The Cupid Conundrum

by Lucy True

  “Well, maybe he wants to mess with them.” It was the only plausible explanation.

  “Yes, but why Rock Grove? This town is a blip on the map. He’d get a heck of a lot more attention if he went somewhere big – Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, Denver. Why choose a tiny town in the middle of Nowheresville, USA?” Jenna folded her arms, challenging Burgundy to answer the question.

  As Burgundy opened her mouth to speak, she distinctly heard Marian yell shrilly, “I said no!”

  “Code phrase,” both women said in a shared breath, and turned to run down the main staircase. Burgundy dug into her pocket and closed her fingers around the vial containing the sleep potion. A startled Sylvia stood outside the auditorium, wringing her hands.

  “I think he’s in there,” she whispered. “He’s in there with Walter and my niece.”

  “We know.” Jenna stepped in front of the other librarian as if to shield her, while Burgundy crept toward the doorway of the auditorium.

  Inside the expansive room, she saw two things – a shadowy figure fleeing through the kitchen and Marian reaching out to Walter, proclaiming, “I love you, Walter. I will die without you!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  After Walter escorted Marian out of the library, seemingly quite pleased with the way she clung to him, Burgundy couldn’t apologize enough to Sylvia for Marian’s condition, but the older librarian waved her away with a sad smile. “She was willing to do it and it was brave of her. At least I know Walter will take good care of her once they get home. I know she’ll be in good hands until you’ve fixed everything.”

  There it was again. The demand that Burgundy be the one to fix what was happening to their town. Of all the people in the entire town, she was the least equipped to deal with the warlock. How could she tell anyone that, though? That she was a failure as a witch, that her magick wasn’t even close to what it ought to be at her age?

  She closed her eyes and nodded. There were only two people left to run the library and, even though that was enough, Mr. Knight wasn’t there to handle the important tasks – budgeting, paying the bills, and approving orders. At this rate, the entire town could cease to function.

  Things were getting dire and Burgundy had to admit she was losing hope.

  She left work that evening dejected and ready to burrow under her covers for a thousand or so years. She hesitated by her car, lifting her gaze to the darkening sky. Everything was falling to pieces. It was only a matter of time before the entire town as they knew it was no more. Even the Witches Council pouncing on them with all sorts of memory erasing spells to get everything back to normal might be a better outcome than letting things continue.

  “Hey.” Jenna had asked Walter to bring her to Burgundy’s house, where she picked up her car, came back, and spent the rest of the day working in the Grove Room. Now she stood at the driver’s side door, looking over the roof of her small electric car at Burgundy.

  “Yeah?” Burgundy almost wanted to tell her to write that article, to go ahead and catch the Council’s eye. Maybe if the supernatural community turned its collective attention to Rock Grove, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

  “You tried. Don’t feel bad. We’re just not in this guy’s league.” Jenna shrugged. “Heck, no one even knows what warlocks are capable of. They’re all silver eyes and mysterious shadows, you know?” She added a waggle of her fingers to emphasize her point, but Burgundy didn’t laugh.

  She lowered her head and stared at the pavement beneath her feet. A few dry brown leaves skittered past her, then swirled in the middle of the street, carried by the increasing wind. “Yeah,” she repeated.

  “Okay, don’t ‘yeah’ me. Go home, take a nice hot bath, and read a book or something. Your aunt has tons of books and stuff in her office. Maybe there’s something useful in there, besides potions. I’m heading back to the city. Call me if you need anything.”

  Long after Jenna backed out of her parking space and whizzed up the street, her little car hardly making a sound, Burgundy looked after her. Grove Street paralleled Main Street and ran east to west. At the end of the block, the fire station seemed quiet, almost deserted. On the next block stood the town hall, all interior lights shut off. Every employee left promptly at four in the afternoon, unless there was a special event, like a town meeting. The street lamps were slowly brightening in response to the fading light.

