Prologue
Hemlock Cove — Two Weeks Ago
“Did you feel that?”
Bay Winchester lifted her head and stared at the clouds building in the sky, clutching her disposable coffee cup tightly in her hand as she cocked her head. From the spot next to her on the bench, her cousin Thistle watched the show with suspicious eyes.
“I felt it,” Bay confirmed, invisible fingers squeezing her heart with anxiety. “It doesn’t seem normal.”
“Oh, you think?” Thistle, the snark queen of the Midwest, wrinkled her nose. “There’s nothing normal about that. The clouds almost look to have a face ... one of those faces only a mother could love.” She paused a beat. “Or maybe it’s Aunt Tillie’s face in the morning. There is a certain resemblance around the eyes.”
Bay shot her cousin a quelling look. Their great-aunt had a tendency to lurk. If she heard Thistle badmouthing her, they would both end up on her list, the last place either of them wanted to be. “She’s been good lately. You should leave her alone.”
Thistle dragged a hand through her purple hair. She changed its color almost weekly — with the invention of Overtone, it had never been easier to run through the rainbow — although purple was one of her favorite hues. “She’s never good. If she’s been quiet, that simply means she hasn’t been caught doing anything illegal. When she is finally caught, it’ll blow back on all of us.”
Bay wanted to argue the point, but she knew better. Tillie couldn’t keep out of trouble, not even for a month. In her heart, she knew Thistle was right. Tillie had been flying under the radar for weeks, which meant trouble was coming ... and it was likely to be of the catastrophic variety.
“Those storms are serious business,” Thistle noted, grave. She glanced around the kitschy Main Street stretch and pursed her lips as she watched tourists and residents scramble for cover. “Everyone feels it.”
“It could be just a storm,” Bay noted hopefully. She wasn’t normally optimistic, but she was riding high on happiness these days after her recent engagement. Out of habit, she glanced down at the diamond on her ring finger and smiled. Her fiancé, Landon Michaels, had bestowed it upon her during a splashy engagement several weeks ago. Since then, they’d been in their own world, rarely venturing out.
“It’s never just a storm,” Thistle countered, her features pinched as she stood and planted her hands on her hips. “Where is Aunt Tillie? This has her written all over it.”
“She doesn’t often conjure storms,” Bay argued, refusing to let it go. “She only does that when she has an enemy to smite.”
Thistle slid her eyes to her cousin. “When doesn’t she have an enemy to smite? Where is Mrs. Little? She could already be dead for all we know, and this storm is simply a way to flatten the town and cover up for a murder.”
Bay snorted derisively, although part of her briefly wondered if Thistle was correct. Their great-aunt tended to fly off the handle. Murder wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. Well, manslaughter. As much as Tillie enjoyed messing with Margaret Little, the porcelain unicorn peddler and their great-aunt’s lifelong nemesis, murder wouldn’t be her first choice. She preferred torturing Mrs. Little over the long haul. If a death had occurred, it would be of the accidental variety.
At least ... well ... probably.
“We should probably check on Mrs. Little,” Bay acknowledged, resigned. She drained the rest of her coffee, momentarily lamenting the fact that she probably wouldn’t get another stretch of quiet for the rest of the day, and then tossed the empty cup into the trash can beside the bench. “I haven’t seen Aunt Tillie since this morning. That’s probably a bad sign.”
“It’s a bad sign to see her, too,” Thistle noted as she fell in step with her cousin. “If we see her, then she can curse us.”
“She hasn’t cursed us in weeks.”
“That means we’re due. And it will probably be something nasty.” Thistle’s lips curved into a sneer. “Wait ... she cursed you the night of your proposal. I could still smell the bacon on your hair the next morning. Why are you claiming she hasn’t cursed you?”
“Technically, that wasn’t a curse. That was rewarding Landon for a proposal well done. You know how he loves when I smell like bacon.”
Thistle took in the way her cousin smiled at the memory and scowled. “Ugh. You are officially gross.”
Bay, realizing that Thistle had recognized her reaction for what it was, blanked her face. “I’m just saying that it wasn’t really a curse. She wasn’t doing it to punish me. And it lasted only one night.
“It’s not like the first time she cast the spell on all of us,” she continued as they crossed the street. “We were stuck with it for days, attracting every man — and a few women — in the town.”
“Yeah, that was an effective curse,” Thistle agreed.
“This time it was more of a game than anything.”
Thistle’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a sick little puppy, Bay. I know your mind just went to a dirty place. I can’t believe you’re rewarding Aunt Tillie with anything other than payback for that curse.”
“It wasn’t the end of the world.”
“But if we let her get away with one curse, she’ll think she can get away with multiple curses. That crazy old bat gets off on torturing us. We need to practice constant vigilance.”
Bay held back a sigh. Thistle’s constant battles with Tillie were the stuff of legend. In truth, she knew a quiet Tillie meant an agitated Thistle, because her younger witch cousin turned into a nervous wreck waiting for their great-aunt to strike. It was a normal occurrence these days.
“I think you’re overreacting,” Bay said finally, slowing her pace as they strode in front of the bay window that looked into the Unicorn Emporium. “Aunt Tillie has been good. Instead of waiting for her to be bad, we should embrace the quiet.” She looked down at her ring again. “I’m thinking of cooking a romantic dinner for Landon — just the two of us. What do you think?”
Thistle, adjusting to the conversational shift, made a derisive sound in the base of her throat. “You live five minutes from our mothers, who like to cook, and if you eat at the inn, you won’t have to clean up the mess. They make pot roast ... and tacos ... and yummy, yummy cakes.”
“But that’s not romantic.”
“And you can’t cook.”
“There is that.” Bay stared into the window of the unicorn store, relieved when she found the cantankerous owner sitting in her usual spot flipping through a magazine. “See. Aunt Tillie didn’t kill Mrs. Little. You were casting aspersions for no reason and have absolutely nothing to worry about.”
Thistle looked anything but contrite as she peered down the street. “Oh, really?”
“Mrs. Little is right there. She’s perfectly safe.”
“Uh-huh. Well, that looks like Aunt Tillie ... and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s trying to outrun the storm.”
Bay swiveled quickly, a fresh burst of wind hitting her head-on and blowing her hair into Thistle’s face.