“Look at the witch float!”
“Nothing can keep her down!”
“Mama, see—she’s just like my rubber ducky in the bath. He always pops right back up, too!”
With a stifled sigh and one final thrash of my legs in the water, I come to a stop at the end of the swimming pool. The water is balmy and the air scented with chlorine, the sounds of children’s voices somewhat muffled by the earplugs I’m always careful to pop in before I go for a swim. I’ve heard it said about town that I wear them to keep the water demons at bay, but the reality is that I have extraordinarily small ear canals. If I’m not careful, I’ll develop an infection.
I pull them out now. When combined with my nose plugs and the pearlescent swim cap I’m careful to tuck my long, black hair into before I go anywhere near the water, I look ridiculous. I also look nothing like a witch, but that doesn’t seem to affect my audience in the slightest.
“Madame Eleanor, that was smashing.” The most exuberant—and bravest—of my onlookers, a gap-toothed, freckled boy named George MacDougal, holds up the stopwatch he’s carrying on a string around his neck. He’s wearing swim trunks in a similar shade of blue to my suit, though he has yet to stick so much as a toe in the water. He’s too busy timing my laps and encouraging every other child in the vicinity to watch the “unsinkable witch” go. “That’s three seconds off the last one, and you aren’t even winded.”
On the contrary, I’m much more winded than I’d like to admit. I’d always heard that nothing can surpass the full-bodied exercise of competitive swimming, but it’s never been an activity that appealed.
And not, as my gawking audience seems to think, because of the medieval superstition that you can always spot a witch by her ability to float. I mostly don’t like getting my head wet. Chlorine tangles in waist-length hair are no laughing matter.
“Thank you,” I say as I hoist myself out of the pool and accept the towel he holds out to me. I dab it at my face. I also don’t like what the water does to my painstakingly applied eyeliner, but sacrifices occasionally have to be made. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, George, but wouldn’t you rather go play on the water slide with the other children?”
He blinks up at me. “There aren’t any children on the water slide.”
After a glance at the opposite end of the community center, I’m forced to retract my words. My heart—apparently the only part of me capable of such an action—sinks. When I arrived here, the shallow end of the pool had been teeming with young swimmers, all of them splashing and playing and enjoying a rainy Saturday afternoon at the local indoor pool. It had been my intention to slip into the water as quietly and unobtrusively as possible to get my laps in.
Clearly, I didn’t do that as well as I’d hoped. The kids are now gathered around the lap pool, watching with mingled excitement and horror to see if I’ll succumb to an impromptu trial by dunking.
“You can hardly blame them for their curiosity.” A male voice sounds behind me. “You do seem to have the uncanny ability to stay afloat. Neither circumstances nor finances nor, it seems, water can keep you down for long.”
That particular combination of amusement and timeliness can only belong to one man. I turn to glare at my accoster. Nicholas Hartford III is the entire reason I’m here in the first place—a thing he knows very well for himself.
“Drowning witches is an unfair test and always has been,” I retort. “That’s why it was devised in the first place. Women are biologically predisposed to rise to the top of the water because of our bone density. Chalk one more up for ye olde patriarchy trying to keep us down.”
“A thing we’d be much more successful at if you weren’t so persistently buoyant.” Nicholas chuckles and leans in to kiss my cheek. I’m dripping wet and not wearing a scrap of my usual makeup, but that doesn’t seem to deter him.
Nor, it seems, does it stop the crowd of onlookers. As Nicholas pulls away, he waves to a girl in pigtails who’s creeping closer, despite her mother’s determination to keep her back.
He cocks a brow at me. “Does this happen every time you come to the pool?”
“Yes.” I fix the towel around my waist. “It also happens every time I go to the grocer’s, whenever I stop by the library, and if I happen to be walking down the street. I gather a line of children behind me no matter what I’m doing. I think they hope I’m going to whip out a broomstick and take flight.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that for myself.”
“Me either,” George says with another of his wide grins. “But she won’t do it, no matter how many times I ask. She says it’s too hard to get air traffic clearance in this day and age.”
