Playing with magic, p.1
Playing with Magic, page 1
Also by Gretchen Rue
Something Wicked
Spell Bound
THE GRIM STEEPER
A WITCHES’ BREW MYSTERY
Gretchen Rue
AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS
www.ariafiction.com
First published in the US in 2024 by Crooked Lane Books
First published in the UK in 2024 by Head of Zeus Ltd, part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Gretchen Rue, 2024
The moral right of Gretchen Rue to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (PB): 9781035904334
ISBN (E): 9781035904327
Head of Zeus Ltd
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
To cat lovers, tea drinkers, bird watchers,
and independent bookstore browsers everywhere.
Contents
Also by Gretchen Rue
Welcome Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Recipes
Blueberry Lemon Sourdough Bread
Rosemary and Olive Oil Sourdough Bread or Rosemary Black Pepper Sourdough Bread
Hand Pies
Gra-tea-tude Tea Blend
Hibiscus Iced Tea Spritzer
Chicken Mafé
Acknowledgements
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
One
Few things in life are certain. I’m told those things are death and taxes, but I think the two certainties in life are this: death and rain in the Pacific Northwest.
Sure, the overzealous environmentalists of the world would tell me the latter won’t be such a sure thing a hundred years from now, but I was born and raised in Washington state. Standing in front of my tea and book shop, The Earl’s Study, huddled beneath an umbrella, I felt confident of my assessment.
“Phoebe, tell me again why we can’t look at this window from the inside? This hair was not cheap.” My full-time employee and full-time friend Imogen Prater had pulled her long box braids forward, making sure her hair stayed safely under her own umbrella. She normally opted for a micro braid style with her signature color flare, but for the summer she had switched things up with thicker box braids that had hot-pink strands mixed into several of the plaits.
Rain poured down around us, practically obscuring the store’s huge front window, and I had to admit my hopes for a dramatic reveal of our summer window display were a bit of a letdown.
On the opposite side of me, Daphne Hendricks huddled beneath her own umbrella, shivering slightly in spite of the muggy humidity that made the air as thick as a winter sweater but nowhere near as cozy. Her blonde hair was damp, and little ringlets curled at the base of her ponytail. For some reason she had decided to wear a filmy, lilac-colored sundress today, and while it looked adorable, there was a good reason she was shivering.
“I think it looks really nice, Phoebe,” Daphne said sweetly.
“Thanks, Daph.”
Inside, perched on the window’s interior ledge, my chubby orange tabby cat Bob blinked slowly at the three of us as if wondering bemusedly what the silly humans were doing when it was so nice and dry inside.
The window did look great, in spite of the rain. It was a Raven Creek tradition to overdo things a bit when it came to seasonal decor, and while many of the other local shops were festooned with Americana to celebrate the upcoming Independence Day street festival, I’d opted to take a slightly different approach.
We had crafted beautiful mobiles with oversized papier-mâché birds meant to depict the local species we saw most often in our neck of the woods. Robins floated alongside downy woodpeckers, and brightly colored American goldfinches bobbed next to the dainty Rufous hummingbird.
I’d spent hours poring over bird books—which we presently had in abundance—picking and choosing the best options, and Daphne had helped make them all, putting her in-progress arts degree to good use. She’d built them on weighted strings so their wings could flap independently, and whenever the door opened and closed, the whole mixed-up flock appeared to fly.
There were stacks of books on narrow tables inside the window, all written by Sebastian Marlow, a renowned birder, with a huge poster advertising his upcoming book tour stop and birding excursion with us.
My stomach cramped nervously, something it had been doing a lot this past month, ever since we’d locked in a signing with him. Sebastian had an enormous social media following, where he was best known as the Backyard Bird Man. He posted videos of himself going all over the world—though primarily in the United States—trying to find rare birds and teaching a new generation about the joys of bird watching.
A tinkling bell sounded, drawing my attention to the shop beside ours. A plump blonde woman in her early forties emerged from the Sugarplum Fairy and hustled over to us, blinking against the falling rain. She hadn’t brought an umbrella, so she tucked herself between Daphne and me.
“You girls look absolutely crazy standing out here,” Amy Beaudry scolded in a downright motherly tone. Amy wasn’t that much older than me, but she had a nurturing quality about her that made her immediately trustworthy and lovable. I was so lucky to have her shop right next to mine.
“I keep telling her we could see it just fine from inside,” Imogen said again, smoothing her braids as if to confirm they were still flawless. They were.
