Chapter Seven

The next morning, I felt kind of terrible.

I knew I was overthinking things, but even so, I had to physically restrain myself from jumping to conclusions. But knowing I was being silly somehow didn’t stop me from being silly, which felt pretty unfair.

Finn frowned down at his bowl of slightly soggy cereal and swirled his spoon through the milk again with a dubious expression. “Um. Did your date with Andre… not go well or something?”

“Not go well! Why would you think that?” I over-insisted, shaking my head and laughing. “No, no no. It went great! So great!” I finished with a smile that was a little too wide if the way Finn was looking at me meant anything.

“It did?”

“Yeah,” I insisted. “I just, uh… woke up a little late—hence why you’re having cereal for breakfast.” I took a breath. “Why don’t we go out to dinner tonight? Just the two of us?”

Finn gave me another worried look, but then shrugged and dug into what was left of his soggy cereal. “Sure,” he answered and gave me another look. “Do I need to remind you, Mom, that I can tell when someone isn’t being honest?”

I felt my heart drop, but I knew I couldn’t tell him the truth. Not yet. If Andre left town, it wouldn’t just break my heart—it would also break Finn’s heart, and there was no way I was going to clue him into the fact that that could be an actual reality.

“I’m not ready to talk about it yet, Finn,” I managed as I whirled around and started aggressively doing the dishes, determined not to keep thinking about it.

###

The next couple of days went by in a blur, and I continued to feel pretty much terrible. Andre and I still texted all the time, and things felt normal (well, as normal as they could, given the context). Regardless, he never once brought up his fancy job offer, and that somehow just made the anxiety twist a little tighter inside my chest.

Finally, one morning after dropping Finn off at school, the tension was so thick in my body, I thought, to heck with it , and turned left at the intersection where I was supposed to turn right. What was the point of being the boss if I couldn’t go into work late every once in a while? And I was desperately in need of a self care day. I’d been dragging my funk around for way too long now. Finn was more than aware that his mother wasn’t her usual happy self, and I knew I’d hardly been myself. And when Wanda made a comment on my mood, then I knew it was bad.

For most people, hearing something like, “ what’s the matter with you? You’re not as irritatingly chipper as usual ,” might have sounded like an insult, but it was just Wanda’s very special type of concern. And if Wanda was picking up on my sour mood, then drastic measures were in order. I needed something to lighten me up, something that would make my day a little better, and I had just the place in mind.

No, it wasn’t Sweeter Haunts, but the chocolate shop was a temptation. Instead, I turned onto the street where one of the Scapegrace coven members, Imani, had opened up the town’s only magical hair salon.

Imani came to Haven Hollow all the way from New Orleans. She’d heard good things about our local coven, apparently, and liked how progressive things were with warlocks being full members, and even a few non-witches involved. She’d stuck around town for a little while to decide if she wanted to stay, and was now the coven’s newest member and I was happy about that because I liked her a great deal.

Haven Hollow had also been badly in need of a salon, and now we had one that could offer charms woven into someone’s hair. Charms for luck, or confidence, or romance. I turned my thoughts sharply away from the last word and focused instead on finding a parking spot.

Luckily for me, it was early enough that it wasn’t too hard to find a spot within reasonable distance of the salon. Hopefully, the same could be said of Imani’s schedule—it wasn’t like I had an appointment. The second I stepped through the door, something in my shoulders relaxed. The quiet music, the faint smell of eucalyptus in the air, the hum of the dryer, it was almost meditative. There was just something soothing about a good salon.

Imani was with a client when I stepped through the doors, but she smiled and called a greeting when she saw me.

“Hey, Poppy. How are you?”

“Good thanks.”

“What are you in for?”

“I just need a little pick me up,” I answered, trying to keep my voice even and my smile in place. “I don’t have an appointment, but I was hoping you’d be able to fit me in?”

“For sure, for sure. Just give me a minute to finish up here. Why don’t you take a look at the magazines on the coffee table there and pick out what you like.”

“Oh, good idea,” I answered with a quick smile and a little wave.

Imani gave me a nod. “I’ll be right with you.” Then she tossed the waterfall of her braids back over her shoulder, the little golden beads she’d sealed the ends with clicking together and sounding like rain. With a deft brush and a hair dryer, Imani went about styling the hair of the woman in her chair into soft waves that framed her angular face.

I drifted over to the couch in the corner of the salon and glanced down at the magazines, which were organized neatly in rows on top of the coffee table. I didn’t need or want anything too fancy. Just a little trim and maybe some highlights or something. Just a change—something to lift my spirits. Even just getting a charm woven into a blow dry would be nice. The way Imani worked was always so relaxing. Her magic was a combination of witchcraft and voodoo, and the way she whispered her prayers in Creole French as she carefully wove her charms into a person’s hair could just melt you if you weren’t careful. Even the act of being fussed over would probably lift my spirits.

