Oh my, doesn’t this all look tasty.”
“Thank you so much for coming, Beatty.”
“Anytime. Anytime.” Beatty smiled at Izzy as she placed a tray of fresh brewed coffee and dulce de leche cookie sandwiches on the glass-topped coffee table.
It was a perfect fall day, and there was no better place to take it all in than from the porch of the B&B. The sky was bright blue, the only bit of white coming from the waxing crescent moon, the crickets were singing, and the deep pink roses that lined the front of the house were still blooming, filling the air with their rich scent.
Unfortunately, all the beauty made what had happened last night even worse.
Emergency services had been at the house until the early morning. We had only managed a couple hours of sleep, but rest would have to wait. Beatty, short for Bartholomew Barnes, the family lawyer, had called first thing as soon as he’d heard the news. Beatty handled all the legal business for Ivywood Hollow, although what had happened to poor Constance obviously wasn’t in the realm of his normal duties.
Once Izzy had arranged the tray on the table, I reached for the coffee, only to have my hand swatted away.
“Brynn, where are your manners? Guests first.”
I rubbed my hand and smiled at Beatty. “She’s right of course. Please.”
He chuckled. “I think you all might need it more than me. Oh, hello, Nora.”
Nora strode toward us wearing a dark green, gauze, kimono shawl with velvet embroidery over a fitted black dress. Her long red hair was piled up on her head, held in place with two gold hair pins. Even distraught, she managed to look terrific. The oversized black sunglasses may have been a bit much though. “Beatty,” Nora said by way of greeting before snatching up the coffee mug he was reaching for.
“Evanora!” Izzy scolded.
“Beatty doesn’t mind,” Nora said matter-of-factly, sinking into one of the oversized rattan armchairs. “After all, it’s not the coffee he’s interested in.”
Poor Izzy’s eyes widened with embarrassment. Beatty Barnes was Izzy’s crush. No one could fault her for it. Beatty was generous and thoughtful, the kind of person you could really count on, and to be completely honest, he was turning into a real silver fox, of the slightly chubby variety. He really seemed to like Izzy too, but things never progressed past cookies and coffee. It made Nora nuts. Like she was anyone to talk.
That being said, I couldn’t exactly judge either one of them. The Warren women were not lucky in love. In fact, you might even call us cursed. I know I certainly felt that way.
“Nora’s right,” I said. “It’s not the coffee Beatty’s after. It’s the baked goods.” I picked up the plate and held it out to him. “Weren’t these one of your favorites?”
“I have to admit, they’re all my favorite,” Beatty said, placing a cookie on a napkin. “Izzy always manages to outdo herself.”
My aunt shot me a grateful smile.
Nora, however, let out a disgusted sigh before moving on with, “I suppose they’ve filled you in on all the grisly details?”
“I’m not sure I would call them grisly.” Beatty reached for the notepad in his leather bag. “My understanding is Constance slipped and hit her head on the bathtub?”
“That’s our best guess. It all happened so fast. I had just been up to check on her a few minutes beforehand. Nora found her,” Izzy said. “That poor woman. I just can’t believe it. I feel terrible.”
“What is our liability in all this?” Nora asked, tapping her long crimson fingernails against her coffee mug.
Izzy straightened in her chair and fixed Nora with a look that could freeze hellfire. “Could we please take a moment to honor the woman who has passed.”
“You’re right. You’re right,” Nora said, waving a hand in the air then resting it on her forehead. “Constance was a,” she struggled to find the right words, “wonderful woman.”
“Don’t hurt yourself there, Nora,” Beatty said, bringing his own mug to his lips. “Everybody in town knew that Constance was difficult. I can attest to that personally.”
Nora collapsed against her chair. “Thank you. Finally, someone other than me has said it.”
“Of course, everyone does say the same thing about you.”
Nora shot back up. “They do not!”
Nobody answered.
“Everybody loves me,” she said, easing back uncertainly.
“Regardless, Constance was who she was. There’s no denying that.” Beatty let out a long breath. “She didn’t have the easiest of lives though.”
“She didn’t?” Izzy asked, placing the cookie she had taken, untasted, back on her napkin. “I mean, I don’t know much about her other than her being the owner of Graves House. Such a lovely old home. It’s a shame it has fallen into disrepair.”
Nora scoffed. “Disrepair? It looks like a haunted house from a children’s book. The entire family should be embarrassed.”
I had heard Nora express these particular sentiments before.
Evenfall was not just a small town. It was also an old one. During the later years of the industrial revolution the mainly pastoral village had gone through a boom, doing quite well with textiles and later on with financing the railroad expansion. A renowned architect, Frank Hobson Henry, had designed a number of homes for the town’s founding families. Ivywood Hollow was one of them, as was Graves House. It was said the architect had given particular care to Ivywood Hollow because he was in love with my widowed great-great-grandmother, but I got this from Nora, and she tended to believe everyone was prone to falling in love with women from the Warren family. But regardless of whether Frank Hobson Henry had loved my great-great-grandmother or not, his love for Ivywood Hollow was plain. Every detail of the Queen Anne three-story tower house showed care and affection. We had strived to keep up that standard. The same could not be said of Graves House.
