Mathilda, SuperWitch

  * * * * *

  “Nicely done.”

  I was alone, having my after-dinner coffee in the back courtyard and wondering if it would act as a magical elixir that would stop me from vomiting when Douglas Addison joined me.

  “Mm. Senator Addison,” slightly slurring, “as a voting American citizen, may I just say that I’m alarmed at the company you keep.”

  “Mathilda, my sweet girl, keep your friends close, and your enemies –”

  “Closer. I know but those folks are just, well mostly… um…” At a loss for words I simply said, “Blech.”

  “Indeed,” he agreed on a twitch of his lips.

  “What’s your association with Agatha Darling?”

  Might as well ask.

  And anyway, I was shitfaced.

  “She’s a friend,” he answered.

  Right.

  “Do you know your friend kidnapped a young boy who is very close to me and when I found them, she electrocuted me?”

  Okay, I know I was being blunt but why not? There may be a time to be diplomatic but alone, in a garden, after eating an elegant dinner with some of the dregs of society all wearing designer gear, in other words, proving the world was unfair, and getting blotto was not that time.

  And anyway, I’d pulled out The Chanel.

  For this.

  What a disappointment.

  I was surprised to see he looked genuinely appalled and maybe a little… could it be… angry?

  “No, Mathilda, I didn’t know that.”

  And you know what? I didn’t know whether or not to believe him.

  * * * * *

  Aidan took me home shortly after.

  I fell asleep in the car.

  Or, perhaps, passed out.

  Toe-may-toes, toe-mah-toes.

  I awoke just before we arrived and he walked me to the door of The Gables.

  “I know I should probably apologize for making a spectacle of myself in front of your friends but I’ve got to tell you, your friends leave a lot to be desired.”

  Maybe I was a tad bit upset because I hadn’t particularly enjoyed my second date with a doctor-slash-supernatural watcher-slash-possible future husband and father of my children and I was definitely still drunk.

  I paused but before he could say anything I continued, “And, if you’re trying to woo me, it’s not a good idea to try doing it while flirting with a yucky, obvious, fake-tanned skank.”

  Aidan laughed.

  He laughed!

  Bastard.

  I sure can pick ‘em.

  “They aren’t my friends and you’re jealous,” Aidan replied.

  “If they aren’t your friends then why did you take me there?” I asked then added, “And I’m not jealous.”

  “I took you there because, as The Chosen One, you’ll be moving in those circles and you were definitely jealous.”

  “I will never move in those circles and I… was… not… jealous. Not of that…” I curled a lip, “thing. A C-Lister whose next big career move is to be on Celebrity Big Brother.”

  He smiled. “You shouldn’t be jealous. Amongst all the people there, you were far and away the most interesting. I think Doug felt the same way.”

  Mm.

  “I don’t care what Doug thinks. Doug is a scary guy.”

  Aidan smiled. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Right.

  * * * * *

  By the way, Aidan left after he gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  A kiss on the cheek!

  Um.

  Whatever!

  18 June

  I was walking up Poet’s Walk after a morning shift at The Dozen. I’d passed the turn off to St. Andrew’s Church and the creepy-yet-cool-slash-older-than-time graveyard that surrounded it.

  I ignored the dog walkers in their wellies who looked with horror at my high-heeled, cherry-colored go-aheads that click, clacked on the pavement as I walked by.

  Lucy had done it again with a walnut and pear salad with bits of parmesan cheese shaved from hunks freshly chopped from that huge-assed parmesan wheel at the Italian deli on Hill Road.

  How was I to compete?

  I didn’t do salads.

  As an update:

  Ash, the Numero Uno Grudge Holder, was barely speaking to me.

  Aidan had retreated, again.

  No sign of Agatha.

  No lightning bolts.

  No kidnapping.

  No new reasons to pull out The Chanel (or Versace or Halston, etcetera).

  Everyone else was still working on intelligence, protection spells and what had become the hugely popular Witches Dozen Coffee House now that tourist season gripped the seaside.

