Playing the Witch Card E-Book

KJ Dell'Antonia

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 448

Beschreibung

Curl up with this cosy, witchy read from NYT bestselling author KJ Dell'Antonia. Practical Magic meets Chocolat in this spellbinding story of a bakery owner rediscovering her magic - and herself. When Flair Hardwicke returns to the tiny town of Rattleboro to take over her grandmother's beloved bakery, she believes she's prepared for anything. All she needs is her daughter Lucie, and to get as far away from her cheating ex-husband as physically possible. But sweet treats weren't the only thing her grandmother was known for in Rattleboro, and as determined as Flair is to avoid it, a misbehaving deck of tarot card-shaped cookies draws her back into the web of family magic she's fought so hard to escape. Even worse: her first love is in town. Flair hasn't spoken to Jude Oakes, now a famous chocolatier, since he broke her heart at seventeen. When Flair finds she's accidentally summoned Lucie's father to Rattleboro under a curse she can't break, the recipe for Halloween chaos seems to be complete. But not everything in Rattleboro is as it seems. As Flair's family is threatened, she is forced to put aside everything she thinks she knows about love, witchcraft, motherhood—and herself. Because Flair might think she's done with magic, but magic certainly isn't done with Flair.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

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Acknowledgments

A Conversation with KJ Dell’Antonia

Discussion Guide

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

“Playing the Witch Card is an enchanting story of small-town magic, love, family, and friendship as delicious and captivating as Flair’s tarot-themed cookies. It’ll have you craving both witchy baked goods and a visit to your nearest swoonworthy magical town.”

Lana Harper, author of the Witches of Thistle Grove series

“A delightfully sweet, heartfelt novel about letting go of our fears to make room for magic, and the power of choosing our own fate. Utterly charming.”

Rachel Harrison, author of Cackle and Such Sharp Teeth

“Buckle up your broomsticks, people. Playing the Witch Card is an absolutely delightful wild ride that will leave you breathless at the end. This intricate and tightly woven novel is ultimately an exploration of identity, freedom and the power of letting things go. This one will stay with me for a long a long time.”

Annabel Monaghan, author of Nora Goes Off Script

“KJ Dell’Antonia perfectly captures life in a small town in this delightful family saga . . . It feels strange to say that a book about witchcraft and magic that won’t take no for an answer is ‘cozy’ but I really did get cozy vibes from this book! It put me in a fall, pumpkin-spice sort of mood, and is the perfect read for curling up next to the fire.”

Jessica Clare, author of What the Hex

“KJ Dell’Antonia had me at magic cookies, but then her story delivered so much more: a charming tale of second chances, family, and embracing one’s true self, all set in an enchanting small town I’m ready to relocate to. This is a Halloween treat of a book.”

Elizabeth Bass, author of A Letter to Three Witches

“A magical, heartwarming, and hilarious story about embracing who we are, and women reclaiming their power. Set in a charming town with its own secrets and enchanted tarot cards, this book will cast a spell on you in the best possible way. I absolutely loved it!”

Maureen Kilmer, author of Hex Education

“A heartwarming, magical story about complicated families and the legacies they leave behind. Flair’s journey of self-reclamation, her cozy bakery, and the charming town obsessed with Halloween cast a delightful spell over me and had me longing for autumn!”

Judy I. Lin, New York Times bestselling author of the Book of Tea duology

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Playing the Witch Card

Print edition ISBN: 9781803366845

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803366852

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: September 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© KJ Dell’Antonia 2023

Published by arrangement with the G.P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

KJ Dell’Antonia asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For S and J, who know just when to askthat all-important question:“Are you a witch or not?”

1

Monday, October 26

OTHER PEOPLE, WHEN forced to start over, do so in appropriate places. New York. Los Angeles. Bozeman. Only Flair would wind up in Kansas, dragging a hand-painted, life-sized figure of Jack Skellington into her bakery and wondering where to hide it until the horror show that was Halloween in Rattleboro finally lurched to an end this weekend.

Flair hated seeing even the outside of her tidy space besmirched with the trappings of a ridiculous holiday that invited exactly the kind of chaos that she normally kept firmly at bay. But she’d had to accept it. From the skeleton on the now spiderweb-covered bench to the black-and-orange garlands and the wheelbarrow of painted pumpkins, her precarious new venture had become part of a Main Street so drenched in town-funded Halloween preparations that it was impossible to rest your eyes on a surface not wrapped in twinkle lights or faux-aged into flawless Gothic dereliction.

But Jack eating a slice of bloodred cherry pie was taking it a step too far.

Like nearly everyone, he was taller than Flair, making him difficult to maneuver, but Flair would not let that stop her from ridding her entryway of the blight. She wrestled him through the door and looked around the shop, wondering where she could stash him until the town’s Halloween powers that be came to retrieve him in November. Or maybe he could meet an untimely and tragic end before then.

Lucie looked up from one of the white tables where she sat with her ankles wrapped around the legs of a turquoise chair, which she had—under duress—helped Flair to paint before Buttersweet Bakery’s opening in August. Ostensibly she was doing vocab, but more likely she was staring into the phone Flair had given her when they moved. Flair’s plan had been for Lucie to connect with (and feel appropriately cool next to) her new eighth-grade classmates, but Lucie preferred to use it to complain to her father and her friends back “home” in St. Louis about the cruelty of her mother’s decision to move them both to the boondocks.

“Grand is having a show in St. Louis tomorrow,” she said. “If we were there, we could go.”

