Bewitched, Bothered, and Biscotti: A Magical Bakery Mystery (10 page)

Lucy’s hand flew to her chest.

“Now, stop that. I’m fine. And they were just pumpkins. Lordy, did they make a mess!”
I forced a laugh.

No one joined me.

“You said someone is watching out for you,” Mimsey said.

I hesitated. Would they think I was crazy? Only one way to find out. “I heard a voice.
It told me to move left. No, it
demanded
.”

They stared at me. Finally, Lucy turned to Mimsey and said, “Do you think she’s clairaudient?”

“Hello? I’m sitting right here. And I’ve never heard voices before.”

A few beats passed; then Lucy patted me on the shoulder. “Well, let’s just be glad
you did this time, then.”

I nodded, silent. Should I tell her the rest? In for a dime and all that. “Lucy? One
other thing. The voice
that warned me? It sounded exactly like Nonna Sheffield.” Lucy’s mother and my grandmother.

I don’t know what reaction I’d expected, but Lucy simply inclined her chin thoughtfully
and said, “It wouldn’t surprise me, Katie. Of course she would want to protect you.”
She glanced at Mimsey and said, “As do we.” She stood up and strode into the living
room.

Mimsey rose and followed her. Raising my eyebrows, I trailed behind.

My aunt went to the coffee table and picked up her purse. From it she extracted a
bottle made of antique milk glass and handed it to me.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a house protection spell. If you were building a home we’d put it right into
the foundation, but it will work fine if you put it out someplace in this main room.”

I shook it and heard a soft rattle. “Can I open it?”

“It would be better if you didn’t. I sealed it with beeswax after setting the spell.”

“What’s in it?” I asked, curious as anything. We hadn’t talked about bottle spells
before.

“Salt, garlic, bay, and basil. Dill, sage, anise, and pepper.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “Salt and herbs. Very hedgewitchy.”

Lucy smiled. “It’s what I do, dear.”

Standing, I went to the built-in bookshelf and placed the bottle in the center. It
looked like an antique knickknack, but I could feel gentle power wafting from it.

Turning, I said, “Thanks.”

Mimsey said, “You should mark your property with the rune of protection. Algiz.”

There were so many possible ways to practice magic, and I’d barely dipped my toe into
ancient runes. “Which one is that again?”

“Basically a Y, with a middle prong in the middle of the vee. Looks kind of like a
pitchfork.”

“Right,” I said, remembering.

They turned and nodded to each other. “We’d better be going,” Lucy said.

“Be careful,” Mimsey said.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

I grabbed a purple Sharpie and walked them out to the Thunderbird. Lucy backed out
of the driveway, and they both waved as she accelerated around the corner. I opened
my mailbox. Mostly junk mail, as usual. The setting sun had painted the sky with dramatic
ribbons of orange and fuchsia, which lingered in the gloaming. Looking up, I dropped
a pizza coupon on the ground in case Margie or another neighbor was watching out the
window. I bent to pick it up and quickly pushed aside the nasturtium twining up the
mailbox post. With a few strokes of the Sharpie, I drew the rune mark that Mimsey
had suggested on the wooden post. The nasturtiums fell into place, effectively hiding
it.

I was protected on many fronts now, but there was something else I could do.

I went around the carriage house checking to make sure all the locks on the windows
and doors were firmly in place and secured. No harm in being practical on this plane
as well as others.

As I moved from the living room into my bedroom, I realized this was the first time
since I’d lived in Savannah that I’d felt any fear in my own home. The tiny clicks
of Mungo’s toenails on the wooden floorboards as he followed me were a comfort, though,
and I scooped him up, grateful for his company and for his canine super senses.

I showered off the run, letting the hot water wash away some of my tension as well.
After rubbing my short hair partially dry with a towel, I dressed in comfy sweats
and went into the kitchen. I washed up Mimsey’s plate and glass, as well as Mungo’s
bowl. Still not hungry, I poured myself yet another tall glass of iced tea and grabbed
my phone off the counter where it had been charging.

