He shook his head. “Thank you, no. I have an errand to run.”

  He turned and kissed Jemima on both cheeks. “Ciao, Bella. I will call you tomorrow.”

  The other man came forward now. He was blond and slightly built. “Sergei,” Felicity cried as though it was a special treat to see him.

  “Good to see you again,” he said in a slight Russian accent. Now he too kissed Jemima on both cheeks, and then the two men walked all the way out of the hotel, talking in low tones.

  Jemima waited until they had left and then sank into the third chair.

  “Phew,” she said. “That was dull. I need a drink.”

  She hadn’t even finished the words and our same server was back pouring her a glass and filling ours. “Another bottle, if you please,” she said to him.

  “My pleasure, madam.”

  She glanced between us. “Do you mind if we just stay here? I haven’t the energy to go somewhere else.”

  We both agreed that was fine.

  To the server, she said, “And bring some snacks.”

  I was shocked. “Didn’t you just eat dinner?”

  She looked sad. “One never does at these dos. I have to keep my wits about me. I’m concentrating so hard, you see. I daren’t touch a sip of alcohol or eat more than a nibble of food or I’m distracted.”

  That aligned with what Violet had said.

  The evening got a lot better after that. Jemima Taft downed champagne as though it was water, and as she relaxed, she grew more talkative. She was amusing in a wicked, sarcastic way. She knew gossip about celebrities that never showed up in Tattler or Hello. And when she recounted an amusing incident at one of those horse races where fancy hats were required, she didn’t sound like she was boasting. It was just the way she lived.

  Felicity joined in as though she lived in that world, too, but she still reminded me of the knockoff bag when set against the real thing. She was almost like the original but never quite.

  Still, they were good company, and I decided to put the grilling I’d gotten from Felicity to bad manners. And she had helped me with one thing. I’d tried to keep an open mind about her relationship with William. Now, I was full on against it. I hoped William wasn’t in love with her. I doubted he was. No doubt he was just flattered that somebody was showing him so much attention. I hoped so, anyway. Because if he did get serious, I suspected he was going to get his heart broken.

  “Nico seems interesting. Are you seeing him?” I asked.

  “I never date clients. It would be completely inappropriate.”

  “How did he make his money?” I had a hard time understanding how people who didn’t have hundreds of years to grow their stash managed to get so rich. “Or is it family money?”

  She giggled. “You could say that.” She leaned in. “Crime family. I don’t ask where the money comes from. In my business, best not. So long as it comes in clean and passes money-laundering laws, I’ve fulfilled my obligation.” She lowered her voice. “But there are rumors.” Then she put her hand over her mouth. “But you did not hear that. Completely confidential.”

  She excused herself for the washroom, and Felicity leaned in, her breath boozy. “She’s the most professional woman at the office. Absolutely top notch. But get her loaded, and she spills the goods. Such fun.”

  “It’s nice she has a friend she can trust.”

  Felicity nodded. “She does try to introduce me to interesting men. I went to the right schools, can fit in with that world, but I’m poor as a church mouse. She thought I might fancy Nico or Sergei.” She glanced at me slyly. “But William was so much more interesting.”

  Every instinct in my witch’s body told me Jemima Taft had told her friend that William had a lot more to offer than his talent in the kitchen.

  We nibbled on snacks and downed more champagne. At some point, we got out our phones and snapped photos. Felicity suddenly said, “What’s this hush-hush deal then? You can tell us.”

  Jemima was pretty far gone by this time. She’d drunk the better part of two bottles of champagne, I was certain. I didn’t know where she was putting it all.

  Instead of telling her friend to mind her own business, she leaned in and told us in a low voice that Hurst and Havers, tailors to royalty, who’d been a private company for a couple of hundred years, was vulnerable to a takeover.

  For this, she had a top-secret dinner? Buying a tailor didn’t seem that exciting to me.

  Felicity, however, looked aghast. “Hurst and Havers is for sale?”

