Main Street wasn’t so much a street as a long cul-de-sac bordered on each side by shops. The architecture reminded me of New England. A lot of brick and colonial buildings. The brick on the nearest shop had faded to a rusty brown and a white, yellow, and orange awning stretched over a pair of double doors and a wide shop window. A wheelbarrow parked outside the shop was filled almost to the brim with taffies and candy corns. The sign rising from the middle of the wheelbarrow claimed one could get two pounds of candy corn free with a fifty-dollar purchase.

  That was a lot of money. But it was also a lot of candy corns.

  The decal on the shop window depicted a candied apple with a grinning skull face peering out through the dripping caramel. Just beneath it, in huge, gold letters read; SWEETER HAUNTS. It was the candy shop Marty had mentioned. Had he created their logo? If so, I was definitely going to have to hire him to do mine. It was very well done.

  Just a few paces away from the candy store was a two-story, Colonial-style shop. A mannequin smiled blankly at passersby, oblivious to the fact she was wearing a hoop skirt and nothing else. No fancy decals for this shop, just a large bronze placard next to the door that read; ODDBALLS AND END TABLES.

  There were more shops further down the street. A small craft store, a visitor’s center with a gift shop and, at the very end of the street, where the large cul-de-sac snaked the road in on itself, was Stomper’s Creamery. It looked like it may have once been a two-horse modular stable, but had since been converted into an ice cream stand. I could make out the shape of the owner hanging most of his torso out the window so he could hand a dish of soft serve ice cream to a mother and a banana split to her child. The girl’s red hair had been pulled into lopsided braids, so she reminded me of Pippi Longstocking.

  In the middle of the lane were two unoccupied shops. The one on the left was a three-story affair that towered over everything else on the street. It even had a steeple. The siding was black; the windows tinted so you couldn’t easily see inside. It looked like the grim cousin of the thrift shop down the road.

  The empty shop on the right side of the lane was mine.

  Mine.

  It felt good to think the word.

  I’d fallen in love with the space when I’d seen it on Hallowed Realty’s website of listings. It was a one story, brown brick square that wasn’t very large. But, I didn’t need large. The frosted glass block windows dominated the majority of the shop front, with a small, hand-carved mahogany door, squeezed like an afterthought, between them. A green awning sheltered the doorway, and the small set of stairs that led from the sloping sidewalk into the store. A solid stripe of lacquered wood stretched like a banner across the front—a placard for the name of the shop. Soon bronze cast metal letters would spell out “Poppy’s Potions”, breathing life into the place.

  I smiled.

  Yes, it had definitely been a good idea to cut through town, I thought, as I rounded the cul-de-sac and made my way back home. Just the pick-me-up I needed.

  Watch out, Haven Hollow.

  Here I come.

  Chapter Eight

  I’d just met Marty at the shop, to give him access so he could install a few shelves. I would have stayed to help, but I still had to make a whole inventory of ready-made potions, so I’d have something to put on the shelves. My plan was to open ‘Poppy’s Potions’ in the next couple of days and now it was getting down to the wire. Not to mention, I owed Marty a few banishment potions for his help with the store. So, I’d have to add those to the long list I still had to whip up.

  Once Marty was finished with the shelves and Finn was home from school, we’d planned to have dinner at the Half-Moon Bar and Grill in order to discuss the marketing materials I still needed for the store. Marty had texted to say he already had some ideas for my logo… I could only hope those ideas had nothing to do with dust bunnies or variations of Ghostbuster logos.

  Regardless, I’d made it a point to put Finn’s Gameboy in my purse so I wouldn’t forget it later—I was more than sure he’d be bored stiff with our proposed dinner conversation.

  “Ooh, pretty,” Darla cooed, trailing a finger down the contours of a turquoise Egyptian perfume bottle.

