Hemlock and Hedge Read online

  With this being Wormwood, that didn’t make me any less cautious when I opened it.

  I found a stick in the alleyway next to the shop and lifted the flaps up from a safe distance, in case anything sprung out. Growing up in this town meant you were open to every possibility when it came to something unknown, but alive, in a closed box. You know the saying - once bitten by a potentially venomous snake, twice shy.

  I peered over the top of the now-open box, wary of anything that might spring out. Two little black balls of fur looked back at me. It would appear that even in Wormwood, the locals had run out of space for any extra black cats. Someone had left kittens on my doorstep.

  One of the little balls of fluff mewed at me. The other one stayed silent and stared, its eyes imploring me not to abandon it. I took a deep breath and picked up the box, telling myself firmly that I was just going to get them out of the sun. Then I would see about who to call to come and collect the pair, so that a good home could be found. If they were lucky, it would be one outside of Wormwood.

  Once we were inside the shop, I lifted the kittens out of the box and sat them on the counter. They looked healthy, and they were pretty big, too.

  I wasn’t incredibly knowledgable about cats. We’d had an obligatory black feline named Asper when I’d been growing up, but we hadn’t been the best of friends due to Asper living up to her bite-ey name. Still, from the little I did know, these kittens were easily big enough to be away from their mother. It was likely that the owner of their mother had let them grow up before failing to find homes for them. The same owner must have observed that I was unusually cat-less in a town that gave the ancient Egyptians a run for their money when it came to cat-worship.

  “You can’t stay, but I’ll find you good homes,” I promised the pair. I knew I was saying it to convince myself rather than the kittens. Money was not great at the moment. Cats came with vet’s bills attached, and I would want to be a responsible owner, if I were to ever have pets.

  Which I definitely was not going to have.

  “I should at least give you names. People like animals to have names when they’re adopting. It means you’re already developing a personality. That, or they hate the name you were given by someone else so much, they immediately come up with a suitable alternative,” I commented.

  I narrowed my eyes at the pair, who looked back at me with their cloudy blue eyes - not yet developed into their adult colour, which would more likely be green or yellow. I’d already ascertained they were both boys. Now to name them…

  “Hmmm Angel and Spike? Harvey and Drell?” I mused out loud before hitting on the perfect names. “Crowley and Aziraphale,” I announced, deciding on monikers used by one of my all-time favourite author pairings, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. “You’ll be Crowley,” I told the silent one, “because you’re dark and mysterious. You’ll be Aziraphale, because you’re a bit of a whiny worry-wart,” I told the one who’d miaowed, kicked, and tried to bite me when I’d lifted him out of the box.

  The kitten named Aziraphale looked like he wanted to be sick.

  I frowned. He was probably hungry. “Sit tight for a bit. I’ll pop out and get some kitty litter and some kitten-friendly food,” I told the kittens, returning them to their box. “And then we’ll find you homes,” I added, several seconds too late.

  I hesitated in the doorway and decided to accept the inevitable. I’d lost the battle as soon as I’d started talking to them.

  What had started out as a day of delivery-collecting and tea-making had morphed into treasure finding and cat owning. I didn’t even bother to waste time considering how off the rails my day had gone. Stranger things had happened in Wormwood. I might not always be able to explain it, but it was time I accepted it.

  After making sure my new kittens were comfortable and fed, I visited the Wormwood library. I knew it might prove a long shot, but I was hoping that the date on the recipe card might reveal something. It might merely be the date that the recipe was first conceived, but I had a hunch that it was important. I had a feeling that something had happened on that date.

  Once inside the library, it wasn’t too painful an undertaking to locate the drawer of newspaper files dating through 1990. As well as modern housing estates skipping our little town, technology had also slunk by unnoticed. I thumbed through the months until I found May and lifted out the entire folder.

  Then began the task of looking through each and every single local newspaper for the entirety of the month of May. As I didn’t know what I was looking for, I couldn’t risk missing anything.

  Fortune favoured me. On the 17th of May, the day after the date on the recipe, there was an astonishing headline:

  * * *

  Wormwood Mayor Poisoned at Annual Cake Competition

  * * *

  I raised my eyebrows. That sounded like a good place to start.

  I pulled the paper fully out of the folder and began to read.

  * * *

  On May 16th at the Wormwood Spring Fair, town mayor, Richard Starbright, was taken ill after judging the cake competition. He had just finished sampling the ten entrants’ work when he suffered a seizure and was taken to hospital.

  We are pleased to report that Mr Starbright is recovering well and the unfortunate incident is probably only the result of mild food-poisoning.

  The police officers investigating the incident were dismayed to discover that the cakes the mayor had tasted were immediately disposed of by an unknown person and could not be recovered. The cakes themselves were anonymously judged. Whilst this has made it an impossible task to identify the baker responsible for the incident, the police believe that it is a case of embarrassment, as opposed to malice, that drove the actions of the unknown individual who disposed of the evidence.

