The Witching Hour (The Witches Pendragon Mystery Series Book 1) (5 page)

“Oh, what is it?” Monique calls out, momentarily forgetting about the parsnips and reveling in the idea of Sheila’s surprise dessert. “Is it a sponge cake? Please say yes.”

“You’ll just have to wait to find out,” Sheila replies in a good-natured tone, as she continues to make her way around the dining room table, ladling pasta onto plates.

“I’d like it very much if you could run my shop for a little while so I could run over to
La Bonne Chaleur
and see what Elise knows,” Noelle whispers, having a side conversation with Camille.

“Probably should run the shop in the afternoon. You remember what happened last time I tried to crack open the cocoa beans,” Camille sighs wistfully. Noelle and I exchange a knowing glance. Who could forget the first time Camille took a hammer to the beans? The woman is so strong that she not only smashed the beans into oblivion (the precious nibs were pulverized), she also cracked the store’s marble countertop in half. It was an expensive mistake.

“In fact, since you’ve been working so much, why don’t I take over your shop for the entire afternoon and you can take some time off? You know I have no problem with sales and if your ghost should show, I’ll chat him up,” Camille continues in her upbeat tone.

“Sounds wonderful,” Noelle purrs like a cat, twirling her pasta around on her fork. “An afternoon away from the store is what I need. And I could make dinner for a change. It’s been so long since I helped out in the kitchen.”

“You’d be most welcome, I could use the extra help,” Sheila perks up, having taken her seat, and unfolding her napkin. “It’s my turn to cook again tomorrow night, and apparently my parsnip-themed meal hasn’t gone over so well.”

She’s right. From her chair at the end of the table Monique is pushing the parsnips around on her plate with her sharp knife and sputtering darkly, “Parsnip flambé, parsnip butter, parsnip flavored pork…”

I meet Sheila’s eyes from across the table and it’s all we can do not to giggle.

“Parsnip pate…” Monique continues.

There are many wonderful things about being part of a coven, but the best thing is the comradery. Another wonderful thing is that we share all the responsibilities –the cooking, the cleaning, the renovation, the working in the two shops in Amboise. We are a team. United, we are hard to beat.

“Parsnip parfait…
pastinacam funesti!”
Monique switches to Latin and her voice grows louder. Just then, Beatrice pops her head out of the swinging door that separates the kitchen from the dining room. “Call for you, Sister Hatha,” she says and parades in with the surprise dessert –a beautiful tart made from fresh crisp Brittany apples that are ripening at this time of year.

“Thank you, I think I’ll take it in the kitchen.” Hatha pushes back her chair, and it makes a loud scraping noise on the stone floor. As soon as she disappears through the swinging door, Monique grabs up the cake knife. Yelling “Funesti pastinacam!” she brings it swishing through the air, slicing the tart right in half with one mighty stroke.

There are a few gasps around the table, but Monique doesn’t care. Taking the largest half of the cake, she scoops it onto her plate and begins to gobble it with relish.

Goodness, Monique’s table manners are becoming more atrocious by the day. I’m not the only one who thinks so. I see Hendra eying Monique with a concerned eye. Sadly, I know that Hatha and Hendra have had some discussions recently over Monique’s mental state. The discussions led to nothing, although Hatha believes that Monique may be pilfering more than library books from the town of Amboise. I know both she and Hatha search Monique’s room for items, and when they can they return them to their rightful owner. Lately, Hendra has been adamantly saying that Monique might someday have to be locked in her own room for her own good. Hatha always shakes her head and frowns at this.

“That was Claire-Elaine,” Hatha says, coming back through the kitchen door, looking grave. “The ghost at Trisse is becoming more agitated, more violent. Last night it raked its nails down the back of the Count’s youngest daughter.”

“No!” most of us cry, but Hendra uses harsher words, calling the ghost a vengeful coward for attacking a child.