“Well, we’re not,” Flair said automatically. “And Grand’s shows aren’t G-rated, so we wouldn’t be going anyway.” Would Jack fit behind the hutch that was very nearly the only thing left of what had until recently been Marie’s Teas, or was she going to have to find a place for him in her kitchen? “We’ll see her soon.”

“That’s what you always say,” said Lucie, who was clearly gearing up for another monologue on her favorite topic, how you have ruined my life. “But it’s been since her birthday two years ago. If we were home, we would at least have dinner or something.”

Maybe. Or maybe Cynthia would be so overrun by fans of the bewilderingly successful vampire-and-witch romances she wrote that—darn—she wouldn’t be able to fit them in. Flair was relieved when the bells on the door interrupted her daughter before the pointless debate could continue. She tried but failed to hide Jack behind her as she prepared a welcoming, but not overwhelming, smile for what would be her first customer of the day. At 3:30 in the afternoon, but Flair wasn’t counting.

Who was she kidding? Of course she was—and the count would still be zero, because unless Renee Oakes had abandoned her distaste for all things Flair and Flair-adjacent, the woman who walked through the door was not and would not ever be a customer. “He’s supposed to be outside, Hardwicke,” Renee said, pointing to the pumpkin-headed particleboard figure behind Flair. “We put him there this morning.”

Flair drew herself up to her full height—which had to be at least six inches shorter than the stern blonde in front of her—and prepared to deliver a considered and logical explanation for why this decoration did not represent Buttersweet, even in the context of the all-encompassing town Halloween festival Renee directed with what should have been admirable dedication.

“But he’s hideous,” Flair said. “His eyes are seriously terrifying, and he looks more like an axe murderer than a friendly Halloween mayor dude or whatever he is. I mean, where did anyone even find this? The drive-in movie theater’s dump?”

“I painted it,” Renee said.

Oh. Flair turned to look at the creation leering back at her and could think of no way to backtrack over what she’d just said. Life, she thought, not for the first time, really needed some kind of rewind button.

“And you have an obligation to display the holiday decor provided to you by the decoration committee.”

Flair knew that. Renee had already given her a “reference” copy of the building’s covenant, which also required that she maintain the window boxes, whose riot of fall foliage and flowers threatened daily to overwhelm her entrance, as well as the paint and the trim (in approved colors only) and all the rest of the landscaping. She felt her resolve weakening. “But I don’t even serve pie.”

“I’ll put it back outside,” Renee said, taking the decoration from Flair and lifting it easily. She glanced around at the empty tables and the full pastry case before giving Flair a pitying look. “Maybe pie would help.”

Renee marched out the door, Jack under her arm. Flair could see her through the windows, standing him prominently on the sidewalk in a way that would effectively deter any potential customers.

She looked at Lucie, hoping for some sympathy—Jack Skellington was truly dreadful—but Lucie was stuffing the worksheets Flair didn’t think she’d so much as glanced at into her backpack. “I’m going home,” Lucie said. “Unless you want to give me a ride.”

“It’s four blocks.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like you’re doing anything.”

Flair pointed to the door. Lucie went out as Loretta Oakes, the only member of the Oakes family Flair regarded fondly at this point, came in. At least Lucie managed to return Renee’s mother’s greeting politely. Either she did have some manners, or she was, like everyone else in town, both terrified by and in awe of Loretta. Flair would take whatever she could get.

Unlike Renee, Loretta embraced Flair, bringing with her a spicy, faintly floral scent that tugged at a memory Flair preferred to leave unpursued. Loretta also brought with her a comforting sense that here, at least, was someone who was happy that Flair was back in Rattleboro.

“My usual, please,” Loretta said, taking a seat at the table closest to the counter. “And join me, if you can.”

Flair appreciated the suggestion that she might suddenly be overwhelmed with customers, although Loretta must know as well as she did that it was unlikely. Obediently, Flair took up her place behind the case full of scones and cookies and flaky croissants, all lined up on their trays, swiveling the portafilter into place and waiting for the grinder’s familiar growl.

Her occasional assistant, Callie, whose wages she really could not afford, had suggested renaming things “in the holiday spirit” and had gone as far as “Spooky Scones” and “Devilish Danishes” before Flair shut her down. Flair’s baked goods weren’t the kind of thing you bought in a plastic clamshell at Dillons. They were award-winning pastries that deserved better. On the cover of Bon Appétit once, she reminded herself. Featured in Martha Stewart’s Holiday Cookies issue three times: see also the triptych on the wall. Midwest Living said, last year, that even if David’s Table ran out of steak and couldn’t fry another frite, it would still be worth the wait for Flair’s Pavlova bars alone.

But after two solid months of effort, she couldn’t seem to entice anyone in Rattleboro to try one. If today was anything like yesterday, Loretta would be her only patron. And she’d clearly noticed that not one thing on the carefully arranged trays had been disturbed.

“Slow day again?”

“Things will pick up,” Flair said, repeating what she’d been telling herself for weeks. “Getting started is always tough.”

“I think it’s been more than tough,” Loretta said. Flair hid her face behind the espresso machine while she prepared Loretta’s favored macchiato so that the other woman wouldn’t see how closely her words hit home, or how much her sympathy affected Flair. She’d grown up spending summers in Rattleboro. Her grandmother had run Marie’s Teas in this spot for fifty years. It wasn’t that she’d expected a parade, but she had thought she could make a go of it here. That she’d be at least sort of welcomed. Instead, other than her best friend and once-again next-door neighbor, Josie, Rattleboro seemed to have shut her out, and it was almost as if the shop were invisible.

