a witchcraft mystery 08 - a toxic trousseau (34 page)

“I don’t have the best track record when it comes to little old ladies,” I admitted. “I never think they’re capable of something so . . . violent.”

She wagged a finger in my direction. “Well, now, you’ll need to rectify that way of thinking, wouldn’t you agree? No way for someone in your position to be acting.”

She chuckled and continued to speak while decorating the already sugar-topped cupcakes with little marzipan apples. “I tell you what, running a cupcake shop—everyone comes in here at some point or another. I hear
all
the neighborhood gossip. So one day Cody comes in here, all upset, poor thing. I fed him a cupcake—one of Renee’s
special
fairy cakes—and he told me the whole story: that he’d been having an affair, and now he had to steal a trousseau from the Rodchester House. Mrs. Morgan had
found out about it and was blackmailing him—but she also promised to pay his girlfriend a pretty penny, and Scarlet really needed the money.”

“There’s a lot of that going around. Autumn needed money, too—was that just so she could stay where she was, with rent increases?”

Renee nodded. “That, and the fact that she had spent a fortune on inventory she was having a heck of a time unloading—I mean, really, who wants an Edwardian dress with a bustle? They’re fun to look at, but to spend thousands on? I don’t think so. Also, she was paying out a lot of cash trying to rid herself of a family curse. Imagine that—then she goes and buys the contents of that trousseau without even realizing its connection to her own family! She thought it was just a bunch of old clothes.”

“Why did you send Autumn to speak with Jamie about lifting the curse?”

“I brought her some cupcakes one day, hoping to encourage her to move her store out so I could expand into that space. I didn’t even realize she had the trousseau until she insisted on showing me upstairs. I could tell right away this was no average trousseau. She sat right there on the floor, clad in that beautiful gown, and started crying and telling me she was suffering under a curse. I still hadn’t put it all together, but I figured there was something very special about this trousseau, some reason dear Mrs. Morgan would orchestrate its theft and then turn around and sell it to Autumn. So I told Autumn I knew a man who could help with her curse. I hoped she’d spill the beans.”

“But then she died.”

“Exactly. Can you
imagine
?” She sighed and rearranged some minicupcakes on a tiered display plate. “At first I thought perhaps she had been right after all, that there
was
some sort of terrible curse on her family. But I wanted the opportunity to look through the trousseau at leisure—”

“So you kept the police from thoroughly investigating her store.”

She winked and gave me a huge smile. “I offered them cupcakes—no one refuses cupcakes, am I right? Simple enough banishing spell. They looked around a little, but they could sense they weren’t welcome.
Anyway
”—she sounded slightly annoyed that I had interrupted her story—“I wanted to look through the trousseau at my leisure, and guess what I found?”

I waited.

“Guess,”
she urged.

“Oh! Sorry—thought that was rhetorical. Um . . . I don’t know . . . old stockings full of arsenic dye?”

She looked peeved. “It’s no fun if you’re not even going to
try
. No, I found this.”

Renee opened a cookie jar and pulled out a very old, yellowed piece of paper encased in a plastic sleeve. She handed it over.

The letterhead was from an auction house in San Francisco. A list, written in faded ink, enumerated the contents of
An Intact Trousseau, Beatrice Beech, circa 1890s.
At the bottom of the long list of gowns, lingerie, and linens was
One lacrimatory, thought to have been added subsequent to the demise of the young lady
.

“A lacrimatory,” I said, looking up at Renee.

“Can you
imagine
? I don’t give a damn—pardon my
French!—about old clothes. But a lacrimatory? That’s a whole different batch of cupcake batter, if you catch my drift. They’re adorable! I collect them. Have quite the assortment, right next to my little souvenir teaspoons.”

“How did you figure out it was on the dog collar?”

“Got one of Jamie’s crazy Russian psychics to read for me. She kept seeing a dog bone; I couldn’t figure it out, until I remembered you had taken Autumn’s dog.” She shrugged. “I sat right down and had a lemon chiffon fairy cake and pondered, and then I remembered about those charms Autumn was forever attaching to the poor dog’s collar.” I blew out a breath, wondering where this left us. Yes, she had interfered with a police investigation, broken into Autumn’s apartment—but then, so had I—and ordered a lackey to steal a dog collar with a lacrimatory. But she hadn’t killed anyone—that had been Mrs. Morgan’s doing. So what was going on?

