A Witching Well of Magic Read online

  Another sign Bailey was out of touch. Why hadn’t Ryan told her?

  “Well, anyway,” Avery went on, “they look a lot like a couple. Can you believe that? I mean, I guess it makes sense, tragedy and all that; they say you recognize your own mortality or whatever. Still, Gloria’s kind of an ice queen; you’d think a guy with a personality like Trevor’s would be, I don’t know, into someone a little more...” he glanced at Bailey and then shrugged, “...positive, or something.”

  For a moment, it looked like Piper tried to be interested. She nodded a few times, raised an eyebrow, shrugged a shoulder, and even made a derisive snorting sound at the mention of Gloria, who had already managed to shout at several of the locals over everything from a too-hot or too-cold coffee to double parking. She was in a constant state of irritation that no one seemed to care for. It was a small town, too—you couldn’t just act any way you wanted to and not be remembered for it.

  But, the excitement never really took off for Piper. Bailey wanted to know why. She wanted to reach into Piper’s mind and just get the answers. It would have been so easy.

  And it would have been unforgivably rude, as well. Having her ability, her magic, didn’t give Bailey the right to go poking her nose into her friend’s private lives. She just wished whatever it was, Piper would talk to them.

  Avery was keenly sensitive to these sorts of things. When the conversation grew still again, he futzed with his menu, and then finally shared a meaningful look with Bailey, one eye up as his eyes flickered in Piper’s direction.

  “So, how are you doing, Pipes?” Bailey asked at Avery’s small nod.

  “Tired,” Piper said. “But, you know, other than that... things are good. Gavin’s mother is out of town for a few days, so I have some peace.” Another smile that didn’t quite escape past the stiff corners of her lips.

  When she didn’t have any more to say, Avery spoke up, pressing her for any scrap that would open the door to finding out what was up with her. “And Gavin? How are things with him?”

  “They’re fine,” Piper insisted. “Why do you ask?” She was staring at her menu.

  “Pipes,” Bailey said, “lately, you seem a little... well just down. And by lately I mean the last several months.”

  “Well, you know,” Piper said, a little bitterly, “I’m a mother of almost-two, plus a house wife. I have a lot going on. And I’m not sure how you’d know, anyway.”

  “Piper—” Avery started.

  “No,” Bailey said, “she’s right.” She took a breath. She might not be able to tell them everything, but she could be honest in other ways at least. “I’ve been busy, and I’ve been letting that get to me. Without the tours, I just didn’t feel like I had anything else to keep me interested. Once I decided to stay, it’s like I’m trying to find something to keep me feeling like I’m moving forward.”

  “So, you took up baking?” Piper asked, a little sharply.

  Bailey shrugged. “I mean... it’s something. And who knows, maybe one day the ladies will let me take over. I don’t know; anyway it doesn’t matter. I haven’t been a good friend in the last couple of months and I know that. And I’m so, so sorry Pipes.” She looked at Avery. “And I’m sorry to you, too, Ave.”

  Bailey rubbed her forehead, and then leaned on the table with her elbows. “I want to be a better friend, and I’m going to. I promise. But, Pipes... Avery and I both know you’re not okay. Part of us being good friends has to be not just ignoring what we can both see. I promise to be there for you more; but you’ve got to tell us what’s eating you up. How can we help?”

  Piper didn’t immediately accept Bailey’s apology, and Bailey knew she’d just have to make peace with that. For a moment, Piper was just quiet, still studying the same spot on the menu. Finally, however, she put it down, and wiped a tear from one of her tired eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m trying to be... it’s just...” her voice was strained. “It’s hard. At home. It so, so hard. Riley is a handful, sure; and Gavin’s mother is an absolute monster even when she’s out of town. But I could handle those things, it’s just... just...”

  “We’re here, Pipes,” Avery said. He took her hand.

  Bailey reached and took her other one. “What’s up, Hon?”

  Piper’s voice cracked as she spoke. “I think Gavin might be... might be cheating on me.” She spoke it in a high pitched whisper.