  Burgundy couldn’t help but stand there and stare, even though she should have been driving home. She blew out a breath and whispered, “I can cast spells.” With that statement, she used the one spell she considered herself most proficient with – the one that allowed her to detect magick.

  It worked. It always did, enhancing her senses and telling her where to find a concentration of magickal energy. This time she sensed it coming straight at her and she narrowed her eyes at the figure in a trench coat and hat that approached.

  “You really suck, you know that?” she told him. “I don’t know what you want, but you’re not going to find it here. You know I can’t stop you, so please just leave. Quit this bullshit of yours and get the hell out of my town. I’m so done with this.”

  “Well, you’d know more if you weren’t dilly-dallying in this library of yours.” The warlock’s voice was as smug as she remembered it, with a bit of a rough edge. Admittedly, its mellifluous quality was nice to hear and she wondered as to his origin. “Though, I recall your aunt having a saying. What was it – quit the bitching and start the witching? You’ve been doing your fair share of bitching, but not much witching. Why is that, Burgundy?”

  The question struck her as both personal and preposterous, and she didn’t care to answer. Instead, she focused on him. “Where are you from?” she asked. “I’d guess Scotland, but I can’t be certain.”

  “Then you’d be right, young lady. My goodness, has that aunt of yours taught you nothing?” The warlock lifted his hat off his head and bowed to her, a courteous gesture she certainly hadn’t expected. “I’d offer my name, but I think you already have some idea of who I am.”

  Burgundy had no idea, other than Jenna’s potential father, but she played along. If he was in the mood to talk, she would let him. “Will you pardon me if I don’t curtsey? Aunt Iris didn’t exactly teach me Regency-era manners.”

  The warlock chuckled and shook his head. “I wouldn’t expect her to, what with her upbringing. Those Harvard elitists with their progressive ideals – no respect for tradition, you know. Then again, times they are a changin’. Even I’ve had to acknowledge that and change, too. ”

  It took a second for the pieces to click into place in Burgundy’s mind. He was talking about her aunt’s family back in Massachusetts and their involvement with transcendentalism, which was one of the ways they could be accepted as witches among mortals. How did he know about that?

  “Oh yes,” the warlock went on, “things have changed a great deal over the past few centuries from when our kind had to hide from mortals. Now, though, our kind roam the world at will, subject to only those laws we choose to obey. The Witches Council would do well to remember that.”

  Even though she knew it meant showing her hand, Burgundy decided to be candid with the warlock. “Of course, when you really want to stick it to the man, what better way than by taking something precious away from them and then drawing their attention.”

  He gave her a narrow-eyed glance and a slow smile spread across his face. “Yes, precisely. Well, what can I say? Our kind like to put on a show.”

  “You keep saying ‘our kind’ like you speak for the entire warlock population. But I’ve heard some are actually a part of the Witches Council. The sane ones, I believe was how it was put.” It was still way more honesty than Burgundy should have been comfortable with sharing. In fact, she’d probably scored negative points for subtlety.

  But if traps, investigation, and trying to keep everything quiet hadn’t gotten her anywhere, then maybe this would.

  “Sane,” the warlock spat out with
a hiss. “Sheep, young lady. They’re all sheep. Even your aunt for all her mid-century progressivism almost two centuries ago is one of their sheep, now. Don’t let her turn you into the same thing, Burgundy Jane. You’ll regret it.”

  His words sounded almost like a plea, heartfelt, and she leaned back against her car in surprise. “What would you know about that?”

  “Trust me. They took something precious from me in the past. Do not let them do the same to you.” For a moment, the smug veneer lifted and showed a concerned man, much like the one who looked so happy in that photo on the mantle above the kitchen fireplace. Then his mask dropped back into place. “Besides, you can’t live up to their expectations, so don’t even try.”

  “How would you know?” she asked. He took a step closer to her and her gaze pinged wildly up and down, side to side, searching for something. If it was the bow - if he shot her and she fell in love with someone – then she lost any chance of saving Rock Grove.

