It had also really helped to have the confirmation that I’d done the right thing for both of us. I deserved to have the relationship I wanted, and Marty deserved someone who loved him as much as he loved them. I knew my vision on Christmas Eve, even if had been just a dream, was right and it was true.

  Things had been so hectic, especially with me sleeping a truly ridiculous amount, that I hadn’t really gotten a chance to talk to Andre since he’d made sure Finn and I got home safely the night of the festival. But Finn was due for another magic lesson in a couple days, so maybe I’d walk him over and see if Andre might be up for another attempt at dinner. One that didn’t end up hexed.

  I ducked down, sorting through the cupboard where I kept my pots and pans, trying to find my favorite measuring cup. Over the years, I’d made my own markings on it, so it was perfect for my potion brewing, but I couldn’t find it. Straightening up, so I didn’t bash my head on the counter, I couldn’t help but frown. Where was the darned thing? It probably wasn’t magical bad luck that was hiding it from me, but I had no idea where it could have gotten to. I used it almost every day, and when the coven had come over, we’d used it then, too. I knew it had to be here somewhere.

  Finn came into the kitchen and grabbed some juice from the fridge. He glanced at me where I stood in the middle of the kitchen, hands on my hips, trying to retrace my last steps after I’d washed it and put it away again.

  I blew my hair out of my eyes with a gusty sigh. “Finn, have you seen my good measuring cup? I can’t find it anywhere.”

  The kitchen was in a bit of a shambles, as I’d torn the place apart in my search. I’d been in such a daze over the past few days, I was half afraid that I’d stuck it in the washing machine or something.

  “Hmm.” Finn took a sip of his drink, his forehead creased as he thought about it. Then he gave an exaggerated finger snap, like he’d just remembered something. “Oh, yeah. I have seen it. It’s out back, in the graveyard.”

  Okay, that was weird. Even sleep deprived me couldn’t have been that out of it, could she? I hadn’t even been to the graveyard in a while, not that I remembered, anyway. And why were Finn’s lips twitching like he was trying desperately not to smile?

  I gave him a look, but figured that, whatever he was up to, I might as well go and see for myself, because I knew I wouldn’t be getting anything more out of him on the subject.

  I still didn’t understand what my measuring cup would be doing out in the graveyard. Even if I’d wanted to catch some dew from the graves for my potions for warding off ghosts, I had bottles for that.

  The back steps creaked a little underfoot as I jogged down them, and headed out across the grass and towards the old graves that made up most of my backyard, and covered the distance to Wanda’s old duplex. It was still technically hers, but she stayed with Lorcan so often that I wasn’t sure she’d even set foot in the place for months.

  I rounded one of the old stone monuments, the angel’s face gone soft and blurry with age and wind, and stumbled to a stop. Finn’s laughter made a lot more sense all of a sudden.

  Andre was waiting for me there, on the grass. He’d spread out a blanket across the ground, and there was a picnic basket half unpacked, with sandwiches and chicken, potato salad, pickles, and a bottle of some kind of sparkling juice that glinted brilliant red in the sun. And there was my measuring cup, sitting at the corner of the picnic blanket, next to some deviled eggs.

  I took a few more steps forward, feeling almost shy, which was ridiculous for a few reasons. “You took my measuring cup,” I managed with a smile.

  “Well, technically Finn took it, but I suppose because he did so for me, I’m guilty as charged.”

  Andre grinned up at me, the skin at the corners of his eyes creasing slightly as he shaded his face with the blade of his hand.

  “Well, you’re forgiven.”

  He chuckled. “I Promise, I’m not holding your measuring cup for ransom. You don’t have to stay. It was just that our last date got cut a little short, and I thought we might try something of a do over. Finn was kind enough to assist me with the plan. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course, I don’t mind.” I sank down onto the blanket and folded my legs underneath me. The blanket was soft, but offered some protection from the grass and twigs poking up from the ground.

  It really was a beautiful, if strange, setting. But I supposed that was Haven Hollow for you. The air was warm, but it was cool enough in the shade of the tombstones that I wasn’t worried about my skin burning. The feast looked beyond tempting, most items finger foods that could be picked up and nibbled on. Well, except for the chocolate cake that was sitting inconspicuously off to the side. A bottle of Italian lemonade sat in the basket, just beckoning to me.

  Andre poured me a plastic wine glass full, and I smiled at the first sip, loving the tart sweetness.

  “This is all so fancy; did you do all of it?” I smoothed my hand over the blanket, enjoying the soft brush of the cotton. I hadn’t realized Andre was a picnic sort of guy.

  “Well.” Andre winked at me, and produced a third plastic glass from inside the basket. “I might have had a little help.”

  Finn bounded up from between the headstones then, and dropped down onto the blanket next to me, grinning from ear to ear. “What do you think? Do you like it?”

  I reached out an arm and tugged him a little closer, brushing a kiss over the side of his head. He must have been in a good mood, because he didn’t even grumble about me doing it in front of Andre.

  “I do like it. I love it.” With my arm still around Finn’s shoulders, I smiled at Andre, where he was sitting across from us. “It’s perfect.”

