Heirloom Magic: Every Witch Way

by Megan Berry

  “It is a lot to take in.” He paused and studied her as though examining if she was fit to continue. “I will need your signature on some paperwork,” he said, passing her a pen and a stack of papers that had sticky notes where she needed to sign. “Your gran took care of everything already, all the taxes and such have been paid. As soon as you sign on the dotted line, you will own everything free and clear,” he said, nudging the pen into her slack fingers.

  Harper picked up the pen and her hands started to shake as she began to sign each page, her mind reeling a mile a minute.

  When she was finished, Mr. Bell took the papers and filed them away in his desk. “I will make sure you are sent copies within a day or two,” he promised her as he stood up and stretched his tall frame. Harper followed his lead and stood as well, her legs wobbling on her first attempt.

  “I have a couple more things for you, but they are… private, so I think it’s best if you take them home with you and examine them there,” Mr. Bell advised as he handed over a heavy fabric bag.

  “What is this, her rock collection?” Harper joked, feeling strung out, and Mr. Bell chuckled slightly…probably out of pity.

  “I can give you a ride home and you can go through the rest of the stuff there,” he said, watching quietly as Harper stuffed her many sets of keys into the bag, trying to balance the strap on her shoulder.

  “Home?” Harper asked in confusion, her home was thousands of miles away in Chicago.

  “Your new home,” Mr. Bell amended as he walked her to the door.

  Oh, right, Harper thought, not sure she was up for spending the night in her gran’s house.

  “Unless you’re checked into a room already at one of the Bed and Breakfasts?” Mr. Bell guessed when she didn’t immediately jump at the idea.

  Harper shook her head. She had gotten in on a late flight and hadn’t had time yet to do much more than land, change into her black dress in a bathroom stall at the airport, and head straight for the funeral home. It was kind of strange how quickly her gran’s funeral was being held, but apparently Gran had everything planned out exactly how she’d wanted it and everything had been paid in advance.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled numbly. Part of her just wanted to be alone, but it would be a long walk hauling this bag with her.

  It was a short drive, and neither of them said very much. Mr. Bell seemed to sense that she wanted to be alone with her thoughts and thankfully didn’t feel the need to fill the space with idle chit chat.

  “Here we are,” Mr. Bell said quietly as he parked his blue sedan with the leather interior outside the white Victorian style house. Harper stared up at it, suddenly terrified to go inside. It would make everything too real. “Are you alright, Miss?” Mr. Bell asked her, obviously sensing her hesitation.

  “I’m fine,” Harper replied, not wanting him to see how upset she was.

  “Good, I will be in touch in a few days to see how you’re settling in,” Mr. Bell promised as Harper pulled the door open and stepped out onto the curb. Harper froze. She hadn’t thought that far ahead, but she did have a life back in Chicago—a job at one of the top software design firms in the city. She even had a two-year lease on an over-priced apartment and a man at work who was maybe going to ask her out one of these days… She couldn’t just pick up her entire life and move to Alabama!

  Harper stared at Mr. Bell blankly for a moment before she slowly nodded her head. There was no way she was going to get into all of this right now. “Have a good night,” she murmured instead as she shut the door and Mr. Bell drove away, leaving Harper standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the old house she had loved so much as a little girl.

  Pain at her gran’s passing engulfed her. A few stray tears slid down her cheeks, and for a moment she thought about turning around and leaving. She could get a room at one of the Bed and Breakfasts and go back to Chicago in the morning. Harper took a step back towards the road and then stopped. The house loomed before her like an old friend she hadn’t seen in a while. Harper took a step forward, and then another, she didn’t know why, but there was something that seemed to draw her towards it.

  The same old board on the front porch creaked as Harper climbed the steps, admiring the porch swing that she had always loved so much as a child. It was startling to realize that it was her swing now, the entire house was. Harper tried the door knob before digging in the bag and found it open—the charm of small town living, nobody locked their doors around here—not even the deceased, apparently.