But which charm to get? I looked up at the framed list of charms available that was hanging on the wall in a gold, gilt frame. As I drifted down the line of various charms, two ladies entered the shop, their heads bowed together as they whispered to each other and took seats in two chairs opposite the couch, where I was standing.

There were a lot of options to choose from as far as the charms were concerned, and I was having trouble picking while also completely ignoring all the romance options on the pink tinged poster board. Almost against my will, my eyes kept sliding that way though, and I was putting in so much effort to ignore them, that I wasn’t actually reading any of the other options.

“Do you think they’ll have to redo the whole thing, then?” One of the women in the waiting area chairs whispered a little too loudly over the hair dryer. In fact, she was so loud, she might as well have just used a normal speaking tone.

“I don’t see how they could. It was statewide, not just at the local high school. I don’t even know how they’d go about doing it over. Besides, why punish the entire school when it was just one group that was cheating?”

When the other woman, who had dark curls and was dressed in a green cardigan, said as much, my ears perked up. I didn’t like to eavesdrop, but if something was happening at Finn’s school, I wanted to know about it.

The first woman, a blond with baby-fine hair, clucked disapprovingly. “It sounds like it was a pretty big group that got caught.”

Cardigan huffed a laugh, but there wasn’t anything humorous in it. “I know. And they weren’t exactly subtle about it, were they? All of them getting perfect scores, even though none of them were top students.”

“Top students?” the blond huffed. “They weren’t even close to B students!”

“That’s asking to get caught.”

The blond lady shook her head, but there was an eagerness to her, like a bird spotting a tasty worm. “Do they know how they did it, yet?”

“No.” Cardigan tossed her hair back, tugging her sweater tighter over her chest. “But there’s going to be an investigation. They’re looking into the group, and there might even be some suspensions. I don’t know what they were thinking. This is going to affect funding for sure.”

The two of them tutted some more, and then turned the conversation towards someone named Janice who was apparently having problems with her husband. I really didn’t want to hear about someone else’s relationship troubles, so I inched away, closer to where the good luck charms were listed, but still unable to pay any attention to what I was reading.

I didn’t know how much of what the two women were talking about was true and how much of it was inflated for the sake of gossip, but it didn’t sound good. Sure, Haven Hollow High probably had its share of kids trying to cheat on tests. But that had sounded large scale and organized, which was odd. And the fact that the teachers apparently didn’t know how the kids were cheating? We’d come a long way from my days in school, where the only options were crib notes and writing on your hand and hoping you didn’t sweat very much.

I made a little mental note to ask Finn about it later. I knew he wouldn’t have gotten caught up in any of it; he’d spent way too long studying to risk his marks by cheating, even if I thought he’d be inclined to try, which I didn’t. Growing up knowing exactly when someone was lying to him had made Finn a bit of a stickler for honesty.

“Poppy, why don’t you come on back and sit in the chair for me, hon?”

Imani’s voice jolted me out of my thoughts, and I realized she was just ringing out her last client at the register.

A little bit of pink crept into my face at being caught staring into space, but I smiled and scooted back to the waiting chair. Imani followed quickly, snapping a pretty purple cape around my shoulders to protect my clothes.

“Did you pick out a charm?”

“Not really,” I had to admit. The blush grew a little deeper. “I was thinking something for good luck? Maybe you should pick.”

“And did you just want a blow out?”

I nodded. “And maybe a trim or highlights?” I paused. “I just feel a little… blah, so anything you can help to get rid of the blah would be good.”

Imani gave me a look in the mirror, and it was a struggle not to look away. Her eyes were big and such a pretty brown color, and her makeup had hints of gold in it that made her skin glow. But those eyes just saw too much, and I didn’t want to give away anything at the moment, not when I wasn’t sure how I was feeling or how I should be feeling.

But she didn’t press, just let out a thoughtful hum as she misted my hair down and began drawing a comb carefully through the strands. “Alright, then. I’ll take care of you, don’t worry.”

A little bit of tension eased out of my shoulders as Imani soothed the brush through my hair. It snapped right back in though when she spoke in a slightly too casual voice. “You doing okay, Poppy?”

“Oh, I’m fine.” My smile was too wide, I could see it in the mirror. It shot past friendly and crept a little too close to manic. I swallowed hard and tried for something a little more reasonable, and a little less like I wanted to pick a fight with Batman. “How about you?”

Imani hummed again, reaching over to grab some clips off her work station. “Pretty good, actually. I’ve been trying to coax Mav into my chair, now that his horrible Little Boy Blue hair is finally growing out. He’s dodging me, but I’m wearing him down.”