  He smiled, slow and sweet, and warmer than the sun resting on my back.

  It was perfect. Being here, with both of them. My heart felt so full that I thought it could burst. For the first time in far too long, everything felt right with the world again. And that was a feeling I absolutely relished.

  Finn finally squirmed away to accept the plate that Andre passed him. “Hey, Andre, did you bring…?”

  With a laugh, Andre reached into the enormous basket and pulled Ouire out, setting the book down on the grass. The grimoire immediately started bounding around on the corners of its cover like an excitable dog, its red ribbon bookmark waggling madly. It looked like it should be yipping with happiness, but the only sound I’d ever heard the book make was a soft rustle of its pages.

  Ouire bounded over to Finn and leapt into his lap, squirming around, and Finn had to laughingly hold his plate up and out of the way, lest he lose a few grapes.

  Andre shook his head ruefully, but there was a smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. “Try not to let him get potato salad on his pages, would you, Finn? It takes ages to get him clean again, and he hates baths.”

  I threw my head back and laughed, and Andre joined me. His hand slipped into mine then, and part of me wished that every day could be just like this one. Our hands laced together, shoulders close enough to touch, with Finn’s laughter dancing on the wind.

  ~~~~

  The End

  Return to Haven Hollow in:

  Lace Laments

  ~~~~~

  Return to the Table of Contents

  LACE LAMENTS

  Haven Hollow #32

  (Wanda’s Witchery)

  by

  J.R. RAIN

  &

  H.P. MALLORY

  Lace Laments

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2023 by J.R. Rain & H.P. Mallory

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Lace Laments

  Chapter One

  My shop was full of customers, and I was one more shrill giggle away from hexing myself deaf.

  Of course, the instant the gaggle of werewolf females started pouring through the door of Wanda’s Witchery, I’d known I was in for it. My cousin Maverick, who watched the shop during daylight hours, had taken one look and made a rapid retreat. The louse. I made a mental note to pay him back for that little bit of cowardice. Sure, it was my store, but he could have stayed for moral support.

  From what I could overhear from their conversation, the entire crowd seemed to be related to each other in various ways. Judging from the age range (between bent-over/ can hardly walk to toddler), at least four generations were crammed into my limited floor space between the racks and the mannequins. That didn’t surprise me, because werewolves tended to settle down young, and have big litters. Huge families were the norm.

  Ick.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t get crowds in my store (though most people didn’t seem to want any witnesses when they were buying enchanted clothing, especially of the losing weight variety), but werewolves, in my mind, were of the more unsavory sort of supernatural. Now, before you think I’m the supreme bitch of bitches, I didn’t give a spell that they turned into wolves (aside from the fact that they did have a distinctive dog odor). No, the reason I turned my nose up was completely owing to the fact that werewolves trained their females almost from birth to be cringing and submissive. Female werewolves wanted nothing more than to get married and pump out babies, and that was something I couldn’t tolerate. Women were more than our ability to breed. Furthermore, I’d been brought up to believe the exact opposite regarding a woman’s place in the world—witches didn’t believe in marriage, and while we did have children, they tended to be raised by the entire coven. That way, they were never one poor frazzled woman’s concern, but everyone’s.

  Though, considering I was both married (and to a vampire, no less) and childless—well, unless you counted Sybil, but the mannequin that Maverick and I brought to life accidentally was really more of a niece to me—I didn’t have a lot of high ground from which to sneer down.

  Still, the horrible combination of excited chatter and timid hesitation to express an opinion was going to cause me to climb the walls in another fifteen seconds. I did want to make a sale, though. Alas, the perils of owning a small business.

  I tried to surreptitiously glance out the front window to see if there were any lights on in Poppy’s Potions, across the street. If my Gypsy BFF was still working, maybe I could send up a distress signal, and she’d come over and speak her native language of inane cheeriness at my customers until they went away, or preferably, bought something and went away.

  But the lights were out, and the store closed. And that meant I was on my own, with only my fraying patience to keep me from ‘accidentally’ cursing the whole group to lose their voices or something similar.

  I should have known. Poppy kept to daylight hours, and considering how late the sun set this time of year, even staying open for increased tourist traffic in Haven Hollow would have seen her home ages ago. It was just one of the many irritations of my having to pretend to be a vampire. Really, I was lucky to have Maverick to watch the store during the day, though I’d have rather eaten live toads than ever admit as much to him. That was just the sort of relationship we had.

  As to why I was a witch pretending to be a vampire? Story time! Once upon a time, my idiot husband, Lorcan Rowe, had witnessed a car accident and pulled the ravishing, dark-haired driver from the wreckage. Now, while the woman was as powerful as she was ambitious and gorgeous, she’d also been in a pretty bad way, and it wasn’t very likely that she’d have lived long enough to get medical attention.

  So, silly Lorcan, unable to allow this magnificent female to die right there in his arms, gave her some of his blood to allow her to rise again unscathed. Touching, right? Except, what the chivalrous moron hadn’t realized was that the ethereal, wondrous creature was a witch. And when a witch gets partially turned by drinking vampire blood, what you get is a Blood Witch, a being full of unpredictable and dark magic. They’re dangerous, powerful, and the idea of one makes absolutely no one happy.

