Fiji was thinking about Aunt Mildred that morning while she worked. She’d been a little rattled when Joe and Chuy admitted they saw Aunt Mildred around Midnight, all these years after her death. Fiji had to wonder what that meant in terms of Aunt Mildred’s soul. Did she dare to ask Joe or Chuy if Aunt Mildred was roaming the earth because she wasn’t fit for paradise? Did she herself even believe there was a heaven, or Hell?
On the whole, Fiji thought she did.
As she turned over the soil in the vegetable bed, Fiji wondered about the soul destination of Tabby Ann Masterson, the first suicide. Catholicism had always given suicide a really bad rap. For all Fiji knew, it was accounted a terrible sin in any religion. But how could you find out for sure? You couldn’t. What if you were in terrible pain and there was no hope for recovery? Would she ask someone to help her depart this earth? She chewed around the edges of that dilemma for a few minutes before abandoning the train of thought. No point wondering about something you can’t know, Fiji figured. At least Tabby Ann won’t pee on my porch again.
Though it might be fall in most of America, in Texas it was still summer, though the nights and mornings were cooler. Fiji was grateful for the early-morning temperature. Mr. Snuggly came to sit with her. He liked to watch her work, especially when she was working in the sun. Mr. Snuggly had caught a mouse the day before, and he couldn’t stop preening himself.
“Don’t tell me about that mouse again,” Fiji said.
The cat shot her an injured look.
“And don’t give me the look, either,” she said. “You’d think it was a lion, the way you go on about it.”
Mr. Snuggly said, “Fine. Next time I’ll let it chew on your bread.” He stalked off, tail upright and stiff, and located a sunny spot on the other side of her garden.
“What’s up with the cat?” Bobo Winthrop said. She’d heard his footsteps, so she wasn’t startled, but she kept her face down. She knew she had a habit of smiling too much when Bobo was around.
“Oh, he’s pissed off because I’m tired of listening to his story about killing the mouse,” Fiji said, pulling another weed and tossing it into her bucket. “I might be willing to hear about it again, if he hadn’t put the corpse in my shoe.”
Bobo laughed. He did it well, because it was natural for him. In the past few months she hadn’t seen him laugh enough. He’d been running; he was wearing an ancient sleeveless sweatshirt and even more ancient gym shorts. And he was sweating, though the air was pleasantly cool.
“Pull up a chair and tell me what you know,” Fiji suggested. She sat back on her haunches. Instead of getting a stadium chair from the porch, Bobo folded down onto the ground to sit with her. She sighed inwardly. Bobo was flexible and fit, the right weight for his height, though he was years older than her. “How old are you?” she asked abruptly, giving in to gravity and settling on the ground, too.
“Thirty-five,” he said. “How come?”
Fiji felt heavy and depressed. “Oh, nothing!” she said, doing her best to sound upbeat. “What brings you over here today?” He was due to open the pawnshop soon. And she would have to shower and unlock her own business.
“You know what we need, Feej?” He was looking very serious, and her heart began thudding, just a bit.
Fiji could think of several things they needed, or at least she needed.
“What?” she said, trying not to sound as though she were strangling.
“We need a vacation.”
She wanted to be absolutely certain what Bobo meant before she made a fool of herself. Cautiously, she said, “Do you mean we need to go to a desert island? Or the Grand Canyon? That kind of vacation?”
“I don’t know of any other kind,” he said, smiling. “Yes, that’s what we need. How long has it been since you’ve been out of Midnight for more than a couple of hours?”
“Two years,” she said promptly.
“I’ve been gone overnight maybe three times, but I can’t remember being gone longer than that. Even Lemuel went traveling when he was trying to find someone to translate the books. Chuy visits his kin, and Joe goes to antique shows. Manfred goes to Dallas or Los Angeles or Miami for a couple of days every few months. Olivia is gone half the time!”
“Not the Rev,” Fiji said.