  “Keep your voice down. No. It isn’t. But Nico says its balance sheet is weak and he’s planning a takeover. He’s got a friend on the board who’s willing to help.”

  “What’s so exciting about buying a tailor?” I asked.

  “Shh. Keep your voice down. If anyone got wind of this deal, the whole thing could blow up. These things require absolute finesse and complete discretion.”

  I was still confused.

  “It’s the brand, Lucy. You wouldn’t understand, being American. It’s utterly exclusive. Imagine it as a global brand? With the right financing, it could be huge. Huge.”

  Felicity looked suitably impressed.

  I excused myself to go to the washroom, and as I stepped into the lobby, I nearly crossed paths with Nico on his way to the elevator. I slowed my steps so he wouldn’t see me. I didn’t feel like chatting to the charming but possibly criminal Nico. He must be staying at the hotel.

  When I got back to the table, a new bottle of champagne cooled in the bucket, and my glass was once more full.

  “Lucy,” Jemima said grandly. “You must tell us all about Rafe Crosyer. I understand you’re friends. He’s very tall, dark and mysterious, isn’t he?”

  “He is.”

  Who knows what would have happened next, but Felicity burst in, “Yes, but he can’t keep William as his butler. It’s positively medieval. William has rights.” The champagne had caught up and was pretty much overtaking her. She was having trouble focusing. She began to scratch at her chest. “I’m so itchy.”

  It was close to midnight, and we were all the worse for wear. “I have to go,” I said. “Got to get up in the morning.”

  Jemima glanced at her watch and gasped. “Yes. So do I. We’re putting the final financing deal together tomorrow. It’s going to be a big day.”

  As we left the hotel, a black Mercedes pulled up. “Let us drop you somewhere,” Jemima said.

  It saved me having to get a cab, and she’d begun a story about someone I would never be able to respect again when I saw them on the television. So I agreed.

  She turned around. “Come on, Felicity, I’ve got to get up in the morning,” she said. I turned around, and Felicity was heading unsteadily towards us.

  “I’ve broken a heel on my new shoe. It just snapped off,” she complained. “They cost a fortune, too.”

  “Never mind. You can buy some new ones. Just get in.”

  “Oh, give me a minute. It’s so hot.”

  It wasn’t hot. It was cold. I was shivering inside my coat, but her cheeks were bright red. I’d assumed she was one of those people that got flushed cheeks when they drank alcohol. But maybe she was coming down with something.

  Jemima obviously thought the same thing. “You’re not getting sick, are you? I can’t have that. I’ve got a busy week coming up.”

  “No. I’m just itchy.”

  She began to unbutton her blouse. Jemima and I together pushed her into the car and climbed in with her. “Home, please,” she said to the driver. “If you don’t mind, we’ll head to my place first. Felicity usually stays over when we’ve had a night out. She lives outside of town, and it saves her the drive. Or, in this case, an expensive cab ride.”

  “No, that’s fine.” I was curious to see where she lived.

  By this time Felicity had pulled open her blouse. I drew in a sharp breath as we drove under a street light and she was brightly illuminated. Her chest was covered in scales.

  “You’ve got some kind of rash,” I said.

  “No wonder I’m so itchy.” She went to scratch her chest, and I noticed her fingers were curling over like claws. I didn’t say anything. I was getting a very bad feeling about this.

  If her hair started falling out or her teeth did, I was going to have a pretty good idea what was wrong.

  The town car pulled up in front of a lovely Victorian townhouse on Kingston Road.

  Even though I was curious to see where Jemima lived, I was much more concerned about Felicity’s state of health. The driver got out. He was a solid man in his fifties with a round face and thick black eyebrows that met over his nose.

  “Oh, Dick, what would I do without you?” Jemima asked, as he, along with me and Jemima, helped Felicity out of the back. Once we had her on the sidewalk, she swayed until Jemima held onto her.

  “Do you think she should see a doctor?” I asked.

  Jemima said, “No, she’ll be fine. It’s just a rash.”

