A Witch Before Dying: A Wishcraft Mystery (2 page)

Well, partly. Elodie was technically a Cross-Crafter (a Crafter hybrid). Elodie’s wish-granting abilities, inherited from her father, were practically nonexistent. Her predominant Craft was Geocrafting—her mother’s Craft. Rarely were a Cross-Crafter’s abilities split equally—one gift was always stronger than the other.

Everywhere I looked inside the shop, a bauble or glitzy trinket caught my eye. Elodie’s Geocrafting skills with clay, gemstones, rocks, and minerals were obvious. Tiny price tags hung from ribbons. Some of the merchandise was quite affordable, and some was out-of-this-world expensive. Undoubtedly there was something in
this store that would appeal to everyone—tourist, villager, mortal, or Crafter.

A frown pulled on the corners of Elodie’s mouth. “Not bad?” She echoed my words. “No, Darcy, not
bad
. It’s
worse
. Much, much worse.”

Her tone was starting to make me nervous. “How much worse?”

Short and thin with shoulder-length curly blond hair, a long narrow face, wide-set blue eyes, and a shy but somewhat sad smile, Elodie was younger than me. I placed her to be more my sister Harper’s age—early to mid-twenties. Fairly young to own her own shop—just like Harper, who’d recently taken over Spellbound Books. Tapping the countertop that separated us with short fingernails painted a sparkly blue, she said, “Have you ever seen that TV show about people who hoard?”

I had seen it. And immediately afterward started cleaning and throwing clutter away. “This is your house you’re talking about?” She didn’t look the type to live in squalor.

Crystals hung in the big bay window overlooking the village green, and every time the sun peeked out from behind fluffy white clouds, rainbows streaked across the room, spilling color on the already vibrant collection of goods in the shop.

“No,” she said. “Well, maybe.” Then she looked at me, her eyes pained. “I don’t know.”

“If it’s your house?” Seemed like a fairly straightforward question.

“Technically, it belongs to my mother, Patrice, as does this shop, but I’ve been taking care of both.” Her forehead wrinkled slightly and her voice dropped. “Mom’s been missing for a year and a half, and there’s just not enough money to keep up payments on both places. I’m going to have to sell her house.”

I didn’t know much about Patrice Keaton’s disappearance.
Only what Aunt Ve, in her feverish state this morning, had told me: Patrice had vanished without a trace.

“Can you do that?” I asked.

“As her trustee, I can. I don’t want to, but I can’t see any other option. I don’t have enough savings to pay her bills and mine.”

I had many questions, mostly about her mother and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, but I didn’t think now was the right time to ask them. “Are you living there, in your mother’s house?”

She shuddered and dragged a finger along the glass countertop, leaving behind a smudgy streak. “No. It’s really not livable. My fiancé, Connor, and I live here—upstairs.”

Village shops were either side-by-side shared storefronts or detached homes that doubled as businesses. As You Wish was in a gorgeous Victorian on a large corner lot at the west end of the square. The Charmory was also a Victorian. Though it was much smaller than Ve’s place, it had a similar footprint. On the first floor was a front parlor, a wide hallway leading to a private office space, and a small powder room. In the back of the house would be a big kitchen and family room. Upstairs, there were probably only two bedrooms (instead of Ve’s three)—plenty of room for two people.

I noticed Elodie wore only a modest diamond engagement ring—surprising, since I thought a Geocrafter would have an outrageous stone. And now that I was looking, I saw that she didn’t wear any other jewelry. Not even a dainty pair of earrings. I wasn’t a big jewelry-wearer either, but if I was surrounded by all these crystals and beads every day, I’d be tempted.

“In order to sell Mom’s house,” she was saying, “it needs to be cleaned out. Really cleaned out. I can’t hire just anyone. Mom didn’t collect just junk. She also collected treasures. Her house is full of them, mixed in between
twenty-year-old newspapers, cardboard boxes filled with flea market finds, and even some wedding presents that were never opened.”

A feeling of dread took root in my stomach. “When was her wedding?”

“Nineteen eighty-five.”

I gulped. What was I in for?