  I’d bought it at a garage sale years back for that exact reason—it did look pretty. Collecting bottles, vials, and crystal was a hobby of mine. Finn had begun to dread the inevitable thrift store and garage sale scavenger hunts and the endless trips to antique stores. Or so he said. But, every time I asked him if he’d rather stay home, he opted to join me. Of course, that could have been owing to the poltergeist…

  My head snapped up from the batch of Gypsy Magic I’d been mixing, and I snapped my hand out without thought, batting Darla’s transparent one away. All I managed to do was send an icy chill racing up my arm as I came into contact with her spirit form. Darla’s hand blurred into invisibility, like fog being rubbed forcefully off a window.

  She drew her hand back, rubbing her wrist as it reappeared, staring at me reproachfully.

  “Gee-whiz! What was that for?”

  “Be careful,” I chided. “I was just about to fill that one!”

  “So fill it!”

  “So keep your hands out of the way!”

  She frowned at me, raising one of her exaggeratedly drawn-on eyebrows and wrapping her arms against her flat chest. “Just because you’re a canceled stamp doesn’t mean you should take it out on me!” And she did that pouting thing that made it look like she was constipated. Her acting skills weren’t exactly… skills.

  “I’m not a canceled stamp,” I grumbled. A ‘canceled stamp’ was another word for a wallflower.

  “Well, I don’t see any hotsy-totsy bachelors lurking around here anywhere, do you?”

  “Darla, I’m ready to turn the vacuum on you.”

  Darla was scared to death (er, no pun intended) of being ‘Hoovered’, as she called it.

  “Phonus balonus!” she said as she shook her head and waved me away with an unconcerned, and see-through hand. But the look she gave me revealed her true concern.

  “If you break any of these bottles I will find a way to exorcise you,” I continued.

  “You keep saying that,” she grumbled as she floated around me. “But I think you’re full of horse feathers.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because you and me… we could help each other out.”

  “Help each other out?” I eyed her narrowly.

  She nodded and gave me a well-rehearsed smile. “Sure. We could be all friendly-like, see?”

  “No, I don’t see.”

  She shrugged. “Well, you’re worried about the little guy, right?”

  I could only figure she was referring to Finn. I flicked a glance toward the high, coffered ceiling, as though I could peer through it to Finn’s room above. I still had almost five hours until I had to pick him up from school.

  When I was through pouring this batch of Gypsy Magic into the perfume bottle, I’d be good to go. Gypsy Magic was one of my go-tos: a potion I liked to have on hand because it was popular. Well, popular for people who liked to do their own spells and divination work. Gypsy Magic was a divination oil—it helped strengthen spellwork if the user anointed his or her third eye with the oil. I always used it before whipping up my own potions.

  As far as my store was concerned, there were two types of potions I would sell—those I made ahead of time and those that were made to order. My most requested potions didn’t have to be specific to the person requesting them. These types of potions included prescriptions for things like success, generating money, attracting romantic partners, and promoting good health. Then there were the more specific potions—things that required objects belonging to the person in question (like a strand of hair, or a piece of jewelry). If someone had a particular health ailment, they needed a tailored cure. Or, if someone had a cheating husband, she’d need a particular potion to dissuade him from his wanderings.

  “Of course I worry about him,” I answered as I finished filling the vial with Gypsy Magic and moved to the next one. “I’m his mom. That’s what we do.”

  “Right,” Darla answered with a quick nod. “So what if I became your eyes and ears here, at the house?”

  “My eyes and ears how?”

  “Well, if I told you what object I’d attached myself to in this house…”

  “Then I could get rid of you.”

  She nodded, but then screwed up her mouth as though that wasn’t the answer she was looking for. “Or you could break off a bit of my object and hide it in a locket. Maybe that big, gaudy one your mother got you last Christmas.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because I’m attached to the… item,” she answered, being careful not to give out any details as to what said ‘item’ was without first getting me to agree with whatever harebrained idea she was working on.

  “So?”

  “So if you’re wearing the item, that means I’d be able to come to you in a flash and that way you’d know your onions.”

  “Know my onions?” I repeated, facing her quizzically. Sometimes her 1920s vocab was irritating.

