Witch Way to Mintwood (Witch of Mintwood Book 1) Read online

  “I just don’t get it,” I said.

  “He’ll do whatever his mommy tells him, and you know she never thought I was good enough for her perfect little prince of a son,” said Charlie. “He’ll have a new girlfriend within the week and he won’t miss me at all.”

  “So he wasn’t cheating?” Greer asked.

  “Not that I know of,” said Charlie. “He’s too boring to cheat, which is the worst! He dumped me!” She said it as if she was trying to get herself to believe it.

  “Something must have happened,” Greer said. “You two have been together since college. That’s a long time.”

  Charlie thought for a minute. “He did tell me I was a little controlling. He said I was a neat freak and he couldn’t take the pressure.”

  “What were you doing when he said that?” Greer asked, giving Charlie a look that told her not to try and lie.

  Charlie bit her lower lip and looked around the room. “I mean, nothing major.”

  “But what were you doing?” Greer pressed.

  “I was just organizing the sock drawer!” she cried.

  “Yours or his?” said Greer.

  Charlie shot up from the sofa. “What difference does it make! The point is that he dumped me! I had a calendar! I had a plan and now it’s all ruined! He doesn’t love me and he doesn’t want to be with me anymore!” Charlie collapsed back onto the couch and wailed. “I would have left the socks alone if I’d known how strongly he felt about them. Who cares about socks!” Over Charlie’s head Greer pointed at the upset blonde.

  “I’ve never been dumped before,” said Charlie, looking lost.

  “You’ve only ever dated Andy,” Greer said. “You haven’t given yourself a chance to be dumped by enough men to know how to cope with it yet.”

  “I’d rather never get to a number that high,” said Charlie. “And somehow I don’t think that would make me feel better.” She paused, then added, “What really gets me is that Andy was so annoying. Like, seriously. Sometimes I thought I was only with him because that’s what I was supposed to do. We’d been together for so long, you know? But then he goes and dumps me and I’m a mess.”

  “It changes your whole life,” I tried to say soothingly. I had some experience with how difficult that was. My whole life had recently been turned upside down when my grandmother died and left me this monstrosity of a collapsing farmhouse. She’d never been much of one for maintenance, and her habits had now officially caught up with me.

  I knew my grandmother had had a benefactor, a very rich man who would show up from time to time and give her money, but I knew nothing more than that. My grandmother had insisted that we not have a funeral for her when she died, and my mother, who was sure this man was up to no good, had only been too happy to comply, since she didn’t want to have to host a bunch of strangers at the house. My mom wasn’t really one for collective grief, and in the end she’d gone to Costa Rica and I had buried my grandmother quietly on a corner of the property she had loved so dearly, where she was surrounded by her favorite flowers.

  “You’re right,” Charlie snuffled. “My whole life was turned around and of course I’m upset. I can’t imagine life without Andy, and I’ve never had to since we first got together. I’ve lived with him for years! Now what am I going to do?”

  “Go out and look at the swanky river apartments?” Greer asked.

  Charlie looked at her in surprise. “No,” she said. “I was thinking I’d live here with you two.”

  It was as if Charlie had dropped a stink bomb into our midst. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded living with just Charlie, just as I didn’t mind too much living with just Greer, but the two of them together were like oil and water. They stayed close while simultaneously repelling each other. The three of us living here would be a disaster, and Greer was clearly thinking the same thing. Charlie was her best friend in the world, but that didn’t mean they had to go and do something really stupid like move in together.

  “Um,” I said.

  Charlie wasn’t looking at me as she continued to talk. “I figured I’d take the first floor bedroom, the one off the kitchen. It’s out of the way and you aren’t using it for much right now. I’ve always loved the view of the woods behind the house and I’d totally do all the work to fix it up. I know the attic is an option too, but I don’t want to climb all those creaky stairs.” In this farmhouse you always knew where everyone was, because the floorboards announced it like trumpets blaring every time anyone walked.

  “You’re talking about it as if you’ve already decided,” said Greer skeptically.

