She patted my hand. “It’s okay, Zane. Go to him. I’m fine now.”
I rubbed her upper arm. “You shaved ten years off my life, Zinnia Rose,” I whispered beneath my breath, wishing I could kiss her but knowing Hyacinth would probably hex me if I tried.
I felt the hawk’s eyes trained on me.
Zinnia lifted her hand and rubbed my cheek. Her touch made me tremble, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I wished we didn’t have an audience, and I wished I could tell her all the things that had gone through me at the very thought of her leaving. I’d seen some truths in myself that I’d not expected to find already, not just yet.
I was falling deeply and madly in love with this woman.
I blew out a breath, my stomach hurting, and my soul aching. Not because I didn’t want this, because I did, but the truth was there was a side of me that didn’t want this either. I didn’t want the pain that came with loving someone so much.
But if I’d thought for even a second that I still had a choice in the matter, I’d been disabused of that notion tonight.
I trained my eye on Hyacinth. “Can I kiss her forehead?”
The taciturn witch glowered at me, her lips puckered as though with disgust, before she finally heaved, “Fine. If ye must.”
Zinnia grinned, and I pressed my lips to her slightly clammy forehead.
She nodded back at me, and in her eyes, I read the same truth that lived in my heart.
Violet patted my arm as I stood. “She’ll be a’right, Paul. She’ll be a’right.”
I frowned. “It’s Zane.”
But Zinnia giggled. “You see it too, Aunty?”
Violet waggled her brows and munched on her cookie. “Aye, he really does.”
“What?” I asked in confusion.
But Violet wrinkled her nose and shoved me toward the hall. “Shoo, you. Shoo. Yer boy waits.”
I turned to look and spotted Edward standing at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall with large woebegone eyes, waiting on me to go to him. In his hands, he held on to a stuffed toad. I’d never actually seen a stuffed toad before, but then there was a lot about Blue Moon Bay that was different.
I walked over to him and held my hand out for his. “C’mon, son.”
He took it, and together, we looked back at Zinnia and her spinster aunts.
“Is she okay now?” he asked, his voice soft and trembly.
“Yes, son, she’s just fine now,” I whispered heatedly.
“Good. I like her a lot,” he said as he led me into the room he’d be staying in for the night.
“Me too, son. Me too.”
Chapter 4
Zinnia Rose
I LOOKED AT MY AUNTS, still shaking a little but feeling loads better.
They all three looked at me as if they were peering into my soul. With eyes slightly thinned, all of them rubbed their chins in thought. I wanted to cry, but oddly enough, I also wanted to laugh. I wasn’t sure which emotion was most dominant, so instead, I did nothing.
I looked at my mint-green aunt and lifted my brows, waiting for her to say something. But she didn’t. Then I looked at my blue-haired one, and she likewise said nothing. Aunty Violet on the other hand was wiggling on her seat, pinching her full lips tight, and looking like someone who desperately had a secret to tell but wasn’t sure whether she should.
I frowned. “Aunty?”
She opened her mouth, wilting and looking relieved that I’d said her name. But Aunt Hyacinth sliced her hand through the air, motioning for Aunt Violet to hush. I cocked my head. Why were they acting so squirrely? Something was definitely up, and I only wished I knew what.
Aunty Cinth sighed deeply. “I’m sure ye’ve got questions, lass. But until we have all the answers, all I can tells ye is that what ye experienced tonight was... well... She fidgeted.
And I was so shocked, my jaw dropped. Aunty Cinth never, never fidgeted.
“Aunt,” I breathed out her name. “What is the matter?”
Prim’s bird-like nose twitched, and her nostrils flared. “She aims to give ye the same kind of pat answer she’d give to anyone else, but ye should ken, lass, tha—”
“Dún é!” Hyacinth snapped, saying “shut up” in the old tongue. She whirled so quickly in her seat that she looked like a woman at least half a century younger than she was. Her pale lavender eyes almost glowed in her face.
