Interrupted Magic Read online

  Cassandra had ordered a ride-share, and after collecting Ash from the shop, Lisa and I walked the footpaths home.

  I thought about Windfall karaoke and those early days with Nora, which prompted me to sing as we walked—or caterwaul as the case may be. I stumbled when Lisa led me from the footpath to my street, giggling as we went.

  As I swayed in front of my front door, Kyle stepped onto his porch. “Everything okay?” he called to Lisa.

  “I could use a hand,” she replied.

  I waved him off. “All good.” I dug through my purse but couldn’t seem to grasp my keyring.

  “Here, let me help.” This from Kyle. Suddenly standing beside me. He turned to Lisa. “Dylan told me to have you call him at the fire station when you get home. I can take it from here.”

  “I thought I might stay with her,” she said.

  I waved a limp hand in the air. “Go home. You don’t need to babysit me.”

  “You want me to walk you the rest of the way home?” Kyle asked Lisa.

  “I’m more worried about Brynn. She’s pretty wasted.”

  “Hello-o-o. I’m right here,” I said.

  “Tell you what. I’ll make sure she gets to bed and then I can walk with you,” he said.

  “You sure you don’t mind?” Lisa asked.

  “Not my first rodeo.” He took my key and unlocked the door. “Let’s get you inside.”

  “You guys suck,” I slurred. “I don’t need your help.”

  As the alcohol churned its way back up, I covered my mouth and ran for the bathroom.

  Having emptied the contents of my stomach, I sat on the bathroom floor. The song I’d been singing on the walk home continued to play in my head, the song that was also the ringtone on my phone. Was my phone ringing? I pushed to my feet and returned to the living room. Kyle stood beside the dining table, his hands on the surface, and his head bowed.

  He glanced up. “You okay?”

  “Cassandra and I signed the offer for the shop today. We went out to celebrate.” Ash wound around my feet, unsettling my precarious balance. I reached for the corner of the wall. “Did my phone ring?”

  “You expecting a call?”

  I released a sigh. “Can we not argue right now?”

  He straightened and headed toward the door. “I’m going to walk Lisa home. You want me to come back later? Stay with you tonight? Make sure you’re okay?”

  I sputtered. “Now you want to stay with me? I don’t think so.”

  He let out an exaggerated sigh. ”Go to bed.”

  Chapter 28

  “Brynn, honey, are you okay?”

  I opened my eyes to find Nora hovering over me, a look of concern on her face. I drew a deep breath that ended in a snort. “What time is it?”

  “It’s nearly noon, and Ash made sure to let me know you hadn’t fed her yet. What’s going on?”

  I wiped a hand across my face and blinked bleary eyes. I was on the sofa, still dressed in the same jeans and tunic I’d come home in last night. “The girls took me out to toast Windfall last night. I might have overdone it.”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “Nothing’s like me these days.” I heaved my feet over the side of the sofa to sit on the edge. My mouth felt full of cotton. “The magic doesn’t work, my business failed.” I stopped before I included my failed engagement—and thought of Ian. “I promised to call Ian when I got home.” I looked for my phone.

  “I’m sure he can wait a few minutes more. Why don’t you get showered and changed. I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”

  When I came downstairs half an hour later, Nora was at the table staring out the bay window, a cup of coffee in her hands.

  “Sorry I’m such a mess this morning,” I said, walking past her into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee.

  “I’m not concerned about that,” she replied. “But I am concerned about the problem with your talents.”

  I carried my cup to the table and sat across from her. “You and me both. I haven’t seen an open grimoire in days, and I couldn’t get to the one in the wall.” I cradled my head, my sinuses throbbing with the percussion rattling my brain. “If my magic is gone, it’s gone. I’m sure I can blend in with all the regular people.”

  Nora frowned at me and crossed to the workroom. She returned with a steeping ball, carried it to the kitchen and microwaved a cup of hot water. She dropped the steeping ball in, set the cup in front of me and sat.

