3
“What happened to you?” Yvette asked when Jacob walked in the door smelling like a brewery. All she knew was that Noel had picked up the kids and that Jacob was with Drew, but she didn’t know why. All her calls to his phone had gone straight to voice mail. “And why didn’t you call me back?”
“My phone is dead.” He placed it on the coffee table in front of her, showing the black screen. He glanced around. “Where are the kids?”
“In Skye’s room. They’re playing a game and talking about what kind of dog they want.” Yvette stood and went over to her husband despite the fumes. “I think you need a shower.”
“There’s no doubt about that. But first I could really use a cup of coffee. It’s been one heck of a day.”
“You go to the shower. I’ll get the coffee,” Yvette said, wrinkling her nose. Besides the scent, she wasn’t excited for the kids to see their father looking so disheveled after he’d no-showed to pick them up from school.
“Thanks.”
While Jacob disappeared into the bedroom, Yvette made his coffee and then went to wait for him.
When he emerged in a fresh pair of jeans with wet hair, she handed him the mug.
Jacob took a long swig and then said, “You’re a lifesaver.”
Yvette curled up in a chair and waited for him to fill her in.
“I was arrested for drunk driving,” he blurted before sitting on the end of the bed, looking like he wanted to sleep for a week.
Yvette sat up straight, hardly believing her ears. “You were… drunk? While picking up the kids?!”
“No. I had one beer with lunch, two hours before I left the brewery.” He went on to explain the tap explosion and then how he’d run a newly installed stop sign. “The cop, some dude named Crooks, arrested me without even testing my blood alcohol level.”
“Crooks? Who’s that?” Yvette asked, trying to place the man. Keating Hollow was a small town. Everyone pretty much knew everyone else.
“Some new guy. Drew was pissed and wrote him up for not following procedure. Then we had to get the Sequoia out of impound before I could get home. The paperwork…” He shook his head. “And with my phone dead, I didn’t know you were calling. I thought Noel would fill you in.”
Yvette shook her head. “She said she hadn’t had time to get any details from Drew as she was dealing with her own crisis. A wedding party canceled last minute, and she had to call all the vendors to let them know the wedding was off. It sounds like a nightmare. So now, not only is she not getting the rest of the wedding fee, but her inn is empty for the weekend, too.”
“That’s awful. And the brewery is going to be out of commission while they get the taps fixed.” Jacob downed the rest of his coffee. “Is it Friday the 13 th or something? Seems like there’s some serious bad luck going around.”
Yvette slumped back into her chair. “I guess I’ll stop complaining about slow sales. At least nothing exploded. Our only issue is that we only sold a couple of books today. And Hanna bought those when she stopped by to drop off pastries for the coffee bar this morning.”
“Maybe the issue is the canceled wedding,” Jacob offered. “If they were filling the inn, that would explain the lack of tourists.”
“Partly, maybe, but Keating Hollow still has a lot of short-term rentals. Seems unlikely all of those would have been for the wedding, but I suppose it’s possible.” Yvette’s phone buzzed. She glanced down to see a text chain that included all her sisters.
The first message was from Faith. A pipe burst at the spa. Out of commission for the foreseeable future. Heavy sigh.
It was followed by a response from Abby. Are the Townsends cursed? The brewery’s taps are down, and it’ll be a week at least before we can get the right parts to get them up and running again.
I think we are, Hope chimed in. Chad’s music store was broken into last night. Thousands of dollars of inventory was stolen or destroyed. It’s devastating.
Noel replied with the troubles at the inn next.
Yvette stared at her phone, unable to comprehend what was happening. “I think we have been cursed,” she said, still staring at the phone.
“Why do you think that?” Jacob asked as he rose and pulled on a T-shirt.
She handed him the phone so he could read for himself. Frowning, he looked up. “Why would anyone curse us? And who?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Yvette took her phone back and tapped out her own message. Emergency meeting at Dad’s? Half hour? Something’s seriously wrong, and we need to get to the bottom of this.
The replies were swift. Every Townsend sister would be there.
“We’re going to need a lot of pizza,” Jacob said.
Yvette nodded, texted that they’d take care of dinner, and asked Abby to let their dad know he was being invaded.
On it! Abby texted back.
Less than an hour later, Jacob drove up the tree-lined drive that led to the Townsend family home. Twinkle lights shone from each of the trees, and it looked just as magical as it always did. Yvette was in the passenger seat, and the kids were in the back. They parked behind a line of cars, and before they could all climb out of the vehicle, Clay and Drew were there to unload the pizzas.