  I didn’t think Felicity was fine. She was pretty wasted, or I might have tackled her then and there about the hex. But neither of them were in any condition for sensible conversation. And, in fairness, I was in no condition to question them.

  The best thing for all of us would be a good night’s sleep. I had Felicity’s mobile number because we were apparently now BFFs. I’d call her in the morning. I told her that was my plan and then said goodnight to them both.

  I stood on the sidewalk and watched them as they opened the gate and walked into a small front garden behind a hedge and then on a path to the door. It looked to me like Felicity was dragging her back foot. Uh-oh. This was not good.

  After they were inside, Dick, the driver, and I returned to our previous positions in the Mercedes. I gave my address, and we slipped smoothly back into the night. It wasn’t more than five minutes by car to my place, but I didn’t feel like walking, especially not so late at night.

  Dick said, “Don’t worry about them. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve dropped them off in a worse state than that. They’ll be back at it tomorrow. Amazing constitutions, the pair of them.”

  “You drive them regularly?”

  “Oh, yes. Jemima’s a regular customer of the limousine service I work for. She always asks for me.” His big shoulders moved up and down. “She knows I’ll look out for her, and the way she drinks, she needs someone to make sure she gets home all right.”

  “She does this often, then?” She must have a constitution of iron; he was right.

  Instead of answering directly, he said, “She’s got a high-stress job. Likes to let loose when she can. And who can blame her? Felicity’s what you might call her wingman. Not to worry.”

  But I was worried. If I was right, Felicity had been so determined to bag William that she’d bought a hex to use against Violet, presumably seeing her as competition. She’d need more than a strong constitution to withstand the effects of the now-reversed hex.

  I was going to have to speak to Margaret Twigg and see what the options were for helping Felicity. I hoped that she could get the witch who’d sold her the hex to remove it. That seemed simplest, but I was very fuzzy on the procedure. Once a curse had been reversed, could its originator still remove it? Or would that be a job for me, Violet, Margaret, and Aunt Lavinia? Having reversed the hex, were we now the ones who could remove it?

  There was one more possibility that I refused to consider.

  What if no one could now remove the hex?

  Chapter 17

  The car dropped me off, and Dick gave me his card, telling me to call him if I ever needed driving anywhere. I thanked him, and he kindly waited until I was inside.

  Then, I pretty much fell into bed. When I woke up, I felt as though I’d stuffed half the stock of Cardinal Woolsey’s into my mouth and chewed on it all night. Apart from a dry, woolly mouth, I also had a headache.

  I thought I’d taken it pretty easy last night, and compared with my two companions, I’d been the model of discretion. Practically a teetotaler, and still I had a massive headache and felt very queasy. It would be a long time before I could face champagne again.

  The other two must feel like hell this morning. Or maybe they drank like this so often they were used to it and no longer suffered.

  I picked up my phone and contemplated calling Felicity to see how she was feeling this morning, but it was only eight o’clock. Besides, I needed to get myself together before I could even think straight, never mind talk sense to another human. Maybe Felicity and Jemima could party all night and still go to work the next day as though nothing had happened. I, on the other hand, urgently needed a couple of aspirin, a strong cup of coffee and a gallon of water.

  While I brewed coffee, I pondered the events of the night before, especially the end of the evening, when Felicity had developed some disturbing symptoms. A bizarre disease or allergy? Or was it the hex? In my fuddled condition last night, I’d jumped to the hex conclusion, but in the cold light of day, that seemed absurd. Felicity Stevens put a hex on Violet that would curse her to Grow ugly, wither and die? Surely a person saved that kind of nastiness for their worst enemy.

  She’d barely even met my cousin. Why would she hate her enough to want evil things to happen to her? For a guy? For William? Had Felicity really nosed out the attraction between Violet and William, as I had? And as it seemed, Rafe had? It seemed obvious to me, but I knew Violet well, and Rafe obviously knew William pretty well. But Felicity didn’t know either of them.

