Gypsy Magic - J.R. Rain Page 0,24

had been pulled into lopsided braids, so she reminded me of Pippi Longstocking.

In the middle of the lane were two unoccupied shops. The one on the left was a three-story affair that towered over everything else on the street. It even had a steeple. The siding was black; the windows tinted so you couldn’t easily see inside. It looked like the grim cousin of the thrift shop down the road.

The empty shop on the right side of the lane was mine.

Mine.

It felt good to think the word.

I’d fallen in love with the space when I’d seen it on Hallowed Realty’s website of listings. It was a one story, brown brick square that wasn’t very large. But, I didn’t need large. The frosted glass block windows dominated the majority of the shop front, with a small, hand-carved mahogany door, squeezed like an afterthought, between them. A green awning sheltered the doorway, and the small set of stairs that led from the sloping sidewalk into the store. A solid stripe of lacquered wood stretched like a banner across the front—a placard for the name of the shop. Soon bronze cast metal letters would spell out “Poppy’s Potions”, breathing life into the place.

I smiled.

Yes, it had definitely been a good idea to cut through town, I thought, as I rounded the cul-de-sac and made my way back home. Just the pick-me-up I needed.

Watch out, Haven Hollow.

Here I come.

Chapter Eight

I’d just met Marty at the shop, to give him access so he could install a few shelves. I would have stayed to help, but I still had to make a whole inventory of ready-made potions, so I’d have something to put on the shelves. My plan was to open ‘Poppy’s Potions’ in the next couple of days and now it was getting down to the wire. Not to mention, I owed Marty a few banishment potions for his help with the store. So, I’d have to add those to the long list I still had to whip up.

Once Marty was finished with the shelves and Finn was home from school, we’d planned to have dinner at the Half-Moon Bar and Grill in order to discuss the marketing materials I still needed for the store. Marty had texted to say he already had some ideas for my logo… I could only hope those ideas had nothing to do with dust bunnies or variations of Ghostbuster logos.

Regardless, I’d made it a point to put Finn’s Gameboy in my purse so I wouldn’t forget it later—I was more than sure he’d be bored stiff with our proposed dinner conversation.

“Ooh, pretty,” Darla cooed, trailing a finger down the contours of a turquoise Egyptian perfume bottle.

I’d bought it at a garage sale years back for that exact reason—it did look pretty. Collecting bottles, vials, and crystal was a hobby of mine. Finn had begun to dread the inevitable thrift store and garage sale scavenger hunts and the endless trips to antique stores. Or so he said. But, every time I asked him if he’d rather stay home, he opted to join me. Of course, that could have been owing to the poltergeist…

My head snapped up from the batch of Gypsy Magic I’d been mixing, and I snapped my hand out without thought, batting Darla’s transparent one away. All I managed to do was send an icy chill racing up my arm as I came into contact with her spirit form. Darla’s hand blurred into invisibility, like fog being rubbed forcefully off a window.

She drew her hand back, rubbing her wrist as it reappeared, staring at me reproachfully.

“Gee-whiz! What was that for?”

“Be careful,” I chided. “I was just about to fill that one!”

“So fill it!”

“So keep your hands out of the way!”

She frowned at me, raising one of her exaggeratedly drawn-on eyebrows and wrapping her arms against her flat chest. “Just because you’re a canceled stamp doesn’t mean you should take it out on me!” And she did that pouting thing that made it look like she was constipated. Her acting skills weren’t exactly… skills.

“I’m not a canceled stamp,” I grumbled. A ‘canceled stamp’ was another word for a wallflower.

“Well, I don’t see any hotsy-totsy bachelors lurking around here anywhere, do you?”

“Darla, I’m ready to turn the vacuum on you.”

Darla was scared to death (er, no pun intended) of being ‘Hoovered’, as she called it.

“Phonus balonus!” she said as she shook her head and waved me away with an unconcerned, and see-through hand. But the look she gave me revealed