  Avery gasped, and shared a horrified look with Bailey. Gavin Spencer? He’d been head over heels for Piper practically his whole life. It wasn’t possible. Was it?

  “What makes you think that,” Bailey asked, trying to sound as compassionate as possible. It just didn’t seem real.

  Piper cleared her throat, and had some water before she explained. “He works late twice a week, and the other nights he’s real quiet when he comes home. He has to travel all the time now, he says, but he’s doing IT work; why would he have to travel at all? I tried to get him to talk to me, but he just gets angry when I ask about it. Says he working hard so that we can have a good life and not need help from his mother anymore. But I can just feel how trapped he feels, you know?”

  She took the napkin that her silverware was wrapped in. A waiter approached for their order, but Avery shook his head and held up a hand—five minutes, please.

  “Maybe that’s all true,” Avery suggested. “You know Gavin wants the best for you and Riley, and this little one. He always has.”

  “Avery’s right,” Bailey said. “Maybe it’s just more steps closer to getting out from under his mother.”

  “I wanted to believe that,” Piper said slowly. “I really did. But sometimes he gets so angry when I ask that now I don’t, anymore, and it’s got my head all twisted up. I have nightmares about him leaving me, you know that? The kind that wake me up at night. Worse, because dreams when you’re pregnant are...” she blew a breath out and swirled a finger around her temple. “I know I’m oversensitive right now, but... all this really started before we even got pregnant again. It’s a little worse, now; I can’t stop thinking about it some days. But I was thinking about it before.”

  Bailey and Avery both gave what comfort they could, but it didn’t look like it would be enough. And of course it wouldn’t; how could it be? It wasn’t the sort of thing any amount of talking to Piper would fix. But she assured them that what she did not want was for either of them to talk to Gavin. “This is between us. I’m glad I can finally talk to you two about it—it was eating me up inside—but it goes no further than this table, alright? If his mother found out...” She pulled a finger across her neck. Mrs. Spencer would never stop screaming about it; her son could do no wrong, and that was a well known fact she was eager to remind anyone who would listen. If there were problems, then in her opinion they were because of Piper you could be sure.

  Still... Bailey tapped a finger on the table, her mind drifting to the book of spells in the attic. Some of them were far too advanced for her—summonings, bindings, weather magic, all sorts of things—but she did recall seeing something, in passing, once. A spell to reveal a person’s intentions. Maybe. She couldn’t remember the heading clearly, but she’d thought at the time how useful it would have been if they’d used that spell before Martha was killed.

  The conversation wore on, and finally turned to happier things—not wildly exuberant, but at least lighter fare. Piper seemed to have a little of the weight off her chest at least. They took turns feeling the baby kick, especially after Piper had eaten a few slices of pizza.

  But Bailey kept going back to the spell. If she was right, maybe... well maybe she could help in a sort of behind-the-scenes way. After all, what was the point of having magic if it wasn’t good for helping anyone?

  More than anything, in that moment, she wished that she could tell them. Then it wouldn’t be behind-the-scenes. She could just tell Piper that she had something for that, and they could discuss it and maybe Piper would tell her not to, or maybe she would agree. Bailey couldn’
t know.

  And anyway, sometimes it was better to ask forgiveness than permission. A spell like that was probably harmless; and there was no guarantee Bailey could even pull it off. But, it was worth checking into.

  So she resolved to do that as soon as she got the chance, and for a moment got a thrill of purpose and righteous certainty. This. This was Bailey Robinson, good witch of Coven Grove, using her powers for truth and justice. She hugged Piper close when they left dinner, and whispered into her ear as she did, “Don’t worry, Pipes. It’ll all be okay.”

  Chapter 6

  The ladies were at work still, though in the evening the Bakery was beginning to slow down considerably, and most of the work involved mixing batters and grinding coffee for the following day. There were only a few customers sitting at the small tables outside on the wrap around porch of the little dutch style house, sipping coffee and chatting quietly in the last hours before night.

  Bailey smiled at the women as she came in. “Hello, ladies.”

