Hemlock and Hedge Read online

  Hemlock and Hedge

  The Witches of Wormwood Prequel

  Ruby Loren

  Contents

  British Author

  All profits from this book go to Honeycat Rescue

  Books in the Series

  1. X Marks the Spot

  2. Good Omens

  3. The Way the Cards Fell

  4. Avenging Angel

  5. Lovers and Lemon Cake

  Lemon Cake Recipe

  Books in the Series

  A review is worth its weight in gold!

  Also by Ruby Loren

  British Author

  Please note, this book is written in British English and contains British spellings.

  All profits from this book go to Honeycat Rescue

  All profits from this book are donated to Honeycat Rescue & Sanctuary - a non-profit, no kill, cat rescue that helps as many cats and kittens find new homes as possible, or offers sanctuary.

  * * *

  Find them and donate online here:

  http://honeycatrescue.org/

  Books in the Series

  Mandrake and a Murder

  Vervain and a Victim

  Feverfew and False Friends

  Belladonna and a Body

  Aconite and Accusations

  * * *

  Prequel: Hemlock and Hedge

  1

  X Marks the Spot

  Black cats are common in Wormwood.

  Everywhere else in the country, they’re one of the hardest colours of cat to home. People want gingers, tabbies, and tortoiseshells - the kind that look pretty when you post their photos online.

  Not many people want a black cat.

  As well as not being classically photogenic, there’s the superstition. Are they lucky, or unlucky? It may be the 21st Century, but things like that prey on people’s minds, even now.

  In this town, superstition is part of their selling point.

  I stepped over the sunbathing pack of black cats on my way in to the Post Office. My long brown waves had to be pushed back from my face, so I could make sure I was avoiding the many draped tails.

  Mrs Meechum, the owner of the local branch, rustled around in the back before finding my delivery. “There we go, Hazel! I don’t know how the postman missed you out. I suppose it’s just been a while since things like this were delivered to…” She trailed off with an apologetic look.

  My mother had passed away recently. I’d been left the house I’d grown up in and the shop that was attached to it in her will. There’d been a few conditions tacked on to this inheritance, but I’d been so guilt-ridden by not even knowing that my mum had been unwell, I’d signed on the dotted line without a second thought. It had felt like the least I could do after selfishly going out into the world to achieve my dreams, leaving my only family behind.

  I’d been so busy wallowing that I hadn’t considered I might be signing my life away. It was only when I’d moved back to Wormwood and had faced the insurmountable task of reopening the shop and going over the old accounts that I realised I’d been hasty. One of my mother’s last requests had been that I keep the shop open. It had been in the Salem family for years, and as her only direct descendent, the Salem Apothecary was now my problem.

  It wasn’t exactly profitable.

  The accounts had revealed that, for the past five years, my mother had barely scraped by with enough to pay the bills and feed herself. Cue another stab of guilt. But it wasn’t as if I could have rushed back, like a knight on a white horse, and saved the day. I was every bit as broke as my mother had been. It was a common side-effect of deciding to pursue a career as a writer.

  The other requests had been more unusual. The first had been to pursue my studies of witchcraft, and the second had been to join the Wormwood Coven. Seeing as I hadn’t been studying witchcraft at all… it had been a surprise.

  I’d always known that Wormwood liked to keep its folklore fresh. Witches, magicians, fortunetellers, and psychics exploded out of the woodwork here. You were more likely to find a tea leaf reading fortuneteller, than a teashop, on a street corner, and if you ever went looking for a pack of cards round a resident’s house, they were more likely to be a deck of tarot than the standard playing type.

  My own family’s name hinted of our heritage. I knew my mother had believed herself to be a witch, and descended from a long line of them. One thing Wormwood taught you was acceptance of all things weird and wonderful. I’d never participated in any of the weirdness myself, but I’d never taken a stand against it either. I hadn’t even entertained the thought of magic being real. My mother’s request felt more like a historical assignment and the keeping of old traditions than something actually, well… witchy.

  I thanked Mrs Meechum for the parcel and left the post office, stepping back over the pack of black cats, and returned to my newly inherited shop.

  The Salem Apothecary was a nondescript building. It had been painted so long ago that the paint itself seemed to have forgotten what colour it was supposed to be. The glass windows opened to a display of creepy corn dolls scattered over a faded table cloth with a cauldron at the centre of the scene. If you imagined a picnic in the middle of an ‘ancient witch curse’ horror film, you’d be getting pretty close to the fresco on show.

  Inside the shop, things weren’t much cheerier. A row of glass jars covered the back wall behind the counter, filled with all manner of herbs and powders consisting of various medicinal chemicals. There was a sign pinned up below the shelf reminding all customers that this was not a professional medical establishment. Everything they bought and used, and any advice they sought, was taken at their own risk.

