It’s A Plunderful Life Page 10

“Nothing,” I said, leaning back against the sink to block her view of what had been dishes. I tried to look casual, like it always smelled like a hazardous waste dump when I washed the dishes. There was a hissing sound behind me, and I turned to catch a puff of noxious purple smoke rising into the air. “Just finishing up.”

  Toni leaned against the doorframe. “I was going to ask for some help with my laundry, but now I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” Pushing off the door, she moved forward, examining the mess in the sink with detached amusement.

  “Are you sure?” I said. “It might give you an excuse to update your wardrobe.”

  “I’m pretty happy with my wardrobe, thank you very much.”

  “So was the grandma who wore that dress thirty years ago,” I snapped.

  She tilted her head, a sly smile on her face. “Are you sure this isn’t misplaced aggression? I wouldn’t blame you—I’d be pretty upset if I had managed to do this. What were you trying to do, anyway?”

  “I was practicing my magic,” I said. The purple smoke was dying down, but the sludge was still collecting in the drain.

  “Uh-huh. Does Evelyn know you’re using magic without supervision?”

  “I’m forty-nine years old,” I said, sliding the window over the sink open and doing my best to waft the worst of the smell outside. “I don’t need Mommy’s permission to use my power.”

  “Yeah. I can see you know what you’re doing.”

  “I’m practicing! Mom always encouraged us to practice things. Remember when you took up the flute?”

  “I never almost burned the kitchen down by playing the flute badly, but sure.” She turned away. “Good luck explaining all this to Evelyn.”

  “She’s going to understand,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure of any such thing. I was just trying to figure out how to clean up the mess when my phone rang. I slipped it out of my pocket. “Hey, Margot,” I said, wandering out of the kitchen to get away from the acrid smell.

  “Hi, Mom. Just checking to see how you’re doing.”

  Wasn’t that sweet? “I’m doing fine, sweetheart. You should come visit sometime. It’s beautiful this time of year.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to.” There was a distinct jingling in the background, and I gritted my teeth.

  Georgie.

  “How’s your job going?” I asked. I turned to look at the kitchen and felt a stab of dismay. Was that purple smoke starting up again?

  “It’s great…” She chattered on, filling me in on the details of her new gig while I did my best to tell myself that everything was fine, that the smell emanating from the kitchen was not, in fact, getting worse.

  The back door opened, and I heard heels clicking on the floor of the back hallway.

  Oh, no.

  There was a gasp, and then a sharp clattering sound in the kitchen. “What happened to this sink?” my mother shouted.

  “Cass did it,” Toni said.

  I covered my phone with one hand. “I did not!”

  “Mom?” Margot’s voice was hesitant.

  “Nothing, sweetheart. That all sounds very interesting!” I said brightly into the phone as my mother, her face storm-cloud dark, poked her head out of the kitchen. I waved my hand helplessly at the phone. I’d love to help you deal with whatever is going on in there, but I’m all tied up on the phone here.

  “Margot,” I mouthed to my mother.

  It didn’t work. My mother emerged fully from the kitchen, her ice-blue suit neat as a pin. “Cassandra Michelle, what have you done?”

  I sighed. There was no point in delaying the inevitable. “Margot,” I said, interrupting her. “I’m sorry, but I need to take care of something.”

  “Is everything okay, Mom?” she asked, and I heard Georgie’s voice say, “What’s your mom gotten herself into now?” in the background.

  Like I was constantly getting myself into stuff.

  “Oh, everything is fine,” I said. And then, because I really didn’t like to be told what to do, I added, “I need to go help Grandma with something. You know how old and feeble she’s getting these days.”

  My mother’s brows met in the middle of her forehead, and her mouth scrunched up into what Toni and I had always called the “Be Careful” face.

  As in, “Be Careful” of what’s about to happen.

  “So, anyway,” I said hurriedly,” I love you, sweetheart, and I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

  Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I did my best to look innocent. “What? I didn’t do anything.”

