Scones & Scandal Page 8

  Also By Amanda A. Allen

  The Mystic Cove Mommy Mysteries

  Bedtimes & Broomsticks

  Runes & Roller Skates

  Costumes and Cauldrons (found in the anthology Witch or Treat)

  Banshees and Babysitters

  Spellbooks and Sleepovers: A Mystic Cove Short Story

  Hobgoblins and Homework

  Gifts and Ghouls (found in the anthology Spells and Jinglebells)

  Christmas and Curses

  Potions & Passions (found in the anthology Hexes and Ohs)

  Valentines & Valkyries

  Infants & Incantations (Coming Soon)

  The Zinnia West 1950s Mysteries (co-written with Christina Hill)

  Zinnia West & The Corpse Served Cold

  Zinnia West & The Corpse Burnt Crisp

  The Rue Hallow Mysteries

  Hallow Graves

  Hungry Graves

  Lonely Graves

  Sisters and Graves

  Yule Graves

  Fated Graves

  Ruby Graves

  The Inept Witches Mysteries (co-written with Auburn Seal)

  Inconvenient Murder

  Moonlight Murder

  Bewitched Murder

  Presidium Vignettes (with Rue Hallow)

  Prague Murder

  Paris Murder

  Murder By Degrees

  Curses of the Witch Queen

  Fairy Tales Re-Imagined

  Song of Sorrow: A Prelude to Rapunzel

  Snow White

  Kendawyn Paranormal Regency Romances

  Compelled by Love

  Bewildered by Love

  Persuaded to Love

  Other Novels

  These Lying Eyes

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Amanda A. Allen, Beth Byers.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Chapter One

  Her first mistake was taking both Ella and Luna grocery shopping. Her second mistake was not going to a different store when the two-seater, car-shaped, devil-designed, ridiculously heavy grocery carts were all unavailable. Her third—and worst—mistake was thinking that the nutrients of the groceries mattered.

  Scarlett had picked up two boxes of frozen waffles and was comparing the sugars in the store-brand versus the hippie-brand when she realized her cart was gone.

  “Luna?” Scarlett’s voice was a tremulous whisper. “Ella?”

  Scarlett looked around frantically and heard the high-pitched, shrieking laugh that belonged to her youngest daughter. It was echoed by the barely-more-restrained cackle of her oldest daughter. The worry of missing daughters morphed into dread. She knew those mischief-filled laughs. Dropping the waffles, Scarlett darted to the aisle over, but it was too late.

  “Stop,” she shouted. “Goodness! Stop!”

  Ella, to give her credit, tried. With the wisdom of her seven years of age, she was smart enough to know the game was up. But Luna, at four-years-old had control of the cart. And when little Luna looked back and saw her mother’s face, the effect was the same as if the fires of hell were in pursuit. Luna ran faster, not even looking where she was going. Her eyes were fixed on her mom, and she was driven by the need to escape.

  “Stop!” Scarlett cried, trying a gentler shriek, but her daughter wasn’t fooled. Scarlett raced past Ella, but somehow—Luna with her chubby little legs was faster than Scarlett.

  “No! Stop!” Scarlett shrieked. She had given up on any attempt at sweetness. She might commit murder once the little fiend was contained.

  “One! Two!” Scarlett cursed, causing a woman in her 70s to gasp as Scarlett and Ella ran after Luna together. Luna, glancing back once again, yelped and let go of the cart, diving behind a display of chips to hide.

  The cart plowed into another display—of dishes. By the stars, no!

  There was a cacophony of crashing shattering platters and bowls and gasps of the onlookers. Scarlett froze, staring in horror. The starkest part of it wasn’t the mess, it was the way each and every head swiveled to her.

  There was the African American man with gray hair and kind eyes that shared Scarlett’s horror. There was the sour grandma who still seemed offended by Scarlett’s language. There was the mother with a pair of angel-faced little boys who looked on—as shocked as their mother. There was the middle-aged woman shopping in the heaven of solitude who took one look, snorted with laughter, and said, “My grandmother left her kids outside on the bench in her day. Too bad we still can’t.”

  The sour grandmother said, “This is what comes from poor parenting and the unwillingness to use the belt.”

  “Hey now,” the man with kind eyes started, apparently willing to defend Scarlett and her devils.

  His voice faded out as Scarlett’s senses focused in on the mess to the exclusion of everything else. Her gaze was fixed on the shattered plates that had sprayed across the aisle in shards of glass and packaging. The cart was a mountain of food covered in glitters of destruction.

  Scarlett stared. Not for the first time, parenting had left her gape-mouthed and clueless. She didn’t worry that someone would steal her daughters—who would after this fiasco? This was worse than when her neighbor had brought the girls home after running through the cul-de-sac naked. This was worse than when Scarlett had found them covered in whipped cream and powdered sugar ‘making breakfast.’ It was worse than when Luna had painted her crib in poop. It was…the worst.

  “Mommy,” Luna whimpered, and the sound of her daughter snapped Scarlett back. Luna slid her little hand into Scarlett’s, “I’m sorry.”

  Scarlett didn’t reply, but she squeezed her baby’s chubby little fingers. Glancing down, she made sure that Ella was there too and then Scarlett let out a string of curses that would have gotten her mouth washed out with soap if her mother had heard her, despite Scarlett having moved out more than 10 years before.

  “Oh my lands,” said the sour old woman.

  “Let it out,” said the middle-aged woman who was still laughing. “It’ll do you good.”

  “What happened?” A man cried with enough authority to startle Scarlett and get her to slowly turn and face him.