“I’ll be fine,” she called. But when she looked up, Loretta met her eyes with an expression that made it clear she didn’t buy Flair’s cheery words.

“This is not fine,” she said with a quick lick of her lips that Flair had learned was characteristic when Loretta spoke. “We need to do something to get you involved. And I have the perfect thing. You know about the Rattlebones Trail, of course.”

It wasn’t a question. No one could spend any time at all in Rattleboro without hearing about the Rattlebones Trail, and Flair was scarcely a stranger. Every summer she’d spent here had been punctuated by stumbling into macabre scenes in Nana’s neighbors’ garages and sheds in preparation for the event, an elaborate outdoor haunted attraction that had been a tradition for over a hundred years and had become famous not just in the Midwest but across the country. The trail, run by the League of Kansas Craftswomen, was legendary for its artistry and its scariness and for being something just a little bit more than what even the average horror fan was going for.

A few actors and performers had appeared as guests years ago, and a famous director had once taken it over, but for as long as Flair had known it, the trail had been masterminded entirely by Loretta, long the head of the league, micromanaged by Renee, and “haunted,” in the town’s parlance, by the same families again and again. Tickets, which sold out fully a year in advance, were distributed through a wildly complicated, untransferable system, and newcomers to town waited years to be initiated into the preparation.

“Of course,” Flair said.

“Then you’ll know what it means to become a part of it.”

Flair stopped short, then quickly resumed adding foam to Loretta’s drink, trying to hide her surprised dismay. She’d known she couldn’t avoid the town’s festival, with its crowds of costumed families. That was going to be bad enough. But the trail took place in an unusually thick wood just on the outskirts of Rattleboro, and given the competition to participate, Flair had expected the trail itself to be easy to avoid.

This was a hard no, and Flair was about to say so, delicately, when she heard a sharp rap on the door—the back door, which opened onto the alley that ran behind every building on this side of the street.

Nobody Flair wanted to see came to the back door without letting Flair know they were here first. Loretta lifted her chin in the direction of the noise as the rap came again. “I can wait if you need to get it.”

“No, that’s okay.” Flair didn’t pause as she added a drizzle of chocolate over the drink. “Probably just a delivery.” It wasn’t, and she knew it. She wasn’t expecting anything, and she could feel the urgency of the knock from here.

The knocking continued. Flair forced herself to move calmly as she placed Loretta’s drink in front of her, the coffee beautifully serene in its white mug on an accompanying plate, tiny complimentary madeleine beside it. As much as she wanted to ignore the interruption, whoever it was, wasn’t going away. “I’ll just go take care of it.”

She made her way through the swinging door into the kitchen quickly, intent upon putting a stop to this now. Teabag, the toy poodle who’d been the first thing Flair inherited from her grandmother, was up and staring at the door.

Flair yanked it open to a woman in a long coat, hood pulled up, hand poised to knock again. She peered around Flair.

“Where’s Marie?”

If Halloween had arrived at the front door, its pagan sibling Samhain would come in through the back.

2

FLAIR SHOOK HER head, glancing over her shoulder to make sure the kitchen door had swung shut. “Not here.”

“But I need her,” the woman at the door said, stepping forward as if to charge past Flair. “And I’m out of tea.”

Most people knew Marie was gone by now. Most people had already been convinced that coming to her granddaughter instead wasn’t going to do them any good.

But Halloween had nearly arrived, bringing strangers to Rattleboro with it. For once, Flair wished that there had been more than the most minimal press coverage of Nana’s accident. But her grandmother’s fame was not of that kind, and this visitor was not Flair’s first and wouldn’t be her last.

“I’m sorry,” Flair said, blocking the entrance. “Ms. Hardwicke died last year.”

The woman stopped looking into the shop and stared at Flair instead. Marie had been small and quick, with long braids and blue eyes that had grown no less intense with the passage of time. Flair, with the same small stature, blue eyes, pointy chin, and pale cheeks, was obviously her kin, even though the wavy hair that fought to escape tight braids was blond rather than silver.

“Then you have to help me,” the woman said, her voice rising as she reached for Flair’s arm. Flair slid away with a practiced move, avoiding contact. Need surrounded her visitor, looking for a point of entry that Flair refused to give. Teabag barked once, a sharp yap of reproval, although whether for Flair or her unwelcome guest, Flair had no idea.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” she said, keeping her gaze firmly on the edge of the door between them, a metal door, red paint peeling. “We don’t sell loose tea. Just coffee. And pastries.” No tea except brewed, served only in bags. No candles, no tinctures, nothing to suggest Flair could, would, or might ever offer the services Nana had specialized in.

“Flair?” Loretta’s voice, from the shop, and the click of her boot heels. “Is everything all right back there?”

Flair tried to shut the door, but the woman put out a surprisingly strong hand and bent just enough to force Flair to catch her eyes.

“But you are Marie,” she said. “Or you could be. I can feel it. Can’t you—I don’t need the tea. I just need to know what I should do.”

Flair heard the kitchen door open behind her. With a great summoning of her own will, Flair refused to see or feel anything in the gaze that so insistently met hers. She kept her voice carefully even, neutral. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve made a mistake.”

Teabag brushed against her ankle and barked, startling the woman. Flair used the moment to begin pushing the door shut, but she still caught the woman’s parting words.

“I haven’t,” she insisted. “Maybe you have.”

Flair slammed the door with more force than she had intended. The walls around it quivered in sympathy, and to Flair’s dismay, a crack appeared in the paint at the corner of the doorjamb, the whitewash splitting to reveal the old wood underneath as Flair turned to smile at Loretta, who was peering into the kitchen.

