A Witching Well of Magic: A Cozy Mystery (Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 2) (4 page)

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.

“
I’d appreciate that,” Trevor said. “It was good to see you, Bailey. Really.”

“
It’s amazing we did,” Gloria said—she took a step forward, and snaked her arm through Trevor’s possessively. “Seems like you’re hardly ever seen in public anymore.”

Bailey wanted to explain that, make up some story, say that she’d been deep in the library now that she didn’t have a job at the touring agency. But somehow she thought Gloria wouldn’t care. Those beady eyes of hers were sharp as ever, a vulture looking for a fresh kill to fall upon.

“
Seems like you two are seen quite a bit,” Francis said dryly from behind the espresso machine she was cleaning.

Gloria only smiled coldly, and then tugged at Trevor’s arm. “Come on,” she said, “we have work to do.”

“
As ever,” Trevor smiled at them all, and waved as Gloria dragged him away.

Bailey watched them go, and when they were gone she looked to the women behind the counter. “Anyone else get a… feeling about them?” She asked.

All three women nodded.

“
We’re keeping an eye out,” Chloe assured her. “Acting on assumptions and fears is a one way ticket to a problem we don’t need.”

“
Best to let things take their natural course,” Francis said. Had she said it a little pointedly? Bailey was probably just paranoid.

“
Right,” Bailey said. “Well, I’ll see you all tomorrow. Bright and early.”

“
That so?” Chloe mused.

Bailey paused, thought it through, and then slapped her forehead. “Right, of course. The tours. I guess I’ll be by in the afternoon then, after they're done.”

“
Get home safely,” Aria said.

“
Keep an eye out,” Francis warned her.

“
Sleep tight, hon,” Chloe said finally. “See you tomorrow.”

Bailey waved, and then left. The last few customers outside had gone as well, and Trevor and Gloria were well on their way down the street to wherever they were staying, or possibly back to work—though, she didn’t think the paper’s office was in that direction.

She only shook her head, though, and pointed herself home. What they were up to was none of her business. She had bigger fish to fry, and a long day ahead of her tomorrow.

When she passed the tour office on the way home, she noticed the faint glimmer of an office light. Aiden, working late probably. She thought about checking on him… but no. She’d see him tomorrow. And that bit of excitement she felt about the prospect of meeting him tonight was probably dangerous.

So she set her course, and stayed it, all the way home.

The next day began in a rush, and kept rushing until Bailey was exhausted in both mind and body. It took her two tours to really get back into the swing of things and talk intelligibly. She’d overestimated how easily it would all come back to her.

“
These paintings,” she said to the last tour of the day, deep in the Seventh cave, “you might expect to be the newest, given the progression from the first cave to the sixth. However, most people are surprised to learn that these drawings are actually the oldest.”

“
No one is quite sure why,” she said—and she was still included in that generalization, “but it seems that the people who first came here decided to decorate the deepest cave first. As these paintings date almost a hundred years before those in the first cave, some have wondered if later generations of artists didn’t realize the cave system went this deep.”

She pointed to the entrance of the seventh cave, which was unusual in that it was more regular than the others, more smoothed and shaped than the other passages. “There is some speculation that at some point between the time when the paintings here were completed, and when the paintings in the first cave were begun, there may have been a collapse that was later cleared away. If that’s the case, the evidence has long since settled.”

“
Could they collapse again?” Someone asked, nervously.

“
No, no,” Bailey assured the crowd as they muttered similar questions. “Geologic surveys are conducted every six months. The caves are quite stable.”

“
So was this the cave where Martha Tells died?” Another person asked.

The cave went quiet. It was a woman, thirty something; not a local. Bailey remembered seeing her the day before, when she’d signed all of these people up for tours.

Bailey composed herself quickly, and spoke gently, despite how the questions had made her go first cold, and then hot. “Yes,” she said simply.

“
You were the one that found her, right?” Another person asked. “The tour guide?”

Worried about this very thing, Bailey had asked that her name be kept out of the stories. In answer, however, all of the papers had instead referred to her as the ‘red-haired, local tour guide in her early twenties.’ She was the only person who fit the bill, so the deduction didn’t take much.