“Why is everybody so quick to blame a ghost?” Francine huffs, “It’s a rare ghost the can actually manifest itself and do something physical. Oh, sure, a ghost can learn to fling a paper clip here or there, but actually touch someone? That would be a ghost with extraordinary powers. Why are you all so sure it was the ghost anyway? Maybe the Count did it himself? Maybe they are covering up for something that’s happening in their family?”

“Come Francine, we don’t have to sit here and take this abuse,” Lizelle pouts and the two of them float up to the ceiling. Quite rudely, they glide back and forth across the table, directly underneath the chandelier. Used to their histrionics, nobody glances their way. When they realize they won’t get a rise out of anyone, they issue a combined “Well, I never.” Then they disappear, their transparent bodies floating straight through the wall that divides the dining room from the living room.

“Now we’ve done it,” Beatrice says sounding like the wise woman she is. “We’ve offended our own resident ghosts; the ones who have taken us in when we had nowhere else to go.”

“Never mind them, I’ll talk to them later,” Hatha states, her face shining with the light of someone who is convinced they are about to fight the good fight. “Who wants to come with me to have a tête-à-tête with the ghost of Trisse?”

Reluctantly, I raise my hand. I am the only volunteer. Hatha looks genuinely annoyed. “Very well then. Hendra, you’re coming too. And Monique stop yelling
funesti pastinacam at the top of your lungs. You are also  recruited for our little adventure, and we’ll need Camille too. We’ll head out day after tomorrow.”

“FUNESTI PASTINACUM!” Monique wails so shrill I hear the neighbor’s hound dog begin to howl.

“Would you shut it!” Hendra cajoles, “Like most things you say these days, it makes no sense. What do you mean by ‘murderous parsnips’?”

Monique doesn’t reply to Hendra’s question. Instead, she flips Hendra the bird, another thing we witches learned from American movies. I’m not really sure Monique even knows what it means. Standing up on wobbly legs, she mumbles something about wanting to smooth things over with Francine and Lizelle. Then, she hits the swinging door to the kitchen open with a bang of her hand and disappears into the other room.

At one o’clock in the afternoon, I close down the chocolate shop for lunch. Camille has come from the chateau carrying an enormous picnic basket. We sit together in the back room and dine on artisan cheeses, a large loaf of brown bread, and an assortment of pickled vegetables.

Around two o’clock, I help Camille reopen the shop. A few late season tourists file in and we become quite busy. I man the cash register until things simmer down, then I hang up my apron.

“I’ll take it from here, don’t worry about me, Noelle.” Camille gives me a faux Roman soldier salute, holding her right fist to her heart. Not wanting to miss this opportunity, I grab my sweater and step out into the warm rays of a late autumn day.

Down by the river, the oak, beech, and ash trees are turning ever deeper shades of gold and brown. A gust of wind kicks up and leaves come free from the trees, floating towards the town. It’s such a beautiful sight that I let out a sigh. Like many others, I’ve come to love living in this 15
th
century French village where everyone seems to know everyone. I think the tourists love it here too. They have smiles on their faces as they take in the city’s tiny, twisting roads, making their way from the Chateau d’Amboise to the Chateau de Clos Luce, the last home of Leonardo di Vinci.

I reach a busy intersection, glimpsing the Chateau d’Amboise on a hill to my left. I head in the opposite direction, slipping down a side street. Reaching my destination, I push open the door to the shop. It creaks like it could use some serious oiling.

“Bonjour Madam,” a handsome man at the front of the store says. This must be Elfie’s Etienne, the one she and the other ladies talked about at dinner last night. They described him as good-looking, but also conceited beyond belief.

“Bonjour,” I reply. Before I can say anything more, Etienne starts rambling. “Oh right, you are one of the Sisters of Perpetual Patience, aren’t you?”

“I rent a room from them,” I lie.

