“Somebody didn’t call us for the eats. Bad sisters,” Regan said.
Amelia added, “Right. Evil sisters. And anyway, you left out the death-magic possibility. Maybe it’s here to get Molly to do something deadly to it.” No one replied, and I sat frozen in my chair, my hands cupped around my heated mug.
“What?” Amelia asked, her tone belligerent. “Sis, the witches among us were there when your magic turned on the earth.”
“The rest of us saw the garden of death afterward,” Regan added.
“And we all know it’s still dead,” Amelia said. “Doesn’t take a witch to know that nothing will ever grow in that soil again.”
“And then there’s the whole thing about your familiar keeping you in control,” Regan said, the conversation ping-ponging as my world skidded around me.
“And about the music spell Big Evan made to keep your magics under control,” Amelia said. “Not talking about this is stupid. Gives it power.”
Regan said, “My twin is taking her second year of psychology. Pass the cream. Thanks. She’s teacher’s pet because she can add the witch perspective to the psycho stuff.”
Amelia huffed with disgust. “Not psycho stuff. That’s rude to people with emotional or mental disorders or illness.” Regan rolled her eyes and buttered her bread, taking a big bite.
The time my human sisters argued allowed me to settle. “Okay.” The Everharts went still as vamps themselves. Because Amelia was right. It wasn’t something we talked about. Ever. And secrets, things hidden, buried, and left to molder in the dark of one’s soul, did give evil the power to rule. “So,” I said, taking a fortifying gulp of tea. “What do you think about the death magics? Did the teapot come to me to die?”
My sisters all broke into talking at once, suggesting things like meditation and prayer, singing chants, spells to disrupt my death magic, and hinting that we simply bust the teapot and see if that would work to free the trapped soul. At that one, the teapot vanished, and appeared instantly back in hiding in my daughter’s toy box. Liz dubbed it the teleporting teapot. Then the human sisters cleared the table and started research into Lincoln Shaddock’s history, trying to find out about his relationship to witches and the teapot. There was nothing in the standard online databases, but I had an ace in the hole with Jane Yellowrock. She had tons of data on vamps, including Lincoln Shaddock, and she sent it to us, no questions asked. The information she offered confirmed the vamps’ story.
Shaddock had been turned after a battle in the Civil War. When he came through the devoveo, he traveled to find his family. His wife had remarried and moved south. She rejected him. According to the data, there was evidence that she was an untrained, unacknowledged witch, not uncommon in those witch-hating times. There was nothing about a teapot, not that it mattered.
By lunchtime, we had a plan. Of sorts.
? ? ?
We closed the café and the herb shop at dusk, and rearranged the tables so there was an open place in the middle of the café. All of us, children, witches, and humans, stood in the middle, circled around the toy box with its magical teleporting teapot, held hands, warded the space where we would work, and blessed our family line with the simple words, “Good health and happiness. Protection and safety. Wisdom and knowledge used well and for good. Everharts, ever hearts, together, always.” Then we broke the circle and the human twins piled our children into my car and headed back to my house. We witches? We waited.
Seven Sassy Sisters’ was decorated in mountain country chic, with scuffed hardwood floors, bundles of herbs hanging against the back brick wall, tables, and several tall-backed booths, seats upholstered with burgundy faux leather and the tables covered with burgundy and navy blue check cloths. The kitchen was visible through a serving window. It was comfortable, a place where families and friends could come and get good wholesome food, herbal teas, fresh bread, rolls, and a healing touch if they wanted it. We also served the best coffee and tea in the area. But it wasn’t the sort of place that vampires, with their fancy-schmancy, hoity-toity attitudes, would ever come. Until they knocked on the door just after dusk.
This time there were four vamps: Holly, his red hair in a ponytail; Jerel; a blond female vamp wearing a fringed leather vest, jeans covered in bling, and cowboy boots; and Lincoln Shaddock. He bore a striking resemblance to the actor in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a beak-nosed frontiersman, but with a clean-shaven chin, tall, rawboned, and rough around the edges. Unlike most vamps, who dressed for effect, Shaddock was wearing dark brown jeans and a T-shirt with a light jacket. And an honest-to-God bolo tie with a gold nugget as the clasp.