How Sweet Magic I

by Amy Boyles

  “But not low blood pressure,” I said. My grandmother had a habit of fainting from low blood pressure. She had never been treated until I forced her into it some time ago.

  She frowned at me. “I’ll thank you not to discuss my personal affairs.”

  “With your family?” I said, confused.

  “You got it.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “But it’s okay for you to go on about me kissing Axel.”

  “You’ve kissed Axel?” Donovan said.

  I slapped my forehead. “Yes, dear Lord. Is that okay?”

  “Well yeah,” Donovan said, “he’s a good guy. One of the best in town, if only the rest of the Magnolia Cove saw it that way.”

  “I think they’re coming around,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Betty said.

  I cracked my knuckles. “Actually I guess I don’t. I was hoping they were coming around. We haven’t been out in town for a while to see how they react, so I’m just guessing.” The heat from their stares made me flush. “Okay, well, can we stop focusing on me? Donovan, you’re coming up with a plan. I’m ready to help however I need to.”

  Donovan folded the paper. “Great, I’ll see y’all tonight.”

  We finished up our breakfasts, and I grabbed Hugo before heading down to Familiar Place. It was a sunny fall day. The wind whipped through my hair, and the smell of burning leaves trickled up my nose.

  The autumnal colors littered the trees, and it made me smile. The days were still warm, but this morning had a nip to it. I pulled my light cardigan closer to me and tugged on Hugo’s leash, making sure he’d keep up.

  I waved to other store owners as I passed their shops—Theodora and Harry, who owned the flying skillet store, and Carmen, my cousin, who owned the most amazing confection shop in the entire world.

  I didn’t know if that was true, but I was pretty convinced it was.

  I’d just flipped the sign to OPEN in the shop when the door opened. Idie Claire, known to my cousins as I-Declare-Your-Business-All-Around-Town, swooped in. Her teased hair made her look a good six feet tall with the help of her white heels.

  “Pepper,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “Hey, Idie. What can I help you with?”

  A hand fluttered to her chest. “I need help finding a fish for a five-year-old’s birthday party. Just a goldfish.”

  I smiled behind my hand. “You know we don’t sell anything that’s a ‘just’ here. Every creature has the potential for magic.”

  Idie nodded. “I know, so I need the stupidest goldfish you’ve got. I don’t want one who’ll help my demon nephew be able to scorch the living room curtains. I want one that’ll just blow bubbles.”

  I laughed. “All right. Let’s find you a fish.”

  I scanned the tanks until I found one that was small and didn’t have much in the brains department.

  “You know, Pepper, I can’t tell you how surprised I am about your uncle.”

  I dropped the fish in a bag and tied it. “You and me both.”

  “But what does that mean for you? For the store?”

  I floundered for words. “Well, um, I don’t know.”

  Idie grabbed my arm. “I’m so sorry, Pepper. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  I shook my head and plastered on my big, fake Southern smile. ’Cause you know, in the South you’re always supposed to be happy and nice and glad to see people—no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you’re slowly dying on the inside. It doesn’t even matter if your mama just passed. You always smile and do the best you can.

  “You didn’t upset me, Idie. I’m fine.”

  She slid a hand over her forehead and pretended to sling sweat on the floor. “Thank goodness. I figure it’ll all be fine. I mean, folks are talking about how Donovan probably killed that man anyway.”

  I dropped the bag to the floor. Inside, the fish sloshed back and forth. I yanked it up. “What? I’m sorry, but what?”

  Her eyes flared wide. “Oh? You hadn’t heard? There’s a huge rumor going on that Donovan escaped some sort of mafia hit man only to kill the same mafia hit man.”

  Sweat was pouring from every gland I owned. My palms were soaked, and my forehead was sticky. “What else are they saying about Donovan?”

  “Exactly what I said—that he called down that lightning at the festival and killed that Carl.”

  “Who’s saying it, Idie?”

