Page 57 of The HalloQueen

With a frown, and partly because I missed the smells of his cooking in my kitchen, I decided to pull out the cheesecloth bag that my mom had bought from the farmer’s market earlier that summer. The bag was full of herb bundles and dried fruit rinds and claimed to be a “cleansing simmer pot” brew. The woo-woo lady at the stand had said that doing these simmer pots were another way to cleanse the house without doing a smudging, and my mom jokingly suggested doing it before I moved into my historic row house to get rid of any spirits. I’d just rolled my eyes at the time, allowing her to support the local woman with no intention of it ever resurfacing from the depth of my spice cupboard, but now decided that I’d cleanse the space from top to bottom to rescind whatever welcome that vampy asshole thought he had to my space. He’d have to grovel - outright beg me to let him back in once he realized what an asshole move that last night had been. I smirked at the idea of him slamming into an invisible barrier when he tried to break in next, smashing his face into it like the funny pictures online where people captured their cats on glass tables from underneath.

I read the card tied to the bag and filled my slow cooker with water. The directions said to submerge the bag while thinking about the “brewing intention” or what you want to cleanse from negative spirits, so I grabbed a wooden spoon and held that thing under the water like I was drowning it, the whole time thinking about Thomas and removing the invitation, and didn’t remove the spoon until every little air bubble had surfaced and popped. I turned the machine on fully knowing that I was supposed to do it on the stove, but I wanted this space cleansed to death and I wasn’t about to go to work with a simmer pot going. With the help of the slow cooker, it could go all day long and I, hopefully, would come home to a delicious-smelling and vampire-free home.

Within fifteen minutes I was out the door dressed in my favorite black flared jeans, a hair metal cropped tee, and space buns atop my head. When I locked up behind me, I could still feel an unsettling silence on my street as I had the night before, like the world had covered me in a cloche, muffling the neighborhood around me. It was past eight, but it seemed that no one else was rushing off to work. Still finding the quiet creepy, I grabbed my phone and called my Mama while hoping that that simmer pot could solve my life’s problems and that I’d magically appear in my life from a week ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t think one could get refunds on witchcraft, and I didn’t brew the damn thing with the intention of time travel.

“Hello?”She answered, her aging voice cracking a bit from a lack of diaphragm support.

“Hey, Mama. Just checking in - how are you and Mom?”

“Just fine love. The kegger ended an hour ago once the strippers left, and we were just about to head to bed to sleep off the ecstasy.”

I laughed, “Mama I don’t think people who use ecstasy actually call it that. It’d be like a pothead declaring that they were going to go smoke a marijuana plant.”

“Well…how was I supposed to know that?”

I smirked and unlocked my car, climbing in and connecting the call to Bluetooth. “I know, not everyone was lucky enough to take fifth-grade drug education. What have you guys been up to? Do you need anything?”

“A visit would be nice.”

Scoffing, I pulled away from the curb, “how’d we go from you saying goodnight to the strippers to your horrible daughter never visiting?”

She huffed on the other end of the line,“Did you see that moon last night? It was insanely bright. Mom damn near couldn’t sleep it was shining so brightly into our room.”

“Oh, it was a full moon? That would explain it then.”

“Explain what, darling?”

“Everyone had a stick up their ass yesterday. And, when I was downtown, there was a freaking raven flying overhead. Like a real one - not a crow that looked like a raven, but like a giant black bird.” He also was a vampire who pissed me off yesterday, but that was neither here nor there.

“That’s not unusual, it’s Autumn, he was probably just looking for a new nest for his wife. Did you know that ravens mate for life? Smart birds.”

“Oh, so they’re super clingy in relationships? What a shocker.”

“What in the devil are you talking about, Annabel?”

“Eh, nothing, don’t worry about it. Just an observation.” I turned onto the street where my office was, “I’m just headed into work, Mama, I’m hoping to finish up the launch stuff today, maybe we can do dinner next week?”

“That would be lovely - we have plenty of things we need help harvesting in the garden and Mom mentioned canning. I’m sure she’d love your help processing all that. She worked so hard on the garden this year.”

I laughed, “Mama you know the extent of my food processing is turning the dehydrator on and drinking whatever tea you put in front of me.”

“That’s just fine. Someone has to turn the machine on. Have a wonderful day at work, I love you. Don’t let that super moon get to you.”

“You too, party animal. Love you.” I shook my head, laughing at the strange dichotomy between my mothers; Mom, being a hippie gardener who only crocheted with local alpaca fiber, and my Mama who taught literature at the college in Salem most of her life, and was happiest under one of Mom’s afghans with tea and a leather bound book. They were soft but powerful women who thrived in the life they’d made together. Despite being raised in Mom’s house with a full working garden instead of a swing set, the most I’d been able to keep alive was Tim and some succulents and the rogue house plant (which I only fostered before my moms come and rescue it to nurse it back to health), but it took well over a decade for me to not instantaneously kill any plant I brought into the house. Mama had even added a solarium to their house so Mom could continue growing things during the horrible Massachusetts winters. Plants were her thing.

I resolved to work quickly and efficiently so I could get home and get thoroughly wine drunk and watch a 90s rom-com. I just needed to survive the anxiety of the day, then I could get smashed and yell at Meg Ryan or something. That seemed like a good enough plan.

I started the morning by filming thirst traps and sneak peeks for the weekend and then piddled away the rest of the day packing up orders and tagging things while Shannon finished up the website and newsletters. We worked in relative silence most of the day, focused on getting the damn launch ready so we could try to enjoy our weekend, but I was still surprised when Shan popped her head into the room to tell me she was heading out for the night.

As a business owner, I could always find something to do. There was always cleaning or organizing, filing or accounting, something to keep me working 24 hours a day, but I was stressed. I was stressed and tired and my stupid anxiety-eating vampire hadn’t texted me all day, which shockingly, only increased my anxiety even more. It was like he was cooking his dinner by ignoring me and that didn’t sit well with me.

* * *

I spent the evening at home eating take-out curry and repeating every line from the movie to Tim with some surprisingly yummy $3 wine from the discount grocery store. One does not simply waste good wine when trying to get drunk. I’d almost forgotten that Thomas had dropped off the face of the earth when the sky had darkened and it felt like a normal evening at home. It had only been a week, there was no reason to completely forget the life I’d made for myself because I had to feed my own cat.

It wasn’t until four glasses of wine in and I was singing a closing credit power ballad into the remote that a gentle knock came from my door. I opened it with a smug grin on my face expecting a groveling vampire to be pressed against my spell bubble, only to come face to face with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life.

She was long and lean with alarmingly straight shiny platinum hair that was cut into a perfectly sharp bob. I’m pretty sure her well-defined legs were at least nine feet tall and she looked like a walking weapon, clearly owning that she was entirely capable of taking off her stilettos and ramming them through your heart. I, on the other hand, stood dumbfounded in my doorway, braless, and wearing an $8 Wal-Mart stretchy muumuu that had brought me insane amounts of joy when I discovered it had pockets. Her painted-on jeans and tight shirt highlighted the muscles of a runner, whereas my muumuu went down to my mid-calf like a sack and had a low enough neckline that I didn’t feel like it was trying to choke me, without being so low that I risked a boob escaping and trying to strangle me overnight. Honestly, it was such a great nightgown that I’d ordered four more. Muumuus were top-notch.

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