  So far, the only area of the shop I’d put my own mark on was the small collection of tables and chairs in the back corner. When I’d taken over the business, it had been set up as an area for my mother to conduct consultations. I’d decided that what the town had in tea leaf readers, it lacked in decent tea shops, and so the Salem Teashop had been added to the apothecary. It was this small area of the business that had actually sparked my interest in all things herbal. I didn’t just sell tea, I made it. It had been fun coming up with blends that tasted good, whilst also imparting their beneficial properties. After the month I’d just had, I needed to restock my ‘Ultimate De-Stressing Tea’. Still… it was slightly better than resorting to alcohol.

  The rest of the shop comprised of tourist curiosities, like love spell bags and protection charms - that kind of thing was expected by the few tourists Wormwood managed to draw in. Aside from that, there was a collection of crystals that hadn’t sold since my childhood and a small range of fresh herbs and plants.

  It’s a total mystery why the shop never made our family rich.

  With business non-existent as usual, I took the package I’d received at the post office into the storeroom at the back and set about replacing some herbs that had probably gone out of date back when the dinosaurs were still roaming the earth. I half-expected them to collapse into dust when I opened the jars and tipped the remnants out. Annoyingly, the ancient herbs looked identical to the ones I’d just bought to replace them.

  Feeling like a virtuous and honest businesswoman, I cleaned out the jars, refilled them, and labelled them with the new dates. Judging by the amount of old stock that had been left inside, I doubted I’d be selling out of these herbs before those distant dates rolled around, but there were some things you had to keep in the back, just in case. What kind of apothecary would it be without a wide variety of herbs readily available?

  With the morning’s business tasks completed, I decided to invest some time in making a new tea blend. A lot of customers complained of insomnia, but drinking a tea made solely from valerian and chamomile was hardly a pleas
ant undertaking. I was hopeful that I might be able to concoct a new tea blend that not only helped the drinker relax and drift off, but also didn’t taste like a compost heap.

  I stretched my hand up to reach the jar full of dried chamomile blossoms. When I pulled, it caught on something. With a grunt of effort, I jumped up and yanked it off the high shelf. I had no idea how my mother had reached up there. She’d been shorter than me, and I hadn’t found a ladder anywhere in the house or garden. Maybe it had been magic. Ha!

  I caught the jar and ducked when something fell off the shelf with it.

  After shaking the dust out of my hair, I bent down and picked the item up off the floor.

  It was a yellowed piece of paper, folded over multiple times. When I unfolded it, I realised it was a very aged, and unofficial looking, Ordnance-Survey-type map of the town and Wormwood Forest. I scanned the map, wondering if there was anything that might tell me when it had been made. A glance at the town revealed that the buildings hadn’t changed since it had been drawn up, but that wasn’t saying much. Every building in Wormwood was at least one-hundred years old. Modern housing developments had swerved hard around our little corner of South East England.

  I was still searching for a date or a watermark when I saw the ‘X’. It had been marked in black ink on top of what the map showed as a small clearing close to the heart of Wormwood Forest.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I muttered, thinking blithely of treasure maps. This was probably someone’s idea of a joke. It might even have been intended for a child’s treasure hunt. I definitely wasn’t going to walk through the forest carrying a spade just to find out what was buried at the point marked on that map. That would be utterly ridiculous.

  In the end, I had to settle for a trowel.

  On the plus side, it made me look slightly less looney when I walked down the high street carrying it in my right hand with the map tucked safely into my back pocket. It was a beautiful day in August and I was telling myself that a walk through the forest was something I should be doing regularly anyway. No one was shopping for dusty old herbs. I should be out enjoying the good weather with the rest of the town.

  I’d closed the shop for the day and now here I was at the edge of Wormwood Forest, ready to hunt for some treasure. I hoped it wouldn’t be buried too deeply, or the trowel would prove to be a mistake.

  I almost laughed out loud as I wandered beneath the leafy canopy, feeling the dappled sunlight on my skin. This was a stupid folly. The map was probably a fake, but it was also a delightfully childish thing to be doing on such a fine summer’s day.

  When I’d moved as far away from Wormwood as I could get (which had turned out to be Inverness) I’d knuckled down, seeking journalism opportunities and writing non-fiction articles left, right, and centre in the hopes of placing them in magazines. There hadn’t been much time for things like wandering through the woods, and with the weather perpetually grim and gloomy, there hadn’t been much will, either.

  Last year’s autumn leaves still crunched under foot in the areas where the ancient trees grew thick and covered the sky. Every now and then, I stopped and listened to the sounds of birds calling and the complete absence of any human-made noise. There was only one road in and out of Wormwood, and it was hardly congested. Even if there had been any fast-travelling cars, the dense trees would have swallowed the sound whole. I was getting close to the heart of Wormwood Forest.

  It was a reminder that times had changed - no matter how isolated the forest might feel - when I was able to use my mobile phone to check the coordinates on the map and locate the clearing marked by the cross. I walked past the sentinel trees, watching the edge of the gap in the canopy, and arrived in the small sunny glade in the midst of the towering forest.