  She backed toward the door. “Lots of people. Pepper, I thought you knew.”

  I shook my head. “No. I didn’t.” Realizing that I probably looked like a crazed woman who was sweating like a pig while trying to pull as much information out of Idie Claire as possible, I decided to ease up.

  I lifted the bag. “Well then, are you all set to buy this little guy?”

  She fumbled for her wallet. “Sure.”

  Two minutes later, Idie Claire scattered from the store, probably on her way to tell all of Magnolia Cove how I freaked out during our conversation, which was probably a sure sign that Donovan was guilty.

  I fished my phone from my purse and was about to dial Axel and have a come apart on him when the door opened again.

  A man, about medium build with dark hair, entered. He wore a black T-shirt, jeans and had tattoos down his arms. I blinked, trying to figure out how I knew him until it dawned on me.

  “You were the lead singer of the witch-a-billy band the other night,” I said.

  He flashed a huge grin. “That’s me.”

  “What’re you still doing in town?”

  He snickered. “Sheriff’s orders. Anyone who entered town the night of the murder has to stay until they untangle this mess. Stinks, too, ’cause we’ve got other gigs in other towns.”

  Remembering Idie Claire’s words, I shivered. “Maybe it’ll be figured out soon.”

  “Hope so. I’m not a small-town kind of guy.”

  I folded my arms and leaned on the counter. “I’m Pepper Dunn.”

  “Name’s Rock.”

  “I like it,” I said. “What can I help you with today? Looking for a familiar?”

  “No, I don’t think I’ll be buying a pet,” he said. “I’m killing time, looking around the stores, seeing what’s going on.”

  “The other night you said that Johnny Utah had hired your band,” I said.

  Rock fiddled with a silver chain around his neck. “Yeah, he hired us. Johnny likes our music, and when he heard that the town was throwing a party for Donovan, Johnny said he wanted to welcome him back the right way.”

  “That was short notice,” I said.

  Rock hitched a shoulder. “Johnny has access to a lot of information.”

  “You also happened to be in the circle when Carl died.”

  “Who?”

  I rolled my eyes. “The guy—Carl. The reason why you’re stuck here in town?”

  “Oh right. Yeah. I was there. Saw the lightning. Saw the dead guy. What about it?”

  I shrugged. “Carl got around. Thought he might’ve gotten around to you, too.”

  Rock shook his head. “Nah. I didn’t care about that guy. Didn’t know him.”

  He was saying one thing, but the guy’s eyes were slashing around wildly. I had the sneaking suspicion that Rock knew more than he was saying, But how could I get anything else out of him?

  He turned around and it hit me. I snapped my fingers. “You ever seen a baby dragon?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  I smiled widely. “Want to?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hugo,” I called.

  A moment later the dragon padded in, fresh from napping in the office. His purple and green scales shimmered under the sunlight spilling through the windows. I scooped him up, and Hugo licked my face.

  “Stop, boy,” I said, laughing.

  I came up beside Rock and laid the dragon in his arms. He patted him and cooed. Hugo didn’t seem overly excited to be held, but he didn’t whine about it.

  Ro
ck played with Hugo a few minutes and took his leave.

  I waved as he left and watched as Rock climbed into a Ford pickup and drove off.

  It wasn’t until he was completely out of sight that I retrieved his wallet from my back pocket.

  As I opened it, I said, “All right. Let’s find out who you are, Rock.”

  THIRTEEN

  “His legal name is Rock Ford.”

  Axel paused. “Are you kidding?”

  “No, why?”

  “Rock Ford like the show Rockford Files. Like a last name. It’s strange.”

  Axel had come to the shop, and I’d sequestered him in the back office. “Think you can run his name through whatever it is you have and discover the truth?”

  His lip curled. “I can try. But I have something more interesting to tell you.”

  I arched a brow. “Is it interesting like Donovan is being rumored to have killed Carl?”

  Axel studied me. “Not that interesting. Who’d you hear that from?”