  “I have,” said Charlie, as if that was the end of it. “It’s important to have a plan, and this is a top-notch one. I’m very proud of myself for thinking of it, in fact. I thought you two would be happy about my idea.” Her shoulders quickly deflated as she actually took in the looks on our faces. “You’ve been having so much fun here without me, and now we can all have fun together.”

  “I wouldn’t say living here is fun or that I’ve been having it here,” said Greer. “Fun is about as foreign to me as Tibet.”

  ‘That’s just because you didn’t like world history or civics,” said Charlie knowingly, while Greer scratched her head and tried to decide if she was going to explain to Charlie what she’d really meant.

  “We only have one bathroom,” said Charlie, “which isn’t ideal, but since Greer sleeps until noon on a good day and I work nine to five, I don’t think we’ll be running into each other so much.”

  “If you don’t think so, then it must be true,” Greer confirmed, looking more resigned by the minute. “You’re like this tiny round battering ram, just shove on until the end.”

  “What are you talking about?” Charlie looked at Greer in confusion.

  “Battering rams, obviously,” said Greer and yawned.

  “The back room isn’t really ready,” I said, “but if you want to sleep on the couch tonight you’re more than welcome.”

  “I do. My suitcase is over there,” she said.

  Greer was looking at me again, and this time I didn’t know what to tell her. There was another reason why having Charlie move in was a problem, and it was one I didn’t know how to solve.

  Greer could see the ghosts, including Paws, because I as a witch had given her permission to do so on the property. There was nothing that said I had to give Charlie permission, but if I didn’t, a ghost could still make Charlie feel his or her presence.

  Charlie didn’t know my secret, but oh boy did I have one.

  Chapter Three

  As I walked slowly back up to my room, I heard Charlie settling in downstairs. I told Greer with a look that we’d talk about it later, then collapsed onto my bed and snuggled under the cozy blankets. Hopefully I had until morning to figure out what to do about Charlie. At least until morning. With that thought, I fell asleep.

  The first rays of the morning sun were sneaking in through the ripples in the curtains when I cracked one cakey eye. For a few seconds I basked in the warmth of my bed and the comfort of my room. Charlie sleeping on the couch and the fact that the house I lived in could fall down at any moment were far-away worries compared with piles of cozy fleece.

  Then there was the slamming of pots downstairs and I leaped out of bed with a start, afraid it was a ghost. As a witch, I had the ability to see, speak to, and generally interact with ghosts. I wouldn’t call it luck, I’d call it a burden, especially because I had refused my ability with both hands and put a continent between myself and my grandmother until she died, leaving me the house, and I had been forced to return. Now here I was, talking to Paws every single night.

  Without another thought I raced down the stairs, hoping the ghosts wouldn’t wake Charlie before I had a chance to explain everything to her.

  But the banging of the pots in the kitchen was Charlie. She was showered and dressed in her usual white pressed shirt and pencil skirt. What I really wanted to know was how she’d kept the wrinkles out of
it after packing and coming over last night, but under the circumstances I put that question on the back burner.

  “Morning,” she said brightly. She had eggs over easy going, a plate of toast, the smell of bacon all through the house, and just in case we were still hungry, a pile of donuts on the table for dessert.

  “Morning,” I said, staring at the spread in amazement.

  “I take it Greer isn’t up yet?” she asked cheerfully.

  “Um, no,” I said. “How’d you sleep?” I did a quick sweep of the kitchen for any ghosts that might be lurking, but when I didn’t see any I relaxed slightly and sat down at the well-worn kitchen table, which sported several scorch marks from hot pans having been set down directly on its surface. Looking around again in a more ordinary way, all I saw was my grandmother’s cluttered decoration sense. Pots at least a hundred years old were stacked on top of each other, and cookbooks, all of which she’d read and used often, lined an entire wall.

  A cup of steaming coffee suddenly appeared in front of me, and I sank back, gratefully clutching my locally made mug and trying to wake up while Charlie talked.

