When Autumn Leaves: A Novel (4 page)

Stella clucked her tongue. “Geez, Ellie, I didn’t take you for such a skeptic. How long have you lived in Avening now?”

Ellie surprised herself by blowing out an exasperated sigh. First Stella told her she looked bad, now this! “What’s with people today? That’s the second time someone’s asked me that question today! I’ve lived here over seven years, and today’s the day everyone wants to know!”

“Well, if you’ve lived here that long, how can you be so skeptical?” Stella said brightly. “I thought that was against the rules or something.”

It was true. While living in Avening, Ellie was aware that some things defied logical explanation. Illnesses were cured, visions were seen. You could even get actual potions from the drugstore. But nothing happened directly to her, and she grew to accept the bizarre anomalies as normal. People get used to the spectacular; whether or not this was a good or bad thing, Ellie still hadn’t figured out.

“I’m not skeptical, I’m just jaded,” Ellie said with a smile. “Besides, if you knew all the answers, I’d be out of a job. So there you go.”

Stella surrendered by way of a shrug. “You got me there, Sugar. Hey listen, you make any plans yet? To go away or something?”

“No.”

“No, you haven’t made plans? No, you’re not going away?”

“No . . . I mean neither.”

“Well, you should come down to my house. I’m having a Welcome Winter party in a few days. Make lemonade outta lemons kinda thing.”

“That sounds nice. But I really haven’t thought about what I’m going to do over the next couple of weeks.” Ellie knew that Stella was hoping for a more definitive answer. But she couldn’t face committing herself to another party. “I’ll call you, okay?”

“You know what? I’m just gonna count on you coming. You call me if you decide not to, all right?”

Ellie could feel her irritation in her toes as they scrunched up inside her shoes. “All right, Stella. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got a ton of work to do . . . ”

“I’m already gone.” Stella headed for the door.

Ellie settled into her work, ignoring the fingerprints of dread that wound their way around her stomach. She couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong today. At 1:00 sharp, Nina Bruno made her daily appearance at Ellie’s door. Nina stood there, in all her former beauty queen pageant glory, tall and slim and panther-like. Nina’s dark hair always seemed to capture whatever available light there was, and her skin, much to Ellie’s annoyance, was flawless. Today she was wearing a black wraparound dress that accentuated every curve and parted in just the right place to show off the best part of her legs.

“Ready?” Nina said in her casual way.

The morning had trudged by, and Ellie was more than ready for lunch. “Yep, just let me grab my bag.”

“Avalon? Or Icky’s?” Nina started walking before Ellie got out the door.

“Icky’s. I don’t feel like waiting.”

“Good call, El. I’ll meet you there. Gotta go pee first.” Nina veered to the toilets.

Of course, Ellie knew the reason Nina had to go to the bathroom before they started their short walk to the restaurant—not to pee, but to touch up. Outside there was a whole new crop of people for Nina to present herself to. Ellie didn’t mind Nina’s preoccupation with her looks. Nina used her beauty like a talent. If her personal presentation looked like a piece of art, it was only natural that people would enjoy looking at her.

Ellie made her way to Icky’s by crossing the street and turning down Mabon Road. As Ellie walked, she prepared herself for lunch with Nina. She guessed, correctly, that people wondered why Nina kept her so close. Nina was a magnet. Men wanted to marry her, or at the very least, sleep with her. Women wanted to be like her and hoped a little of Nina’s casual self-confidence would somehow transfer onto them. But Ellie, being a keen observer of human nature, knew exactly why Nina felt the need to have Ellie in her life. With Ellie, Nina talked and talked about herself and her life, never asking Ellie for her opinion or feedback. It was as close as Nina could possibly get to being by herself, which Ellie suspected she preferred over anyone else’s company. Ellie supposed this should bother her, but somehow it didn’t. She was amused by Nina’s outrageous self-love, but Ellie also knew Nina’s friendship forced Ellie into human interaction, which she knew was good for her. Nina was always inviting Ellie to openings or parties. They had even vacationed together in Cabo San Lucas one year.