“Everyone misses Marie,” Flair tried to say brightly, but she heard a crack in her own voice to match the one in the paint.

“I have missed Marie for a long time,” Loretta said. She stood for a moment, her eyes on the closed door. Flair held her breath, searching Loretta’s face for any sign that she’d been aware of the second and probably more lucrative business her grandmother had run out of the shop. Thankfully she found none. Loretta couldn’t have heard much from the other room. Maybe she wouldn’t ask.

She didn’t. Instead, she gestured for Flair to return to the front room, continuing their earlier conversation as though there had been no interruption. Teabag trotted after them.

“We do one stop on the trail that provides a ‘treat’ to give travelers a little breather. I’ve chosen you to provide the treats.”

Loretta resumed her seat and took a sip of her drink. Flair hesitated as she took the other chair, looking for the most politic way to refuse. She had the faintest memories of standing behind a steaming cauldron while her grandmother ladled something into cups, delighted with the black lace and tulle that made up her costume, her hair hidden beneath one of Nana’s glittering scarves. She remembered an evening that stretched on and on, people dancing, the night sky seeming to lower itself to meet them, a sense of anticipation satisfied that she had never experienced before or since.

But her grandmother had let go of whatever role she once played in the trail long ago, and Flair’s single experience as a trail “traveler” was one she tried to forget. When she’d made the decision to return to Rattleboro, the trail—and all the Halloween madness that went along with it—was the one thing she hadn’t looked forward to.

In the end, Flair hadn’t had any choice other than to come back. This, though—“I can’t,” she began. Loretta didn’t let her finish.

“This is your heritage,” she said firmly. “There have been Hardwickes in the woods on Halloween for generations. Your grandmother was stubborn; your mother—” She waved a hand around, seeming to indicate that she, like everyone else, found it difficult to describe Flair’s mother, and left it at that, instead looking intensely at Flair. “I know it’s been hard to establish yourself here. Trust me that that will change, and this is how.”

In her head, Flair disagreed. If anything, this would make people resent her more; it would be horning in where she wasn’t wanted—

“I want you,” Loretta said. “And when people see that, they will change their minds, and quickly. Your grandmother was once a respected part of this institution. Not just respected. Beloved. When people see that you are Marie’s granddaughter in every way, they’ll change their tunes. Give it a chance.”

Marie’s granddaughter.

Flair would prefer to be just Flair, but “Marie’s granddaughter” was surely preferable to being “Cynthia’s girl,” a turn of phrase she’d caught being whispered behind her back over and over again whenever she returned here as a child. Being her mother’s daughter had meant a hundred things that Flair had purposefully left behind, even when it meant abandoning her grandmother’s teachings as well.

Flair avoided looking toward the back door, pushed aside intrusive thoughts of cards spread across what was now her worktable. She should have gotten rid of it, even if she couldn’t afford to replace it.

But Loretta’s Halloween happened in the street, not the alley. These revelers would dance in the square, pretend to scare themselves in the woods, savor their brush with darkness, and return the next day to their shops and offices without trying to impose any deeper meaning on what they’d seen. All Loretta was asking Flair to do was help create that illusion, not enter into it. She bit back her objections and focused on Loretta’s words.

“Halloween is Rattleboro’s biggest source of revenue and one of the reasons this town hasn’t suffered the same decline as some of our neighbors. This year, with the black moon, will be bigger than ever. We’re proud of our celebration, and you need to show that you are, too. This is your chance to prove yourself.”

Loretta removed the sunglasses that held back her silver bob and shook them at Flair before donning them. “And”—her gaze included both sympathy and challenge—“it really isn’t optional.”

She took a folded paper from the handbag she’d set at her feet—a Birkin, Flair realized, incredulous—and handed it to Flair. “These are the details. You’ll join us tomorrow morning with a sample of what you can do. Make it spectacular. Show everyone that you belong here, because you do. Marie knew it. I know it. I need you to know it, too.”

She bent to pick up her bag, and Flair glimpsed its contents: keys, a lipstick, wallet—and a deck of tarot cards.

Flair stilled, her gaze caught. She glanced quickly up at Loretta and saw nothing in the other woman’s face but the calm expectation that Flair would accede to her plans as everyone always did. Flair looked back at the bag and saw that she’d been mistaken.

It was a deck of playing cards, nothing more.

The transformation—or the mistake, because of course that had been nothing but Flair’s mistake—was almost more disturbing than the idea that Loretta Oakes, Halloween queen, might also carry around an ordinary Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck.

Anyone might have one of those. But if Flair began seeing that deck where it wasn’t, she might begin to see others. And while the harlequin-like images in muted colors that Pixie Smith had created all those years ago were one thing, the deck that was most familiar to Flair, painted by her ancestor and far more vivid, was 100 percent not welcome here. Flair pushed aside the momentary intrusion of those images, brimming with an intensity that—according to Flair’s mother—had been infused with all the magic of generations of witches and passed forward to Flair’s mother for safekeeping.

A claim that, ironically, proved to Flair her mother must be lying. No one, witch or otherwise, would have handed over anything important to Cynthia Hardwicke for safekeeping.

Flair’s mother had never kept anything safe in her life.

Flair looked up at Loretta. Playing cards, lipstick, wallet—ordinary things in an ordinary bag, and an ordinary request, really. Halloween was a thing people did, and Loretta was right—people all over the world had heard of Rattleboro and the Rattlebones Trail. Being part of it wouldn’t be falling back into her mother’s world. It would be proving that she had really and truly left it behind.

