We drove a few more miles before I finally saw the brown timber roof of the Gas ’n Dash just over the horizon.
“You wanna go to the bathroom?” I asked Edward, turning down the volume on a random radio station playing, of all things, Halloween songs. Who played “Monster Mash” in July? Ridiculous.
“I’m hungry,” he said mournfully.
We should have hit the Oregon border two hours ago. But after being forced to stop and mess around with my useless phone, and after the gallons of coffee I’d been consuming just to keep me alert, we were looking at another night in a hotel, which was absolutely depressing.
From the moment I’d concocted this harebrained idea, I’d had a good feeling about it, as if getting to the coast was going to save us. Save him. I’d felt a tug deep inside my chest telling me to go. Go now. Leave it all behind. I hadn’t even put in a two-week notice at my father’s shop. I’d just dropped the papers on his desk, told him I was leaving and taking Edward with me, and said I hoped he had a nice life.
He hadn’t cared. My family had stopped caring about me the second I’d chosen love over family honor.
My hopes of the Gas ’n Dash having some sort of real food were shattered when I finally pulled into the red-dirt lot and noticed just how appropriate its name was. There weren’t even any isles inside the glass-encased storefront, just a small office with bare walls and one utilitarian desk that looked like it had come from the turn of the nineteenth century. There was a woman inside with her back to us. Her hair was a halo of tight silvery-white curls around her head, and she wore a blue work bib. She sat on an antique-looking rocker and was watching a very tiny, portable, black-and-white TV.
I pursed my lips, instantly not liking the feel of this place, though I couldn’t exactly explain why. Something just felt off.
The theme song to Deliverance played in my mind. I looked down the road a bit, but I didn’t see anything else for miles, just a whole bunch of trees. I’d run out of options here.
If I couldn’t rely on my phone any further, then I’d have to navigate the old-school way. I just hoped this place sold Rand McNally maps, or we were up excrement creek without a paddle.
“Daddy, I’m hungry,” Edward whined again, crushing his now empty Ho Hos wrappers in his small fists.
“I know, buddy,” I said as I stepped out of my ’65 convertible—a cherry-red Mustang with white pinstripes and white-walled wheels. “We need gas. I’ll see if there’s a diner somewhere close. You sure you don’t need to go to the—”
“Restrooms just over yonder,” a thin, creaky voice said from over my shoulder, startling me.
“Holy sh—” At my son’s wide eyes, I said the first thing that came to mind. “Sheets. Holy sheets,” I said again pitifully, which caused Edward to snigger.
It was rather embarrassing that a grown man like myself used the words excrement and sheets instead of shit. But I had the vocabulary of a toddler now. Welcome to Fatherhood 101, where you didn’t know what the hell you were doing, but you just hoped by the end of it you hadn’t raised a serial killer. That would be considered winning in my book.
My heart was still trapped somewhere in the region of my spine when I looked down into the kind blue eyes of a gray-haired grandma. She had a few heavy wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, a sign that she laughed a lot. She had the same kind of hair just about every single grandmother past the age of seventy seemed to have—a curly, thinning puff that reminded me of spun sugar. When she tilted her head at a certain angle, it even looked a very light shade of pale blue.
How in the world had she snuck up on me the way she had? She wasn’t big by any means, but even my sixty-nine-year-old granny didn’t move as spryly, and she walked at least three miles every day, rain or shine.
Giving me a toothy grin, she tsked and said, “Touchy, now, aren’t we?”
I grumped. I was not touchy.
I was about to say so, when she planted her hands on her hips and beamed down at Edward. “And who might ye be, young master?”
Young master? I squinched, wondering why she’d greeted him in such a strange manner. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but it was an odd way of saying hello.
A half smile had formed on Edward’s face. I’m sure he loved seeing his dad nearly jump out of his skin. I might have grumbled at him if I wasn’t currently transfixed by the sight of that partial grin. Edward hadn’t smiled much in over two years, and the rare times he did, it was a momentous occasion. I rubbed at my chest with my thumb.