  I shot her a veiled glance, feeling guilty about getting drunk the night before, but sipped the tea she’d brewed. Within minutes, I felt better. I raised the mug to toast her. “One of the many reasons I miss you.”

  She reached across the table and clutched my hand. “You are in a pickle this time. What are you going to do about the spell that traveled to Kyle? If you don’t have the ability to send it back, his future is in jeopardy.”

  “Something that haunts me every day. I still have to wonder if the interruption in my magic is a result. We both have to pay the price for me interfering with Madeleine’s spell.” I took another sip of the tea.

  “What did she say when she was here the other day?” Nora asked. “She isn’t going to try to hurt you the way the woman who enchanted Kyle did, is she?”

  “I hope not. She scolded me for interfering with her spell.”

  “Oh, Brynn...”

  I held up a hand. “She seemed sympathetic, even went so far as to say she’d consider helping me out, although I’m not holding my breath.”

  I heard the faint melody of my ringtone. “Where did I leave my phone?” My purse wasn’t on the dining table where I usually left it. I had no idea where I’d deposited things when I’d come in last night. I looked around the living room, checked the kitchen and found my phone on the washing machine, in the utility room inside the back door. It showed a missed call from Lisa, no doubt checking on me. I looked at the history, saw Ian’s number and remembered—again—that I’d promised to call him when I got home. That was last night. I’d told him Nora would be visiting today. I trusted he wouldn’t mind if I didn’t call until she’d left.

  Since Nora was here, I thought she might want to help pack the backroom at Windfall. We had two weekends left before we closed the doors. There might be things she wanted, and there were things other people shouldn’t pack. For that matter, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to access the recipe books inside the locked cabinets at the shop while my magic was on the fritz.

  Cell phone in hand, I returned to the dining table. “People aren’t going to come when the recipes I mix don’t work,” I said. “I’m going to start applying for botanical jobs tomorrow.”

  “It’s possible this condition is temporary,” she said. “Maybe when the spell is satisfied, your talents will return.”

  “I can’t depend on that, can I?”

  “Tell me how I can help.”

  I chuckled. “I’m not going to ask you to reverse the spell for me. I asked Ian, and he reminded me of the hazards of interfering.” I took another cleansing breath to clear the remaining cobwebs, and proposed my plan to clear out the backroom at Windfall.

  “Are you sure you’re up to it?” she asked.

  “We’re closing the doors after Labor Day. As Cassandra says, the sooner the better.”

  “Then we may as well go as soon as you’ve had your breakfast. Lunch, now, I suppose.”

  I clutched my stomach. “Not sure it’ll stay down. If I get hungry, I can get a muffin in town.”

  When we walked outside, I squinted and yanked my sunglasses from my purse. The day was growing warm, but the humidity was uncharacteristically low. A comfortable breeze refreshed the air.

  We took the footpath through the park and went into the shop through the back door.

  “I think we have some boxes broken down,” I said. “I’ll grab some tape and we can start packing.”

  Nora pointed at the storage racks, at a trunk on the top shelf, one I didn’t remember seeing before. “T
hat will work better for the books.” She approached the glass-faced cabinet that held the recipe books and the door swung open to greet her.

  “Even the books missed you,” I joked. “I’ll pack the oils and the bath salts. The big tub is almost empty, so if I mix a few new jars, I can pack everything else in the tub.”

  Nora ran a hand across the label maker on the worktable with a faraway smile. “I remember the first time you mixed bath salts. Brynn’s Mix.” She turned to me, her eyes watery. “I miss you, too, sweet Brynn.” She opened her mouth and inhaled sharply. “Okay, I’d suggest music while we work, but there’s so much I want to talk to you about. Tell me more about this man you met at Gupta’s.”

  I touched my pocket to confirm my phone was there. I itched to call him, but everything in its own time. “I should tell you before one of the local busybodies hunts you down—since you’re in town. He stayed the night Thursday.”

