Magic and Macaroons (18 page)

As soon as I’d returned to the Honeybee, I’d related everything Cookie and I had learned to both Lucy and Ben. They, in turn, had told me Detective Quinn had stopped by with news that Dawn Taite was still in intensive care. She remained in a coma, and the doctors remained baffled. Then a group of teenagers had come in, and Ben had returned to take their orders while Lucy and I went back to the kitchen. It was Iris’ day off, so we could talk freely, as long as we kept our voices low.

“Mother Eulora must be the one Dawn meant,” Lucy went on. “After all, she knew Franklin—and she knew about the talisman.”

I peered over her shoulder. “Yeah. Spooky what she said about the gris gris, though.”

She reached for a bowl of grated cheese and dumped it into the flour mixture before glancing up at me from under her furrowed brow. “
Spooky
is a mild way of putting it.
Terrifying
is more like it. Whatever voodoo magic is at work here, the idea that someone could augment their dark magic with that talisman scares me half to death, Katie. And Franklin wanted you to get involved in a situation like that? What was he thinking?”

I grimaced. “I wish I’d had a chance to talk to Eulora more about that—and about being a lightwitch. I suspect she might be the one who can tell me what Franklin never did. But we wore her out with our visit as it was.”

Still, I had every intention of going back and asking her. She had called me a candela, so surely she knew what that meant.

“Gougères?” I asked, eyeing the contents of the pan.

She shook her head. “Pão de queijo.”

“Ah,” I said. Similar, but Brazilian rather than French, and gluten-free. Pão de queijo was made with tapioca flour, and the bite-sized puffs ended up crispy-chewy on the outside but tender and airy inside.

“Yum,” I said. “We need to put those on the regular menu.”

“These are a special order for Mrs. Standish,” Lucy said. “Appetizer for a fund-raising cocktail party she’s hosting this evening. It’s for the animal shelter, I believe.” She scraped the smooth, shiny dough into one of the large standing mixers and reached for the eggs.

“Bless her for thinking of us,” I said. “I hope there will be a few leftovers for us, though.”

She smiled and cracked the first egg into a ramekin before transferring it to the mixing bowl. “Don’t worry—I’m making a double batch.” Once the first egg was blending into the dough, she turned to me, the next egg in her hand. “Seriously, what are you going to do about that talisman?”

“Try to find it—goddess knows how, though. Eulora gave me a picture of it. Cookie was going to ask her for a spell to find it, but Eulora said I didn’t need a spell from her. Being a lightwitch and all.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? What about a spell from us? Or, rather, with us?”

“The spellbook club?”

“Of course!” She added another egg to the pão de queijo. “I can call the ladies as soon as I’m done here. We can meet here, right after we close. Remember the location spell we did for Mavis Templeton’s murderer?”

“Yeah, that didn’t really work very well . . .”

“Bah,” she said and cracked another egg. “You were too inexperienced to help us then. Now you’ll be in the circle with us, and heaven knows you add oomph to our spell work.”

I reached for a stack of silicone baking mats and began placing them on metal sheets in preparation for the little cheese puffs. “I’d sure love to try. Getting a hold of that talisman would put the kibosh on someone using it
for dark magic, but as important—at least to me—is that Eulora said it could help me figure out what happened to Franklin. And if I can find
that
out, I might be able to help Dawn.”

“I hope so.” Lucy flipped off the mixer. “Poor thing. You get these in the oven,” she said, rinsing her hands in the sink. “And I’ll start making phone calls.”

“Make sure Mimsey brings her shew stone,” I said.

Chapter 14

The evening was overcast, and the heat wave seemed to have broken. Mungo trotted happily beside me, his leash loose in my hand. Lucy was setting things up back at the Honeybee. She’d shooed me out for a walk, saying it would help clear my head for the location spell. Mungo hadn’t been getting much exercise, either, so I’d brought him along.

As we walked along Bay Street, I dwelled on Dawn Taite, still lying unconscious in a hospital bed.
Beware of someone new.
Connell’s warning, cryptic as anything. Even the not-quite-dead seemed determined to confuse the living.

Well, I certainly didn’t suspect Mother Eulora of having any nefarious intentions toward Franklin or Dawn. Not only was she his mentor and the origin of the gris gris that helped him ferret out magic, but she had also been genuinely devastated to learn of his death.