Yvette herded her kids into the house and then out to the backyard where all their cousins were hanging out with Clair, her father’s fiancée. And when Silas and Levi showed up right after she did, all the kids ran over to them, not caring at all that the two men were big-time famous movie and rock stars. All they cared about was the fact that their uncles were back in town.
“I didn’t know you guys were here,” Yvette said to Levi. “Did you just get back in town?”
Levi nodded. “Hope told me what’s going on, and we decided to come by and help keep the kids occupied so you all can meet without interruptions.” Levi was Hope’s half brother, and as far as the Townsends were concerned, he’d been folded into the family just like Hope had been. Silas was his fiancé.
“Thank you!” Yvette threw her arms around Levi and blew Silas a kiss. “You two are incredible, you know that, right?”
Levi let out an embarrassed chuckle. “Just trying to help.”
Yvette kissed him on the cheek. “There’s pizza in the kitchen, and don’t be afraid to come get any of us if the kids get out of line, okay?”
“We’ve got it,” Silas said and winked at her. Then he got a serious expression on his face when he said, “Go on in. It sounds like you all have a lot to discuss.”
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh and headed back inside. She found Jacob sitting at the end of the couch holding a plate with two slices of her favorite pizza and a diet soda. She gave him a grateful smile and sat on the arm of the couch, leaving room for her siblings.
Lincoln Townsend walked into the room just as everyone settled in. They all had pizza, but no one was really eating it. After the day they’d had, no one was particularly hungry.
“It appears we have a problem,” Lincoln said. “Is there anyone here who hasn’t seen their business suffer a major event?”
Yvette raised her hand as she looked around at all her sisters and their husbands. No one else had their hand in the air. She cleared her throat. “Business has been nonexistent the last couple of days, but other than that, the store is fine. No break-ins and no flooding at least.” She grimaced as she looked at Faith and tried not to imagine her beloved spa soaked with water.
“No exploding taps?” Abby asked.
“Nope. The espresso machine was just fine when I left it today,” Yvette said, referring to the coffee bar section of the bookstore. “No smashed inventory. No event cancellations. Am I missing anything?”
Hunter, Faith’s husband, cleared his throat. “On the way over, I got a call that the custom home we’re building collapsed.” He was a contractor and had become one of the town’s go-to builders. If word of this got out, people would be hesitant to hire him for future jobs.
Yvette sucked in a sharp breath as she pressed her palm to her chest. “Is everyone all right?”
He nodded. “Luckily the crew had already left for the day, but it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.”
“What happened? Do you know?” Lincoln asked him.
Hunter’s face was full of fury as he spit out, “Deliberate sabotage. A major support beam was cut with a chain saw.”
“Who is doing all this?” Hope asked as she stood and paced the living room. “Every single one of our small businesses have been targeted.”
“I’d say that Gabrielle hired someone on the outside to target us,” Yvette said. “But that doesn’t explain the wedding cancellation or the lack of tourists in Keating Hollow.”
“Yeah, my lotions and potions business hasn’t seen a single sale in two days,” Abby added. “And that includes my online store. That’s just… unheard of. How could she have sabotaged that?”
“It could have been a spell,” Noel said. “She could have had us cursed. She’s done it before.”
Lincoln shook his head. “She can’t cast from prison. And it would cost a lot of money to pay someone to do it for her. Money she doesn’t have. Besides, your mother has often made terrible choices, but she has never been purely spiteful. Even the last spell she cast was just to get Abby’s attention. This…” He waved his hand around the room. “It’s something else entirely.”
Yvette wasn’t so sure she agreed with her father. Gabrielle was in prison for using illegal spells. If the experience had exacerbated her bitterness, anything was possible. She stood and said, “Maybe one of us should go see her and find out.”
“Not it!” Abby said, a surly expression on her face.
“I’m not going either,” Noel chimed in.
“I barely even know her,” Hope said.
Yvette met Faith’s gaze.
Faith gave her a tiny shake of the head. “I have enough on my plate. Dealing with her might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
Yvette nodded, understanding completely. Faith had triplets and now had to deal with a flooded business. She sighed. “I guess that leaves me.”
“If you go, I’ll go with you,” Lincoln said.
“Thanks, Dad. That’s—” Suddenly something on the mantel started to glow with shimmering magic. “What in the world is that?”
Lincoln walked over and plucked the object off the mantle. As soon as he touched it, the magic vanished and he was left holding a book.
A children’s book.
The Witch of Redwood Grove .