  “Oh,” I said, when I saw what was in the middle of the clearing. Digging might not be so simple after all. A large oak tree rose up from the ground, its branches curling up towards the sky. No other tree had dared to cross the green expanse to compete with the king of the clearing, but the tree had paid dearly for its outstanding position at some time or other. The vast trunk was split down the middle, probably from a lightning strike many years in the past. I knew it was an old wound. The oak had grown around it, repairing and regenerating, as trees are often remarkably able to do. The result was an open scar and a hollow trunk, that I imagined was often used by forest wildlife seeking shelter. Curious as any child, I stuck my head inside to see how far up the hollowed out area continued.

  What I wasn’t expecting to see was an envelope taped inside the trunk, just above the main opening.

  “The plot thickens,” I said aloud, gently removing the drawing pin that had been keeping the envelope in place for what surely must have been many, many years. The tree had protected the envelope from deteriorating completely, but, much like the map, it was yellowed with age and the sticky strip that kept it shut had long since curled up. I’d come out here searching for buried treasure, but I’d never expected to find something.

  The ‘X’ marked on the front of the envelope left me in little doubt as to whether or not it was this item that the map had sent me to find.

  With no little trepidation, I lifted the flap to reveal the envelope’s contents.

  2

  Good Omens

  No gold doubloons or long-lost diamonds fell out of the paper packet, but a remarkable array of things did when I upended the envelope on a large, flat rock next to the oak tree. The first was a scatter of leaves, dried berries, and pieces of hard resin. I recognised these things as elderberries and juniper berries, frankincense, peppermint, and sage. I doubted they’d been added to the envelope as potpourri. These were witch herbs and I’d just emptied out a spell.

  I put that thought to one side and focused on the other items that had fallen from the envelope. The first was a recipe for lemon cake, typed using a typewriter. The date typed at the top was the 16th of May 1990 - a little under one year before I’d been born. I glanced at the ingredients out of mild curiosity but was stunned by a more unusual addition to what had sounded like a good cake. In-between the ground almonds and honey, distilled essence of wormwood had been written in. I looked at the amount used and nearly choked.

  Wormwood wasn’t a particularly poisonous plant, but when it was made into alcohol, it could have some pretty peculiar effects. The herb was most commonly known for its inclusion in absinthe and the hallucinogenic properties that its active ingredient, thujone, imparted to the drinker. Or in this case, the eater. I may not be the expert on herbs that my mother had been, but when you grow up helping out around an apothecary, you learn a few things… like recommended dosages. If anyone had actually made this cake, it would have caused the eater to go on one heck of an absinthe trip… or worse. Wormwood was not without its risks.

  I shook my head at the mysterious recipe and looked at the next item. It was something else that I recognised - a tarot card. The Lovers, to be exact. I looked at the beautifully painted watercolour print of a couple embracing before flipping the card over. There was nothing to see beyond the design on the back. It was just a normal tarot card.

  I pulled the envelope open, just to check, and discovered one final item stuck inside. It was a hastily hand-scrawled note of only three words.

  * * *

  He’s the father!

  * * *

  Curiouser and curiouser, I thought, borrowing words from famous literature. I sat back on my haunches and thought about what had been in the envelope. Some herbs and bits, a recipe with a surprising ingredient, a single tarot card, and that strange note - written in what I’d immediately recognised as my mother’s handwriting. A solid week spent going over the shop’s accounts had meant her style of writing was engraved in my mind.

  It was the note that bothered me most of all.

  I shook the possibility away. When paired with the other strange items in the envelope, it seemed nonsensical. All the same, this envelope had been hidden in the forest for a reason a
nd a map had been left directing the finder to this location. Someone had cared about these things enough to leave behind a trail that led to them. And I had a feeling that the person responsible had been my mum.

  I traipsed back into town with the envelope and its contents added to the back pocket where I was keeping the map. Endless possibilities flew through my head on the walk back, but all I was able to conclude was that I had a mystery on my hands.

  The logical place to start seemed to be the recipe. Out of all the items in the envelope, it contained the most information. There was a date that could be investigated and, even in a town as wacky as Wormwood, I was certain someone would remember a psychoactive lemon cake if it had been served for afternoon tea.

  It was with this mission in mind that I strode up to my shop and nearly tripped over the cardboard box that had been left on the doorstep. My left foot accidentally made contact. When the box was jostled, I heard something move inside, accompanied by a strange sound. Did I order something alive? I thought, wondering if I’d written in the wrong code when I’d bought from a questionable herbs and magical supplies stockist. I’d done my best to ignore all of the things that were almost certainly illegal that had been on sale when I’d been looking for hard-to-find herbs for the shop.

  I considered the closed flaps. They looked like they’d been pushed shut, rather than taped. There was no address written on the box. I was inclined to think that this box had come from a local source.