Tanna, on the other hand, I just didn’t like. That didn’t mean she was evil, of course—I was unable to read her at all. Eulora obviously trusted her, and Tanna appeared devoted to her mistress. Could that be an act? Or could her worry about Eulora’s health have caused her to dip
into darker arts, and Franklin found out? She would have known him from his association with Mother Eulora, and indeed would have known much, if not everything, that her employer knew about him.

We strolled by Emmet Park. The Spanish moss hanging from the trees above waved in the slight breeze caused by a passing transit bus. Once the loud engine had faded into the distance, I detected another rumble to the east. A flash in my peripheral vision made me turn my head. Dark clouds piled on the horizon, and the still air buzzed with the subtle flavor of metal.

“Come on, buddy. Better head back before it starts to pour,” I said. We took off at a light jog.

Mungo and I turned into the alley behind the bakery and entered through the unlocked back door. I heard Mimsey’s excited voice, then Jaida’s deeper tone. I unleashed Mungo, and he bounded around the corner. I followed to find the two ladies helping Lucy to move a table in front of the espresso counter. The window blinds were already closed, and soft yellow light shone down from three ceiling-fan fixtures above.

“Hi! You’re early. Or am I late?” I looked at my watch.

“We’re a little early,” Mimsey said, eyes twinkling. “I wanted to help set up. It’s been far too long since we’ve cast together!”

Jaida grinned at the older woman’s obvious delight. “Too bad we can’t all be here.”

Mimsey looked crestfallen. “Someone can’t make it?”

My shoulders slumped, too. I wanted the power of the full coven for this spell.

“Cookie said she and Oscar have plans she can’t break,” Lucy said, looking at me with sympathy.

I rolled my eyes.
Oscar
. I was happy for Cookie—I really was—but her new husband sure threw a wrench into things.

“And Bianca couldn’t get a sitter for Colette on such short notice,” Lucy said.

“She should bring the little one with her,” Mimsey said, her brow furrowed in frustration. “My daughter started learning the Craft before she was ten.”

I muffled a flare of envy. My mother had done her best to shield me from any knowledge of magic, afraid of being ostracized in the small town of Fillmore, Ohio. I’d been twenty-eight before Lucy had stepped in and told me about my witchy heritage, and until then I’d felt like an outsider in every aspect of my life except baking.

“Colette is only seven, and it’s Bianca’s choice,” Lucy said in a mild tone.

“Well, of course,” Mimsey agreed, but she sounded pretty cranky, at least for Mimsey. I didn’t blame her. Getting the spellbook club together in its entirety had been like herding cats lately.

Jaida unfolded a cloth of rich brown velvet. I hurried over and helped her spread it on the table.

Mimsey’s face cleared, and she nodded in approval. “The perfect color for finding lost objects. Lucy, do you have the map?”

My aunt moved behind the counter and drew out a map of Savannah I recognized from the previous location spell we’d tried. She laid it on top of the brown velvet, and Mimsey reached into her capacious handbag and drew out a small bronze stand decorated with green stones. She set it on the map and retrieved her scrying stone from the bag. It was a smooth sphere of pink quartz crystal about five inches in diameter—literally a crystal ball. She set it on the stand.

We pulled over four more bistro tables, arranging them at east, south, west, and north. Jaida set four black votives on them and actually pulled out a compass to make sure they were spot-on the four directions. Lucy
added a drop of ginger oil to each wick, and the air filled with the potent, spicy scent. I went into the kitchen and came back with the canister of salt.

Jaida eyed the industrial-sized container. “Fancy.”

I examined it, then looked up at her. “Not good enough, huh?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “Respect the elements, Katie, if you want them to work with you.”

I went back into the kitchen, got out the marble bowl of the mortar and pestle set we used to grind herbs and spices. I debated whether to wash it, but decided the many incantations that Lucy and I had muttered over it would add magical energy rather than contaminate our good intentions. I wiped it thoroughly with a soft cloth and filled it carefully with salt.

The four of us moved within the perimeter of the tables, and Mungo tucked himself under the central table to be out of the way. Normally, I would have asked him to stay outside the circle, but I didn’t know what kind of magic the talisman might hold or whether it—or whoever had it—would resist being found. I wanted my little guy as protected as the rest of us, and the other witches didn’t protest his presence.

