Page 29 of A Lady’s Guide to Witchcraft

“Ouch.” Briar poked her back. “Just hush a minute.”

And because Mr. Allens was not the only gossip in Haven, she reached into a jar of tin charms, the kind every child had sewn to their clothes for good luck, every lover hoping for a kiss, every old man cursing his painful joints. They came in all types: eyes to blind the evil eye, roses for love, shells for secrets whispered between friends, horses for leaping over obstacles. Also, every body part from eyeball to baby toe, mostly used for healing spells.

Briar pulled out a tiny ear and placed it down on the counter. She turned a teacup over it, around which she also drew a circle of salt. She could not risk anyone overhearing. Not a single syllable.

“Who do you suppose is trying to eavesdrop on us?” Sorcha asked. Her crow hopped up onto the windowsill to keep a close watch.

“The Keepers were looking for Petal,” Briar whispered.

“What? Whatever for?”

“They say she stole a moon charm from the London Museum of Magic.”

“Get away.”

“They’re blaming her for the shields and the locked portal.”

“Petal? Did she flirt the museum guards into puddles of useless goo? That’s not even her magic, but your sister does have a talent.”

Petal barely even bothered to flirt. It was only that people took one look at her face and became instantly stupid.

“You don’t believe them, do you?” Sorcha asked.

“Well, as it happens—” Briar broke off, groaning. Charles bloody Aster and his horrid mother were coming up the path.

Sorcha followed Briar’s gaze and groaned even louder. “Bloody hell, not those two. I wish you’d knock his teeth out, just once.”

“I can’t.”

“You absolutely can. No one would blame you.” When Briar only shook her head, Sorcha added, “I could knock his teeth out. It would be my pleasure.”

And it would be a pleasure to behold. Briar did not care if that made her bloodthirsty. But instead she could only dredge up her best shopkeeper’s smile and the very last of her patience. “Mrs. Aster, Mr. Aster. Good morning to you.”

Go away, go away, go away.

Charles, in his new hat directly from Piccadilly, and his mother, with her capelet fringed with silver tassels, even though it was far too hot for a capelet of any sort, and her perpetually pursed mouth. Her familiar stalked beside her, an elegant egret. Charles’s familiar was a toad and rarely made an appearance. It was far too common, not nearly smart enough for fashionable company. Briar thought it rather sweet—the only sweet thing about him.

Briar could not afford to have them here with Petal as she was. They were too nosy, too meddlesome. But she also could not afford to antagonize them either. Not when she had yet to pay her mother’s debts and time was running out.

“What can I get you?”

“You look tired, my dear,” Mrs. Aster said with a glance at Briar’s cane. “I do wish you’d let us help you. It’s simply too much land for two girls to manage alone. You must see that now.” Sometimes they were girls; sometimes they were sad spinsters in need of a soothing skin tonic to keep the wrinkles at bay. Pointed insults, barbed compliments. Mrs. Aster made a meal of them all.

Aster Apothecary was a favorite of the Mayfair set when they visited the island. And the Asters had an eye on the Foxglove cottage, had done for many years. They wanted Briar’s garden. Charles’s father had kept them at bay for a time, but now the only things standing in their way were the Foxglove sisters.

Who were struggling to pay their bills, truth be told.

The notoriety of the Keepers’ late visit would not help matters, not to mention Petal’s being involved. Once word was out about that, Briar might well lose her Midsummer customers, the very ones she depended on to see her through to Samhain. One never knew until it was far too late if notoriety would end in infamy or ostracism. Infamy would at least pay the bills.

And Mrs. Aster had been denied, and that she would not have. When her attempts to foist her son onto Briar in order to claim the land that way was also thwarted, her ire grew. She meant to have her way.

Briar might have told her that she only had to wait for her rent to come due.

She didn’t, of course.

But every month it was more and more difficult to pay what was owed. Tearooms and green witches were not rare, even on Lyonesse. Their mother’s love spells had been the real draw, as they discovered.

Briar forced herself to breathe calmly through her nose when one of the elms slapped a branch against the window. Behind it, the sun shone placidly on her boisterous garden, humming with honeybees, birdbaths filled with sparrows. Charles watched her with the same expression he always wore: some combination of a leer and a sneer that always set her teeth on edge.