The lady held out her hand to him, which Edward went to take. But the second he moved to grab it, there was a candy bar in her hand, a fun size one. He and I both blinked in startled shock. I could have sworn her hand had been empty just a second before. I frowned. Sleep deprivation must have been getting to me just a little.
“I’m... Edward,” he said cautiously, trying to be polite and not just grabbing her fingers, assuming that candy had been meant for him.
But she turned his hand over and very deliberately put the candy bar into his palm. “Aye, weel, ‘tis good to meet ye, Edward. Folks round these parts call me Aunty Prim. So I reckon you can call me that too.”
As she spoke, she leaned in, and a silver pendant slid out from beneath her coveralls. It took me a second to make out what it was, and when I did, my brows shot straight into my hairline.
A pentagram. The harmless old granny was a witch.
I rubbed my brow, not sure how I felt about that. A person had a right to be or do whatever they wanted, so long as they didn’t harm others in the process. And yet, raised in the Bible Belt as I’d been, I felt an immediate inclination to lean back on my heels, grab my son, and hightail it out of there.
Prim glanced at me, wearing a soft, almost knowing smile. “Ain’t another gas station around for at least a hundred miles, if not more.” She gestured toward the road with her chin as she clasped her pendant.
My nostrils flared, and I was strangely put off again. There was something very different about this woman, even if she seemed harmless enough.
I warred with myself. Leave and run out of gas on the side of the road? I still had no map and no phone to reliably depend upon. Or stay, pump the blasted gas, and learn to let old biases go?
That was the whole reason Edward and I had opted to start over again—to get away from my parents’ stifling and frankly terrible influence. I didn’t want Edward growing up like I had. He deserved better. Elle’s son deserved better.
I knew what Elle would have done just then. She’d have held out her hand, smiled, and introduced herself.
“My name’s Zane,” I said, voice sounding like gravel after hours of not saying much.
We shook hands, and I swear, the moment our skin touched, I felt a spark, a pop, like static on laundry just out of the dryer.
I yanked my hand back, rubbing at my still tingling fingers, feeling as though I’d just climbed a giant hurdle and won.
Edward was crawling over the closed car door to run off to the bathroom. I’d scolded him about that more times than I could count. Yes, we had a convertible, but I didn’t want scratches on the paint from his shoes. But even that couldn’t dampen my feeling of euphoria.
Small as this was, Elle would have been proud of me. I was making a conscious choice to not turn into my father, and I was winning.
Prim reached for the gas handle. It took me a second before I realized what she was about to do.
“Whoa. Wait. I can do that.” I tried reaching for the nozzle, but she yanked it out of my reach and shook her head.
“Not here, you dinna. We do things the old-fashioned way in Blue Moon. How much ye be wanting?” Her accent was unusual, Irish, maybe Scottish as there was a definite roll to some of her words, but also American in places. I couldn’t place where she was from, which shouldn’t have bothered me and yet sort of did.
Feeling weird because, as a proud Southerner, it went against my very fiber to let a grandma pump my gas, I wanted t
o refuse. But, when in Rome...
“Twenty’ll be fine.”
She started pumping, quiet at first, then looked down at the car. “Nice conveyance ye’ve got there.”
She patted my car door, and I snorted. Conveyance? Little master? Who spoke that way anymore? But even as I thought it was strange, I also liked it.
I grinned. There weren’t many ways to make me smile anymore, but this car had been Elle’s baby. She’d doted on the thing like a proud mama, making me mighty jealous a time or two, if I was being honest. And then Edward had come along and taken over the throne, and I hadn’t minded one bit. This car and Edward were my last tangible connections to her, and they both meant the world to me.
I patted the trunk. “She is indeed. Listen, I hate to be a bother, but you wouldn’t happen to have a map on you, would you?”
She laughed, a great big belly laugh that caused my own lips to twitch. Her entire face crinkled up, and the sound was so infectious that I couldn’t help but join in.
