever it was she was making. The old wooden floor creaked under her as her feet shifted side-to-side. “Have you seen Bewitched?”
“You can’t have it both ways.” My hand tightened around the lipstick tube.
“Don’t make me ask you why you were down by the docks and what business you had down there.” Auntie Meme let me know real fast that she was still in charge of the Coven.
“What both ways?” Mom asked, walking back into the kitchen.
Lilith put the vase of flowers in the middle of the table, arranging each stem. “You can’t have us follow witch rules and the mortal rules. It’s virtually impossible nowadays.”
“That.” I smacked the table with my free hand and stood up. “How do you expect us to blend in if you go by the witch phases? Phases I really don’t know all about because you tried so hard to mortalize me I’m so confused which is witch and which is mortal.”
“Good one.” Lilith gave me a high-five when I walked by her.
“Besides, I’m only twenty-eight. And if I could work anywhere else but the diner, I’d get my own apartment or something.” I nudged Lilith. “Now you on the other hand, you’re old.”
Mom rolled her eyes and walked out the back door. She always liked to check on Abram and his work.
“I’m thirty! Not an old maid!” Lilith hollered after me as I disappeared down the hall into my room, closing the door behind me.
“We lost all hope for you,” Mom joked, sending a look toward Lilith.
I set the tube of lipstick on the dresser and took a seat on the edge of my bed. I stared at the lipstick trying to get a good witchy sense on why SKUL and Mick wanted the cosmetics. Nothing was coming to me.
Unlike the fantasized images the mortal world has of witches, we aren’t able to look into the future and see what lurked around every corner; we could only deal with what was in front of us. This lipstick and the package were in front of me and somehow it held the key to something, but what?
I plucked the lipstick off the dresser and scooted back on the bed, emerging myself in the stack of fluffy decorative pillows. I held it up in the air, letting the glittery crystals of my room’s chandelier glisten down on the black tube of lipstick. I slid the top off the shaft and rolled the base up until the entire lipstick was exposed. There didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary of what normal, everyday drugstore lipstick looked like and though I had never owned nor touched Mystic Couture, as far as I could tell, they looked the same. I rolled it back down and replaced the top. I wrapped my fingers around it and closed my eyes. I took a long, deep steady breath through my nose, letting the oxygen saturate the blood circulating in my brain, wrapping my thoughts around the magic I needed to figure out what was so special about Jockey Red. I wasn’t receiving anything.
The compact was still in the box. I reached over and grabbed it off the dresser, digging inside, pulling out the compact with the same scrolling red letters on top as the lipstick.
I opened the compact and lifted the powder puff off the beige powder. It wasn’t my color bronzer and nothing looked out of the ordinary so I snapped it shut.
“Supper time!” Auntie Meme’s voice snuck up under the bedroom door.
Letting out a big sigh and realizing I was just going to have to let the curiosity go and give Mick the package, I stuck the lipstick and compact in the box. Besides, I didn’t have a reason to care. I could just keep telling him I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not tell him I was taking a dare from my sister. A spell dare where I turned his informant into a cat. I could only pray the man with the crazy snow brow didn’t remember what happened to him.
I put the box back on the dresser, for safe-keeping, until I decided how I was going to get it to Mick. A delicious aroma floated in the air down the hall leading me to the kitchen where everyone was already sitting around the table for supper. The colorful bouquet from Ronnie had been placed in the middle of the table, complementing the yellow plates and lime green soup bowls.
Auntie Meme believed it was very mortal-ish if not Kentucky-ish to decorate for the season. This meant switching out the entire home décor, including the dishes. Soon we’d be eating off fall plates and drinking from Halloween mugs.
“What’s this?” I asked about the cat collar next to my plate. I picked it up and dangled it in the air and let the small silver bell ding.
“I don’t know.” Abram scooped his spoon into the bowl and took a sip from it. “Some guy told me to give it to you.”
“Some guy?” I asked, taking a closer look at it.
“Yeah. He walked into the garage and said to give it to you. Freaky white eyebrow over his left eye.” He did a little shimmy-shake before he took another slurp off his spoon; his eyes darted between my family and me. All of us stared at him. “What?” He took a bite of the mini French loaf Auntie Meme had given each of us. The butter dripped down his chin. He wiped it with the back of his hand. “What?” he cried again.
“Some guy? Did he call me by name?” I asked. I didn’t have to use my witchy instincts to know it was the guy, the informant, whomever he was. How did he find me? I felt numb, almost paralyzed.
“I don’t know, why?” Abram sat back staring at all of us.
“We don’t know anyone. At least anyone who’d give me a cat collar.” My eyes drifted over to Lilith. “Maybe it’s for Riule.”
Her mouth hung open, her eyes practically bugged out of her head as she stared at the collar. She didn’t have to say a word to know what I was thinking or for me to know what she was thinking.
“Ouch!” I screamed dropping the collar in my soup, jerking my hand to my chest when a spark shot through my fingers, leaving a burn mark on the tip of my skin.
“Abram, can you please go check on my bicycle tires and brakes?” Auntie Meme grunted pointing him out the door.