Plus, if there was anything Flair could do, it was spectacular baking. “Okay,” she said, then regretted the informal word. “I mean, yes. Yes. I’ll do it.”

“Wonderful. We’ll see you at the meeting.” Loretta got up and swirled her way to the door as Flair watched, already running through options in her mind. It had been a long time since she’d been given an assignment like this, and ideas spun through her head like the leaves on the sidewalk as Loretta opened the door and offered one final piece of advice over her shoulder.

“I’m expecting magic,” she said, and before she could register the look on Flair’s face, she was gone.

Flair stared after her.

It was just an expression. Spectacular she could do. Magic, no.

Loretta’s chair was out of place. Flair rose to adjust it, then went to each of the other chairs and tables, checking unnecessarily to make sure they were still where they belonged. She unfolded the sheet of paper Loretta had given her and forced herself to consider the requirements it listed—handheld, no utensils, one per serving, a delight to the eye, the palate, and the spirit.

That wasn’t asking much.

Her own spirit rose to the challenge, and to the faith that lay behind it. She could do this. She could give Rattleboro’s Halloween visitors something worth remembering, even amid the mayhem that was the Rattlebones Trail. And maybe if she did, Rattleboro would be forced to open up and let her in.

But Flair’s momentary optimism dissipated as she looked at the empty shop. She just didn’t get it. Even now, as she looked out the bakery’s window, she could see people passing by without even glancing at Buttersweet, carrying to-go cups full of the weak brew available from the Keurig in Renee’s bookshop. The only thing that stuff had going for it was the price—a dollar donation to the coffee-and-cats fund.

Flair had even checked in with Renee about the “competition” her bakery would offer said Keurig. Renee had barely looked up from the box of books she was emptying. I don’t care, she’d said. Do what you want. She’d lifted a youngish cat out of the box and then watched, without even a trace of amusement on her face, as the cat jumped back in. Coffee’s not a moneymaker.

Flair remembered her grandmother and a much younger Renee sweeping away a spread of traditional tarot cards as Flair came in through the back door of the tea shop. Renee’s tendency to dismiss Flair even when she was in the room had always been irritating.

Renee had never liked her, and Flair in her turn had resented Renee for her part in those late-night readings—the only ones Marie didn’t permit her to join. Until Flair became a teenager and decided to pity Renee instead, for never leaving Rattleboro, for the rigid and unchanging wardrobe of black turtlenecks and jeans that had turned out to actually just be ahead of their time, her apparent lack of friends, and of course her interest in the cards themselves, which Flair, so much wiser, had chosen to set aside.

But now here they were, and it was Renee who was at the center of everything in Rattleboro, who didn’t just run the town’s bookstore and the Halloween festival, but—at her mother’s behest—essentially controlled the whole town. Loretta might hold the gavel at city council meetings and the purse strings of the League of Kansas Craftswomen, but it was Renee who did all the work. It was Renee who belonged.

Flair went to the door and stood holding it open, looking out at a street that was well populated with visitors even on a Monday. Teabag trotted up beside her and began dancing around on her hind legs, a request to be held that Flair granted.

She snuggled the little dog close as she looked out at the bright autumn leaves of the trees that lined the row of shops, galleries, and small restaurants that made up the core of Rattleboro, all transformed by Renee’s iron hand into a Martha-Stewart-meets-Hogwarts display that everyone except Flair seemed to love. Buttersweet Bakery should fit right in, both with and without the loathsome holiday bling. Awful as he was, at least Jack and his luridly depicted slice of pie were on theme. Flair tried, and failed, to imagine Renee with a paintbrush, carefully shading the pie’s latticed crust. Behind Jack, the window boxes were sprawling, blooming riots of yellow and orange interspersed with black feathers and dried seedpods to really pile on that Halloween motif.

Huge vines, the flowers like gulping yellow mouths, some open, some closed, climbed up a trellis and over the door and hung down to the sidewalk as well, meeting the mums and marigolds that had been planted in the beds closer to the building. Maybe she should cut the vines. They were a little daunting, and if they got any bigger—could they get bigger? They were already gigantic—they’d block the light from the windows.

But the thought of attacking them with scissors was daunting as well. She’d consult Josie, whose gardening prowess far exceeded Flair’s.

Even Flair’s smiling presence in the doorway didn’t encourage anyone to consider coming in. Maybe she was the one who was off-putting. Flair returned to the empty shop and opened her laptop, meaning to brainstorm ideas for her trail treats and saw instead her spreadsheets. She opened a new document to cover them, quickly tapping in ideas, but the unwelcome truths they contained bled through her notes and her thoughts.

She massaged her hands, pressing the tips together to stretch them out and release the tension. If she didn’t get some customers in here soon, she’d be icing cakes for Walmart. Loretta was right—doing the Rattlebones Trail would help her finally find her footing here.

Flair spun away from the computer and paced the shop instead, unnecessarily lining up flatware so that all the tines and bowls were even and straightening sugar, sweeteners, and straws, contemplating petit fours and tarts before finally settling in her mind on iced sugar cookies. Unlike most, Flair’s cookies were both beautiful and delicious, sought after as party favors and a moneymaker for Flair when things got tight. She lacked shaped cutters for this particular holiday, but rectangles were easier and more efficient anyway. She’d ice them to look like retro Halloween cards; they’d be beautiful and no one would ever know how easy it actually was to create the dramatic swirled effects people loved.