  The house looked exactly as it always had—nothing had changed. Harper walked into the spacious foyer with the closet where she stopped and took off her coat. She bypassed the twisty staircase and went around the side to the kitchen, flinging her bag up onto the granite counter top. It landed with a heavy thud.

  Everything was immaculate. Harper opened the cupboard to retrieve herself a glass and started to run herself some water—until she remembered all the weirdos she’d met today. She turned off the faucet and poked around the fridge instead. It was filled with lots of containers with strange names. Harper frowned when she read one particularly nasty-looking container labelled frog eyes. “I really hope that’s a code for something else,” she muttered to herself as she grabbed a bottle of water and made sure it didn’t say anything other than ‘Bottled Fresh from the Spring.’

  Harper guzzled down the water, panting when she reached the bottom of the bottle. It felt like she’d cried out at least a gallon of tears today, and she was feeling dehydrated and out of sorts. A tiredness engulfed her, and she decided to forget everything tonight and sleep on it.

  She stopped and made sure to lock both the front and back doors on her way upstairs—this might be a sleepy small town, but she was from Chicago—and in Chicago you don’t mess around, or you get mugged.

  Harper crept past her grandmother’s closed bedroom door; she had never been allowed in there when she was a child. It still felt taboo, but Harper comforted herself that it was probably okay for her to go in there now since her gran had left her the house. She wasn’t ready for that yet anyway, not by a long shot. Harper found her way to the small guest room at the end of the hall. It was the room she’d always stayed in when she came for a visit. The room was comforting in its familiarity, and Harper sank down onto the small single bed, without bothering to remove her dress, and fell asleep.

  It didn’t feel like very much time had passed at all when Harper was awakened in the middle of the night by a noise.

  She sat up in the pitch black room, straining her ears to figure out what exactly had woke her up. Her heart began to pound when she heard it again. It was a pretty ominous sound as far as middle-of-the-night noises go.

  A steady pounding, thunk, thunk, thunk, reverberated from somewhere down below, and it was definitely coming from inside the house.

  “That better not be you, Gran,” Harper muttered as she threw back the blanket and stood up trembling. The weight of knowing there was nobody here to go check it out, except herself, settled firmly around her shoulders. She hadn’t survived all these years in Chicago just to get murdered in this little Podunk town her first night back!

  Chapter Two

  Harper dug through the hallway closet as quietly as she could. She knew her gran had been a pack rat and kept all her childhood stuff, and one summer she’d been a proud member of the ‘Bantam Bama Batters.’ Finally, her shaking fingers landed on the pink baseball bat with the Barbie stickers that nine-year-old Harper had loved. It wasn’t the most lethal looking thing, but it was all she had. So help her, she would break someone’s skull open if they tried any funny business!

  The noise came again, making Harper jump. The stairs creaked loudly under her feet and she quickly jumped down to the next step, praying it would be quieter. This was becoming the start to every bad slasher movie she’d ever seen! Harper reached the bottom of the stairs without further incident and rushed forward to check the front door; it was still locked. She moved silently through
the dark house and tried the back door and then all the windows. Nothing had been disturbed or left open. The sound came again, a scraping noise and then a heavy thump. Harper was finally able to pinpoint the source…

  …the basement. Wonderful. Harper stared at the heavy oak door that led downstairs and listened to the thumping again. There was another noise now, a scuffling of sorts, like something digging in dry earth. Harper pulled her phone out of her bra and stared at it, not sure if she should call the sheriff. She bit her lip and agonized for a long moment before deciding not. One summer she and Gran had been awakened by a similar noise, and Gran had gone to investigate and reported that it’d been a possum that had gotten into the basement and had been knocking things over.

  Harper would feel like an utter fool if she called the sheriff and made a huge kerfuffle over a possum. Besides, wouldn’t a burglar take more care to be quiet? None of the doors or windows had been disturbed… She bit her lip in uncertainty before deciding that it must be a possum. She stared at the door before chickening out. If she had to confront a possum, there was no way she was going to do it in the middle of the night.

