Daria massaged her hands, her eyes fixed on me as if she couldn’t make up her mind. “Can you restore balance to my life?”
I’d had my own string of bad luck when I’d first arrived in Hillendale. Aunt Nora had suggested the universe had been trying to get my attention. She hadn’t done anything to restore balance, at least not to my knowledge. I’d had to find my own way. What did the universe want with Daria?
Tears streamed down her cheeks and I instinctively reached for her hand. I pulled a rose from my basket and held it under my nose. “Here’s what I propose. I can make a cup of rose chai tea. It won’t hurt, and it might be exactly what you need.” I had been picking roses, after all. Rose essence would comfort her. I didn’t understand the magic, but it always seemed to know what was called for. “Why don’t you sit here a minute while I heat the water.”
“That would be nice. Thank you.”
I carried one rose into the kitchen, filled my teapot with water and set it on the burner. Through the window, I studied the yellow-gray haze that hung around Daria. Would a grimoire be waiting for me in my workroom, one that would tell me what I needed to know? I didn’t want to leave my visitor unattended long enough to find out.
I washed the rose and plucked a couple of petals, adding them to the teacup. When the teapot whistled, I spooned chai spices into the steeping ball. After arranging the pot and the cup on a tray, I carried everything outside.
While I poured, I gave Daria a reassuring smile.
Daria dipped the steeping ball a couple of times before she laid it on the tray. Curls of steam carried the spicy aroma. “You sure this will help?”
I shrugged. “It’ll make you feel better, if nothing else.”
She blew across the top of the cup and took a sip.
“When did you first notice things going wrong?” I asked. Talking about her problems might do as much good as the tea.
Daria eased back in her chair. “About six months ago.”
“Can you pinpoint an event that might have triggered your run of bad luck?”
“No.” Her abrupt answer led me to believe the opposite was true.
She took another drink of tea and set the cup down. “I don’t know what I was hoping for when I came here. Everyone has a string of bad luck now and then, right? I’m sure it will pass.” Daria rose from the table. “Thank you for the tea.”
I couldn’t help her if I didn’t know what I was dealing with. I nodded and watched her walk away.
Another gust of wind blew through the trees. My ponytail fluttered against my back. A storm was surely on its way—literal? Or figurative?
Chapter 2
I carried the basket of roses into the sunroom that served as my workshop. In the corner, the still bubbled quietly while it processed lavender essential oil.
None of the grimoires that served as recipe books lay on the table. Odd, considering Daria had come to the house. The books had lives of their own, frequently predicting which mixtures people would ask me for. I checked the cupboard in the corner where the books were kept—firmly shut.
I carried the roses to the sink, snipped the stems under cold water and put them in vases to stay fresh until I was ready to work with them. I had herbs yet to harvest. One of the recipe books would undoubtedly be waiting for me upon my return.
I came in half an hour later with bowls of sage and rosemary. No books on the table.
“Come on,” I said to the charged air around me. “Nothing?”
Ash, my gray cat, announced her arrival with a loud meow.
A recipe book flew from the cupboard and opened to a tincture for an upset stomach—not an answer to Daria’s problem. Then again, maybe I’d resolved Daria’s issue. I hadn’t needed magic to fix my life. Time, and love from my Aunt Nora had brought me to where I was. Kyle Jakes, my fiancé, had played a role, too, but he’d run into his own string of bad luck over the past few months.
The Hillendale police force had made budget cuts, and as the low man on the totem pole, Kyle had been laid off. One of the benefits to living in a small town, however, meant the community banded together in times of crisis, and within a week, Jude Everly, Rhoda Christenson’s brother, had offered Kyle and his friend Chip a job renovating rental cabins in Door County. The downside was that Kyle spent the week up north working and was only home on the weekends. As a result, he’d insisted on postponing our wedding.
I checked the clock on the wall. Plenty of time to work before Kyle arrived home. This weekend marked the anniversary of our first official date, and I’d bought steak and shrimp to celebrate, hoping to dispel the black cloud that had descended on him since losing his police job.
I settled onto the stool behind my worktable and Ash jumped to my lap. She made herself comfortable and purred while I mixed the recipe I would sell at the boutique tomorrow. Once the product was bottled, my thoughts returned to Daria and her yellow-gray aura. Fear, but why did she look shrouded in smoke?
I closed my eyes and silently summoned the grimoire hidden in the wall of my utility room, the one with the intentional spells. The fragile book landed on the worktable and brittle pages flipped. They stopped on a page I’d read before, one that discussed how to read auras. I had a copy of the page on my phone from when I was learning to interpret what the different colors meant, but there was no mention of a smoky aura. Prepared to abandon