  “Idie Claire Hawker.”

  “Well, she knows almost as much as Betty Craple.”

  I folded my arms. “Idie is a hairstylist. They hear all kinds of gossip.”

  “She’s got her fingers on the pulse of the town.” He scrubbed a palm down his cheek. “But no, I hadn’t heard that. I haven’t spoken to Garrick, though.”

  I sighed. “This is getting more and more complicated. But anyway, what’s the news?”

  “I think I may have figured out how to help Princess. But we need the vampire, and unless we can get Princess to tell us who it is, then we won’t be able to help.”

  A ray of hope shot through me. “Donovan’s working on a way to separate her from the rest of the bats so we can catch her.”

  A dark look slashed across Axel’s handsome features. “The main thing I’m going to need is blood from Princess and the vampire.”

  Bile crept up the back of my throat. “Uh. That involves way too many bodily fluids for me.”

  He chuckled. “That’s how some of my magic works. I need organic material, and blood is the strongest of all.” He crossed to me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “I know of other bodily fluids that you exchange and have no problem with.”

  I cocked a brow. “I assume you mean saliva.”

  “I do.”

  He kissed me, and I melted into him, letting some of the tension dissolve from my shoulders.

  When we parted, I said, “That exchange wasn’t so bad.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Axel murmured as he nuzzled my ear.

  I pressed my fingers onto his chest. “Okay there, boy. This is a public place.”

  He backed away, gesturing wide in surrender. “You got me there. I’ll run a background for Rock, see what we come up with. I’ll let you know tonight what I found out.”

  “Sounds great,” I said, admiring his straight jaw, the masculine line of his shoulders and the soft tuft of dark hair that sprouted at the top of his chest.

  Axel left and I started locking up the store. I stashed Rock’s wallet under the counter and decided that if he came back, I’d simply tell him it fell from his pocket and I didn’t notice until after he’d gone.

  When the animals finally quieted down, one of the parrots chirped, Where’s Donovan?

  My heart lurched a little. The animals hadn’t mentioned him really, but I knew some of them had to miss my uncle. After all, I’d inherited most of the creatures, which meant many of them knew Donovan and had bonded with him.

  “He’s out but will be back soon.”

  The parrot stared at me, unblinking in a way that made me feel bad—like I was lying to the bird or something. “He misses y’all, too,” I added quickly.

  The animals didn’t say another word about Donovan, which was a relief. I didn’t want to explain why my uncle hadn’t been around much, and to be honest, I didn’t know. I thought that Donovan would’ve missed the animals and wanted to see them, pet them, simply be in their presence.

  But he hadn’t done any of those things.

  I brushed my hands as if cleaning off the dirt from the day, locked up and headed home with Hugo on his leash.

  When I got to the house, I found Betty stirring the cauldron in the hearth.

  “Smells like stew,” I said.

  “And cornbread,” she added. “A hearty meal for the work we have to do tonight.”

  “Where’s Donovan?”

  “On the back porch.”

  I found him there reading a notepad in his lap. “I think the animals miss you.”

  He glanced at me. “They do?”

  I sank into a wicker chair. “They asked about you today.”

  “Hmm. They’re good creatures.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “When I first went into hiding, I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. I thought if I didn’t have animals to feed and bins to clean that I might go crazy. But after a while I got used to it. I moved around a lot, trying to make sure I was staying ahead of Johnny Utah.”

  “Until the margarita incident,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “Until that. But the truth is, I didn’t practice my magic while I was out in the world.”

  I frowned. “You didn’t?”

  He wagged a finger at me. “No, because I never knew who was watching and waiting. If Johnny hired a witch or wizard to spy on me, then by using my magic, I might be giving them my location.”

  “Which is what happened when you stepped inside Magnolia Cove.”

  “That it did.”

  “So where did you stay?”

  “Witchama City Beach.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “It’s the witch version of Panama City Beach.”

