Bewitched, Bothered, and Biscotti: A Magical Bakery Mystery (6 page)

Well, almost perfect. There had been a few issues.

Inside, I went through the tiny living room to the kitchen. I put some of Steve’s
sandwich in Mungo’s dish, and he tucked in. The memory of the near accident hung about
me like a fog. Pouring a half glass of wine, I wandered out to the backyard for some
quick garden therapy before tackling the smelly mess in my car.

It was a day off from my Witchy 101 lessons as well as baking. The spellbook club
had taken me under their collective wing. Jaida taught me about tarot magic. Bianca
focused on Wiccan teachings and moon magic. Cookie was four years younger than my
twenty-eight, so she didn’t mentor me as much. Still, I’d learned a few things about
voodoo and the darker side of magic from Ms. Rios. Mimsey usually instructed me in
how to use colors and flowers in spell work, as well as trying to hone my divination
abilities. She was trying to teach me how to scry using a crystal ball. I was pretty
bad at it, frankly, but she insisted on encouraging me.

Lucy, of course, focused on lessons about our family heritage of hedgewitchery. Mostly
that meant working outside and with herbs and other plants. It included using them
in cooking, too—at the bakery and at home. So I was learning kitchen and garden magic
as well as brewing and herbal craft.

Those were the lessons I looked forward to the most.

I stepped from the small covered patio onto the lawn. When I’d first moved in, the
whole backyard had been grass, but I’d carved out an herb garden along much of the
back fence, and now all manner of culinary,
medicinal, and magical herbs flourished within its curving border. To the right of
the herb bed a small stone path led to the section of the stream that ran through
my property, and along the right side of the yard a kitchen potager boasted vegetables
planted with an eye to aesthetics as well as function. A profusion of heirloom roses
climbed up one side of the house, and potted annuals on the patio augmented what I
thought of as a kind of personal magical farm.

A recent addition was the small gazebo in the middle of the yard. It was round, and
the man who had constructed it urged me to paint it. But the exposed grain of the
cedar had a natural energy that calmed me. That was important, because the gazebo
also served as my sacred garden circle. No one suspected that the candles sometimes
flickering within the quaint structure were anything but festive decoration. As long
as I didn’t get too rambunctious, the gazebo allowed me to cast in the open whenever
I wanted to, in all but the worst weather.

I checked on the vegetables, noting that a few tomatoes were plump and ready to eat.
I grabbed my harvest basket and filled it with the heirloom fruits once called love
apples, red peppers, onions, carrots, and a head of romaine lettuce. Finally, I added
a few late strawberries that I spied peeking out from under their leaves.

The witch hazel I’d planted near the stream glowed with vigor. I’d encouraged its
health by burying a moss agate at each of the compass points around its base on the
night of a new moon. Despite my rather lackadaisical attitude toward magical paraphernalia,
I intended to make an honest-to-goddess traditional wand from one of its branches.
As I watched, dozens of multicolored
dragonflies drifted in to perch there. It was my good luck that dragonflies—mosquito
hawks—were drawn to me. They kept the ubiquitous mosquitoes in Savannah at bay.

The jasmine I’d planted at one end of the herb garden was a little different, however.
It was itself a spell. I’d planted it with the intention of increasing—and clarifying—my
dreams at night. When it seemed to struggle after the initial transplanting, I’d felt
discouraged and asked Lucy’s advice. I was happy to see that the nettle and lavender
tea had worked so quickly. The jasmine’s glossy leaves had perked to attention and
tiny flower buds were beginning to form on the vine.

Belly full, Mungo trotted out and joined me. In an abbreviated gesture, I moved my
hand in a kind of blessing, from the east to the south, west, north, and again to
the east, murmuring, “May the elements of air, fire, water, and earth bring strength
and grace to this jasmine and what it represents.”

“Katie Lightfoot, don’t tell me you’re talking to yourself again!”

Startled, I turned to find Margie Coopersmith approaching the four-foot fence that
divided my backyard from hers.

Did I mention there had been issues?

Not that I didn’t love Margie to death. Honest, I did. However, she not only kept
a protective eye on her single neighbor, she also had the uncanny ability to sneak
up on me. I didn’t know how she managed it, given the baby on her hip and the four-year-old
twins who constantly trailed on her heels.