Jaida had placed a tarot deck next to Mimsey’s shew stone. Rather than the classic Rider-Waite cards, which she usually used for disposable spells like burning magic, this set depicted stylized dogs in vivid primary colors. The backs of the cards were all Great Danes. I smiled, since her familiar, Anubis, was a Great Dane who no doubt approved of his witch’s choice.

Lucy laid a device I’d never seen before on the other side: a thick silver wire and another of copper, twisted together in the middle to create a kind of handle for the two prongs of a Y.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Her lips curved in an easy smile. “My dowsing rod. I had Ben go home and get it this afternoon.”

“I’ve never seen you use it,” I said, fascinated.

“That’s because I’m really bad at it.” She laughed at the look on my face. “You know Mimsey is the only one of us who is any good at divination.”

I glanced at Jaida, who shrugged. “It’s true. I’ll do a spread, but I’m pretty sure the cards aren’t going to give us an address, if you know what I mean.”

“Then why . . . ?” I asked Lucy.

That smile again. “Just because I’m not great with the dowsing rod doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. As I recall, you actually pulled off a location spell of sorts back when you were just learning.”

“You’ll show me how?” I asked, feeling a little nervous.

She nodded. “Of course. Shall we begin?”

I placed the picture of the gris gris Mother Eulora had given me on the corner of the map, off the grid of streets but propped up so we could all see it. My aunt turned off the overhead lights, and I moved to the eastern table to begin pouring a fine line of salt along the floor, moving deosil to the south, then west and north. Lucy followed, lighting the candles behind me as I defined the spell circle with the salt. As she touched flame to wick, she invoked the elements of air, fire, and water, and ended with earth. I closed the circle in the east and returned to where the others were already seated at the table. Mimsey was on the north, better to access the elemental power of earth as she gazed into her stone. I sat across from her with Lucy on my left and Jaida on the right. Mungo leaned against my ankle, warm comfort in the semidarkness.

I’d never cast a full circle like this with only a portion of the members of the spellbook club. It felt weird. Incomplete.

“Mimsey, you go first.” I was itching to try Lucy’s dowsing rod, but Mimsey was the eldest and most experienced. Plus, as my aunt had pointed out, she was better than the rest of us at divination.

She didn’t argue. We all clasped hands, forming a circle within the circle. We closed our eyes, and Mimsey murmured, “We call upon the earth to reveal the location of Franklin Taite’s voodoo gris gris.”

Her words made me think of Declan trying to access Franklin’s dead spirit. I’d talked to him at the firehouse earlier in the afternoon, filling him in on the visit to Mother Eulora but not mentioning my plans for the evening. He probably thought I was at home—

Lucy squeezed my hand. “Focus,” she hissed.

I sent an apologetic look around the table and closed my eyes again, centering my attention back on the map, the gris gris, and my desire to find it. We joined in Mimsey’s invocation three more times, then fell silent and opened our eyes. The older witch bent forward over her crystal, probing it with her physical gaze as well as a deeper vision.

The orb seemed to grow a little brighter, the pink quartz pinker, the crystalline structure within called out in sharp relief. I scanned the surface, tried to delve deeper, but all I managed was a slight throbbing behind my forehead. I turned my energy toward Mimsey’s intention rather than my own. I felt the others doing the same, including a canine-flavored soupçon of energy from Mungo, still hunkered at my feet beneath the table.

From outside, the muffled sound of traffic. A horn honked, and a grumble of thunder echoed from far away. Mimsey’s eyelids fluttered, and I saw her grip Jaida and Lucy’s hands tighter as she leaned forward. I closed my eyes and imagined myself
inside
her shew stone, throwing out my senses in all directions, seeking the gris gris.

A confusion of images assaulted my mind’s eye, as well as scent and tactile impressions. I felt myself gasp, but I no longer felt like I was in my own body. I drifted, increasingly untethered, floating . . .

Fog. Smoke. My own reflection. Mimsey’s twinkling blue eyes. A glimmer of red. A heavy feeling in my chest. The rasp of slithering snakeskin. Fear. Angry desire. Blades and bones and the smell of something rotting . . .