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Authors: Delia James

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14

ALL THREE WOMEN
stared at me with varying degrees of shock and hostility. I guess I kind of deserved it.

“I think,” said Julia primly, “that we need a little more information.”

“Damn straight,” said Kenisha. She didn't sound overly enthusiastic.

I swallowed and rested my hand on Alistair's head. With an apologetic glance at Valerie, I told them the whole long story—from seeing Alistair on the B and B's back fence to finding the wand in the attic, to meeting Mr. Mustache and then Frank Hawthorne, and how we both followed Alistair down into the basement where I almost passed out from the wave of emotion that hit me there.

Julia leaned forward. “This feeling, what was it like? Have you ever experienced something like it before?”

To say that the words came slowly is an understatement. I had to drag them out one at a time. “My whole life. Not all the time, but sometimes. I'll walk into a place and get a Vibe on it. No, that's not right. On something that happened
there. It can be a good thing or a bad one. I never know which it's going to be, or if it's going to happen at all.”

“But you're sure?” said Val. “This feeling, this Vibe, told you someone did push Dorothy down those stairs?”

“Pretty sure, yeah. I felt . . . hands, and someone hating her hard. And . . . Alistair . . .”
Say this, too. No turning back now, A.B.
“He wanted me down there.”

We were all silent for a moment, trying to let this sink in.

“What was Frank's response when you said Dorothy had been pushed?” asked Julia, finally.

“He believed me, I think. He wanted to know if I could tell who'd done it.”

“Could you?” Valerie scooted up to the edge of her seat.

“Hold it!” Kenisha put up both hands. “Julia, Val, you swore you'd keep the craft out of any inquiry into Dorothy's death.”

“We agreed not to influence events,” Val corrected her. “This isn't influencing; this is investigating.”

“This is bull . . . ,” started Kenisha heatedly, but she caught Julia and the dogs all looking down their long noses at her and swallowed the second half of that. “Nonsense.”

Julia pretended not to have heard. “What did Frank say, Anna?”

“He didn't get a chance to say much of anything. Ellis Maitland interrupted us.”

“There!” Val stabbed a finger at me. “Ellis Maitland! There's your proof.”

“You got a very loose idea about proof, Val. How is a
real estate agent showing up at an empty house proof of anything?” snapped Kenisha.

Now it was Valerie's turn to ignore people. She shifted herself to face me. “You were asking about the bad witch of Portsmouth, Anna? If we've got one, it's Elizabeth Maitland.”

“Valerie!” cried Julia, genuinely shocked.

“I'm sorry. No, I'm not. It's true and we all know it.”


I
know no such thing,” snapped Julia.

“A little help here?” I pleaded toward Kenisha. “I mean I know Elizabeth is Ellis's mother . . .”

“Elizabeth Maitland hated Dorothy,” said Val before Kenisha could answer. “If anybody had a reason to kill her and the power to do it, it was Elizabeth.”

“We do not know that,” said Julia. “We have seen nothing that leads us to that conclusion.”

“And it wouldn't matter if we did,” added Kenisha.

“Wouldn't matter!” cried Valerie. “How would it not matter?”

“Because we couldn't prove it. How many times have I got to say that, girl? We got
nothing
I can take to my lieutenant, never mind the district attorney. I tried to keep the investigation open when Dorothy died, but they shut us down,” she told me. “Because there was no genuine proof. No physical evidence, no chain of events that would hold up.”

“Plus your lieutenant is a blind, stubborn old . . . coot who doesn't care about anything as long as the tourists keep coming and the chamber of commerce stays happy.” Valerie's eyes glittered with a dangerously determined mix of tears and anger. “It doesn't matter anyway. We don't need them.”

“Oh, no.” Kenisha held up one finger. “I did not hear you say that. Because you are not even thinking about taking the law into your own hands.”

Valerie threw up those hands. “This is Dorothy we're talking about! Our friend!”

