by Sharon Pape
“I thought that was why you were dating Jerry. Or are things cooling off between you two?”
“No, no cooling. If anything the boys have adopted him, which makes him even hotter to me. But there are different kinds of rushes. If you’re going to be talking to Scott’s family, I might be able to help. I babysat for him too, back in the day.”
I clutched my chest. “You just destroyed my long held childhood belief that I was your one and only.”
She laughed. “Sorry to disappoint, poor dear, you had such a dull and uninspired childhood.”
My childhood had been so wildly the opposite that we both dissolved into laughter, tears streaming down our faces until we were doubled over with bellyaches. We were catching our breath and still grinning like idiots when we felt the first rumblings. The counter vibrated like a coin-operated bed in a seedy motel. We jumped down, thinking it was finally collapsing after all our years of sitting on it. But the floor was no steadier than the counter.
“Is this an earthquake?” Elise gasped. Neither of us had any experience to draw upon.
“Outside! We need to get out!” I dashed around the counter to pluck Sashkatu from his ledge. He opened one critical eye, no doubt wondering why I was making everything shake. The rumbling had segued into swaying that was making it hard to stay upright. Glass jars flew off the shelves and crashed on the floor, splattering their contents. Display tables fell onto their sides. I headed for the door, a skier on a slalom course, barely able to stay on my feet. I whispered to Sashki, “we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine,” repeating it like a mantra so I wouldn’t think about other things like whether or not the magick shop would crumble to the ground. It was sturdy, but also centuries older than any other building in New Camel, including Tilly’s shop.
As I joined Elise outside, she was clicking off her phone with a shaky sigh of relief. “Are the boys all right?” I asked.
“That was Jake. He already spoke to Noah. They’re good.” She shook her head. “Jake sounded like this was some kind of exciting adventure. He said Noah was scared, but that he reassured him. I want to drive over to the school this minute and get him.”
“Way too dangerous until we know this is over,” I said, trying to hold onto Sashkatu who only liked this much closeness when it was his idea.
“What about Tilly?” Elise asked. “Her sign says closed, but I know she sometimes does her baking there.”
“Not today.” But my aunt and I lived so close to our shops, our houses had to be in the quake zone. I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket and called her. She answered out of breath and in a prickly tone. She and Merlin had just made it outside, after capturing Isenbale, who’d fled to the top of a kitchen cabinet.
Down the length of Main Street, shopkeepers and would-be shoppers clustered out on the macadam. None of the structures in New Camel were quakeproof, since there’d never been any reason to design them that way. If they fell, even the sidewalks would be dangerous. We’d all adopted the stance of seagoing men, with our feet apart for balance, while the earth pitched and rolled beneath us.
Drivers had stopped in the middle of the street and jumped out of their cars. Sirens screamed as police cars, fire engines and ambulances took to the roads. I realized Lolly wasn’t outside. I thrust Sashki into Elise’s arms and went to find her. At that moment, she appeared in her doorway as pale as the white chocolate she sold.
“Since when are there fault lines here?” she muttered, making her way to me like she too was walking the deck of a ship in high seas. She listed sharply to the left as if she might go down with the next rumble, but I got to her in time, taking her arm and using my body to keep her upright. We had just made it back to Elise, when the earth heaved a deep groan and the temblors subsided as suddenly as they began. Sashki meowed to get my attention and leapt back into my arms. If he had to be in someone’s clutches, he clearly preferred to be in mine.
We humans exchanged wary glances and stayed where we were for several minutes. We all knew about aftershocks from the news coverage of earthquakes in other places, never thinking they could possibly happen here. Blizzards were our thing, and they were enough.
“Is it over?” Elise asked me.
“I don’t know. Can’t aftershocks happen days and weeks after a quake?”
“I can’t wait. I’m going to get Noah now,” Elise said already headed for her car. “Talk to you later.”
When everything remained quiet and motionless for another ten minutes, we all became impatient and went back into our shops to assess the damage.