Two hours later, with the cookies baked and cooling and the icings made, Flair found herself contemplating the sketches she’d made with distaste. The Victoriana-style beaming pumpkins, black cats, and green-faced witches were so smarmy, so jolly and naive. She would hate re-creating them again and again, even if it were just for a week.

What could she make that she wouldn’t loathe?

Flair couldn’t think of a thing.

Outside, it had begun to rain, driving torrents accompanied by thunder and wind. She needed to get started if these were going to be dry before tomorrow’s meeting, needed to get home to Lucie, who would not like being alone in a storm. Teabag, disturbed by the pounding of raindrops on the tin awning over the back door, huddled under her feet as she sat in front of her worktable, glazed blank cookies and piping bag in hand, and thought about her grandmother, beside her in the shop, packing dried tea leaves, spices, herbs, and flowers into metal tins, and then in the kitchen back at the house, helping her to frost wonky black cats and jack-o’-lanterns that Flair’s grandmother said only a mother could love.

That younger version of Flair had thought of her own mother, who never so much as got out of the car in Rattleboro, and whether her grandmother loved her. She’d been afraid to ask, but Marie answered anyway, as she often did. Hush. Of course I love your mom. More nights, mostly summer nights, brewing tea, talking, the lights flickering off and on as Flair and her grandmother lifted and lowered their hands and Marie clapping happily when Flair caught on, a memory that Flair shut off instantly.

The lights in the shop flickered, too, echoing her memories. Her head nodded over the table, the result of not enough sleep and far too much of everything else, and when she tried to force her eyes open, she saw, instead of her tidy white walls, the cluttered wood of Marie’s tea shop, jars on every shelf, dried flowers hanging from every beam, a woodstove behind the table where Nana held the hands of the women who came in and whispered to them, then spread the cards before them.

But it wasn’t Nana’s shop anymore. Flair knew it in the way you know things in dreams and because she saw her window boxes, but then she saw her grandmother there, too, tearing at the yellow clematis that was growing faster than she could hold it back, shutting Flair in and her grandmother out until finally Nana ripped it all away.

And then her grandmother was laying out the cards, but their faces kept shifting until it was not one of Marie’s many decks but the deck, the family deck, in front of Flair, with the skeletal baby bird fool, the raven of strength, the tree house tower. A voice pressed her to read the cards, and she almost felt as if she could, but then it was her mother’s voice, asking her what she saw, and then it wasn’t, it was some other voice, and always the Ferris wheel of fortune turning, turning, and at its center the symbol on the back of every card, the eye within the triangle, blinking furiously at Flair and demanding her attention. Flair shook her head just as furiously because she did not want to give that eye her attention, not when there were so many other things to do, and she didn’t need the eye and it didn’t need her, and it needed to go away, she’d made it go away a long time ago—

And then she was really shaking her head because she was sitting at her worktable, and honestly, there was so much to be done and she was better than this—she did not doze off in her shop when the sign was turned to Welcome, like some apprentice just waiting to be fired so they could go into hotel management. She tightened her grip on the pastry bag and turned her attention to the cookie in front of her.

But it had already been iced. That one, and all the rest. Every cookie she could see drying on every surface of the kitchen, on every set of stacking racks, every counter and every windowsill, had been decorated to perfection with Flair’s distinctively precise piping work and lettering lightly dusted with black-and-gold edible glitter. Images she recognized instantly, horrified. The Fool. The Hierophant. The Hanged Man. Death.

These were not the designs she’d planned earlier. These were images she knew, had always known, down to their tiniest detail and right down to her very bones.

She’d stolen the originals of these tarot cards almost thirty years ago and hidden them, with good reason. She didn’t want them back.

3

FLAIR STARED AROUND her, frightened by what she’d done. At the sound of the bells on the door jingling, she leapt up and ran into the front of the shop, tearing off her apron and flinging it on the floor behind the swinging kitchen door, half expecting to see more cookies on every surface, but the café was as tidy as she’d left it. Teabag, who’d run after her, now stood waiting for her walk, perfectly composed, as though she’d never cowered from a storm at Flair’s feet. Josie stood in the doorway, bemused.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said. Flair ignored her, grabbing her jacket and keys from their hooks behind the counter and practically pushing her friend back out onto the sidewalk, clucking at Teabag to follow and grateful that the rain had stopped. As she slammed the door and locked it, she realized that Josie was looking at her oddly. “What’s wrong?” Josie asked.

“Nothing.” The only ghost Flair had seen was of her own past.

If Flair even could explain what had just happened, she wasn’t sure she would, wasn’t even sure, now that she was outside, if it had happened at all. If she went back in the kitchen, would she see nothing but bare cookies and hastily strewn bags of unused icing?

She hesitated, hand on the door, and saw the icing caked under her fingernails. She knew the truth. She’d decorated every single cookie as her family’s tarot cards, a deck she hadn’t looked at in years and wasn’t going to look at now, no matter how hard it seemed to be knocking on the inside of her own head.

There was no need to worry like this, she told herself. Of course she’d think of that deck when she was back in Rattleboro. When she was stressed. When she was at a decision point. That was what she’d been trained to do.

But she didn’t have to listen. Flair decided then and there: she’d be damned if she was going to Loretta’s meeting, or anywhere near Halloween. The cookies she could dispose of in the morning, a failed experiment that would cost nothing more than the price of the ingredients and her time. These things happened.

Josie was waiting for Flair to expand on her response. She shook off all thoughts of Chariots or Temperance.