“I don't care if it's Mother Teresa.” Kenisha did not shout. Her words were all very soft and very precise. “You do not get to decide who's guilty and who's not. That is the court's job. That is the
law's
job.”

“We're supposed to help people.”

“Yes, we help people. We do
not
decide somebody needs a little magical visit after dark because the law isn't doing things our way.”

“That's not what I'm saying.”

Kenisha raised one eyebrow. “Isn't it?”

That made Valerie pull back, at least for a minute. Alistair gave me a sideways look, then jumped lazily off my lap to circle around Kenisha's ankles and then Valerie's.

“Kenisha is right,” said Julia before Val could gather any fresh arguments. She spoke gently but with the finality of someone used to getting her own way. “Valerie, we cannot use our power to enforce retribution on someone we only suspect.”

“On
anyone
,” said Kenisha sharply.

“On anyone,” agreed Julia. “If it is not covered by
the
law, it most definitely is covered by our law.”

“What's our law?” I asked.

“The threefold law,” answered Julia.

“What you send out into the world comes back to you threefold,” Valerie muttered as she slumped back onto the sofa.

“Quod ad vos mittere in mundum triplici,”
I added, remembering the inscription on the wand.

“Exactly,” Julia said, and for the first time I heard a note of approval in her voice. “It applies to the good and the bad, to aid as well as . . .”

“Revenge,” I finished, and the word sent a shiver up my spine.

“Yes.” Julia set both dachshunds on the floor so she could
more easily reach for Val's hand. “I am sorry, Valerie. But at least now we do know it was murder. That's something.”

Valerie didn't answer, but I did see how her fingers curled around Julia's, holding on.

All at once, I flashed back on the memory of sitting in a speeding cab on a snowy winter day. Dad had had his heart attack. I'd just flown back to Boston and I was on my way to meet my brother Bob and his wife, Ginger, at the hospital. They hadn't answered my texts in the past twenty minutes. Dad might be dying. He might already be dead. I had no way to know, nothing to hang on to. I was powerless and it was all I could do not to scream at the driver, who was already doing eighty through the Boston traffic, to hurry up!

Dorothy had brought that kind of misery down on her friends by not telling them what she was doing. What kind of secret could she possibly have been keeping from these women, who clearly cared so much for her?

“I'm sorry,” I said to Julia, to all of them really. “Not knowing is what hurts the worst.”

Julia bowed her head. “I'm sorry as well, for the way I've acted. Of course you weren't to know, or to blame. Whatever Dorothy thought . . . whatever she was doing, the motivation behind it was hers and hers alone.”

Leopold and Maximilian stared at Alistair.

“Yip?” said Leo.

“Mrp,” grumbled the cat. They all settled back onto their haunches, and that seemed to be that, for the moment anyway.

“So what happens now?” I asked. “Now that I've been . . . summoned.” And handed the spooky cat.

“What do you want to happen?” answered Julia.

“Huh?”

She smiled. “Dorothy's spell did not bring you here to fulfill some kind of mythical, preordained destiny. You are
being presented with a choice. You can stay in Portsmouth, take a place in our coven, study magic and maybe learn something about yourself, your family and your life. Or you can walk out the door.” Julia gestured grandly toward the front of the store and then frowned. “Once I unlock it, anyway. If you genuinely and freely choose to leave, not even Alistair will follow you.”

“I thought I was ‘summoned.'” Yes, I made the air quotes. You would have too.

“And you answered the summons. Everything you've done since then has been your choice.”

I couldn't deny that, as much as I might want to. I remembered the Vibe I got in Dorothy's garden—that powerful sensation of being poised on the edge and not knowing which way to jump. But I had not only jumped; I'd picked the direction. Was I ready to jump again? This time into a life and a way of looking at the world that I barely understood.

“Mrrp?” Alistair illustrated my dilemma by jumping back onto my lap.

“I don't know.” I rested my hand on his warm furry back. “I really don't know. I mean, I've only been here two days and I'm already up to my hips in magic and murder. Why should I let myself in for more?”

