A Familiar Tail (24 page)

Which is why you asked someone else to look for you.
I swallowed and nodded.
You had to know, but you weren't sure you could follow through on your own.
Julia had said something like this too, about the pain of finding out people you'd known your whole life might not be what you thought.

My purse, with the wand inside, was beside me on the picnic bench. I laid my hand on it, and I watched Frank as he stared across the pond. I tried to study him like I was going to paint his portrait—breaking his face down into its component shapes and shadows, seeing through skin to the lines of the bones and the shape of the person.

I felt my palm prickle, and this time I understood at once. I was looking at someone who was lonely. Really, truly lonely, and he had no idea what to do about it.

“Brad's missing,” I said.

“What?”
Frank whirled around.

“Colin said he didn't turn up at work today, and Laurie's worried.”

Now Frank did swear. Journalists have a large
vocabulary, and he used it all. “Why didn't you tell me? I have to . . .” He yanked his phone out of his pocket, hit a number and waited while it rang. “Hi, Laurie, it's . . .” I heard the sound of shouting from the other end. “Yeah, yeah, okay, I know, but is Brad . . .” More shouting. “Okay, I'm sorry.” He hung up.

Worry dug into me. “He's not home yet, is he?”

Frank shook his head, and he shoved his phone into his pocket. “And she's still mad at me. Doesn't matter.” He took a deep breath. “I'm going to go check a couple of spots. Last time . . . well, Brad can drink too much when he gets depressed, and . . .” He stopped. “Somebody needs to find him.”

I nodded. “Go on. I'll clean up here.”

“Thanks.” Frank squeezed my hand briefly, turned on his heel and took off back toward downtown at a good fast clip.

I gathered up bowls and bags and spoons and stuffed them into the trash can. My head was spinning. I didn't know what to think or whom to believe. Every time I thought I had the people around me figured out, they showed me an entirely new side and sent all my theories into a tailspin.

“Merowp?”

“Speaking of tailspins.” I turned my head, completely unsurprised to see Alistair sitting on the picnic table with his tail curled around his toes.

“I know what you're here to tell me,” I said. “If we're going to send Frank looking through the old financial documents, it's about time I got off my duff and really went through Dorothy's attic, isn't it?”

“Merow,” answered Alistair.

Well, who was I to argue with that kind of logic?

34

THE ATTIC WAS
warm and stuffy. The windows were sticky from disuse, but I eventually got a couple of them open to let in the breeze. It was still hot, but at least it wasn't so close. I needed to get a fan up here. Another thing for the shopping list.

I faced the bookshelf. The books faced me. Alistair, in true cat fashion, came over to rub his face on the corner of the case.

I thought about Frank Hawthorne and how he'd been unable to answer all his own questions about Dorothy and Brad because he was afraid of what those answers might be. Standing in front of the journals, I could really sympathize. Whom would I find in here? The kind, laughing woman in the picture Julia had given me? Or the bitter, heartless woman reduced to blackmail and revenge who Elizabeth Maitland said was all that remained of her friend?

“So, where do we start?” I whispered to Alistair.

“Merowp.” Alistair rubbed his face against the corner of
a battered black journal that stuck out of the end of the shelf. It was labeled 1954.

“Begin at the beginning.” I pulled the book out and carried it over to the chair. Alistair was in my lap as soon as I sat down, so I balanced the book on the chair arm and started to read.

•   •   •

TWO HOURS LATER,
I had a crick in my neck, itchy eyes and dry fingers. Stacks of journals and binders teetered on the floor and the footstool. The sun had set, so I'd turned on all the lamps.

I also had a picture of a life that had nothing to do with blackmail.

I'd skimmed years of clipped articles detailing all the small-town triumphs. There were pieces about school plays, bake-offs, scholarships, high school graduations, town hall meetings, candidate lunches, successful fund-raisers for local causes. The library opened; it expanded; it struggled for funding; it had a successful casino night and raffle. The high school teams went to the National Spelling Bee and to the state championships for ice skating and hockey. People met and married and raised families. There were articles about the opening of Midnight Reads, and the ad for Didi's business, the Cleaning Fairy Housekeeping Services (It's magical!).

