Chapter 3

ONE STEP AT A TIME

“You want me to what? ” I blurted, startled enough by my half-sister’s declaration that I wasn’t overly concerned about how tactful my response might have sounded.

However, she didn’t seem upset by my shocked tone, and repeated patiently, “I want you to teach me how to be a witch. You worked for years as a psychic in L.A., and it’s obvious you’re still being all witchy here with that shop of yours. I feel like there’s so much more I could do if I only had someone to show me the ropes.”

Because her expression was so hopeful, I knew I could never respond with a flat denial, even as one part of my brain thought it took a lot of guts to make such a request of a woman who clearly was about to give birth any day now and might have had a few more important things to occupy her time.

So I pulled in a breath and said, “Chloe, I’m not sure if that’s the sort of thing you can really teach someone. It’s not as if I had anyone to help me. I just sort of found my own path.”

She crossed her arms and her lips compressed slightly. But to my relief, she sounded calm enough as she replied, “I’ve read lots about witchcraft, and it sounds as if people either learn from their family members or find a coven to work with. It’s not as though they know all this stuff out of the blue.”

“Some people seek out help and guidance from others,” I agreed. “Everyone’s route to the source is different, though. For me, I didn’t have anyone like that. I just read books and did my best to find my way. Maybe your talents need something else. All I’m saying is that I’m not sure I’m the right person to teach you…especially with everything I have going on in my life.”

Her head drooped a little. “I get it,” she said. “Honestly, if I’d known you were about to have a baby, I would never have come here and bugged you. But now….” The words trailed off, and she uncrossed her arms and instead planted her hands on her hips. “Now, I don’t know what I should do. I really don’t want to be in Northridge.”

Well, I could understand that. There came a time in almost everyone’s life when they had to decide whether to continue with the status quo or whether it was time to forge a new path, whatever that might turn out to be. I’d had that decision thrust on me after learning Lucien Dumond was hot on my trail, and it seemed the same sort of turning point had presented itself to Chloe, even if she wasn’t quite ready to tell me what that turning point was.

“I’m not saying you need to go back to California,” I replied. “You can stay here for as long as you need to.”

She glanced around the living room with its whimsical floral sofa and lighthearted color scheme, and again something about her seemed to droop. “It’s really cute,” she said. “But I don’t think I could afford this place for more than a couple of days.”

Did she really think I was going to ask her to pay for the Airbnb when it had been my idea for her to stay here?

Apparently so, or she wouldn’t be looking so disconsolate.

“The house is my treat,” I said, and her dark gray eyes flared with surprise. “I certainly don’t expect you to pay for it, not when it was my idea in the first place. And while Hazel has a booking later in the month, you still have several weeks when you can stay here as you try to get things figured out.”

“But I want to do something to help,” Chloe protested. “I didn’t come here just so I could freeload off you. Yes, I wanted your advice on all this witchy stuff, but once I saw you had a store, I thought maybe I could work for you…if you needed an extra pair of hands.”

An extra pair of hands? Definitely — and much more than that, if she was up to the task. She’d said she’d worked at Chipotle, so she obviously had experience working with the public, but that wasn’t quite the same thing as having to manage a New Age store all by herself.

I knew I was getting way ahead of myself, especially considering how reticent I’d been to hire anyone else after the whole Melanie Knowles debacle. Still, sometimes we needed to stop and pay attention to the messages the universe was beaming to us, and in this case, it sure felt as though some higher power had decided to take pity on me and send the one person who might keep me from having to close Once in a Blue Moon after all.

“Maybe,” I allowed, and then smiled. “Why don’t you tell me about your experience?”

As it turned out, Chloe had been an assistant manager at Chipotle during her last year of college, so she knew more about dealing with inventory and placing orders for stock than I’d originally thought. It wouldn’t be too hard for her to learn the nuances of managing the shop, and I had to imagine the pace would be much, much slower.

First things first, though. After she explained some of what her work had been like, I realized it was time for us to head out of town if I was going to have even a prayer of getting those cornbread muffins together in time. Chloe climbed into the passenger seat of my Renegade and glanced around somewhat wistfully.

“My friend Andrea bought one of these last year,” she said. “She really likes it. But the only way she could afford the car was to have her parents give her the down payment, and there was no way I’d ask mine to give me that kind of money.”

“They’re strict about that sort of stuff?” I asked, curious despite myself. It was one thing for me to be all noble and pretend I didn’t care what Jordan Fairfield had done with his life, but I knew deep down that I had a burning curiosity to know what the man was really like, how he interacted with his family.

“Strict?” Chloe repeated, then shook her head. “I don’t know if ‘strict’ is the right word. They’re just careful with money. My brother Justin and I always had jobs once we were old enough to work. Actually, after he graduated from college a couple of years ago, he went to work full-time for the computer company he’d been with since he was a senior in high school. I guess it makes sense — teachers don’t exactly earn the same as doctors and lawyers, even though they probably should.”

