Chapter One
SCENE I. A CAVERN. IN THE MIDDLE, A BOILING CAULDRON.
Thunder. Enter the three Witches
First Witch
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
Second Wit—
Yeah, totally kidding about that. There was no second witch. It was one witch, me, and John, my husband, SFPD’s new Police Commissioner. Oh, and the scene was the breakfast table at our house on Greenwich Street in San Francisco. I was fixing French toast, which, for the record, is not French, and the coffee was just about ready.
“… new report, you need to make just over $343,000 in order to afford a median-priced home in San Francisco,” the bespectacled and solemn news reporter on the TV across the kitchen informed us. “The report was compiled by…”
John and I had arrived home the night before from Scotland, where we had been on our honeymoon for the past two weeks. As a side note, I am very much in favor of honeymoons. I mean, yes, they’re artificial in that getting to spend two weeks doing whatever pleasurable thing you feel like doing is not real life. And, yeah, it’s also true that a luxury vacation in a romantic foreign country is probably not the best way to get to know someone you’ve only known a short time—although it certainly works that way in Hallmark movies. But it is a good way to figure out if you want to spend more time together, and needless to say, I had figured out I wanted to spend as much time as possible with John. Ideally, the rest of my life.
John poured coffee into two mugs. “You’re still okay with hosting this cocktail party on Wednesday?”
“Of course.” His expression was doubtful. “What?” I asked.
He nodded at the wall of cardboard boxes filling half the kitchen. It was pretty much the same situation in every room of the house. Combining our separate households meant John and I had bestowed a lot of worldly goods on each other. And then we’d bought a few new pieces too–like the Victorian black and bronze bed in the master bedroom.
“I’ve got a lot of catching up to do this week. I’m not going to be able to be much help. Presumably it’s going to be the same for you.”
“I can manage. Don’t worry. I’ll have Bridget to help.”
John looked unconvinced, but he poured a generous helping of cream and sugar into my coffee, brought it to me with a kiss.
“I’m going to miss you today,” he murmured.
“Same here.” I kissed him back.
That led to another longer kiss, and before I knew it, I was sitting on the quartz counter with my jeans unzipped, the French toast was burning, and the doorbell was ringing.
“Hell,” John exclaimed, hastily tucking his shirt in and zipping up his trousers. “That’s Aloha.”
“Yes, it is,” I sighed. “In more ways than one.”
Aloha Newman was John’s driver. Though she worked for SFPD, she was not actually a police officer and did not carry a gun. That was fine by me. I’d had more than enough of guns on our wedding day.
What Aloha did possess was a ruthless sense of punctuality.
“I’ll see you around six.” John was already heading for the arched doorway leading into dining room.
“We’re having dinner at your mother’s,” I called after him.
He muttered something uncomplimentary to the universe, returned, “Right. See you at five-thirty.” The front door slammed behind him.
I sighed, glanced at the stove and twitched my nose. The dial turned to off, the flame beneath the pan guttered and died. “Down the sink, before you stink,” I muttered.
Two burned slices of egg-coated bread rose from the pan, floated past my face, and dropped down the sink drain.
Across the room, another reporter, also bespectacled and solemn but female, was reciting, “Though friends of the victim say Ms. Starshine was a practicing Wiccan, investigators speculate these “satanic” elements might be intended to divert suspicion from the killer or killers.”
“What the what?” I hopped off the counter and went to turn up the sound on the television—the remote was still MIA—which promptly zapped me. “Ouch!”
The volume blasted up then died away again.
By the time I managed to dial in the sound, the cameras had returned to the studio and the news anchors (recognizable for the lack of spectacles or solemnity) were exchanging cheery banter about the weather forecast. Sunny with a chance of homicide?
I made a mental note to ask John about the Starshine case, turned off the TV and sprinted upstairs to get changed for work.
“How was Scotland?” Andi asked when I stopped by her apartment in Alamo Square to pick up Pyewacket.
Andi—Andromeda Merriweather—has been my best friend since I can remember. Her mother and my mother were chums back in the day and apparently it was a dream come true to be able to share morning sickness and swollen feet with their nearest and dearest. I’m not entirely kidding about the nearest and dearest. By the time I came along, my parents were experiencing a certain lack of enthusiasm, and Andi’s father had crossed over, so Maman and Belinda did rely heavily on each other. Girl Power being a magic that transcends realms.
Anyway, Andi is three months older than me. She’s tall and slim with short, inevitably spiky red hair, freckles, and hazel eyes. She owns and operates the Mad Batter bakery, which has The Best cupcakes in all of San Francisco. And I don’t say that merely because I concoct the recipes for her exclusive line of cocktail cupcakes.
“Bonnie,” I answered, cuddling Pye. Pyewacket is my three-hundred-year-old Russian Familiar. I mean, I haven’t had him for three hundred years–I only turned twenty-nine in May. Pye inhabits the body of a cat. A Russian Blue cat.
I kissed Pye’s nose, which he bore stoically. “Was he any trouble?” I asked Andi.