  She breathed out a sigh of exasperation. “You’d know what was going on here at the house, in case you were… out.” She paused as I searched for a way to refute her idea, but then thought better of refuting it. She might actually be onto something…

  “Hmmm.”

  “Think of me as a ghostly babysitter.”

  I considered it for another few seconds before I focused on the downside. And it was a fairly big downside. Keeping a bit of Darla’s talisman around my neck meant she could flash to my side whenever she felt like it. That was a great way to get a reputation as the town nutso. Furthermore, there had to be something in it for Darla. She wasn’t the type of person—er spirit—who did things without selfish reasons. She probably just wanted to stowaway on the good ship Poppy and explore the world.

  No, I’d install a home security system… at some point. When all the other necessary home repairs were done. Which was a day I didn’t imagine seeing for a very long time. A very long time.

  What were the odds that something awful would happen in the meantime?

  In my experience? Pretty high.

  “I could keep an eye on the place,” Darla continued, feigning ennui, but not quite managing it. “Keep an eye on the kid when you’re out.”

  “If I were out, the ‘kid’ would be out with me.”

  She shrugged. “I could make sure no ghosties came callin’. Point is, I could alert you if somethin’ bad was goin’ on here. Like a fire, a break in, a visit from that cranky, old broad who did a number on your apple tree…”

  “Ophelia.”

  “Right.”

  I let out a sigh, holding up the perfume bottle within pouring distance.

  “Which one’s that?” Darla asked.

  “Memory Drops Oil,” I answered, being careful not to spill any of it.

  Memory Drops Oil had always been one of my more popular potions. It was used to improve mental acuity, especially for those who had trouble remembering names, faces, or locations. Equal parts rosemary, vanilla, cinnamon, and clove wafted up to tease my nose as I poured the lot of it into the bottle.

  Mixing days with GG had always been my favorite of the month. Even now, the cavernous kitchen smelled like GG’s pantry and the scent took me back so many years—to when I was newly learning the history of my ancestors and the ways of the gypsies.

  Maybe that was why I said what I did—because I was suddenly in a nostalgic mood which made my defenses less than what they ordinarily were. “Alright, Darla. You can be my eyes and ears around here, but only until I install a security system. And if you just pop in for no reason, I swear I will exorcise you! Or you’ll get the vacuum.”

  Darla squealed and slapped her palms together in what appeared to be ghostly glee. “Oh, this is just berries! I promise you won’t regret this, doll.”

  “No showing up unless it’s an emergency!” I said, already regretting it.

  “No poofin’ in to spy on you, cross my heart an’ hope to die.” Then she started giggling in a falsetto that made my ears hurt. “Get it? Hope to die?”

  “I get it,” I grumbled. Then I looked at her. “I’m serious, Darla, no just showing up because you’re bored or you’re wondering what I’m doing or when I’m going to be home.”

  She made the sign of crossing her heart and then grinned at me even more broadly. “If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”

  She was so excited, she vibrated right out of the visible spectrum. I stared at the place she’d disappeared, wondering what the hell I’d just agreed to.

  Not coming up with an answer, I sighed and surveyed my handiwork on the table. Dozens of glass bottles winked back at me, refracting the light of the noonday sun like prisms all over the antique kitchen. Dusty green bottles, stoppered with corks. Crystal lachrymatory bottles, crystal vases with teardrop stoppers, a jug that Great Grandpa had used to bootleg whiskey in the 1920s. There was history in each glass, and now each of them contained a little bit of my history too. GG’s wisdom and just a wisp of my magic.

  Darla’s voice drifted down the stairs, singsong and off-key. “Oh, by the way… I picked out an outfit for your date,” she enthused.

  “It’s not a date!” I called back. No, it was just a meeting between Marty and me to talk business—marketing my store business. I still needed a logo, business cards, flyers…

  I focused on the task at hand again. Cardamom, wisteria, bergamot, and patchouli swirled in aromatic waves up to the ceiling, encircling an ancient looking chandelier. Some of the bulbs weren’t working and would need to be replaced. I still wasn’t sure if the stove worked, and there was definitely something desiccated and stinking behind the Westinghouse Refrigerator. But for just a moment, none of that mattered.