While I agreed with her on that point, I couldn’t help saying, “Your mother doesn’t work?”

“She does now,” Chloe responded. “But when Justin and I were little, she stayed home. It wasn’t until after I was in first grade that she got certified as an EKG tech, and that’s what she does for a living.”

Somehow I guessed that EKG technicians didn’t make piles of money, either, although I knew it wasn’t my place to ask. The picture I was getting from Chloe was that of a solidly middle-class family, one that had been able to afford a home in a decent area and have a modest lifestyle, but definitely not with the kind of extra money lying around that would have enabled them to go on lavish vacations or buy fancy cars for their children.

I couldn’t help contrasting this scenario with what I’d learned about Tom’s kids’ upbringing — private schools, brand-new cars when they turned sixteen, their every need pretty much catered to. The result had been a couple of people I couldn’t help thinking of as anything except spoiled brats, even though they were now in their thirties…and even though I, as someone who liked to believe she’d done some serious work on herself, shouldn’t have been thinking of them in such judgmental terms.

But man, did they rub me the wrong way.

“Well, I really loved my Bug,” I said. “But in a minute, you’ll see why I needed to switch over to four-wheel drive.”

In fact, the turn-off for the narrow lane that led to the house was coming up right then, so I slowed down and made the turn. The second we were off the highway, we began jouncing our way along, the Jeep’s automatic four-wheel drive handling the washboard road with aplomb, even if it wasn’t the smoothest ride in the world.

“I see what you mean,” Chloe remarked with a grin. She reached up to grab the “Jesus handle” overhead, although her smile remained in place.

“We’ll probably get the drive resurfaced before the monsoon rains come this summer,” I said, slowing down a bit so my stomach wouldn’t continue to smack into the steering wheel. “But we’ve had some cold nights, so we wanted to make sure we were past any freezes before we started the work.”

“You have to pay for the maintenance? I didn’t see any signs saying it was a private road.”

Clearly, my half-sister paid attention to what was going on around her. “Technically, it isn’t,” I replied. “But ours is the only house on this lane, and it’s actually on tribal lands. It’s just easier to take care of it ourselves instead of having to submit a request to the elders.”

I didn’t bother to point out that even such a big project wouldn’t be too much of a hit to our budget, mostly because I didn’t see the need to go in depth about my finances to someone I’d just met, long-lost sister or no. Most people in town knew I’d inherited some kind of money, but the exact amount was something I never talked about.

Chloe gave a thoughtful nod, and we continued the rest of the way in silence…which wasn’t for very long, since the house was only a hundred yards or so down the drive. I pushed the remote for the garage door and we pulled inside, then got out so we could walk over to the house.

I could tell she was keenly interested in everything, from the overall architecture of the pueblo-style adobe house to the band of cottonwoods that followed the line of the creek at the edge of the property. It was too early in the year for them to have leafed out, but the branches had a thin film of green indicating that they intended to come to life soon.

As soon as I opened the front door, my little long-haired chihuahua, Sadie, came bounding into the entryway, her flag of a tail swishing this way and that. And she went right up to Chloe, who bent down so she could scratch behind my pup’s wispy ears.

“What an adorable dog! What’s her name?”

“Sadie,” I replied, inwardly relieved that the dog seemed to have taken to Chloe right away. Like most dogs, Sadie was a pretty good judge of character, and if she liked my half-sister, then it seemed likely the girl wasn’t hiding any deep, dark secrets.

“Hi, Sadie,” Chloe said, and gave the dog a final caress of her ears before she straightened again. “I’m very happy to meet you.”

Sadie’s tail kept going, and she followed the two of us into the living room, where Chloe set her purse down on the hearth.

“I think you’ve made a new friend,” I said, and my half-sister’s mouth turned up in a lopsided smile.

“We always had dogs around,” she replied. “Our cocker mix, Buster, just passed a few months ago, and my parents are trying to decide when they should adopt a new dog.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “That’s such a hard thing to go through.”

Chloe only inclined her head, acknowledging my comment but clearly not wanting to reply. I’d never had pets growing up because my mother and I had lived in a series of apartments with strict no-animals policies, so I’d never dealt with such a loss personally. Over the years, though, I’d seen enough friends go through the grieving process over a beloved pet that I knew how difficult it could be.

Thank the Goddess that Sadie was a young dog, only a little over two years old, so we had plenty of years left to enjoy her company.

But then Chloe seemed to shake it off, saying, “Is there anything I can do to help you in the kitchen?”

“Not really,” I replied, knowing she’d changed the topic on purpose. “Although it would be great if you could set the table. I’ll show you where everything is.”