If an article showed that some hoped-for event had come to pass, Dorothy decorated it with underlinings and exclamations, and lists of related magical ceremonies were jotted down in the margins. Smiley faces too. Dorothy Hawthorne
was a deep believer in the smiley face, not to mention the heart and exclamation point. No wonder she and Grandma B.B. had been friends.

Between the articles were pages of handwritten notes. These were the details of Dorothy's magical life. The phases of the moon were faithfully recorded. There were descriptions of the coven ceremonies Dorothy attended or created, along with their blessings and wishings and workings.

I read about blessings and incantations for clarity of mind before acting and for attracting luck, prosperity and, yes, love. Dorothy was all about bringing people together, or bringing in the good and banishing the negative.

“That was her specialty, wasn't it?” I said to Alistair as I scratched his ears. “Attraction, connection.” I paused. “Summoning.”

“Merow,” Alistair agreed.

I read about meditations for calm, for acceptance and for forgiveness. I read about cleansing before rituals and closing the circle afterward, and how some spells had to be tended for days if not weeks before they could come to full strength.

There was a lot about the garden as well. Dorothy listed her various cuttings and plantings. She made notes about the weather and clipped yet more articles about natural methods to fight pests, from aphids to green flies. She listed which herbs were good for cleansing and healing and which were best for mundane uses, like marinara sauce or soothing teas.

There were pages about her students, too. Names and photographs were pasted on pages like a handmade yearbook. There were years' worth of letters, going from handwritten to typed, and finally printed e-mails. They discussed the philosophy of magic, sometimes curious, sometimes angry or confused, but always trying to move closer to an understanding of the world and themselves. There were
letters of thanks sent as students moved away, looking for their own paths.

I found a picture of Val, looking sullen and unfamiliar as she stared out from under a set of long, slanting punk-rock bangs. I found another of Kenisha, who looked at the camera like it was pronouncing a life sentence.

I found Frank. Not that it was difficult. Dorothy had detailed his life with maternal pride. There were photos of birthday parties, of Frank in his peewee hockey gear, and of him hugging a very patient Alistair around the neck. Teenage Frank held up the keys to an epically battered Ford Mustang. He wore a fast-food uniform and waved a paycheck over his head. He stood in his graduation cap and gown beside a gray-haired man who must have been his father. Neither one of them had an arm around the other. In the last journal, Frank stood in the doorway of the
Seacoast News
. He held up the keys to the office with the same triumphant pride with which the boy had held up the first paycheck or the keys to the first car.

But where was the hard, petty woman Elizabeth Maitland had described to me? I closed the journal and laid my hands over it. She wasn't in here. Everything in here was cheerful, loving. Oh, there were obituaries, but nothing cantankerous, let alone bitter.

“It makes no sense,” I said to Alistair. He was lying on the rug beside the bookshelf, playing with a loose thread. “Why would Mrs. Maitland tell a lie that I could disprove so easily?”

Alistair rolled over on his back and looked at me upside down.

“Unless I'm missing something.” I frowned at the shelf. “What's not here?”

Alistair vanished.

I jumped. I may have also made a slightly undignified sound that could have been mistaken for a scream by the uninitiated.

“Meow?”

Alistair reappeared on top of the bookcase, blinking at me.
What's your problem, human?

“Don't do that!” I pressed my hand over my heart, which was now going a mile a minute. “When I said what's missing, I didn't mean you!”

Alistair leapt from the bookcase to the floor, slid between two crooked stacks of journals and vanished again.

“Fine, stay gone. Be missing . . .” I stopped. “Missing,” I said again.

I scrabbled through the piles, yanked out some older journals from the sixties, and started flipping through pages.

This time I saw it.

A number of the pages had blank spaces. Scraps of yellowing Scotch tape were still stuck on the corners, showing where photos or articles had been attached but then removed.

What I didn't find was any mention of Grandma B.B., who was supposed to be one of Dorothy's girlhood friends. I didn't even see her name in the yellowing newspaper announcement of the graduating class from Portsmouth High School. I found the picture of a young Dorothy in a white cap and gown, clutching her diploma. But it wasn't a complete photo. I ran my finger down the right side. The rest had been cut away. I turned more pages, scanning the faces, scanning the names in the articles. Some names, I saw, had been carefully and solidly blotted out with black marker.

