Page 1 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite & Spellwork

Chapter 1 Audrey

“Are you intending to kill me or play cricket?”

“Mom?” The wild-eyed young woman in the doorway dropped the bat to her side.

“I see your hair is still pink.”

Saga ran her fingers through it as if comforting a pet and pretended to ignore the observation. “It’s five in the morning.”

Audrey Hudson pursed her lips. She was not a woman of pride, but protocols. She was not seen unless presentable, and she held every person she encountered to this standard, especially if they claimed her bloodline. “I assume that’s the reason you’re still wearing your pajamas like some common layabout.”

Saga smoothed down the front of her jumper, her hands pausing over the Oxford University logo and her wasted potential. “I thought you were a burglar. We saw the lights on from across the street.”

“We?”

Audrey was answered by something pressing against her calves. She looked down her nose to see a black cat rubbing against her, purring incessantly. Her late mother’s cat. Now her daughter’s cat. It had never been her own cat, and she found its familiarity unnecessary and inappropriate. “Stop that.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Why is he doing that?”

“Mom.”

“Make him stop.”

Instead of providing any assistance, Saga was distracted by the cardboard boxes Audrey had placed about her late mother’s room to separate items of value from the flotsam. Saga was making a career out of being distracted these days. “What is all this?”

“Sorting boxes for the estate sale.” The estate sale that was necessary to clear out the town house. The estate sale that would enable Saga to either move in or sell the town house. The estate sale Saga had been refusing to entertain.

Saga took a deep breath. She was angry. Saga always paid particular attention to her breathing when she was attempting to keep a strong emotion at bay, thinking Audrey would never notice. “No one asked you to do that.”

That was true, and it had been a matter of internal debate for quite some time before Audrey had resolved herself to the task. It was, she had decided, a kindness to her child.

Death, despite being the only certainty in life, often had a way of trapping perfectly capable people in a kind of sentimental paralysis, unable to settle affairs.

Audrey had worn a full face of makeup to both her parents’ funerals without concern for smudging even the liner on her lower lid. People had called her cold; she chose to see it as a gift. It was often an unappreciated gift, especially among her family, but it was useful. Where others faltered, overwhelmed by emotion, she rose to the challenge. “I thought it might be easier for you, since you did not have the initiative to go through your grandmother’s things.”

“I want to be the one to go through her things,” Saga insisted.

Audrey abandoned her attempt to shoo away the cat at her feet and resumed packing boxes. “It has been a month.”

“And it doesn’t feel right yet.”

There were those, as the saying goes, who did not suffer fools gladly. Audrey Hudson simply did not suffer fools full stop, unless she was expressly being paid to do so (a common occupational hazard for lawyers).1 That Audrey Hudson remained in the conversation without being given a retainer was a testament to her care for her daughter. “When”—she spoke the words deliberately and punctuated each syllable—“do you feel it will be right?”

“Am I on a time limit that I’m not aware of?”

“When you allow grief to overcome you, it is common to lose sight of what is truly important.”

“Are we talking about the town house or my life as a whole?”

It was said there were five stages of grief, but since she’d been left at the altar, Saga had refused to attempt any of them other than depression. That was the only explanation Audrey had been able to come to when puzzling over her daughter’s actions over the past four months. Saga had abandoned her medical career, was working as a waitress, and now, even after being left a home all to herself, she was refusing to move into it. “You are alive, my mother is not. Refusing to move forward will not change that.”

“Just because you don’t approve of how I chose to put my life back together doesn’t mean I’m not moving forward.”

“What part of busing tables do you find particularly challenging?”

“Mom, please.”