“Aside from that, though, I never really knew the Graves family,” Izzy said, looking to her sister. “Nora?”
For the briefest moment, I thought I saw something in my aunt’s expression, but she said, “No. I know nothing of the family.”
Beatty tapped his pen against his notepad. “Constance was a bit older than me, but I went to school with one of her brothers. Their father wasn’t the nicest of men, not after his wife died giving birth to their youngest, Mary. After that, his kids could never do anything right. He pitted all four of them against each other right up until the day he died. Made sure they’d never get along. The boys even competed for the same girl back in high school. Ugly business that. Constance took care of her father in his final years. Bore the brunt of his behavior, from what I’ve heard.”
“That sounds awful,” Izzy said. “I wish I had known. I would have done things differently.”
“Done what differently?” Nora said grumpily. “Given her a nightly foot rub? You were lovely. You know you were.”
The implication was of course that she herself had not been. I couldn’t help but feel for my aunt. Nora did not do well with guilty feelings. And I didn’t think it was just because of the truly awful conversation we—she!— had had before Constance’s death. If I were to guess, I think she felt responsible for what had happened. All three of us took pride in Ivywood Hollow and the comfort we provided our guests. We wanted everyone who stayed with us to have a memorable experience. We had never had a guest hurt, let alone die while staying with us. And the truth was we weren’t like other B&B proprietors. We should have been able to prevent this.
“I’m sure Nora’s right, Izzy. You could have showed Constance all the kindness in the world, and I doubt it would have made a difference,” Beatty said kindly. “We’re all products of our upbringings.”
Nora adjusted her gauze shawl. “Not that that’s an excuse to be miserable to everyone.”
“No, it’s not, but Constance certainly had her fair share of people being miserable to her. All that business with her father’s will?”
“What business?” Nora asked, peering at him over the top of her sunglasses.
Beatty shook his head. “It’s old news. I shouldn’t have brought it up. That whole affair was one of the low points of my career. I’ve never felt right about any of it. But suffice it to say, if I had to guess, Constance’s choices resulted in a pretty lonely life. In fact, the only person I think she was friends with was Theo,” he said, looking at me.
I smiled. That made sense. Theodora Holmes was a wonderful person. She also happened to be my old boss. I used to work part-time at her bookstore, Lovely Leaves, up until, well, up until I didn’t. There was no sense in reliving the past.
“Actually, I think Theo was the only person able to stay friends with everyone in that family and not take sides.”
“What sides?” Nora asked.
“Again, I shouldn’t say.”
My aunt bristled. “Beatty, must you be so infuriating?”
“I keep wondering if it was somehow our fault,” Izzy said loudly enough to derail Nora. “I’ve always made sure we’ve followed health and safety regulations, but maybe we missed something.”
A soft buzz sounded from the coffee table. “Sorry,” Beatty said, putting up a finger before picking up his phone. “This may be important. I have a friend over at the department.” A deep furrow formed in his brow as he looked at the screen. “You know what? I hate to cut this short, but I’m going to pop over to the police station.”
Izzy’s eyes widened in alarm. “Why? What’s going on? They don’t think we were somehow negligent?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Beatty said, rising to his feet. “It could be nothing. I’ll call you when I know anything for certain.”
“Unacceptable,” Nora snapped, also getting to her feet. “Beatty Barnes, I demand to know what that message on your phone said.”
“Goodbye, Nora.” Beatty placed his old fishing hat on his head. “It’s always a pleasure, Izzy.”
Nora dropped back down into her chair. “Infuriating.”
The three of us fell into an uneasy silence.
We knew Beatty had more than just one friend down at the station. He would be the first to know if there was any speculation we were somehow responsible for Constance’s death. But how could we be? It was an accident. Even though the bath had been running, the floor had been dry. We had the proper bathmats. Handrails. She had fallen. That was all.
But if I were to be completely honest, I wasn’t sure that was true.
Something had been bothering me since we first found Constance.
It was a small thing, and I was certainly no expert, but I couldn’t seem to put it out of my mind.
There was no blood on the edge of the tub.
If she had fallen and hit her head, wouldn’t there have been blood? She could have hit her head on the floor, but she was on her side, not her back. Surely her shoulder would have blocked a direct blow.
Again, I had no experience with this kind of thing, but it seemed odd.
And then there had been all of that banging and door slamming before Nora had gone up. Looking back, it had almost sounded as though someone had been up there with her. Faustus had been acting strangely too, and he did have a canny sense of when things weren’t quite right.
But no, there couldn’t have been someone upstairs with Constance. We would have known.
I was being ridiculous. It had been an accident. Nothing more.
Of course, in the past there was a way I could have found out for sure. But that was all a long time ago. A different lifetime. It was no longer an option.
“Brynn,” Nora said, breaking me from my reverie. When I caught her expression, I knew she had been thinking the same thing.
“We’ve been over this,” I said, putting my coffee mug down on the table with a bit of a clatter. “There’s no point in going over it again.”