But Aunty Prim wasn’t at all intimidated by her baby sister. Sticking out her tongue, she gave a very impolite gesture with her fingers. “She has a right to know it, Cinth,” she hissed. “We canna continue to coddle the chit as though she were but a mere—”
“Nay!” Aunt Hyacinth shoved to her feet, nearly knocking the chair to the ground in her haste. She moved with such a blur of speed that I didn’t realize she’d even reached for her wand until it was suddenly in her hand and she was pointing it unerringly at Aunty Prim, who wasn’t looking at her with fear so much as shock.
In fact, I think we all were. Aunt Cinth had never, never reacted like that with anyone else. It was a known fact that she was grumpy, but she’d never before been violent. I swallowed, not sure what to do or say.
Time seemed to slow to an eternal crawl, making me aware of my aunts’ every twitch and breath. The shock that had initially scrawled tight lines around Primrose’s eyes and mouth changed into indignation and outrage.
Aunt Cinth’s own outrage and fury transformed into shock as she stared down at the wand in her hand. Her eyes widened in horror at the notion that she’d just threatened her own sister’s life.
She gasped. “Prim, I... I don’t... I dinnae... Dear goddess,” she squeaked out as she withdrew her wand, turned on her heel, and marched toward the front door.
“Cinth, wait!” Aunt Violet shot to her feet and waved her hand madly at her sister’s retreating backside. But my cantankerous aunt wasn’t to be deterred. If she heard Aunt Vi calling to her, she did not act like it.
“Hyacinth!” Aunty Vi cried again, this time louder and with more authority as she followed Aunt Cinth out the front door.
The slamming of the screen door was what finally made me turn back around. Aunt Prim hadn’t budged from her seat, and she wasn’t looking at the door, but rather at me. A small, tired frown pinched her brows.
She sighed deeply as she rubbed at her wrinkled forehead, causing her blue overalls to bunch and gather around her chest. She shook her head and sighed deeply.
“What just happened?” I whispered slowly, confused by what I’d seen. Surely my Aunt Hyacinth hadn’t just threatened the life of her own sister. Surely not. She would never. Aunt Cinth was many things, but she was not a murderess. She was not a killer.
Aunty Primrose, who was rarely known for being all that serious, was absolutely serious now. She pointed to the couch I’d recently vacated. “T’would be best if ye took a seat, lassie,” she said without a hint of laughter in her voice.
Feeling as though my knees were about to give out anyway, I dropped onto the cushion and stared at her. I wished I had Lapis with me, and the moment I thought of her, I began to shake and tremble.
“Lapis is dead.” I didn’t mean to say it, but the words were yanked out of me, full of pain. “Lapis is...”
My aunt leaned forward, took my hand, and squeezed it tight. Aunt Prim was over three hundred years old, and the strength in her deceptively frail-looking form always surprised me.
“She is no dead, Zinny. Neither is Gwenny, nor even tha’ strange woman.”
I frowned, blinking and shaking my head to try to wobble loose the marbles. Because I was sure she’d said they weren’t dead, which was bushwa because I’d seen my familiars breathe their last breaths with my own two eyes.
As if she’d heard me, my aunt shook her head harder, causing her fat, frizzy curls to bounce. “Nay, lass. What ye saw was the effect of the Sleeping Beauty curse. Least that’s wha’ we’ve called it.”
She refused to hold my gaze, glancing up at me then back down, up and
down, the move furtive and nervous. Her unease made me feel anxious, and I pressed my hand against my stomach to try to stop the butterflies flying willy-nilly inside of me.
“I don’t understand. I-I... That’s only a fairy tale, right?” I clenched my molars tight.
She licked her lips, and it didn’t escape my notice that none of my aunts were acting normal tonight. They were always self-assured and confident. But this—Hyacinth threatening my aunt Prim and Prim looking as if she’d just swallowed a vat of freshly squeezed lemons—was making me feel sick to my stomach and hollow inside. That plus all the furtiveness of the past two weeks made me feel certain that something was not right.
I wrapped my arms around my middle. My toes and fingers felt cold, and I wondered if that was a side effect of whatever spell had gotten hold of me or if it could be shock.