  “I know the reason you can’t use magick the way you think you should has nothing to do with taking six years off to go to college.”

  Ice speared her heart and she looked up at him. He towered over her now, not in a threatening or intimate manner, but close enough that she could see the flash of determination in his eyes. “I’m a witch-in-training. One of these days, I’ll know how to use my magick,” she whispered in protest.

  “No. You’ll never know if your aunt doesn’t tell you the truth.”

  “Then you tell me the truth. Why are you here, doing this to us? Why is there a picture of you on the mantle in my house?” Her fingers curled around the door handle behind her as she glared up at him. “How come my aunt won’t talk about you? What did you do to betray our family and why come back?”

  She wanted to cry, something she promised herself she wouldn’t do in front of the people who’d hurt her most. The reaction was long overdue, she supposed, but she also knew this warlock would take it as a sign of weakness. Maybe she didn’t need his respect, but she at least needed him to know she wasn’t completely powerless.

  “This isn’t the place to discuss it, but come with me and I’ll tell you everything she refuses to acknowledge.” He extended his hand and Burgundy dropped her gaze to it.

  There was only one person whose magickal knowledge she trusted, and that person was somewhere out of contact. “My aunt should have answered my messages to her by now, but you found a way to block my communication with her. Why should I trust you?”

  “I did it for a good reason, Burgundy. Even if she were to come back at this moment, you’d never know everything you need to know.”

  A dog’s bark shattered the night. Then several more followed. The baying grew louder and closer, and Burgundy spun to look over the top of her car. What remained of the larger canine shifters in town now charged toward them in a dense pack of furry, four-legged bodies.

  “They spotted you,” she told the warlock. “I guess this is where you either give me a damn good reason to go with you or deal with them.”

  “You should come with me because you want to, because you know what I’m saying is important. And if you want to use your magick to its fullest ability, well...” His gaze lifted from her to lock on the approaching shifters. “The choice is yours, Burgundy, but if you don’t decide to trust me, then don’t come crying to me when you’re the last person standing in Rock Grove.”

  “How about Sheila Iverson?” Burgundy asked. “Did you give her that option, as well?”

  The man’s eyes widened, followed by a low laugh. “There’s only one woman in Rock Grove who ever earned that invitation, and she turned around and betrayed me. You get it by virtue of kinship, because I owe you that much. What’s it going to be, young lady?”

  Kinship.

  “Fine. I leave you with one thing, Burgundy. If you change your mind, remember these words: The Firebrand Syndicate. Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

  With that statement, the warlock turned and waved his hand at the approaching shifter pack. They stopped in their tracks, snarling and straining toward him, but otherwise unmoving. The warlock gave Burgundy one last look, tipped his hat, and disappeared without a shred of evidence that he’d just been standing in front of her. Not even a puff of dark smoke.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The first thing Burgundy did when she got home was rummage through her aunt’s office. She pushed away the small twinge of remorse she felt at invading a family member’s privacy. Really, it was her only family member, as far as she knew, so she wondered if that made it an even more reprehensible act.

  Regardless of whether or not her behavior was entirely appropriate, she didn’t care. It was clear that most of the answers to her questions were somewhere in her aunt’s possession and she had every intention of finding them.

  Her first stop was the filing cabinet, which stood against the wall to the left of the office door. It was an ancient, wooden cabinet, probably handed down from a distant ancestor or even purchased by Iris herself in the eighteen hundreds. In a way, Burgundy felt a little guilty about touching it. When she was a little girl, her aunt often reminded her not to touch the precious antiques with which she’d furnished their home.

  “Well, not my fault you raised me in a house with furniture as old as you are, Iris,” Burgundy muttered as she crouched in front of the cabinet. She braced herself for it to be locked, but the first drawer slid open easily, almost as if it were new.

  Whatever hopes she had were dashed when all she found in the bottom two drawers were potion recipes and spells. There were a few scattered folders also containing rituals but, all in all, both bottom drawers were useless to her. The third drawer was stuffed full of old newspaper clippings and photographs. The photos ranged from daguerreotypes to Polaroids, and everything in between. A quick check of the backs showed that most were marked with names and dates.

