Witch Raising Situation (Witch of Mintwood Book 5) Read online

  Witch Raising Situation

  (Witch of Mintwood, Book 5)

  by

  Addison Creek

  Copyright © 2017 by Addison Creek

  Cover Design © Broken Arrow Designs

  This novel is a work of fiction in which names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is completely coincidental.

  License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of

  the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

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  Chapter One

  “There are rules!” Charlie Silver cried, stamping her foot.

  “Rules are made to be broken,” Greer quipped. “Didn’t you ever go to high school?”

  “I did, and I didn’t notice any crazy rules while I was there,” Charlie fired back.

  “Probably because you were too busy studying,” I said, muttering it into my shoulder so I could say it but she wouldn’t actually hear me.

  In case you couldn’t tell, my two roommates and best friends were having a fight over a very important matter, and I was acting as the ever-helpful peanut gallery. We’d been living together for a few months, and now I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

  Charlie was plump and blond and beautiful, while Greer was pale, willowy, dark-haired, and pretty. Charlie dressed as if she had a job interview every day, while the more faded Greer’s jeans got the more she liked them. Their appearance contrasted almost as much as their personalities.

  My aunt Harriet, who had been visiting Mintwood and staying with us at the farmhouse, had gone away for the week to attend to some work obligations. We were on our own again, and handling it splendidly.

  I didn’t know when my aunt would be back, because her work was likely to take her hither and yon. Despite the fact that we had been okay so far, I was a little nervous that with Harriet gone the dark witch Ellie would come tearing back into Mintwood, since she knew I was both inexperienced and preoccupied with other very important matters. But so far there had been no sign of Ellie in our little hamlet, nor of her cronies.

  “You can’t just bypass the rules and do whatever you want all the time or any time! This isn’t driving in Massachusetts!” The drivers in Maine’s sister state were notorious for aggressive, bad, unpleasant driving, a sort of do-whatever-you-want-on-the-road kind of behavior that we Mainers disdained.

  “I would never drive like that,” Charlie snapped. “Calm, cool, controlled is the way I go.”

  “It sounds like you’re advertising a breath mint or something,” said Greer. “And anyhow, you can say that because you’re too busy imitating a snail when you drive.”

  She held her hands up in front of her shoulders and loosely tucked her fingers into her palm as if she was holding a steering wheel, then stared straight ahead and didn’t move.

  You might think this sort of intense arguing would be about a guy, or at least would have originated that way. But for once Charlie wasn’t storming about Hansen Gregory, the star reporter for neighboring Caedmon’s newspaper, who was usually the object of her ire. She wasn’t even storming about Lena, her editor at the Mintwood Gazette, who loved to whip the town into a frenzy of gossip with explosive editorials about the bird feeders on Whistle Way.

  No, Charlie was ranting about a hair salon, a new one to be exact, and one whose proprietor had had the nerve to set up shop on Mintwood’s Main Street, right next to our dear friend Liam’s Twinkle Costume Shop.

  “They’re renovating the shop, and the hair stylist will be open for business shortly! They opened a business on the Main Street and they didn’t even put an announcement in the paper ahead of time! And now it’s just there! The insanity!” Charlie was shaking her head as if the world was ending, or at least as if she’d run out of milk for her morning cereal.

  “I’m excited about a new hair salon,” Greer replied.

  “That’s because your hair looks like a mouse tap-danced in it and left,” said Charlie with distaste.

  “But it looks like that precisely because there isn’t a hair proper salon in Mintwood. Now my hair can be glossy, shiny, and bouncy perfection,” said Greer. “I’ll be loved and adored the county over. My hair might even be so great I could do a commercial for the salon!”

  “I’m sure your hair isn’t beyond saving. Most definitely not,” Charlie rolled her eyes.

  Greer and I had just sat down to eat chicken, salad, and rice for dinner when Charlie’d come rushing in from work. Luckily, today was one of Greer’s days off, so she’d been the one to cook instead of Charlie or me.

  I wasn’t as bad a cook as Charlie (because no one was), but I wasn’t anywhere near as good as Greer, so it was always nice when she was around to tend to dinner.

  “Next to the Twinkle Costume Shop. Huh!” said Greer with bemusement. “I bet Liam’s having a cow.”

  “Did you see him today?” I asked.

  “No, I just drove past and saw the sign and the construction, but it says opening for business later this week! They aren’t going to be finished with construction by then, surely!” said Charlie.

  “Maybe they’re just doing construction in the back room,” Greer offered.

  “I guess,” grumbled Charlie. “Still, there are proper ways of handling such things, and this was not one of them.”

  “Quite right,” said Greer. “The proper handling would surely be calling the police!”