Mimsey and/or Lucy had left eight messages on my voice mail, each one more frantic
than the previous
one. I shook my head and hit
DELETE
until I got to the last one. It was from Declan. He’d called minutes before I’d returned
from my run.

“Hey, Katie. Just checking to see how you’re holding up after our adventure this morning.
Pretty crazy stuff, huh? Well, I’m sure you’re fine, probably out running or something,
so, you know, hi. Um, and I really had a good time today. You know—before the dead
guy and everything. So maybe you’d want to do it again? I like cooking for you. A
lot. Um, yeah. So okay, let me know. Bye.”

Sweet. The guy was downright adorably sweet. He had every confidence in my ability
to bounce back from finding a body under a bush. Of course, he had no knowledge of
druids or magic or secret societies.

Steve did, though. I carried the phone into my bedroom. Settling in amongst the pillows
piled up against the iron filigree headboard, I scrolled through the contact list
on my phone until I found Steve’s number.

Never mind that I already knew it by heart.

“Tell daddy dearest to call off his dogs,” I said when he answered.

A pause, and then, “Katie?” As if he didn’t have caller ID. “What are you talking
about?”

I looked down at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was almost eight thirty. “Please
tell your father and his Dragoh friends to leave me alone.”

“What happened?”

I had to give him credit: He didn’t waste time defending them. Once again I related
the tale of not one but eight pumpkins mysteriously falling from a wide balustrade
just as I was running underneath it. As I spoke I became painfully aware of how incredibly
silly
it sounded. I could just imagine what Declan would have to say if I were to try and
explain it to him. By the time I was done I was on my feet beside the bed, feeling
like an idiot. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it happened.”

“Oh, I believe you, Katie. Settle down and let me think about this for a minute.”

Pacing barefoot on the wooden floorboards, I managed to hold my tongue.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said after a few moments. “Let me talk to someone.”

“Great. That’s what got me in trouble in the first place.”

“Not my father. Someone else.”

“Who?”

“Will you please just trust me?”

“Because that’s worked out so well for me so far.” But as I said the words, I knew
Steve would never have intentionally put me into harm’s way.

“Then why did you call?” His words were flat.

“I thought you could help. I thought maybe you
would
help. If it weren’t for you, that group of druids wouldn’t be after me.” Well, heck.
That sounded silly, too.

“Okay, listen,” Steve said. “For one thing, I don’t know that they are ‘after you.’”

“Who else could it be? Your father obviously saw me as defying him.”

“Maybe. Or maybe the group as a whole created a magical barrier against anyone who
found out about them. In case you haven’t realized, they are
very
secretive, and always have been. There are long-standing wards to repel anyone who
gets too close. You could
have run into that. Or they may have cast another spell specifically for anything—or
anyone—who was curious about Lawrence Eastmore, since he was discovered this morning.”
He hesitated. “Or…”

“Or what?”

“It could be something else altogether.”

I snorted. “Pretty coincidental if that’s the case.”

“Not if it’s something about why Eastmore was killed in the first place.”

I stopped short, and Mungo looked up from where he lay dozing on the bedspread. “You
know why he was killed?”

“No.” There was real regret in his voice. “But I know someone who might have an idea.
I’ll talk to him, see if I can find anything out. In the meantime, keep your head
down.”

“Right.”

“Um, Katie?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you know to get out of the way?”

“Instinct, I guess.” I wasn’t ready to tell him my dead grandmother might have warned
me from beyond the grave.

He was silent for a long time, and I wondered what he was thinking. Then he said,
“Promise me you’ll call if anything else happens.”

“Okay.”

“Anything at all. Even if you’re just feeling nervous. Day or night.” The concern
in his tone made me kind of nervous. But it also made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy.

“I mean it about keeping your head down. I don’t want anything to happen to you, Katie-girl.”

“Me, either.”

I hung up. As irritated as I was with him, it was surprising how much better I felt
after hearing his voice.

I brushed my teeth and settled back into bed to read while my hair finished drying.
The waning gibbous moon rose outside my window, bright with encouragement. I sent
an intention out to the universe that as the light faded so too would any danger to
me or to the spellbook club.

As long as I stayed out of the Dragohs’ business, that shouldn’t be a problem, I thought
as I finally drifted off to sleep.