Nicholas’s lips twitch in a familiar attempt to suppress his smile. He manages it—barely—and places a hand in the center of my wet back to direct me toward the changing rooms. I’ve been dating this man long enough to know that the gentle pressure is deceptive. When it comes to having things his own way, Nicholas is king.
Technically, he’s not royalty in the traditional sense. He doesn’t even have any claims to nobility. However, he is one of the richest men in all of Sussex and lives in a bona fide castle to boot. In other words, a spade is a spade, and Nicholas Hartford III knows how to get what he wants.
Most of the time, anyway.
He stops me outside the door to the women’s changing room. The children seem to have dispersed into the background, leaving us in relative seclusion, but that doesn’t stop him from lowering his voice. “As pleased as I am to find that the swimming lessons are coming along in time for our vacation, I’m afraid I have good news.”
“I don’t think you understand how that phrase works,” I say as goose bumps break out over my upper half.
Neither my sarcasm nor the state of my puckered skin has any effect on him. In addition to being supremely autocratic, Nicholas is also impervious to things like freezing cold air after a dip in the pool. He clears his throat. “What if I were to tell you that I won’t be making you go scuba diving with me in Malta, after all?”
“Then I’d tell you not to be such a liar. That’s not good news, Nicholas. That’s fantastic news.”
I cast my eyes up in thanks before he can respond. The ceiling is made of corrugated tin and appears to have rust growing in several spots, but that doesn’t deter me. A month of swimming laps has in no way, shape, or form prepared me for a two-week Mediterranean vacation with a millionaire. Not for him a relaxing sojourn to the beach to drink fruity cocktails and soak in the sun. Oh, no. Nicholas scuba dives and jet skis and jumps from cliff tops with nothing but a triangular kite at his back.
It’s unnatural, if you want my opinion, which you should. When the village witch—and a woman who can commune with her dead sister, no less—draws a line, it’s usually for a good reason.
“Bless you, Winnie,” I say as if to prove it. “You are the best of sisters, and I’ll put an altar up to you tonight. No, I’ll put up two altars, and you can flit between them as the mood strikes.”
When I glance back down at Nicholas, he hasn’t lost any of his amusement. “You could have just said you don’t want to go.”
“Oh, I want to go. I never pass up an opportunity to enjoy myself somewhere that it doesn’t rain six days out of the week. What I don’t want to do, however, is risk life and limb and my entire oxygen supply to go stare a few fish in the face. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather lounge poolside for eight hours every day? We can always watch the fish simmering in butter sauce later.”
He lets this comment pass, but an earnest expression arrests the handsome features of his face. He’s everything a non-royal, non-noble British millionaire should be, which means it’s impossible to read him 90 percent of the time. His face is well-lined, but not with either gaiety or sorrow, and his gray eyes are incalculable. In fact, unless he smiles, most people assume he’s some sort of superhuman.
But I know better. Not only am I skilled at reading people—a must when the entire village looks to you to solve their problems via witchcraft—but I’m skilled at reading him. I reach out and touch his forearm.
“Hey,” I say gently. “It’s okay. I understand. If we have to postpone the trip, we have to postpone the trip. I won’t die from lack of sunlight for at least another two months. And even then, I know some great fungal folk recipes that will take care of it in a flash.”
At this, a small smile twists his lips. “Why does that sound like something you just now made up?”
“Because you’re a cynic,” comes my easy reply. “But I’ll have you know that mushrooms are very high in vitamin D. All my spells come with a side of science.”
I’m speaking no more than the truth. Some people might believe that the work I do tips toward the shady side of the morality scale, but I have a large—and happy—clientele. Love spells, sleeping spells, spells to pass a test or get a promotion at work . . . If it can be fixed with an herbal remedy and/or a slight boost of confidence, I’m your witch.
As if just noticing that I’m dripping onto the concrete floor and rapidly losing all feeling in my extremities, Nicholas makes a tsking sound and rubs his hands up and down my arms. “You’re freezing,” he says. “And I’m late for a business call.”
I’m about to reply that I’ve been freezing for pretty much the entire year that I’ve been living in England, but he stops me by reaching into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulling out an envelope.