“Well, you take these and then get your butts back indoors. Storm watch was just upgraded to a warning.”
Up until now we’d just had days and days of rain but no thunder or lightning. It sounded like that was about to change. Maybe it would be what the bad weather needed to get over its foul mood and move on.
Hopefully before our book signing tomorrow.
Amy handed me a cardboard tray with three identical pink cups in it, and the scent alone was all I needed to know it was her famous Nutella lattes. Perfection in a cup. She was working on adapting an iced version for summer, but she hadn’t quite perfected it—according to her. According to me, and the dozen different samples she’d insisted on me trying, it was already incredible.
I planted a quick peck on her cheek. She smelled like sugar. “Thank you, you’re an angel.”
“Oh shush,” she said, blushing furiously. “That’s just what friends do.” She then darted out from under my umbrella, her baby-pink Crocs making little squeaky sounds as she hustled back to the dry comfort of her own shop.
“Okay, okay, you’ve both humored me long enough. Dual employees of the month. Best staff ever. Let’s go inside.”
Daphne and Imogen both let out delighted cheers in unison and did not need to be invited twice.
Inside the store we were greeted immediately by the warm scent of fresh sourdough coming from the compact kitchen in the back. The store wasn’t designed to be a restaurant, but it was more than capable of churning out a few signature baked goods every day. We took advantage of Amy’s wares to otherwise fill our bakery case.
The Earl’s Study was my aunt Eudora’s life’s work. She’d spent decades traveling the globe, learning as much as she could about tea varieties and how best to mix and blend her own unique creations. As a passionate and motivated book lover, it had only made sense to her to combine books and tea together in one perfect package.
And so The Earl’s Study was born. One part bookshop, one part tea shop, and one hundred percent charming. I hadn’t been certain I had the mettle to keep up her store after she passed, but she’d had enough faith to leave it to me, and I had spent nine months getting my feet under me. I was almost convinced I was doing it right.
Since I’d taken over, we had digitized
When I’d started bringing Bob to the shop with me every day, I’d been worried the locals would reject the idea of having a cat around. Instead, he’d become a bigger hit than I could have imagined. With Daphne’s efforts on our social media pages, I soon realized that Bob had a bigger following of fans than our shop did and that we’d start to get comments if he wasn’t featured often enough.
Daphne had even started a little vlog series told from Bob’s point of view, and he narrated—her voice-over with a modifier that made it sound cartoonish—the woeful shortcomings of our treatment of him. The videos had become a viral sensation, and now tourists would often come into the store just to see him. I’d had to add a small sign under the open light to indicate Bob is in or Bob is out, as sometimes I’d already taken him home for the evening or weekend.
This also meant I’d seen the willingness of our customers to embrace cats in the space. So, after many months of fighting tooth and nail with the town council—and more specifically one spitfire board member, Dierdre Miller—I had gotten approval to open Bob’s Place, a small section inside the bookstore where we’d be able to host adoptable kitties from the Barneswood Humane Society.
Barneswood was the closest thing to a “big” town we had near Raven Creek, with more specialty shops, a dedicated vet, and its own shelter. But that shelter had to deal with animals from an enormous chunk of the state and was often filled to capacity.
Taking between two and four cats wasn’t going to make a huge difference, but it would certainly help, and I was motivated to feature the cats who had been waiting the longest, hoping that a change of scenery—and quieter digs—would help them find the right families.
The grand opening to Bob’s Place was scheduled for the following Wednesday, a couple of days after Fourth of July, once all the excitement over Sebastian’s book signing and the outdoor excursion was over. I glanced over at the kennels, freshly constructed by my friend Leo Lansing. He had refused to let me pay him for his work—typical Leo—so I’d insisted on adding a little plaque to the kennels that read Donated by Lansing’s Grocery. He’d made a solid effort at declining even that honor, but there was no way I was letting him build me gorgeous custom cat kennels and not do something to thank him.
Leo was the kind of guy who hated to have any kind of attention directed at him, so I think the entire situation embarrassed him terribly, but I’d be a bad person and a worse friend not to show how much his work mattered to me.
The timer I kept clipped to my apron started to beep, letting me know that the sourdough currently in the oven was ready to come out. Both Daphne and Imogen had already resumed working, grateful to no longer be outside.
Things had been going so well with our online shop recently that I’d actually been able to increase Daphne’s hours, allowing her to work full-time. She needed the money to help pay for school, and I was grateful to have her around more frequently. Her social media skills and artistic eye were proving to be a genuine asset, and having an extra body in the store gave me time to work on fulfilling all our online orders.
