Faking It, page 14
part #14 of A Wayfair Witches' Cozy Mystery Series Series
Whether I walked on the shore itself, or stuck to the forest, I could hear the waves, and smell the salt in the air.
It was on a Sunday afternoon in May when Will finally came to visit, and we went for a walk on the beach. Will’s familiar, Fred, came along with us, while Dizzy stayed at home to rest. He’d been out flying the night before, and he was all tuckered out.
‘I don’t think there’s a more beautiful place in the world than Riddler’s Cove,’ said Will, taking in a deep breath of sea air.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ Fred looked up at Will. ‘Naples was a whole lot warmer.’
Will gave me a guilty smile. ‘I’ve been travelling the world a little bit over the past few weeks. Just … clearing my head. I wanted to come and see you, but … I was afraid you’d think I was doing it for the wrong reasons. Like, it would come across as if, now that Max was off the scene, I assumed you and me … I mean, I know he’s not off the scene. He’s just … absent for a while. And I know you’ll always love him and not me. So I just … I didn’t want you to think that I thought–’ He shook his head. ‘I should stop talking now.’
I walked a little slower, looking up at him. There was no point in telling him the truth. It wasn’t that I loved Max more than I loved Will. It was never that. Right now, though, it wouldn’t do either of us any good for me to tell him that I had always loved him, and that choosing Max was far from easy – in fact, it tore my heart in two. So instead, I picked up a stone and skipped it across the water.
‘You should come for dinner,’ I said. ‘My dad’s making a curry as we speak. There’ll be samosas, too.’ I gave Fred’s head a quick rub. ‘And there is always room in the cat corner for one more.’
≈
It was a quiet dinner, with Christine still out at work. My mother and father chatted comfortably with Will throughout the meal, asking him about his recent travels, and about how things were going with the coven and the school. We were just clearing up the dinner dishes, and about to serve up some dessert, when Melissa arrived with a friend in tow.
‘You guys all know my friend Pru, right?’
Pru Montague gave us all a friendly wave, pulled off her sunglasses, and took a seat at the table. Pru was a beautiful and powerful vampire from Riddler’s Edge, the semi-supernatural town on the other side of the Wandering Wood. I liked her a lot. Whenever there was a murder in Riddler’s Edge, she was usually involved in helping to track down the killer.
‘We’re just about to have some apple tart, Pru,’ said my mother. ‘Would you like some? Or a cup of tea?’
‘Yes to both,’ Pru replied. ‘Please and thank you, Beatrice. But first, there’s something I want to get out of the way. Um, Wanda … do you think you and me could go somewhere together to have a little chat? The garden, maybe? It’s ever so lovely out there.’
‘Sure,’ I said, with a little bit of trepidation. ‘Let’s go.’
As I walked out past Melissa, she squeezed my arm and said, ‘It’s nothing bad, honestly.’
I hoped she was right, but either way I was too curious not to find out, so I followed Pru to a bench near the end of the garden.
‘I like your earrings,’ I told her.
She grinned, putting a hand to one of her hooped earrings. ‘Some days I think that I have too many hooped earrings, and other days I think that I can never have enough. Look, I’ll just say it, Wanda. I had a vision. About Max. About when you’d see him again.’
‘Oh.’ For the first time in weeks, my heart changed from aching to hopeful. ‘When? How? I mean … when?’
Pru gave me an uneasy frown. ‘Not for a while, I’m afraid. And I’m always open to the possibility that my visions can be wrong, but … there are some that I know, for certain, are going to come true. This is one of those, Wanda. I was in the middle of a plate of steak and chips and it just rushed into my mind, big and bright and beautiful. I can tell you all about it, but … I think it would be better if I showed it to you. If you’re comfortable with that? You’d have to open your mind to me.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed nervously. ‘We can do that. I’ll open my mind.’
Pru spun so that she was straddling the bench, and I did the same, facing her. She put her palms on either side of my face, cupping my temples. Her hands were cold, and I shivered, beginning to open my mind. It wasn’t a hard thing to do, not when I wanted to see this so much, and within seconds, I felt a tingle in my brain as she began to enter.
‘Okay.’ Pru nodded. ‘I’m in. Are you ready?’
I took a deep breath, and said, ‘Ready.’
Almost immediately, a vision poured into my consciousness. It was so vivid, like a memory of something that had already happened, something that had remained clear and precious in my mind.