“Here.” He hands it to me. “Read this. It’s not Malta, but I think you’ll like what it has to offer.”
I dangle it between two damp fingertips. “What is it?”
“Read it,” he says again. “It’s from an old school friend of mine. And meet me at the castle tomorrow by seven. If we leave before breakfast, we can be there in plenty of time for lunch.”
“Be where?” I ask, but I already know there won’t be an answer. Nicholas’s delight in being mysterious is secondary only to my own.
His response is to lean in for another kiss. This one bypasses my cheek and lands on my lips. The outbursts of “blech” and “ew” in the background indicate that some of the children must have still harbored hopes of my bursting into flames or transforming into the shape of one of my cats.
Their disappointment is my gain. Nicholas is a good kisser.
“You can thank me later,” he says as he pulls away. He shows no signs of lingering, this time offering me that friendly wave. “See you tomorrow, Eleanor. And pack warm. If you’re suffering from lack of mushrooms now, I shudder to think of what will happen once we get there.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to demand what the there in question is, but I won’t give him the satisfaction. He might think he has the power to tell me what to do, brandishing mysterious letters and demanding that I rearrange my travel plans at the last minute, but unless there’s something downright amazing in this envelope, I’m staying exactly where I am.
“Ha! That’s ten quid you owe me, Grandmother.” Rachel pulls open the front door to Castle Hartford and immediately turns on her heel. “She totally caved. She’s got three bags, and there’s not a bikini in sight.”
“Good morning to you, too,” I call after the pretty blond girl, but to no avail. Nicholas’s niece is one of my favorite people in all of England, but she’s as much a Hartford as the rest of her family. I’m forced to struggle through the door with my stack of luggage on my own.
To be fair, I don’t mind too much. I might have to carry my own bags for now, but I’ll be steeped in luxury soon enough. Wherever Nicholas Hartford goes, he goes in style.
And by style, I mean he flies his own airplane.
“I don’t believe it.” Vivian Hartford pokes her head into the foyer. In the manner of grand castles everywhere, the entry to their home is a huge, cavernous space complete with black-and-white marble tiles spread expansively across the floor. There’s also a grand staircase, a dust-covered chandelier, and a suit of armor bearing an axe that’s likely to fall at the least provocation. I adore it.
Vivian, the matriarch of the family and a woman who delights in being an oddity, isn’t so impressed by her surroundings. Nor, I need hardly add, by the sight of me.
“Eleanor, how could you?” She steps closer and takes in my scarf-covered person with a frown. I have three scarves in total, each one layered over the other to keep out the chilly blasts. I’m going to need them if I’m making it through this trip in one warm piece. “You’re supposed to be better than this.”
I’ve finally managed to get all my suitcases through the heavy wooden door and allow it to fall shut behind me.
“You think I’m better than an all-expenses-paid trip to the Outer Hebrides to commune with a Scottish patriarch from the great beyond?” I tsk gently. “And here I thought you knew me.”
Nicholas certainly does. I was fully dressed by the time I opened the letter yesterday, but that hadn’t stopped chills from moving up and down my spine as I read it. Phrases like dead father, missing heirlooms, don’t know who else to turn to, and your friend the medium had been all that were necessary to have me consigning Malta and its exotic splendors to perdition.
If there’s one thing I enjoy more than dead fathers, it’s dead fathers who require the immediate aid of a medium. And Nicholas, drat him, knew it.
“It’s been ages since I got to do any real ghost hunting,” I say eagerly. “Apparently, this Glenn Stewart guy died last month without telling anyone where he stashed a bunch of valuable family heirlooms. His kids seem to think he squirreled them away somewhere on their private island, but they’re at a loss to locate where. What could be more natural than hiring me to contact him via the spiritual world?”
Vivian snorts. “Buying a metal detector and going about things in the usual way?”
Rachel and I take this response as it’s intended, which is to say we ignore it. Vivian Hartford has never been known for her tact. The younger woman sticks out her palm and gives her fingers a waggle. “Pay up, Grandmother. I told you she wouldn’t be able to resist.”
