Barbra gathered up her purchases and trudged out the door, not bothering to return my faux-chipper farewell. She had the doleful, dejected air of a chastised bloodhound as she departed. I was left staring at the empty doorway, pity twisting my stomach.
My first transaction ought to have been an occasion to celebrate.
Chapter Twelve
I stroked the pendant resting above my collarbone thoughtfully. I’d finally given in to Darla, bending to the necessity of a ghostly security system. I traced the apple cheeks of the kissing silver cherubs that made up the locket. My mother had found it in a rummage sale and gifted it to me last Christmas. The supposedly innocent angels were wrapped around each other and engaged in an ardent liplock. Call me crazy, but I believed my mother was trying to tell me something…
No matter.
Just inside was a shaving taken from the wooden pencil case Darla had attached herself to. It’d almost physically pained me to take a box knife to one corner. The engraved case had been my great-grandfather’s, and one of my prized possessions. That was the reason Darla had chosen it. She’d correctly assumed I wouldn’t burn it to be rid of her.
If I called on Darla now, I wondered if she could walk the streets of Haven Hollow with me and identify the haunted homes? Maybe she’d be able to shed some light on the whole murder incident I was still dreaming about.
Yes, the nightmare visions had continued, and somehow, they’d only gotten worse. I woke clutching my chest almost every night now, choking on the last stale breath the man had sucked in. I was fairly sure he’d died from a heart attack. The creature in the doorway, real or imagined, haunted my waking hours. I swore I saw it in shadows, or darting across the cemetery at night. When I peered closely, it was either the rustle of the aspen trees or a deer pair ambling through the headstones. It was mating season and the deer were out in full force.
Still, I couldn’t continue jumping at shadows. If Darla could help me figure out what had happened to the man, maybe that would bring an end to my night terrors. At least it was a thought that had been visiting me more and more lately.
I rubbed my finger across the locket’s surface again, like a lucky penny. At the piercing sound of the bell above the door going off, I jumped and jerked my hand away from the locket, like a kid caught mid-cookie theft.
The door swung inward so violently, it took the newly installed bell off the door, sending it skittering, with horrible clanging sounds, across the floor until it collided with the base of my shelves. I blinked a few times. Marty had installed the bell so I could avoid nasty frights of the sort Barbra had given me. And he’d done a good job of keeping the thing in place with a few screws, so who on earth had the strength to dislodge it so easily?
I squinted into the bright afternoon sunlight, half-expecting to see the beefy Roy Osborne standing in the gap. But, no, this wasn’t a chiseled hunk of man-flesh come to strain the limits of my doorway. When my vision cleared, I could make out an elderly woman, dressed in what appeared to be a tartan pantsuit. The colors were eye-searingly bright, and the creases ironed into the material looked sharp enough to put an eye out. It was Ophelia and she was wearing a white blouse beneath the suit, buttoned up all the way to the collar, where red lace frothed down. It was like her throat had been cut and spilled forth ruffles.
“Ophelia, how nice to see you!” I lied, rounding the desk.
Ophelia didn’t smile, she didn’t even blink. She watched me with a strange look in her beady black eyes. The rose-colored glasses did nothing to soften her countenance or make her approachable. If anything, they were a stark reminder of just how unsettling she was in comparison.
She lifted her raven cane from the hardwood and prodded the air just before me.
“We have much to discuss,” she whispered in her brittle, parchment-like tone.
Ophelia’s magical energy buzzed around her, reminding me of the waitress, Fifi’s. I’d already decided Ophelia wasn’t a witch but her aura, especially this close, made my skin crawl. So, what in the world was she?
I backed away from her, on instinct. Until I caught myself and then I held my ground. Whatever she was, she was in my store, so she’d better be polite.
“And what is it we need to talk about?” I asked, hoping the subject wasn’t Marty.
Ophelia bobbed her head in a singularly vulture-like movement, still eyeing me from behind her spectacles. “You need to declare yourself, girl.”
The shop seemed to grow dim, despite the afternoon sunlight slanting in from the open door. I flicked a glance up at the ceiling, wondering if the lights of the chandelier were still on. When I looked up, I found the lights were still glowing. So why did this space seem as cramped and dark as a closed casket, all of a sudden?
“Declare myself?” I managed to ask, as I faced her again.
“Yes, declare yourself,” she said with a reproving tut. “Which side are you on, Gypsy girl?”
It was more her tone than the word, itself, that raised my hackles. Traveller blood ran thick in my veins, calling to long ago magic and adventures. While I didn’t roam from place to place the way my ancestors had, their magic was still in me, as much a part of me as my skin, hair, or eyes. I was used to the word ‘Gypsy’, had grown tired of trying to explain why it was technically a slur. The contempt in that one word allowed me to find my voice at last.
“I’m a descendent of the Scottish Travellers, Ophelia. I’d appreciate it if you’d call me by my name, or at least by the proper name of my people. And I am forty-three years old. I haven’t been a girl in a very long time.”
She didn’t backpedal or apologize. Instead, one corner of her withered mouth curled upward in the barest hint of a smile, but that was all the outward indication she gave that my impassioned speech had gotten through to her. The smile shifted lines in her face, casting more of those strange shadows into the deep creases.
“Strange that you’d be offended by the word ‘gypsy’,” she said, taking one shuffling step forward. She stood on tiptoe to reach one of my best-sellers from the shelf above her head. She rolled the antique eyedropper between her fingers and a shimmering green liquid splashed the sides in a merry dance as it settled. “Gypsy Magic, it’s called,” she said as she looked up at me.
“For divination, or spellwork.”
“Right. So what?”
Ophelia shrugged, and the exaggerated movement made the ruffles at her neck flop to one side. Had she always been this prickly? Maybe that was why no one had staged an intervention regarding her fashion sense.
“I’m merely trying to point out the hypocrisy in your feeble defense.”
“It wasn’t the word that offended me… it was the way you said it,” I snapped, finding some volume at last. I was angry. Angry she’d cornered me in my own shop, and talked down to me.
I stalked over to her and snatched the bottle of Gypsy Magic from her hand. I set it down, none-too-gently, on the shelf above our heads. “I’m sure you didn’t come into my store to buy something,” I started.
It was then that I had to fight not to draw back. Beneath the overpowering chemical scent of musk was something worse. A note of sweet decay, like I’d smelled once under GG’s peach tree. The peaches had fallen early, and we missed our chance to gather them for pie-making. By the time we’d found them, they were rotting, brown sides caving in, drawing in flies by the millions.