  If Felicity Stevens had bought the hex—and it was a big if—she must have been incredibly sensitive to any possible rival for William’s affections and extremely determined to get rid of them. I thought back to those moments when I had really found Felicity not very likable. Mainly they were when she acted like money was all that mattered. When she’d talked about how William had too much money to stay on as Rafe’s butler, especially when he got married, she hadn’t been speaking hypothetically. She’d been thinking about herself as the next Mrs. Thresher, and it was pretty clear she didn’t fancy a life tucked away at Crosyer Manor making Rafe’s life run smoothly. She also very clearly didn’t want any competition on her path to the altar.

  William was decent enough and thought little enough of his own attractiveness that a determined woman might be able to fool him. And Felicity Stevens was nothing if not determined.

  I wondered if marrying well had become an obsession. For it wasn’t only William she seemed to like. When Nico had emerged from dinner with Jemima, Felicity had fluttered her eyelashes at him and invited him to join us. And never mind we were on a girls’ night out.

  As I popped toast in the toaster, I wondered what it must be like for her to always be second best to her closest friend. Not to be able to shop at the top-end designer shops but to make do with the second string. Felicity struck me as a woman who did not want to be second string in anything. She wanted what her friend had, and I suspected she wanted it very badly. As I continued my train of thought, it became less of a stretch to imagine her putting a hex on a rival. But why not just something to make Violet less attractive to men or William in particular? Why go the extra length? Why curse someone with a lingering death? That was beyond self-interest. That was just plain vicious.

  However, she’d got tangled up in dark witchcraft somehow. I could imagine how easy it would be to request a fairly mild hex and find yourself purchasing something much more dramatic. Anyone who’d sell that kind of black magic wouldn’t be concerned about health and safety.

  A cold shiver went down my spine as I thought not only how much of a near miss Violet had had but how, when reversing the curse, we’d thrown some pretty hefty dark magic back on Felicity Stevens.

  Margaret Twigg would argue that she’d brought trouble on herself. She’d tried to beat her competition back with a very big stick. Now it was her rival who’d wielded the stick back at her, only first she’d given it a heftier wallop. The only question was, how hefty? I glanced at the kitchen clock and knew I had to get moving if I was going to open the shop on time.

  Now that I had some food in my stomach and coffee in my system and the aspirin was doing its job, my headache began to lift. I still wasn’t feeling in top form, but I could function. I was just brushing my teeth and thinking about heading downstairs when my mobile rang.

  My first thought was that it might be Felicity, hopefully letting me know she was better and whatever weird thing had happened to her last night had been a result of alcohol or something she’d eaten. Maybe, in the dark, what I’d seen as scales was a bad rash and the claw hand a figment of my imagination and, well, she could have dragged her foot because she was stumbling with drunkenness.

  No. Much as I tried to come up with alternatives, I didn’t believe them. She’d been suffering the effects of the hex, and however cruel she’d been to hex Violet, I was going to do what I could to get rid of that thing completely. When I checked my cell phone, I saw it was Rafe calling.

  I felt a spurt of pleasure as I answered. “Hi. I’m about to head down to the shop.”

  “Turn on your television and look at the news,” he said, his tone bleak. Rafe wasn’t one to utter strange and cryptic messages like that. I got a very bad feeling in my stomach.

  “What’s going on?” I flipped on the TV as I said it. I found a local news station and then sat down with a thump as though all the muscles in my legs had gone to sleep at once.

  “Breaking news” was flashing across my screen in a red banner.

  Right away I recognized Jemima’s house, which was pictured on the screen. It looked even nicer in the light of day. Police cars were pulled up outside, and an earnest-looking reporter was standing outside the gate talking into the camera.

  “Early this morning, police were called to the scene of a suspicious death. We have no details yet, but a young woman died here last night.”

  The reporter began to go on about the neighborhood and how few details there were, so I turned down the sound and said to Rafe, “That’s Jemima Taft’s house.”

 

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