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“What did you do today, beside mull over the letter?” Bree asked. She could always tell when my mood was spiraling.
I shrugged. “Planted flowers. And I bought some more—they’re in the back of my car. I plan to finish the walkway tomorrow. Oh—I’ve been spending more time with my neighbor. May Anderson.” I sighed as the sweet taste of lobster melted in my mouth. “This is good. The chef here knows his stuff, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, the mac ‘n cheese is the best I’ve tasted. You know, May’s great. Everybody in town loves her. Well, almost everyone. She has a few enemies. Maybe ‘rivals’ is the right term. They envy her wins at the Starlight Hollow Autumn Fair.” Bree grinned.
“Well, good luck to them changing that.” I snorted, then sobered. “I like May. She has the most calming aura. Every time we’ve talked, I have felt at peace. And the basket was huge.” Laughing, I described the massive welcome wagon gift I had received from May. “She filled it with homemade preserves, fruit, a honey-baked ham, fresh bread, a few magical oils that she makes, and a list of trusted handymen, gardeners, a plumber, and other service people whom she trusts.”
“May’s a fixture in Starlight Hollow. You can trust her.” Bree tore open a biscuit and slathered it in butter, then offered me one.
“I feel like I can trust her. But…I have to tell you, the woods separating her land and mine make me nervous. I don’t know why, but the trees feel…off.” I shivered. “Maybe it’s that I’m not used to living out on my own in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know.”
“I told you, Starlight Hollow’s an odd place. You think Port Townsend has secrets? Starlight Hollow’s secrets go deep, and there’s no way to know when they started. But I still prefer living here to living in Port Townsend.” Bree buttered a second roll.
“Are there any vampires around?” I asked.
Bree shrugged. “I don’t think so. I haven’t heard of any. This town may be odd, and there’s a lot of dark history here, but vampires…I doubt they’re welcome here. For one thing, Faron Collinsworth hates vampires and his Pack is headquartered here.”
I grimaced. I hadn’t met Faron, but he was a wolf shifter and that alone gave me the creeps. Most wolf shifters I knew, at least the men, were arrogant and patriarchal, a direct opposite to the witch community.
“Well, that’s one thing in his favor,” I said. “Do you want dessert?”
We decided on lava cake a la mode and moved on to discussing my flowered walkway and Bree’s hectic summer schedule.
* * *
By the time we finished,it was six-fifteen. I asked Bree if she wanted to come back with me to help me plant flowers, but she had to sort out her schedule for the upcoming week.
“I’ll be gone Friday through Sunday on a trip. I’m leading a hike into the Olympics. It’s an easy-access trip. We’ll leave Friday morning and be back Sunday afternoon. I doubt if I’ll have great cell service while I’m there.” She paused by her car—a full-size SUV that could take off-road gravel paths with ease. “Give me a call tomorrow, if you can.”
I nodded, waving as she drove away. As I fastened my seat belt and headed toward home, I smelled a shift in the wind. Rain was on its way.
* * *
Ten minutes later,I pulled into my driveway. A long graveled road, the drive was a quarter mile long, winding through a heavily wooded thicket. Firs and birch trees lined the road, and the undergrowth was so thick that once I started my trail project, I would need a machete to create a path.
I slowed as I drove along the gravel road, through the copse of trees, into the clearing.
The cottage maintained a fairytale look, and it was truly a witch’s cottage. It reminded me of an English cottage, sans the thatched roof. Shingles lasted longer, in my opinion, and I was relieved that the prior owner had agreed.
Built in the early 1920s, it had been renovated through the years. With around sixteen hundred square feet, the cottage had three bedrooms. One of my deal breakers had been a basement, so I’d been relieved to find none during my first visit. Basements creeped me out. The cottage was single story, but it suited my needs.
The siding was in good condition, painted a pale sage green with white trim. Built-in raised flower boxes surrounded the base of the house. They were empty at this point, but I wanted something perennial for them—something that didn’t die off for six to nine months of the year.
A huge oak tree stood in back of the cottage on the left, shading it with solemn solidity. To the right was a weeping willow, massive with low-hanging branches. The drive circled around a water fountain that had seen better days, but it stopped directly in front of the house. The walkway had been overgrown, a faint trail through the knee-high grass when I first bought the place, but I’d weeded and cleared the slate walk.
A white picket fence cordoned off the cottage from the driveway, and I’d cut back the grass, and now the cottage and the yard looked cozy and tidy. The slate walk curved around the side of the house over to the workshop—which was about fifteen yards away—and the utility shed—another twenty yards from the workshop.
The picket fence was in reasonably good shape, and I’d refreshed the paint except where a thick patch of blackberries had overgrown a ten-foot section. I liked that, so I left them there, though I knew they’d eventually destroy the slats beneath it.
Tidying up the immediate yard around the house and workshop had taken me two months, but each day I managed to reclaim a little more from the hands of time and nature that had encroached, and now the cottage had truly become home.
The cottage had three bedrooms. The second largest I had made my library/office. The smallest, I’d turned into a guest room. The last, the master bedroom, was mine, of course. It had a decent-size walk-in closet and a cozy bathroom with a walk-in shower.
The country kitchen had room enough for a small table and four chairs. There was no dining room, but the living room was fairly large. The powder room in the short hall that led to the bedrooms was a two-piece—toilet and sink. The wood stove was in the living room. It was modern, air-tight, and I’d had the chimney replaced and fully inspected.
Turning off the ignition, I parked in front of the arched trellis that led to the slate sidewalk, and decided that, before unloading the flowers, I’d light a fire before the night chill came on.
Glancing to my left and right, I slung my purse over my shoulder and dashed up to the door and unlocked it. The smell of stew hit me as I opened the door. I’d started it in the slow cooker before I left for town, and now the aroma of tomatoes and beef and gravy filled the air. I wasn’t hungry now, but it would make for a good meal tomorrow. Maybe a good breakfast.
