Witches and Wine_A Paranormal Cozy Mystery Read online

  At this she smiled again, nodding along. "Milk certainly doesn't hurt, although that's not why you were able to fall from a tree and walk away so easily from it. It's actually because you, Taylor, are a witch. And it appears that your special ability — we all have one — is to heal people. A truly lovely gift, if I might add."

  Oh. Okay, so the kind older lady who just had to take me out to coffee and celebrate my heroism or whatever was actually totally insane. But hey, that was San Francisco for you.

  "All right. It's been fun, Barbara, if that's even your name, but I really should get back to work now," I said as I quickly stood back up, hoping to exit stage right.

  Barbara whispered something under her breath, and just like that, I was stuck, unable to move another step. It was like someone had glued my feet to the ground. Panic rose up in my throat. What on earth was going on?

  "I'm sorry for that, I just need you to trust me here for a moment."

  I looked at Barbara as if she'd suddenly grown another head. "I hate to break it to you, but any kind of trust that may have developed in the fifteen minutes since I first met you? Yeah, it's gone. I don't know if maybe you somehow drugged me or —"

  Barbara laughed in interruption, shaking her head at me. "Oh my. Nothing of the sort, I can assure you." She mumbled again, this time loud enough for me to hear.

  "Evanescetroa."

  I didn't feel anything, but something caught my eye right away, and I looked down to see the blood all over my clothes that I hadn't been able to wash off slowly start to disappear, until finally it was gone completely. My clothes looked brand new.

  I supposed I had gone into shock after all. I probably should have gone to the hospital with Miranda, because now I was hallucinating.

  "What...?" I barely whispered. "I don't… I don't understand. Am I going crazy?" No one else around us seemed to notice or even care that this lady had me under some kind of mental woo-woo or something. What on earth had she slipped me? Ecstasy? I had never used drugs, beyond smoking a few joints in high school, so I didn’t exactly know what it felt like, but this had to be drugs.

  "Not at all, my dear. It's like I said before, you're a witch. And since I am one as well, I have the power to do things like that," she replied all too simply for my taste, pointing at my shirt. "And even this. Retexo Adhaesit."

  I nearly fell flat on my face as I became mobile again, suddenly able to move my feet and legs. I took a good look at Barbara, checking out the way she looked at me not smugly, but knowingly. Everything in my head was telling me to run as far away as I could, to not even stop at Little Richie's. But then there was the pesky matter of my heart, which was tugging at me, telling me that maybe it was time. Time for what? I didn't know.

  But I ignored my brain, running around waving red flags everywhere, and I sat back down slowly.

  Chapter 3

  "A witch. Like, a witch-witch. The kind with the pointy hat, broomstick, and black cat kind of witch?"

  Barbara leaned forward, as if she were about to share a juicy secret with me. "Believe me, we've been misunderstood for quite some time now. No pointy hats, that is, unless you find it fashionable. Or it's Halloween. And only some of us have cats, because cats are rather interesting creatures. Might I add that I only use my broomstick to sweep up the dust from the floor? But yes, all that aside, I’m still very much a witch."

  I slowly sipped on my coffee, my brain reminding me that it was okay if I wanted to skedaddle out of there. And yet, I didn’t. "I just don't understand. Don't you think I would have noticed something off about myself? Or my parents?"

  She nodded. "Which is exactly why I'd love to know what your life was like, growing up. It may give me some insight as to why you haven’t discovered your abilities until now."

  My home life wasn't exactly my favorite topic, but in a way it was always easier to tell strangers about the deepest secrets of your life than it was to people you were close to. Barbara was definitely a stranger.

  "I can only tell you what my parents told me, but I was put up for adoption when I was only a few days old. Well, left in front of a church, more like. My parents never found out any information about my birth mother. I had always been under the impression that they would rather I not look for her, so I never did. I had never felt the need to, either. My parents are my parents, as far as I’m concerned. They had always been honest with me, and I knew I was adopted pretty on early on. But um, they died last year in a car accident." I shifted in my seat as the usual discomfort that came from talking about their death settled into my stomach.

