Jessica
To enhance thy beauty in his eyes, serve him garlic.
Goody Fletcher, Book of Useful Household Tips
Walking around train tracks in the semidarkness, looking for wolves, was not my idea of a fun night out.
But when Derrick reminded me of the window in my office that was stuck open—the one Pye used to get in and out of my shop—and how much a cat would look like prey to a wolf, I agreed to a short walk along the tracks.
Not that I thought Pye was in any actual danger, especially given that he was currently trapped in a box in Derrick’s rental car. I didn’t believe there was a wolf, and if there was, I knew Pye could take care of himself. I’d once seen him defend himself against an entire pack of raccoons.
But it never hurt to be sure.
Fortunately there was no sign of wolf paw prints, something Derrick was apparently an expert in.
“So are you going to call them?” I asked him as I used the flashlight on my phone to pick my way through the rocks and weeds back to where he’d parked at the West Harbor train station (designed to look like a quaint Colonial farmhouse, even though thousands of commuters used it every day to get to and from the city).
“Call who?”
“Your supervisors, or whoever, and tell them about the wolf, and Rosalie and the Harvest Princess thing.”
“Oh.” He was using the flashlight on his own phone to scan the brush on the other side of the tracks. He hadn’t said what, exactly, we were going to do if we found the wolf. Call Animal Control? Cast a spell over it? Unclear.
What was clear, however, was that he was sticking close to my side in case the wolf did reappear. That kind of old-fashioned chivalry was definitely something that had been lacking in the guys I’d met lately through dating apps.
“I might. But I think Esther is right about the Harvest Princess. It’s only a beauty pageant,” he continued. “Harmless.”
When I snorted in response, he glanced my way. “You think I’m wrong?”
“Beauty pageants are never harmless—especially a beauty pageant run by Rosalie Hopkins. Free cookies aside, I think she’s up to something.”
“The timing is a little concerning,” he agreed, “especially with it being the same night as the Hunter’s Moon.”
I shivered involuntarily. “Would you please stop calling it that?”
“Why? That’s what it’s called. The Hunter’s Moon symbolizes abundance—a time when people celebrate the harvest and all they’ve reaped as they prepare for the change that’s—”
“Okay, now you’re just creeping me out.”
“How can that creep you out? You’re a witch.”
“I’m a cottage witch,” I reminded him. “I make things look nicer, and people feel better about themselves. I don’t mess around with reapings . . . or wolves.”
“I think you underestimate yourself.”
Even though it was so dark, I saw his eyes flash at me—just for a moment—almost as intensely as the few stars that were winking above.
Then he said, “Watch out for that gravel there,” and reached out to take my wrist and guide me over the deadly gravel. “I wouldn’t want you to turn an ankle in those boots.”
“Yeah, thanks.” My voice was as unsteady as my feet since I was still a bit shaken by the compliment—and the zing! of my heartstrings at the feel of his fingers, though this time he was touching me through the fabric of my coat, and I knew the sensation was all in my head. “Next time we go tracking a wild animal, I’ll try to dress more appropriately.”
“At least don’t wear such high heels. You know, I don’t think we’re going to find anything out here.” Derrick looked out across the darkness surrounding the train tracks and heaved a sigh. The temperature had fallen since the sun had set, so his breath fogged up in front of him. “We should probably call it a night and head home.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. I’d been yearning for a hot shower and a glass of wine for hours. And maybe a little something more. “Do you want to stop for something to eat along the way? My friend Dina asked us to join her and her boyfriend, Mark, at his family’s restaurant.”
What Dina’s most recent text had actually said was:
LegalBeagle: Get over here! The special tonight is branzino. It’s selling out fast, but Mark says he can hold some for you and your fake boyfriend if you can get here by nine.
“Not sure going out is the best idea,” he said. “Especially given that your cat is in a box on my front seat.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Hmmm. Was he really worried about Pye, or was this a sex invite? It had been a long time since I’d made it to the sex stage of a relationship with a guy. Usually we didn’t make it past Getting to Know You coffees because it became so glaringly obvious one of us had lied on our dating profiles (Me. Always me. About not being a witch).
“I have some lasagna I can heat up,” I offered. “From Sunday night. Mama Giovanni always makes sure I go home with some, in addition to her gravy.”
“That sounds good,” he said.
Yes, it did. It did sound good. So did the idea of those lips and fingers of his on my naked body.
Which was how we found ourselves a little while later back at my place, after me having texted Dina back:
Nix the branzino. Fake BF wants to stay in.
