Pointy Hats and Witchy Cats Read online

  Stunned didn’t begin to describe it.

  He was heading straight for me!

  Several women around me gasped and gave me dirty looks.

  As the man had made his way up the aisle, a flutter of movement caught my eye. Then, suddenly, there were lots of people in his path.

  So now he was trying to wade through lots of wedding guests to get to me.

  The next instant the strange-looking woman with the bird’s nest hat darted out of the fray, raced up to me, and said, “Now that he’s distracted, let’s get you out of here. Hurry! There isn’t much time!”

  She tried to seize my hand, but I pulled away from her.

  “Who are you? Were you on the guest list?” I demanded.

  Mitsy had gone to assist her fallen sister, and the circle of chaos gave me and the strange woman some unexpected privacy.

  “Does your grandmother need an invitation?” she retorted, her chin jutting out mulishly. I had seen that facial expression before: in the mirror.

  My mouth fell open as she reached for my wrist again. “Come on! Time’s a-wasting, and we’re in big trouble as it is! Let’s get you out of here.”

  There was a tattoo on her hand. It was faded, but still clear enough so that I could see that it was a rainbow.

  This time when she tugged me I moved, mostly because I was too stunned to do anything else. As she dragged me toward the imported hedges, I asked feebly, “Where? What?” Shock made my knees weak. Or maybe they hadn’t recovered from getting a good look at Smoldering.

  “This way!” she cried. “Lucy? Where do we go?”

  Just then the bird on her hat took flight. I cried out, not having realized that the bird was alive. It a little robin with a bright red belly, easy to spot in flight.

  Lucy darted toward the hedge and disappeared through it.

  “I thought as much,” said the woman grimly.

  We made it to the hedge without any interference, but the branches were so thick I couldn’t see a way through.

  “What’s going on? You aren’t my grandmother!” I stammered. I tried to tug my hand away, and this time she let me go.

  The old woman with the red cheeks and the smooth skin turned to face me. “I am your grandmother. Just because your father hasn’t let you be a part of the Rhinestone Witches’ lives all these years does not mean we don’t exist. I’ve come here to retrieve you and save you from a fate worse than death.”

  My head was spinning. “I need more of an explanation than that! What do you mean Dad didn’t let you be a part of my life?”

  The woman’s aqua eyes skirted past me to look at something over my shoulder.

  We had the same color eyes.

  My heart twisted. For the first time I found myself slightly believing what she said.

  Then I turned to see what she was looking at in the fray behind us.

  One giant cloud still hovered in front of the sun, but the wind had died down.

  Smoldering was on the move!

  He had seen us run!

  Now his face was more determined than ever, his jaw more set. The people with him were unceremoniously pushing guests out of the way.

  “You have to decide right now. Come with me or stay,” said the woman. Her voice was suddenly even. She had been taken over by calm.

  At that moment, Lucy the bird shot through the hedge, chattering angrily at the woman who claimed to be my grandmother.

  “Yes, I know. I’m trying to convince her. She got the family stubborn streak! I told her mother to try and breed it out of this generation. Look who she had kids with,” she sighed.

  I glanced back at Smoldering. In the distance I saw Bailey raise her bouquet up into the air and bring it down on someone’s head.

  A fitting way for a wedding to end, if I do say so myself.

  Especially Bailey’s.

  I turned back to this strange lady. “I’m coming with you!”

  “Excellent! By the way, my name is Bethel! Are you ready for an adventure?” Without waiting for an answer, she seized my hand and tugged me toward the dark green hedge. No, no, I definitely wasn’t.

  Chapter Four

  Diving at top speed through the hedge I’d been hiding in just the night before ripped my dress. That probably improved the appearance of the detestable garment. Mitsy would have been thrilled, if only she were with me.

  As we rushed away, a storm of memories came rushing in on me and made me stumble.

  Once I had called Blossom a witch, because I wasn’t allowed to swear.

  My dad had been furious.

  He didn’t usually get angry, but on that occasion he grounded me for a month.

  I thought the punishment was out of proportion to the crime. Mostly because I’d called her a lot of other names too.

  He told me I was never to use that word again, and I promised him I would never say the word “Blossom” again.

  I hoped that meant he planned to divorce her.

  But no, it was the word “witch” that he didn’t want me to use.

  Now I had a new reason to wonder why.

  There had been other strange oddities as well. My dad hated cats. Like, sure, some people prefer dogs and that’s all well and good. But he didn’t just prefer the slobberingier pets. He HATED cats.

  Okay, so: witches were often associated with cats. Was this the reason he wanted nothing to do with them?

  We emerged on the other side of the shrubbery onto a short blanket of grass, beyond which was the gray expanse of a paved street.

  At first my vision careened wildly.

  Parked on the street was a Honda Civic, and that was it; there were no other cars. Bailey had tried to get the street closed down, but the town wasn’t having it. Instead she had illegally posted a bunch of signs about a wild boar roaming around and smashing car windows. She took it upon herself to make it believable by using a bat.

  I glanced at my grandmother in confusion. To be honest, I was expecting a cooler car.

  “Loads of people have them. They’re very inconspicuous,” she explained defensively.