  I walked through the wood thinking of dried cranberries, rocket leaves and gorgonzola and nearly missed my turn off after the donkey’s pen into the private footpath to The Gables.

  As I made it into the clearing by the greenhouse I saw, sitting on one of Mavis’s ornate wicker chairs, Althea, replete with what looked to be one of Gran’s famous mint juleps.

  “The Chosen One!” she called, lifting her drink to me.

  Ack!

  “Anyone shoot at you today?” Althea asked as I approached.

  “Not yet,” I answered.

  And she cackled.

  Crazy old coot.

  “The day is young,” she said.

  Great.

  Not something you want to hear from someone who sees the future.

  “Mint julep?” she asked.

  I stopped, my cherry heels sinking into the damp lawn.

  The sun was miraculously shining, my shift was done and I had to admit I would never create a salad that would compete with Lucy’s.

  Further, I hadn’t yet had time (or the opportunity since she was mostly drunk) to chat with our loony guest.

  What the hell.

  “Sure.”

  Another cackle then she poured me a mint julep.

  I sat in the chair beside her, grabbed the drink that was teetering scarily in mid-air (held by her hand), kicked off my go-aheads and put my feet on the little wicker poof that had a yellow and white striped cushion on top.

  “How’s it hangin’?” I asked Althea.

  A slight chuckle came forth but no answer.

  “How’re you finding it here at The Gables?”

  She ignored me, closed her eyes and tipped her face to the sun.

  “Enjoying your stay?”

  Still nothing.

  “Hear from Agatha lately?”

  Silence.

  “The gods? Goddesses? They talking to you?”

  She didn’t even move.

  “Ring-a-ding ding, hello, this is Hera, the end of the world is nigh. Anything like that?”

  Nothing.

  “Have you seen anything interesting, you know, in your mind?” I pressed.

  She burped.

  Then she spoke. “Mm, yes, a fool girl walking the footpaths in high-heeled shoes. You’ll wish you didn’t when your back goes out on you when you’re one hundred and five.”

  Um, did she see my back go out when I was one hundred and five?

  Was I glad that there was an opportunity, maybe, to get to one hundred and five?

  I decided to let it go then I asked, “Would you like to go home?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at me.

  The she muttered, “Home… home, would I like to go home?”

  She was so weird.

  “Yes, home… you know, the sweet little cottage in the glade…” where you lure children to their deaths, “Nothing’s happened in awhile. Maybe you’re safe again there.”

  “I am home, you stupid girl.”

  I was getting a wee bit tired of the “stupid girl” comments.

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m always home.”

  “Listen, Althea, we need to –”

  Her face changed and she waved her hand across the distance between us and I fell silent.

  But…
>
  Not of my own accord.

  Ack!

  Holy Zipped Lips Batman!

  No more drunken-and-weird-yet-somehow-benign Althea.

  Definitely not benign.

  “No, Mathilda, you listen to me.” Yowza, her voice was cold. “You leave me to my drink and my sun and my thoughts.”

  And, right then, I had the terrible urge to get up and clatter away.

  But it wasn’t my urge.

  I even went so far as to put my hands on the chair arms to push myself up.

  But I didn’t want to get up.

  The bitch was trying to control me.

  I struggled against her spell and, with some effort, I remained seated and waved my hand just as she did.

  To my surprise, the spell fell away.

  Now I was pissed.

  “Althea, now’s the time for you to listen to me.”

  She resolutely kept her face set and toward the sun.

  That pissed me off more.

  I snapped my fingers angrily, demanding her attention.

  She didn’t move but she did say, “Go with the cranberry salad. But with goat’s cheese. Strong but not overpowering.”

  What?

  “Althea –”

  Still with eyes closed, face tipped to the warmth of the sun, calm as you please, she spoke.