The three women looked at one another, and I got the feeling Kenisha at least was trying not to laugh.

“Your ‘Vibe,' as you call it,” said Julia. “It comes on you suddenly? You can't ever bring it on deliberately?”

“Why would I want to?”

“So you also can't ever shut it out, can you?”

“A little,” I answered defensively. Why was I being defensive?

“You learned to hide it,” said Val. “That's different.”

Julia picked up her cup again and swirled it. “What if you could control your Vibe? Bring it on only when you wanted to? If you ever wanted to.”

I was staring, but I couldn't help it. The Vibe was just something I'd always had to live with, work around. Hide. Was she actually telling me I could control it?

Julia saw my shock and nodded. “You are a witch of the bloodline, Anna. That means you have some talents and some limitations that those who come to the craft purely by their own choice—like Valerie and Kenisha—don't have. You will always be sensitive to the vibrations and influences around you, but it doesn't mean you have to live at the mercy of those feelings.”

“You're serious?” My jaw was hanging open again. Julia nodded, and I saw she was perfectly serious. “I could learn to control my Vibe?”

“Control it, and call on it to help you,” said Julia.

I wanted it to be true. I'd always wanted to be a person who didn't have to brace herself whenever she walked into somewhere new. Now Julia was telling me I could be.

All I had to do was become a witch.

15

“I'M SORRY ABOUT
what I said about Elizabeth,” said Valerie to Kenisha as we stepped onto the sidewalk. Behind us, Julia was turning off the bookstore's lights and pulling down shades, closing up for real this time. I'd said I needed more time to think. She said it was just as well, because she had a business to run and needed a good night's sleep to do it. Kenisha reminded us she wanted to change out of her uniform, and Valerie mentioned she had guests who would be wanting breakfast and clean rooms tomorrow.

I hugged the empty box to my chest. Somewhere between the reading nook and the front door, Alistair simply ceased to be following me. As much as it would have killed me to admit it, I already missed him.

Kenisha shrugged. “We can't do anything on suspicion, Val, even our kind of suspicion. We need proof.”

“I know. I do.” Val hung her head. “I've just felt so helpless.”

“Roger that.” Kenisha touched her friend's shoulder
briefly. “How about we get you home? Do you want a lift back, Anna?”

I stared across Market Square. The evening was warm enough that the cool breeze off the river felt welcome. A lively combination of tourists and locals headed in and out of the bars and shops that filled the center of Portsmouth, even though the church clock had just chimed ten. Somebody zipped by on a turquoise Vespa scooter and I suddenly missed my motorcycle. Mom had taught me how to ride on her Harley. I'd ridden mine all the way through college before I decided I needed more carrying capacity and switched to the Jeep. I still missed it.

Sometimes when you've got a monumental decision, a whole set of little things comes crowding around. It's like once you've opened your mental closet, the old questions and wishes spill out in a heap, and the possibility of a motorcycle mixes up with wondering what would happen to the cat who used to be in the empty box you're carrying if you decided to leave, and that mixes up with wondering if you're really about to become a witch.

“What I want,” I said slowly, “is a drink. How about you guys?”

Kenisha stared at me, startled; then she shrugged. “Why not? I've only been in this uniform fourteen hours. Another couple won't make a difference. How about you, Val?”

“Very pregnant here, in case you forgot.”

I smiled. “It just so happens, I know a place where you can get a really amazing mocktail.”

•   •   •

LIKE THE SQUARE,
the bar at the Pale Ale was full of cheerful people and cheerful voices. As soon as we got through the door, the three of us automatically started craning our necks to see if the shifting crowd had left anyplace to sit. I spotted Sean on duty behind the bar. He raised his hand to wave hello and pointed toward a free stretch of
banquette in the corner. I waved back and led the other women over.

“You know, we could be the opening line of a joke,” I said as we shifted and slid to make room for one another around the little round table. “Three witches walk into a bar . . .”