Cleaning the mess in my shop and restocking would have to wait their turn. I locked up and went straight home to check on the rest of my cats. They came running at the sound of the door opening. They’d all fared well, but wouldn’t leave Sashkatu’s side, until I set out their dinners.
Chairs, lamps and other lightweight furniture had fallen over. Knickknacks were on the floor, some in pieces. I’d see what could be salvaged after I checked on my aunt, Merlin and Isenbale. I pulled into her driveway and did a quick survey of the outside of her house. Some of the roofing tiles were missing and there were cracks in her driveway, but that seemed to be the extent of any outside damage.
She opened the door with a sour expression that dissolved into a smile of relief when she saw me. “Thank goodness you’re okay,” she said, grabbing me to her muumuu-clad bosom.
“How is Merlin?” I asked.
“You’ve heard the expression, saved by the bell? Well when you rang the bell, you saved his harebrained life. Come, come inside where we can talk.” She bundled me into the house and gave a quick look up and down the street, like a crook on the lam, before shutting and locking the door.
Inside the house, there was the same kind of mess I’d found at home. Merlin was sitting at the kitchen table looking grim. When I walked in, he perked up a bit. “You are, as ever, a ray of sunshine,” he said, rising and bowing just enough to kiss my hand. He’d foregone much of his gallantry for the more informal ways of our times. Although I missed the old-fashioned niceties, I never said anything. He had every right to adopt our less rigid standards.
“I’ll make some tea to soothe our nerves,” Tilly said, “while his majesty there tells you about his latest misadventure.”
Merlin’s smile collapsed with resignation. “After my attempt to summon a familiar went awry and deposited an elephant in the living room, your dear aunt was concerned about what might happen if I gave it another try.” Tilly glared at him over her shoulder. “And with good reason,” he hastened to add. “Although to be fair, the elephant was quite charming. We hit it off from the moment he arrived and—.”
“Skip the asides and get to the point,” Tilly said, setting three cups on the counter.
“Yes, yes. Well the only logical thing to do was to fix the underlying problem we have all been experiencing with our magick.”
I held up my hand to stop him. “Wait—you tried to restore the ley lines to their original positions?” We’d all commiserated about the situation, but he’d never said one word about having a solution. “How?”
“With a singular magick spell I’ve kept tucked away in my brain against a time that I might need it.”
“You didn’t cross the line into black magick, did you?” A frisson shimmied up my spine at the thought.
“He came mighty close,” Tilly grumbled. She poured the hot water and added the tea infusers.
“Not by a long shot,” he snapped, having regained some of his vinegar. “It was gray magick—dark gray, but gray nonetheless. The spell is meant to restore the norm. A reset button of sorts. It does, however, require the utmost focus on the exact thing you wish to reset and therein lies the problem.”
I could imagine any number of missteps with such powerful magick. “I take it the spell caused the earthquake, but did it at least restore the ley lines to their original posi
tions?”
Merlin’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know.”
Tilly brought the mugs and fixings to the table and took her seat. “To test it, he wants to try summoning another familiar.”
I added a spoon of honey to my tea and took a sip. “Are you okay with that?”
“It wouldn’t be a proper test if he tried too simple a spell,” she said, “so I suppose I will have to be.” My aunt had more steel to her than was obvious with the naked eye. Until my mother and grandmother were taken from us, I hadn’t seen it myself.
I tried to keep my mouth shut even though I wasn’t okay with Merlin testing a major spell so soon after the earthquake, but the words shot out in spite of my best intentions. “That earthquake wreaked havoc in my shop and probably in all the shops. In my case, it will take weeks to replace the merchandise I’ve lost. And without merchandise, I have nothing to sell and no way to pay my bills.” I was getting myself all worked up. I took a deep breath and sipped more of the tea.