She shook her head, smiling as she watched us. “He’s good company for Minerva.” Minerva is Andi’s Familiar, a Dwarf Hotot rabbit with a disposition as benign as the carrots she loves to snack on.
“Did you have fun?” I asked Pye.
His meow was loud and scented with liver-flavored Friskies Paté.
“I bet,” I said.
“So everything is…good?” Andi asked–maybe a little tentatively.
“Everything is great.” I guess I was beaming because Andi looked relieved.
“You look happy.”
“I am. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy before.” To be honest, it was a little unsettling. Obviously, the honeymoon phase couldn’t last forever, and I wasn’t sure how much of John’s and my contentment with each other was the result of a couple of weeks of nothing to do but sight-see and make love.
“I’m glad.”
I didn’t doubt it. If anyone had a vested interest in my relationship with John working out, it was Andi, who was, when you thought about it, inadvertently responsible for the whole thing. “How’s it going with Trace?” I asked.
“Great.”
I hadn’t expected that. Andi’s…well, picky.
“Really? That’s wonderful.” At least I hoped so.
“Is it? I mean, I really, really do like him.” She sounded troubled.
“But that’s good, right?”
“No. Not right. I’m not like you. I can’t—he’s mortal. Being together would mean, well, I’m not even sure what it would mean. A lifetime of living a lie? Or breaking my oath and telling him the truth?”
I considered. “As far as oaths go, don’t you think the not-telling-any-mortals-anything-ever rule is really more of a guideline?”
“No. I don’t.”
I did not want it to end. It was one of the sweetest, saddest (in a lighthearted way, not big, ugly tears-and-snot way), most romantic-without-feeling-faux original tales I’ve read.
“Because some mortals do know.” I was thinking of Ralph Grindelwood. Not that Ralph was a great example given that I now believed he was the sworn enemy of the Craft.
“That can’t be helped. It doesn’t change anything. We cannot contribute to their knowledge.”
In our silence lies our safety.
The final—and some would say the most important—of the Ten Precepts.
Still I persisted, “I understand, but times are changing. Mortals are more accepting now. Of a lot of things.”
She shook her head. “Not really. Fashions change. That’s about it. And even fashion cycles around again.”
Kind of a bleak outlook from a girl who made cupcakes for a living, but Andi’s feelings mirrored those of a lot of our friends—and both of our families.
“Yeah, but even two steps forward and one step back means progress. Incremental maybe, but progress.”
She shook her head. “You’re an idealist, Cos.”
I let it go and changed the subject. “Well, on the topic of fashion, I brought you something frae Bonnie Scotland.” I shifted Pye onto my shoulder, and handed over a small box.
“You didn’t have to.”
“I know.”
Andi unwrapped the box, lifted the lid, and her face changed. “Oh, Cos.” She picked up the necklace inside. A tiny cinnabar carved sacred heart crowned with a flame of raw garnet stone dangled from a vintage rosary made of bogwood.
“It’s lovely.”
“I found it in an antiques shop in Dumbarton. It’s Wiccan, I think.”
“I love it. Thank you.”
“And I’ve been thinking of a Drambuie-based cocktail that might work for cupcakes.”
Her eyes lit. “Perfect timing. We need to shake up our menu for autumn.”
“Autumn? It’s only July.”
“Exactly. Time to start planning.”
We chatted another minute or two and made plans to meet for lunch on Wednesday. I coaxed Pyewacket into his carrier, and headed for the door.
As I was leaving, I asked, “Have you heard anything about Rex?”
Rex was a friend of ours who had been injured in a hit and run accident. When John and I had left for Scotland they had still been in a coma.
Andi shook her head. “Sorry. Nothing. But then I’m not sure I’d hear anything. They’re really more your friend than mine.”
“What about Oliver?”
“Oliver?”
“Oliver Sandhurst.”
Andi only looked more confused. “What about him?”
“I thought I told you this. He disappeared after I tried to—after my visit to the Creaky Attic.”
“Oh. Right. That feels like a million years ago. I haven’t heard anything.” She looked apologetic. Not that Oliver was her responsibility. Technically, he wasn’t my responsibility either.
But I did fear for him. And I did feel responsible.
Confused yet?
Let’s recap. A month ago, I met John Joseph Galbraith, San Francisco’s new police commissioner and my husband-to-be, at Bonhams’ warehouse where we were both interested in bidding on a black and bronze Victorian antique four-poster with crystal bed knobs. I was attracted to John from the minute I laid eyes on him. I don’t know why exactly, because he wasn’t really my type. Not that I think of myself as having a type, but if I did, it wouldn’t be a big, brusque Kennedyesque guy with a military background and political ambitions.
Except, somehow, when I gazed into his amber—yes, brown-gold—eyes, something funny happened to me. I’m not saying it was love at first sight, but I did feel some instant, odd connection. Which is why it sort of smarted that John didn’t feel the same. In fact, he was kind of…well, let’s say pointedly not interested.
Which, come to think of it, maybe is a sign of interest?
Or maybe I’d just like to believe that John caustically brushing me off was the equivalent of Gideon Terwilliker pushing Andi into the swimming pool back when we were in the third grade.
