Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
“They were really nice,” Toby told me when I came back inside.
“I think so too.”
“Do what we practiced now,” Amanda ordered her children.
Instantly, they both turned their backs on us.
“What is—no,” I managed to get out a moment before Amanda smacked me so hard in the gut, I had to bend over. I noted that there was no reprisal for her from my cottage for striking me. If she’d done it to Lorne… I shuddered to think. “Owww, and why?” I snapped at her.
“You were supposed to call me after you saw Father Dennis. You were supposed to tell me what was going on, update me, and…nothing. And then you don’t answer any of my texts. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? How angry, sad, and worried I was?”
“And then you brought breakfast.”
“And then I brought breakfast!” she yelled at me.
I walked into her, gathered her close and hugged her tight. “I’m so sorry. It was an insane night, and I will tell you all about it, and I promise that will never happen again.”
“Years off my life,” she said into my shoulder.
“No,” I soothed her. “No life lost.”
“I have to know everything, you understand?”
“I do. Forgive me. I was thoughtless, and I’m truly sorry.”
She grunted softly several times, then let me go. “Okay, turn back around,” Amanda instructed, and her kids faced us again as though nothing happened. They were well trained.
“Uncle Xan?”
“Yes, JJ?”
“Can you braid some sweetgrass into my crown so it smells good?”
“Of course. Did you bring it back with you?”
“Yeah, it’s in my bag.”
While JJ went to get it, Toby brought me my scissors, jute, raffia, and several stalks of wheat.
“What am I doing with this?”
“Someone took Mom’s broom from her office,” Toby told me.
“What?” Amanda asked, putting a mug of peppermint tea down in front of me and taking a seat with her own mug, across from me. “When?”
“Which office?” I asked. “The one at home or the real-estate one?”
“Why would any of us take down the one at home?” He was scowling at me.
Valid question. “Okay, so the besom at work?”
He nodded. “It used to be right by the front door, remember?”
“Wait,” Amanda said, looking at her son. “I want to know when you noticed the besom was missing.”
“The bells are still there,” JJ announced, putting the daisy crown from the day before in front of me, then darting into the sunroom to get a sweetgrass braid from one of the drawers. “I’m gonna get some white sage too, Uncle Xan.”
I turned to Amanda. “Why does your child need a daisy crown full of protection herbs? What’s going on?”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Nothing’s going on. I’m sure JJ just loves the smell. I want to hear about this besom I didn’t even notice was gone.”
“People think the bells are only there to make noise so Mom knows when people come in, but you held the bells and made them strong,” Toby reminded me.
“Yes, I did.” The enchantment on those witch bells was very powerful, as I’d taken one of the sets my grandmother had put away, blessed them again, then hung them in Amanda’s office. It was important to me that she was safe there.
“I knew you did,” he said, smiling at me. “And JJ’s right. Those are still there, but when I went Friday after school, the broom—the besom, I mean—was gone. And that’s the one we made, you and me, so you have to make another one and say the words, and I’ll put it back.”
I’d seen where he’d hung it originally. It wasn’t in the way of the door, it wasn’t too close to the frame or in any kind of draft, so it couldn’t have simply been knocked down. “Did you see who took it?”
Toby shook his head.
“I did,” JJ divulged, returning with several pieces of goldenrod and sage. “The plant man told Sylvia to move it because she was sneezing and couldn’t stop, and he said it was because the broom was doing it.”
“What?” Toby sounded confused. “It never made her sneeze before.”
JJ nodded. “That’s what Sylvia said, but the plant man still took it.”
The plant man? I looked at Amanda for clarification, but she only shrugged.
Sylvia was Amanda’s office assistant and had been for years. The besom, there to cleanse the energy of anyone coming into the office, had been there for a while too. That meant Sylvia and the besom had been sharing space for a long time. And while I knew people could develop allergies at any time, it was a bunch of very dry flowers at this point.
“What plant man?” I asked JJ.
“The one with the garden.”
Allard Pace had several gardens, as he had purchased an office right down the street from Amanda with an enormous courtyard full of wildflowers. In fact, he spent a small fortune on landscaping on most of his properties around Osprey.