  “This is serious! A new shop is going in downtown and no one was consulted!”

  “You mean you weren’t consulted, right? I’m sure whoever’s opening the salon didn’t break down the door and take over the abandoned space without permission, nor are they now squatting there because Detective Cutter just doesn’t care.”

  In the middle of the melee better known as dinner at our house, my phone dinged. I ignored it. Aunt Harriet had been sending me random texts ever since she left, because she had recently gotten a smart phone and she didn’t really know how to use it yet. My phone had been making a lot more noise with the arrival of such scintillating prose messages as “hiya” and “k” and “baack.”

  “You going to check that?” Charlie asked. She hated it when a phone went unlooked at.

  “In a minu
te,” I told her.

  “Where is Paws, anyway?” Charlie asked, looking around in an obvious attempt to change the subject.

  Paws was my farmhouse’s ghost cat. He thought he ran the place, and maybe he sort of did.

  “He wasn’t on the porch?” I frowned.

  My friend shook her head.

  “He’s probably either chasing birds or engaging in his other favorite pastime, trying to sneak up on Tank and kill him.”

  Tank was the resident ghost rabbit. It had taken me a long time to meet him when I moved back to the farmhouse after my grandmother’s death, but once I did, I had the nerve – from Paws’ point of view – to give Tank a green-jeweled collar so he too could go with us on adventures from time to time. Without a certain type of magical necklace that matched the one I wore, the ghosts attached to the farmhouse couldn’t leave the property.

  “We have to try this new salon,” said Greer, her eyes shining as she pointedly ignored the topic of the cat. “We have to support local town business and such.”

  “Do we have to do all that?” Charlie asked. “Maybe if we don’t ever patronize it the business will die out quickly!”

  “What would you want that for!” Greer cried. “Whenever you get a haircut you complain about it! Maybe the woman starting this place is good!”

  “Miss Violetta from the city,” said Charlie, shaking her head as if the very name condemned her.

  “With a name like that, she has to be good,” said Greer. “We have to give it a shot.”

  “I mean, I guess if you’re willing to get a haircut we could try it,” said Charlie reluctantly. “Maybe.”

  They both looked at me and I shrugged. “If anyone can do anything with this mess on top of my head, more power to them.”

  “Have you ever heard of Miss Violetta?” I asked.

  “No, the name is unfamiliar to me, which means she’s from away and she’s probably never even visited Mintwood before,” growled Charlie. “If she had let me know she was coming, I might have more information for you.”

  “Maybe the fact that she’s from away means she can actually cut hair,” said Greer, “no offense to us Mintwood natives.”

  Given that the current local hair stylist, Mrs. Barnett, was usually brewing coffee and getting pastries baked at the same time as she cut our hair, suffice to say that the haircuts were not very fancy.

  “Mrs. Barnett only cuts hair for everyone who doesn’t want to drive twenty minutes. There are other places to go,” said Greer.

  “You mean Caedmon places?” said Charlie, eyes narrowing.

  “Yes, it’s a bigger town with at least two salons that I can think of. It’s probably where Hansen gets his hair cut, and those are some perfect waves he has going there.”

  “You’re only saying that to torment me,” groaned Charlie.

  “Is it working?” Greer asked with a wicked grin.

  “Yes,” said Charlie, rolling her eyes.

  Hansen Gregory was the incredibly good-looking lead reporter for the Caedmon Chronicle. He was the only reporter around who could compete with Charlie for good stories and good writing, and he sure liked to compete with Charlie. My friend considered him to be the bane of her existence, but the rest of us viewed the situation as glorious entertainment. Cable was expensive, after all.

  “Anyway,” said Charlie, trying to get back to business, “there’s a new hair salon. I thought you’d want to know. Lena said we’re going to put a notice about it in the paper whether Miss Violetta likes it or not, but I’m to try and get an interview with her. The news will not be thwarted! I figure I’ll stop there in the morning and see if she’s in so I can introduce myself and pelt her with questions.”

  “If you want to know the truth,” said Greer, “I’m glad a business is going into that storefront. It’s been empty for as long as I can remember, and it was kind of an eyesore.”

  “The space is small and awkward, so a lot of types of stores wouldn’t really make sense there. But I bet a hair salon is perfect,” I said.

  My friends continued to talk about the new salon, while I reached for my phone to make sure Aunt Harriet was doing okay wherever she might be this week. To my utter shock, the text wasn’t from Harriet at all.

  I felt a thrill when I saw Jasper Wolf’s name flash on my screen. My whole mood shifted and my face grew hot. But I had enough presence of mind to bring the tidal wave under enough control so that neither Charlie nor Greer noticed the shift in my happiness scale.

  I also found myself trying to hide my phone.