  As you can probably guess, I was that poor damsel from the accident and after I was turned into a Blood Witch, I got turfed out of my coven and had to move to Haven Hollow to start over. True, the decision to come here had ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. Not only had it gotten me out from under my insane mother’s thumb, but I was now High Witch of my own coven, filled with people I respected. But I’d been pretty pissed about it at the time.

  The vampires also weren’t happy. Their leader, a vampire named Rupert (quite a silly vampire name, if you ask me), had ordered Lorcan to finish the job and turn me fully, thus removing the threat and my magic. It was either succumb to his wishes or we’d be killed. That hadn’t gone so well for the vampires though, and had ended with Rupert dead, and all the vampires believing that I’d been fully turned. Yes, it grated on me, not being able to be acknowledged publicly as the High Witch I truly was, and having to keep to the night shift was getting old, but it was worth it if it kept everyone off our backs.

  Though, it did leave me stranded with no back up in the face of a gaggle of giggling werewolves. Really, was peace worth this hell? I wasn’t convinced.

  After what felt like an eternity and a half, but was probably closer to twenty minutes, one of the werewolves actually gathered up the courage to approach the counter. She was middle aged, gray just starting to creep in around the edges of her dark hair, and she smiled, but couldn’t hold eye contact when she spoke to me. I forced a death grip on my temper.

  Customer service, Wanda. You can’t save them from themselves.

  “Hello. I’m sorry to... well, to bother you... and please excuse me if I’m interrupting you from—”

  “You’re not.”

  “Oh, good.” She blinked rapidly, clutching the edge of the counter. “Um, well, the reason we are here is that my, uh, my daughter is getting... well, married.”

  Of course, she was. I kept the thought off my face, and slapped on my best customer service smile, which I was fairly sure came off as a grimace because I was doing my best not to flash too many teeth. “Congratulations.”

  The woman beamed, almost visibly perking up. “Thank you. We wanted to get her something pretty for... well, for...” And then she dropped her face to the floor. “Her wedding night.”

  And then she blushed, and giggled this high-pitched, awful sound I hoped to never hear again. A middle-aged woman, mother of at least one and probably more, giggling like a teenager over the idea of sex. Goddess, have mercy on me.

  She got a hold of herself finally and called to the gaggle of women behind her. “Bryony, come here, please.”

  The girl who stepped forward, separating herself from the rest of her pack, looked to be about nineteen. Tall, leggy, with her mother’s dark hair. But she actually held her shoulders back instead of rounding them forward and stood with her hip cocked to one side. She didn’t look like a bride, eager for her wedding. She appeared luke-warm at best, and that seemed strange. I mean, most brides I got in here appeared to be at least excited about getting married, but what did I know?

  “We wanted something pretty,” Bryony’s mother continued. “And maybe spelled for fertility? I want grandpups. The sooner the better.”

  Bryony rolled her eyes at the same time that I did internally. It made me think there just might be hope for her, that is, if she could break away from the burden of her family.

  “Of course, I can do that.” I offered Bryony a smile, watching her with interest. “How about we look through my book of designs, and you can see if anything appeals to you? Or did you have something specific in mind?”

  Bryony seemed a little surprised that I was directing my question towards her and not her mother. But the girl just shrugged, and let her mother and relatives crowd around the book while she hung back.

  While four generations pored over my laminated book of designs, I beckoned Bryony over to the slightly raised platform at the back of the store. “I just need to get your measurements.”

  I got to work with my measuring tape, keeping half an ear out to the chatter over by the desk, and brushed off my unused and frankly shitty small-talk skills. “So, when’s the big day?”

  Bryony jolted, her forehead creasing as her brows pulled together. “Um… like, three weeks, I think.”

  She thought? That didn’t sound promising. Weren’t women supposed to be all excited and annoying about their upcoming nuptials, squealing and so on?

  I ran my tape measure from her shoulder down to her hips and jotted a note in my book. “What’s the groom like?”

  “Mark?” Bryony shrugged, dragging the tape measure up and down with the movement. “He’s fine, I guess.”

  It seemed I’d found someone even less interested in this conversation than I was. I decided not to bother, and just kept quiet for the rest of the session as I took the last few measurements so we could rejoin everyone at the counter.

  Thus started the most annoying hour of my life. I’d dealt with brides before; some wonderful, some awful, and it was hard enough to get people to come to a decision about anything to do with a wedding. Now multiply that by thirty, with every aunt, cousin, sister, and grandmother voicing an opinion and the toddlers making sounds that would probably come to revisit me in my nightmares. Clothes weren’t meant to be designed by committee.

  And once they finally, finally decided on what Bryony’s nightgown would look like, then they had to pick a fabric, lace, and what enchantments they wanted woven into the material. Everyone was talking over each other, and then apologizing for talking over each other, but continuing to do it anyway. There was a baby crying, a toddler trying to touch everything with fingers that looked like they’d survived World War III, and a migraine blooming to life in the middle of my forehead. A lesser woman might have snapped.

  The only one who didn’t seem heavily invested in making sure every single thing was absolutely perfect was, funnily enough, Bryony.