  “Ah,” Francis said, looking up from a bucket of coffee beans, “there she is. How did it go?”

  Chloe and Aria looked up expectantly as well.

  “I’m starting tomorrow,” Bailey said, letting some of her excitement show. It masked the little bit of nervousness she felt about what she was planning. It wasn’t stealing—not really. She was part of the Coven now, initiated and everything; if anything it was borrowing temporarily.

  Chloe gave a high pitch, short hoot of victory, and came around the end of the counter to hug Bailey. It was tight, and fierce, as Chloe’s hugs always were. “I’m so proud of you!”

  “I didn’t have to do very much to get it,” Bailey said as Chloe let her go. “But I did meet Aiden—the new owner—and I think Rita was right about him. He’s a slick one.”

  “Handsome, I hear,” Aria said.

  “Aria thinks all the boys are handsome,” Francis countered.

  Chloe pursed her lips at both the other women, then turned back to Bailey. “Your verdict?”

  Bailey only shrugged a little. “I mean... I suppose, in a certain light... he’s a little attractive.”

  “I’ll take that to mean he’s devastatingly handsome,” Aria giggled.

  With a sigh, Bailey and Chloe shared an exasperated look. Aria seemed to want nothing so much as to set Bailey up with someone. She had her own ideas about what made for a good husband—not boyfriend, or interested party; Aria always jumped straight to marriage. Francis said it was because she never did, and always wanted to. Chloe was the only one who’d ever nearly married anyone, and that was a long time ago—and something she didn’t normally like to talk about.

  Bailey, however, was not here for advice on dating her new boss. “I’m headed upstairs to practice with the candle a little more,” she told them, making her way toward the back room and the stairs up to the attic.

  “I’m almost done,” Chloe said. “Want me to come work with you?”

  “No,” Bailey said easily, thinking quickly, “I think I almost got it before, and I was alone. I want to try and work it out myself. But,” she added after a pause, “I might ask you to help me if I can’t get it going again.”

  “Some witches work better alone,” Francis said, pointedly. Chloe and Aria both were good at what they called ‘group casting’, but Francis’ style, or energy, or character or something tended to be solitary in nature. It took her an extra measure of effort to synchronize her will with anyone else’s. That probably accounted for why she’d never settled down with anyone. For Aria, no one was right enough; for Francis, it was just too much of a bother. She wondered why Chloe never had. Of the three, she was decidedly the prettiest, and her kindness was of a different quality than Aria’s giddy, optimistic sweetness. It was soft, warm, gentle.

  “This morning,” Bailey said as she hung at the door to the back room, “I got it to smoke a little. I’m feeling particularly lucky at the moment. We’ll see!” She waved to them as they let her go, and she ascended the stairs to the attic quickly.

  She did intend to do some work on the spell, but in the event that one of the ladies came up the stairs she went straight to the wide, deep wooden chest at the far end of the room.

  It was never locked—spells set on the attic kept anyone who didn’t belong here out—so she opened it, and pushed aside folded robes and small boxes of spell ingredients to fish out the bundled book, wrapped and tied with leather and twine.

  The Arcanum, as Francis called it—Aria called it a Book of Shadows but Francis thought that was over-dramatic new-age nonsense—was about ten pounds, and massive. The pages weren’t regular paper and they weren’t all made of the same stuff. The pages near the front of the book were pressed and grainy, some sort of cotton paper molded from strips that you could still vaguely see the seams of. Later, some pages were made of a substance like papyrus, and some were made of thick hemp. Others were wide, hard sheets of kidskin parchment. Only as the pages got back into the most recent additions did they start to resemble modern paper, but it was still fine, archival quality, the sort that wouldn’t eat itself in a hundred years from acid in the wood pulp.

  Like the writing in the cave walls, much of the book was scrambled to Bailey. She had only taken the first steps on her long journey, Chloe explained, and the book itself was actually tied directly to the magic of the Caves. In a way, the spells were agreements made with the Genius Loci of that place. Words, gestures, herbs—all of this was to some degree arbitrary. The real magic was in the will, and in the Earth, and in the spirit. The Intelligence of the Caves helped draw that magic out, which was why Martha’s magic had failed her when she left town those many years ago.