“Merlin intends to work for you until you’re caught up,” Tilly said. The wizard’s eyebrows told me this was news to him, but he knew better than to cross my aunt under the circumstances. “And I will gladly cover your bills,” she continued, “until your shop is at one hundred percent again. I only wish I had the wherewithal to do as much for the other shopkeepers.” When I started to decline her help, she stopped me. “I have lived a quiet, unpretentious life all these years and to what end, if not to help the one who is like my very own daughter?”
“Thank you, but—.”
“No buts about it. That’s my final say on the matter. I should also tell you that I made the tea double strength.” That explained how fast my body was relaxing. The tea was like liquid silk, smoothing the ragged edges of my nerves. I put my cup down. If I drank any more of it, I’d relax right into a coma.
“When will you try to summon your familiar?” I asked as they walked me to the door.
“Soon,” Merlin said, “I just wish to be sure there are no more aftershocks.”
“You need time to go through the whole cleansing ritual anyway,” I said.
He chuckled. “Fadoodle. I come from a time when it was believed that bathing left one open to all manner of bad humors, including the plague. You people take cleanliness too far. The tiniest odor and you’re spraying and scrubbing everything and everyone in sight.” He gave Tilly a sideways glance as he said the last.
“I can’t help it if I have an acute sense of smell,” she muttered.
“Do you know what kind of familiar you want?” I asked to change the subject.
“I have one in mind, but I prefer to keep it a surprise.”
Chapter 8
“I only called Lillian once after Scott’s funeral,” I said to Elise. “I feel awful about it now.” We were on our way to visit her.
Elise took her eyes off the road for a moment to glance at me. “You were graduating, getting ready for college. It was a major milestone in your life and you had a million things on your mind. Knowing Lillian I’m sure she doesn’t hold it against you.”
“No no, I don’t want a free pass on this one. I was wrong. I’ve known her nearly all my life. The least I could have done was check on her from time to time. Something more than a wave on the run when I see her out and about.”
“True,” Elise said as her tone turned hard as stone. “What you did was despicable. You buried the poor woman along with her son, wiped her out of your mind. For you, she ceased to exist.”
“That’s more like it,” I said, a giggle escaping in spite of myself. Elise had a way with hyperbole that made it difficult to wallow in self-pity or pointless guilt.
“I seem to remember that Bronwen, Morgana and Tilly took her under their substantial wings,” she pointed out.
“Yes they did, and Tilly baked her so many goodies, she grew two dress sizes and took up exercising at the Y, which brought her blood pressure down. But that doesn’t excuse my absence in her life.”
“You’ve broken me,” Elise said. “I officially give up.” She turned onto Lillian’s block and pulled to the curb in front of a house that defied easy classification. Lillian called it a cottage with delusions of grandeur. At some point in its history, an earlier owner had added a second story and years later another owner extended the roof line to create a front porch with spindly columns that looked like they would snap one day like toothpicks.
The house would have benefitted from a coat of paint and the bushes needed trimming back, but the windows sparkled in the sunlight and the porch was swept clean. A woman living alone couldn’t be expected to do everything, especially if she didn’t have a working knowledge of magick or the DNA with which to implement it.
“I wish this was just a social call,” I said, “but we do need to see if she could possibly have been looking for revenge.” I shook my head. “I feel terrible for even saying that.”
“I think we can do it without showing our hands or upsetting her.” I was glad Elise was there with me.
Lillian was expecting us. She opened the door when we stepped onto the porch. She looked smaller than I remembered, her dark hair threaded with silver. She gathered me into her arms and held me tight, reminding me what an intense hugger she was. She released me only to grab onto Elise. I glanced around the living room, surprised by the piles of crocheted blankets folded neatly on the couches. There were solid ones and others in multicolored hues that covered the color spectrum.
“You have enough blankets to open your own shop,” I said, following her and Elise into the kitchen.
“I find it’s wonderful therapy for my arthritic fingers. And if I crochet while I watch TV, it keeps me from snacking too much.”