The weather had warmed up a bit since her cold walk to work, but the sky looked one-dimensional, like a big white curtain had been stretched across it. Maybe it will snow, Ellie thought. That would be nice for tonight’s ceremony. In this part of the world, rain was the norm, but it always got at least one or two good snowfalls a year. The timing couldn’t have been better.

Ellie got to the door of Icky’s and stepped on her tiptoes, lifted her arm, and touched the worn wood of the sign above—a diehard habit. Icky’s was really called Icktome, for the spider in First Nation mythology. The sign was a carved and painted dream catcher along which Ellie couldn’t resist running her finger.

Icky’s was crowded with its usual lunchtime customers. Ellie spotted a table in the corner and immediately nabbed it, putting her coat and bag on the chair. The place was really more of a cafeteria than restaurant. There was no waitstaff; you ordered your food at the counter, and after awhile your name was called out. Before long, Nina walked in the door, causing the usual amount of head-turning as she did so.

Nina joined Ellie in line just as she was about to order a tuna sandwich. “Good timing. Hey, Bob, what’s happening? I’ll have my usual salad, please.”

“Hey, Nina!” Bob grinned good-naturedly over the counter. “Just the salad? Is your friend gonna have anything?” Nina must have introduced Ellie to Bob about a dozen times.

“Ell, know what you want?”

“The tuna sandwich, please.”

“No problemo. That will be $10.65, ladies. I’ll call you when it’s ready and tell you what—I’ll get Freda back there to make it a priority, ’kay?” Bob leaned over the counter a bit towards Nina.

“Bob, you’re a sweetheart and a gentleman,” Nina replied. They paid for lunch and sat down at the table Ellie had staked out.

“He’s so nice, that guy. He’s always rushing our orders through.”

“Gee, I wonder why, Nina?”

Nina ignored the comment and started taking off her layers of winter accessories. Today, Ellie didn’t feel like hearing about any of Nina’s usual unhinging personal crises or philosophical revelations. She was actually thinking that she should have simply gone home early, before lunch even began. But here she was, so she slipped into her half invisible mode. “I’m a duck,” she thought, “A green and purple mallard. Everything Nina says is water off my little feathered . . . ”

“Hey, you know Tucker’s story about Autumn Avening?” This was a rhetorical question, of course, because Ellie would have to know as the paper’s researcher. Tucker had written a story about a contest Autumn was having; apparently she was looking for some kind of apprentice. Ellie wondered why Nina cared. “Yes, of course I know about the story.”

“I think he likes you, you know.” Nina said, suddenly switching gears.

“Whatever, Nina,” Ellie said dismissively. “Really, why would you even say that?” Too late, Ellie realized she had been baited. She hadn’t meant to ask the question, but her mouth settled around the words before she had a chance to rearrange it.

“Well, let’s just say . . . I’ve heard things.” Of course Nina had heard things; she was an incurable gossip. “And besides, what about the way he looks at you when he thinks you’re not looking? And his body language . . . please. Come on, Ellie, are you, like, completely blind?”

Ellie hated her condescending tone. But there were too many variables in Nina’s argument to either accept or reject it. It was too much for Ellie to think about. She decided to dodge the issue. “Humph. Maybe. Anyway, what about his story?”

Nina shrugged and tucked her hair behind her ears in a perfect gesture of conciliation. “You know. The contest. What do you think? You going to enter?”