“Then you’re probably here to ask me why I haven’t shown up at Chateau Morcelle this morning. I had to mind the store, but Elise should be here any moment. She took the morning off without bothering to inform my uncle. As soon as she returns, I’ll be up at your place to help out.”

He smiles but I notice the smile doesn’t extend to his eyes.

“Oh, well, that’s fine. I’ll text Elfie and let her know why you haven’t shown up yet,” I say, before turning to exit the store. Since I would really like to find Hugo’s murderer and have the ghost leave my store in peace, I decide to hang out in a ca
fé
on the other side of the street, watching for Elise’s return. Two
café au
laits
later, I find her sauntering down the Rue des Halles. She’s strolling along with two other teenagers who wear baggy pants and printed t-shirts. One of them has purple hair in a virulent shade that I’m sure Elfie would love. A moment later, the wisp of a girl bids good-bye to her friends and enters the store. From my perch at the café, I can see Etienne exit the back office, yelling and shaking a finger at her.

Some thoughts swirl around in my mind. Is Elise mixed up in something bad? Is she part of the group that drew the upside down pentagram in the sand that Pierre found?

I wait and watch. A moment later, Etienne exits the store with a large black bag, probably his electrician’s tools. He throws the bag in the back of a small, yellow Citroen, slamming the rear door with a loud bang that I’m sure can be heard a mile away. Then he climbs into the front of his car and roars off. I imagine he’s heading out to our chateau, anxious to get to work. Now’s my chance to talk to Elise alone. Quickly, I pay for my
café au laits
, and hasten across the street, listening once again to the creaky door as I enter the store.

I fine Elise sitting on a tall stool behind the counter with tears in her eyes.

“Hello, dear, my name is Noelle, Hendra sent me.”

Elise looks confused.

“Hendra… she’s the nun to whom you wished to confess the other day. She sent me here to talk with you.”

Elise wipes a tear on the sleeve of her hoodie. Her mascara is so smudged that she resembles the raccoons in the woods behind our chateau. She eyes me up and down with curiosity before she says, “You don’t look like a nun.”

No, I don’t. Today I wear a dark blue tie-around skirt embroidered with autumn leaves and a white blouse.

“Aren’t you the one who runs the chocolate shop?” she asks.

I nod.

“Oh, your chocolates are horrible, really bad.” She twists her face up to emphasize the point.

“Yes, well, getting better every day,” I laugh.

“Non,” she says, tossing her long blond hair. I believe her “non” means that not only are my chocolates not improving in any way, they will never get better.

“You Americans don’t know how to make chocolates. You are used to having everything processed. Your taste buds are all dead.”

“I’m not here to talk about my chocolates,” I say, starting to feel more than a little annoyed by this teenager with an attitude. “I’m here to help you with whatever it is you want to confess.”

“You’re not a nun, I only want to talk to a nun.”

Clearly, I am making no headway.

“Did you know the young man who was killed recently?”

Elise’s somewhat sullen gaze changes and for a moment she looks frightened.

“That boy who was found floating in Parc Leonardo?” she questions, mascara now so runny, it drips down her cheek.

“Yes,” I reply. “That one.”

“Non,” she replies and shakes her head again. “We went to the same school but he was several years ahead of me, I didn’t know him. Although I do know my friend Anna’s cousin used to date him. And that’s all I know.” She crosses her arms and looks fierce. The meaning is clear: she’s not going to answer any more questions. I need to wait for Hendra to come back from her ghost-hunting trip before I’ll get any further with this line of discourse. It looks like my entire afternoon of sitting in a café, waiting for Elise to return was a waste of time.

“Now do you want something or not? This store is for customers only, not chit chat,” Elise adds obstinately.

I buy a bag of bolts for her trouble, not having the slightest idea what I can use them for, and bid her farewell.

The following day finds the four of us tucked up in the minibus again. This time, I drive. I understand how to shift so well that I race across France like I am in the Grand Prix. Beside me, Hendra shouts, “Elfie! Slow down!”