Looking much more cheerful, she followed me into the kitchen, where I pointed out the drawers that contained the placemats and table settings before I headed over to the walk-in pantry to gather all the ingredients for the muffins. While I fetched a bowl from the cupboard, she went ahead and got the table ready, obviously happy to be of some use.

That was why, when Calvin came home some ten minutes later, the table was set and I was just popping the muffins in the oven. Chloe and I had been chatting about the store and how I’d found it via an online real estate listing, but I broke off at once so I could make the necessary introductions.

“Calvin, this is my sister, Chloe Fairfield,” I said, and he reached out to shake her hand.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” he said in his warm, deep voice.

“Nice to meet you, too,” she returned, looking awed. I supposed I shouldn’t have been too surprised by that; although various comments I’d made had let her know my husband was chief of the tribal police, she probably hadn’t been expecting someone six and a half feet tall with black hair to his waist and the kind of looks that should have put him in front of a camera.

But they hadn’t, and striking as he was, my husband was very happy to simply be the chief of police for his tribe and to live a quiet existence…or at least, as quiet as it could be with a wife who couldn’t seem to prevent herself from stumbling into murder investigations.

However, everything had been quiet since the holidays, when I’d helped Josie with figuring out who had murdered one of the contestants in her High Country Holiday Brewing Competition, and I thought maybe the universe had decided to take it easy on me for a while, considering I had a very important event of my own coming up soon.

And because Calvin and I had long ago agreed that we should never keep secrets from one another, I thought I might as well say, “Chloe found me using her Tarot. It sounds like we have quite a bit in common.”

“Oh?” my husband responded, looking amused. “Are you another hedgewitch like Selena?”

Both of Chloe’s eyebrows lifted, but she said in similarly light tones, “Probably not. I like reading Tarot and that kind of thing, but the witchiest thing about me is the way I sometimes see stuff in my dreams.”

This was the first time I’d heard anything about that, but I told myself it wasn’t too strange. After all, my younger sister and I had only met a few hours earlier, and even then, the majority of the time since then had been occupied with keeping watch on the store. It wasn’t as if we’d had the opportunity to sit down and spill our entire life stories.

“The future?” I asked, knowing I sounded a bit startled.

Her shoulders lifted. “Sometimes. Or sometimes I see things that are happening as I dream about them. Like, in my junior year of high school, I had a dream that a group of my friends got into a car accident coming back from the homecoming game. I was supposed to be there with them, but I got strep throat and had to stay home. The next day, I found out my dream was real…right down to the color of the truck that T-boned their SUV.”

“I hope they were okay,” Calvin said.

That was my husband to a T. He wasn’t fazed by talk about locating people with the Tarot or having true dreams, but he needed to know that the group involved in the car accident had survived the crash just fine.

“They were,” Chloe said. “I mean, Trey and Lola had broken arms because they were on the side where the truck hit them, but the police caught the guy — he’d been driving drunk — and he’s in jail now. And my friends mostly just had fun having people sign their casts.”

Well, I supposed that was one way of making lemonade from what must have been a terrifying incident. And while it was the kind of story some would-be psychics might have concocted to make themselves sound more impressive, I didn’t think that was what was happening here. For one thing, Chloe had spoken simply about the situation, without any embellishment, and for another, just as she finished her comment, her aura flickered into existence above her head for a second or two before disappearing again. It was a gorgeous shade of dark pine green, washed with deep teal around the edges, and definitely not the aura of someone telling a lie.

No, it was the aura of someone who could be trusted.

Something inside me relaxed then. Yes, I already had Sadie’s reaction to Chloe to let me know my little sister was on the up and up, but seeing with my own eyes that she was no more than who she seemed to be made me feel much better about the way she’d appeared in Globe out of nowhere.

Calvin smiled, and the next few minutes were all about grating cheese and getting a pitcher of lemon water from the fridge — and me apologizing that I’d been avoiding alcohol and caffeine, for obvious reasons, and that I hoped Chloe wouldn’t mind too much.

“It’s fine,” she said. “It was a long drive here, so I don’t think I would have wanted anything else to drink even if you had it. A glass of wine would’ve probably made me face-plant in my chili.”

That remark made Calvin and me both grin. He got the muffins out of the oven for me so I wouldn’t have to bend down again, and as soon as they were tipped into a basket and the big crock of chili had been carried into the dining room and set down on some hot pads, we were ready to eat.

A moment of quiet as we dished up the food — with Sadie scurrying from place to place, wondering which of us would be the softest touch for scrounging some morsels during the meal — and then everyone took their first bites.

“This is the best chili I’ve ever had,” Chloe declared once she’d washed down her food with a swallow of water. “What’s your secret?”

“A kitchen witch never divulges her secrets,” Calvin remarked with a grin, and Chloe raised an eyebrow.

“Selena, I thought you said you were a hedgewitch.”

