She shook her head and pulled the roll of bills out of the front pocket of her jeans, peeling off five hundred dollars’ worth and placing them on the counter next to the little white jar. “How much do I owe you?” she asked.
Bob scrambled for a handwritten invoice, almost dropping it in his hurry to get her out of there. But before he could pick it up, a door slammed in the back and a tornado blew in on a wind of bluster and bellowing. A smaller, shorter version of Bob, with close-cropped white hair and the bearing of an ex-military man, he limped up to the counter, grabbed Baba’s money, and threw it at her. It drifted down like autumn leaves to rest by her booted feet.
“Is that her?” the senior O’Shaunnessy demanded of his son. Not waiting for an answer, he turned to Baba and said with a snarl, “Get out of here. We don’t want your kind here. Take your damned motorcycle and be grateful we didn’t put it into the crusher. And don’t come back.”
Baba could feel her mouth drop open, and she blinked a couple of times to see if that made the world make any more sense. Nope. No help at all. She looked at Bob for a clue, but he just lowered his gaze, an embarrassed flush spreading across his freckled cheekbones.
“I’m sorry,” she said to his father. “Have I offended you somehow?”
Veins pulsed rapidly in the old man’s neck as he glared at her. “You are an offense to all good Christian people. I heard about you down at Bertie’s. Taking money off of people who can’t hardly spare it, and givin’ ’em fake medicines that make them sick. That tea you made for Maddie over at the library to fix her allergies made her sneeze so hard she fell off a stepstool and broke her ankle. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Baba’s stomach clenched as if he had punched her. Normally, she would have yelled back. Hell, normally, she wouldn’t have cared. But she liked this place, with its open meadows and high pine-covered hills. She liked going into the slightly ramshackle old town and having people greet her by name, and smile at her when she passed them in the grocery store aisle. She liked the folks who’d come to her for herbal remedies. What the hell had gone wrong?
“My preparations do not make people sick,” she said through her teeth. “Try the ointment I brought for you, and you’ll see.”
The senior O’Shaunnessy picked the little jar up off the counter and threw it into the garbage can at his feet. “Not on a bet, missy. They’re saying you’re some kind of witch. That maybe all the stuff that has been going wrong around here is your fault. I’m not using nothing you made, no how.”
He turned to his son, somehow towering over the younger man, even though Bob was a good six inches taller. “You’re an idiot, Bob. Letting her trade some poison voodoo for your hard work. You’re like that boy with the cow and the magic beans.” He shook his head, looking like a bee-stung bear. “Jee-sus. Get her the hell out of here, will you? Idiot.” He limped back out the way he’d come, cursing under his breath the entire way. The door slammed hard behind him, like a death knell in the quiet room.
Bob’s freckles stood out in his white face as he bent down to pull the jar out of the trash. The tips of his ears glowed a vivid, embarrassed red. “Sorry,” he mumbled, still not meeting her eyes. “His gout is acting up. It makes him a little difficult.”
Baba swallowed a dubious snort. She thought it was more likely that the old man was more than a little difficult at the best of times. Still, his reaction to her had been fairly over the top.
She bent to pick up the scattered hundred-dollar bills from the floor by her feet, placing them together in a neat stack on the counter top. “I’m a bit crabby on occasion myself,” she said in a neutral tone. “But my medicines never make anyone sick, I assure you.”
No point in trying to explain that they were two parts herbs and one part magic, especially if someone was trying to pin the name “witch” on her. She was a witch, of course, but no good could come of folks starting to call her one. But there was no way her mixtures could make someone sick—the worst that could happen was that they simply did nothing. And even then, they’d smell like heaven and feel like a caress.
Bob darted a glance over his shoulder and stuffed the money into a small gray cashbox. Finally, he looked her in the face, his eyes a startling blue framed by pale red lashes. “It’s true what he said, though. People seem to be having bad reactions to the stuff they bought off of you.” He gave her a halfhearted smile as he pushed her keys and the ointment onto her half of the counter. “I’m sure you didn’t do it on purpose.”