Her reply was classic Dina:
LegalBeagle: Wooo, girl! Ride that biker boy!
The world works in funny ways. If you had told me a week ago that I’d be getting dinner ready for myself and my fake witch boyfriend, I’d have fallen over laughing.
But here I was, the height of domesticity, giving Derrick a tour of the upstairs of my house as Mama Giovanni’s lasagna warmed up in the oven (I said “the height of domesticity.” Just because I’m a cottage witch doesn’t mean I can actually cook).
“So this is my parents’ old bedroom,” I said, flicking on the light. “You’re welcome to stay in here, but you might find it a little . . . crowded.”
That’s because even though the second-floor bedroom was huge, I’d converted it instead to a sewing room, since the thought of banging guys in my parents’ bedroom was deeply unsexy.
Now, in addition to the floor-to-ceiling shelves where my dad had once kept all his nonfiction World War II books, and on which I now stored containers of all my best buttons, lace, elastic, ribbon, and thread, the room contained my sewing machine and a half dozen dressmaker’s dummies, each garbed in a nearly finished gown that I intended to deliver to its owner sometime this week.
“The sofa folds out into a bed,” I said, as Derrick stared skeptically into the chaotic sea of pale pinks, purples, and black sequins. “It’s really comfortable. I sleep on it when my parents come back to town to visit.”
“Thanks,” he said, looking dubious. “But the couch downstairs is fine—”
Ouch. I could see I’d made a strategic error by showing him this room first. But I hadn’t wanted to seem too eager.
“Or there’s my brother’s room.” I led him across the hall, Pye following at our heels, because Derrick was his new favorite person.
This was not only because I’d thrown him into a box to transport him home, but because I’d also locked his cat door so that he was now trapped inside for the night. Although I doubted the existence of the wolf, and trusted Pye to win in a battle with it if it turned out I was wrong, I wasn’t going to risk it.
I threw open the door to Ethan’s room. “My little brother’s in grad school overseas and doesn’t really have anywhere to store his old stuff, so I told him I’ll hold on to it until he lands somewhere permanently.”
Derrick glanced appraisingly at Ethan’s old soccer trophies and plaid wallpaper. “I’ll leave my things here,” he said, and slung his duffel bag down onto the single twin bed. “But I’ll still probably sleep on the couch downstairs. That way I can keep an eye on the doors.”
“I hardly think that’s necessary, but okay.” I was trying not to show how nervous I was that he was standing so near the door to the one room in the house I hadn’t shown him—my bedroom.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t entertained other male guests in there before. But none of them had ever carried me over my threshold because my knee hurt, or cured that hurt with his touch.
And he’d just announced he’d be sleeping on the couch.
Which was fine, just fine. I wasn’t at all stressed by that fact, or the fact that Dina kept texting, along with various fruit- and vegetable-shaped emojis:
LegalBeagle: Any action yet????
Why did I have such nosey friends?
“Well, I’m sure you’ll want to get washed up before dinner,” I said, showing him the Jack and Jill bathroom I’d battled over my whole life with my brother, and that, since I now owned it, I’d had renovated into a luxurious spa complete with a rainfall showerhead.
Derrick didn’t look the least impressed by my newly installed radiant floor heating or subway tile, however. He only said, “Thanks,” and disappeared into Ethan’s room, closing the door behind him.
Okay, then.
By the time he reappeared downstairs, I was in my best silk pajama set and kimono, having had my own quick shower in my parents’ old bathroom. I’d also set the dining table with the Limoges dinnerware my mother had left behind, lit the candles in the silver candlesticks my great-aunt Ruth had bequeathed me, put a Nina Simone record on my father’s vintage turntable, and reapplied my lip gloss half a dozen times.
When Derrick saw this, he looked stunned—though I wasn’t sure if it was because of my incredibly shiny lips or the romantic tablescape I’d created.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“Dinner.” I made the same motion with my hand that Vanna White made when she turned over the letters on Wheel of Fortune. I wasn’t sure if I was showing off the table or myself. Either way, Derrick looked impressed.
“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
“It wasn’t any trouble at all.” I always eat off of 24 karat gold-trimmed vintage plates from France that you have to wash by hand. “Did you find everything you needed up there?”
“I did, thanks.”
He certainly looked as if he had. He’d changed out of his black jeans and henley into . . . another pair of black jeans and henley. But these, just like the last, fit him like a glove.
“Would you like a cocktail?” I asked, in a huskier voice than I intended to. I cleared it. God, I sucked at seduction. “Wine? Beer?”
“What I’d really like is to get a look at your security system.”
