Any Witch Way You Can (11 page)

“Still,” Edith paused and looked in the window of Mrs. Little’s unicorn store. “It’s so tacky.”

I opened my mouth to answer her but saw Mrs. Little staring at me suspiciously from inside of her store. I knew I couldn’t explain talking to thin air in front of her business, so I quickly shut my mouth.

“Is that Margaret Riddle?” Edith asked.

I shifted so Mrs. Little couldn’t see my mouth before I answered. “I think Riddle was her maiden name. Now she’s Margaret Little.”

“Did she marry John Little?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to have a crush on him,” Edith admitted. “How did he turn out?”

“I think he died – like a decade ago,” I answered.

Edith didn’t look happy with the news, but she continued to follow me down the street, kibitzing about the tacky businesses as she went.

“The bakery is still the same. That’s good.”

A few minutes later: “Why is all that horrible stuff in the front window of the hardware store?”

I let her keep up her own running commentary. I didn’t get the feeling she wanted my input anyway.

When we got to Hypnotic, I held the door open until Edith entered. I could tell she was really disgusted by Thistle and Clove’s store. “This is a hocus pocus shop,” she hissed.

“It’s not hocus pocus,” I argued. “It’s just a nature store . . . essentially.”

“They’re threatening to curse people,” she shot back.

“That’s just a joke.” Or, at least I hoped it was.

Thistle and Clove were busy behind the counter when we entered. They looked up expectantly. They didn’t seem surprised to see me.

“Who were you talking to?” Clove asked.

“Edith,” I said tightly. I was hoping they wouldn’t scare her off by asking too many questions.

“Edith from the paper?”

“Yes.”

“Hi, Edith,” Clove said breezily. She was apparently over her discomfort of being around ghosts.

“She looks just like Tillie,” Edith said distrustfully.

“She looks just like her mother,” I corrected Edith.

“She’s Marnie’s girl?”

“You knew Marnie?” I was essentially just trying to keep her talking at this point. I didn’t want her to clam up.

“I knew them all.”

I glanced around the store quickly, but I didn’t see Shane. “Where is Shane?”

“He’s in the backroom,” Thistle said through gritted teeth. “He doesn’t believe we don’t smoke the herbs back there.”

I smiled despite myself. I often wondered that, too.

Edith had turned her attention to Thistle. “Her hair is blue.”

“Yes.”

“She must be Twila’s.”

“Yes, she is Twila’s.”

“What is she saying?” Thistle asked suspiciously.

“She said you look like your mom.”

“Did she mean it as an insult?”

“I don’t think so.” Probably, though.

“Go get Shane,” I told Clove.

“Do I have to? He’s been driving us crazy all morning.”

“Just do it.”

Clove grumbled as she disappeared behind the curtain. I could hear her talking for a few minutes and then she came back out into the main area of the store. “He’ll be here in a minute,” she said.

“What’s he doing?”

“I told him you brought another ghost to talk to him and he’s scared.”

“He’s a ghost,” I protested.

“Tell him that! I’m not your go-between,” she grumbled.

I threw myself on the couch to wait. I watched as Edith walked around the store. “I knew your family was into some hinky stuff, but this is ridiculous.”

“We’re not hinky,” Thistle said testily.

“You can hear her?”

“I can now. I think if you’re talking to them in our presence, eventually we can hear them. I have no idea why.”

I didn’t either. “We’ll ask the aunts later,” I suggested.

Shane was peeking his head out from the curtain. He smiled at me, but frowned when he caught sight of Edith.

“She doesn’t look like a ghost,” he said.

“Neither do you,” I assured him.

Shane took a step out into the room. He didn’t make a move towards Edith, though. She turned and regarded him distastefully. “Are you a hobo?”

“What’s a hobo?”

“A vagrant. A tramp.”

“I’m not a tramp!”

“You’re dressed like a hobo,” Edith said. “You’re pants are too big and that jacket looks like it belongs in a dumpster.”

Shane looked down at his coat in confusion. “It’s just a hoodie.”

“That’s just how people dress today,” I interrupted. I didn’t want the conversation to devolve any further.