  “The busybodies know this because?”

  “From what I can gather, Kyle spread the word. Of course, Mrs. Knight, next door, might have said something. They’re all quite shocked, as you can imagine, and dismayed I would be so disloyal to Kyle.” The words came out strangled. I felt them more than I thought I should.

  Nora rested her hand on my arm. “Things haven’t been right between you and Kyle for a long time. How easily they forget what he did to you, and how gracious you were to forgive him.”

  I nodded, still choking on the guilt.

  “We’re not talking about Kyle, now,” she said.

  I set my hands on my hips and faced her. “How did you do it? With Fletcher? You said you knew he was the one for you, and yet the two of you stayed apart.”

  “To a degree, yes. We had the prejudices of both cultures to overcome, and as young as we were, neither of us was up to the task.” Her eyes shone. “That’s why we enchanted the beech tree. There, we were free from prying eyes. You don’t have the same obstacles to overcome. You and Ian are free to pursue whatever the future holds for you, if you believe you’re meant for each other.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself, anxious to call him. “It doesn’t seem quite real, the way I feel. I mean, how do you get so wrapped up in someone you’ve just met? It’s scary.”

  Nora chuckled. “Trust me when I tell you I know. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Enjoy each other while you’re young. Fletcher and I lost so many years to public opinion. Your young man must be extraordinary.”

  Ian had used the same word. I laughed. “Cassandra says she doesn’t know what I see in him, that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ but honestly, Nora, he is the most handsome man I’ve ever met.”

  “I’d love to meet him, and then I can offer you my opinion.” She winked at me. “Does he live close by?”

  “In Pratt. He inherited his uncle’s castle—not really a castle, I suppose. He calls it a folly.”

  Nora plopped onto the stool beside the worktable. “Edgar Oliveiro’s folly?”

  “You knew him?”

  She looked off into the distance, at something I couldn’t see. “I met him a time or two. Odd gentleman. Some called him eccentric.”

  “Including his nephew.”

  “The story goes he built the folly to impress a woman, but as you know, our hidden abilities often present problems which are hard to overcome in relationships. A cold, drafty tower might be impressive, but it isn’t enough to inspire true love in the face of superstition. Or, more appropriately, fear of the unknown.”

  “Ian said the woman rejected Edgar.”

  Nora shrugged. “I didn’t know the man all that well, but I’d heard things from people at the solstice celebrations.” She scoffed. “I’m no better than the biddies in town. It’s all gossip at the end of the day, things I heard from the Wiccan women,” she leaned toward me, “some of whom might have been willing to take up with Edgar in that woman’s place.”

  I laughed. “The difference is you aren’t mean-spirited in your comments.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion, I suppose. I still want to meet this young man of yours.”

  I couldn’t wait a minute longer. “I need to call him. I promised to call him last night, but I crashed and burned when I got home.” I took out my phone and dialed his number.

  “Brynn.” His voice was flat.

  “I meant to call you last night, but I guess I passed out. In fact, my aunt had to wake me this morning. I had too much to drink...”

  “I need to know about Kyle,” he said.

  “Kyle?”

  “You told me it was over between you.”

  “It is.”

  “Are you sure?”

  My pulse skittered. “Yes.”

  He was silent a moment. “Then you can tell me why, when I called last night, he told me you couldn’t come to the phone, and that he was taking you to bed.”

  My breath froze in my chest. “He told you what, now?”

  “Is that why you didn’t want to see me last night? Because you were with him?”

  “No. Ian, I went out with the girls, and when we came home, Kyle helped me inside. That’s all. I had too much to drink...”

  “How many stories begin that way?”

  I blinked, stunned. “You don’t believe me.”

  “He was there, wasn’t he?”

  He had been. “He lives across the street.”