  Burgundy made a mental note to give her aunt some archival-quality storage materials to organize her paper belongings. So many of the newspapers were yellowed with age and being filed with photos was not at all safe. If everything wasn’t properly stored, it would ultimately crumble. Just the kind of thing she hated to see happen to precious documents and ephemera.

  The top drawer had folders marked “Witches Council” but only contained meeting minutes. Burgundy scrunched her nose a bit as she examined them. “This sounds like a blast,” she muttered to herself as she rifled through the agendas.

  It looked like the subject matter wasn’t merely irrelevant, but bland, such as votes on whether or not to accept certain witches to take their chosen path. She hadn’t realized how much the Witches Council managed the minutiae of the day to day lives of witches. The idea made her wrinkle her nose even more and she shoved the notes right back where she’d found them. The agendas hadn’t even contained anything useful, like an address or location for the Witches Council. Even in voting about whether or not a young witch was ready to call a familiar to her, it appeared secrecy was their priority.

  A glance at the bookshelves was all it took to discount them as a place of information. Unless something was hidden within a book, she’d find nothing there. So Burgundy went for the next obvious piece of furniture.

  She walked behind the desk and knelt to open the bottom drawer. Once again, she was surprised to find it unlocked. Then again, she’d never shown any interest in her aunt’s office or the contents of her desk. Iris had no reason to lock anyone out, because strangers couldn’t get into their home and anyone else was usually a trusted friend.

  There was a folder marked “Family Records” and she plucked it out, opening it in her lap. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she told herself as she settled down in her aunt’s enormous, plush office chair.

  When the opened the folder and flipped through the papers, she let out a sigh of resignation. The folder did hold important documents, but nothing revealing. There were her aunt’s birth and marriage certificates, and the divorce decree citing “ir
reconcilable differences” between herself and her husband. Burgundy supposed that wasn’t surprising, since her aunt had married a much younger, more modern man. The only thing she’d kept from the marriage was the Hart name, which she’d given to Burgundy.

  It wasn’t that legitimacy was important in their community. It was just that the adoption was official and normalized their family, in a strange way. Burgundy supposed having the legal paperwork on hand also made it easier if Iris had ever decided to move while her niece was still a minor. It would probably be necessary if she’d ever enrolled Burgundy in a mortal school.

  The thought of going by her aunt’s and mother’s surname at birth made her cringe, anyway. Burgundy Bloom – it was a name the kids would have mocked, even in Rock Grove.

  Her own birth certificate was in there, too, naming her as Burgundy Jane Bloom, daughter of Lily Bloom. Of course, the fields for the father’s name, race, and place of birth remained blank. But right behind it was the adoption and name change paperwork. Both had been filed and approved when she was not even a year old and Burgundy pressed her lips together. She often wondered exactly when her parents dumped her on Iris and then took off to do whatever it was they were doing in the world.

  Sometimes, she tried to remember them, but she could never picture them or even imagine what they looked like. Now she knew why. They hadn’t even stuck around for her first birthday. It’d been Aunt Iris taking care of her all along.

  “Nice,” she muttered, slapping the papers down against the folder open across both of her knees. “Well, I feel better, knowing you both have been looking out for me all these years. Thanks Mom and mystery man.”

  She shoved the papers back into the folder, dropped the folder back into the drawer, and slammed it shut with her foot. There were four other, smaller drawers, two of which were too shallow to hold anything other than pens and paperclips.

  Since the paperwork in the office gave her nothing, she turned on the computer. It came to life with a noisy whirring sound. The fan was going to give out at any minute, she realized. Like it or not, Iris needed a new computer. Not that she used it often, but she turned it on enough to necessitate a reliable machine. As soon as the main desktop appeared, Burgundy opened the browser and went to her aunt’s email provider. At least their internet speed was good, even if the equipment in Iris’s office was not.