“Lily, think about this. You don’t have to work for Aidan. You have other choices.”

“Such as?”

“Working for me.”

I laughed.

“I’m serious. Aidan is weak. He’s off now looking for a fountain of youth, if you can believe that. But as we both know . . .”

I leaned forward, wondering what we both knew.

She cocked her head. “There’s no such thing.”

“Oh. Oh, right.”

She narrowed her eyes and focused on me, as though trying to read my mind. “You’re saying there
is
a fountain of youth?”

“Heck if I know,” I said with a shrug. “Frankly, I’m not even all that sure about vampires.”

Renee gave me a strange look. She pushed a pink cupcake across the top of the case. It was sprinkled with red-and-white striped crumbles.

“A new flavor. Peppermint Patty. Try it.”

“I’m good at the moment, but thank you. No more eating between meals or I won’t fit into my own vintage clothes anymore.”

“Is that a crack about my weight?”

I had to laugh. It was all so absurd. We were talking about Autumn’s untimely death, a toxic trousseau, and facing some sort of supernatural showdown for the soul of San Francisco, but Renee was talking about cupcakes and her weight.

“I promise you,” I said, “that was
not
a crack about your weight. I would think you were a beautiful woman, except for the fact that you’re trying to take over this city.”

“Why do you assume I’d be any worse for San Francisco than is Aidan Rhodes, of all people? Who died and made
him
dictator?”

That was a good question. Why would I assume Renee was less equipped than Aidan to deal with this city? When I first met Aidan, I thought a woman should be in charge. So here was a woman ready, willing, and apparently able to mount a challenge. And she made a hell of a cupcake. So what was I so afraid of?

Rain turning to blood. A cup of snakes. The coming storm.

I couldn’t get the visions out of my mind. I was going to have to trust my admittedly weak third eye on this one: Renee was no good, cupcakes or no.

“I guess I’ll take the devil I know,” I said.

“I mean that quite literally, though. Do you know
who died and made him boss? You should ask him that. This is the way of it, Lily: The weak are taken out for the good of the herd. There can only be one leader.”

“We’re talking metaphorically, here, right?”

She paused for a long time before smiling sweetly and saying, “Whatever else could I possibly mean?”

*   *   *

“It has begun,” said Aidan.

He had flabbergasted me by walking into Aunt Cora’s Closet immediately after I had returned with the dogs. And Sailor arrived right behind him.

I had never before invited Aidan into my apartment. But we needed to talk in private. So I left Maya in charge of the shop, and now our trio sat in my small living room: Sailor and I on the couch, Aidan in a chair facing us.

Oscar, still nervous around Aidan, had gone to hide in his cubby over the fridge.

I told Aidan and Sailor about my encounter with Renee, and what happened with Loretta’s collar.

“‘It has begun’? Isn’t that a little . . . melodramatic?” I glanced over at Sailor’s unsmiling face, then back at Aidan. “I mean, know I was the one who first suggested it, but I guess I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that the big showdown we’re all so afraid of is with the cupcake lady.”

“Don’t underestimate her,” said Aidan. “She’s excellent at cloaking. We really don’t have any way of knowing how powerful she is until she launches the challenge. And now she has the lacrimatory.”

“If it’s that powerful, why didn’t I feel it earlier?”

“It’s not that powerful by itself, but it seems Renee’s been tracking and collecting lacrimatories for some
time. And as a group . . . yes, they’re powerful. There’s a lot of energy in grief. And she has the residual salts from the tears, of course. You should know, better than I, how those could be used as a basis for powerful spells. Renee’s abilities to brew might rival your own.”

I chafed at that idea—I’d gotten used to being the acknowledged local expert on brewing. I couldn’t scry worth a darn, and my soothsaying left a lot to be desired. But I could brew. But it looked like there was some new competition in town.

“Still,” I said. “I guess it’s the cupcakes that are throwing me.”