  Harper dragged out a chair from the kitchen, just in case, and wedged it underneath the basement door knob. Then she sat on the couch to stare at it like she expected the possum to squeeze its way underneath the door and maul her.

  Harper woke up with something stiff and hard poking her in the back. “Not right now…” she mumbled sleepily before her eyes flew open and she glanced around blearily. She was in Alabama, in her gran’s house, and she was sprawled out on the couch in some sort of pretzel-like position. So what in the hell was poking her in the back? Harper dug around behind her and pulled the offending baseball bat out of her back, where it had somehow gotten wedged between the couch and her spine. The bat reminded her about her midnight prowler and she spun in a panic, letting out a little sigh of relief when she saw that the chair was still firmly in place. She was surprised she’d been able to get any sleep with all that racket. Last time she’d glanced at a clock it had been a little after four in the morning.

  Harper stood up and her head started to pound. Her mouth was dry like she’d spent the night drinking. “Ugh,” she moaned, clutching her head as she stood up, intent on having a shower. The ringing of the doorbell interrupted her path, and she skirted around to the front door instead.

  Looking through the peephole, she could see her parents standing on the front step, and she let out a groan.

  “Honey?” her mom called through the door. “We heard that—open up.”

  Harper grimaced and unlocked the door, plastering a smile on her face.

  “Morning,” she said as her Mom barged inside to wrap her in a big hug.

  “Goodness, Honey, you look terrible!” her mother said, planting her hands on her hips. Her dad followed his wife inside, far more subdued, and pressed a kiss to Harper’s cheek.

  “Don’t listen to her, you always look beautiful,” he told her with a tired smile, making a smile tug at Harper’s own lips in response.

  “We came to drop off your suitcase—you left it in the back of the rental,” Mom told her, getting right to the point. Harper winced. Crap, she had run out of the funeral so fast that she hadn’t even told her parents where she was going—or that she’d inherited all Gran’s material possessions.

  “About that…” Harper began. “I have something to tell you guys,” she motioned them into the living room and sat them down on the couch. Her mom eyed the chair pushed against the basement door with a critical eye, but thankfully didn’t ask. Harper stared at her parents, not quite sure how to tell them.

  “It’s okay, Honey. We already know your grandmother left you the house,” Dad interjected, and Harper let out a big sigh of relief.

  “And the truck and the…er, store,” her mother added, never one to be left out. Deacon Jones chuckled as he fondly remembered his mother and her eccentric ways. His wife had been shocked to find out her mother-in-law had been running the strange little store for the last ten years, without telling a soul, but it really was just like his mother to do the most unexpected and crazy things, like becoming a budding entrepreneur at the ripe age of 78. It had made growing up interesting, that’s for sure.

  “So you guys aren’t mad at me?” Harper couldn’t help asking, her fingers worriedly working the faded couch cushion in her lap. Both of her parents laughed.

  “Goodness, no, Harper. Don’t be silly. We’re happy for you,” her father exclaimed, and even her mother nodded.

  “Your gran took care to provide for us too—much more than we needed or expected.” Patty Jones stopped to dab at her eyes for a moment. “Your father and I are thinking about finally going on that cruise,” she admitted, and Harper was glad that there were no bad feelings created by the will.

  “Gran doted on you. You were her only grandchild—I would have been surprised if she hadn’t left it all to you,” her dad admitted, and the three of them hugged each other like some sort of family you might see on a TV sitcom.

  “We have to get going,” her mother reminded them all, pulling away from the hug first. “We have an early flight…unless you need us to stick around for a few extra days?” She stopped and looked hopefully over at her only child, and Harper quickly shook her head.

  “Thank you for the offer, Mama, but I’ll be alright here.” Her mom let out a very put-upon sigh and stood up to brush the imaginary wrinkles out of her skirt.