“You're not a witch yet, remember.” Valerie picked up the wine list, gazed at it like an old friend, and put it back down. “Being a witch involves commitment and study. I'm glad you're thinking about it, though.”

“I reserve the right to backtrack at any moment.”

“Fine,” said Kenisha. “But what's got you thinking?”

“The idea I might be able to learn how to control my Vibe. That and . . .” Val nodded in encouragement. It was going to take a while to get used to talking about my Vibe in public. As it was, I felt strangely exposed, like I'd taken off my shoes in public. “If somebody is trying to use . . .” Nope. No good. This was a conversational bridge too far.

“Magic,” Valerie said it for me.

“You'll get used to it,” added Kenisha. “Admitting you have a problem is the first step.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Hi. My name's Anna and somebody's trying to use magic to get me to leave town.”

“Hi, Anna,” chorused Val and Kenisha, and I couldn't hold it in anymore. I threw back my head and I laughed.

“Good evening, ladies.” Sean stepped up to our table, wiping his hands on a clean white towel that he tossed across his shoulder.

“Young Sean!” Kenisha slapped palms sideways with
him. “Aren't you supposed to stay back there?” She nodded toward the antique oak bar.

“Like I'm going to let somebody else take care of New Hampshire's finest? Not to mention my boss's best friend. What can I get you, Miss Britton? Ginger Lady? Maybe with prosecco instead of the seltzer this time?”

“Perfect.”

Kenisha raised that eloquent eyebrow of hers. “Ginger Lady? This is new. Can anyone play?”

Sean laid one hand over his heart and bowed. The guy was clearly something of a showman. “I'd be delighted to make you a Ginger Lady, Officer Freeman. Anything for you, Val?”

“Cranberry spritzer.”

“My pleasure.” Sean gave another little bow, with added sparkle, and headed back to the bar. When I turned back to Kenisha and Val, they were both looking at me.

“What?” I asked testily.

“Nothing,” they said, again in perfect unison.

I might have been tempted to start an argument, but the sight of a red coat moving through the crowd distracted me. “Martine!” I called, raising my hand.

“Hey, Anna. Sean said you were out here.” Martine gave me a peck on the cheek and extended her hand to Officer Freeman. “Kenisha, good to see you. Hi, Val. You guys don't know what a miracle you're seeing. Normally, Anna here turns into a pumpkin around ten.”

“I do not,” I said indignantly. “I am the total party girl.”

“Uh-huh. The kind who parties with the cop and the pregnant lady.” Martine turned to a passing server. “We need the French fry tasting for the table, Beth,” she said.

“Yes, Chef!” Beth said immediately, and changed direction, heading for the kitchen.

“Martine . . . ,” I began, but she turned her chef's eye on me.

“You have something to say, Miss Britton?”

“No, Chef. Sorry, Chef.”

Martine laughed. “We're still doing Monday, right? If this is the company you're keeping, I'm guessing we've got things to talk about. Good to see you all.” She nodded to the other women and left us, cutting a professionally straight line through the crowd.

“How long have you known Martine?” asked Val.

“Since we were kids. We roomed together in college for a while too, before she switched over to culinary school.”

We talked a little about where we'd grown up and how each of us came to be here. It turned out Kenisha's family had roots in Portsmouth, but Val was a relatively recent arrival from Chicago. From the way she danced around it, I guessed the situation she left there had not been good.

I was maybe halfway through the list of places I'd lived since college when Sean edged his way back to the table carrying a heavily laden tray.

“Right on time, Young Sean!” said Kenisha as Sean set the glasses in front of us.

“Why Young Sean?” I asked.

“Because my dad's Old Sean, and it keeps me from being called Sean-Boy.” In addition to the drinks, he set down three wire holders containing paper cones of French fries, and a trio of sauce-filled ramekins. Kenisha and Val were watching me again. I really wished they'd cut that out.

“And here I've just been calling you Sean the bartender.” I sipped my Ginger Lady. It was spicy and sparkling, and just what I wanted.

