“There’s a nice vineyard, maybe three miles from downtown. The sunset view is beautiful.”
“I love a good vineyard sunset,” I say. “I mean, I’ve never seen one, but I can’t imagine complaining about it.”
He pulls out his phone. “Would you be okay with giving me your number? I would give you mine, but your hand looks like a mummy’s.”
He’s right—I’d be pretty bad at texting right now. My phone is in my back pocket, though. Thank goodness they’re waterproofthese days. “Sure, I trust you. And my lawyer already knows your name, so I’m guessing you’re probably not an axe murderer.” I pause and look up, realizing how ridiculous this sounds. “Unless he knows your namebecauseyou’re an axe murderer?”
He just grins in a very un-axe-murderer sort of way. “It’s a small town. Everybody knows everybody. If somebody disappeared, believe me: They’d notice.”
I spell out my name and rattle off my number. My phone immediately vibrates in my back pocket, and I jump, making him grin with dimples.
“My last name is Blakely, by the way. I guess I just assumed you already knew. Again—small town.”
I did know. It was seared into my mind like the lines on a Burger King hamburger.
“Got it,” I say, so he doesn’t learn about the searing. “I’ll put that in my phone once the mummification process is complete.”
His phone pings—not me—and he looks down and frowns. “I’d love to stay and chat, but my grandmother is getting antsy. I was just here to toss some wood scraps in the dumpster, but now I’m fifteen minutes late and she’s pretty sure I’m dead. Grandmas, right?”
“Grandmas,” I agree with newfound vigor.
Hunter looks over to the bird backpack, where Maggie is watching us like a pink hawk. “And if you need a vet, you’ll want Mountain Veterinary. The other vet in town, Wag and Purr, overcharges outsiders.”
“I don’t know if I’m an outsider, if my family’s from here—”
“Are they?” He looks at me with curiosity.
I blush at my stupidity. “Maybe. I think so. A long time ago.”
He chuckles. “Then you’re notfrom herefrom here, but I’m glad you’re here now.”
With a little wave, he heads outside, shutting the door softly behind him. I go to the yellowed blinds that Maggie recently mangled and secretly watch through one of the many cracks. Hunter gets in a black truck parked a few spaces away from my Explorer and drives off. A black Lab watches me from the open back window, ears flapping in the wind.
I suddenly realize I’m in a bedroom—Maggie’s bedroom. It’s odd, being in a stranger’s personal space, especially when it’s a grandmother you’ve never known and even more especially when she’s currently a cockatoo.
The blinds are as messy as they looked from the alley, and I can see now that a cat was involved in this process. There are even little tooth marks.
“Is your cat still here?” I look around, suddenly worried for soft, feathery Doris, even if she’s no longer exactlymyDoris.
“Not anymore,” Maggie says sadly from the other room. “I had two cats. My familiar, Artemis, and a young tortie named Moon. My trust left everything to my best friend, Diana McGowan, including the cats. And she was supposed to bring Moon to the waterfall, and then I’d be a cat and I’d be laughing about this with Diana right now. But I’m guessing that after I passed someone else took the kitties in.”
That stops me. “Wait. Why’d you want to be a cat?”
“Well, I didn’t want to die. No one does, I reckon. But I figured that your mama was using magic to hide from me and that when I died maybe Diana and I could find her—and any kids she might’ve had. Diana still had a decade in her at least, and we would’ve found a way to set up my trust—well, honestly, about like it is now. Keep the legacy in place. So it all worked out, in the end.”
The bedroom is neat, with a very bohemian feel. More macramé, more flowers, more crystals. The walls are painted a softrose, and the furniture is old-fashioned: a dresser, a blanket chest, and a vanity with a glass tray covered in perfume bottles. A big rag rug in shades of purple is placed right where bare feet would hit the wood floor every morning. Flowy velvet robes with fringe drip from hangers on the back of a closet door. Everything smells of incense and the uniquely crispy, herbal scent of dried greenery.
This room—I would’ve loved it as a child. It would’ve felt so magical, so mysteriously feminine, like Stevie Nicks’s dressing room.
“So you were all in on the witchy-woman thing, huh?” I ask, getting used to the situation.
Because I’m starting to realize that if I can just accept that my grandmother’s spirit has been transferred into the body of my pet cockatoo, I suddenly have a lot more answers to all of my many questions.
“Iwasa witch,” she says, proud and sniffy, if cockatoos can sniff. “Obviously. You think I just randomly ended up inhabiting this bird? You think it’s easy to refuse to die? Oh no, honey. Your mama might’ve tried to outrun it, and she might’ve gone to great trouble to hide you from me, but we come from a long line of witches. And you’re a witch, too.”
This is the craziest thing she’s said yet. I stand in front of the vanity mirror, which is bedecked with crystal mala beads and skinny scarves glittering with metallic thread. I have never felt so alien and out of place.
“Me? I’m not a witch. I’m the most normal person in the world.” I cock my head. I look horrible. I do not belong in this room, with its prism rainbows and rose petals. “Right?”