I pulled the sourdough out of the oven and was hit with a blast of fragrant, warm air. Today’s savory offering was a new one for me and had been a special request from one of our regular customers. It was a rosemary and olive loaf. Normally I would have immediately declined making anything with olives—they just weren’t my thing—but I had recently tried a Castelvetrano olive for the first time and had to admit the buttery, light flavor almost made me like olives. So I had yielded and was trying something a little outside my personal comfort zone. Our sweet offering for the day was a blueberry lemon sourdough loaf with fresh blueberries I had picked myself.
I heard the bell over the front door jingle merrily and didn’t think much of it until a moment later when Imogen came into the tiny kitchen.
“I think I’m going to need your help, or someone is going to wind up dead.”
Two
I stared at Imogen wide-eyed, not sure if I’d heard her correctly.
“What?”
“Please rescue me, Phoebe. I can’t handle these people.” She held her hands together in a gesture of pleading and gave me her most heartfelt expression. How could I refuse, especially when it was a rare day indeed that Imogen couldn’t handle an irate customer?
I wiped my hands on my apron and followed her out into the main part of the store. A group of four people had come in. One was milling around in front of the tea shop counter, sniffing our testers and nodding approvingly. One was inspecting the stack of books in the front window with a scrutinizing look, not with an eye to purchase but more like a teacher checking over my work, and the final two were waiting at the cash desk that sat between the two shops.
I might not have been the most social media–savvy person on the planet, but I recognized Sebastian Marlow at the desk immediately. His face was, after all, plastered all over my bookstore’s walls, and I had recently unpacked over fifty copies of his books.
“Sebastian, what a pleasure to meet you. I’m Phoebe Winchester. I spoke with your publicist to arrange all of this.” I gestured toward the display, which the young man in black horn-rimmed glasses I’d noticed earlier was now rearranging. “Um, sir, what are you doing?”
He ignored me and continued to change the entire presentation of the table. Daphne, who was standing on the window ledge beside him painting letters on the glass, cast me a helpless look. I just shrugged. I could change things back later; let the little weirdo rearrange books if he wanted to.
“Oh, yes. Deacon. My business manager. I fired Deacon.”
My head swiveled back to Sebastian. He was an incredibly handsome man, with the kind of rakish good looks one might expect from a man who made his money in the wilderness. He had a bit of a Bear-Grylls-meets-Heath-Ledger-in-his-prime vibe that I’m sure helped explain why such a large portion of his fan base was female. Right now, he was looking bored and very much like he didn’t want to be in my shop.
“Did you say you fired Deacon?” I scrunched up my brow, because surely I’d misheard him. Deacon Hume, Sebastian’s publicist and business manager, had been the one to arrange this entire signing and the accompanying outing. I’d just been emailing him about final details and the weekend itinerary not even twenty-four hours earlier. There had to be some mistake.
The petite girl beside Sebastian piped up. “I’m Melody Fairbanks. I was Deacon’s assistant. I’ll be helping Sebastian this weekend in his place.” She offered me her hand, which I shook politely, still not sure I really understood what was happening.
Something must have caused quite the rift between Sebastian and Deacon, because I had been under the impression that they were childhood friends and that it had been primarily Deacon’s efforts and marketing savvy that had helped turn Sebastian from a guy who knew a lot about birds into the world’s most recognizable bird watcher.
They’d even launched an app recently that helped novice birders identify nearby species with a quick photo or an audio recording of the bird’s song. The Backyard Birder app was a mega-success; even I had it installed and had started using it almost every evening while sitting out on my front porch.
Whatever had caused the split between the two men wasn’t my business, but I was a little surprised not to be seeing the person I had spent so much time coordinating everything with.
None of this was Melody’s fault, though, so I fixed my best smile on my face and greeted her politely. “I’m sure Deacon would have shared with you all the arrangements and plans he and I worked out for this weekend.”
“Yes, thanks, it was all very thorough. We’re on our way to the bed-and-breakfast right after this to check in, but we wanted to stop and see where the reading was going to be tomorrow.”
She glanced around the store, her lips pursing slightly, and then her nose wrinkling visibly when she spotted Bob sitting in one of the armchairs next to the big fireplace on the far wall. The fireplace was unlit for the summer, but it was still Bob’s favorite place to while away the hours.