“So, you’re not even going to try?” she asked.
“I have tried.”
“I can understand why you were not willing to do anything about your problem before, but, surely, given what’s happened it’s time to reconsider.”
“You’re not listening to me. There’s no point.”
“That’s not true. There are things we can try.”
“No, there are not. I’ve already tried. It’s not happening.”
“But you haven’t tried everything. You know you haven’t tried everything.”
We warred gazes, but I was not backing down. My aunt was crossing a line here, and she knew it.
“Nora,” Izzy said gently.
“Don’t you Nora me,” she snapped. “I’m tired of being the bad guy. You know as well as I do her behavior isn’t healthy.”
Izzy cleared her throat.
I should have known this was coming given the circumstances of Constance’s passing. And I knew my aunts were worried about me. They had raised me from the age of five when my parents were killed in a car accident. You could say it was their job to worry about me. But I had just passed my thirty-first birthday. There had to be boundaries. I was an adult now.
I challenged Izzy with a look. She cringed but carried on. “Brynn, your aunt Nora isn’t wrong. We know you’ve been through a tragedy. A terrible loss. And everyone is entitled to having time to heal, but we’re worried you might be stuck, darling. And that you might need a little help getting unstuck.”
I wouldn’t say I was stuck. I was changed. There was a difference.
Recently I had come to a decision about how I wanted to live my life going forward. I hadn’t, however, told my aunts about that decision yet. They would not react well.
“We are your family, Brynn. Don’t shut us out. There isn’t any problem we can’t solve together.”
I suspected she intended to say more, but all of the sudden a strange look came over her face.
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear what? What are you talking about?” Nora slapped the armrests of her chair. “You were doing so well! Don’t stop now! You were saying Nora’s right and . . .”
“No, I’m being serious,” Izzy said, holding up her hand. “Listen.”
I took a breath, trying to focus on whatever it was my aunt was talking about, but all I could hear was the blood rushing in my ears.
Nora slowly sat up in her chair. “Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”
What was going on with the two of them?
I took another breath and tried to refocus my energy. This was obviously important if they were willing to drop the issue we all had been dancing around for months.
I closed my eyes.
I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary at first, but then it came to me.
It was a soft trilling.
Soft because I was hearing it from a distance, but louder than it should have been. Probably because there were so many of them making the steady hum.
“Come on,” Nora said, sweeping to her feet.
Izzy and I followed her around the side of the house, down the porch steps, and into the back garden.
Nora’s garden was a sanctuary. There was no better word to describe it. Even though she tended to it daily, it had a wild feel, lush and overgrown. It was the type of place where you wanted to dance in the moonlight, trailing your fingers over flowers, or laze away a hot summer’s day listening to the wind rustle in the trees.
Today, though, that feeling had been replaced with something else. It was a small sensation, like catching the faintest whiff of smoke on the wind, but it was there, and it felt almost sinister.
“I don’t like this,” Izzy said, looking up to the window of the room where Constance had stayed.
The sound swelled as we got closer.
Nora pointed. “There, by the thyme.”
I looked over to the cluster of tiny purple flowers. It was late in the year for the herb to be blooming, but the rhythm of the season couldn’t compete with Nora’s skills.
I stepped forward carefully.
It was hard to spot them at first, but they were there.
Toads.
Twenty, maybe thirty of them, right beneath the window of Constance’s room.
Izzy, Nora, and I exchanged looks.
Toads gathering like this where someone had died? That wasn’t something we could ignore.
“We need to bring one of them inside,” Nora said firmly.
No one moved.
“Brynn.”
“Why me?”
“Because,” Izzy said, waving a hand to shoo me toward them, “toads like you.”
“Toads like me?”
She nodded vigorously. “You were always playing with them as a child.”
“I never played with toads.” I put my hands on my hips. “And I’m pretty sure no toad has ever liked me.”
Right then a fat little toad flopped itself onto my boot. “Really?” I asked, looking down at the big-eyed creature.
The toad blinked.
“You have been chosen,” Izzy said happily.
I squatted down to get a better look at the little guy. “What do you say? Do you want to be the one to come inside?”
The toad blinked again.
“Stop chatting with the beast and pick him up,” Nora snapped. “This is serious.”
I looked up at my aunt. Her expression mirrored her words.
I would have had a tough time explaining to an outside observer what it was we were doing scooping up a toad on a bright autumn morning the night after a woman had died, but not being able to explain our behavior was hardly a new experience for me growing up the way I had, in the family I had.
Outsiders always had questions.
Like how did my aunts always know when someone was at the door before the bell rang? Or how did Nora keep her flowers blooming long past the time when everyone else’s had died? Why was it the fire raged when one of us was upset? Or a clear sky clouded over when one of us was sad?
The explanation was simple, but no one would ever believe it.
Magic.
Enchantments and conjurations. Spells and incantations. Divinations and charms. All the hocus-pocus old wives used to speak of in hushed tones by the fire. My aunts could do all of those things.
They could do them because they were witches.
I was too.
Or at least I used to be.