  I nodded, but my mind was still on my dad and the strange memories.

  “There is usually a moment,” said Bethel quietly. She reached out and put her hand on my shoulder. “A moment of reckoning for witches who haven’t been with their communities, and in extreme cases did not know that they were witches themselves,” she explained.

  Her words took a breath to sink in.

  Then I let out a squawk. What had she just said!

  Her eyes flared. “No need to be dramatic about it. Goodness. Your dad hates witches because he used to date one. Makes perfect sense, especially given the witch. Lots of men don’t know what’s good for them, if you ask me.”

  “He what?” I gasped.

  Could she possibly mean Blossom? The woman was horrible at keeping secrets. There was no way she had managed to be a witch all of these years and not slip up and tell. I would have noticed.

  “That plastic poser! No, I’m talking about your mother!” said Bethel.

  My dad had showed me pictures of my mother when I was younger, of the two of them together. He only had two, and he said we had to be careful with them. If Blossom ever found them, she’d rip them to shreds.

  My mom had looked so happy standing there with my dad’s arm around her, and the two of them had been so young. Their cheeks were flushed and their grins were wide. Something had shifted from that captured moment to the endless ones where he wouldn’t speak of her at all.

  “We can talk more in the car,” said Bethel.

  We hurried to the silver vehicle and got in, but before she drove away she paused.

  “Hang on! I’m forgetting something!” she cried.

  I was so shocked and nervous that my neck had started to sweat. Under my arms, my dress was drenched. I opened the glove compartment and looked for tissues.

  “Oh, I remember!” Bethel cried, opening the driver’s side window to let Lucy in.

&n
bsp; The bird zipped in and landed on Bethel’s hat.

  “What did he tell you happened to your mother?” Bethel asked, keeping her eyes on the road.

  In no time we were speeding away, with Bethel’s white-knuckled hands clutching the steering wheel.

  I told myself I’d have to be careful with this conversation, because surely this was madness. Pure insanity. What could I possibly have been thinking to let this woman drag me away from my home?

  “Umm, he said they had a falling out and that she wasn’t in the picture. For a long time I didn’t accept that. I also asked about her family. He said they weren’t the right kind of people.” At that point I was interrupted by a snort, but when Bethel didn’t actually say anything, I went on. “After a while, when I wouldn’t accept it, he just starting saying she didn’t have any family. At some point along the way I started to believe him.”

  My grandmother sighed and shook her head. “That isn’t as terrible as I was expecting. But I’m not going to say it’s good, either.”

  We pulled over. We had been driving at top speed and there had been at least five almost crashes. For most of that ride, the scene had looked the same, with lush green grass sloping gently toward trees that lined the well-paved road. Every so often a house or two interrupted the forest, but soon enough more trees were flying past the window.

  I wondered where Smoldering was. Then I wondered why I was wondering about him and not my family.

  “You have to decide. If you’re coming with me at all, you’re all in,” said Bethel.

  “I don’t really see how I can commit to that seeing as how I don’t have the slightest idea what it means,” I told her. My whole body was still trembling with shock. This day had definitely not gone as I expected, and it wasn’t half over yet!

  “Are you all in?” Bethel demanded, ignoring my comment and turning to look at me directly

  I thought about returning home to my unpleasant stepfamily and a dad who loved me but kept secrets.

  My soul rebelled.

  This was fun.

  This woman had my eyes.

  I told her I was in, and the next thing I knew she was ordering me into the trunk of the car. “You can’t see where we’re going. Yet.”

  Without time to think or protest, I climbed into the trunk. Only after the lid slammed shut did I start to panic. What was I doing? How could I possibly have believed that nonsense? Just as I was about to pound on the lid of the trunk to be let out, the car roared to life. Music started blasting from the front of the car and we were off once again.

  The trunk of the car smelled like incense, and between that and the bumping along at high speeds I felt terribly ill. Bits of grit pressed into my skin wherever it was exposed, and I could feel the carpet coming up. This was an old car. It was all I could do not to be sick.

  We drove and drove, but finally I felt the Civic slow. At that point I had given up on praying. God probably couldn’t hear me over Bailey’s caterwauling about her ruined wedding anyway.

  The trunk popped open and the woman with the red cheeks looked down at me. Relief made me dizzy.

  “If I had known I’d have that much fun coming to get you I’d have shown up years ago,” she whooped.

  Tension seeped off of her and she gave me a toothy grin.

  Then her brows united in one line and she pursed her lips, as if she had just come to some bleak realization.

  “Actually, maybe not,” she added.

  I flailed around in the trunk, trying to generate the forward momentum to get up without ripping my dress so badly that I wouldn’t be able to wear it.

  “That wedding, though?” Bethel rambled on. “Terrible. Everything about it was awful. The flowers stank. I didn’t even know that was possible. The colors were all wrong. Why do people try to be classy when they could be happy instead?”

  She looked down at me, but I had subsided into stillness and was trying to put as much pleading into my eyes as I could.

  “Here, let me help you out.” She grabbed my arm in a steely grip and yanked me out of the trunk.

  I almost melted with relief. Half of me had wondered if she’d release me at all.

