Turn the page for a preview of
Annette Blair’s next book
in the Vintage Magic Mysteries . . .
Cloaked in Malice
Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
—GEORG C. LICHTENBERG
My name is Madeira Cutler, and I’d like to invent a ghostly tracking device. I mean, there’s nothing like a dead person dropping into your personal space to set you up for the day. Or to knock you off your Jimmy Choos.
“Dante, you scared the wits out of me,” I said, my heart racing.
“My apologies,” said my dapper Cary Grant clone in tux tails and top hat, “but I just saw a ghost.”
“You are a ghost.”
“Semantics.” He had the wisdom to put some distance between us. “Why so scared?” he asked. “You’re used to having me around. I introduced myself before you moved into my eternal restless place.”
I smoothed and folded the Hermès scarf I’d crushed in my hand at the minor fright. “It’s a Saturday, the shop’s barely open, and the residents of Mystic have the good grace to sleep in. And I was alone, sorting vintage clothes, and thinking about—”
“Nick?”
“Shush. Maybe. And suddenly I have a heart-shocking face-to-face. I’m here to tell you, being startled in that particular way can scare a girl.”
“My apologies, but seriously, you put your designer vintage dress shop in a former funeral home carriage house—horse-drawn hearses, caskets, old embalming room, and all.”
“Wait, this isn’t about me,” I said. “It’s about you being freaked by a ghost. Surely Mr. Undertaker Underhill, you’ve seen your share?”
“Not like this one.”
My shop bell rang, and a curly-haired young blonde entered, fashionably attired in vintage seventies, a stranger, with the most unique baby blues I’d ever seen—well, no, I had seen eyes like hers before.
I shivered deep inside, and Chakra, my cat, catapulted into my arms to soothe me. “Welcome to Vintage Magic,” I said, stroking Chakra’s caramel-swirl fur coat.
She turned a full 360, like a little girl in a candy store. “I’ll take one of everything.” She about swooned over my vintage treasures. By the twinkle and excitement in her eyes, I could see that she loved the possibilities.
“This place is wonderful, just brimming over with— Oh, look, you have street signs. Mad as a Hatter, Little Black Dress Lane, Paris when it Sizzles.” She chuckled and turned back to us—I mean, she turned back to me, though Dante remained beside me, his wide-eyed gaze glued to her.
“What do you think?” he asked me. “Is she a dead ringer or what?”
I wanted to shush him. It’s difficult to carry on a conversation with a ghost and a live person at the same time. No, my customer couldn’t hear or see the hunk in his work clothes. And yes, Dante died of a heart attack during a funeral. Go figure. Evidently, one wears for eternity what one dies wearing.
Dolly Sweet, aged one hundred three and threequarters, planned to die in her Katharine Hepburn gown, the one like the wedding gown in The Philadelphia Story. So of course I had heart palpitations every time she wore it.
No one could see Dante but me, my Aunt Fiona—not really my aunt, but really a witch—nuff said—and Dolly.
Why Dolly? Because she’d had an illicit affair with Dante more than half a century ago. Arguably, Mystic’s biggest secret. Their love had transcended time, as had the gossip.
Dolly had been young, beautiful, unmarried and, shall we say, unsullied? Dante, renowned rake, was, and still is, drop-dead gorgeous—the Cary Grant description is not an exaggeration. He’d been at least fifteen, if not twenty, years her senior at the time, and the last living heir to the wealthiest dynasty in Mystic, Connecticut.
The gossip might have gone down in history as speculation, if not for the fact that when Dante died, he left Dolly everything, this building included, which she sold to me for the cost of taxes. I love them both dearly, and I love that they’re still attracted to each other, he a debonair fifty-year-old ghost; she a wrinkled centenarian in the prime of her life. Even now, they dallied, every chance they got, in their favorite of my nooks: Paris, making it more of an inferno than a sizzle.
So why could Dante not take his gaze from the young stranger facing us?
I extended my hand. “I’m Madeira, call me Maddie, Cutler, and this is my shop.”
“Nice to meet you.” Her grip was firm, eye contact on target, nothing to hide. “Paisley Skye. Sounds fake, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all,” I said, taken by surprise. Frankly, though her question was jarring, the image was inspirational.
The bell above the door jingled, again, and Dolly Sweet and her daughter-in-law, Ethel, came in. They were regulars and very early risers, no matter what day of the week. I’d often counted on them for an early homemade breakfast full of love and friendly chatter.
Dolly’s eyes brightened when she spotted Dante behind the counter.
“Look at Mad’s customer, Doll,” Dante said, “and tell me she doesn’t remind you of someone.”
I wanted to remind Dante that only Dolly and I could hear him. “Dolly,” I said. “This is Paisley. Paisley, this is Dolly and her daughter-in-law, Ethel.”
“Hello, Dolly,” Paisley said, her abbreviated laugh in perfect sync with Dolly’s, in tone and cadence, at least. Their voices sounded nothing alike.
Dolly tilted her head. “Ethel,” she said, “does she remind you of me when I was young?”
“Well, I don’t know, Mama. You looked seventy when I married your son.”
“I was fifty-six.”
“Same difference.” Ethel turned to Paisley. “We used to think fifty was old. But Dolly, now, she’s officially old . . . as dirt.”
“Thank you, dear.”
Dante chuckled, charming the cherries off Dolly’s straw hat.
Paisley’s smile, beside Dolly’s, those unique eyes—periwinkle blue, if I didn’t miss my guess—sure did it for me. “You know, you two do look like you could be distantly related.”
The hand Paisley raised to her temple trembled. “You know, I’ve dreamed all my life of hearing somebody say that.”
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Annette Blair
A VEILED DECEPTION
LARCENY AND LACE
DEATH BY DIAMONDS
SKIRTING THE GRAVE
Berkley Sensation titles by Annette Blair
THE KITCHEN WITCH
MY FAVORITE WITCH
THE SCOT, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
SEX AND THE PSYCHIC WITCH
GONE WITH THE WITCH
NEVER BEEN WITCHED
THE NAKED DRAGON
BEDEVILED ANGEL
VAMPIRE DRAGON
Skirting the Grave Page 19