Elodie’s mention of a wedding suddenly reminded me of my aunt Ve, who’d recently become engaged to potential husband number five, Sylar Dewitt. After two months, I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the upcoming nuptials, mostly because I didn’t have a good feeling about it. The wedding was this coming Sunday. And unfortunately, Ve had come down with a nasty virus. One that had terrible timing—as there was no wedding planner and she was the one in charge of the preparations for the ceremony and reception. Preparations that now fell on me to complete since Sylar was too busy running his optometry office…and the whole village (he was the village council chairman). First up for me as Darcy Merriweather, wedding planner, was a menu tasting later today. Then I had to try and figure out why there was a surprising lack of RSVPs coming in.

“My dad tried to keep her collecting in check,” Elodie said. “But after he died, my mother’s hoarding escalated. I was talking to Mrs. Pennywhistle the other day, when she was in here shopping, and she gave you the highest of recommendations. I need someone I can trust. Someone who’s not going to find an uncut gem amid the trash and stick it in a pocket.”

Mrs. Pennywhistle, or as most everyone called her, Mrs. P, was the village’s geriatric spitfire. I’d helped her clean out her late granddaughter’s apartment a couple of months ago. Since then Mrs. P had become like family.

“Can I trust you?” Elodie asked me.

For some strange reason I had a feeling she was asking
about something beyond nicking a few trinkets. It made me nervous, which immediately gave me second thoughts about saying, “Absolutely.”

“Then you’ll take on this task?” Her hands gripped the edge of the counter, and her blue gaze fixed upon me. She stared, unblinking.

Suddenly she seemed anxious, and a little bit desperate. Which made me
really
nervous. Was there something she wasn’t telling me?

Traces of panic lined her eyes. “Darcy?”

Cleaning a hoarder’s house sounded like a nightmare, but I had little choice. “As You Wish’s motto is that no request is too big or too small and no job impossible. I’ll do it.”

I didn’t break my word ever. So now that I had given it, I was all in on this job, for better or worse.

She smiled her sad smile and tucked a blond curl behind her ear. “You might come to regret that motto, especially after seeing the house.”

I gazed at her. “Are you
trying
to scare me?”

“Just giving you fair warning.”

I ignored the growing pit in my stomach and tried to keep the conversation light. “You do know we charge by the hour, right?”

She laughed. “You’ll earn every penny, Darcy. Every penny.”

I
left the shop with a promise to meet with Elodie at Patrice’s house later that afternoon for a quick look-see. I had to gauge for myself what I was getting into so I could plan ahead. I was a planner—I couldn’t help myself.

For August, it was a relatively mild day, not too hot or humid. A slight breeze rustled the colorful awnings above village storefronts. It was almost noon, and the shops were already full of tourists. Adding to the usual hustle and bustle were the Roving Stones. The popular traveling rock and mineral fair was camped on the village green for the week. Multiple matching crimson tents dotted the landscape, flaps raised to show off gems, fossils, minerals, rocks, and hand-crafted jewelry. It looked a little bit like a flea market setup to me, but the Roving Stones certainly didn’t sell their wares at flea market prices. I had bought a gorgeous—but pricey—pair of obsidian earrings from a vendor to give to Harper for Christmas.

If she knew, she’d surely tease me about buying Christmas presents in August. But in my opinion, the earlier I started shopping, the better. Harper, on the other hand, preferred the mad dash of buying everything on Christmas Eve. Not because she was a procrastinator,
but because she loved the thrill of a whirlwind shopping trip. Since I’d been her mother figure from the day she was born (which, sadly, was also the day our mother died), sometimes I questioned where I’d gone wrong raising her. I wasn’t at all sure where Harper had gotten her adventuresome nature—it surely wasn’t from me, though sometimes I wished I was a little more spontaneous. Considering I couldn’t grant my own wishes (a pesky Wishcraft Law), I was trying my best to make the change on my own. It wasn’t happening easily.

I spotted my friend and fellow Wishcrafter Starla Sullivan in the crowd on the green, her blond ponytail swaying as she snapped pictures. Owner of Hocus-Pocus Photography, she padded her bottom line by selling candid snapshots of village visitors. She had her dog, Twink, with her, a little bichon frise that Evan, Starla’s twin brother, liked to call the Beast. The dog hopped more than walked, and lapped up the attention of the tourists who
ooh
ed and
aah
ed over him.