“I bet some of the shops would be happy to carry your blankets on consignment.”
She smiled. “I’m a few steps ahead of you. Two shops here and one in the Glen are already displaying them, and they’re selling so well, I can hardly keep up with demand.”
“Look at you, reinventing yourself,” Elise said.
“To be honest, the extra money comes in handy.”
We sat at the kitchen table, where I’d lunched on many a tuna sandwich. Lillian hadn’t changed a thing in the room, which made it hard for me to focus on the reason for our visit. I had to keep pushing aside the memories that crowded my mind like cobwebs.
“Kailyn,” Elise said in a tone she used when she wasn’t close enough to poke her elbow into my ribs, “Lillian asked if you’d like some lemonade.”
“I’m sorry—yes, I’d love some.” After she filled my glass, she brought a plate of donuts to the table.
“These are from the new donut shop on the way to the Glen. Promise you won’t tell Tilly or she’ll whip up a few dozen of her own to bring me.” She passed me the plate, and I went straight for the maple-frosted one. Lillian winked at me as she handed me a napkin. It had always been my favorite. She sat down beside me. “It’s so nice to see you girls. What’s new?”
“I’m sure you heard about Genna Harlowe,” Elise said, choosing a jelly donut.
Lillian set the plate down between Elise and me. “Terrible thing. First my Scott and now Genna. It’s almost like your graduating class was cursed. Not that I think anything else is going to happen,” she hurried to add. “Please forgive me—my censors are asleep on the job these days. I can hardly believe what comes out of my mouth at times.” She’d given me the opening to segue into Scott’s death.
“I never asked what you thought of the ME’s report on Scott,” I said, nibbling on the donut in an effort to make the question appear casual rather than probing.
“I believe it was accurate as far as it went. It’s entirely possible that Scott consumed alcohol that night, although to the best of my knowledge he was never particularly fond of the stuff.” She gave a little shrug. “Then again how much do parents really know about
their teens? It’s clear that he went swimming and that for some reason, or combination of reasons, he drowned, regardless of the fact that he was a pretty decent swimmer.”
She looked at me. “I remember taking you and Scott to swimming lessons when you were only four years old.” I had vague memories of the lessons. “You do whatever you can to protect your kids,” she said. “You teach them to swim, so they won’t drown, but it doesn’t always save them.” Tears welled in her eyes. She tried to blink them away, but a few spilled onto her cheeks. She wiped them away with a napkin.
Elise and I concentrated on our donuts to give her a chance to compose herself.
“Anyway,” she continued after a minute, “I don’t think we know the whole story of what happened at the lake. It’s been ten long years and I still feel like I’m missing an important piece of the puzzle.”
“Wasn’t Scott involved with a girl at the time…Ashley, I think?” I knew the answer, but it would be worth hearing what Lillian thought of her.
“Yes, Ashley Rennet, a nice girl. I liked her, and Scott was serious about her. I remember when he told me he was going to give her his class ring.” She smiled wistfully. “Teenagers always think their first love will last forever. Who knows, maybe it would have.”
I finished my lemonade and declined a refill. “About that missing piece of the puzzle,” I said, “do you think it involved another person?”
“Well I don’t know. If I had suspected someone, I would have gone to the police about it, and if they ignored me, I would have hired a private investigator.” I’d given her the opportunity to point a finger, but she wasn’t taking it. “All things considered,” she said, “it might have been easier for me if there had been a person to focus my anger on. Being angry with fate and circumstances has been a lot harder.” She nodded, as if acknowledging the truth of her own words. “Now,” she said with a soft smile, “I want to hear what the two of you have been up to.”
We gave her brief synopses of our lives. She laughed at the funny stories about Noah and Jake, and wanted to know how serious Travis and I were. It seemed Tilly had been feeding her tidbits about our relationship. “Your aunt would love to see you married,” Lillian said, eyebrows raised, clearly angling for a scoop.