  My mother moved back into the kitchen without a word. She stood staring down into the sink, her hands behind her back, purple smoke rising up to frame her silhouette. “So,” she said finally. “I guess we’ll be using paper plates for lunch.”

  I got the mother of all lectures after that. “Magic isn’t a toy,” she said, pacing back and forth. “This isn’t something to play around with. There’s a cost to using it, you know. Throw it around willy-nilly and you’re bound to drain your reserves. Plus, there are unintended consequences even when you’re using it correctly. You never know what ripples you’ll send out into the universe when you mess around with magic.”

  She stopped to stand in front of me. “And, most importantly, you’re very bad at it.”

  We were in the family room, Toni sprawled out in Kurt’s La-Z-Boy, me perched on the edge of the couch with my head bowed. “Sorry, Mom,” I said.

  She sighed. “This is partially my fault.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Toni piped up. I shot her a glare.

  “No, it is. I need to work with you, help you understand how to use this ability. I keep thinking that I trained you once, and that your training is still there, buried in your memories. But it seems like you might have forgotten it for good.”

  It was hard to believe that my mother and I had once gone over all of this, that I had been trained to wield magic. And then I’d given it all up for a man.

  But it had been worth it, I reminded myself. It was easy to have regrets now, given that things hadn’t worked out. But my marriage had lasted almost thirty years, and we’d been happy for most of it—at least I had been. And there was Margot, who I wouldn’t give up for all the magic in the world. I could wish I remembered all of this until the cows came home, but it wasn’t going to change anything.

  “We’ll have to start over,” my mother said.

  “I still think I should have a wand,” I said.

  Toni snorted. “I can just see you waving one around while everything melts in front of you.”

  “No wands,” my mother said, her forehead furrowed. “You don’t need one.”

  “Harry Potter had a wand with a phoenix feather in it,” I insisted. “I’d like one with a unicorn hair embedded in the core.”

  “Wouldn’t we all?” my mother said, her voice edging on exasperation. “Now, listen. Magic is like…like…spitting.”

  “Gross,” Toni said.

  “Ew. Can’t we come up with a sexier analogy?” I rubbed my thumb over the bridge of my nose. “Like, magic is like driving a convertible?”

  “It certainly is not. It’s like spitting. You gather the saliva in your mouth, and when you have enough, you can, well, you know—spit. The more you gather, the more spit you have.”

  “Great. So I just gather a bunch of magic in my mouth and then shoot it at people, trying to get it in their eyes?” I said. When Toni looked at me, I shrugged. “It’s what I learned in my self-defense class.”

  “No.” My mother dragged one hand though her perfect tea-colored hair. “It’s about focus and concentration and intention.”

  “Well, that’s super helpful. I was focused and intentional about the dishes, and you see how that turned out.”

  With a heavy sigh, my mother sank into one of the chairs opposite me. “Knowing when to use magic and when not to is a big part of the equation. It takes a toll on you, especially when you’re using it frivolously. Use it for selfish reasons or
, oh, I don’t know, because you want to get out of doing the dishes, and it can backfire in ways you can’t predict. As you’ve already seen.”

  Toni stood up and stretched. “Well, this sure has been interesting, but I’ve got stuff to do. Cass, call me if you’re going to do something disastrous again. I’d like to watch. From a distance, of course.” Then she gave me a mocking wave and headed for the back door.

  My mother watched her go. “I wish you and Toni would fix this.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? I don’t even really know why she’s mad at me.”

  My mother turned, her bright blue eyes fixed on my face. “Don’t you?” And then she, too, got up and walked away.

  15

  The next day at breakfast, my mother told me I was on housekeeping duty.

  “Think of it as a way to make up for ruining most of my kitchenware.”

  I wasn’t thrilled about it, but she made a good point.

  Toni buttered a piece of toast. “Franny’s off today,” she said.