  For the first time, starting fresh in a new town didn’t sound like such a crazy gamble, after all.

  “We’re gonna make sure you’re a choice bit of calico and get a handcuff around that finger!” Darla sang out.

  Sigh. Maybe I’d spoken too soon.

  I was fairly certain Darla had to have necromantic powers, because she’d managed to raise the Ghost of Wardrobe Past. When I went upstairs to see the outfit she’d flung onto the bed, I found a wrinkled black mini skirt, my best heels, and a sleeveless violet blouse. And here I’d thought I hadn’t owned a mini skirt since high school.

  Hmm, guess I was wrong.

  Regardless, I’d tried to pick out my own outfit—something a bit less… revealing, but Darla wouldn’t hear of it and protested in that high-pitched, whiny voice of hers for twenty minutes straight until I gave in. She was lucky the vacuum was downstairs.

  Chapter Nine

  I eased the Jeep around the bend from Orchard Street onto Main Street that would lead into town. I took a deep breath and thought about the fact that this was the first date I’d been on in a long time. Of course, it wasn’t really a date. It was more a get-together with Marty to talk marketing—after he finished putting the shelves together in the store.

  Yeah, so this wasn’t a date at all.

  Then why had I referred to it as such?

  Hmm.

  I pulled into the alley behind my shop and then parked between the faded yellow lines just outside the rear entrance, killing the engine as I opened the door. Marty’s hearse and a box truck were parked in the spaces that flanked mine.

  I stepped down from the Jeep and closed the driver’s side door behind me. The back door to my shop had been propped open with a large cardboard box, allowing the crisp autumn air to cool the inside of the shop.

  At the buzzing of my phone from inside my purse, I paused at the entrance to the store and pulled my phone out. A text from Finn appeared on the screen: Hey, Mom, can I walk to Sweeter Haunts with some new friends?

  I smiled.

  Sure. But don’t forget we have dinner plans with McFly, I texted back.

  I won’t, he responded. I’ll meet you at the shop in a couple hours.

  Okay, I texted back. Love you.

  Love you too, Mom.

  I was glad Finn was making friends. I wanted him to feel like he fit in. I wanted him to be happy here.

  Taking a deep breath, I put the phone back in my purse (next to his Gameboy) and faced the rear of the shop again. I could only hope everything was going according to plan and there wouldn’t be any surprises.

  When I approached the door, a strange and horrendous noise filtered out to meet me. It was like a cross between a skipping record and the much hated-dial tone.

  “Ack! Just shut that thing off, Henner! That’s even worse than before!” I recognized Marty’s voice as he interrupted the horrible sound. His voice came from the front of the shop—just beyond the storage room and the restroom.

  “I swear I’m going to get this right one of these days,” another male voice answered.

  “Or maybe the spooks will start singing show tunes next,” Marty countered with a laugh. “Channeling Julie Andrews from beyond the grave. That’d be a spectacle we could charge for.”

  “Hello?” I called out as I walked through the storage room and rapped my knuckles sharply on the hand-carved mahogany door that led into the main shop. There were boxes everywhere and the contents were strewn around the floor like entrails. So much so, I couldn’t walk forward.

  “Poppy?” Marty asked, raising his voice to be heard above the screeching noise. It thankfully cut off a second later.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Is everything okay?”

  There was the sound of rustling in the interior and, seconds later, Marty poked his head out from behind the wall and gave me a big smile. He appeared red-faced, hair slicked back with sweat, but nonetheless, grinning from ear to ear. He pushed the boxes aside and waved me forward. But, before I took a step, I motioned to the Jeep.

  “I’ve got some boxes I still have to grab,” I said as I gave him a big smile. “How’s it going?”

  “Good!” he practically sang in response. “Let me help you,” he said as he followed me to the rear of the Jeep and lifted up two boxes while I took the third. I closed the back door and then we walked back into the shop.