“You know better than to joke about ghosts here,” Flair said, gesturing around her. In the weird post-storm light of a sunset under dark clouds, the cornices and parapets of Rattleboro’s turn-of-the-century main street would have looked a little ominous even without their ghoulish embellishments. “Someone will just think they missed a spot.”

“Impossible,” Josie said, hooking an arm through Flair’s. “There is not one single square inch of this town that isn’t fully on theme and then some. Even the final holdout here.” She surveyed Flair’s transformed business. “Your day,” Josie demanded. “How was it?”

“Bad, very bad, and then worse,” Flair replied. She was gripping her keys so tightly that the teeth had bitten into her palm. She shoved them in her pocket.

“Customers?”

“One. If you count Loretta. Maybe it’s too Halloween-y. Look what Renee added today.” She pointed to Jack Skellington, and Josie burst out laughing.

“He’s maybe a bit much, yeah. But you know that’s not it. That’s what people are here for. My customers prefer the alley, though. You know, part of the mystique.”

The alley. Yet another thing Flair wasn’t going to think about. “Yes, because tattoos are so rebellious. Only, like, every third person you see has one.”

“Except you.” Josie had her own designs all up and down her legs and left arm, while her right arm, for obvious reasons, was largely bare. Flair could remember when her friend had inked her very first one, a series of shooting stars, with a needle she’d bought from a shop in this same alley, and how angry Josie’s mother had been when she found out what Josie had done. Josie had followed her mother, who was a nurse, into medicine, training as an EMT, but the art never let her go. Now appointments at her own shop, just a few doors down, booked out months in advance, especially this time of year.

“As soon as I think of anything I want tattooed on me forever, you’ll be the first to know.” Flair was walking quickly, glad to put distance between her and the bakery. The awnings on the newer fifties-style buildings of the next block had been replaced by seasonal ones in an orange-and-black scheme. Banners advertising The Darkest Night of the Year hung from every light post. A few businesses had even replaced their signs and names with Halloween versions, but Flair knew that behind the Scare Salon lay Posh, where Lucie had had her hair trimmed in August, while Terror Wreck-ords hid Vivi’s Vinyl. The boba shop had simply gone all in, named itself Bubble, Bubble and kept up a mad witch-chemist display year-round.

“That’s part of my job, you know. Helping people figure out what they need and where it should go. Want to know what you should get?”

“I do not.” Flair was afraid of needles, and permanence, and Josie’s too-probing insights. She changed the subject, pointing at one of the banners. “I keep meaning to ask. What is this black-moon, darkest-night-of-the-year stuff? Just this year’s slogan?”

“Hardly. We’re leaning in on this year’s astronomical oddity. You know what a blue moon is? Second full moon in a month?”

“No, but now I do.”

“A black moon is the opposite.” Josie pointed to the sky, where a fat, C-shaped crescent moon was just visible under the clouds in the fading daylight. “The moon is waning now. Getting smaller. There’s one day in every cycle when there’s basically no moon visible. When that happens twice in a month, it’s a black moon. Thus, the darkest night of the year.”

“But not really. Because that’s in December.”

“That’s longest. Fine, so technically no night is darker, at least moon-wise. It’s poetic license. If you were into this sort of thing, you’d know it was a big deal.” But they both knew that Flair was not, and they knew why.

At least Josie would understand Flair’s decision. “Loretta wanted me to bake the treats. For Rattlebones. But I’m not going to.”

Josie stopped, forcing Flair to stop as well. “Get out. Of course you’re going to. Nothing could possibly be better for business. You tell people you’re part of the trail, and they’ll line up.”

Flair shook her head hard enough to make her braids bounce. “No, no, and no.” She should have said no from the beginning.

“I know you hate Halloween. Whatever. But you do not hate customers, and you do not hate the lovely, lovely money they bring with them. Seriously. I charge three times as much this time of year. You’re going to have to suck it up, buttercup.”

“Not like that. There has to be another way.” Flair looked back at Buttersweet. “The shop just isn’t pulling people in for some reason.

Fine—it’s not Jack. Maybe people don’t like the plants, or the window boxes. Too Little Shop of Horrors. I can’t go in or out without feeling like those yellow things are going to eat me.”

She was joking, but Josie turned to stare up the street, where the Buttersweet Bakery storefront was still visible. Her eyes widened slightly. “Of course,” she said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that.”

Flair waited for her to say more, but instead Josie tugged at Flair’s arm and they started walking again. “I can’t deal with it now. But we’ll tear those down tomorrow. You’ll do the trail. It will get better,” she said. “You’ll see.”

Flair didn’t bother to argue—she wasn’t doing the trail, although she wasn’t averse to getting rid of those creepy vines. She’d have to think of something else to improve business.

The town’s Halloween vibe faded slightly as they turned the corner onto more residential streets, although many homes were equally decorated or in process. Another corner, and they could see Josie’s Victorian, where an elaborate trick-or-treat haven filled the porch and overturned toys took the edge off of a graveyard of politically themed tombstones. Flair’s house lay just beyond it, nongrass plants all cut back for winter—Josie said Flair had done it wrong—and the porch free of furniture or decoration except for the hanging bench. Flair had sanded and repainted that porch herself, and she’d find a way to do the whole house next summer if she couldn’t find someone to do it for her.

Josie’s door flew open. Travis and Declan burst out, one demanding Popsicles, the other brandishing art made in preschool. Her mother, who took care of the boys after school when Josie’s partner was away on a tour of duty, waved from Josie’s porch. Flair had about half a second to envy the enthusiastic greeting before her own door slammed into the wall. Lucie stalked out and struck a dramatic pose, no doubt inspired by the unexpectedly larger audience.

