Page 3 of Witchful Thinking

“There’s Mayor Walker!”

“You know I can see her. I’m not blindfolded.”

Mayor Walker stood over by the game with the stuffed animals. The mayor, the Honorable Des’ree Walker, dressed in a fashionable floral jumper, glanced around at the crowd with a superior air as if she were a queen visiting her lowly subjects. Her eyes flickered over the festival, and a pleased look flashed upon her face.

“She hasn’t answered my email about the luncheon yet,” Callie grumbled.

“Email her later. We’re having fun.”

“It can’t wait. I’ll be right back,” Callie said. “Mayor Walker!”

Callie rushed over to the mayor without another look back. It was clear from her animated hand motions and lively discussion with the mayor that Cal wasn’t coming back. Cal was a Boss Lady with a capital B, having started her own event planning business after dropping out of college. With her planning talent, she could even make a trip to the DMV something to look forward to by throwing glitter, giving out goody bags, and handing out flavored mocktails while drivers renewed their licenses.

Lucy was filled half with dread, half with anxiousness as she glanced over at Mayor Walker and Callie. If she was here, then Marcus was probably nearby. The dread went up a notch at that thought. Marcus Walker, the town’s favorite son, was her ex and the mayor’s elder son. All she had to do was think of Marcus and he popped up in front of her. They’d always bump into each other at town events and celebrations, and he’d sweet-talk her into another conversation about the good days.

He was comforting, like her favorite breakfast tea, which she drank every morning before work. Rich. Full-bodied. Basic. There wasn’t anything wrong with Marcus, but there wasn’t anything special about them being together. She’d seen the love between her grandparents. Their souls just clicked. Her parents, Vanessa and Isaac, married thirty-seven years, just fit together like missing puzzle pieces.

She and Marcus didn’t click. She was searching for her soul mate, her personal click.

It didn’t help that Marcus’s twin brother, Lincoln, was engaged to Ursula, which meant she ran into Marcus all the time. Even though their breakup was amicable, Marcus was a typical Taurus man and didn’t give up what he wanted—a second chance with her—without a fight. It’d gotten so awkward that she’d started finding silly-ass reasons not to go out with them for dinner, drinks, or happy hour. How many more times could she tell them she was cleaning her crystals and feeding their familiar, a gray cat named Shadow? She loved amethyst, but she needed to come up with another excuse. Oh well, at least the festival was a nice distraction from Marcus and everything else. Her phone buzzed. Spoke too soon. She glanced down at the incoming email. The subject line caught her attention, and she clicked it open with her thumb.

Subject: Alumni Class Note Deadline Tomorrow!

Hello Freya Grove Gladiators!

It’s time to submit our class notes for the next editionof the In the Grove e-newsletter coming out this Sunday. Tell us what’s going on with you! New job? New relationship? Recent travels? Exciting news?

It would be wonderful to hear from fellow alumni, even if not much is going on! Keep all class notes to ten sentences or less, and include your name!

As always, please pass this message forward if you know a classmate who is not getting this information, and please make sure I have your most up-to-date contact information.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me!

Best wishes,

Quentin Jacobson

Class Secretary

PS. Mark your calendar for our reunion weekend during the last week of August. We’d love to celebrate this moment with you.

Well, that happened. All the funnel cake in the world couldn’t change how crappy she felt after reading that email. Her mind answered the questions.

New job? She taught high school history and economics for the seventh year in a row, which was coming to an end soon.

New relationship? She was single again. No follow-up questions.

Recent travels? She hadn’t left the state since Nana passed away two years ago.

Exciting news? Well, she’d inherited a hundred-year-old Victorian manor from Nana Ruth, along with a lot of spell books. That was nothing new. It happened a while ago…

She could cut, copy, and paste the same class notes from the last two years, and no one would notice. The only thing new about Lucy was the booty-enhancing boy shorts underwear she’d gotten on sale at Circe’s Closet. A dull ache grew behind her eyes. Nana had trusted Lucy to watch over the Caraway witches’ legacy. No one protected her family legacy like she could, but it gave her pause. Who in their right witchy mind could follow in Ruth Naomi Caraway’s footsteps? No one. Ruth was a once-in-a-century witch who’d made an indelible mark on the Caraway family tree.

She’d be remembered generations from now. Who’d remember Lucy?

Her stomach churned. She was no longer in the mood for carnival junk food. She’d just be another random face in the family album, her life forgotten to time. Years from now people would narrow their eyes and tilt their heads in memory and say, Oh yes, Lucy, she drank a lot of tea, bathed in honeysuckle and vanilla oil, and she loved her crystals—a lot.

Lucy toyed with the silver saint medallion on her charm bracelet, a sweet sixteen gift from Nana, while she gathered her thoughts. She racked her brain to come up with something—anything—special about her life. What was she going to talk to people about at the reunion? Her tea pantry? Her spell books? Her cat? She rubbed her temples gently with her fingers. All she could think of was she had a new tea blend—cucumber, mint, and melon—waiting to be tasted.

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