Aunty heaved, looking skyward as she began talking in a low monotone. “Me sisters and I have seen this curse before. We’re well acquainted with it, though the truth is we’ve no seen the curse for several hundred years. And it can only be cast by a... a”—her shrewd blue eyes roved slowly over my face, making me break out in a wash of goose bumps—“a dark witch. ’Tis why Cinth lost her mind the way she did. Whatever this is, is no good, lassie.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. The numbness in my fingers and toes were spreading, going up my forearms and down my gams. “Wh-what?”
I shook my head. Aunty just looked at me, saying nothing but her countenance shone with misery. I no longer saw a stalwart beacon of confidence, but an elderly witch with definite curls of fear pinching her eyes and mouth.
I blinked. My head was crammed full of words, but my mouth felt locked, and my tongue felt swollen, making it impossible for me to speak.
The fact was there’d only ever been one dark witch in Blue Moon Bay. Just one. And that one dark witch had cursed our town, it had been Old Man Tinker himself.
He’d been different from most dark witches, or so I’d been told since I’d never actually met the infamous witch. His magic had been predicated on the darkness in the world, but he himself hadn’t been dark. Therefore, he’d been able to successfully cohabitate among us, living by our laws of peace and tolerance for the differences of our paranormal brethren.
At least he had until he’d gone off the deep end after his son had vanished and in his sadness had cursed us all, locking us away from the outside world for decades at a time. But the crux of the problem was that the curse had only ever allowed humans to come inside of Blue Moon Bay, not other paranormal types. Once the curse had been placed on our village, we’d been shut off from the rest of the paranormal world.
And that was how it had been since I’d been alive. Tinker had crafted the curse, but he’d also abandoned Blue Moon almost a century ago.
I bit my upper lip, the gesture a reflex that showed just how nervous this conversation made me. “Is it possible that Tinker is back?”
It would stand to reason that if he’d crafted the curse, then maybe he could return. If that were the case, had he come back to heap even more vengeance upon us for killing his son? I blinked, staring at my aunt and waiting for answers.
She pursed her lips and glanced down at her feet. “I dinna ken, lassie, but...” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. That alone made me feel terror, the likes of which I’d never truly known before.
“Aunty,” I hissed, “what are you keeping from me? What is the matter? Please tell me.”
Her bright-blue eyes stared back at me without flinching. “It’s no Tinker’s brand, Zinny. Whoever”—she swallowed hard, stuttering with her breath—“whoever cast this curse, it was no Tink.”
I blinked, then blinked again.
A paranormal had passed through the veil. That was impossible. Yes, Sage might be a part of our town, but she’d come through unusual circumstances. If what my aunt was saying was true, whoever the dark witch was, he or she had simply walked right on through.
“No.” I shook my head. “No. Do you take me for a dumb Dora? I’ll not believe this. You’re lying.”
She shook her head, looking serious and sad. “I’m not lying, Zinnia Rose. I wouldn’t do that to ye. Not now.”
I leaned forward on my seat. “So you have lied to me, then?”
She inhaled deeply and shook her head. “All parents do, and if they say they don’t, they lie.”
I swallowed hard, wondering what that meant. But I turned to glance down the hall where Zane and Edward waited for me, and my body erupted with gooseflesh.
“What? What does this mean, Aunty? What does this mean? Has the curse changed? Will I lose them?”
She reached over and clutched my waving hands, squeezing them tight. I trembled from head to toe.
Her jaw was set with determination. “Nay, lassie. Ye’ll no lose them. I vow it to ye. No matter what comes, we will no allow harm to come to those ye love. But it would appear the curse has changed. And what this means now, I dare not speculate. The sisters and I must research further. There is much we dinna yet ken.”
“You woke me up. So wake them up.” I pointed at the very still bundles lying on the opposite side of my living room. Their eyes remained closed, making them appear freshly dead to all the world.
She shook her head. “It is a miracle, lassie, that we were able to bring ye back at all. By all rights it shouldn’t have worked, and yet it did. And I’ll no be looking a gift horse in the mouth, that’s fer certain. But...there is naught the sisters and I can do for the others, we tried and they remain as they are. Now, all we can do is keep them out of harm’s way.”