I waved away her words with a smile. “Just talking to Mungo here. He’s a good listener.”

He dutifully grinned up at our neighbor.

“Can he come over and play?” Jonathan asked.

“Yeah, can Mungo come over and play?” his sister, Julia, joined in.

I looked down at my familiar. “What do you think? You want to go play with the JJs
for a while?”

Yip!

“That’s what I thought.” Familiar or no, Mungo had a puppy’s heart, and he liked playing
with the towheaded twins. I lifted him over the fence, and the three of them ran off.

“Haven’t seen you around for few days,” Margie said, brushing the hair back from baby
Bart’s forehead. It was blond like hers, and he had her brown eyes and round cheeks,
too. “Redding’s leaving tonight on a big loop up north, and I wondered if you might
want to have dinner next week.” Her husband was a long-haul truck driver who often
had to leave his family for a week or more at a time.

“Sure,” I said, “I’d love to.” Margie’s culinary talents began at take-out pizza and
ended at hot dogs and macaroni and cheese out of a box, but she was such a nice, normal
person to be around that I couldn’t have cared less.

She blinked, consulting an internal calendar. “How about day after tomorrow?”

I nodded. “What can I bring?”

She gestured at the basket at my feet. “How ’bout something from your spread here?
I swear, girl, I don’t know how you manage to grow so many good things. Pretty, too.
I can’t even keep our grass green.”

It was true: Margie’s gardening ability was on par with her cooking. Her strength
lay in being a terrific
mother, a feat she managed to make look effortless despite her husband’s being gone
so much.

“A salad, then?” I’d bring a few extra veggies for them to eat later. As much as she
felt protective of me, I always felt compelled to feed her. “Are you guys planning
to come to the Honeybee Halloween party?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world! Wait until you see what these darlin’s will be wearing!”

“What?” I asked, amused.

She wagged her finger and looked smug. “You’ll just have to wait and see. Those two”—she
indicated the JJs, still running around the yard with Mungo and giggling—“are so excited
about the party. ’Course, I don’t know how much they remember about trick-or-treating
last year, but it was pretty miserable. Rained like the dickens. Ugh!” She hitched
Bart up on her hip and raised her hand. “This one needs changing. I’ll see you later,
okay?”

“You bet. Monday if not before.”

She moved toward their back door.

“Mungo,” I called, stooping to pick up the harvest basket. “C’mon.” The JJs waved
and turned to clamber up the bright plastic play structure in the middle of their
yard.

Mungo ran to the fence and followed me along the other side as I made my way toward
the front of the house. I let him out of Margie’s yard and together we approached
the Bug. The smell of spicy pork and seafood reached us before we got to the car.
Bracing, I opened the passenger door.

“Yuck.”

Yip!

Sighing, I went in the front door, put the veggies on
the counter, and gathered rags and paper towels. I laced a bucket of warm water with
a dose of white vinegar and dish soap and grabbed a couple of plastic bags. Back outside,
Mungo grinned at me from a prone position in the grass as I scooped bits of shrimp
and sausage into the take-out container.

“A lot of help you are,” I grumbled.

Out came the floor mat, which I dosed liberally with the vinegar-and-soap solution
and then sprayed off with the hose in the driveway. Then I set to soaking and scrubbing
and wiping down the hard surfaces. By the time I was done, I was pretty sure I never
needed to eat any kind of sausage again, but at least the smell was largely gone from
the car. A few sprigs of parsley in the Bug’s built-in vase might look funny, but
they would act as a deodorizer overnight.

I, however, desperately needed a shower. Bundling the used cleaning materials into
a plastic bag, I grabbed my empty bucket as a car pulled up to the curb in front of
the carriage house.

Not just any car. A Lincoln Town Car. As I watched, a man got out from behind the
wheel and moved to the rear door. He opened it, and a tall man unfolded himself from
the backseat and stood on the sidewalk in front of my house. His driver closed the
door behind him and returned to sit behind the wheel.

His driver.

Why the heck was someone with a driver standing in front of my house?

