The Root of All Trouble (31 page)

I had two options: to kick the black witch out—which would then let the crowd in . . . or keep Delia in—and the crowd out.

Delia won.

Slamming the door, I threw the lock.

Just in time. Fists pounded the wood frame and dozens of eyes peered through the window.

I yelled through the leaded glass panel, “I’ll be open in half an hour!” but the eager crowd kept banging on the door.

Trying to catch my breath, I walked over to the cash register counter, an old twelve- drawer chestnut filing cabinet. I opened one of the drawers and grabbed a small roll of numbered paper tickets. Walking back to the door, I shoved them through the wide mail slot.

“Take numbers,” I shouted at the eager faces. “You know the drill!”

Because, unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time this had happened.

Turning my back to the crowd, I leaned against the door, and then slid down its frame to the floor. For a second I rested against the wood, breathing in the comforting scents of my shop. The lavender, lemon balm, mint. The hint of peach leaf, sage, cinnamon. All brought back memories of my grandma Adelaide Hartwell, who’d opened the shop more than fifty years before.

“You should probably exercise more,” Delia said. Her little dog barked.

My chest felt so tight I thought any minute it might explode. “I think I just ran a five- K. Second time this month.”

“What exactly did Mr. Dunwoody’s forecast say?”

“Sunny with a chance of divorce.”

Delia peeked out the window. “That explains why there are so many of them. I wonder whose marriage is on the chopping block.”

The matrimonial predictions of Mr. Dunwoody, my septuagenarian neighbor, were never wrong. His occasional “forecasts” foretold of residential current affairs, so to speak. On a beautiful spring Friday in Hitching Post, the wedding capital of the South, one might think a wedding ceremony—or a few dozen— was on tap. But it had been known, a time or two, for a couple to have a sudden change of heart over their recent nuptials (usually after the alcohol wore off the next morning) and set out to get the marriage immediately annulled or file for a quickie, uncontested divorce.

And even though Mr. Dunwoody was never wrong, I often wished he’d keep his forecasts to himself.

Being the owner of
the Little Shop of Potions, a shop that specialized in love potions, was a bit like being a mystical bartender. People talked to me. A lot. About everything. Especially about falling in love and getting married, which was the height of irony considering everyone on my mother’s side of the family were confirmed matrimonial cynics. Luckily, the hopeless romanticism on my father’s side balanced things out for me. Mostly.

Somehow over the years I had become the town’s unofficial relationship expert. It was at times rewarding . . . and a bit exasperating. The weight of responsibility was overwhelming, and I didn’t always have the answers, magic potions or not.

Because Southerners embraced crazy like a warm blanket on a chilly night, not many here cared much that I called myself a witch, or that I practiced magic using a touch of hoodoo. But the town thought I did have all the answers—and expected me to find solutions.

My customers cared only about whether I could make their lives better. Be it an upset stomach or a relationship falling apart, they wanted healing.

And when there was a divorce forecast, they were relentless until I made them a love potion ensuring their marriage would be secure. I had a lot of work to get done. Work I’d rather not have done with Delia around.

“Why are you here?” I asked her.

“I had a dream,” Delia said, fussing with her dog’s basket.

“A Martin Luther King, Jr., kind? Or an REM- drool-on- the- pillow kind?” I asked, looking up at her.

“REM. But I don’t drool.”

“Noted,” I said, but I didn’t believe it for a minute. I shifted on the floor— y rear was going numb. “What was it about? The dream.”

Delia said, “You.”

“Me? Why?”

Delia closed her eyes and shook her head. After a dramatic pause, she looked at me straight on. “Don’t ask me. It’s not like I have any control over what I dream. Trust me. Otherwise, I’d be dreaming of David Beckham, not you.”

I could understand that. “Why are you telling me this?”

We weren’t exactly on friendly terms.

Delia bit her thumbnail. All of her black- painted nails had been nibbled to the quick. “I don’t like you. I’ve never liked you, and I daresay the feeling is mutual.”

I didn’t feel the need to agree aloud. I had some manners after all. “But?” I knew there was one coming.

“I felt I had to warn you. Because even though I don’t like you, I don’t particularly want to see anything bad happen to you.”

Now I was really worried. “Warn me about what?”

Caution filled Delia’s ice blue eyes. “You’re in danger.”

Danger of losing my sanity, maybe. This whole day had been more than a little surreal and it wasn’t even nine a.m. I laughed. “You know this from a dream?”

“It’s not funny, Carly. At all. I . . . see things in dreams. Things that come true. You’re in very real danger.”

She said it so calmly, so easily, that I immediately believed her. I’d learned from a very early age not to dismiss things that weren’t easily understood or explainable.

“What kind of danger?” I asked. I’d finally caught my breath and needed a glass of water. I hauled myself off the floor and headed for the small break room in the back of the shop. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when Delia followed.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

I flipped on a light. And froze. Delia bumped into my back.

We stood staring at the sight before us.

Delia said breathlessly, “It might have something to do with him.”

“Him” being the dead man lying facedown on the floor, blood dried under his head, his stiff hands clutching a potion bottle.