“Lawd, no. I sure don’t. But I ken someone who does. Lives just down the road a short ways. Take ye to her, if you’d like.”
I grimaced, not sure why that had been so funny. “No, that’s all right. I’d hate to inconvenience anyone. I was just hoping to buy one. You said the next town’s—”
“—over a hundred miles away. I sure did.”
I sighed. I really needed that map. “Do you have a library in town?”
She snorted, topping off the tank with a few clicks until she got to twenty on the dot. “We might be a small, backwoods sort of town, but yes, we actually do have a library. With running internet too.”
I held up my hands. “I wasn’t meaning to imply—”
“Weren’t you though, Mr. Huntington?”
I frowned, sure I’d never given her my name. I glanced down at her pentacle. “You trying to tell me you’re a real witch? I know I never gave you my surname.”
A corner of her lips twitched. “That’s right, I am. But in this case, alls I had to do was look.”
She pointed at my license plate, and I groaned, remembering the day Elle had proudly displayed our new and ridiculous tags. There was an image of a hunter in black silhouette with the letters INGTON. Still, it was vague and not easily deciphered.
“I play a lot of crossword puzzles,” she said by way of explanation.
“Daddy, Daddy!” Edward came running back, practically skipping along the way as he pointed behind him. “There was a giant toad in the bathroom, Daddy, and he had really pretty green eyes, and he said hi to me.”
I frowned. “That’s good, son.”
“No, but Daddy, he really said hi to me.” Edward almost barreled into me. I had to plant my hands on his shoulders to get him to stop.
I nodded. “Good. Good.”
He huffed, looking up at Prim. She winked at him, which caused my son to grin again. I couldn’t believe the transformation in him. But it was definitely time to go. The old lady was starting to give me the willies. I knew I was tired, but I could swear she’d read my mind not once but twice.
“I’m hungry,” Edward said a second later as I bustled him back into the car.
“Edward, maybe you could wait just a lit—”
“Weel, I know a great wee place where ye can find just about anything you might have a hankering for.” She pointed down the road with a gnarled finger. “Just a ways down. Called The Golden Goose. Best cook around for a hundred miles. No lie. She’s me niece, ye ken,” she said in a stage whisper, covering her mouth with her hand and leaning toward Edward as she said it.
“Can we go, Daddy, please?” he pleaded, clenching his little fingers tight and staring at me imploringly.
I groaned. How could I say no to that? He had his mama’s eyes, and he wielded those things like a blade. Plus, I hadn’t seen him so animated in some time.
Setting my misgivings aside, I nodded. “Fine. Fine. We’ll go. Just down the road, you said?”
She nodded. “Aye, sir. Canna miss it. Got a big ol’ goose in the window.”
Edward chuckled, and my heart melted into a puddle in my chest. Blowing out a raspberry, I stared at my freckle-faced boy and sighed. “Dirty pool, little man. Buckle up, then.”
He did, and just as I slid in, I saw him turn in his seat and wave goodbye.
“Nice meeting you, Aunty Prim. See you later. Tell Aristotle I say goodbye!”
“I will. An you too, young master,” she called back as she walked backward toward her office. I wasn’t sure, but I could have sworn I heard her say, “An sooner than ye might think.”
I glanced at Edward side-eyed. “Who’s Aristotle?”
His smile was innocent as he said. “Aunty Prim’s toad. He’s really nice.”
Shivering, I tore out of there, recalling ten miles down the road that I’d completely forgotten to pay her.
Chapter 3
Zinnia Rose
IT’D BEEN FIVE DAYS since my aunties cast the spell. The diner was bustling with folks, both old and new. The pier-side carnival was up and running again. The community of Blue Moon was blossoming. Like Sleeping Beauty, we’d woken from our curse, even if only temporarily. I decided that made the occasion all the sweeter because of its rarity.