“No, not the Rev, I’ll give you that one. And not the Reeds. And Diederik’s only lived here for a few months, so he doesn’t count.”
Fiji was thinking that it surely sounded as though Bobo was proposing they go somewhere together. Like a couple. But she could hardly believe it. She tested the idea. “You think you and I should go to see Hawaii, or Death Valley?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” He looked serious enough to mean it. The morning wind blew his light hair around.
Fiji had waited for this moment for so long. It was like a clear, perfect, shimmering crystal of happiness. Then Bobo shifted slightly and looked anxiously into her face.
“Of course, we can get two rooms,” he said.
For the life of her, she could not interpret his tone. The crystal shattered.
Fiji mustered every smidgen of self-control she could summon to keep her face from showing her painful disillusion. Something inside her snapped, and she lost hope. “I just can’t do this,” Fiji said into her hands. “You have to leave now.”
Her dearest friend and longed-for lover looked shocked, but maybe not so shocked that he could claim ignorance of his offense. “Let me backtrack,” Bobo said urgently.
“No.” She stood up, pushing off the ground to rise to her feet, for once not caring how heavy and clumsy she might look in the process. “No. I’m going in. Do what you like.” She flicked her hand to show how little she cared. She walked away, into the back door, and closed and locked it behind her. Somehow Mr. Snuggly had beat her inside.
“I’m done with him,” she told Mr. Snuggly. “I can’t live like this anymore.”
Wisely, Mr. Snuggly said nothing.
In the shower, you could not tell the water beating down from the tears.
“Fiji,” Fiji told herself out loud, “you are a fucking idiot.”
It was a harder, tougher witch who turned off the water and toweled herself dry just in time to unlock the front door. A car stopped in front of the shop. Good, I need something else to think about, Fiji told herself. But then she took a second look. To her puzzlement, the car was a familiar one. Fiji was even more amazed when she recognized the woman who got out.
Her first customer of the day was her sister.
“Kiki?” she said, incredulously.
“One and the same,” her sister called gaily.
Waikiki Cavanaugh Ransom was four years older than Fiji. Though all the Cavanaugh women were inclined to be well-rounded, Kiki had starved herself and exercised herself so she would never reach that pleasant state. Kiki was a little taller than her sister, and she wore bright green contact lenses that made her eyes extraordinary. That was new. So was the color of Kiki’s hair, a sort of golden wheat. In the time it took to register all this, Kiki had reached the front porch.
The sisters hugged. For about six seconds, Fiji was simply excited her sister had driven up from Houston to see her. Then her knowledge of Kiki’s nature reasserted itself.
“Not that I’m not glad to see you . . . but I’m surprised,” Fiji said, trying to soften her actual impulse to say, “What the hell are you doing here?”
It wasn’t like any member of her family had come to see her since she’d claimed her inheritance. And her one trip home for Christmas two years before had been a terrible mistake.
“Well, it was just time, Fiji! You’re the only sister I’ve got! You know I’ve regretted that big scene. Mom thought she should have gotten the house, and it may have seemed like I sided with her, but I thought the better of it. I know there were a lot of hard words spoken.”
?
??You’ve waited two years to tell me this? After maybe three phone calls in the intervening time?”
“Give me a break! I’m trying to make nice!” Kiki held her sister away and gave her an admonishing smile.
But Fiji was not having any of it, not today. She folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not in the ‘giving a break’ business. Out with it. There must be some reason you left Houston and drove all the way up here. Let’s have a seat. You tell me about it.”
Fiji gestured to the two armchairs on opposite sides of the little table in the middle of the shop, and Kiki sank into one.
Since she sat down when I asked her to, now she’s going to ask me for something, Fiji thought.
“All right,” Kiki said. “By the way, I could use a cup of coffee.”
Right on the money. “I’ll do the polite hostess thing after you tell me what your trouble is,” Fiji said. She didn’t know where this new tougher Fiji was going, but so far it felt good.