No problem at all.

An hour later I awoke with a start.

 * * *

For most of my life I’d suffered from a sleeping disorder. Some people might call
it simple insomnia. In fact, some people had—doctors and sleep experts and the like.
But it didn’t feel like regular insomnia. For one thing, even though I slept only
one hour a night, and sometimes not even that, I wasn’t very often tired. The reason
I’d taken up running in the first place was to burn off energy. Energy I shouldn’t
have had in the first place.

Once I’d begun practicing magic, the manic need for running had evaporated and my
sleep disorder had become a thing of the past. Well, mostly. I still had the occasional
sleepless night, and I still averaged only about five hours of sleep each twenty-four
hours. As a baker, that left me with plenty of time to have a real life on top of
crazy early hours at work and long days. Plus, since magic had taken the edge off,
I felt calm and peaceful instead of anxious and jittery.

Looking down at Mungo, I said, “Maybe I can get back to sleep in a little while. Right?”

Yip.

It wasn’t to be, though. I spent the rest of the night on the Internet researching
druids. At four a.m. I dressed in my usual work uniform of skirt, T-shirt, and sensible
shoes, and headed out to the backyard to snip a few stems of fragrant basil and parsley.
Back inside, I loaded Mungo into my bag, grabbed my to-go cup of coffee, and locked
the front door behind me. The basil was for focus as I drove as well as general protection,
and the parsley was for protection and a little practical deodorization after the
previous day’s mishap. The herbs went into the Bug’s vase, Mungo went into the passenger
seat, and the coffee went into me as I drove downtown to the Honeybee.

Mungo was a good listener, so along the way I related what I’d managed to dig up during
the night hours. Given all the hush-hush that seemed to surround the Dragoh Society,
it wasn’t surprising that I didn’t find any information—or even reference—to it. Not
in Savannah or anywhere else. I did find out a little more about Dr. Lawrence Eastmore.
Sure enough, he was a professor of art history and aesthetics at the Savannah College
of Art and Design, and the few comments from students were quite positive. Apart from
his teaching position, he was also a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association
of America and the Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association. There was no reference
to spellbooks or to his having a particular interest in the occult.

After digging for a while I’d discovered an obituary from eleven years before for
a man named Samson
Eastmore. He was survived by his son, Lawrence, who was about the right age to be
the man I’d found, and a grandson named Greer Eastmore. No mention of Lawrence’s wife,
though he apparently had a sister, Penelope, and a mother named Esther. A bit later
I found Esther’s obituary, too. She’d died within a year of her husband. Unlike his
son, it sounded like Samson Eastmore had died of natural causes.

“I know Quinn wants me to stay out of things,” I said to my familiar as I steered
around Oglethorpe Square. “But now it’s getting personal.”

He made a sound in the back of his throat.

“Let’s hope he knows all this plus a whole lot more. Right?”

The dog curled into the bottom of the tote and went to sleep. I couldn’t blame him.
He’d stayed up with me most of the night and was probably exhausted.

I was uncharacteristically tired as well, but did my best to shake it off. Even though
the Honeybee was open only until one o’clock on Sundays, as soon as we closed the
bakery the spellbook club was meeting at Lucy and Ben’s town house. Today Cookie and
I would hold the fort at the bakery, while Lucy prepped for our meeting and Ben indulged
in his weekly round at the Crosswinds Golf Club, where he had a standing eight a.m.
tee time.

Inside the bakery I left Mungo sleeping on his chair in the office and got to work.
First the sourdough loaves that had been rising all night went into hot ovens. We
sold a lot of sourdough bread for family Sunday suppers, so I usually made extra.
The brioche dough was also no-knead, rich with eggs and butter and honey, so
that went into molds for a quick rise before following the sourdough into the ovens.

Then I mixed up a batch of cinnamon raisin biscotti, which customers had taken to
dipping into the warm apple cider we offered in the fall. As I sprinkled in the cinnamon,
I added a short incantation encouraging good luck, prosperity, and general healing.
I had just finished when Cookie came in the door from the alley. The morning paper
was tucked under one arm.