Walking quickly, I turned my attention to my next destination—the Sorcerer’s Stove, a local family restaurant. I had a noontime appointment for a final taste test of Aunt Ve’s wedding menu, and I was running late.

The restaurant anchored the north end of the square, and its architecture was a village favorite. With its multi-gabled and steep-pitched rooflines covered in faux thatching, diamond-paned windows, stone facing, central chimney, and board-and-batten door, it really looked as though a sorcerer lived there. Fitting, since the people who dined on Foodcrafter Jonathan Wilkens’s food often claimed, appropriately, that he was a culinary wizard. His talent of combining casual dining and gourmet foods had once made his restaurant a hotspot.

Ve had told me that the Stove had fallen on some hard times over the last couple of years. She didn’t go into details but said there had been a rodent problem
and several outbreaks of food poisoning, including one as recent as last week.

When I questioned why on earth Ve would use them to cater the wedding, she smiled. “I believe in second chances, Darcy dear. Don’t you?”

I did, but food poisoning? I wasn’t sure it was a risk I would take and told Ve so. “We Crafters have to support one another. I have faith in Jonathan. This is but a mere bump in his road.”

I was going to have to trust her on this one.

Something smelled wonderful as I neared, and it helped assuage my doubts. Food that smelled so good couldn’t possibly give me food poisoning. Or at least that’s what I told myself so I’d actually eat the tasting menu.

When I pulled open the door, I saw that the restaurant was almost empty. The delicious, savory scents hadn’t enticed tourists or villagers to come inside. It was lunchtime, and the restaurant should have been packed. It was sad to see both large dining rooms full of empty chairs. I gave my name to the hostess and told her why I was there.

While I waited in the small vestibule near the front door, I read the “local notices” bulletin board. Tacked to the board was a flyer about the Roving Stones Fair. I wondered if Elodie, as a Geocrafter, was involved in the show somehow. Seemed like a great place to buy some stock for her shop—and to market her merchandise.

Then my sights landed on a notice from the Sorcerer’s Stove that they were holding a series of cooking classes, twice a week for six weeks. I checked the dates. The first lesson started tomorrow night and was touted as a culinary boot camp, designed to turn even those who had trouble boiling water into gourmet chefs.

“Are you interested in signing up for the class, Darcy?”

I turned and found the Stove’s owner, Jonathan Wilkens, standing behind me. He was tall and thin, with silver-streaked hair and slightly cloudy brown eyes. He gave me a peck on the cheek and added, “There are a few openings left.”

It seemed like fate. I’d always wanted to take cooking classes. But the timing of these particular classes wasn’t great. I was busy at As You Wish and with Ve’s upcoming wedding. Plus I was helping Harper with the bookshop and redecorating her new apartment. Then there was the whole food poisoning thing.

But hadn’t I just been thinking about spontaneity? Because it was hard to say no to fate, I said, “Sign me up.” I’d make it work. The classes were at night, so they had the added perk of distracting me from the fact that I was going home to an empty bed. My divorce had been finalized over two years ago, but certain things persisted in reminding me that I was single. Like that queen-sized Serta.

My thoughts suddenly shifted to single dad Nick Sawyer, whom I’d met shortly after moving to the village. There was something happening between us, but it was happening slowly. Which was okay with me. The last thing I wanted was another broken heart.

“Wonderful!” Jonathan enthused.

The wrinkles around his eyes multiplied as he smiled, but I noticed that he looked tired, wan. His thinness now seemed more like gauntness. I hoped he wasn’t coming down with the same flu as Ve.

“Now, what’s this about your aunt?” he asked. “She called and told me to expect you in her place.”

I explained about the flu and finished with, “I’m sure she’ll be just fine by this weekend.” I knew she would. She was expecting a house call today from Cherise Goodwin, an old friend who also happened to be a Curecrafter, a healing witch.

“Bad timing,” Jonathan said as he led me slowly through the restaurant.

As we walked, I spotted Vincent Paxton across the room, eating alone at a corner table. A few months ago, he’d been a murder suspect. Now he was the owner of Lotions and Potions. He was also a Seeker—a mortal who wanted to become a Crafter. He was fixated with the Craft, wanting to learn anything and everything. I was fully aware that his level of obsession could be dangerous. How far would he go to uncover our secrets? How much, I wondered, did he already know?