"It's the added hot flashes on top of it. I feel like I cannot get my temperature down."
Tilly grunted in agreement. "I woke up with my pajamas soaked through. And on backwards."
"There's red clover in the tea. Should help with the hot flashes," Ursula said.
Eloise lifted her hand in a thumbs up.
"Can we name the racoon babies?" Jen asked.
Tilly laughed, the sound garbled against her folded arms. She popped her dark head up and her red glasses were askew."I just realized baby racoons are called kittens which you can't say."
"They're actually called kits," Eloise replied having done as much research on raccoons as her aching head would allow. "Can I have more of the magic tonic?"
"More won't work faster," Ursula said. "And we probably should be careful with the wordmagic."
"Right. Because Carol Willoughby is a snoopy crone who we should have hexed," Jen bemoaned.
"Isn't her name Carol Weatherby?" Tilly asked with scrunched eyes.
"Yeah, but my feelings toward her right now mimic how I felt when Kelsea made me watch Sense and Sensibility."
Kelsea chuckled and then made a face that said she regretted the sound.
"I will appropriately praise you for that Austen reference later," Eloise said into the countertop smooshed into her face.
Just then Crystal breezed in. Breezed. Like a light wind. The hungover women watched her with varying looks of awe and Ursula handed her a cup of tea.
"Now, we have quite a pickle on our hands," Crystal said. "Those pictures of us last night are rather damning."
"Yeah, but they were taken illegally," Jen pointed out. Small plates were given to everyone with the coffee cake as well as mugs of coffee that Bess was pouring.
"When did you get here?" Eloise asked looking at the teenager in surprise and a little trepidation as she and the teen had yet to work out Eloise's club bathroom loose-lipped betrayal.
"Between a dreamy detective dropping you both off, and introductions to pregnant Lady Macbeth." Her smile was tentative, a little tight, but it gave her hope.
"Really," Tilly replied in awe. "You've been here this whole time?"
"Mhmm. And I made the coffee extra strong. You may be town pariahs, but even pariahs need good coffee," Bess said and gave Eloise a look.
Eloise raised her eyebrows in question and Bess smiled the slightest in answer. They were going to be okay. Maybe not right now, but they would figure it out.
"Though illegally the pictures may have been taken, that doesn't matter in the court of public opinion and no one knows who took them," Crystal brought them back to the matter at hand.
"We're never going to be able to set foot in town again," Ursula said.
"Do you think we can have Michelle's croissants delivered?" Eloise asked in panic.
"I'll bring them," Bess offered. "But you should also probably stay away from The Black Cat for a while. We've already had a few customers say they may not continue to support the shop until Shellee comes back." Her usually perturbed face had a look of discomfort and regret and Eloise nodded in agreement, a sadness sweeping inside of her. Then her discomfort slid into a calculating smile as she lifted the hand not pouring coffee into the air with her purple-painted middle finger sticking out. "Or I say, fu-"
The rest of Bess's words were garbled into Ursula's hand. Bess mumbled an apology before Ursula shook her head and let her go.
Eloise watched it all, her heart floating. There was her best friend mothering an amazing teenage girl. A teenage girl who would turn into a woman and then one day she would be in her late thirties maybe with kids of her own or not, but she would have people in her life that she loved well and part of that was because of Ursula loving her well.
Then a thought hit her. "Hey, did anyone else have a weird dream?"
"Ohmygosh, a lady in white?" Tilly asked. Her glasses were still crooked and her hair was matted on one side which was completely emerald green. One half of her hair was a black sheet, no longer with violet ends, and the other half of her hair was dyed and looked like a curtain of dark green vines that were currently tangled together.
"Did you dye your hair?" Kelsea asked and all the women studied Tilly who reached up to touch her nest of a hair.