“Well, it’s stupid,” Edith said.

I turned back to Shane. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Shane looked confused again. I had a feeling he looked that way a lot in life. “I was in the backroom.”

“I mean before you died.”

“Oh,” Shane furrowed his brow in concentration. “I was at the mall.”

“What were you doing?”

“Shopping. I bought some new shoes.”

“Those shoes?” I pointed to his gray Converse.

“No. They were black.”

“Black Converse?”

“Yeah.”

Well, that at least was something. If we found the shoes, maybe we would find the killer.

“Did you leave the mall?”

“Yeah. I was out in the parking lot, loading stuff in my car,” he said.

“Then what?”

Shane thought hard before shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

“Did someone come up behind you?”

“I told you, I don’t know.” He was getting snippy now.

Edith stared him down for a few minutes. “I think he doesn’t want to remember,” she said.

She was probably right. I couldn’t force him to remember, though. “He will when he’s ready,” I said finally.

“I hope so,” Shane said. “I want to know who killed me so I can haunt them.”

“You want to haunt everyone,” Clove grumbled.

“Hey! If I’m going to be a ghost I might as well have some fun with it.”

You really couldn’t argue with that.

Eleven

I spent the rest of the afternoon at Hypnotic quizzing Shane about his final day. My questions increasingly irritated him, so I convinced Thistle to start asking them for me. As much as Shane didn’t want to answer the questions, he did want to please Thistle. I figured I might as well use his crush to my advantage.

Despite steady hours of questioning, though, we didn’t learn anything else of any interest. Until he remembered on his own, we were at a standstill.

Edith lost interest in the conversation pretty early on and decided to leave.

“Are you going back to the newspaper?”

“No,” she said.

That surprised me.

“I’m going to take a look around town.”

Now that she had gotten the courage to leave the office, I wondered if she would ever go back. The world had just grown exponentially for her.

“Well, have fun.”

“I don’t have fun, missy,” she chastised me. “I just want to see if anyone I know is still around.”

“Aunt Tillie is out at the inn,” Thistle offered evilly.

“Why would I want to see her?” Edith looked insulted.

“She can see ghosts, too. You could irritate the crap out of her.”

Edith looked intrigued by the prospect. After she left, I turned on Thistle. “I’m telling Aunt Tillie you’re the one who sent her.”

“I’ll tell her it was you – and she’ll believe me. She thinks you’re out to get her anyway.”

I told Clove and Thistle about my visit out to the inn earlier in the afternoon. They both seemed surprised by my story.

“So, you’re saying that she faked a freak out just to get you out to the inn?” Clove looked like she didn’t believe me.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Thistle offered. “She cares. She just doesn’t want us to know that she cares.”

“Still,” Clove sniffed. “That seems like a lot of wasted energy.”

“You know she likes to irritate our moms. It was probably her afternoon entertainment.”

I decided to stay at the store and help Clove and Thistle bag herbs and stock their shelves. The weekend was coming up, and like any other weekend in Hemlock Cove in the fall, the store would be slammed.

At about 3 p.m., the store phone rang. Thistle answered it. I could tell by the shift in her body language, though, that she wasn’t happy to hear the voice on the other end. “We just had dinner out there the other night,” she complained.

Crap.

Clove and I both stopped what we were doing to listen to Thistle’s end of the conversation.

“No, I’m not saying that I don’t want to see you,” Thistle argued. “We were just out there, though.”

Thistle was quiet as she listened for a few moments. I figured it was her mom. Thistle only got twitchy when she was talking to her own mother. We all found our aunts more entertaining than our own mothers. I think that’s just a biological rule or something.

“No, there’s no rule that you can only see your mother once a week.”

Thistle was rolling her eyes.

“Yes, I know you won’t be here forever.”

Thistle glared at Clove and I openly when she caught us smiling at her.

“Yes, Clove and Bay are here right now, as a matter of fact. They already know and they can’t wait for dinner.”

Clove and I weren’t smiling anymore.

“Yes, we’ll be there at seven sharp,” Thistle grumbled. “I said yes!”

