“Montgomerie is finishing her practicum studies right now,” another hushed voice, all the women in attendance leaning forward slightly in their chairs. “She lives out west, and I’m just not sure if the things she’s being taught at the school there are going to align very well with the coven’s new principles.” Another one of those fast glances around as if there might be someone hovering over the group listening in. “Some of the potion requirements Evelyn has are certainly controversial in certain circles.”
Murmurs and mutters, and suddenly, no one in the room was willing to meet the eye of the witch beside her.
“But-but like I said, she is sodynamic! She’s brought about a dramatic change; she really put her mark on the coven here. We’re so excited to have you back!”
“What do you suppose all that meant?”
Her mother’s voice was hushed. The house was empty and echoing once more, the witches departed. Morgan was engrossed with something on her phone, not paying any attention to the way their mother hovered in the doorway of the foyer, peeking out the sidelights as her tea guests pulled away.
Ilea shrugged. “It means this coven finally has a high crone unafraid of putting our ambitions ahead of the petty bickering and egos in this community. Authricia was a fine witch, but she was the werewolves’ puppet. You’ll love Evelyn.”
Harper frowned. She was disinclined to agree with Ilea on anything, which made their pronouncement of this high witch being one they would all love highly unlikely. Their words felt cryptic, and even though she didn’t know the first thing about the witches in this neighborhood, didn’t know anything about the neighborhood itself, and wasn’t sure if she could even be considered one of them, Harper was sure a coven actively working against the needs and wants of its community seemed entirely contrary to everything she had been taught in school.
There is no way you’re studying with Ilea. You can just move to Bridgeton and live as a normal human. Maybe get a job at the paper, or in a coffee shop, or whoever will hire you, it’s not like you can do anything. Morgan is right. You need to get up and get out of the fucking house. Don’t give them the opportunity to rope you into whatever mom is planning.She would get up the following morning after her sister left for school, she decided. The car engine always woke her up, and most days she went right back to bed, but that was going to change.Pack your books and your laptop. Go somewhere and read. Just get out of the house and remove yourself as a target.
She would much rather stay home, Harper thought, once she was snuggled back into the ass groove on her loveseat, wrapped in her blanket with her laptop on her knees, cappuccino mocha chip pint beside her. She would rather stay in bed, sleeping away the reminder that other witches her age would be rising to attend class, preparing for their futures . . . But leaving the house was preferable to whatever her mother had planned, and there was no way around it.
OOTD:Thesilkblendknee socks and stacked platform loafers. The pleated skirt dress with the Peter Pan collar. The double stitched blazer.
She nodded decisively in the mirror as she readied herself, finishing her look with a black lip stain. Just because she wasn’t heading back to class with her contemporaries didn’t mean she couldn’t look the part. Harper slipped out the door, determined to make herself scarce.
It did not take long to realize she was a stranger to Cambric Creek in more ways than one, regardless of the time she may have spent here in her youth. The late summer sky was a wash of white-dotted blue, and although the sun was shining, a breeze kept the tree branches moving, a perfect day to leave the house . . . and promptly go indoors, someplace else. Getting out of the house was the main imperative. Harper decided she was library-bound, craving nothing more than a quiet place where she could curl up and read her book, quieting her mind, uninterrupted.
Harper set off on foot, tentatively knowing from her cursory explorations of the map on her cell phone that she could pick up a bus that passed through Cambric Creek’s downtown area. Her family’s home was at the edge of an area known as Oldetowne, and during her twilight meanderings, she had discovered that while the house was grand to her and had seemed cavernous when she was a child, it paled in comparison to the stately properties owned by some of their neighbors just a few blocks in.
There was one such residence at the end of Magnolia Street that had made her jaw drop open, the first time she passed. Grey stone, four stories high from what she was able to tell, iron cresting at the roof line, leaded windows winking, the house had been at once magnificent and hideous. It was set back from the road, the long drive buffeted by snarling stone figures and a wrought iron gate. Harper wasn’t sure how long she had stood there gaping at the stone edifice, but her skin had begun to prickle, feeling eyes on her, watching her stare at the house. The Victorian beside it, an ornately designed Queen Anne, had a shadow in one of the upper windows, one that shifted as she began to walk again, and Harper would hurry up the sidewalk, away from the homes, the feeling of observance not passing until she had rounded the corner.