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to do with it all?” her dad asked as he stood and hugged her goodbye, and Harper could only shake her head.

  “Not a clue,” she admitted, and both of her parents nodded sympathetically.

  “It’s a big change,” her mother told her. “Though, if you stayed in Alabama, you’d be closer to your father and me,” she wheedled, and Harper honestly wasn’t sure what side of the tally that little gem fell on...

  “Oh, Deacon, the time!” her mother pointed out, and her Dad nodded sagely, having learned many years ago that nothing good ever came from arguing with his wife.

  Harper bid her parents goodbye before pouncing on her suitcase. She hadn’t packed a lot of clothes, but anything was better than the dress she’d worn to the funeral and then slept in.

  A hot shower and a change of clothes did Harper a world of good. Her stomach was rumbling loudly, and she was digging through the kitchen cabinets, trying to find some cereal, when the doorbell rang again. Harper checked her watch and frowned. Her parents should definitely be at the airport by now.

  Harper was surprised when she pushed the door open to find the woman who’d almost snapped her spine like a twig yesterday at the funeral. The woman was standing on the front step, pacing back and forth. “Hello,” she said hesitantly, giving Harper a sheepish smile. She was holding some sort of elaborately baked pie in her hand, with a crust that looked like leaves carved into the dough. The pie smelled delicious, but when she started to pass it to Harper, Harper automatically stepped back. The woman winced.

  “I’m so sorry about yesterday!” the woman blurted out, stepping forward to follow Harper back into the house. Harper stopped, realizing this woman would only keep following her.

  “Thank you,” Harper said, eyeing the pie with curiosity, and the woman smiled.

  “This pie is for you. I hope you like peach! My name is Susan, by the way. Your grandmother was a great lady.” Susan smiled hopefully up at her, and Harper suddenly felt like a jerk.

  “Thank you, would you like to come in?” she asked, motioning for the kitchen. “I’m just getting acquainted with everything, but I’m sure I could find some coffee.”

  Susan beamed as she shook her head. “No, no, that’s alright. I don’t want to intrude. I just wanted to stop by to apologize, and drop off the pie.” She looked like she was going to hug Harper again, but then thought better of it and stuck out her hand instead. Her grip was still a lot stronger than most people, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the hug.


  “Thanks for stopping in. Your pie looks delicious,” Harper called after Susan’s retreating back. She could see Susan’s teenage son leaning casually against the fence in the front yard and she gave him a little wave, which he returned.

  Harper closed the door and took the pie into the kitchen, debating if she should keep looking for cereal or have pie for breakfast. The pie was nearly too beautiful to eat.

  She was scooping up a big forkful of the golden, gooey ripe peaches coated in sugary syrup when the doorbell rang again, making her jump. Who in the heck could that be?

  Harper found an overwhelming group of people standing on her front step.

  “Hello, dear. Sorry to intrude,” the tall women in the center, who seemed to be the ring leader, said, and Harper gave a hesitant smile.

  “No bother.” she assured them, even though they were kind of interrupting her breakfast. Pie was the most important meal of the day after all.

  “A bunch of us were planning on heading over, so we decided to all come together so we’d trouble you less,” the woman explained in her twangy southern drawl, and Harper nodded like that made perfect sense, even though she still had no idea why they were here.

  “We wanted to give our condolences again and drop a few things off,” the woman said, like she could read Harper’s mind.

  “That is so generous of you,” Harper said, meaning it from the bottom of her heart. None of her neighbors back in Chicago would have done something like this. Harper didn’t even know any of her neighbors and vice versa—not that she knew any of these people either—but they sure seemed to know her.

  Harper held out her hand, and the woman set the still-warm casserole dish in her palm. “Thank you,” she said again. Another woman came up and piled another casserole dish on top of the first. “Thank you,” Harper told her, beginning to feel like a broken record. A man came forward next and did the same, and Harper began to feel some strain on her arms. “T...thank you,” she managed to get out.