“I’m going to assume you never saw
Ghostbusters
,” said Sailor. “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you’re killed by a puffy marshmallow man or a bad guy with a gun: You’re just as dead.”

We all let that sink in for a moment.

“All right,” said Sailor, standing. “Now that we know a little more about who, and what, we’re dealing with, I’m going to go talk with my relatives. The Rom will be able to rally some troops.”

“Good idea,” said Aidan. And then, as though it pained him to say it: “Thank you.”

Sailor nodded, gave me a kiss on the cheek, squeezed my hand, and left.

“While he’s doing that,” Aidan said, sitting forward in his chair, “you and I should divide up the folks in the satchel and start making the rounds, make sure people fall in line.”

“Sure, good idea. But first, I had a couple of questions. What was Autumn Jennings’s name doing in your satchel?”

“She asked me for a favor. A long time ago.”

“What was it?”

“That’s confidential, as I’m sure you’re aware. It was nothing outrageous—most people want help with their finances, or love life, or both. But she was keeping an eye on a few things for me, until . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“Until what?”

“She started asking others for help. It’s not done.”

“Jamie mentioned Autumn originally found him through Renee.”

Aidan inclined his head. “I didn’t know it was Renee at the time, obviously. But I knew she had gone elsewhere. She was impatient.”

“So you cut her off?”

“Not exactly, but she knew I wasn’t happy. I believe she was looking for you, perhaps to try to win you over to her side. Probably assumed since you had vintage clothes in common, you had a basis for an alliance.”

“She filed a lawsuit against me!”

“Leverage. She thought she could use it as leverage, I believe. As I said, she was impatient.” He paused. “The truth is, I haven’t been tending well to everyone lately. As I told you before, my powers have been compromised, and I’ve had to concentrate on the most important threats. These petty concerns are the least of my problems—until folks start getting out of line. That’s why I asked for your help while I was out of town.”

“That satchel is a lot of work.”

“That it is.”

“Listen, I wanted to tell you something, Aidan. Sailor proposed.”

Aidan looked at me for a long moment. Maybe Renee
was right; he looked younger and healthier than he had last time I saw him. Had he gone somewhere looking for youth and vitality? Now didn’t seem the best time to ask. I read anger but also sadness in those mysterious, too-blue eyes. They were as cool and beckoning as a turquoise Caribbean Sea. The kind with an invisible riptide that could pull you into the depths before you even realized what was going on.

“Proposed what, exactly?”

“Marriage, of course,” I said, barely refraining from rolling my eyes.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“I sincerely hope you told him no.”

I just looked at him.

Aidan gave a disgusted toss of his head and threw his hands in the air. “What
is
it with you two? You’re like a couple of hormonal teenagers. I rue the day I introduced you; I tell you that much.”

I shrugged.

“What did I tell you about your chances in a romantic relationship?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You think you aren’t subject to the same rules as the rest of us?”

“Not in this case. Besides, who made up those rules?’

“No one made them up, any more than someone ‘made up’ gravity. It’s just the way it is.”

I shrugged again. “Your concern is that the relationship will make me vulnerable, right? But I’m powerful enough that a little chink in my armor isn’t going to do me in.”

A ghost of a smile played on Aidan’s lips. After a moment he reached up and very slowly started clapping.

“Well, I have to hand it to you, Lily. When you first arrived in San Francisco you were unsure of yourself, afraid of your own power. And now here you are, considering yourself so powerful that it doesn’t matter who challenges you.”

“I’ve learned a lot since I arrived. And I’ve been introduced to the Ashen Witch, my guiding spirit.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s her nemesis that’s giving you this confidence—or dare I say it: this
arrogance
.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I told you, you defeated the demon known as Deliverance Corydon too easily. She left a bit of herself with you.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to accept that possibility. Deliverance was evil incarnate.

“I was worried about it,” Aidan continued. “The first time I felt it was when we combined our powers that time on the Golden Gate Bridge, do you remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

“I felt it then. A definite vibration . . .” He studied me, as if he could read the future in my face. Then he nodded and let out a long breath. “Maybe you’re right, at that, Lily. Magic is all about powers in balance. The male, the female, the androgyne. Good and evil, the ancient and the contemporary.
Coincidentia oppositorum.
”