“I am never going back to that school,” she said loudly. “Ever.”

Teabag barked, in greeting or possibly agreement. Internally, Flair sighed. They’d had this conversation. Many times. In her first weeks in her new school, Lucie had managed to alienate more than one teacher, and probably most of her fellow students, with her descriptions of how much better school was in St. Louis, how far behind Rattleboro was in math and science, how she had already read Romeo and Juliet (in second grade) and, obviously, Great Expectations (duh, that was last year).

Lucie put her hands on her hips and glared at Flair, waiting for a response.

“What happened?” Flair tried to infuse some sympathy into her voice. Lucie had seemed at least relatively resigned to her fate that afternoon. This had to be some small eighth-grade drama. As much as she’d envied the Rattleboro schoolkids when she was younger, dreaming of what it would be like to live here full-time, Flair could concede that showing up in the final year of middle school might be a little tough.

“How big a baby do you have to be to have an actual Halloween birthday party? And put actual invitations in people’s mailboxes? Who even does that?”

Flair had a pretty good guess at who did that. “I take it you didn’t get one.”

“I wouldn’t go anyway. I hate Annabel Anderson. She’s a bitch.”

Language, Flair thought but didn’t say. Teabag pranced up the porch steps and let out a small, demanding bark. Lucie bent down to scoop the dog up and then plunked herself down on the bench.

“Teabag’s offended,” Flair said, climbing the stairs. “She can’t believe you’d compare her to Annabel.”

Lucie’s only response was to bury her face in the little dog’s curls.

Not the time for joking, then. “It takes time to get used to a new place.” Flair had been hopeful things would get easier for Lucie, but the truth was, after all her own moves, she knew it was unlikely.

“I don’t need to get used to it,” Lucie said. “I talked to Dad today. He’ll come get me for Halloween—he said he would. He says Carly is gone and he has to work, but I’m old enough to trick-or-treat by myself. Unless you want to come, too.” She looked at Flair, a challenge in her eyes.

Unable to keep her thoughts from showing on her face, Flair went to stand behind Lucie, twirling her fingers in her daughter’s red hair, which was nearly as curly as Teabag’s. She’d been counting on David staying uninterested. He’d been sending casual texts to Lucie telling her to keep her chin up, stick with it—the kinds of things you said when you didn’t want to have a real conversation or actually tell your kid you had no intention of bringing her home to live with you, or explain your new girlfriend, Carly, who had been Lucie’s nanny. “Gone” meant that Carly had been discarded, like all of David’s flings, with the predictable result that David wanted Flair back. Flair knew David well enough to know that his supposed willingness to come get Lucie had nothing to do with Lucie and everything to do with Flair.

But Flair was finally done. Lucie hadn’t known what it meant when she found Carly’s sweatshirt under Flair and David’s bed. And maybe Flair wouldn’t have thought anything of it if she hadn’t recognized the look on her husband’s face when Lucie brandished the sweatshirt cheerfully, saying how glad Carly would be that she’d found it.

Josie, who knew the whole story, shooed the boys back into her house but paused herself, leaning on the railing at the bottom of the steps. “You won’t want to miss Halloween here,” she said. “Parties are nothing. Your mom’s doing the Rattlebones Trail.”

Flair, from behind Lucie, had begun shaking her head frantically the moment she realized what Josie was going to say. Lucie looked up instantly. “What?”

Josie sounded smug. “Yep,” she said. “The trail itself. Loretta Oakes asked her to do treats. Tell Annabel to put that in her pipe and smoke it.”

Lucie jumped up, dumping an annoyed Teabag to the porch. “Seriously? Everyone wants to do that. Can I help?”

Flair could have slugged her friend. “I’m not doing it,” she said.

“Mom.” Lucie dragged out the single syllable in an elaborate moan of frustration. “You have to.”

Flair glanced at Josie and saw a knowing smile on her face. She’d backed Flair into a corner, and she wasn’t going to help her get out.

“Do we get costumes? What do we do?”

“I don’t even know,” Flair said weakly. “I still have to bake something.” Something different. She’d have to clean up everything she’d done, pull herself together, and bake something else, anything else. The thought exhausted her. “She might change her mind.”

“She won’t!” Lucie ran into the house, the screen door banging behind her.

“I might change my mind,” Flair said to the closed door.

“I already changed it for you,” Josie replied cheerfully. “Halloween, here you come.”

“I’m not doing it,” Flair said.

But if it meant keeping Lucie happy, she knew she would.

4

Tuesday, October 27

THEY’RE JUST COOKIES.

Flair repeated it over and over like a mantra as she drove to Loretta’s house, a short trip as the crow flies made longer by the need to drive out to the edge of town, past the riverside woods where the trail would take place, and around two corners of a huge cornfield before doubling back to the driveway of what had once been a simple farmhouse but had long since grown enough guest wings and outbuildings and landscaping to turn it into something far more glamourous.

Cookies. Butter and sugar and flour and salt.

The tarot card cookies were beautiful, though, and when she went back to the shop after dinner, leaving behind an excited Lucie looking up everything she could find out about the Rattlebones Trail, Flair couldn’t bear to start all over. Cookies were cookies. If the decorating process had been . . . strange, that was on her. She needed to change the atmosphere of the bakery. Add music, maybe. More lighting. And get more sleep.

She wouldn’t let it happen again. Meanwhile, she had cookies, and she had a mission. If the Rattlebones Trail was what it took to keep Lucie happily in Rattleboro, Flair would make it happen.