  “You hush,” Mom said. “This isn’t about any staffing issues.” But she wouldn’t quite look at me when she said that.

  Ah. I saw how it was.

  Well, regardless of why Mom had put me on housekeeping duty, I wasn’t going to let her down. Grabbing my supplies, I headed out for Mother Goose. Still not my favorite mode of transport, but at least this time I got to drive instead of riding in a duckling.

  A thought I had never imagined I would have during what was supposed to be my retirement.

  I had a moment of trepidation as I eased the goose out of the shed, those cut brake lines still fresh in my mind. I tested the brakes several times, the niggling fear that something was wrong making me take it slow even after I’d demonstrated that everything was working just fine.

  I reached the first set of cottages and parked Mother Goose in the shade of a hickory tree. Bucket in hand, I knocked on the door, then let myself in. “Housekeeping,” I called.

  No one answered.

  I’d cleaned guest cottages hundreds of times in the past. Hell, I’d been there just days ago, cleaning with my mother. But that was before someone had sabotaged Mother Goose, before I had heard that twig breaking while I was alone in Snow White’s Cottage.

  Now, the silence of the guest cottage seemed menacing, the emptiness a negative rather than a positive. I took out my phone and pulled up a favorite playlist. Bouncy pop music, tinny through my phone’s speakers, filled the air. I had expected it to help, but it actually made things worse. It felt discordant, like some scene in a movie where everything seems upbeat and then you realize the murderer is hiding right there.

  Steeling myself, I headed for the first bedroom, half expecting someone to jump out at me as I pushed open the door…

  And found myself face to face with a real, live person. The curtains in the bedroom were still closed, and the room was dark enough that the intruder was merely a terrifying silhouette by the bed.

  A woman screamed.

  I screamed.

  It felt like we stood there, both of us screaming, for several minutes. In reality, it must have been only a couple seconds before the woman stopped screaming. “Cass?” she said.

  She stepped closer to the door, and I recognized her in a wave of knee-weakening relief. “Diana?” I leaned against the doorframe. “What are you doing here?”

  Her gaze flicked to a spot just over my shoulder. “I lost an earring when I was down here yesterday. Was hoping it was still here.”

  My heart was still pounding away like the bass in some badass kid’s car. “Didn’t you hear me knock?” I asked. “Or my music?”

  She lifted an earbud from where it lay around her neck. “I was listening to music, too.”

  Of course. It all made sense. But I was still edgy, and encountering an unexpected person hadn’t helped at all. “What’s it look like?”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “What?”

  “Your earring. I’m on housekeeping duty, so I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

  “Oh.” She picked a fleck of lint off the ivory shirt that, together with her burgundy pants, made up the park uniform that gift shop and guest relations employees wore. “It was a heart. A little diamond heart.”

  “I’ll let you know if I find it.”

  She nodded, then slipped past me, making her way quickly to the door. It struck me that she didn’t seem to be leaving as much as fleeing.

  Idly, I moved to the window and watched her hurry away from the cottage, her phone pressed to her ear. As if she could feel me watching, she turned around and caught sight of me, lifting her hand in a brief wave.

  And then she walked around a bend in the path and disappeared from view.

  Well, that was weird.

  But at least now I didn’t have to worry about a serial killer hiding in the cottage. They would have gotten Diana first.

  She was like my own personal canary in the coal mine.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. But nothing out of the ordinary happened until I got to the bathroom and turned the faucet to wet a rag. The faucet made a harsh sound, but nothing came out.

  Well, as problems went, that was definitely preferable to a serial killer hiding in the closet. I turned the faucet off, then tried the other tap. Nothing.

  Okay, so the bathroom sink in cottage one needed Wilder to come out and fix it. I jotted down a note, and then decided to check the shower.

  Nothing. And the kitchen sink was the same.

  Leaving my cleaning supplies on the floor of the bathroom, I made my way over to the next cottage and tried the bathroom sink there, with similar results. I checked the next cottage, and the next. None of the cottages in that group had water.