  Kyle had answered my phone? Scenes from my life flashed across my brain, starting with my parents dying and leaving me with Aunt Theresa and Uncle Jerome. My best friend, Cordell, leaving me behind when I wasn’t “old enough.” My high school boyfriend walking out on me in a Denny’s when he learned I was going away to school to escape my aunt and uncle after graduation. “You’re throwing me away, too,” I whispered, barely able to breathe. I stared at my phone and disconnected the call.

  “Brynn? You’re pale as a ghost.” Nora took hold of my arms.

  I should have known better. “Some things never change.”

  The tears ran unchecked down my cheeks.

  Chapter 29

  Barry Waterman walked into the shop Monday morning with a smile. “Congratulations, ladies. I’m not expecting any bumps with the financing. The two of you should be free to pursue your dreams in no time.”

  Cassandra and I exchanged glances. Windfall had been our dream.

  “Your mother says you’ll be doing tailor work at the mall again,” he said to Cassandra. He took a step toward me. “Do you have plans for what comes next?”

  “I still have the internet shop,” I told him. “Beyond that, I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Let me offer you something to think about. Someone stopped in the real estate office the other day looking to buy a house. They specifically requested one of the older-style, original homes. Any thoughts of selling? Relocating?” he asked.

  Cassandra fisted her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to run her out of town, too?”

  Barry raised his hands. “That’s not what I’m doing here. I thought I’d mention it, in case Brynn was thinking of moving. I thought she might want to be closer to Nora with the shop closing.”

  I touched Cassandra’s arm. “I appreciate you standing up for me, but I’ve got this.”

  “I’m not sure you do,” she said. “Sometimes you’re too damn nice to these people who are so rude to you.”

  “It wasn’t my intention to be rude,” Barry said.

  “Escalating matters doesn’t help anyone,” I told her. “Life has a way of turning out the way it’s meant to. I arrived here on a string of bad luck and found my family.”

  Cassandra huffed and turned her back on Barry.

  “In answer to your question,” I said to him, “I haven’t thought too far ahead. One hurdle at a time. Who knows? Maybe your buyer for the shop will fall through. Maybe the townspeople will stop judging me for a failed relationship with their golden boy and discover they like my products enough to keep me around.” And pigs might learn to fly. “Or maybe the ne
xt opportunity is waiting right around the corner.” Or in an Indian market. No, I’d blown that opportunity. The easy conversation I’d had with Ian, the red-hot physical connection we shared, the talents we had in common had allowed him past my defenses. We’d only known each other a week, but he’d taken a part of me with him when he’d backed away.

  “You’ll let me know if your situation changes?” Barry said, interrupting my personal pity party.

  “I’ll do that.”

  He handed me a business card and left the shop.

  Cassandra shook a finger at me. “Don’t you dare scold me for standing up for you.”

  I laughed. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “I’m serious, Brynn.”

  “I have a long history of people not listening, not caring. I don’t even notice when people are rude anymore. Well, mostly. Which makes me appreciate the people in my life who do care about me, like you. Thank you.”

  She started to cry and grabbed a tissue, wiping the dark trails of eye makeup off her face. “Well, at least you have a smoking hot new guy, at least in your eyes.”

  Her tears triggered mine. “Who knew selling the shop would turn us both into emotional wrecks?”

  Sally Miller walked into the shop and stopped at the sight we presented. “I can come back.”

  I mustered a smile and waved her in. “Don’t mind us. What can we do for you?”

  “About our contract...”

  I stiffened. “I don’t intend to default. Do you?”

  “No, Brynn, and that’s why I’m here. I know I’ve been trying to renegotiate your prices, but the truth is it’s a fair deal, and my guests love your products. I wanted to be sure you would continue to supply me.”

  I nodded once.

  “If you’re willing to hold the prices you currently sell at, we could discuss a contract extension.”

  “Oh, hell, no,” Cassandra said. “You know you can’t get a better deal anywhere else.”

  Again I rested a hand on Cassandra’s arm. “I’ve got this.”

  Sally pursed her lips. “You won’t have the overhead here anymore. It isn’t as if you’ll have other operating costs to cover.”