The man spotted me gawking at him and began walking my way. His precision-cut hair
was the color of caramel but heavily streaked with gray. That coincided with the fine
lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and mouth. He stopped in front of me,
and I looked into those eyes. They were gray, so light as to be almost colorless,
with a charcoal-colored ring around the irises. They were eerie, indeed, but the feature
that really threw me was the newcomer’s mouth.

It was very familiar. Lord knew, I’d spent more time than I should have thinking about
Steve Dawes’ mouth. About the way the upper lip curved, about how smooth the lower
lip was. About how it felt on mine.

The gentleman’s lips parted to reveal perfect white teeth and then quirked up in a
wry smile. That was all I needed to know for sure. This man had to be Steve’s father.

What in blazes? Steve drove a nice car, sure, but this guy was
rich
. He wore a suit the same dark gray as the ring around his irises. I’m no expert on
sartorial elegance, but it looked plenty expensive.

“Ms. Lightfoot, it’s about time we met. I’m Heinrich Dawes.”

I put the empty bucket down on the ground. “Um, nice to meet you.” It sounded almost
like a question.

He held out his hand. I glanced down and saw that the cuff of his crisp blue shirt
was fastened with actual silver cuff links. Who wore cuff links anymore? And not silver.
Of course not. They’d be platinum.

Half stunned, I transferred the bundle of plastic-wrapped cleaning rags to my left
hand and began to reach out to shake his hand with my right. A soggy hunk of sausage
meat dropped onto my foot and bounced wetly to the pavement of the driveway. I jerked
my hand back, realizing it was still sticky with a combination of soap and soup, and
heard Mungo slurping up the sausage next to my flip-flop. The faint scent of shrimp
drifted into my nose.

If I could have crawled inside that bucket, I would have.

“Sorry. Just cleaning up a little accident. Would you like to come inside?” I heard
the coolness in my tone regardless of my flushed face, and it made me feel a little
better.

He dropped his hand, emanating ease. “That would probably be best.”

Best for what?

He followed me up the walk and into the house. As soon as we entered the enclosed
space I could feel his power. It was like a live thing accompanying him. Some of it
was the simple secular power that came from the kind of wealth Heinrich Dawes obviously
enjoyed, but there was something else. Something more. Something from another plane.
I was disconcerted to
realize it felt familiar, as if it shared a signature, a scent even.

The scent of leather and cloves that I associated with his son.

Heinrich’s gaze flicked around the living room, up to the loft above, down the hallway
to my bedroom, and beyond the French doors to the yard and gardens.

Examining and assessing.

Judging.

“Excuse me while I dispose of this. Please make yourself comfortable.” I nodded toward
the purple fainting couch and went toward the kitchen. “May I get you something to
drink, Mr. Dawes?”

“Heinrich, please. No, thank you, Katie. If I may call you that?”

“Sure,” I called over the sound of water running as I scrubbed my hands clean. A movement
in my peripheral vision reminded me that Mungo had followed us in. Now he sat in the
corner, eyes boring into me. I raised my eyebrows in question, and his little doggy
forehead wrinkled.

When I returned to the other room he followed me as far as the doorway. He seemed
to be as intrigued by our visitor as I was—but also leery.

Heinrich had settled into one of my two leather wingback chairs, so I sat on the couch,
with the Civil War–era trunk that served as a coffee table between us. After a few
seconds of hesitation, Mungo trotted over and joined me. I smiled at Steve’s dad and
waited.

What do you want?

As if he read my mind, he said, “Naturally you’re wondering why I’ve so rudely dropped
by unannounced.”

I kept smiling. “It’s nice to finally meet you, whatever the circumstances.” Did that
sound rude?

Nah.

Yeah, maybe. But he had indeed shown up without the slightest warning.

He sat back. “My son thinks a great deal of you.”

Surely this wasn’t some kind of matchmaking mission? I cocked my head to one side,
choosing my words carefully. “I’m quite fond of Steve as well.”

“He’s told me quite a bit about you.”

Like what? Steve had hardly even mentioned to me that he had a father.

But…mental palm slap to forehead. He’d said he had to talk to someone before telling
me more about the tattooed wreath sigil. Was this the someone? Why else would Heinrich
Dawes suddenly feel the need to meet me?