“Well, it’s all kind of loosely defined,” I said. “I love to cook and do things in the kitchen, but I’m also a solitary witch and self-taught, which is part of what defines a hedgewitch, so I suppose I’ve just sort of mashed everything together.”

Now it was Calvin’s turn for an eyebrow lift. “‘Solitary’?” he echoed. “After living with me for the past year and a half?”

About all I could do was grin. “Not that kind of solitary,” I told him. “It just means that I don’t practice with a coven.”

“Makes sense,” he said, and broke a muffin in half so he could spread some butter on it.

The baby kicked then and I started, then put a hand on my belly. So far he — or she — had been pretty quiescent today, but maybe the scent of chili and cornbread had been a kind of wake-up call.

“Evening gymnastics routine?” Calvin asked, and I nodded.

“Something like that. But I’d rather have it happen at dinner than 3 a.m.”

After hearing this exchange, Chloe said, “When are you due?”

“On the sixteenth,” I replied, and she relaxed almost imperceptibly. True, that was still not all that far off in the future, but I could tell she was glad I hadn’t said the baby was supposed to be here the day after tomorrow. “Speaking of which,” I went on, looking back over at Calvin, “Chloe and I were talking earlier, and she told me she’d like to help out at the store while I’m on leave.”

My husband, who’d been looking fairly relaxed up until then, at once sat up a little straighter in his chair. While he didn’t frown — he was far too polite to make such a show of disapproval in front of our guest — I could tell he wasn’t as thrilled as I’d hoped he would be at my revelation.

However, his tone was even enough as he said, “That’s really nice of you, Chloe. So, you’re planning on staying in town for a while?”

“That was my thought,” she said. A flicker that came and went in her eyes told me she’d picked up on his body language and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. However, she still sounded upbeat and cheerful as she went on, “I always had this feeling that SoCal wasn’t going to be it for me, you know? And then when I found Selena in Globe, it felt as if the universe was guiding me here somehow. That probably sounds kind of crazy.”

A corner of his mouth lifted, and I knew he was thinking about the way I’d arrived in our small town, guided here by the cards as well. “Not as crazy as you might think,” he replied. “And I can see why getting out of L.A. might seem like a good idea. I’ve only been there once, but that was enough for me.”

“Calvin’s not a city boy,” I said, knowing my own mouth wore a similar smile. “And that’s fine — coming here to Globe was the right thing for me. L.A. is an amazing place, but it can really wear you out.”

Chloe broke off a piece of her cornbread muffin and spread a modest amount of butter on it. “That’s exactly it. I was just…tired. I knew I needed something different in my life.”

That comment might have caused just the slightest flicker of my husband’s eyes toward me, accompanied by a quirk of his lips that I doubted anyone else would have been able to detect. It was probably a bit difficult for him to believe that someone as young as Chloe Fairfield would already have been overcome by ennui at the prospect of spending the rest of her life in the big city, but at the same time, I’d grown up in the Valley as well and knew what it felt like to be overwhelmed by the crush of population in the greater Los Angeles area.

And that didn’t even take into account how the cost of living just kept going up and up. When I moved out when I was a little past nineteen, at least I’d been able to earn enough to pay for a modest studio apartment. These days, unless you were making six figures right out of school, you’d never be able to afford a place of your own in L.A.

No wonder Chloe had still been living at home…and no wonder she was looking forward to spending the next few weeks in Hazel’s darling vacation rental.

It wasn’t a permanent solution, but for now, I was just glad the place had been available at all. For a while, I’d thought that Sofia Barnes, one of the competitors in Josie’s brewing contest back in December, would settle into Hazel’s place, but it turned out that the old hardware store Sofia had bought for her brewpub start-up had an apartment space above it, and it just made sense for her to fix it up at the same time and be right where the action was, so to speak.

“And I made it to assistant manager at Chipotle while I was working my way through school,” Chloe went on. “So, while it’s not exactly the same as running a New Age shop, I’ve got lots of customer-facing experience and know how to handle the books at a store.”

Calvin gave a grave nod, although I could tell he was still inwardly amused. “This isn’t a job interview, Chloe,” he said. “If Selena believes you’re the right person to watch over the store while she’s out on leave, then I know it’s going to be fine. Her instincts are impeccable.”

I sent him a grateful smile, and my sister seemed to relax slightly, even as she looked a little wistful. Was she surprised that Calvin would be so openly supportive of my decision? Hard to say; I certainly didn’t know her very well yet, and I knew even less about her family dynamics, whether her parents were equal partners or whether my bio-dad took his role as man of the house seriously.

Which seemed as though it would be a complete about-face, considering he’d been a head-banging drummer in a metal band when he hooked up with my mother, but people often changed in strange and mysterious ways.

“So I think it’s settled,” I said, and sent an encouraging smile my little sister’s way. “Tomorrow, you can come with me to the store and get started.”