  Bailey recalled the spell being somewhere around the middle of the volume, and after some frantic flipping and searching she found it. Tearing it out was absolutely out of the question, however. It was simple enough, and she recognized the reagents needed to pull it off. She took her phone out and snapped a picture—when the ink appeared fuzzy, protected by some magic she hadn’t realized was on it, she instead quickly wrote out the details in a note. Whatever ancient magic protected the book appeared to account for photography, but not for simple copying.

  Still, she checked the note against the calligraphy on the page three times, just in case.

  Then, she really did spend about an hour trying to light the candle. Maybe because of everything else on her mind, however, she didn’t even get so much as a puff of smoke this time. The bakery would be closing in just a few minutes, so she tucked her phone away and decided to call it for the night.

  Downstairs, she almost walked right past the last two customers, until one of them said her name.

  “Bailey Robinson,” a man said. Bailey’s eyes snapped around at him.

  It was Trevor Sullivan. He was there, as Avery had prophesied, with Gloria Olson, Martha’s old assistant, as well as a journalist who now worked for Trevor at the paper, to hear Avery tell it.

  Trevor was handsome as ever—it was the only way he was capable of looking, Bailey imagined—even if he did look a little worse for wear. Running a paper was probably hard work. Getting run by Gloria—she couldn’t imagine the woman letting any man run her—was probably twice as difficult.

  “Good to see you,” Bailey said stiffly, even though it wasn’t. She wanted to ask him why he’d fired her father, but then, perhaps now wasn’t the time to go stirring pots anymore than they’d already been stirred.

  Trevor, however, wouldn’t let her off that easily. “How’s Ryan doing?” He asked. “I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

  “We need to get going,” Gloria muttered, rather pointedly.

  Trevor ignored her, and Gloria did not like that one bit. She set her jaw, sipped her coffee, and made an ugly face at Francis when the older woman wasn’t watching.

  “He’d be better if he was writing,” Bailey said, cooly.

  “I’d love to have him with us,” Trevor said solemnly. “We’re still working on
the follow-up piece about Martha’s murder, but it’s difficult to make a lot of headway without a local writer. Ryan was a great help.”

  That didn’t track. Ryan had been fired, hadn’t he? Or... maybe he hadn’t actually said that precisely. Bailey blinked away her confused. “Oh. I was under the impression the decision was... mutual. Dad leaving the paper, I mean.”

  Gloria snorted, and murmured something to Trevor that Bailey couldn’t hear. Bailey very nearly opened herself up to Gloria’s mind to get it first hand, but didn’t. Violating anyone’s mind was never the right choice. Chloe caught her eye from behind the two and shook her head just slightly. She’d probably sensed what Bailey was thinking.

  “Hush,” Trevor told Gloria, but not very sharply. “In a moment.” He took a step toward Bailey, and the concern on his face was evident. “Ryan didn’t tell you?” He wondered. “We didn’t fire him, Bailey; he quit. Said he didn’t want to write for the paper under these conditions.”

  “What conditions were those?” Bailey asked.

  Trevor sighed, and shrugged. “I’m not really sure. Most of the old guard has left. I guess he felt like we were moving on, but I’d really like him to know that isn’t the case. If you get a chance to let him know. He’ll always have work with us.”

  It wasn’t at all like Ryan to quit anything, really; much less the thing he loved most in life. There was more to this, and Bailey was almost ashamed she hadn’t learned the truth already. Another cost of her distraction.

  “Well,” she said finally, “I’ll have a talk with him, and see what he thinks.” She planned to ask him about this follow-up on Martha’s murder, as well. Hadn’t the poor woman’s fate been exploited enough already? They just had to keep dragging things on. She supposed it had more to do with selling papers. Milk the tragedy for all it’s worth. Her estimation of Trevor wasn’t especially high to begin with, but it fell just a bit now.

  Her estimation of Gloria had always been pretty low. She reminded Bailey too much of Poppy.