  And this is what the crazy old bitch had to say, sounding sober as a judge:

  “You are powerful. You’ve no idea what powers you command. You are not a storm, you are a hurricane. You are not a wave, you are a tsunami. You are not a wind, you are a tornado. You are dangerous because you are foolish, stupid, unprepared. You think you’re taking this seriously but you walk up the footpath in high-heeled shoes worried about lettuce leaves. You worry about which man’s seed will create your children. You will be the end of the witch world as we know it and you will be the end of your Spellbounds. The gods and goddesses themselves fear your foolhardiness.”

  Ack!

  Drama, anyone?

  I think I preferred her drunk and slurring.

  But, she wasn’t done.

  “You want to know why they hide your Prophesies? Because they foretell our misfortunes. Because they tell stories of you, Mathilda, The Chosen One, as our Apocalypse. Because they know that you are Disaster. And that, you silly, little fool, is with a capital ‘D’.”

  Holy shit.

  She kept going.

  “You don’t even attempt to read your own feelings, your thoughts. You push away the important and worry about what color to varnish your toenails. Under your roof, you harbor a traitor. A traitor who you ache to touch you, your desire for him blinds you, corrupts you.”

  Er, what? Was she talking about Ash?

  She didn’t elaborate but she kept talking.

  “Witches fear you, man is terrified of you, the supernatural and magical worlds wait in horror as you… bake… cookies.”

  Oh dear Mother Earth and all her fluffy friends.

  She kept right on going.

  “It might be funny if it wasn’t the End of Days.”

  Oh. My. Goddess.

  “Luckily, I’ll be dead before it happens. So… cheers!”

  And she lifted up her glass and downed the whole thing. Took my glass and downed that too. Then burped. Again.

  I left her with that and, of my own volition, went inside and made myself a mojito.

  I never much liked mint juleps.

  I pulled out my trusty, old recipe box that Mom bought me before I started Home Ec in seventh grade. It was beaten up and ragged around the edges. I sat at the kitchen table and I sorted through it, card by raggedy-assed card until I found what I was looking for.

  Then I walked back out to the garden where Althea looked like she was asleep under the sun.

  “Wake up, you old bat,” I ordered.

  She opened one eye and I shoved the recipe card in her face.

  “Catarina’s Homemade Bleu Cheese Dressing!” I said, triumphantly, waving the card in her face. “No goat’s cheese and dried cranberries. None of that frou frou stuff. Just romaine hearts, homemade croutons and fresh bleu cheese dressing! Maybe some real bacon bits. Voila! A salad to-die-for.”

  Althea sat up straight and opened her mouth but I interrupted her.

  “If you think being mean to me is going to make me scamper off home, then you… and Agatha… have another think coming.”

  She harrumphed.

  “And, just so you know, I can wear high heels, be boy crazy, take your abuse and bake cookies and still kick Agatha’s sorry ass all across England and back again. All without the aid of manmade appliances. Or… maybe not entirely without them but only using them in a recreational, stress-relieving capacity.”

  She had both her eyes open and she was now paying lots of attention.

  I kept at her.

  “Until I know that no one is going to shoot at you, or me, or until I figure out why I think you should be here, you’re stuck. I can promise you, those boys didn’t seem to care who they hit with their bullets. And it’s highly likely Agatha sent them. So don’t be thinking she’s loyal to you or anyone who’s caught in the crossfire, because she’s not. And I won’t have the life of a two hundred and three year old woman on my hands.”

  Then I took a big breath and finished.

  “And if you say anything mean about Ash again, no more mint juleps and we’ll magically lock the liquor cabinet and put a spell on you so that any beverage you touch turns to Kool-Aid. And you can call me a stupid girl as many times as you like, I still look hot in these shoes.”

  And then I walked back into the house to make a batch of homemade bleu cheese dressing.

  Chapter Nine

  The Month of July

  5 July

  Yesterday at The Witches Dozen we had a big, ole, down and dirty, cheeseburgers, homemade macaroni salad, real baked beans, ooey, gooey cream cheesy-chocolaty Better than Robert Redford pudding Fourth of July party.