Ellie knew this was Nina’s way of telling her that she herself was going to enter Autumn Avening’s bizarre contest. Autumn was one of the more colorful residents of Avening; Ellie had talked to her just recently while doing some preliminary research and fact-checking for Tucker. Although she had never met Autumn formally, she’d seen her a few times around town. Autumn Avening was best described as the good witch of the north grown older (but not old old) and retired to the Pacific Northwest. It was fairly common knowledge that Autumn was indeed a witch of the very good kind. She ran a bookshop out of her home and gave various lectures on a variety of health, self-improvement, and empowerment tactics. But she was getting old—or so she said on the phone, although Ellie felt like she was talking to a woman her own age, full of vitality and a sharp wit. The contest was Autumn’s way of passing the torch, so to speak. Besides the long career profile Tucker had written—and boy, had Ellie come across some strange information when she was researching that one—Autumn had also taken out ad space in the paper, a prominent space already booked in the first Sunday edition of each of the next twelve months. Apparently, she was pretty serious about tapping a protégé for her difficult-to-explain business.

Autumn had a Book of Shadows, a very famous Book of Shadows everyone seemed to know about and precious few had seen. Supposedly, in this book was a journal that not only recorded Autumn’s incredible life but also contained secret spells for everything from curing a variety of illnesses to shape-shifting to, some said, flying. Or at least that’s what the gossip was around town. The Book was quite an alluring prize to compete for.

Now, Ellie didn’t really buy all the occult stuff, but she’d been in town long enough to know that there was often a kind of truth in even the most outrageous stories. But the whole contest thing didn’t seem right to Ellie. It didn’t seem . . . mystical enough. Her instincts told her there was more to the story. But she was a researcher, not a reporter; it wasn’t her place to get involved.

The contest itself, she had to admit, was intriguing. All those interested in being considered for successorship had to write an essay. This essay had to explain why she (yep,
she
—the contest ad didn’t specifically exclude men from entering, but it did make heavy use of the female pronoun) felt like she was the most suited to work with Autumn. Autumn had been strangely vague about what the exact specifics of this work would include. And no matter how hard Ellie tried to steer the conversation to a job description, Autumn verbally crawled around it.

Ellie thought it sounded suspiciously high schoolish and sexist, but she also figured that Autumn must have a reason for such an unusual approach. Of course, Ellie was not going to enter. Even thinking about it—like, what if she were forced at gunpoint to write an entry? what kinds of things would she have to say?—made her feel like throwing up. How could she explain to this wonderful woman that it was highly unlikely anyone would come to Ellie for any kind of guidance? They probably wouldn’t even be able to find her.

The fact that Nina seemed interested in the contest baffled Ellie. Nina wasn’t exactly the kind of person who could open herself up to whatever earth energy Autumn and her ilk commanded. Nina was singularly the most self-involved person Ellie had ever known. Ellie got the feeling that whoever took up ownership of the Book would also eventually take over as unofficial patron to the off-center spirituality that guided Avening; in that job, Nina would last five minutes.

“No, I’m not going to enter,” Ellie answered neutrally. “I really don’t have the time or desire to devote myself to something like that. Why, are you?”

“Me? Oh God, no!” Nina laughed. “Can you imagine me in a pointy black hat and striped knee-highs racing around town on a shriveled old broomstick? Not likely.”

Ellie gave Nina a skeptical look. “I don’t think that’s exactly how it works, with the broomstick and stuff, Neen. And I’m sure the uniform has changed in the last three hundred years or so.”

Nina shrugged. “I just thought, I don’t know, it might be something you’d be interested in, like a new hobby. Or a hobby, since you don’t have one at all, to the best of my knowledge.”

Ellie sucked in a breath; that seemed like a bit of a slap. “I do have a hobby. My garden, remember? And I embroider,” she added weakly.

Bob called out their names and Ellie went to go and collect their lunches from the front. She couldn’t help but smirk when she noticed the forced smile on Bob’s face as he realized it was Ellie and not Nina picking up the food.

They both ate their lunch, which was, as usual, very good, and talked about the party and plans for their vacation. Nina was going home to Forks, to spend the time with her parents. When lunch was over, they both walked back to the office. Nina, in a rare gesture of real affection, slipped her arm into Ellie’s and pulled her close.

“Things are changing, Ell. I can feel it.”

To this, Ellie had no response or defense. She felt like nothing was ever going to change in her life. Maybe the something dark that had been nagging her all day was the realization of this, of one day pulling into the next.