Page 3 of Witch and Tell
Thor’s younger sister Buffy popped from the other side of the counter, holding a collapsible fan in one hand and rubber bands in the other. “I’m making him another one.” A calculating look crossed her face. “It’s a warm day. Perhaps you’d like me to follow you around the store and fan you?”
“For a modest fee, of course,” I said. These kids were constantly on the prowl for money.
“Naturally. You would want to pay a poor little girl for her work, wouldn’t you?” Buffy actually batted her eyes.
“No, thank you. I’m fine. Is Ian in?”
Realizing she couldn’t turn a buck with me, Buffy retreated behind the counter. Thor picked up his comic book. “Nope.”
Ian’s stall was directly to the left of the cashier’s counter. I was relieved to feel the books’ energy as they murmured hellos only I could hear. I brushed fingers over a row of leather-bound spines with gold embossed titles and felt a tingle of magic rush through my palms as the books gasped and sighed. A treatise on alchemy lectured with a German-inflected accent.
“Books,” I whispered, “where is Ian?”
Gone, disparû, verschwunden, vanished, the books replied.
The books’ message wasn’t reassuring, but it was so good to hear their voices. Besides the drop in my ability to siphon magical energy from books, other strange things had been happening. Candles snuffed out by themselves. Mirrors refused to return my reflection for the span of a few blinks. Flowers deadened in their vases overnight, and I periodically smelled wafts of sulfur. And the crows—rivers of crows. They crowded the branches of the oak outside my bedroom window and cawed, even at night when they should be roosting.
Something—or someone—was stealing my magic, and I was unsure how to prevent it.
Rodney twisted around my ankles and rose to stand on his back legs so I could scratch his chin. He was an honored citizen in Wilfred and let in just about everywhere except the café, which, because of county health regulations, banned animals. That didn’t stop him from sneaking in from time to time to cadge a forkful of salmon.
“Josie, I was hoping I’d run into you. I just got back from an estate sale and have a few things that might interest you.”
Babe Hamilton stood outside Ian’s stall, holding a box. Her stall was stocked with vintage textiles. I’d already bought enough linen napkins to host dinner parties for twelve. A stranger could see Babe’s style in her chic eyeglasses and simple but well-cut dresses on her comfortable frame. I knew her taste from the amazing fabrics and old Frenchtorchons she somehow harvested within a few hours’ drive of Wilfred.
“Let me take that box,” I said. Babe was hardly elderly—I pegged her as in her sixties, a bit older than my mother—but linens were heavy. Besides, I wanted to get first dibs on whatever the box held.
“Thank you.” Babe led the way to her lavender-scented shelves. “You can set it on the floor.”
I rested the box next to a table holding chenille bedspreads. “Have you seen Ian lately?”
She wrinkled her brow. “No, come to think of it. Not here or at home.” Babe lived in the mobile home behind Lalena’s at the Magnolia Rolling Estates. “Not for a few days.”
The This-N-That’s doorbell chimed again, and Buffy and Thor’s voices greeted the newcomer. “Hi, Wanda. Will you require our help?” Buffy asked. “We offer guided tours at a reasonable price.”
Where did Buffy get her patter? She sounded like a shopping network host, not a seven-year-old girl.
“No thanks, you little shysters. I can find my way around just fine.”
I didn’t know Wanda well, just that she was the new custodian at the retreat center and Duke’s sister. Duke, Wilfred’s jack-of-all-trades extraordinaire, was a town fixture, and all it had taken was his recommendation to secure his sister a job.
My upbeat mood faded when I saw Wanda’s face. She stepped back, as if startled. She smiled, but it was the kind of smile someone affects when the dentist asks if everything’s okay. She pointed at my feet. “I see you have a cat.”
“That’s Rodney,” I said. I looked down. Rodney had vanished. “At least, he was here a second ago.” Something in her tone of voice led me to add, “He’s friendly.”
Wanda’s smile labored on. “Is that so?”
“Have you by chance seen Ian Penclosa up by the retreat center?”
Wanda shook her head and ran a finger through scruffy, steel gray hair. “We have a short-term visitor, a young lady, who came a few days ago. That’s it. But about the cat. Does it run free?” Her voice was remarkably clear and loud. Had she not gone into janitorial work, she might have had a career on the stage.
“Yes,” I said. What was she getting at? Babe shrugged and ducked back into her stall. “But like I said, he’s perfectly friendly.”
She made a sound I couldn’t quite read and backed for the door. Then she was gone. Whatever she’d come to the This-N-That for apparently could wait.
Very strange. Maybe she was allergic. I retreated to Ian’s stall to let the books soothe me with their murmurs of runes, ancient texts, and crystal balls. Rodney reappeared and leapt to Ian’s corner desk. He purred as I stroked his back and ran a finger up his tail. “I think Wanda’s afraid of you, little guy.”
Rodney flicked his tail, knocking one of Ian’s business cards from its holder, a plastic skull, to the floor. I picked it up. Ian. Where could he be?