  “I’ve decided I can’t mope around,” she said firmly. “I’ve further decided that Andy is going to come to his senses and we’ll be back together in no time. I just need to give him a little bit of space. I can do that. I’ll arrange the sock drawer here.” I had a brief imagine of her going through Greer’s sock drawer, which probably didn’t have one pair of matched socks in it. Greer would grow to be ten feet tall if she found out, and her head would explode. It would be funny if it weren’t a very likely scenario.

  Why did I feel so tired? Maybe it was the late night running around in an effort to comfort my old friend, but I nodded to Charlie anyway and asked, “What else do you have to do?”

  She gave me a guilty look. Her lower lip protruded and she did that looking around the room thing again as if she wanted to avoid giving an answer.

  “When we get back together, I’ll leave his sock drawer alone. I promise,” she said.

  I was about to say something else when a chill went up and down my spine. The back window was open, letting in a little fresh fall air, and I could see the side of the house from the table’s position right beneath the window.

  There, right outside the kitchen, was a ghost.

  And not just any ghost.

  The ghost haunting my formerly quiet morning was the former mayor of Mintwood. Bessie Goodkeep had been the first female mayor of our small town, so said the local historical society. She had been an honored member of the community, and her gravesite was unknown. I happened to know that it was unknown because it was at my house. I had seen her picture displayed at the library, and there was no mistaking her feathered hat and fur coat, her walking stick, or her massive face. I sprang to my feet and hurried outside, muttering an excuse to Charlie that I didn’t remember a minute later about why I was rushing away from breakfast.

  Outside, the grass was damp, and Greer’s dog, Charger Beard, followed me out with delight to do his business. He was a black lab Greer had saved when he was a puppy. She had been bartending one night and had come out of the bar at two in the morning to see a couple of kids harassing the little dog. She’d driven them off and stayed with the pup all night until a vet could come and help move him. She’d been his and he’d been hers ever since. The mistreatment had left him with an intimidating scar over his forehead. He was a big fan of Greer, me, and anyone else he knew, but he hated strangers.

  Now he snuffled around in the grass while I ran up to the ghost. She gave me a dirty look, which somehow focused on my favorite pair of worn jeans. “Time used to be that you got dressed up fancy to meet the mayor. Sad how times have changed, and not for the better,” she sniffed.

  I shifted my back so that it was facing the kitchen window. Charlie seeing me out there talking to myself wouldn’t help her have a better morning.

  “Sorry, I just woke up,” I said.

  The ghost squinted at the sun.

  Mrs. Goodkeep frowned at me and shook her head. “Your grandmother was never so unprofessional.”

  “Yeah, well,” I muttered. I wanted to tell this woman to deal with it or shove it, but I did neither. Instead I said, “The quicker you tell me what you want, the quicker you can go back to whatever you were doing, and so can I.”

  Mrs. Goodkeep sniffed again; that seemed to be her default tone. “Always impatient, are the young. Trust me. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t very important.”

  Ghosts always thought what they had to say was terribly important. It rarely was, but my grandmother had always listened with an amazing attentiveness anyway.

  “Yes?” I tried not to drum my foot impatiently on the ground.

  “My great-great-granddaughter is in trouble,” said Mrs. Goodkeep. “I don’t know what kind, I just know she needs help, and you’re the only one I can tell, so I’m telling you, for all the good it’ll do me. If your grandmother were here I’m sure she’d have a solution, but . . . “

  “Who’s your great-great-granddaughter?” I asked, although I had a horrible suspicion I already knew. Maybe she had more than one.

  “In fact I have three, but I’m talking about Gracie,” she said.

  My heart sank.

  Gracie Coswell was the epitome of the prom princess who is better than you and knows it and is more than happy to tell you about it thank you very much. She was, in fact, literally the prom princess the year my friends and I graduated, and she had been incredibly angry that Charlie was recognized as the valedictorian of our class instead of herself, even after she’d been told it was an academic achievement and not something involving votes that you could bribe your classmates to cast for you. She wanted to win everything. The principal refused to make an exception for Gracie even after she demanded it, and she’d been incredulous.