If only Monique were here, she’d be shouting at me to drive even faster. Unfortunately, Monique wasn’t feeling well –Hendra always says the elderly witch is “two heartbeats away from keeling over” –and this morning she was so shockingly pale, I really thought it might be true.

So today at Chateau Trisse, Camille, Hendra, and I help Hatha unpack her supplies. She wants everything set up in the basement so we can call on the ghost at midnight. A shaken Clare-Elaine takes issue with this idea.

“This ghost is behaving frightfully; it seems to be growing in strength. I would feel better if you set up in a more neutral place like the kitchen in case you should need my husband or me in the middle of the night.”

Hatha nods her head. “Alright, if it’ll make you feel better, we’ll set up in the kitchen. This is your house and we’ll do as you wish.”

We carry Hatha’s copious black bags full of jars of herbs, candles, potions, and various assorted accessories into the kitchen. There’s a new item in Hatha’s bag today, a beautifully wrought gold cross that is about two feet tall. It makes me whistle just to see it; it must have cost a mint. Pulling it from the bag, I run my finger along it’s smooth contours. Hendra throws me a get-back-to-work look and I put the cross down on the kitchen counter. After we unpack all of Hatha’s things, Claire-Elaine shows us to a well-appointed room, with a canopied bed, Louis the XVI furniture, and fussy wallpaper in a small floral print. Camille and I are to share this room, but I worry because the bed looks so tiny. With sweet Camille tucked up in it, there won’t be much room leftover for me.

I am just finishing unpacking my own bag when Claire-Elaine calls us down to the red room to show us the marks on her daughter’s back. All four of us gasp when she lifts her tiny daughter’s white cotton blouse. The marks are light but clearly visible. Someone or something has scratched the poor girl.

“How evil!” Hatha exhales.

“Indubitably,” Camille agrees.

“Time for that ghost to go,” Hendra insists, feisty as ever.

“Ladies, first things first. What kind of a host would I be if I didn’t serve you some dinner before you get started?” Claire-Elaine asks.

I smile ruefully at this. The idea of ghost hunting has stolen my appetite. Hendra however, looks delighted, so we follow Claire-Elaine down the hall where she slides a pocket door open to reveal a room with dozens of windows and a long mahogany dining table running down its center. This room is so much saner than the red room. Here the walls are painted a calming green color. I take a seat next to Camille as Claire-Elaine serves a simple dinner consisting of a creamy leek soup, a cheese course, and pears from Anjou.

After dinner, the Count goes upstairs to ready his children for bed. Since the incident with the fingernails, we are informed that the girls no longer sleep alone. At the insistence of their mother, cots have been installed in their parents’ suite.

“That sounds very sensible. Until we rid you of the ghost, it’s best if your family stays together at night,” Hatha concurs.

“Do you think you’ll be able to make her leave us alone?” Claire-Elaine asks with a twinkle of hope in her eyes.

Hatha nods, “I do,” while I marvel at her optimism. Ever since we moved into Chateau Morcelle, we’ve been telling Francine and Lizelle to move into the light. Hatha has tried reasoning with them several times, but they say that now that we’ve come to live with them, they’re having too much fun to move into the beyond. It seems to me that if we can’t convince reasonable ghosts like Francine and Lizelle to move on, what chances do we have with this totally irate spirit who is raking its fingernails down the backs of innocent children?

Of course, with Lizelle and Francine we didn’t try the Gathering like we’ll do tonight at the Witching Hour.

“I’ve done some research on your ghost,” Hatha reports, as we retire to the horrible red room after dinner. “I believe your ghost is Lady Charlotte du Mont. She was married to a count in the 11th century. I found this information by contacting a Catholic priest in Paris who is a genealogy expert. He was more than happy to help one of his own.” She says this with a straight face. I shoot Hendra a penetrating look. What does she mean by “happy to help one of his own?” We are witches, not Catholics. Although these days, Hatha seems to be some mixture of the two.

