Page 23 of Fresh Old Bounties

SEVEN

Six years earlier.

I studied the book on top of the dining room table. It was one of those hardcover tomes wrapped in fabric instead of a paper dust jacket. Beautiful embroidered flowers on the pastel green fabric made me think of the kind of artisanal journals you found in farmers’ market stalls and Etsy.

My mom sniffed into a paper tissue. “It was Grandma Oakes’s journal. She wanted you to have it at seventeen. She also wrote you a letter. In case.”

“Mom?”

Sniff. “Yes?”

“I’m twenty.”

She waved that aside. “I hope you’ll take good care of it, Hope. I know how much you loved your grandma.”

A carousel of memories ran in my head—laughing in Grandma’s garden, playing checkers together, eating grilled ham and cheese sandwiches at her kitchen table. Her light gray tombstone, looking strangely cheery in the cemetery among the flower bouquets. As an eight-year-old, it hadn’t completely dawned on me at the time that I would never see Grandma again.

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I took the book and the letter up to my room, ready to go down memory lane.

Instead, a whole new world had been revealed, and I’d called the number at the bottom of Grandma’s letter. The Council’s number.

Present.

“I don’t understand,” I said into the phone.

“Think about it. I’m willing to pay top price. I’ll be in contact.”

The line went dead, and I stared at the receiver, utterly speechless. Why would anyone want to buy Grandma’s spellbook? It was a family treasure for sure, but beyond my love for it, there was nothing special about it. Certainly nothing worth paying top price for.

Dazed, I tried to pay attention to Veva as she made suggestions for cross-promotion ideas between our shops.

Aware that my body might be present but my mind was somewhere else, the woman agreed to come by again in a couple of days and see if Hope had returned to planet Earth.

“What is it?” Dru asked the moment Veva was gone. “Who was that on the phone?”

My mouth opened and closed, then opened again. “It was whoever sent that note about the spellbook. They want to buy it.”

“Bagley’s?”

“Grandma’s.”

“Your grandma’s?” Dru sounded skeptical, and I couldn’t blame her. “Why? Was she a famous witch?”

“No. She was a nobody. She didn’t even have a witch shop.”

“Why would anyone want her spellbook?”

Why, indeed. Hearing someone else voice the question finally kicked my brain into gear. There was no reason anyone would want Grandma’s spellbook, except for one.

“Someone’s trying to mess with me.”

Outrage filled me at the idea. How dare they?

Posting bad reviews, complaints, and leaving a ghost in my bathtub was one thing, but involving Grandma?

No.

Grandma was off limits.

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