Page 47 of Midlife Witch Unexpected

“How far can you possibly get from me in this town?” I asked.

Branson ignored me. Something was bugging him. “I do have some other duties I could carry out,” he conceded.

“Look, I’m not your duty.” I was perturbed. “And you really need to get a few more things going in your life if I'm the only thing you're worried about in a single day. I'm a grown-ass woman. I mean, I get I don’t know magic and I don’t know this world, but I’m not completely helpless here.”

Branson stared at me, his gaze burning through me, but he stayed silent before turning on his heel and heading out the door. I turn to Hilda, but she had her head bowed down. “Don’t trouble me,” she said. “I’m very busy.”

I laughed. “You’ve been sitting at my kitchen table for the last hour shooting the shit with us. What could you possibly be doing that is so important?

She lifted up her hands from under the rim of the table and to my shock, she was actually crocheting something.

“How did you…?” My voice trailed off and I gave up. There was too much going on for me to figure it all out. I needed some time. I needed a glass of wine and a hot bath. I knew exactly how to get those two things using the good old fashion tactics of turning on the faucet for the tub and pouring myself a glass of wine. And I’m not going to sip. That’s a given. I’m just going to suck it back. I filled the glass of red wine up to the very edge and took a big swig.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner,” I murmured.

“Be careful with the drink,” Hilda said. “You don’t want to do drunk magic.”

“Ohhhhh,” I murmured. “That is probably worse than drunk dialing.”

“Much,” Hilda snickered. “Never turns out well.”

I giggled, already feeling my muscles start to relax. “Sounds like the voice of experience,” I said, a questioning look in my eye.

“I think you’ve had enough stories for one day,” Hilda said. “I’ll be gone. I’m in need of some quiet time of my own.”

I made my way upstairs. I didn’t mind having Hilda here. It actually felt comforting, and I was able to relax a little bit more. She was unobtrusive. I went to get my bathrobe while the bath in the atrium filled up. I was going to figure this thing out, but I was going to do it in my time and quietly.

I had already made too many decisions quickly in my life with too little information and, well, a lot too little information. Also, I didn’t know about half of my life. This required some effort to think about before I made some random decision.

From what they’d been telling me, this whole witchcraft thing had a lot to do with feeling your way through it and trusting your instincts. For me to trust my instincts, I had to first get in touch with my instincts. I had to spend some time alone. I stripped off all my clothes and stood there naked in front of the mirror looking at myself.

“Not bad,” I said. My stomach wasn’t flat anymore and my thighs had a little extra jiggle, but I was proud of the way my body had maintained itself over the years. I certainly didn’t have the body of a twenty-year-old anymore or even a thirty-year-old, but for forty-nine, I was looking pretty sharp considering I never worked out.

I opened my aunt’s wardrobe and grabbed out the gray woolly bathrobe, which looked so cozy. It felt deliciously comforting as I wrapped it around myself.

“Aunt Emma,” I murmured quietly. It was her bathrobe and standing there with it on I could almost feel her, even though I didn’t really know her much.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” I asked myself in the mirror wearing her robe.

But it didn’t matter. She was dead. Passed away in this house. There was no finding out anything from her. I had to figure it out for myself.

I pulled my hair out of the ponytail I'd been wearing all day and let it cascade around my shoulders as I tied the robe up and put my hands in the pocket. It was time to go to the bath. There was something hard in the pocket. At least it felt hard and sharp.

“Ouch,” I murmured to myself, feeling a prick on my finger and pain shot through my body.

I pulled my hand out of the pocket and sitting there in my palm was a pendant. It had a five-pointed star with small gemstones at the end of each point. There was a stone in the center of the pentacle, also.

I stared at the pentacle. It was a piece of my history, a piece of my coven, and I knew nothing about it. Now it just created more questions than answers. What was it doing in the pocket of my aunt’s bathrobe? Had she had it close to her in her final days?

Chapter 28

“Mae, my darling.” The voice floated to me in the dark. “Mae, come to me.”

I was startled awake.

This wasn’t a dream. What I thought was a dream was real.

I was sleeping in my grandparents’ bed with the dark canopy of stars and spells floating above me.

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