  Jasper’s text said, “Hey, it’s been a while! Can you make it over to the barn for dinner Friday night?”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. Could I ever!

  Images of Friday night immediately took form in my mind. Jasper wanted me to come to the Babbling Brook Barn for dinner; not Greer or Charlie, just me. Could this be what I thought it might be? Was it really . . . ?

  But I told myself no, my dreams couldn’t actually be coming true. Yes, of course it was my dream to go on a date with Jasper, and the fact that I pretended it wasn’t didn’t mean it wasn’t the innermost yearning of my heart.

  Come on now.

  All the reasons not to do it flooded my head.

  I said yes immediately.

  With a new hair salon coming to town, I might be making an appointment to have my hair done sooner rather than later.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning we headed to the Daily Brew and found the whole town on new hair salon watch. The fact that I didn’t have a mystery on hand at the moment was making me especially restless for some excitement, and since didn’t get cable TV, this was the next best thing.

  “I bet Liam can’t even handle it anymore,” said Greer with relish as we drove downtown, enjoying the clear day was and the sun that warmed the treetops. “The banging, the noise. He’s probably beside himself.”

  “Too much excitement around here! I live in the country to relax,” said Charlie.

  “You live in the country because if you went to the city you’d scare them. Here,” said Greer, “they wouldn’t be able to keep up.”

  “Only because it’s easier to keep your distance,” said Charlie. “I always thought the cities were more accepting of a wide variety of crazy.”

  “Maybe so, but your kind of crazy fits perfectly here,” said Greer.

  “Why did they start work in the winter, anyway?” I wondered.

  “It’s indoor work, so it can happen, but it is strange,” agreed Greer. “Openings around here are rare, but they usually happen in the summer when there are a lot of visitors around to make the place more lively, and provide plenty of customers for new enterprises.”

  “I might be able to tell you if I’d gotten advance noticed that this was happening,” said Charlie, still nursing her grudge. “I could have looked into town permits and the background of the owner.”

  “I thought we didn’t know who owned the row of buildings that makes up downtown Mintwood,” said Greer.

  “We don’t. It’s held in some top secret trust, so it’s obviously someone who wants to remain nameless. Whoever it is stays pretty much out of town affairs, though,” said Charlie, “as far as I can tell.”

  It was one of those small-town mysteries that could go for years. A rich individual owned one entire side of Main Street, and no one had any idea who it was. But speculation was fun, and lots of people indulged in it. Some thought the secret tycoon was our mayor, while the list of even more fanciful suggestions included Detective Cutter.

  “I’m going to boycott,” said a woman standing behind us in line once we were inside the café.

  “Hi, Mrs. Snicks. Why exactly are you going to do that?” Charlie asked, pulling a notepad out of her pocket. “Mind if this is on the record?”

  Mrs. Snicks looked down her nose at Charlie. “I’m a woman of the seventies. I’m not afraid of the press! Bring on the record!”

  Charlie flipped her notebook open,
looking eager.

  “I don’t believe a new business can just come in without consulting the town,” said Mrs. Snicks. “What would poor Mrs. Barnett do without her haircutting business on the side? We must defend our own!”

  All the people around the counter gave serious nods and looked at Mrs. Barnett, who responded with a weak smile.

  Through the window of he coffee shop I could see the gleaming letters of the new shop’s sign: Mintwood Mirror.

  “We’ll be there for you! No big fancy people coming in and taking your business,” said Mrs. Snicks. “I’m going to make a protest sign tonight.”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t see what this woman is about before we go writing her off?” Mrs. Barnett asked.

  Everyone looked at her in surprise.

  “You’re thinking maybe she’ll bring business into the downtown that wasn’t here before, which would be good for you,” said Mrs. Snicks wisely. “That’s very smart of you and very generous.”

  “That’s me, generous,” said Mrs. Barnett. Her cheeks were bright red and she had flour on her brow.

  “I could consider getting my hair cut there,” said Mrs. Snicks, fluffing her short gray curls. “Strictly for research purposes, obviously.”

  “I would consider it a personal favor,” said Mrs. Barnett.

  That did it. Mrs. Snicks was eternally helpful, and this occasion was no exception. She marched right out the door, then marched right back in.

  Unfortunately, the Mintwood Mirror wasn’t actually open for business yet, but she stated her clear intention of going over there to get a trim as soon as it was.

  “I’m going to go grab that table in the corner. Get me a coffee, will you?” said Greer. She moved off to claim a table, while Charlie and I stayed in line, chatting and observing our neighbors.

  Once we had our drinks, we joined Greer at the table she had claimed. Liam had come in after us and sat down with her, so we’d gotten him a coffee too. He looked a little worn out.