Clearly here to rescue her from the soldiers, Mickey had a way of anticipating Ann’s needs that she’d always found a bit disconcerting. She was aware that he had a crush on her. He’d been threatening to take her on for years, telling her he had magic powers of his own that could rival hers and inviting her to check them out. She’d never taken him up on it, though she had to admit she’d been tempted a few times. Annoying as he could be, Mickey Doherty was a carelessly attractive man.
Mickey was like the old-school movie heroes he’d obviously watched and emulated. He looked like Errol Flynn, though his attempts at flirtation were more like Groucho Marx. She wondered who he really was, thought she’d heard somewhere about some dark past-but no, that was a brother maybe. She couldn’t remember. All in all, the Dohertys were an interesting family. But dark. Quite dark.
Mickey had gone into a rage when his sister died, had turned against Finch and more particularly Melville, though no one could really blame him for that one. Mickey could be a bit of a brawler. She remembered, more than once, hearing on her scanner that the police had been called to break up some kind of disturbance at Mickey’s shop.
Ann’s one vice was a serious addiction to her police scanner. She had one in the shop and one by her bedside at home. Her habit had started when she’d first become a witch. In those days there were not a lot of witches in Salem, just Ann and Laurie Cabot and a few others who had not yet come out of the proverbial broom closet. In an act of paranoid practicality, Ann had purchased her first scanner in order to make sure she had a head start out of town if Salem’s famed witch-hunting ever started up again. In reality she had nothing to worry about. Sensing an opportunity for tourist revenue that the town sorely needed, Salem had for the most part embraced its new witches. But by now she was addicted to the chatter of the scanner.
“Come on, gentlemen,” Mickey said as he rounded up the soldiers. He gestured toward his shop with his sword. “I’ve got grog.”
The soldiers picked themselves up off the benches and followed him across the wharf to his store. When the last of them had filed in, Mickey removed his three-cornered hat and bowed to Ann.
She rolled her eyes and went back inside.
The sea-chantey singers had arrived and were setting up outside Mickey’s shop. On the wharf, people walked their dogs, and someone was assembling a booth for face painting. Ann thought she’d heard that the Friendship was sailing today, but she wasn’t sure. Already there was a line waiting to tour it where it sat at the wharves. Though the Friendship did sail on occasion, she was not allowed public passengers, just crew and, rarely, some special guests. Ann had heard that they were trying to change that status, to have the ship commissioned to sail with groups of tourists aboard, but so far nothing had come of it.
If they were taking the Friendship out sailing today, they’d better do it soon, Ann thought. It was going to storm later, and it was going to be a doozy. She didn’t know how she could tell this-she hadn’t heard a forecast-but Ann always knew about a day ahead exactly what the weather was going to do and when. If she hadn’t been a witch, she could easily have been a meteorologist.
She sighed at the thought of the day that lay ahead. Her first reading was already waiting inside, a twenty-something girl who’d been to the shop for readings several times in the last few months. She hoped to marry her live-in boyfriend, but he was holding back. With so many readings to do, Ann had almost forgotten that Zee was coming. She’d called and asked if she could come by, and Ann had offered lunch, completely forgetting that today was the Fourth. She had thought about rescheduling, but she hadn’t seen Zee much since she got back, and she knew that things must be tough for the girl. Finch had never been an easy man to deal with, though Ann had always liked him. Even when Maureen was having such a hard time of it, Ann had never blamed Finch. Though Maureen had been one of Ann’s best friends, it wasn’t difficult to see how sick she was.
What Maureen had seen in Finch in the first place was anybody’s guess. Still, it seemed that she’d loved him and longed for him in the same way that poets long for the romantic ideal, the merging with the beloved. Yet it didn’t take her psychic powers for Ann to tell that some of the stories Maureen related about their passion were clearly fictional. Maureen was, after all, a writer of fairy tales. But over the years Ann had come to suspect that the stories Maureen told weren’t about Finch at all, or if they were, then it was more wishful thinking on Maureen’s part than reality.
After her mother’s suicide, Zee had taken to hanging around Ann’s shop.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?” she had asked one day.
“I don’t know, sweetie,” Ann said. “Why do you ask?” Of course she had known exactly why she would ask, but she wanted Zee to talk. In the days since Maureen’s death, Zee had been far too silent.
“My mother believed in past lives,” Zee said.
Ann nodded. “Yes, she did.”
“I was thinking that she might come back as someone like Juliet.”
“You mean, as in Romeo and Juliet?”
“Yes, I know she wasn’t real, but someone like her. One of the great star-crossed lovers.”
Ann considered.
“Or maybe,” Zee said, “she might come back as a radish.”
“As in the root vegetable?”
“Why not?” Zee said. “Why do we have to come back as people at all?”
“Why indeed?” Ann said.
“My mother used to grow radishes.”
“Did she?” Ann asked. “That’s one thing I didn’t know about your mother.”
“There’s a lot you didn’t know about my mother,” Zee said.
Ann thought that was probably true. Zee had always known far more than any child her age should have to know.
“She really did love radishes,” Zee said. “She ate them all the time. Finch told her if she ate any more of them, she was going to turn into a radish.”
It brought a smile to Ann’s lips. She was really fond of this kid. Didn’t seem much like her mother at all, or her father either, for that matter. She was definitely her own person.
“I have some books on reincarnation,” Ann said. “If you want to read them.”
“No,” Zee said. “I just wanted to know if you believed in it.”
“I’m not sure what I believe about it,” Ann said.
ANN FIRST MET MAUREEN THE year before Zee was born, when Maureen enrolled in one of Ann’s herbal-remedy classes, one that was meant for practicing witches but was open to the public as well.
It was a decidedly manic period of Maureen’s life. She was spending Finch’s money with abandon and signing up for everything in town. It would have been annoying if she weren’t so charming. Seldom had Ann seen anyone as beautiful as Maureen. When she walked into the class-late, of course-the energy of the entire room changed. Heads turned.
Maureen’s purpose for taking the class, she said, was that she was afraid she couldn’t conceive. She was desperate, had tried all the regular methods, and wanted to try an herbal remedy. She announced this to the class as they went around the room, each person stating her particular areas of interest in herbalism. Most wanted spells, or child-safe remedies, or to learn to make perfume by brewing essential oils.
“What kind of traditional methods have you tried?” Ann asked Maureen at the break. No matter how New Age Ann might be, she was still a New Englander, and she didn’t believe Maureen should share such private information with the whole class.