  His headset and red vest indicated he was clearly the manager. She didn’t know what to say. She stood, trying and failing to come up with an explanation.

  “I—I—,” Luna’s tremulous voice filled the silence and crocodile tears started running down her freckle bedecked cheeks as she said, “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

  Luna’s apology was followed by a wail that had her mother scooping her up.

  The manager took a long, deep breath, his gaze fixed on Luna’s crying face.

  “I’m so sorry,” Scarlett whispered, echoing her daughter. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Just go,” the manager ordered. His fists were clenched on his hips, looking beyond Scarlett, his gaze fixed on the disaster. But there was an edge of sympathy on his face when he added, “Maybe don’t come back.”

  “Those are some fine spirited daughters you have there,” the African American man said. His empathetic gaze eased Scarlett a little out of her stupor. “They’ll be outstanding adults.”

  Scarlett nodded once. If she survived their childhood, she was very much looking forward to their adulthood. Scarlett glanced around, seeing that everyone’s gazes were still fixed on her face. She told herself to channel her inner southern belle. She told herself to stick her nose up in the air, straighten her back and shoulders, and own her walk of shame. She didn’t though. She scurried for her car, daughters in tow, and escaped.

  Her daughters were silent when she started the car. They stayed quiet when she laid her head down on the steering wheel and breathed, trying and failing for fluffy-cloud thoughts or sunny-day thoughts, or quiet
-stream thoughts. Ella and Luna didn’t make a peep when Scarlett wiped a tear off of her face, sniffed, and stared at them through the rearview mirror.

  “That was exciting,” she croaked. She had tried and failed at cheery, but her comment broke the shell around the girls.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy,” Ella said.

  Scarlett shook her head and then said, “How about pizza?”

  It was the right thing to get them chattering again, but in the end, Scarlett still needed milk and bread, and...

  Wine.

  And to talk to her sister.

  Scarlett turned on the soundtrack to Moana even though the 'Shiny' song made her want to gouge out her eardrums. She drove through the only pizza place with a drive-thru even though she hated the pizza there. They each got a slushy and she rolled the windows down while the girls ate.

  With the east wind tangling her hair, caressing her skin, whispering to her she was feeling the impending change in the air. It was time. It had been for a long time.

  * * * *

  “Shut up,” Scarlett’s sister, Harper, squealed through tears of laughter. Scarlett didn’t need to see her sister’s face to know that Harper was flushed in her laughter, that she was sitting barefoot and cross-legged on the floor with a bag of hot Cheetos, a bottle of sweet wine, and probably leftovers from the dinner she had likely missed because she had been working late.

  Scarlett’s own dinner of cold pizza had been shoved aside for sherry and a bar of dark chocolate. She was justifying her food choices with a bowl of strawberries. Scarlett was sure her mother would be as disapproving of Scarlett’s dinner as Harper’s.

  Scarlett slid down the wall, crossing her legs, and toeing off her shoes. She listened to Harper laugh some more over the episode at the grocery store, but Harper ended it with a statement that Scarlett wasn’t quite ready for.

  “I found the right place,” Harper said, casually referring to finding a place for Scarlett to live in Mystic Cove. Harper had been looking for a place for Scarlett since the day she'd moved away more than a decade ago. Her sister's persistent rebellion against Scarlett's move had always made the idea of the move back all the easier. She didn't want to admit it was past time to come home, but it was. She was going to leave her husband, pack up their things, and move home. The east wind had been whispering to Scarlett for a long time, and she knew better than to ignore such a capricious friend for long.

  The truth was, Scarlett was a druid. She'd had her path foretold. She'd known that she'd fall in love. She'd known that she'd see the world. She'd known that she would eventually move home. The druids were some of the least powerful of the supernatural races individually. But their sense of knowing had led them aright for generations. The knowing was a discernment, an understanding—less than prediction but more than instinct. If a druid followed her knowing, it wouldn’t necessarily lead her through the easiest paths, but it led her to the most wanted pockets of joy. The ability to know was a gift that the wisest of the other races envied.

  “This is it. Definitely.” Harper said as Scarlett mused on the east wind and what her extra senses had been telling her. “It's the bakery. Sweeter Things. Henna is going to sell the bakery and the building. There are apartments over it."

  Scarlett sipped her sherry to the sound of her sister holding back her demand that Scarlett admit that this was it. For saying nothing, Harper was being really loud.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready,” Scarlett admitted, taking another sip to procrastinate thinking, letting the sweetness of it linger in her mouth.

  “What do you feel when you meditate in your garden?” Harper’s voice held a tinge of irritation to it, and Scarlett was sure it was because they both knew the outcome already. It was just a matter of time. It always had been. And Harper knew well that the garden, like the east wind, would help Scarlett access her abilities. The garden would push Scarlett down her path. It was why she hadn't wanted to meditate.

  Scarlett closed her eyes. She hadn’t wanted the answer. She knew what she was going to get if she dared to meditate—and it was a transformation she didn’t think she was ready for. But she felt the impending ax of change all the same.

  “It's time,” Harper said right before they hung up.

  Scarlett looked down the hall to her empty bedroom and then slid into her daughters’ room. Ella had climbed into bed with Luna and their heads were nestled into the same pillow. Scarlett didn’t need the light of the hall to see their peaches-and-cream faces, the sprinkling of freckles across their cheeks, their pink lips. She didn’t need their eyes to open to perfectly envision their mossy green eyes. They were mirrors of each other and, for that matter, her.

  They were everything. She reminded herself of it as the door to her house opened and the wind of change swirled through the entryway, down the hall, and around her ankles.

  And she knew.

  "It's time. We're coming."