“It took the priest, Father Antoine Beaufort, about a day to get back to me. He said that a fellow priest living in the 14
th
century wrote about the haunting. They have some kind of fancy machine where Beaufort works, a cat scan I believe, and they’ve entered many priest’s and monk’s diary entries into their computer. I don’t really understand it all, but he was able to access some entries in a database pertaining to your ghost.”

Here Hatha breaks off and looks at me to see if she’s got her facts correct. Hatha doesn’t do computers, and she has a tenuous grasp on the concept of a database.

“No, not a cat scan,” I tell her.

“An MRI!” shouts Hendra.

“No, not an MRI. The priest’s diary entries were scanned into the computer and stored in a database. You both are getting your terminology messed up with medical equipment.”

“It’s because you forced us to watch that idiot show about Dr. Mc Dreamy,” Hendra flails her arms in disgust.

“Anyway,” Hatha continues, smiling at Claire-Elaine, “It turns out that we know who your ghost is, or at least we think we do. Her name is Charlotte and there were reports of her haunting this house as early as the 14th century, some one-hundred years after her death. Apparently, Lady Charlotte had a very hard life.”

Claire-Elaine sinks into a chair, turning a ghastly white, looking like a woman who is being haunted to death.

“Lady Charlotte,” Hatha continues, “was forced into an unhappy marriage with a much younger man –Charles du Mont, the Count of Trisse at that time. He openly cheated on her with a younger woman and then, after only three years of marriage, he poisoned her so that he could marry the younger woman.”

Sitting in her scarlet-upholstered wing chair, Claire-Elaine makes a slight, moaning noise. “So her initials were perhaps C. L. D.?”

“I don’t know her middle name, but they could have been, why?”

“On the windowsill outside the only bedroom at the top of the 11th century turret, there are initials C. L. D. etched into the stone.”

We witches exchange looks.

“But,” Claire-Elaine says, coming half way out of her chair, “the initials are etched facing the wrong way, as if someone on the outside was writing them, which would be impossible given the height of that tower. Those initials have been here as long as my husband can remember, but we never knew how or why. In the 14th century that turret was all that there was to Chateau Trisse, so that bedroom would have been the main bedroom at the time.”

“Sounds like the poor ole’ thing wanted back in after she got chucked out,” Camille gives a small laugh accompanied by a smile so warm, it would cheer up anyone except a mother who’s fretting about a ghost harming her daughters.

Claire-Elaine sinks back into her chair and stares down at her hands, which are shaking.

“There now,” Camille mutters, rising from the couch. We witches understand the healing power of touch, so Camille walks around to the back of Claire-Elaine’s chair and puts a hand on her bony shoulder.

“She needs a cup of tea, Elfie,” Camille addresses me a moment later.

“Oh…right…I’ll just pop into the kitchen and make some.”

“No, you mustn’t bother,” Clare-Elaine insists, “The cook’s gone for the evening and I really can’t ask my guests to make tea.”

“Nonsense,” Hatha says. “All Elfie needs is a kettle. I brought my own special tea, it will help steady your nerves.”

Claire-Elaine protests feebly, but in the end, she informs me of the kettle’s whereabouts.

“In the cabinet to the left of the stove,” she mumbles.

“Good enough, I’m sure I’ll find it.”

Before I rise from the sofa and head for the kitchen, Hatha leans in and whispers to me. “Brew the tea with the mixture in my black tin. It’s a mixture for courage and strength. And add two drops of the liquid in my silver flask to Clair-Elaine’s cup along with a healthy dose of sugar.”