  Gracie lived on the other side of town, the fancy side on the lake, and she didn’t give two shakes about me or the rest of Mintwood.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “She’s a horrible human being.” Might as well be honest. Mrs. Goodkeep was dead, so surely she could recognize the truth when she heard it.

  Mrs. Goodkeep drew herself up. “Don’t talk about my great-great-granddaughter that way. She’s very accomplished, writing that fashion newspaper and working so hard.”

  She wrote a fashion blog, but I couldn’t expect this ghost to understand that.

  “But she’s in danger?” I tried to fish out.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Goodkeep, sounding grave. “You have to help her as soon as possible, or terrible tragedy will strike.” Ghosts were dramatic. They had already experienced the most dramatic event possible, death, and they usually took that and ran with it, as my grandmother liked to say.

  “I don’t think she’ll let me onto her considerable property,” I said. “She probably has detection alarms that keep out riffraff from the wrong side of town like yours truly,” I said, pointing to myself just in case Mrs. Goodkeep wasn’t clear on who I was talking about. Really, the jeans should have tipped her off.

  “You’ll find a way. Her life hangs in a delicate balance. She doesn’t know the half of it,” she said raspily. “She’s in grave danger.” Mrs. Goodkeep couldn’t keep from repeating herself, apparently, even as a ghost.

  “Right, sure,” I said. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Care to tell me how you came by this information?”

  This was always the tricky part. I’d had ghosts try to send me on assignment before, but it had never been for something involving impending danger. It was always something like “I left my watch in the attic, could you find it and return it to my grandson?”

  Mrs. Goodkeep, as I expected, drew herself up even further, wrapping her strange fur coat tightly around her shoulders. “It’s a secret, but trust me, it’s bad. Very bad.”

  I gave her what I hoped was my most unimpressed face. Why didn’t these ghosts just behave like sensible people?

  “And
if I don’t try to do anything about it?” I said, figuring I might as well see how she’d react to some resistance.

  But Mrs. Goodkeep was too smart for me. She just sneered. “There’s a reason your grandmother never had anyone live with her: she couldn’t risk letting her secret be known. It was one thing for the town to call her a witch, but it would be quite another for people to know it was true. That one grumpy-looking friend of yours might know about the ghosts, but that new porcelain doll in there burning breakfast doesn’t.”

  I resented a number of statements she had just made, but the one about breakfast was true. I could smell it from out in the yard.

  “Are you threatening me?” I asked, looking for clarification. There was a good chance she’d scare the living daylights out of Charlie with random flying objects and strange noises, and I couldn’t let the old ghost do that. I knew it was much better just to tell my friend about the ghosts and the fact that I was a witch now, but I wasn’t ready to do that yet, and I certainly wasn’t going to be forced into it by Mrs. Goodkeep.

  “Oh, no, dear, I’m merely stating facts.” But Mrs. Goodkeep was smiling like the cat that drank the cream.

  Oh, how I wanted a real cat. I could never tell Paws, of course. Anyone who’s ever talked about the glamour of ghosts and witches should be subjected to an uninterrupted hour with Paws.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “I’ll go check on little Miss Gracie without any helpful information from you. I’m sure I’ll get super far.”

  I stomped back inside. Doing a ghost’s bidding was one thing, but trying to deal with Gracie Coswell was another thing entirely.

  “What were you doing out there?” Charlie asked, trying valiantly to ignore the fact that Charger had skidded into the kitchen ahead of me, leaving a track of wet paw prints on the old tile floor and a delighted expression in his messy wake.

  “Just getting some fresh air,” I said darkly.

  Then I sat down. For the next few minutes I skimmed the local paper, which I still had delivered to the doorstep every morning. Charlie had an article in today’s Mintwood Gazette about a proposed addition to the library, and there had been a series of break-ins all around town. Liam Smart, owner and operator of the Twinkle Costume Shop, had been interviewed for the piece. For all Mintwood’s small size, we had a nice downtown with lots of cute shops.