“I left Marty,” Kiki said, almost tearfully. “I just wanted to get out of town for a while, but I don’t have any money, so Mom said I should come stay with you, since you had a house all your own.”
“Fake house envy,” Fiji said. “You didn’t like Great-Aunt Mildred, you never spent any time with her, and you thought this place was a dump. You didn’t keep that any secret. And yet you and Mom have the gall to be surprised that Aunt Mildred left it to me.”
“I never told her I felt that way,” Kiki said childishly. “Aunt Mildred, I mean.”
“You think she was dumb? You think she didn’t know?”
That was exactly what Kiki had thought. As if a few smiles and hugs and flattering comments would pull the wool over Aunt Mildred’s eyes.
“So you really like this place?” Kiki was truly amazed.
“I love it,” Fiji said fiercely. “I love the house, I love my business, I love the town.” Despite everything, she added to herself, without spelling out what “everything” was.
“I just figured you’d fix it up and sell it.” Kiki laughed.
“To whom? You noticed a booming housing market around Midnight?”
“Well, no,” Kiki said, still smiling. “You really do like living here?”
“I really do.” Fiji smiled back, just a little, showing her teeth. “So you left Marty, huh? What did he do to break the camel’s back?”
“He stole some of my jewelry and pawned it. Then he tried to tell me I’d lost it.”
“Why’d he need the money so bad?”
“He’s developed a gambling addiction,” Kiki said stiffly. “He isn’t getting any help, and he’s lost almost all his money, so to save myself and my own things, I had to get out. I put some stuff in Mom’s attic, and then I lit out.”
“So you came here.” Fiji smelled a large rat, much bigger than the little creature Mr. Snuggly had stowed in her shoe.
“Yeah, I came here.”
“Mom wouldn’t let you stay?”
“She made it clear that if Marty came by her house, I couldn’t expect any help from her.”
“What about Dad? He used to be pretty much ready to defend his darling.” Fiji had always been sure she wasn’t included in that defense.
“I don’t know how much you talk to Mom . . .”
“Hardly at all. What?” Fiji was suddenly alert. There was a serious note in Kiki’s voice, a note that said, “Sit up and listen close.”
“Dad has the onset of Alzheimer’s,” Kiki said.
Fiji could only stare at her sister. “Mom didn’t think she needed to tell me? And you didn’t call to tell me?” she said, without any inflection.
Kiki pursed her lips. “I’m telling you now. This is pretty new. I stop by their house maybe twice a week, and I didn’t notice anything wrong for a long time. He was absentminded about things—but he didn’t do any one thing that scared me. It was just like, ‘Where’d I put my car keys? Where’d I leave my phone?’ Stuff like that.” She looked around the shop as if she were appreciating Fiji’s arrangements, but Fiji knew better. “Then one day he called me from the hardware store. He couldn’t remember how to get home.”
“But he could remember how to call you?” Fiji groped to understand.
“He liked my picture by my phone number, so he hit that one.” Kiki shook her head. “Could have been much worse.”
“That must have been really scary. For him. For you.”
Kiki nodded. “No shit.”
“So you decided to come here upon the breakup of your marriage, instead of Mom’s?”
“Yes,” Kiki said firmly. “You know she’s always hated Marty, and I couldn’t stand to listen to her gloat. Plus, helping her with Dad is really stressful. I need to unwind, not get more tense.”
Since Fiji had no intention of going home to help her mother take care of her dad, she hardly had the moral high ground, she realized. “I can understand that,” Fiji said. And she did. But Fiji also knew there was more that Waikiki Cavanaugh Ransom had to tell her, and she supposed sooner or later she would have to hear it. She could hardly tell Kiki to turn around and drive back to Houston, though for a moment that seemed like a delightful possibility. But the bond of family prevailed, somewhat to the new Fiji’s disappointment.
“Well, then, the guest bedroom is just back here,” Fiji said. “I’m sure you recall.” When the family had visited her mother’s aunt, of course Kiki had come, too. “There’s not that much house to remember.”