  It also came home to me at that moment that she wasn’t wearing fake nails to stab me with.

  Another plus.

  But I was still shaken. I wobbled on my feet and my dress fell haphazardly. I dimly noted that I’d ripped it despite my best efforts. When I got home, Bailey would be furious.

  When Bailey got angry, her neck went all splotchy and gross. She tried to keep her temper to avoid that ugliness, but more often than not she just wore turtlenecks.

  I didn’t see how that was an improvement, because then she looked like an ostrich.

  “This way. You must get car sick,” said Bethel.

  “Today I do,” I feebly reached up to my hair and tried to shove it back into place.

  Without further ado, Bethel led me toward the most adorable white house I had ever seen. It had a thatched roof and a million bright orange and pink tulips out front, every last one of them prettier than Bailey’s wedding flowers.

  A cobblestone path led up to the front door, and as we walked along it I found myself feeling more stable with each step.

  When we reached the little stoop, Bethel went ahead, pushed the door open, and led me inside. Before she closed the door behind her she glanced over her shoulder.

  “Just a minute. Make yourself at home. Put the kettle on,” she said, pointing to a door off to one side of the entryway.

  The kitchen was just as cheery as the outside. Although it was small, it was filled with pots and pans that looked like they were used often, plus a well-worn table and a sink with a window above it that looked out over the garden.

  On the stove was a pink kettle, which I filled and put back on the stove to heat.

  Out the window over the sink I watched Bethel march back to the car and dump some dark liquid out of a coffee mug and onto the ground. Then she moved a few steps back toward the house, threw something in the direction of the car, and turned and walked quickly back toward me.

  She was about halfway to the stoop when a fire exploded upward from around the vehicle. With a humongous bang the car exploded into a ball of heat. The force of the air shooting outward from the blaze was so strong that I was thrown back against the stove.

  Bethel clucked disapprovingly. “Be careful of the tea!” she cried as she entered the kitchen.

  “How is that less conspicuous?” I asked her.

  How were we going to leave now?

  “Just you wait and see,” she said.

  I had thought we were alone, but just then another woman walked in, much younger than Bethel. In fact, she looked just about my age.

  I nearly screamed in surprise, but the woman just inhaled deeply. “I smell chaos,” she smiled.

  “Pretty sure that’s burning rubber,” I muttered into my hands.

  “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” said the girl.

  “It already is,” said Bethel. “Lowe. Meet your cousin Jade.”

  I choked on my tea.

  Chapter Five

  Lowe beamed at me. She didn’t look anything like I would have expected a cousin of mine to look. Her hair had a bewildering array of shimmering ties in it, and she was wearing a white tank top with a shimmering bra underneath. A big tattoo on her shoulder disappeared around behind her back, while baggy black pants and running shoes completed the somewhat unusual look.

  “Thank you so much for coming!” She rushed over to hug me. “We didn’t think you’d agree!”

  I glanced at Bethel, who looked uneasy.

  Lowe looked at her, sensing that something was wrong. “She did agree, didn’t she?”

  “I haven’t exactly explained everything to her yet,” said my grandmother, who was shifting nervously from foot to foot.

  Lowe scrutinized her.

  “You haven’t explained anything! You interrupted a wedding!” I said.

&nbs
p; “You didn’t like that bride, though, am I right?” said Bethel.

  “That’s beside the point! Now she’s just going to have another one! She was insufferable before she got engaged. Since she started planning her wedding, all bets are off.”

  “She can plan another wedding all she wants, but it won’t be one that you’re going to attend,” said Lowe.

  I frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw my grandmother give her a warning look, but Lowe went on anyhow.

  “Well, you can’t go back there,” she explained, as if it should have been obvious. “You’re coming with us to Twinkleford now.”

  “I already agreed to come with you, but no one told me it was permanent. Just what do you mean, I’m not going back there?” I asked.

  My grandmother sighed. She clearly hadn’t wanted this conversation to go in this direction right now. “You need to come back to our town,” she said. “We aren’t far away now. That’s why we came to this cottage. It’s a safe place to be while we figure out how to get you to the passport office.”

  “I would love to come visit you sometime. I just think my family is going to need me for the next couple of days. This wedding was ruined,” I said.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave them to pick up the pieces without you,” said my grandmother. “We are currently heading for the passport office. We will have to get an expedited permission slip for you. There’s no time for you to return and check on your wretched stepsister.”

  My head was spinning. So far we hadn’t even mentioned the most fantastical claim that had already been made.

  “Next thing I suppose you’re going to tell me that it’s a town filled with witches,” I muttered.

  “Naturally. It’s a magical town. Witches don’t live in a vacuum. We have a lot of different sort of magical friends there. It does take all kinds, doesn’t it? From the friendly ogres to the airy ghosts,” said Lowe.

  I had been kidding, but even in my befuddlement I could see that my cousin wasn’t. I blinked several times in surprise. “So this whole witch thing . . .”

  “We aren’t kidding. We are definitely witches. The whole family is. All of the families in town are, as a matter of fact, although we’re all also very different from one another,” she said. “Different social standing,” she added as an afterthought.