Anyway, Andi did not appreciate that slight to my ego and she, er…cast a spell on John so that the next time he saw me, he, well, fell in love.
Or thought he did.
Which is sometimes the same thing.
And sometimes not.
That explains John’s part of all this. It doesn’t explain why I went ahead and married a man I’d only known two weeks. But you know, you either believe in love at first sight or you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re quite right not to because it will never happen to you.
I don’t say that to be mean. It’s a fact. If you can’t conceive of a thing, how will you recognize it when it happens? Unless we’re talking about an earthquake. Anyway, it’s right there in the Bible. Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
It does happen to some of us. It happened to me.
Granted, part of what—who—I fell so head-over-heels for was the John under the influence of the love spell. The John not under a love spell was a different bloke. Not nearly as romantic—or malleable. Yet it didn’t seem to matter to my heart.
Regardless of the bait, once a fish is hooked, it’s hooked.
I forgot to mention the part where, a couple of days before our wedding, I was suspected of murdering Seamus Reitherman, a fellow witch in the Abracadantès tradition. I was—patently, since I’d just returned from my honeymoon—exonerated, but unfortunately the police had arrested the wrong person.
Or at least, that was my theory before I went to Scotland for two weeks.
After two weeks of Scottish history, Scottish weather, Scottish booze, and an encounter with a Scottish ghost, I was not quite as sure. Scottish women are that rare mix of ruthless pragmatism and blazing idealism. So, yeah, it was possible that Ciara Reitherman had killed her husband. She had tried to kill me.
Then again, Ciara’s attempts to kill me had almost certainly been driven by her belief that I’d killed Seamus.
Or maybe not.
Occam’s razor, as John had pointed out when I’d tried to make a case for Ciara being wrongly arrested. The simplest explanation is the most likely. At least when it comes to police work—according to the police commissioner in the family. It was far more likely Ciara had killed her unfaithful (and generally exasperating) husband than that some shadowy global conspiracy tried to frame me for murder.
Not that I had told John about the shadowy global conspiracy that might or might not really exist.
Just one of the things I hadn’t told John about.
* * * * *
“Welcome home. We missed you.” Blanche greeted me, when I finally arrived at Blue Moon Antiques, cat carrier and peevish occupant, in tow.
“Thank you. It’s good to be home.” I gazed with satisfaction around the spacious and airy downstairs showroom. Light through the protectively tinted windows glanced off gilt curlicues, and silvered glass, warmed the velvets and brocades of aged upholstery, glinted off ivory scrimshaw and ebony trinket boxes.
Blanche asked, “How’s married life?”
“I highly recommend it.”
Blanche Baker has been working for me since I opened Blue Moon Antiques four years ago.
The customers love her. I love her. In fact, everyone loves Blanche. She’s about fifty. Tall and voluptuous with black, curly hair–currently streaked with indigo–one blue eye, one green eye behind a seemingly infinite wardrobe of rhinestone glasses (I’m partial to the ones with butterfly-shaped frames). Her makeup is on the sexy witch side, but she’s not a witch. She’s Wicca. Like most mortals, she’s not aware there’s a difference.
Blanche said cheerfully, “No thank you. I’ve been inoculated against that disease. Twice.”
“So you’re a carrier?”
“Ha.” She took the cat crate from me, set it on the counter, and lifted Pyewacket out. “Oh, you beautiful baby, what has he done to you?”
Pyewacket proceeded to detail his list of grievances into her sympathetic ear.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said. “He’s been living it up on catnip and dried shrimp at Andi’s.” I glanced around the still empty shop. “Where’s Ambrose?”
Blanche sighed. “Another problem with his grandma.”
“Another what problem?”
“I don’t know. He’s being very closed-mouth about it.”
“Uh oh. How long has this been going on?”
“Not long. The Tuesday after you left, he had to leave suddenly, but he was back the next day and he’s been here every day since. Until this morning. There’s a message on the machine. The poor kid is clearly stressed out of his mind.”
“Okay. I’ll deal with it.”
I had hired Ambrose right before the wedding. He’d been recommended by the previously mentioned Ralph Grindlewood. Ralph was a good customer and, once I’d have said, a friend. What exactly Ralph was now, I wasn’t sure. But I had hired Ambrose and agreed to make him my apprentice, so he was most definitely my concern.
“Anything else I should know before I start going through my mail?”
Blanche, still coddling Pyewacket, shook her head. “It’s actually been very quiet since you left.”
“Well, we’ll see what I can do to change that.”
She chuckled. “I don’t doubt it.”
All the same, she looked pretty surprised when she poked her head into my office a few minutes later to whisper, “Pierre Sjoberg is here to see you.”
I put down the catalog for Alexanders Auctioneers. “Who?” The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“The defense attorney.” Blanche was still whispering. She threw a quick, uneasy glance over her shoulder as though she feared Sjoberg was lurking behind her. “I think he’s her attorney.”
“Her who?”
Blanche hissed, “Ciara. Ciara Reitherman. The woman who tried to kill you!”