Dorothy had edited Grandma B.B. out of her life as thoroughly as Grandma B.B. had edited out Dorothy, and Portsmouth itself. I grabbed up the more recent books and flipped through them too. Not only had the Blessingsounds been blotted out; so had the Maitlands. Mostly. There was one long, gossipy article about Elizabeth Maitland's divorce from Albert Maitland, her husband of thirty-two years. But when I leafed back through, I found no mention of the marriage. I found articles following the New Hampshire district
attorney's probe into Maitland and Associates' finances, but nothing about when the office opened, or how it had grown.

“Oh, Dorothy,” I breathed. “You really did carry your grudges, a long way.” Elizabeth had been telling the truth about that at least. I looked around at the heaps of books and binders. “But nothing about Brad,” I said to Alistair. “And no copies.” I tapped the cover of the binder in my lap. “Not of anything obvious, anyway.” I stopped. My hands stilled. “No copies and sure as heck no originals.” I stopped again. There was something there. Something I'd missed before. Alistair climbed up onto my lap and onto the binder and sat staring at me.

I scratched his ears. “How come Brad was worried about finding copies?” I asked him. “Whatever these documents are, why wasn't he worried about finding the originals?”

“Merow.” Alistair jumped onto the footstool, sending a whole stack of binders and journals crashing to the floor.

“Hey!” I shouted, and went down on my knees to pick the scattered books up. Alistair, of course, jumped in the middle and scrabbled in the pages.

“Cut. It. Out.” I picked him up and, I admit it, dropped him to one side. But he just came right back, unfazed, and head butted the book I was holding so hard it slipped out of my hands.

“Hey!”

“Merow!” he repeated as he leapt across the book, the motion rifling the yellowing pages.

I yanked the book off the floor, intending to put it safely back on the shelf away from further cat interference. But then the page headline caught my eye.

AUTOMATIC WRITING

I looked at Alistair. Alistair looked at me. I looked at the book. This time I read:

Automatic writing or psychography is an alleged psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words
without consciously writing. The words are claimed to arise from a subconscious, spiritual or supernatural source.

“What? I'm supposed to try this?”

Alistair sat bolt upright and looked at me, steadily and expectantly.

I sat back on my heels. Was I really thinking about this? Well, why not? Grandma B.B. said that clairvoyance was the family talent. She also said somebody might have been trying to get me to leave town because they were afraid of what I might be able to see.

“Meow.” Alistair rubbed his head against my elbow. I scratched his ears briefly as I read the page again. This might not produce any evidence Kenisha could use with her stubborn lieutenant. In fact, it might not produce anything at all. But maybe, just maybe, it would give us an idea where we should be looking.

“Okay,” I told Alistair. “But we need to do this the right way, don't we? Like it says in the books and Dorothy's notes. We need—I need—to set up a circle, right? Like for the blessing ceremony? So I can . . .” I dug down to remember all the reading I'd been doing and the lectures I'd been getting. “Focus my intention.”

Creating a space for focus was something I could just about wrap my head around. The times when I had my own dedicated studio, I always decked the space out with pictures, colors, motivational sayings, anything I found beautiful or interesting, really, to draw down the inspiration for my work.

Now I looked at the altar that stood in the center of the attic, and at the cat.

“I'm sure you'll let me know when I get it wrong.”

“Merow,” promised Alistair.

We'd finished the bottle of red wine Sean had brought, but I still had the bottle of white that had been Shannon's
contribution. I brought it up and poured some into the silver cup. I didn't have any kosher salt, but I had plenty of the ordinary kind, and I refilled the silver dish. There were white candles in a box in the kitchen. I grabbed one for the candlestick and stuck a pack of matches in my pocket. I also grabbed the kitchen shears and went out into the garden. Alistair accompanied me.

I looked up at the moon. It was half-full, and waxing, I thought, which was supposed to be propitious.

“Lavender's green, dilly, dilly,” I muttered as I snipped some branches. “Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly . . .” I snipped a branch from the apple tree, with a small green apple on the end. “What else? Rosemary? For remembrance, right?” I found the big bush and added some of that to the bundle. “Is that enough?”