“You already had my apple butter in your fridge. You liked my food before I walked in.”
Then I give what I pray is such a casually blasé bow at the waist, no one can tell I’m cracking on the inside.
And I hope, so fiercely, that it irks him to no end.
My truck tires screech on the gravel as I peel out and leave him on the porch, his heavy dark gaze hovering in my rearview mirror.
Chapter Five
FRIDAY, APRIL 8
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
Do not rush your process, ingredients, or oven. You cannot bake quickly. You can only bake incorrectly.
It’s only fitting the first time I move in with a man, it’s for work.
I park my purring Dodge off to the side of Knight Manor, although there’s no one else to make room for. An older pickup I just now notice is napping under half a tarp, hidden in the greenery. Like everything else, it looks forgotten. For errands? They can’t get everything delivered, can they? Have I even seen a postman—a mailbox?
I can easily imagine the Warlock’s answer and scowl.Mailboxes imply we’re open to correspondence.
Heaven forbid.
After my interview turned tribunal, I slapped a new sign to the shop’s yellow front door.
ON VACATION. BACK IN THREE WEEKS.
Even my rest is a lie. Can a Farewitch cure a powerful magical being in the time it takes to get a sourdough starter going? No idea. Sounds like a feat on par with mastering a Julia Child recipe.
How to Cure Your Warlock in a Weekend. The title of my next cookbook.
Then I spent the rest of the week at the hospital with my mom, or in the Apothakery furiously baking and replenishing stock for the more common ailments and standing orders. I stopped counting my all-nighters. Somehow, I still managed to deliver everything for my regulars across the Holler. Can’t leave my neighbors up a creek. I’m a Farewitch toeveryone. Even if everyone doesn’t believe it.
But deprived of their usual steaming skillet cinnamon buns and biscuits for a week, my neighbors eventually connected the dots. A dash of panic ensued.
The last couple of days, whispers followed me on errands in town. Harsh looks at the post office, upturned noses at the market, even major side-eye at the consignment shop, where my overalls addiction keeps them in business, thank you. A gaggle of aggrieved church ladies even shadowed me, close as hungry barn cats. For ladies who distrust magic as much as their spitfire leader Gertha Fudge, they sure do believe awful hard in it.
“One does not simply close Frost Apothakery, child!” they shouted at me across the town square. “And most certainly not for a dastardly Warlock!”
Friday came blessedly soon.
Now, as I stare up at the neglected farmhouse laid bare in the morning sunlight, the fear in town taps like Ms. Buchanan’s poodle’s claws across my mind. Inhale. Exhale. Hay, grass, horse somewhere in there. The familiar fragrance of the Holler anchors me as I enter the Manor and seal my fate.
Inside, I dump my skillets in the kitchen, away from overhanging pots. I half expect an ambitious vine to steal something. Farther into the room, a massive picnic-style kitchen table looks like it can seat twelve, fourteen, sixteen… You could bowl on this thing. When it’s not throwing a tantrum, it really is a kitchen for entertaining, for family gatherings and celebrations of hearth and home.
Forwhatpeople?
My favorite cast-iron skillet looks pitiful on the floor, and glares at me, rather rudely. It can sense this is not its kitchen. I glare back. We don’t have a choice, do we?
But: Whowillrun the Apothakery if I need to stay longer? I can handle living with a dangerous Warlock. But I cannot, under any circumstances, stop working. The residents of Foxe Holler make for some cantankerous customers, but they’re mine.
Ten minutes and a slow, clumsy ascent up two flights of stairs later—governesses apparently donothelp with luggage—I stop in a narrow hall on the third floor, in an entirely new wing I don’t think exists on the outside. The farmhouse’s guts do not at all match the blueprint of its exterior.
Warlock magic has to be at play here, yet he couldn’t have magicked in some elevators?
Rows of closed doors line the narrow hall, probably bedrooms for a fuller home, with life and laughter and generations. Again, forwhatpeople? How did such a spacious farmhouse end up so vacant? What went wrong? Then I think of how quickly my own family shrank to two. Death moves fast. Grief doesn’t. Empty space grows like a weed.