  Barbara’s face softened as she patted my hand, the many silver and gold rings on her fingers glittering under the track lighting above us. This was the part I hated the most: the pity.

  "I'm terribly sorry to hear that, my dear. It must have been very hard for you."

  "Yeah, well, things happen." I swallowed hard and took a deep breath before continuing on. "And it sucked big-time, but I kept moving, kept going. My parents had always wanted me to help others above all else, and that's why I want to go to veterinary school. To help the four-legged others, anyway." In fact, one of the very first things I remembered my mom telling me was that I was put here to make sense of things and help others in any way could. And also that I was their good luck charm.

  Maybe it was because Barbara could tell the subject was taking a toll on me, but she quickly changed tracks, the pity on her face slipping into something more determined.

  "So, you mean to tell me that you are living here and working at some despicable car lot without any other family around? That must be very lonely. Someone with your powers needs to be honing them, learning to work with them. Perhaps," she trailed off for a second, tapping the side of the mug with her long fingernails as she gazed out the window deep in thought. "Perhaps you should come move to Rosemary Creek, and then I can show you what it means to be a true witch."

  Were all the planets aligned in the perfect conjunction with Mars in the seventh house, or something? Was Mercury in retrograde? Something crazy seemed to pop out of this woman’s mouth every few minutes or so.

  "Wait, you want me to what? I can’t just pick up my whole life and move to some place in the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger! Witch or not, that's just way too freaking weird of an offer, even for someone who has superpowers or whatever," I exclaimed, suddenly made aware of the other patrons in the shop as they glanced over their shoulders to look at me and then quickly averted their eyes. Great, now I was the crazy person in the coffee shop.

  "It would do you some good, Taylor. Not only is it lonely for a solitary witch in the world, especially one who doesn't know her own strengths, but it's also dangerous. Have you ever done anything unintentional, like cause any kind of problems now that you know what you are? Think about it. Really think about it."

  But no, I wasn't going to think about it. "It doesn't matter. I'm not moving out of San Francisco. This place is my home, I grew up here. And yeah, my job is crappy, but I'm getting paid to do it at least. I can't just walk up to the vet school and say 'Hi, my name's Taylor Dean, and I'd like to enroll. Money? Ha! No, I don't have any money, but I can't show you this really cool card trick!' Yeah, no. That's not how the real-world works."

  And after the crazy day I just had, I wasn't about to let myself make any rash decisions that would completely change my life.

  While Barbara's shoulders slumped slightly, she still had an air of dignity about her as she gathered up her purse and her mostly finished coffee, giving me a nod. With her unoccupied hand, she pulled something small and white from her purse and handed it to me. "I understand. It is a rather big decision, I will give you that. And it's fine, truly. But, if you ever decide you want to change your life and live the way you are supposed to live, like a true witch, all you have to do is call."

  I turned over the small business card in my hand, the sharp corners poking at my palm as I closed my hand around it. "Okay. Well, thank you."

  I wa
tched Barbara return her dish to the front, before walking out the front door, head held high. When she was out of sight I looked down and read the business card she had given to me.

  Creekside Trinkets

  "A treasure in the heart of Rosemary Creek!"

  Barbara Dunham, owner

  The phone number was right underneath her name, but I pocketed it until I knew what to do with it. She may have been some mystical Jessica Fletcher type, but what she was asking from me was simply too much. First, I had to process the fact that I had just seen someone nearly die in my arms. Then the rest of it would have to slowly trickle in. But first, I had to go back to work. After all, my break had ended a long time ago.

  I became uncomfortably aware of what I looked like again the moment I showed back up to Little Richie's. After all, while Barbara had gotten rid of the blood in my clothes, my hands and arms were still covered in it, and my hair absolutely had to be a mess. I could just tell.

  "Are you okay, miss?" a customer asked, hopping out of the red coupe, having just finished what appeared to be a test drive with none other than Little Richie himself.