“I’m not a bike mechanic.” Abram’s face contorted. His brows drew in a V.
“Please, Abram.” Auntie Meme stood up, walked over to the door and held it open. Without a word, Abram did as he was told.
Auntie Meme crept over to me, looking down into my bowl of soup. “There is evil lurking in the air. Does this have to do with that dare?”
Auntie Meme’s head rose. Her eyes dark. There was a sudden knowing between me, her, and Lilith. She licked her finger and pressed her finger to my mine, healing me in an instant.
“What are you talking about?” Mom’s words seethed through her gritted teeth. “What dare?” She demanded to know. “Do not tell me you girls are up to childish games again?”
Mom hated how Lilith and I played dare. It kept us busy and out of Mom’s hair when we lived on the farm, until the neighbor was featured on the local Louisville news with his half-rabbit, half-dog animal. Another spell gone bad because of me.
“I don’t know what is going on,” I bellowed with a whine in my tone. “First I see this guy three times.” I stopped and then started. “Two guys three times. Then I got this earthquake feeling in my body all three times.” I flopped my hand in the air from my wrist. “My spells with one of the guys are off. I just don’t know what is wrong with me.” I rubbed my forehead. “I think I’m going to be sick.” I held in my gag reflex and put my hand over my mouth.
“Spells are not something to mess with. One wrong syllable, one wrong snap, or twitch and everything we have ever done to blend in will go away in a flash. Then where would we be?” Her eyes darted between my sister and me. “We would have to start over.” She snapped the collar from my bowl.
She tossed it into the air and clapped her hands. The collar exploded into shimmery sliver glitter, floating down perfectly on the bouquet, giving the flowers a sparkle.
Mom had a natural gift of turning evil into good, and clearly the collar was filled with evil. I never went to her because Auntie Meme had always been more understanding.
“Now.” Mom let out a heavy sigh and dusted off her hands. She went back to eating as though nothing had just happened. My appetite was shot. “Why would someone want to give you a cat collar?” She took a sip of soup off her spoon, her pinky elegantly cocked.
Abram stuck his nose in the back door. “Is it okay to come back in? The bike looks fine.” He gestured over his shoulder to the garage.
Squawk! Gilbert swooped into the room, perching itself on Lilith’s shoulder. Riule growled.
“Yes.” I waved him in. “I’m sure someone had me mixed up with someone else about the collar.”
“No.” Abram took his seat, shaking his head, taking another bite of his bread. He spoke with a full mouth, “He described—”
“So,” I spoke in a loud tone cutting Abram and his big mouth off. “How is my Vinnie’s operating system?”
“It needs new tires.” Abram’s shoulders bounced up and down as he chuckled to himself. Vinnie would be so mad if he knew Abram referred to him as it.
“I haven’t changed the tires in a while.” Abram hunched over his soup bowl, not looking at anyone. “Since we have this rain, I want to make sure you are safe in that old car.”
“Are we supposed to have bad weather?” Lilith asked, covering up her part in the collar problem.
“No.” Mom snapped. She knew better. She kept an eye on the weather since she took such great care of her flowers and plants. Not to mention her herb garden.
I pushed the bowl of soup away from me and pulled my mini-loaf apart. The thought of the informant coming to my house, finding me, sent goose bumps all over my body, even my neck. It didn’t take a witch instinct to know something was wrong. Way wrong.
Chapter Eight
“What was that about?” Lilith and I retreated to my room after we had cleaned up from dinner and let Aunti
e Meme get ready for her Spell Circle to come over and do their weekly cleanse.
“What?” I pretended not to know, pulling my clothes off and replacing them with a black turtleneck and black yoga pants, and pulling my hair up into a high ponytail.
I had to get the package out of my house before something really went wrong. The informant really wanted me to know he knew he had been turned into a cat, otherwise, why would he have sent me the collar? There was no way I was going to give Mick the package. The informant knew where I lived. I was going to get the package back to him. He obviously meant business and Mom was right. There was no way I was going to put my family in danger over overpriced makeup or whatever was going on between Mystic Couture and SKUL.
My family had a good gig going in Louisville with the diner and I wasn’t going to be the one to take us down.
If Mick threatened to shut down The Brew, I’d have to let Auntie Meme in on my little secret and let her deal with Mick. She’d put a good spell on him.
“You know what. The collar.” She stood with her back rested against the door, her hands planted on her slim hips. “The only person who would know about the collar is us and the person you turned into a cat.”
Pfft. I waved her off and entertained the thought of using the Mystic Couture lipstick to top off my spy girl outfit. The package had to be delivered unused, though I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull it off without using magic, since Lilith and I had already used the lipstick.
“You somehow screwed up the spell and now that person knows.” Lilith warned. Her eyes shifted to the package. “And somehow that has something to do with him.”
“It’s not that.” I tried to brush her off, but I knew she had a keen witchy sense that I didn’t have.
“Where are you going?” she asked with cautious eyes. “You look like a cat burglar.”
“I’m going to meet someone.” I grabbed the package off the dresser.
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