“
Yes,” she said finally. “It was me. I’d rather not discuss it, though; as you can probably imagine, it was very traumatic.”

Whether it was what she said, or how she said it, that put a stop to those questions. Unfortunately there were no others. Not a single question the whole tour about the beautiful paintings or the unique history of the caves. These people had been waiting the entire tour to ask about Martha Tells. Well, Martha wanted to be famous.

Bailey thanked everyone and gave them five minutes to look around the cave before she led them back out through the six previous caves and then to the entrance and up the path to the tour office. Some had wanted to stay behind and get pictures, so she indulged them briefly, but was sure to shuffle everyone off as quickly as possible without being too rude about it.

It was well into the late afternoon. More tourists had trickled in, and though Bailey had planned to stick to her original schedule, she let herself get pressured by them into scheduling more of them. It was fine; she didn’t mind, really, and it gave her practice. Plus, Aiden was paying her by the tour.

He emerged from the office when the last tourist had left. He wasn’t much for people. She noticed that when the tourists began to gather, Aiden tended to disappear. It was strange, she thought, that a Tour Company owner and manager should seem to have such a social anxiety; or maybe it was something else, like that he didn’t want to be recognized. She wasn’t discounting any possibilities just yet.

“
So,” he said. “Your first successful day. I’ve been hearing good things.”

Bailey wondered exactly how he’d heard anything at all from the office. “Good to know,” she said anyway.

“
So, I do wonder,” Aiden said, “you’d mentioned before that the paintings don’t look like any local Native American tribes. Their style, anyway.”

Here we go again. He’d been asking questions this morning. She wanted to believe it was just his curiosity, but that didn’t quite sit right with her. “That’s right,” she said.

“
But that raises the question of who painted them,” he told her, as though it were a mystery he was somehow unveiling for her.

She frowned. “That’s… essentially the mystery of the caves in a nutshell, yes.”

“
Well I was thinking,” he said as he waved her toward the office, “what if some people came across the ice up north, into Alaska, and came down, and made the paintings and then kept on moving?”

“
That’s a popular theory,” Bailey said. He wasn’t really passing off something he’d read from one of the brochures as his own pet hypothesis, was he?

“
I know, I know,” he said, chuckling a little. “It’s been proposed before. But, see, I’m thinking it could be a little more… interesting than just that.”

Bailey was a little intrigued. Had he actually managed to dig up something closer to the truth? Bailey herself didn’t actually know the exact origins of the paintings herself. Chloe assured her that she would when she was initiated into the seventh cave, but until then those secrets were closed to her and she very much wished they weren’t.

“
So, what do you think, then?” Bailey asked him. She sat on the other side of his desk when they entered the office. It was strange. The last time she’d been in this room, she’d been confronting Poppy about killing Martha. It gave her a shiver, and something like a flashback.

“
I’m still sort of exploring an idea,” Aiden said, waving her question away. “It’s not fully formed yet.  I mean I’m still looking for resources, historical precedents, that sort of thing. Like the Vikings coming to the new world in the eleventh century AD. It was a pet theory for a while, and but it took forever to dig up any proof. Local history of the tribes that had been mostly wiped out.” He shook his head slowly. “Such a shame. So much lost. So many people…” He looked into a middle distance for a moment, his eyebrows knit.

He seemed oblivious to Bailey. He also didn’t seem inclined to discuss the matter any further, which made Bailey wonder why exactly she was in his office.

Bailey had come to think of her gift as the sort of thing she might employ for things like what the police would call ‘probable cause.’ Something like serving a warrant or breaking into a house where there was obviously some kind of distress going on inside.

That was how she justified taking what she promised herself would be just the quickest, most minuscule peek into her new boss’ head. If there was nothing untoward she could finally relax and maybe even start enjoying their conversations. If there was a problem, she could take it to the Coven.

