Page 3 of Never Been Witched (Starfall Point #3)

“Oh… So I just called your grandparents’ olfactory senses into question?” the man said, wincing.

“Yes, but you’re not the first one to do that,” Alice assured him. “A very dear friend of mine compared it to air freshener in a funeral home restroom.”

The man threw his head back and laughed, while Arthur made a disgusted sniffing noise. “It’s a wonder the human species has continued, if this is what you call wooing.”

Alice frowned at him, shaking her head. She would not shush him again.

“Well, I guess ‘smell-blind’ is nicer than ‘air freshener of the living dead,’” the man hooted, extending his hand. “Collin Bancroft.”

“Alice Seastairs,” she replied, gripping fingers that were long, tapered, and warm against her skin. The name sounded familiar, but she wasn’t sure from where. “And I don’t think that’s exactly what I said.”

Collin chuckled. “I took poetic license.”

“That was not poetic,” Arthur insisted, from behind Collin. “That was pitiful.”

“Would you like to see the letter opener?” Alice asked, ignoring their historical heckler.

“Please.” Collin grinned at her, and the jellification of her knees only worsened.

It was such a smile. Warm. Kind , even. The sort of smile that launched movie careers and melted a thousand hearts.

And it didn’t matter what this man’s price range was; she was going to make sure he walked out of the shop with the letter opener.

It was worth it, if it put that expression on his face.

She would put the difference in the till out of her own pocket.

“My dad always swore it was a narwhal horn,” Collin told her as she pulled the blade from its green velvet display box.

The polished steel blade was set in a spiral-shaped handle made of some sort of bone or horn material.

Honestly, it looked like something one would buy in one of those fantasy shops in a mall that sold twenty-sided dice and pewter wizard figurines.

But Alice had liked the way it felt in her hand when she’d seen it in an estate sale.

It had felt significant , like it was going to be important to her life.

“I can’t guarantee that this is narwhal, as, oddly enough, I don’t have a lot of narwhal samples to compare it to,” Alice told him, making him laugh—a pleasant, low rumble that sang across her nerve endings like a cello player’s bow.

“It’s most likely a ram’s horn, or a goat.

I have a list of experts you could contact for testing if that sort of thing is important to you.

But I can date the maker’s mark on the hilt to Danbury’s, an English artisan who operated in Bath in the early nineteenth century.

It wasn’t a particularly prestigious workshop, but they created some interesting pieces. ”

“I like it,” Collin said, balancing the blade in his hand. “Reminds me of hanging out in my father’s office, waiting for him to finish work, pretending I was a pirate.”

Though it sounded like a happy memory, the look on Collin’s face was so sad in that moment, Alice’s heart lurched. Forget the letter opener. She was in very serious danger of giving this man her grandparents’ whole shop.

Oh, dear. This was inconvenient.

“I’ll take it,” he informed her. “No need to wrap it.”

He hadn’t even checked the price. She didn’t know whether that was a positive sign. But given that he didn’t balk when she handed him the velvet case that came with the blade (and the price tag), she proceeded with the sale.

“So, have you lived on the island long?” he asked as the phone rang again.

She tried very hard not to let the distress show on her face, knowing that she was going to pay for ignoring her grandparents’ calls.

Even if she explained that she’d been with a customer, they wouldn’t be appeased.

Alice knew this wasn’t a smart play. She just needed this conversation to last a little longer.

“Most of my life,” Alice replied as he handed her his credit card.

To her surprise, Collin frowned at that. “Really?”

And because she needed just a little more chaos in her life, three members of the Shaddow House Ghost and Friday Night Euchre Club (Riley and Caroline were still arguing about the coven’s name) chose that moment to burst through the door.

Mina was at the head of the pack, of course, as “she who could not be contained.” Also, despite being a teenager, she was considerably taller than both Riley and Caroline, so her legs were longer and cardio took less effort.

Mina had stopped at the door long enough to hitch heart-shaped aqua sunglasses into her messy chestnut bun, so Caroline crashed into her back.

“Oof, no sudden stops, sweetie,” Caroline said, rubbing her nose, which had smashed between Mina’s shoulder blades. Riley was a little faster on her feet and had sidestepped the collision, but seemed as shocked as Alice to find a customer in the shop before eight a.m.

