Almost every seat in the place was full. That hadn’t been the case with the coffee shop, so Gideon might be right about the quality of the offerings at The Witch’s Brew.
I rushed over to order. With this many customers, the staff might need a bit of time to get everything together. I anticipated it’d be a bit of a rush to prep my order.
The mousy-looking woman who took my order didn’t share my concern about rushing. She double-checked each thing before she wrote it in her notepad with careful strokes. I appreciated the attention to detail, but I was ordering coffee, not designing the next space station.
“Okay, I’m heading out…” a woman with a lilting voice said as she walked out from the kitchen at the back. This new woman wasn’t a traditional beauty, but there was something captivating about her. She was tiny, almost otherworldly, with her dainty features. I swore her skin had a purplish hue. I’d never seen someone with lilac-colored skin before. It was bizarre. When she saw me waiting at the counter, she hurried over. “Is everything okay, Ethyl?”
Did I look irritated?Oops. I had a dreadful poker face.
Ethyl muttered to herself as she rechecked her notepad.
“I’m just ordering some coffee and pastries,” I said, forcing a smile.
“Enough coffee for a whole group and a whole box of baked goods,” Ethyl admonished.
“Oh?” the dainty woman asked.
“My grandfather, Elwood, sent me.”
“Oh! For the meeting. Yes. Of course. I’m Rue. I was ducking out to attend it.” She smiled at Ethyl. “Why don’t I take care of this, since I’m going to the same place as…”
“Declan.”
“Right, of course. Your grandfather talks about you. I should’ve remembered that.” Her laughter tinkled in the air.
Ethyl huffed and shoved her notepad and pen into her apron. She grabbed a fresh pot of coffee and trudged off to do a circuit around the room, filling cups as she went. Not the most enthusiastic employee, but people didn’t seem to care. Everyone was smiling and laughing, which made me curious enough to want to come here to eat soon.
A few minutes later, and much more quickly than I suspect it would’ve been if I’d been stuck with Ethyl filling my order, Rue and I were out the door with an array of pastries and enough coffee and herbal tea to fuel the meeting for the rest of the night and into tomorrow if needed. The tea had been Rue’s idea. She’dinsisted not everyone drank caffeine this late into the day. Who knew?
“I thought you’d gotten lost,” Elwood said when we arrived to find the room at the back of The Mystic Menagerie full of people. He rushed over to take the food out of my hands and set it in the middle of the table while Rue poured coffee and tea from large disposable carafes for those who wanted it.
The rattling and banging next door had everyone wincing. How late did Jim work? I hoped he didn’t work around the clock. I’d never get my forty winks tonight with all that going on.
On the way to their seats, both Elwood and Gideon detoured to the corner of the room with the bar fridge, but they didn’t open the fridge. In fact, I swore they were going over there to drop bits of pastry on the floor. I glanced at the floor. There was nothing there, no pastry crumbs or anything else, for that matter. The shadow under the fridge wavered a little. Was there something wrong with my eyes? The last thing I needed was an astigmatism.
The stress of the day must be catching up with me.
“I invited my grandson Declan to join us tonight,” Elwood said once people were seated around the rectangular table. I didn’t recognize everyone, but the few familiar faces nodded at me. “He’s one of those social media PR types. He’s staying in town for a while, and he’s volunteered to help with the festivals.”
I bit my cheek to stop from correcting him, because I hadn’t volunteered. Elwood had voluntold me, saying it’d be good for me to meet people and make connections. Which, okay, fine. It would be an excellent opportunity, but hadn’t enough happened already today? An evening talking to strangers about an event I knew nothing about wasn’t what I’d planned for my first night in Ravenstone.
I suspected the most interesting part of the night would be trying not to stare at Gideon, who was sitting on the other sideof the table from me. He wore different clothes from what he’d been wearing earlier, and a fresh pang of guilt pinged through me. I hoped he hadn’t been burned. Should I apologize again?
The balding man in the sweater vest I’d seen on the street when I’d first arrived narrowed his eyes at me with a speculative gleam in his eyes. That didn’t look ominous at all. He sat beside me at the head of the table, which I suspected was by design.
“So, let’s all introduce ourselves,” Elwood continued.
“That isn’t how things are done, Elwood,” the sweater-vest guy said. “We can’t hand everything to a stranger. There needs to be a vote. Social media is the face of our organization…”
“You’re overthinking this, Leon. I say we let Elwood’s grandkid do it. We’re all volunteers, and we could use all the help we can get,” Henry said. I remembered the middle-aged man from my summers in Ravenstone as a kid. I always thought it was ironic that the skinniest man I’d ever met owned a grocery store. Didn’t he eat his own products? He hadn’t changed in the years since I’d been here. “All in favor?”
All around the table, people lifted their hands in agreement. Leon did not. He was spluttering, and his face had turned an alarming shade of red.
“You’re in, kid,” Henry said with a chortle. “I’m Henry, by the way, in case you’ve forgotten. Ithasbeen a while.”
“We haven’t even opened the meeting yet,” Leon protested. “You can’t vote. We need a discussion. And as the chairperson, I’m the one who calls for votes.”
Whatever might have come next was interrupted by a loud thump next door, followed by a crash in The Mystic Menagerie.