I know better than to ask Hatha what’s in the silver flask. If Hatha believes a person needs a certain potion or remedy, then Hatha is always right. I make my way down a stone hallway hung with cheerful, modern portraits of the Count and his family. Reentering the kitchen, I examine its layout with the eye of a renovator. The room is gorgeous. Here everything is modern and well-appointed, with white granite countertops gleaming over sleek cabinets. I make my way to the range, grab the kettle from the cabinet, fill it with water, place it on the stove to boil and proceed to rummage about through all of Hatha’s stuff, searching for the black tin. Outside, the sun has set and a fine, misty rain begins to fall.

I am just pouring the tea into a yellow-chintz tea cup and adding two drops of liquid from Hatha’s silver flask when the kitchen light flickers. Everyone knows what a flickering light means. Well, at our chateau, it means faulty wiring on behalf of yours truly, but everywhere else, it means ghosts.

Hastily, I begin to arrange several more cups on a silver serving tray. Sugar? Where is the sugar? I begin searching thoroughly through the cupboards with great celerity.

In the span of ten seconds, the kitchen turns from warm to slightly cold, to downright frigid. Dropping temperatures are, of course, another sign of a ghost. I am now flying through the drawers of a large wooden hutch, searching for the sugar bin when I hear the clanking of pots above the stove.

I turn around and a tingle runs down my spine.

Hatha says that she read in
Deterring the Demonic
that the presence of a witch can antagonize certain ghosts. For some reason, knowing that we can sense them makes them, in her words, mad as spitfire.

“
Quærite lux,”
I shout in the language of the Roman invaders.

In response to my words, the rustling of the pans grows louder.

“Sod the sugar! Sod the tea!” I shout, preparing to race across the kitchen to the door on the other side with tea tray in hand. That’s when I see it. A shadow appears in a tiny corner of the kitchen, faint at first, it grows and stretches spreading greedily across the ceiling.

I drop the tray, stand up and run for it, making it to the door on the other side in nothing flat. Yet five minutes later, I find myself returning down the hallway towards the kitchen with Hatha fearlessly in the lead. Hendra’s right behind her and a twittering Camille is holding my hand, telling me it’ll be all right.

“Chin up, that’s the ticket,” she cheers me on. “We’ll put Charlotte on the right path. Send the ole girl into the light. It’ll be alright.”

Hatha swings open the kitchen door bold as you please. She’s ready for whatever the ghost may have in store. But the kitchen looks perfectly normal, no clanking pots, no creepy shadow and no freezing cold temperatures.

“But, I don’t understand. It…the presence, the ghost, whatever you want to call it…it was here. The shadow was spreading over the ceiling.” I try to illustrate this with sweeping gestures of my hands.

Hatha says nothing, instead she gathers up the tea tray while Camille and Hendra search for the sugar. Together we make our way back to the red room where an exhausted Claire-Elaine asks us if everything is okay.

“My dear,” Hatha replies, “there are two things I know quite extensively: how to bring a child into this world and how to deal with the occasional spook. Don’t you worry about it. Make sure to drink your tea, there you go.”

I figure this last part about “how to deal with the occasional spook” is a bit of an embellishment on Hatha’s part. It’s true she’s helped dozens of woman give birth, but as for ghosts, we really only know Francine and Lizelle. There were bad things in the Forest Fosse but they were generally magical creatures, or agents of the Dark Queen. I only recall the occasional passing ghost back in our old world of 546 A.D., and I personally never confronted one before Lizelle and Francine. Noelle, however, has met more than her fair share of spirits. Once, she ran into an entire dead contingent of Anglian soldiers. Sounds hideous, but Noelle said they were all extremely polite and bowed and doffed their hats as they marched silently past her in the forest.

Given Hatha’s encouraging words, Claire-Elaine takes a small sip of her tea. A moment later the finely dressed woman slumps motionless in her seat. Prepared for this reaction, Hatha pulls the cup out of her hands and rests it on the silver tray.

“She needs her rest,” Hatha says succinctly and now I know exactly what was in the silver flask –the strongest sleeping potion the world has ever seen.

So much for not giving potions to the locals. Hatha appears to have broken her own rule.