I shook my head. “No. No. You can fix them. I know you can. I’ve seen you do impossible, miraculous things.”
She squeezed my fingers tighter, and her mouth thinned. “Ye ken as well as I that a curse can only be lifted by the witch that cast it.”
“And yet you managed to do just that for me.”
She thinned her lips and stared at me for several, tense seconds. “True. Though why you came out and the others didn’t, it’s a mystery even to me, little one.”
I heard the ring of truth in her words, she really did seem as confused by all of this as I was. If it was true, that I’d come out of this spell when by rights I shouldn’t have, I couldn’t help but wonder why. What was it about me that should make me so special?
A tear rolled down my cheek as I gazed at the three lifeless bodies. My gaze lingered longest on Lapis. I shook my head. “So they’re stuck like this? Forever?”
She shook her head. “We’ll find who did this, love. We’ll find who did this, and we’ll make them reverse the spell. I vow it to ye. Have faith, dear.”
I shuddered, hanging my head and letting my long hair shield the tears slipping freely down my cheeks. I’d had Lapis since she’d just been a kitten. I’d shared my life with her. She was my most trusted and loved familiar. She was my baby. And unless we found the dark witch who’d cursed her, she would be dead to me forever.
“What if we never find the witch who did this?” I asked into the thick hush.
My aunt patted my cheek, her soft fingers feeling like cotton against my skin.
“Get some rest, dear. Ye had a verra trying night.”
I sat there long after Aunty had left. If we didn’t find the witch, they would all three stay like this forever. I had to fix this. I had to try. But I didn’t have a clue where to start.
Chapter 5
Zinnia Rose
IT HAD BEEN TWO DAYS since we’d lost the three to the sleeping curse, and though the town was still in a state of mild shock by the events of that night, there was nothing that could be done other than to try as best we could to move on with our lives.
My aunts had been holed up in their cottage, poring over their tomes, looking for answers I feared we might never know.
Doc had taken to patrolling Main Street as temporary acting sheriff. We’d never needed one before, so he’d been the best choice for the job in a pinch. Everyone els
e was pitching in to make sure the humans didn’t catch a whiff of the unusual goings on.
But no matter how hard we tried to keep things normal, I felt the thick tension, and the humans clearly had too. There’d been a mini exodus since the happenings of the other night.
After reopening my diner, I’d been forced to dump out all the cupcakes. My aunts had sworn it wasn’t my cupcakes that had caused the curse, but I’d been too spooked to try to sell any of them. In fact, I couldn’t even abide the thought of making any more sweets at the moment.
“Zinny, you’re doing it again, sweetheart,” Zane whispered in my ear, brushing the bangs out of my eyes and looking profoundly worried for me.
Edward was staying with Glenda and Oswald tonight. For the past two months, Glenda had been planting a garden of moonflowers, and tonight was the reaping for the first batch. Moonflowers were an integral ingredient in our sleep potions. The translucent-petaled flowers had stamens that were full of phosphorescent blue dust. It was sublimely magical when she harvested them, and it’d been all Edward’s idea to go and help out.
The young boy had taken a shine to our town, which I loved, truth be told. But now I worried about it too. I worried about what was happening and why, but mostly, I worried about Zane and Edward’s safety if my aunts’ words were true and there really was a black witch skulking through Blue Moon Bay.
That was why a part of me wanted Aunt Prim to be wrong. A part of me actually wanted to be the one responsible for what had occurred. Not that I would ever forgive myself for it, but I would rather it be a simple oversight than something worse, something... malevolent.
I sighed and shook my head, staring into my cup of black coffee. Usually, I drank it full of cream and sugar, but I was in a black mood tonight.
“What if my aunts are wrong, Zane? What if it’s not a”—I glanced around the diner, at the handful of humans sitting and eating around us, and lowered my voice to whisper—“dark witch, but what if it was poison?” I barely mouthed the last word, and when I did, my heart trembled. “What if I... What if it was me?”