  * * *

  I sat back in the chair and let the air out of my lungs. The article alone made interesting reading but when you paired it with the recipe I possessed, it certainly put things in a different light. Someone had wanted the judge to be dosed with wormwood. And it looked as though they’d succeeded.

  “But why?” I muttered. Wormwood really wasn’t that poisonous. What had befallen the then-mayor was some of the worst side-effects that could be expected when you received too high a dose of the convulsant, thujone. I was willing to bet that the person doing the dosing hadn’t been expecting it to happen, either. It was mostly a luck of the draw sort of thing. Plus, the baker probably hadn’t expected the mayor to eat much of the cake. It had been a tasting competition, not a tea party.

  “Maybe it was a practical joke gone wrong,” I mused. Drugging the mayor and taking enjoyment from his hallucinations seemed an entirely plausible thing to happen in Wormwood. The only thing that really bugged me was my strong suspicion that my mother had been the one to hide the envelope and mark the map. Had she also been the one to drug the mayor? Did she even take part in the cake competition? I wondered, and discovered the answer was written just below the article.

  Even though the judge had been poisoned, and the winners remained unselected, all of the entrants’ names had been published. Considering the circumstances, I wasn't sure that it was responsible, but it was certainly helpful.

  My mother’s name was among them.

  “What the devil?” I said under my breath when I realised something else. None of the cakes had been mentioned, even in passing. The main article had cited anonymous judging, which meant the judge wouldn’t have known whose cake was whose, but it would also appear that no one had the slightest clue as to which cake had been the poisoned one.

  Except for me. I knew the truth… and so had my mother.

  “Mum, if you did this… why hide the evidence in a tree and leave a map? Why not destroy it completely so no one would ever know?” It was a perplexing problem. If it had merely been a guilty conscience eating away at her, she’d probably have left the map in her will. But it had been abandoned on top of a dusty shelf.

  I frowned. My mother had neve
r struck me as the kind of person who felt guilty about anything. Even if she had experienced a stab of remorse, I found it highly doubtful that a twenty-seven-year-old baking competition faux pas was the first thing that would have sprung to mind.

  My mother had believed she was a witch and, real or imagined, she had not been someone you crossed. Not unless you were willing to face the consequences. I’d turned a blind eye to some of the things she’d done when I’d been growing up. They seemed like twisted dreams now… so much so, I wasn’t even sure if any of it had really happened. But the point remained - it was unlikely that she would have gone to so much trouble just to come clean, which left one, far more probable conclusion.

  It was blackmail.

  That was the theory I kept at the forefront of my mind when I devised my next move. I knew I needed a cover story for the questions I would have to ask, if I wanted to find out who’d poisoned the mayor… and along the way, answer the other burning question the envelope had brought up.

  The best lies were those that made use of the truth. The story was, I’d found out about the cake competition and was researching an article to add to the local interest magazine I was soon to be launching. I’d even come up with a name for the fictitious publication: Tales from Wormwood. It had a nice ring to it and was spooky-sounding enough to suit the town. It would definitely work for what I had in mind. When I’d been living in Inverness, I’d conducted plenty of interviews in my quest to discover interesting stories. This should be a piece of cake.

  A non-wormwood laced piece of cake.

  I knocked on the door of the first name on the list. Annabelle Dukes. The sign out front told me that she was a fortuneteller and communicator with the dead.

  A large lady with a complexion of dark coffee opened the door and smiled at me. “Blessings on your day. What can I do for you? You have the look of a searcher on your face…”

  “I’m here to ask you about a baking competition you took part in twenty-seven years ago. It’s for an article in the local interest magazine I’m going to be launching soon,” I explained.

  “There. I knew you were searching for something,” Annabelle Dukes said, looking far too satisfied for someone who’d simply nailed the reason everyone knocks on a door (because they want something from the person within). “Come in. I’ll get the tea ready and then we’ll see how we get on, hmmm?” She jangled a satin bag that she’d magicked up from somewhere. Inside I heard things clinking together. They sounded like bones.

  “It’s only a couple of questions. It shouldn’t take long.” Why couldn’t I just say a straight ‘No thank you?’ or even a less polite ‘No way?’. It was an annoying side-effect of being British.

  “It’s always only a couple of questions. Don’t worry… we’ll get to the bottom of everything in no time.” Annabelle pushed the door open wide and I reluctantly filed past her, telling myself it was necessary to go along with it. I wanted answers, and this was the only way I was going to get them.

  Five seances, three palm-readings, two tarot spreads, one numerology reading, and a rune casting later, I was struggling to keep track of anything useful I may have learned. As far as I could remember, I was on the verge of meeting a handsome stranger, coming into a lot of money, losing a lot of money, experiencing ill health and a sudden drastic life change, rekindling things with an old flame, achieving my goals in business, struggling to make ends meet from work, due to being unsatisfied in my career, and on track for my best, or maybe my worst, year ever. The only consistency had strangely enough come from the many tea leaf readings I’d been subjected to. All of them had shown a cross in the bottom of a cup, which apparently meant obstacles were going to stand in the way of me getting what I wanted.