The bus, when it arrived, turned out not to be a bus at all, but an old-fashioned open-air trolley, and Harper wondered if she looked as ridiculous as she felt, swinging her bat wing backpack over her shoulder as she climbed aboard, taking her seat behind two gossiping goblins in pastel activewear. She watched as a trio of sleek young women boarded at the stop on the corner opposite a long line of condominiums, selkies, she guessed, based on the identical sable-colored fur coats draped over their shoulders.They’re probably students at the school. You should enroll, take some classes and get an English Lit degree. You can move to Bridgeton and be a teacher and pretend you’ve never even heard of witchcraft.
“Excuse me,” she leaned over the seat slightly at the first break in the goblin’s conversation, as the shops of Main Street neared, “this is the stop for the library, right?”
One of the petite, green-skinned women turned, giving Harper a pitying smile. “It is, but I’m afraid it’s still closed for renovation.”
Dammit. She should have checked the website. Harper’s shoulders slumped, as the other goblin continued.
“The building had a pipe break at its main and there was a major flooding issue. I understand it was a lot of damage, but it seems like it’s taking forever. It’s been weeks! The high school students are able to use the campus library, but what are the little ones supposed to do? Storytime has been moved to the community center, but it’s not the same. We keep hearing it’ll be reopening at the end of the month, but you know how that goes.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” the first goblin cut in, standing as the trolley slowed. “Jack’s grandson goes to story time, and you know howthatgoes.”
The goblin women laughed, exiting the trolley as Harper scrambled to scoop up her belongings, deciding she might be able to find a sleepy little coffee shop to hide in amidst the downtown landscape.
She found the coffee shop with little trouble, not that she stayed long enough to even place an order. The Black Sheep Beanery was a cacophony of sound — students, office dwellers, construction workers, and everyone in between. ‘Sleepy’ was not a description it could boast unless she planned on returning in the middle of the night, and even then she wasn’t willing to count on it.
The town she’d grown up in had its fair mix of goblins and trolls, but Harper had never before been surrounded by folks of so many different species the way she was at that moment.
“For God’s sake, Byron, do you ever just stop and think before opening your mouth?!”
She listened as the vampire in front of her in line berated someone on the phone, overheard a snippet of conversation from the two activewear-clad goblins in line behind her — not the same two from the trolley, she noted after a swift glance over her shoulder, and as she watched, a broad-shouldered man in an immaculately tailored suit breezed through the doors, circumventing the long line of patrons, moving to the opposite side of the counter from the pick-up area. He gave the ewe-faced woman behind the counter a blinding white smile as two drinks were placed in front of him by the ram manning the espresso machine. Harper shook her head as the man was checked out on a handheld device, oblivious to the two dozen people he’d cut.
“You leave today?” the ram asked, as the man tapped his credit card to the handheld checkout, answering in the affirmative. “We’ll be looking for you in the paper. Give ’em hell.”
“Oh, I plan on it,” the big man said with another dazzling smile, leaving as quickly as he’d arrived.
A throng of college-age students and chattering mothers pushing strollers were taking up a not-insignificant portion of the dining area, and Harper realized there would be no quiet nook to disappear into, not here. Her desire for caffeine wasn’t as strong as her desperate need to lose herself for a bit, and while the Black Sheep Beanery might deliver on one half of that equation, the second, more important half was likely an impossibility with so much noise and commotion. Leaving her place in the line, she found herself back on the sidewalk.
She had a hard time remembering any specifics of the town from her childhood, for visits to her grandmother rarely necessitated or involved leaving the big house, and it was only occasionally that they would venture into town. The picturesque waterfall tickled something at the back of her brain, as did the gilded clock tower that sat at the center of Main Street. The white painted gazebo looked like something out of a brochure for small town America, and she was almost positive she had sat on her father’s shoulders, listening to music in the open field before the little grandstand, but those memories were hazy and indistinct.
Harper turned away from the gazebo as she passed it, not wanting to remember the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the conspiratorial way he would pass her a potted chocolate when she’d had a bad day, or the incense and wood smoke smell of him as he came in from the fires. Instead, she turned up the first street that intersected Main, as if she might be able to abandon her grief, leaving it at the gazebo for someone else to find.