As Aiden began to talk about numbers of tourists, and his excitement at there being more, and that they’d been collecting reviews on Yelp—and also he was shocked that Poppy hadn’t gotten them listed here, or even on Google Business and Maps which was just a crime against marketing—Bailey relaxed the reflexive grip she kept on her ability to see into people’s minds. She had practiced this very thing with Chloe again, and again, so that now it was an easy thing to keep it in the back of her brain, or let it come forward.

It felt, in fact, very much like that in her mind. It was behind her, until she relaxed some subtle muscle in her brain, and it slowly came forward and into focus. Now, it was mostly quiet—there was a range to it that Chloe assured her would grow over time as well as her strength and the depth and clarity that she could listen or see with—but that only meant that Aiden was one of those who didn’t think very loudly. Some people did, some people didn’t.

When she turned her attention to him, however, normally she would have heard something. People had surface chatter in their minds all the time. While it was true that anything a person wanted to keep secret was much harder to hear, the fact was that only some kind of master monk that spent their whole life learning not to think unless they wanted to had no surface thoughts at all.

Master monks, and, apparently, Aiden Rivers. But that wasn’t quite accurate; no, there was something there, it just wasn’t the typical chatter of internal monologue (or, sometimes, dialog). Instead, it was like tuning into a radio station with no broadcast on it. White noise.

She pressed, a little, sharpening her focus. Her eyes squinted just a little bit with the effort but she smoothed them when she caught herself doing it—another bit of Chloe’s instruction—and tried to listen deeper.

The static only grew louder, however. What was worse, it sharpened suddenly, as if the scramble of black and white dots she’d have seen on a television spitting white noise became a thousand barbs. It was hot, even searing, and she withdrew defensively, but not before she felt a dull throbbing behind her eyes.

It took a supreme effort of will to push her ability back to the back of her mind and avoid rubbing her eyes.

Aiden was most definitely not normal. But neither did he seem to notice, the way Chloe could. He did, however, pause while he was talking about something—what was it? Oh, changing the hours and maybe creating a website where people could sign up for tours online. For a second, it was like he’d been distracted. He cleared his throat, and shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, I… lost my train of thought. What was I saying?” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Oh, right… I’m looking at two or different softwares, all over the internet. The connection is slow here but we would get emails or texts about tours; when they were scheduled for, how many, how close they are. What would you say to that?”

Bailey wouldn’t say much of anything right now. She blinked slowly, hoping the headache would recede. “Um, that sounds good. I’m not too familiar with any of that stuff, so… I might not be the best judge.”

“
Hmm,” Aiden mused. “Well, maybe we can try it out tomorrow, or over the weekend.” He sighed, and pressed his fingers briefly to his forehead. “Well, it’s been a long day, hasn’t it. Why don’t I let you get home, I’d hate to keep you any longer than you need to be here. Another big day tomorrow. I might come along on one of the tours, I think, if that would be alright. They all look full.”

“
One more wouldn’t hurt,” Bailey said, though in truth she didn’t want Aiden anywhere near the caves at the moment. This development she would need to take to the witches the next chance she got.

Which wouldn’t be until after tomorrow’s tours were done, she realized. Tonight, she already had other plans. A spell.

“
I’d better go,” she said.

Aiden smiled at her as he stood up. “Thanks for listening to me prattle on,” he said. Did he look just a little more tired than before as well? Bailey knew she must.

“
Of course,” Bailey said. “It was no problem. I mean, you weren’t prattling, that is. I didn’t mind listening to you talk.”

“
Well, if that’s the case,” Aiden said, with a wink, “I’ll talk more often. And maybe get you talking eventually, too, eh?”

All Bailey could come up with was a slightly embarrassed chuckle. They said their goodbyes, and she left to let him lock up on his own.

When she was finally outside, she rubbed her forehead, her temples, and her eyes, as if that would help. That settled it, in her mind. Whatever the deal was, Aiden was not here by accident. He almost certainly knew more than he said he did, and was baiting her for some reason.

Well, that only strengthened her resolve to watch him. That was, right after she dealt with her other issue, and got Piper the explanation she needed.

Bailey just hoped she could actually work with her head pounding like this. It seemed a witch’s job was never done.