  I privately thought it was more likely a sign that I stirred my tea in a particular way, but given the day I was having… I honestly couldn’t say that prediction was wrong.

  When I left the ninth contestant’s house, I had only two leads to show for my strange day of fortunetelling and witchcraft. I hunted in my pocket for my notes and had to sift through a couple of spell bags for success. The first significant thing I’d learned was that there’d been a theme to the competition. I had hoped that any tarot readers on the list would be the ones I needed to pay close attention to, as indicated by the card I’d found in the envelope, but apparently every cake had displayed a tarot theme. A couple of people had been able to remember the card they’d used and the kind of cake they’d baked that day, but twenty-seven years was a long time ago. I didn’t know if I could trust their memories… or their word.

  Fortunately, the second lead I’d uncovered might actually prove useful. The mayor had stepped in at the last moment to judge the competition. Elliot Hex, one of the better known magicians in Wormwood, had been the original judge, having taken the cake crown the previous year. That was the way the competition worked. However, the people I’d interviewed recalled that he’d cancelled on the day, due to ill health. The mayor had stepped in to replace him… by which time, the cakes would have already been baked.

  I believed I had found the real target of the lemon cake.

  Elliot Hex’s house was not difficult to find. He was one of the many entrepreneurial members of Wormwood’s society who’d taken it upon themselves to add their own signs to the official signposts around town. All I had to do was follow his nicely carved directions and I ended up standing on his doorstep.

  The sign on his door informed me that Elliot Hex was the most qualified magician in town (whatever that meant) and was available for all manner of spell work. Even better, the initial consultation was free. I might actually get away from this house without having my purse emptied.

  I didn’t begrudge the other business owners I’d visited today. I was certain I’d be very impressed when everything they predicted came true. Of course, if it did all come true, I’d be far too busy to let any of them know.

  “Good afternoon. How may I help you?” The door was answered by a well-groomed man in his fifties. Even though his face was lined and his hair grey, you could still see the lingering good looks and intelligent blue eyes that must have had ladies falling left, right, and centre for him in his day. It was with a jolt that I remembered hearing about Elliot Hex one time I’d listened in to the gossip at my mother’s coven. He’d been the fox of Wormwood. Everyone had been after him, but judging by the lack of a wedding band on his ring finger, none of them had been successful in entrapping their target.

  “I’m writing an article on a baking competition that happened in Wormwood twenty-seven years ago. I understand you may have been the intended judge?” I smiled in what I hoped was a winning manner. I needed to get some answers from this man.

  “If you know that much, then you must also know that I never attended the event. A lucky escape, I believe.” He smiled politely.

  “It must have occurred to you that the poison might have been intended for you, not Richard Starbright. Was there any bad blood between you and any of the contestants?”

  Elliot looked thoughtfully at me. “I’m not proud of it, but I have my fair share of enemies - like most people in this town. You remind me of one of them…”

  I inwardly winced, knowing what was coming next.

  “Freya Salem. If anyone was petty enough to poison a cake to get even, it would have been her.” He frowned. “Hang on… are you her daughter?”

  “I am,” I said, searching his eyes for any sign of further hidden knowledge. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?” I prompted when he stayed silent. It didn’t take a psychic to know that love and hate were closer than they appeared. What if…?

  “I don’t think so,” my only lead said and politely shut the door in my face.

  3

  The Way the Cards Fell

  Much like black cats, single mothers are common in Wormwood. Witches and the divine feminine power of their craft and beliefs encourage the daughters of Wormwood to be free spirits and sow their wild oats. Sometimes, th
e sowing of wild oats carried consequences for those who didn’t take precautions, but the town’s magical community had always rallied around those who were left, quite literally, holding the baby. I’d grown up without knowing my father, but I hadn’t felt that I’d missed out. Instead, I’d been blessed with the influence of some of the strongest women I’d ever met. I may not agree with the ideas the town circulated, but I could still admire the community for all that they did.

  But since reading that hand-written note, I’d wondered. Had it been a message left for me? Was this my mother’s way of revealing my father’s true identity? I’d asked her before, countless times, but she’d always claimed she had no idea, or couldn’t remember, or that he’d been a stranger from out of town. Any child would have been able to see the inconsistencies in these stories, but I’d never got a word more out of her. My father’s identity was a mystery I’d believed she’d taken to the grave… until I’d found the note.

  When I sat on my bed that night, stroking the kitten who complained whenever I stopped, whilst being equally fair to the one who still had yet to utter so much as a purr, I wondered if all these years my real father had been closer to home than I’d ever imagined. I’d been born a little under a year after the fateful baking competition. In the months that had followed it, something must have happened with someone. The question was… had it been Elliot Hex or Richard Starbright?

  “I am so glad I was never able to find a date,” I muttered, thinking of the current mayor, Gareth Starbright (Richard’s only son). He was only five years older than me, and I distinctly remembered a lot of girls in my year dating him, back when I’d been in sixth form. Now, thinking about the possibility that the current mayor was my half-brother, it made my stomach churn to imagine the near-miss that might have been, if I had ever managed to snag a date with him.