“Alice, uh, we were just heading over to Starfall Grounds for rugalach… Everything OK?” Riley asked. She barely gave Collin a glance as she tried to subtly sidle between Alice and Arthur. She was getting better and better at that.

They’d become a coven unintentionally, which seemed apparent in their affectionately dubbing themselves the Shaddow House Ghost and Friday Night Euchre Club.

Riley’s hereditary magic had chosen Alice and Caroline to be her “witch support,” assisting the last of the Dentons in managing Shaddow House and its hundreds of ghostly residents.

Then Mina and her brother, Josh, had been appointed, well, junior members, with Mina gaining telekinetic magic similar to Riley’s.

Josh was the victim of matrilineal magic sexism, getting a more passive “listening” ability, more like Caroline’s ability to communicate with even the most recalcitrant of ghosts.

Alice still hadn’t figured out exactly what her particular magical talent was, or who would want to share in it.

So far, the most significant development she’d experienced was a sort of magical Bat-Signal, being able to sense when either Riley or Caroline was in distress from across the island.

“Yes, Collin here was just purchasing this lovely letter opener. What brings you here so early in the morning?” Alice asked, cutting her eyes toward Arthur.

Riley shook her head.

“Don’t bother. They can’t see me either,” Arthur chortled.

Mina responded to this by turning, behind Collin’s back, and pointing two fingers at her own eyes and then the same fingers at Arthur. The cabinetmaker gasped, as if deeply offended. “They can see me?”

“If I can, they can,” Alice told Arthur.

“‘Can’ what?” Collin asked.

“Um, get up this early in the morning,” Alice replied, smiling sweetly, even as lying to him made her feel an icy twinge of guilt. “As a friend group, we’re all trying to be a little more cheerful in the mornings. Did you need something, Riley?”

“Oh, nothing specific ,” Riley said, tilting her head toward Arthur. “Judith was walking past the shop earlier and told us she saw you having quite an animated conversation. We thought we’d stop in, see how your day was shaping up.”

Riley gave Arthur a pointed look, which probably meant that Judith Kim, one of the cornerstone members of Nana Grapevine, had seen her talking to herself through the shop window.

If that was the case, within the hour every woman in town over the age of fifty-five would know that Alice had been seen talking to herself through the shop window. Great.

“I told her you were probably just talking to your grandparents on speakerphone,” Caroline assured her.

“Thank you,” Alice told her. “You are a very good friend.”

“Nana Grapevine, neutralized ,” Riley said solemnly.

“I still can’t believe they see me,” Arthur grumbled. “After I specifically set out for them not to see me, so I could laugh at their expense. I suppose they can hear me too.”

Now it was Caroline’s turn to wave a hand at her ear, behind Collin’s back, and then point to Arthur. His ghostly mouth dropped open. “How rude!”

“They’re a little more talented than the average person,” Alice muttered quietly. “You weren’t prepared for it.”

“I’m sure they are,” Collin said, blinking at her. “Should I just come back at another time?”

Oh, this was becoming complicated.

Suddenly, Caroline’s eyes narrowed, and a smile of recognition bloomed on her face. “Wait, Collin! Collin Bancroft? Good to see you again.”

Alice frowned as Caroline threw her arms around Collin’s besuited middle.

Collin startled at Caroline’s casual affection—which was, honestly, something Alice had had to adjust to, herself—and then he chuckled, patting Caroline’s back and managing to back out of the hug without a single wrinkle to his shirt.

Alice was pretty sure she’d never seen Collin in her life. Why was Caroline hugging him?

“I know, it’s been a while,” Collin said. “I was trying to avoid unpleasant family scenes. You know how it goes.”

“Yes, I do. Collin’s family owns Forsythia Manor. He just purchased the Duchess,” Caroline supplied helpfully. “And he holds the record for failed beer-ordering attempts at The Wilted Rose.”

“With your brothers serving at the bar, I had some chance,” Collin muttered. “It was a numbers game.”

“He’s not wrong,” Caroline conceded.

“Collin Bancroft, as in those Bancrofts,” Alice said. “Ah.”

Her grandparents had warned her about the Bancroft family.

Repeatedly. The Bancrofts were greedy and hateful.

The Bancrofts were selfish and couldn’t be trusted.

The Bancrofts didn’t care who they stepped on to reach their own goals.

Then again, they’d also warned her about the Denton family and the Wilton family.