  Still, this wasn’t a disaster. I pulled out my phone and plugged in Wilder’s number. His voice, when he answered, was smoky and warm. “Cass,” he said. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

  “I’m not sure you’ll think that when you hear what I have to tell you. I’m cleaning Elf House One, and the water isn’t working. Just checked Two through Four, and none of them has water.”

  “Huh.” I did my best to listen for any sign of irritation, but there was none. Instead, he sounded puzzled. “Well, that’s weird. Stay where you are. I’ll be right there.”

  “Sure thing.” I turned to study my reflection in the bathroom mirror and wished I’d thought to put on makeup before I left the house. I fluffed my hair a bit, pinched my cheeks so I didn’t look as pale as Ichabod, and bit my lips to rosy them up.

  It wasn’t the worst I’d ever looked.

  Of course, it wasn’t the best, either. I wished I could clean cottages in silk suits like my mother, but I felt much better in yoga pants and a T-shirt I’d gotten for free from a local business fair that read, “Mitchell’s Manure Movers.”

  I know—sexy, right?

  But there was nothing else I could do besides act like I wanted to advertise a Kentucky manure-moving business in front of my oldest crush. Confidence is sexy.

  Even when it’s just about helping you with your manure-moving needs.

  Wilder got there fairly quickly, handling the golf cart like a pro. I liked how he drove, one-handed, his other arm draped over the passenger seat. It was easy to picture myself sitting beside him, his arm warm against my upper back, puttering along the trails of the Enchanted Forest.

  Which was stupid. These days, what I should be looking for in a man was financial stability, a willingness to do his share of the housework, someone who listened—really listened—when I talked, someone who had a well-developed sense of humor.

  Note that “looks sexy when driving a golf cart” was not on that list.

  What is it about our first crush that sends us back to our high school selves?

  He stopped the cart in front of the cottage and jumped out, as athletic as he’d ever been. He was wearing a baseball cap today, pushed back on his head so I could see a good amount of thick, dark hai
r.

  Sigh.

  “Hey, Cass.” He grinned at me, my heart tripping over itself like the idiot it had become in middle age. Then his grin faded as he moved past me into the cottage. “Let’s see what’s going on here.”

  As I had done, he tried all the faucets, frowning as nothing he did produced any water. “Doesn’t seem to be working.”

  If I thought to myself, “Yes, just like I told you on the phone,” I managed to keep myself from actually saying it out loud.

  He tried the faucets in the next cottage, then pushed his cap back even farther on his head. “Well, this is a problem.” He rubbed his hand over the dark stubble on his chin, and I forgave him for trying the faucets even though I told him I’d done that already. “We’ll need to check the pump station. Want to come?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, examining my fingernails like my childhood crush hadn’t just asked me to look at a pump station with him. “I’ve got time.”

  Which was a lie. I might not be able to get the cottages completely done without water, but I could still change the sheets and run the vacuum.

  But whatever.

  Was driving around with Wilder O’Shea in a golf cart as amazing as I had imagined?

  Reader, it was.

  To my disappointment, he did not rest his arm along the seat, but instead kept both hands on the steering wheel. But his knee bumped mine several times, and once he leaned over, his arm reaching across me, to point at a fawn curled up in the brush beside the trail.

  Sheer. Bliss.

  Don’t judge me.

  We arrived at a small utility building, which was disguised to look like a fairy dust storage shed not far from the Fairy Village, and by that I mean it had a sign that read, in large, childish writing, “Fairy dust storage. Keep out! This means you!” And below that, in much smaller, neater print, it read, “Fairy servants only, please.” To add to the illusion, the door was hidden behind a wall of ivy, and if Wilder hadn’t known exactly where it was, I don’t think I ever would have found it. He eased the door inward, and I had the feeling of slipping into another world as I followed him between the vines into the cool, dark interior.