  I nodded appreciatively. “Oh.”

  He rolled his shoulders back. “It’s easy to disappear down there. So many magical creatures vacation there, all I had to do was put on a tropical shirt and a pair of beige shorts and I looked exactly like everyone else.”

  I laughed. “Sounds like an interesting place.”

  “Oh, it is. Worth visiting at least once. There are lots of amazing water sports to take part in. It’s almost as easy to disappear there as it is Witch Vegas, and at least that city offers lots of shows.”

  I smiled. “This, I know. Betty hired Barry the Dragon Tamer to come and help with Hugo when he was first hatched.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “She did?”

  I shrugged. “I had no idea what to do with a dragon.”

  “They’re kind of like dogs.”

  “Except they eat live animals like mice.”

  He nodded as if embarrassed. “You get used to it, and when he gets bigger, he’ll hunt on his own.”

  My stomach turned at the thought. “By then he’ll be big enough to eat household pets.”

  Donovan shook his head. “No. Just feed him some steak and he’ll keep to the small stuff.”

  I frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “I mean, he might require a side of beef every now and then.”

  I raised a hand in a gesture for him to stop. “I’ll think about that when I get there.”

  “Okay, understood.” Donovan paused and glanced down at the pad. “I’ve been going over the plans for tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  Donovan scratched his head. “The whole point is to get Princess to leave the pull of the other bats and come to us.”

  “Okay.”

  “So she needs to, firstly, trust us, and secondly, she needs to believe we have something she wants.”

  I moved to sit beside him on the couch. “So how do we do those things?”

  “Well, the first thing that needs to happen is to establish the trust. Since you connected with her last night, you’ll need to be the person to do that.”

  I balked. “Me?”

  He nodded.

  “No pressure there,” I said, fumbling to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

  Donovan squeezed my shoulder in a
fatherly sort of way. “You’ll be great. Remember, you already have a bond with Princess. It’s weak but it exits. Your job will be to strengthen it. I know you can do it.”

  I pressed a finger between my brows, smoothing out the worry wrinkle that had formed because y’all, I did not need premature wrinkles. “But how am I supposed to strengthen the bond?”

  “Talk to her. Ease her into conversation.”

  “This is a bat we’re talking about,” I reminded him.

  “But she’s still human at heart. That’s what you need to focus on.”

  I exhaled a shot of air. “Okay. So once the bond is nice and tight, what happens next?”

  Donovan coughed into his hand. “Then we have to convince her we have something she wants.”

  I scoffed. “The thing she wants most is that vampire.”

  Donovan was silent.

  I stared at him. “Are you saying we’re going to tell Princess that we have the vampire?”

  He bobbed his head back and forth. “Only to get her to come to us.”

  “But then she won’t trust us anymore,” I said. “All that trust will be broken.”

  He shrugged. “By then we’ll have Princess in a cage and will tell her we need help identifying the vampire.”

  I sank back onto the cushion. This was so many kinds of wrong. “I don’t know. That seems sneaky.”

  He pulled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Donovan blinked and then held my gaze in a way that caused a knot to form in my throat.

  “Pepper, what we’re doing is for Princess. You can’t forget that. How much time does she have left before the transformation is complete and there’s no going back?”

  I sighed. “I know… It’s just, I don’t want to lie, and if I were her, I wouldn’t want to be lied to. I’d want to know the truth up front. That’s how I like to be dealt with, and I figure most other folks do, too.”

  Donovan smiled. “Your father raised you right. I wasn’t happy that he didn’t introduce you to us, but he did a good job with you. You’re a great person, Pepper.” He rubbed his thighs. “All right. We’re honest with Princess. The only problem with that is her bat brain probably has a lot of influence. It’ll be harder to wean her from the flock and get her to join us. But we have to if we’re going to break the spell.”

  I tapped my foot on the tile floor. “Don’t you think that’ll be enough? If we just tell Princess we want to help break the curse and free her?”