Already, I’d seen more than a few of our bachelorettes paired up. There’d be more offspring soon. So far as I knew, there was nothing in the curse that said all offspring were destined to be girls. It was just the way things had transpired in the last couple of centuries. We were all hopeful that, someday soon, our odds might change. But magick was tricky business and not always easily understood or navigated, even for the strongest among us.
I grinned at my Aunty Vi, who was sitting at the bar, lazily swinging her short legs back and forth as she hummed a merry tune under her breath. She had a small, bubbling cauldron sitting in front of her and was actually working on a spell, though the humans around her merely thought her antics quirky and silly.
From the short looks I’d managed here and there, I thought she was casting a forget-me-not spell. Aunt Vi had a terrible memory at the best of times, but she was over three hundred years old, so she had an excuse.
I tried to bustle past her, but she saw me and forced me to slow down.
“Oh, Zinny, dear. How are you today?” she asked as she plopped a gnarl of dragon’s root into her murky brown brew. There was an immediate hiss and sizzle. Dragon’s root had heating properties and could boil a spell in no time flat.
A little girl with pink bows in her blond curls clapped her hands and said, “Oh, Mommy. Magic!”
The girl’s mother only smiled and said without bothering to look away from her companions, “Yes, sweetheart. She’s making magic.” Then she proceeded to laugh with her girlfriends as though they knew a secret the child didn’t.
I always found it ironic, no matter what decade we were in, how a human mind was able to reconcile what they saw with what they thought they knew. Magick—the real kind—did not exist in their reality. Ergo, Aunty Vi’s potion was nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
But then, their denial was also our shield. We could be open about what we truly were, and nobody actually believed it. Except the children, of course, but no one ever paid them any mind.
To the humans, the town had appeared overnight, a fully-fledged place with buildings and families and amazingly odd and unusual architecture. And hardly anyone batted an eye about it. They accepted the impossible by twisting and turning reality into something that made absolute sense in its total nonsense, at least to them.
I doubted I would ever fully understand the human condition. Humans fascinated me with their dichotomous natures, unyielding and staunchly jaded in so many ways and yet with the capability to be youthful and wonderfully naïve all at once.
“You have a busy day ahead of you,” Vi said with a happy little wink.
Being hit with the love spell was becoming a distant, hazy memory. I’d marched right over to my aunts’ place before
sunrise that very same day, demanding they remove the spell.
Aunt Prim had apologized profusely and, had given me her word that she would break the spell before nightfall. Surely, if a man had been in my future, he’d have appeared by now. So I wasn’t overly worried by my aunt’s cheerful enthusiasm.
I shrugged. “It’s always busy when the veil lifts. You know that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Aunt, my table is very patiently waiting for its order.”
She nodded and resumed her happy tune, plopping a few elderberries into her brew. The little girl’s smile grew ever wider.
Using magick among the non-magical wasn’t forbidden, but we’d all agreed by tacit consent to keep our use of it to low-level doings, spells that could easily be explained away. That was simple enough for witches, but far harder for our vampires, shifters, and other sorts. Witches looked exactly like humans. But for some of our less mundane-looking folks, this time of century had traditionally been a terrible burden, until my aunties had discovered a hidden spell in Old Man Tinker’s abandoned grimorie and had created a concealing charm that helped disguise their appearance to outsiders.
The only exception was Annabelle Lee, who was far too insubstantial to hold onto anything she hadn’t died with.
Blue Moon enjoyed the influx of humans, but we didn’t want to attract too much attention to ourselves. After all, in no time, we’d find ourselves sealed off from the world again. We didn’t want or need a horde of news crews and faces from around the world descending upon us. Whoever was in our town when the veil once again blanketed our township would remain—good, bad, or ugly. Luckily, our magick was very picky about who it let in, and that method worked just fine for me.
“Delilah,” I said as I bumped into my second-favorite waitress, nearly unsettling the tray of smoked-cherry tarts and cups of frothing brew I held—tea with a hint of juniper berry juice and a pinch of magick added to the mix.