“Ah, well, see, there's a problem with that, because my dad tends bar too. It's a family thing. Now, then.” Sean gestured toward the array of dishes. “We have here the sweet potato fries, the zucchini fries, and the double-dipped potato fries, my personal favorite. The sauces here are a spicy aioli, a lavender mustard, also my personal favorite, and a soy ginger.” Something back at the bar must have set his bartender sense tingling, because he glanced over his shoulder.
“I have to get back to manning the barricades. You have a great evening.” I did not particularly notice that he was looking at me when he said this. There was no reason for Val to give that low whistle or for Kenisha to become deeply fascinated by the sweet potato fries.

I opened my mouth to point this out, but Kenisha leveled a French fry at me. “Trust me, Anna—now would be a good time to remain silent.”

“So, what are your plans?” said Val, very intelligently changing the subject. “You said you were only going to be in town a couple of weeks.”

“That's a really good question.” I swirled a zucchini fry in the soy ginger sauce and popped it in my mouth. They were fabulous, but then, they came out of Martine's kitchen and she did not accept anything less. “I guess it's going to be for longer than that now.” All things considered. “But I'll need someplace to else to stay.” I couldn't afford the B and B for more than a couple of days, even with the discount, and Martine and I had tried the long-term roommate thing once. It did not go well. I am, as I've mentioned, a morning person. Martine, on the other hand, had never voluntarily gotten out of bed before ten in the morning when the house wasn't actually on fire.

“That shouldn't be a problem,” said Kenisha. “There are plenty of apartments in town.”

At Portsmouth rents. I tried not to wince. Those rents would get jacked up to new heights for a short-term lease. Plus, it'd have to be a place that would take spooky cats. I wondered if the local landlords would charge extra for the spooky part.

Before I could say anything about this, though, Valerie started waving to somebody over my shoulder. “Laurie!
Over here! Laurie!” she called, half standing to be seen better.

I twisted around to see a woman in a pale blue sundress making her way toward our table. She had a brown leather purse slung over her shoulder and under her arm she clutched a black portfolio, the kind used to hold prints and sketches. I had been through about a thousand of them since school.

“Hello, Val. Hello, Kenisha.” The woman, Laurie, smiled. She looked a little older than me, and recently sunburned. She'd French braided her straight brown hair, but the wind off the river had had its way and wisps of hair straggled across her forehead and down the back of her neck.

“Laurie Thompson, this is Anna Britton,” Val introduced us, and we shook hands. “She's thinking about moving to town. Here, have a seat.”

“Thank you.” We all shuffled around to make room for Laurie and her portfolio. “I'm meeting Brad and Colin here. My husband and my oldest,” she added for my benefit. “But I haven't seen them yet.”

“You're an artist?” I gestured toward her portfolio.

She blushed. “Oh, well, no, not really. I do some watercolors. Martine was nice enough to say she'd hang one here.”

“Anna's an artist,” said Kenisha.

“Are you? You look familiar . . .” She snapped her fingers. “I know. I saw that article in
New England Arts Monthly
about art and the Internet. You sounded very upbeat. Half the time people talk like the Web is going to bring about the end of the world.”

I smiled and thanked her and we chatted a little about change and art. Both Val and Kenisha looked at me expectantly, and I knew what it was they expected. Because I wanted to be friends with them, I took another swallow of the Ginger Lady and nodded at Laurie's portfolio. “Can I see what you've got?”

“Oh, well. It's not really that good. Not professional or
anything.” As Laurie fumbled with the portfolio tie, I started lining up polite, noncommittal compliments.

As it turned out, I didn't need them.

The painting inside the portfolio showed an extreme close-up of a stone tide pool, with a cluster of shells and pebbles nestled in the hollow. The tiny, complex scene was richly rendered in sepia ink and bold watercolor on cream paper.

“This is terrific.” It wasn't framed, so I took it carefully by the edges and held it toward the light.

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