Vivian grumblingly acquiesces, but it’s obvious she holds me personally responsible for this drain on her purse. Rachel is gleeful as she tucks the money into the pocket of the heavy parka she’s wearing to keep out the chill of the castle they call home.
It doesn’t occur to either of them that they have enough money to pay several million such debts—or to install a good heating system—and it doesn’t occur to me to question it. A large part of this family’s charm is how oblivious they are to how the real world works.
“Where’s the man of the manor?” I ask, making a show of peeking around the foyer in search of my absent beau. “I was up half the night repacking my bags for the wilds of coastal Scotland instead of Malta. The least he could do is be here to appreciate that I made it on time.”
A stricken look fills Rachel’s wide, violet eyes. Although she’d be considered a beauty even without such strangely compelling irises, that purple tint gives her an almost supernatural attraction. “Uh oh. Didn’t you get his message?”
A sense of doom fills me. Another medium-turned-witch might call it a premonition, but I know better.
“Don’t tell me. He was called away on business?”
Rachel nods. “Early this morning. He had to fly out first thing. I’m supposed to tell you that he’ll join you up there as soon as he’s free.” She reaches into the pocket of her parka once again and extracts an envelope. This one I recognize almost immediately as a ticket.
A train ticket.
My sense of geography isn’t nearly as strong as my sixth sense, but I know enough about the United Kingdom to recognize that train travel that far north will take me at least twelve hours. I accept the proffered ticket and stare at it.
“There weren’t any flights?” I ask doubtfully.
“I didn’t ask.” Rachel shrugs. “Besides, Uncle Nicholas thought you’d prefer to go this way. So you’d have time to prepare your incantations.”
“He said that, did he?” I ask in a purely rhetorical spirit. That sounds exactly like something Nicholas would say, if only because he believes in my incantations as much as he does Santa Claus. “Of course he did. He wants me to suffer.”
Rachel watches me under knit brows. “You don’t mind, do you, Ellie? Perhaps I could skip my art class next week and come with you—”
I hold up my hand to stop her before she can finish. “If you came with me, who would stay at the cottage and watch over Beast and Freddie?” I ask, and not only as a way to keep Rachel from rearranging her plans on my behalf. I’ve been worried about leaving my two cats behind ever since Nicholas first broached the idea of going on vacation together. Beast, an all-black cat who occasionally masquerades as my witch’s familiar, has been with me since the start of my sojourn in England. I have no doubt that she’ll view my absence as nothing more than an opportunity to glory about, catching mice and letting in evil spirits, but Freddie is still just a kitten. And considering the way both Beast and I coddle her, she’s not a very self-sufficient kitten, either.
“It’s best this way,” I say with a decisive nod. I left my fur babies curled up before a banked fire, but it won’t be long before they’ll need Rachel to get the flames roaring again. I’m not the only one who finds this fall weather chilly. “Besides, your uncle is right. I do need time to prepare, and it’ll be lovely to see something of the country. The ride up to Scotland is supposed to be beautiful.”
At this, both Vivian and Rachel cast a doubtful look out the nearest window. The gray drizzle of a ceaseless rain isn’t up there with, say, the azure skies over a Mediterranean archipelago, but what can you do? There’s a ghost somewhere in the Outer Hebrides that needs my attention.
“Well, is one of you going to drive me to the train station, or do I need to call a taxi?” I ask. “Spirits don’t lay themselves to rest, you know.”
“I’ll take you,” Rachel offers, and once again reaches into her capacious pocket to extract the keys to the family’s Land Rover. She twirls them on one finger. “But we’re stopping for breakfast on the way.”
“Are we?” I ask without surprise. Keeping this girl fed is practically my second job—and one that doesn’t pay very well.
She knows this, which is why she flashes me the ten-pound note. “And for once, it’s my treat. To repay you for your predictability.”
“I am not predictable, thank you very much,” I retort as I gather up my bags and follow her out the door. In the name of fairness, I pause to add, “But the day I say no to hunting a ghost is the day I am one myself. And even then, I’m not making any promises.”
Incantations—at least, the kind of incantations I’m used to performing—don’t require much preparation, so I spend the first half of my trip to Scotland pouring over the letter Nicholas gave me.
