GOT TO HERE
Ever since Celeste told me the news, I’d been wondering why anyone would want to kill the Widow Hardcastle, especially in such a brutal manner. But Rafe has offered two possible motives that the police absolutely wouldn’t be following – that the widow might have been trading in rare orchids, and that she was a witch powerful enough to turn a man into a cat.
I shouldn’t stick my nose in, of course.
Warrick wouldhateme sticking my nose in.
“My mother and grandmother were both witches,” I tell Rafe. “I have their grimoires in a trunk in the attic. We’ll start there. Maybe they have something that will help. You haven’t seen Old Widow Hardcastle’s grimoire around? All witches have one, but I haven’t found anything like that during the cleaning.”
“She had a leather book she carried around,” Rafe says. “But I haven’t seen it since she died. Are we going to your house now? Where do you live? I can’t wait to walk there on two legs and not get accosted by Mr Muffins, the Giant Ginger Gigolo of Peach Street. When I get my human form back, I am going to have vengeance for the humiliations I have suffered. Tiny costumes will be involved.”
I glare at him. “Are you forgetting something?”
“Bargain with a witch? Revenge plans? The chance to sleep in a human bed once again?” He grins. “Nope, I think we have everything. Let’s go.”
“You agreed to help me. We need to finish this coat of primer. So grab a brush.”
He looks disdainfully at the pile of brushes. “I’m a cat. I don’t do manual labour.”
“If you help paint, this will go faster, and then I can leave you to licking your arsehole or plotting revenge or whatever it is that cats do, because you arenotcoming home with me.”
He sighs dramatically. “Your disrespect angers Bast, the goddess of cats, and you shall suffer greatly.” But he picks up a brush and gets to work.
IV
Angela: We cleaned out most of my grandmother’s old stock and planters so we could lease the shop. I got too busy to finish off the cleaning, and Rafe got irrationally angry when I tried to throw away his mouse heads, so I left things the way he liked them. We never found a book, leatherbound or otherwise. Sorry I can’t be more help.
What do you need it for, anyway? As far as I knew, she never kept a shop ledger.
The next morning, I wake in my bed and panic. Still blinking against the onslaught of light, I slap my hands into the cold bedspread, searching for the warm body of my husband but finding nothing.
Warrick never,evermisses a night at home with me.
Did I sleep in? If he had to fix his own breakfast, he’d be in a foul mood?—
No. He won’t be in any mood.
Because Warrick is missing.
And I have a meadery to organise.
My meadery.I can’t believe it’s really happening. I throw myself out of bed with a smile on my face, pull on my gardening clothes, and head downstairs.
My shoulders ache from last night’s painting. After we finished the primer coat, I told Rafe that I wouldn’t be looking for the spellbooks tonight, but I’d bring them into the shop when I came in. He looked hopeful as I gathered my things to leave, as if I might ask him to come back to my cottage. But I know that walking a strange, naked man back through the village to my house when Warrick was missingwould get the attention of the local gossips, as would taming the infamous Rafe. As soon as I closed the door to the shop, he shifted back into a cat. He scratched at the door, howling pitifully as I walked back across the green. I nearly turned around so many times to go back for him.
Boundaries are important. I don’t want a thief – even one cursed to be a cat – in my cottage, not now that…
…that I have the place to myself.
I pad into the front room. Warrick mostly left me to decorate the house how I wished, although he didn’t like seeing any of my mother’s or grandmother’s things anywhere. When we were dating as teens, they never liked him, and unlike me, they weren’t much good at plastering on a smile and pretending.
A couple of years ago, in a fit of creative energy, I took down a quilt Mum and I made of bees flying around a garden of bright red flowers, made from squares of my grandmother’s hand-dyed fabric, and replaced it with a picture wall of Warrick and me. Photos from our wedding, from date nights at the pub, me in the garden, him at some of his pop-up stores in London and winning a business award, us in front of the wall of hoverboards in the sitting room, and us on the one holiday we took to Majorca.
I pull that last one off the wall and stare at it. A bee wanders across the glass, waggling his bum at me, telling me that he’s found a great source of honey nearby. I brush him off Warrick’s face. We’re sitting together on a sun lounger. I’m wearing a new bikini that I agonised over buying. I tried on so many in the shop until I found one that I felt comfortable in. When I nervously modelled it for him, Warrick said I should wear a shirt over it so that other men didn’t get ideas about me. But then, he told me I should take the shirt off for the photo. In the picture, he’s grinning from ear to ear, his arm around me, water droplets glistening on his bare chest. My smile looks genuine, but all I can see is the white shirt balled in my fist.
I go to replace the photo, and find I can’t do it.
I grab another picture, and another, and before I know it,the wall behind the sofa is empty except for the hooks sticking out like little bee stingers.