That brought a proper smile to my face, at least. I’d been a bit surprised at first by Maverick and Imani’s friendship. As a rule, Maverick was prickly. And by that I meant he had more layers of defence than a paranoid onion and he seemed to think everyone was out to get him. Considering how and where he’d grown up, I couldn’t exactly blame him. I’d only ever really seen four people that he genuinely liked, and even two of those relationships were pretty fraught with their own issues. As far as Maverick was concerned, there were only five people in the world; Wanda, his sister, Astrid, his adopted daughter, Sybil, Taliyah, and everybody else.

But he and Imani got along like a house on fire, though it had taken me a little while to see it, with the way they threw quips and barbs back and forth. There was no malice in any of it, just two quick witted people who knew the other could keep up with them. They were a little bit like the frenemy version of BFFs. Instead of Besties, they were Worsties.

The thought made me smile. “You going to convince him to change the color?”

“Oh, boy, that would be fun. Can you imagine?” Imani cackled. “I should tell him to go red and see how many of the old guard lose their collective broomsticks.”

All witches had black hair, except for the very rare exception of the red-headed witches, and all of those tended to be seen as agents of chaos and change. Betanya was one, so was Astrid (or she had been, before she was turned vamp), and most other witches tended to regard red-headed witches with something of a suspicious side-eye. Combine that with the fact that Maverick was a Blood Warlock, and Imani said it perfectly. The old covens would lose their broomsticks.

We giggled about it and gossiped a little about the latest in the coven. Apparently, Olga had been making heart-eyes at some man in town, and the rest of the coven had just about collectively sat on her until she agreed not to throw herself into yet another ill-fated love affair. And we talked and chatted and laughed and sighed for the next hour and a half as Imani trimmed my hair into layers and then gave me light and dark highlights. And then she finished it off with a blow dry and a charm.

Maybe it was the fact that Imani was very, very good at what she did, or maybe it was just the friendly chat and the act of being fussed over, but when I stood up from the chair, I looked and felt a million times better. My hair fell in gentle waves around my face, so shiny it practically glowed under the lights.

Imani tried to wave me off with a coven discount, but I insisted on paying full price. The things that woman could do with hair was some of the greatest magic I’d ever seen.

I honestly hoped that she talked Maverick into letting her do something with his. It had been shorn off unevenly by the vampire that had attacked him, and then he’d been forced to crop it shorter when he went undercover to try and rescue Sybil from a group that had kidnapped her, thinking she was Wanda. Since then, he’d been keeping it in this weird, bowl sort of cut that wasn’t doing him any favors. Before that, he’d always worn it long—to the middle of his back. I thought a visit to Imani might let him take some of his power back from the people who’d tried so hard to humble him.

I was feeling too good to linger over dark thoughts, though, just about humming to myself as I headed for the door. The two women were still gossiping in the waiting area, oblivious to anyone else around them, but I did my best not to eavesdrop.

Just as I reached the door, it opened. A woman stepped through. She was in her early thirties maybe, with dark hair just touched with gray at the temple. She was vaguely familiar, not anyone whose name I knew, but someone I’d seen around before. Haven Hollow wasn’t that big of a town, and a lot of people passed by my shop windows on Main Street.

I gave her a smile, stepping out of the way so she could come into the salon more easily. But she didn’t. Instead, she stopped right where she was, and stared at me, blinking rapidly as all the blood drained out of her cheeks, leaving her looking like she’d seen a ghost. It was an odd enough response that the smile slipped off my face, leaving me a little shaken. Why would a stranger look at me that way?

Worse, she spun on her heel and ducked back out the door, hurrying down the street and casting furtive glances over her shoulder like she was afraid I was going to follow her. What in the world had that been about? I mean—I didn’t even know the woman. I was pretty sure I’d never even spoken to her. Maybe a ‘good morning’ if we passed each other in the street, but nothing more. So why had she run from me like that?

Imani and I exchanged a confused look, and I did my best to shrug it off. “Maybe she forgot her purse.”

The gossipers had fallen silent at the exchange, and the salon was a little too quiet when I slipped out the door.

A little bit of my new hair happiness had been dashed away. The whole situation left me feeling nothing but uneasy. I wasn’t a scary person, not by anyone’s measure. I was in my forties, and while I was holding up pretty well (if I did say so, myself) I was a mom, and I looked like it. Plus, I had a penchant towards sweaters and cardigans and yoga pants. Not exactly the uniform of a badass.

Maybe she thought I was someone else? What was it people said—that everyone in the world had a doppelg?nger somewhere? It must have been coincidence, or just a case of mistaken identity. Or maybe she’d forgotten her meds this morning?

But as I made my way towards my store, there was a sense of uneasiness coiling in my stomach.