Fiji walked down the little hall. The bathroom was on her left, her own bedroom was on her right, and the guest room was after the bathroom on the left, across from the kitchen. It was a small room, but now it was a real guest bedroom since she’d bought a shed for the backyard.
Bobo had helped her put it up. Well, Bobo had put it up, with assistance from her and Diederik and a few hours of skilled labor provided by Teacher Reed. The happy memory turned sour in a second, now that she knew she would always be a buddy, never a lover. Fiji pushed back the wave of misery. She would not show weakness in front of her sister.
The bed was a single and covered with a bright patchwork quilt. There was a red bedside table holding a lamp and a box of tissues. Otherwise, the room now contained only a narrow chest of drawers (purchased from the pawnshop) and a narrow wardrobe (likewise).
Kiki looked around her, her lips pressed tight together. It didn’t take a mind reader to tell that Kiki had a low opinion of these accommodations.
Fiji let that roll off her back.
“Okay, I’ll go get my suitcase,” Kiki said. She jerked her thumb down the hall. “That’s the only bathroom?”
“Yes. I know it’s not what you’re used to, but we’re lucky Aunt Mildred put one in. She used to have an outhouse.”
“Ew.” Kiki’s disgusted face was enough reply. She pivoted to go to her car out front.
“You can move your car back behind the house with mine,” Fiji called after her sister. When Kiki was out the door, she sat in the chair behind the counter and put her head in her hands. Ordinarily, she’d be calling Bobo to tell him the big news—a family member had actually come to see her. But of course she could not do that. She thought of telling Manfred, but somehow that didn’t suit her mood, either.
My sister is here and there’s more to that story for sure, my dad’s mind is disintegrating, and I just broke off emotionally from the guy I’ve loved for three years. So what else can happen today? Fiji asked herself.
The bell on the door tinkled as it opened, and Fiji stood up to see an actual customer coming in. “Hi,” she said, hoping she sounded passably sane. “What can I do for you?”
“Do you have any ceremonial daggers? I’m not sure how to pronounce them. Athames?” The middle-aged woman peered around the shop as if one would materialize in front of her. She looked faintly familiar.
Fiji looked a
t the woman more closely, wondering where she could have encountered her new customer. Fiji would never have pegged this woman for a serious practitioner. On the short and stubby side, she had a graying perm with a severe, almost militant, curl to it. Bright pink lipstick was her only makeup. Her clothes were strictly Chico’s, and her sandals were something good but practical, like SAS.
“Don’t I know you?” Fiji said.
The customer looked up reluctantly. “Maybe,” she answered vaguely, and looked around the shop again. Fiji began to get the feeling something was distinctly off about this woman. This had been a day for encounters that weren’t what she’d expected, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock.
“I have a few athames,” Fiji said. “I keep them here inside this counter, if you’d care to come look.”
The woman approached, and Fiji pointed through the glass of the countertop. There were seven or eight athames on display, of different types, sizes, and styles. The newcomer peered down, apparently fascinated by the blades. Fiji was ready to tell her the different materials used in carving the handles, but the woman didn’t ask a single question. The bone one was plain and simple, a steel one had designs chased all the way down the blade, another had a wicked and practical look, another was modeled on a Scottish sgian dhu.
While the customer looked at the display, Fiji looked at the customer. She was convinced she’d seen her before.
“Athames have very specific usages,” Fiji offered, to break the silence. “Would you like me to explain?”
But the woman shook her head. “I want that one,” the customer said after another moment of contemplation. She pointed to the sharpest one, made of stainless steel—the most utilitarian-looking of the bunch, and the only blade that looked as though it could do real damage. Athames didn’t have to be sharp; they were meant to direct energy. Some witches did use their athames as daily tools, on the theory that usage gave the blades power—but most were strictly ceremonial, like Fiji’s, which she kept locked away.
“So when are you going to use it?” Fiji asked directly, though she took care to smile as she did so.