  We even had fireworks.

  Granted, they were amateur and fell off the back of one of Mavis’s “I know someone’s” truck but they were still great!

  It was kickass!

  Everyone had a good time.

  English folk have gotten over the War of Independence (as they call it) so no hard feelings.

  Best part, when Lucy arrived she was waving a copy of the Bristol Evening Post. She slapped the paper on the counter right next to the vat of Robert Redford and pointed at an article.

  “Check that out! We’re famous!” she cried.

  And there it was, our first review:

  Bewitched, Bothered but not Bewildered

  The Witches Dozen

  By Nathan Montgomery

  Food Critic

  Rumor has been flying about The Witches Dozen, a small “American” Coffee House right on the seafront in a town not half an hour away from Bristol’s city centre.

  Some say The Witches Dozen is run by a bevy of true-life, wand-wielding witches.

  They say that the goodies are good because they’re stuffed with magic.

  They also say you can buy yourself a love potion there, if you ask the right witch.

  I don’t care if it’s white magic, black magic or voodoo, just give me more of it.

  The Witches Dozen is worth whatever risk you take when you enter through their broomstick-laden door.

  As you walk in, running the length of the left side is a carved, polished-to-a-shine wooden bar connected to a variety of sparkling clean, curved glass display cases filled with mouth-watering selections of sweets and savories. Behind the bar is a big, shiny, red espresso machine flanked by teetering stacks of a vibrant and eclectic collection of coffee mugs, tea cups and saucers, glasses and ice cream dishes. Behind that is a huge mirror etched with a scraggly cat, its back arched and its tail straight up. And above the mirror is a blackboard with stars and moons drawn on in brightly-colored chalk and the flowery, cursive words, “Sit long… talk much… eat hearty” wr
itten across it.

  Your invitation.

  The Witches Dozen has hipper-than-hip décor that mixes rock ‘n’ roll with witchy chic and comes out somehow cool and cozy. You can have a latte and an enormous sugar cookie, iced with a thick layer of soft, melt-in-your-mouth lavender-colored icing that is so beautiful and delicious; you want to spend hours savoring every bite.

  And you can. You can stay a minute or most of the day – no one will bother you. In fact, they provide books and games you can read and play if you find you need a diversion or an excuse to stick around. Best of all, instead of opening at 9:00 and closing at 3:00, like most cafés, it opens at 7:00 in the morning, so you can pop round for a warm, homemade blueberry muffin with demerara crumble and an espresso for breakfast before work. Then it closes at 9:00 in the evening so after your tea you can go out and have a big bowl of “Dozen’s Mess” (a take on Eton Mess but with blackberries instead of raspberries, meringues made of brown sugar rather than caster and a thin, ribbon of custard throughout) and a “Paris on the Platte Café Fantasia” (a tall glass layered with hot cocoa and espresso separated by a thin wedge of orange and topped with a piped mound of whipped cream and sugared orange sprinkles – one of the owners’ homage to her favorite coffee house in Denver, Colorado).

  The staff is a mish mash. There are old white witches who you fear may not be able to lift that stainless steel beaker full of milk to be steamed. There are also trendy, young lasses whose stylish clothes and high-heeled clattering give you the impression that the cast of Sex and the City have relocated to the West Country. They also make you wonder if London’s fashion elite, in order to get fashion inspiration, may not soon be hanging out on the velvet couches or in the smooth, curved and cushioned wooden booths at the back.

  But all the staff work under another American tradition, fine customer service. You always get a smile and a heartfelt “have a nice day” or “y’all come back now”. And they mean it. You’re made to feel comfortable, welcome and that there’s no request you might make that’s too taxing.

  I’ve been there many times, the first time Macy Gray was blaring out and everyone, patrons included, were singing out loud and the last time Billie Holiday was plaintively speaking to our souls. You’d think one or the other would be annoying but the whole vibe of the place suggests you go with the flow… and you do. It could be you’re bewitched but why worry?