AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“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?”