When Pru said that it was big and bright and beautiful, she hadn’t been exaggerating. It was an entire story, spanning more time than I would like, beginning with me, here now, and all the years that followed. It progressed to what I would need to do to get Max back, carrying on to when I finally saw him again.
And that … that was the part of the vision that I wished I could put on pause, and then replay it, over and over again.
There we were, Max and me, facing one another in the moonlight, with a gentle wind surrounding us. He was smiling at me, and crying, and smiling some more. And I was grinning right back at him, not even bothering to wipe away my tears. Why would I, when they were tears of happiness?
But it was only a vision, and as much as I wanted to hold it there, it soon faded away, and Pru moved her hands from my skin.
‘I don’t suppose you freeze your visions in ice-cube trays the way Christine does, so I can keep that one to watch again?’
‘Afraid not. They stay in my brain. But something tells me you won’t have any trouble remembering it anyway.’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I’ll have it on repeat every night before I go to sleep.’
She gave me a soft, sad smile. ‘I am sorry that it isn’t going to happen sooner. I know it’s a long time away. I know it’s not what you want to hear. But … I thought it was something you should know. Particularly since you’ll have to play a part in making it happen.’
I threw my arms around her, hugging her tight. ‘Thank you, Pru. Thank you for showing me. Thank you for giving me hope.’
‘You can see that a lot is going to happen between now and then, right?’ She pulled away and gave me a pointed look. ‘Things that other people just can’t know. You, you have to know, I feel certain of that. But for most people, no matter how much they want to fast forward to the end of the story, no matter how much they want to be told there’ll be a happy ending … it would change too much if they did know, you know? It can do a lot of harm to find out what the future holds.’
‘I get it, Pru. I do. I’ll keep it to myself,’ I said, hugging her again, muttering against her shoulder. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’
When I was sure I’d squeezed her to the point of breathlessness (hey, she was a vampire, she’d survive), I finally pulled away, unable to keep the smile from my face. It would be a long time before I would see my Max again. But I would see him again, and when I did, we would have our happy ever after.
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Books by A.A. Albright
All of my books are set in the same magical world, with the same magical rules and supernaturals occurring throughout. Each series itself is self-contained, and you don’t need to read any one series to understand another. But my characters do reserve the right to pop in on one another from time to time to make a little cameo or two.
Books in the Wayfair Witches Series:
Book One: Bottling It
Book Two: Bricking It
Book Three: A Trick for a Treat
Book Four: Winging It
Book Five: Wrapping Up
Book Six: Loved Up
Book Seven: Rocking Out
Book Eight: Acting Up
Legally Red: A standalone featuring Melissa, with the action occurring between books eight and nine of the main series
Book Nine: Swotting Up
Book Ten: Forget Me Knot
Book Eleven: All Hallowed Out
Holiday Heist: A standalone featuring Melissa, with the action occurring between books eleven and twelve of the main series
Book Twelve: Doing Time
Book Thirteen: All Tricked Out
Book Fourteen: Faking It
Book Fifteen (coming in late 2021): Testing Times
Wayfair Witches Side Stories:
(These books can be read as standalones, but if you’d like to read them in order with the main series, see the list above for their placement in the series timeline)
Legally Red
Holiday Heist
Books in the Riddler's Edge Series:
Book One: A Little Bit Witchy
Book Two: Witchy See, Witchy Do
Book Three: Lucky Witches
Book Four: Shiver Me Witches
Book Five: So Very Unfae
Book Six: Old-School Witch
Book Seven: A Little Bit Vampy
Slippery Slope: A standalone featuring Pru, with the action occurring between books seven and eight of the main series
Book Eight: A Little Bit Chilly
Book Nine: A Little Bit Spacey
Book Ten: Totally Married
Riddler’s Edge Standalones:
Slippery Slope: A standalone featuring Pru, which can be read on its own – if you’d like to read in order with the main series, the action occurs between books seven and eight
Books in the Katy Kramer Series:
Book One: The Case of the Wayward Witch
Book Two: The Case of the Haunted House
Book Three: The Case of the Listening Library
Book Four: The Case of the Strange Society
Book Five: The Case of the Treacherous Train
Boxed Sets:
Riddler's Edge Books 1-3
Wayfair Witches Books 1-3
A. A. Albright, Faking It