  Richard wiped at his forehead and shuffled around the back of the car to me, looking not so much alarmed like the customer, but more of an especially splotchy kind of angry. The look was gone from off his face as soon as the customer handed him the keys to the coupe, and in its place was a plastered on ugly, wide grin. He honestly resembled a frog. And a sweaty one, at that.

  "Well, Mr. Mathers, what did you think of this beaut? Doesn't she handle like a dream?"

  Mr. Mathers, who was still staring at me like I’d just crawled out from the underworld, seemed dazed. "I'm sorry, what? Miss, I really think you should get yourself checked out. Possibly even at a hospital?"

  "Oh, yeah," I nervously giggled, feeling like a complete idiot for crossing the front lot looking like this. Of course I was going to run into someone. That was just how my luck had been today. "I, uh, it's not mine. Don’t worry, I’m fine." I swallowed hard as I saw the look my boss was giving me out of the corner of my eye. "I'm just going to go freshen up a bit."

  I bolted out of there as fast as I could, my cheeks burning with embarrassment and worry. I would've said that the day couldn't possible get any worse, except that I already knew the wrath I’d be facing as soon as Richard was finished with his customer. All I could do was sit in the back office and wait.

  Nearly half an hour later, after I looked significantly more normal and less like a serial killer, the door to the office nearly exploded open, and it took everything I had not to dart behind the desk and hide. It was stupid and I felt like a child, so I stared at the keyboard, trying to calm myself down.

  "Taylor!" Richard growled. "What in the name of Mercedes-Benz are you doing out there, coming back in to your shift late as hell? And look at you! What on earth happened? No one wants to see a woman all covered in blood like that. It's disgusting, quite frankly, and —"

  Yeah, that whole part where I tried to calm myself down didn’t exactly work, and I interrupted my boss in the middle of his tirade.

  "I'm going to have to stop you there, Richard. I was coming back from lunch when I saw someone get mugged and then shot. I was trying to help the poor woman —"

  Richard was having none of it. "I don't care what you were trying to do out there, leave it to the police if you have to, but I need you here! Daniel was out there alone, and we had three customers come in all at once. I had to come out of my office to do your job! I'm not paying you to play knight in shining armor to the public at large! I'm paying you to sell cars, dammit! And you're not exactly tearing up the sales quota chart, either!" Spittle flew from his mouth as he mopped at his forehead again, his face turning the color of a moldy tomato.

  It was all I could do to keep myself in check, and I swallowed hard, thinking about everything that had just happened.

  I thought about Miranda Banks, about the gunshot, about Barbara finding me in a weird twist of fate. And how I had essentially saved Miranda's life unknowingly, because I was a witch. I was a witch? Ugh, this was going to take some getting used to. Harry Potter seemed to accept it a lot more easily than I did.

  "All I ask you to do is get here on time, and you can't even do that. What am I paying you for? God, I don't know what I was thinking when I hired you. Feeling sorry for you just because your parents were dead," he muttered, re-adjusting his rectangular glasses.

  That was it. I was a witch. A freaking Harry Potter, saved-a-woman’s-life-today, witch, and I was absolutely not going to sit here and listen to this potato of a human being demean my parents and their tragic death.

  I rose slowly to my feet and grabbed my purse off the desk. Luckily for me, Richard never let us keep any personal belongings at work so there was nothing else to worry about as I made my way to the other side of the desk and stood right in front of him. I felt like I could shoot lasers through my eyes and bore right into him. Who was to say I couldn’t?

  "It's actually a funny story, Richard," I began, tilting my head to the side. "You keep saying that you don't understand what you're paying me for, yet you barely pay me at all. I'm the one who keeps the office running in the back, because we all know Daniel can't handle it. You keep saying you don't know why you're paying me, but you're not paying me anymore. Because I quit."

  In my head I imagined dropping a mic and walking gracefully as ever out the door, with everyone jealously looking on as I glided out of there without a backwards glance. But what really happened was I left the office, promptly returning 2.5 seconds later to add a quick "And what I mean by you're not paying me anymore is that obviously you're going to send me my last check, because you can't not do that. But after that, you're definitely not paying me. Because I definitely quit."