He’s never been the kind of man to overindulge in details, so the fact that I have nothing to go on but two handwritten pieces of paper isn’t as strange as it sounds. In all honesty, these papers tell me a lot more about what I can expect at my destination than any number of long conversations could.
For example, the fact that Nicholas’s friend Sid sat down and penned a letter to ask him for help is a marvel in and of itself. People don’t write letters in our day and age—and if they do, they’re not done in this florid style of handwriting. There’s even a seal on the outer envelope in bulbous red wax. This tells me that Sid is either a lover of history and tradition, or he’s a pretentious windbag. It could go either way.
There’s also the little matter of just how little matter is divulged. Instead of giving me particulars about the death of Glenn Stewart or the ways in which I might reach out to his ghost, the letter focuses mostly on reminiscent stories about the boarding school Sid and Nicholas once shared. From everything I can glean from the rest, it seems that Glenn hid a small fortune’s worth of family heirlooms before he passed. No amount of searching has uncovered them, which is why they’ve resorted to a woman like me. When logic and common sense fail, only communion with the dead will work.
Or so they believe. The only dead person I’ve ever been able to talk to is Winnie, and she’s much more like a sarcastic commentator on my life choices than a helpful spiritual guide.
Gee, thanks. And here I was going to tell you exactly where to find the money.
I can’t help a grin from spreading across my face. I’m never entirely sure when or where my sister will reach out to me, but her visits are always welcome.
“That shows what kind of help you’d be,” I say, heedless of the impression that talking aloud to myself on a train might give the other passengers. There’s a gentleman in a kilt the next aisle over who’s busy clipping his fingernails. I’m obviously not in the classy car. “It isn’t money that’s missing. It’s family heirlooms.”
Um, hello? Money can be an heirloom.
I tamp down a snort. “Only if you’re some crass American. These are fancy people, Winnie. They own an island.”
What about gold coins? Those are both currency and collectible.
She has me there. I’m about to dig deep into my upholstered seat and settle in for a long chat when a loud, deeply fluting voice interrupts from the doorway between the train cars.
“This is the one,” it announces. When I glance up, it’s to find a tall, gaunt woman standing on the threshold. “There’s no need to keep following me about, young man. I’ll sit here or nowhere.”
“But, ma’am . . .” The young man she’s speaking to is wearing the blue uniform of an employee, his face flustered as he struggles under the weight of the carpetbag in his arms. “You have to sit where your ticket says.”
“There.” She lifts a finger and points at me. “I’ll sit there, or I’m flinging myself out of this train at full speed. Try explaining that to your superiors.”
I blink, thinking at first that she wants my exact seat. The train car is only half-filled, which means there are plenty of open places—some of which are well out of the way of the flying fingernails of my nearest neighbor. I’m about to point this out when the woman starts making her way down the aisle toward me.
As she draws nearer, I blink again. Now that I’m seeing her in her full glory, I’m able to take in the full spectacle of her appearance. This is marked primarily by a pair of eyebrows so thin and arched they look as though they were drawn on with a pencil, a row of glittering rings on each of her ten fingers, and a sweeping purple robe with a fringe that drags along the floor to hook on each passing seat. She seems blithely unaware of this, causing the porter with her bag to fumble to release the strings every few steps.
“No, no. I’ll take that,” she says as the man makes a motion to stow her bag overhead. She drops into the open seat next to me and lifts her arm to take it from him. Each movement she makes is accompanied by a waft of patchouli-scented air. It’s not an unpleasant smell, but it is a strong one. “Thank you, young man. I’ll be quite comfortable now.”
He pauses in the manner of an underemployed worker expecting a tip for services rendered, but the woman makes no move to pay him. He looks so crestfallen that I reach into my own wallet and extract a bill. Since Rachel paid for our breakfast with her honeyfall, I’m feeling generous. I also get the impression that he thinks the two of us are traveling together. If I want my tea later, I’m going to need to smooth the waters.
“Thank you,” I say. “You’ve been a big help.”
His shy nod is enough to convince me that I made the right choice. Since there’s little likelihood of Winnie returning to chat now that I have a real person to talk to, I turn m. . .
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