Clove shot a look in my direction. There was no way out of this for us either.

“I’m not crabby! Why do you always think that?”

Clove moved around the counter and stood beside me. “Why do you think they want to have another dinner so soon?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t like it, though. It means they’re up to something.”

“They’re always up to something,” Clove countered.

“Then they’re up to something especially irritating,” I suggested.

Thistle was still arguing with her mom. “Of course I didn’t forget the equinox celebration.”

Clove and I both froze as we looked up at Thistle. We had all forgotten the autumnal equinox celebration. Shit.

“Of course, we’re all looking forward to it,” Thistle lied.

We all looked at each other resignedly. It was going to be a long night. After Thistle hung up, Shane looked at us expectantly. “What’s the solstice celebration?”

“An excuse for our moms to get naked in the woods,” Clove said bitterly.

Shane seemed to consider her response for a second. “Are they hot?”

“They’re in their fifties,” Clove said disgustedly.

“Are you guys going to get naked?” He was looking at Thistle with renewed interest.

“No,” Thistle said determinedly. “Absolutely not.” That almost never happened – at least since we’d hit our teens.

We all shared a dubious glance with one another. “This isn’t good,” I said finally.

“That’s the understatement of the year,” Thistle sighed.

The three of us dragged our feet for the rest of the afternoon. We were all dreading the evening’s upcoming activities. There was no way to get out of them, though. We had all tried in the past – and we had all failed miserably.

Thistle and Clove closed up the shop at six, and we all climbed into my car. Shane even got in the backseat with Thistle – much to her chagrin.

He kept up a steady stream of chatter during the drive out the inn. He seemed interested in what was going to happen tonight. I didn’t blame him. It’s always more interesting in theory than in practice.

“So why do they get naked in the woods?”

“They dance around a fire,” Thistle said grumpily.

“Why?”

“To drive me crazy.”

“But why?”

“It’s a pagan practice,” Thistle said shortly.

“Pagan? Like witches?”

Thistle rolled her eyes. “Yes, like witches.”

“Are you guys witches?” Shane looked suddenly scared.

“Yes.”

“Do you cast spells on people?”

“No.”

“Then what do you do?”

“We don’t really do anything. We were just born into a family of witches.” Thistle didn’t feel like explaining – and I didn’t know how to help her – so I kept my mouth shut.

“Then why do they dance naked in the woods?”

“It’s just tradition.”

Shane wasn’t happy with her answer. “I still don’t understand.”

“Just watch what happens tonight and you’ll understand.”

“I get to come?”

“Could we stop you?”

“No.”

I parked at the gatehouse. We all went into our rooms and quickly changed for dinner and then made our way up to the inn.

“This place is so cool,” Shane said when he saw The Overlook. “It looks like a haunted house.”

“Technically, since you’re staying there, the guesthouse is haunted,” I pointed out.

Shane shrugged off my statement. He was much more interested in The Overlook now than anything else. He seemed to have temporarily forgotten about the promise of naked dancing in the woods – which was a blessing.

When we entered the family living quarters, Aunt Tillie was sitting in front of the television watching
Jeopardy
. It was the only television show she cared about.

“Hey, Aunt Tillie,” Clove greeted her.

Aunt Tillie grunted in response. We knew better than interrupting her show, so we started to move through the house. “She’s not what I expected,” Shane said when we walked into the kitchen.

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know, a little old lady with a wart on her nose,” Shane said innocently.

“Do not say that to her,” Thistle warned.

“Why? Can she curse a ghost?”

Thistle merely shrugged. “I don’t know. If anyone can, she can, though. Besides that, she’ll curse us for bringing you here.”

“She’d curse her own family?” Shane didn’t look like he believed us.

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Twila and Marnie were staring at us all when we entered the room. “Whom are you talking to?”

“Shane,” I answered simply.

“The boy who died?”

“Yes.”

Aunt Twila clucked sympathetically. “Oh, that poor boy. How is he doing?”

“Ask him yourself.”

“I can’t talk to ghosts,” she chided me.

“Neither could Clove and Thistle. They can now.”

Both Twila and Marnie looked surprised. “They can?”