  And then I was out of there.

  I mulled over the options before me, the bumpy streetcar ride underlining my every thought with a quick thump to my rear. And really, there was only one option.

  Crossing over the street to walk the few blocks down to my place, I threw my shoulders back and pulled my purse around in front of me. "Please, please, please don't make me regret this," I mumbled as I pulled out the white business card.

  Chapter 4

  The minute I heard Barbara’s polite greeting over the phone, I spilled the beans.

  “Hey Barbara, it’s Taylor Dean. The one from the alley? The, uh, the witch?” How on earth was I supposed to introduce myself? “Listen, I’m in. I thought about it a little bit, probably, no, definitely not enough. But I don’t care. I need to get out of this place.” It cut like a knife to admit it, but staying in the same city where I grew up living with my parents suddenly felt too morbid for me. Like I was living in a mausoleum with all these memories of the old places we would go out to eat or shop, or of the park where my parents taught me how to ride my bike. I may have been a grown woman, but it was still hard to deal with. Not to mention, now that I’d quit my job at the used car lot, it wasn’t like I had job offers up the wazoo or anything like that.

  “So, you’ll accept my offer to teach you?”

  I bit my lip, slowly exhaling through my nose. I didn’t have to just jump right in and claim my whole witchdom, did I?

  “Yes, but I need to take it slow. This is still a heck of a lot of crazy to swallow. I would love your help, though,” I added softly.

  I could practically sense Barbara smiling through the phone. “Wonderful. I can come pick you up in my car in a couple of hours, and we’ll be on our way. And Taylor?”

  “Mm?”

  “You’re making the right decision, my dear. You will learn things you never knew were possible, and it will make your eventual profession as a veterinarian even more profound,” Barbara told me.

  “I’m looking to become a vet assistant, actually, but I—”

  “Assistant? No, I can feel it in my bones; you’re meant to be Doctor Taylor Dean. It’s just the way your lifeline is laid out, my dear. No need to fight it,” she add
ed, effectively cutting me off from arguing.

  I settled into my bare room, the smallest one in the tiny apartment I was renting, along with the most invisible roommate that ever existed in the other room. It wasn’t like this was exactly paradise, either. It took me exactly twelve minutes to pack every single belonging I had in this world into a suitcase and wait for Barbara. Maybe Rosemary Creek had better things awaiting me.

  And just as she’d promised, a couple of hours later a silver Lexus SUV pulled up in front of my apartment, and a few minutes later I was clicking my seatbelt into place.

  I turned to look at Barbara who was positively beaming, facing the windshield.

  “I never took you for a luxury car type of gal,” I told her, still pretty blown away by her choice in vehicles. One of the ways I got myself through the monotony at Little Richie’s was by pretending I was a customer there to check out the newest in the luxury cars. I’d always dreamed of driving a Lexus. “Also, um, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Rosemary Creek.”

  “Oh, I’m surprised. It’s in Napa Valley,” she said, a hint of amusement in her eyes.

  My eyes widened. Ok, that was definitely a lot cooler than I had been expecting. Barbara threw the car into drive, the tires peeling as we headed out of the city, and towards the beautiful Napa Valley. Despite having lived in San Francisco all my life, I’d never been to Napa. I’d heard about it, of course. And I’d drank more than my share of Napa Valley wine. But I’d never actually been. Didn’t really know much about the place, really; that probably explained why I’d never heard of Rosemary Creek.

  The ride didn't feel like the two hours that went by according to the clock on the dash. I was especially surprised to see just how comfortable I felt in the car with Barbara, as if everything would work itself out in the end. Like one of those corny television shows from the '90s where they always managed to find a solution to whatever the problem was, all within a convenient thirty minutes. Despite the fact that I was literally letting a stranger drive me to a place I’d never heard of to start a new life – hello, red flags! – I could really sense that it was all going to be ok.