“Security system?”
The expression on his face might have been a smile, if he ever smiled. “I know. Why would you have a security system? People in this town don’t bother locking their doors. But I thought I’d ask.”
“I told you, there’s no crime in West Harbor—except for the usual stuff in the summer, kids drinking on the beach and breaking into vacant homes. That kind of thing.”
“Jessica. You live a block from the beach.”
“Yes, but my home’s not vacant. And I do lock my doors. I even sprinkled salt across my threshold, like any decent witch—”
“What about protection against nonsupernatural entities?”
“Who would want to break in here? I don’t have anything worth stealing.” No one wants Limoges anymore. Great-Aunt Ruth’s candlesticks, maybe . . .
“What about the book?” he asked.
“What book?”
“The one written by the local woman. The grimoire the love spell came from.”
“Oh, that book. Don’t worry, I keep it in a safe space. No one will ever find it.”
Now Mark was texting me as well as Dina:
Scungilli: Use protection! You don’t know where that filthy warlock has been!
“Besides, I don’t know that Goody Fletcher was a local woman.” I really needed to switch off my phone. “My mom bought her book at an estate sale in East Harbor, but who knows where it was from originally.”
LegalBeagle: Mark, how many times do we have to tell you that the term witch is gender neutral?
Scungilli: You better hope for Jess’s sake he’s not gender neutral.
“Have you ever researched her?” Derrick asked.
“No, I never bothered. Records from that time period are impossible to find. There was a flood that destroyed most of the town records—”
“Yes, I know, in the early eighteenth century. Then there was the fire that took out most of the town in the early nineteenth century. And I’m not even going to mention the smallpox epidemic in the seventeenth century, or the influenza that wiped out half the population just after the First World War—”
I hesitated as I headed for the wine refrigerator. “What are you saying? You don’t think—”
“That every ninety years or so since it was settled by Europeans, a disaster of epic proportions befalls West Harbor? Yes, I do. And it’s overdue for another one, unless you and Esther can stop it.”
But if that was true, did that mean the rift had nothing to do with me? What about all of those people who’d nearly frozen to death out on the interstate during the blizzard Rosalie had summoned?
Pop! I’d been tugging on the cork of a bottle of pinot noir, and startled myself when it suddenly came free.
“But why?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “What did West Harbor’s early settlers do to put a curse on the town?” I poured two glasses of wine. “If it’s because they slaughtered or enslaved Native Americans, lots of towns in New England did that. Why aren’t Hartford or Greenwich facing a supernatural threat?”
“How do you know they aren’t?”
Thanks to the wall I’d had removed, I had a perfect view of him from my kitchen, prowling around the living and dining rooms, going up to each of my windows and making sure they were completely closed, the locks secured. What he didn’t know, of course, was that half the windows didn’t open at all. The frames were so old, I couldn’t find a carpenter who knew how to fix them.
“Well, obviously I don’t know. But I think I’d have heard about it.”
“Why? You never heard about this one until I told you.”
“Yeah . . . you have a point.”
Another text:
LegalBeagle: WTH, Jess, why am I only hearing just now from my brother that your car got destroyed by hail at his school today, and towed away by Hopkins Motors?
Scungilli: Jess, did you make a certain someone mad again?
I texted back:
Can’t talk right now. I’ll call you later.
LegalBeagle: Jess, I don’t like this. What do you know about this guy? Who is he even working for?
Scungilli: Yeah, at least before he showed up, Rosalie wasn’t actively trying to kill you.
“Is this usable, or is that woodpile outside just for show?” Derrick was kneeling down in front of my fireplace and looking up the flue.
I crossed into the living room holding both the glasses of wine I’d poured. “Yes, of course the fireplace works. Why? Don’t tell me you think a demon is going to come flying down the chimney.”
“No,” he said, and began to push up his sleeves—enough to reveal that he had a tattoo on the inside of his right forearm, but not enough so that I could see what it was. “It’s cold outside. I thought I might build a fire.”
Drinks in front of a crackling fire with Derrick Winters? This was better than anything that had ever happened in my bedroom—better than anything I’d ever fantasized about happening there.
Even if my friends might not be particularly thrilled with the idea.
“Be my guest,” I said, trying my best to sound casual as I handed him one of the wineglasses. “Red okay?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Well, then.” I raised my glass, still trying to control my facial muscles. Be cool. Do not smile too much. “To the Bringer of Light.”
He clinked his glass to mine. “May her Spanish homework go well.”
Dammit. I not only smiled, I laughed. “Cheers.”