Maudlin's Mayhem (Bewitching Bedlam #2)(53)
Luckily, she had been there to see it, and from the beginning, she had taught me, bringing me into the local coven before I was barely able to toddle around. The high priestess had mentored me herself, and as long as I was home to do my chores, my mother didn’t care what I did. In fact, the less she had to deal with me, the better. I had been taught to read and write—illegal in our area, for anyone not of the nobility—and by the time I was ten, I was a whiz at counting sums.
A group of girls passed by, giving us a wide-eyed look. One of them stopped and, in what looked like a spontaneous burst of courage, asked, “Are you Mad Maudlin? We heard she lives on the island, and…”
I blushed. “Yes, I am.”
“We’re learning about you in history class—about the vampire hunts.”
I decided then and there that if Neverfall was teaching stories about me, I should be there to make sure they were correct. “Well, maybe I can visit your class someday.”
She blushed again. “That would be waysome!”
Waysome? Deciding to take it as a compliment, I waved as she hurried to catch up with her friends. I followed Sandy into the billing department and watched as she wrote out a check that made me cough when I saw the amount. Apparently, quality magical education didn’t come cheap. Another five minutes and, clutching a receipt, we headed back to the car.
As we exited the building, I caught a whiff of some floral scent. It was too early for most flowers, but then we saw that a teacher was showing a class how to make a patch of daffodils bloom. There must have been a hundred flowers in the patch, and as they all opened up at once, the fragrance wafted past us.
“Talk to the headmaster. They’re teaching classes about us, so I think we should be there to make certain that whoever wrote the history books got the info correct.” I slid in and fastened my seat belt.
Sandy laughed. “I just hope they don’t tell the kids about our hundred-year after-party.”
Snorting, I agreed. “That would have to be sex-ed class, I guess. Anyway, so everything taken care of?”
She started the ignition and eased back down the driveway. “Yeah, tuition’s paid and all is well. Where to next?”
I couldn’t think of anything else that was pressing. “Let’s drop in on Auntie Tautau. Maybe she’ll have some advice for us. The gods know I could use it.”
As we headed back to the other side of Bedlam, my thoughts strayed back home. Even with the shadow warriors protecting my property, I wouldn’t be comfortable until I had figured out how the hell to deal with Essie and that damned book.
THE AUNTIES WERE a phenomenon onto themselves. They had always been, as far as we knew. They were power incarnate, beyond any witch known, and yet they belonged to no coven, no circle, no group. Ancient—we had never heard of a young Auntie—their origins were a mystery.
Most of them went about in the guise of old women who were seen as no more than the eccentric neighbor down the street, or the crazy cat lady who lived on the edge of the forest. But one mistake, one misstep over the line and the Aunties could twist you up and dice you into hash for breakfast. They protected and guarded those who were necessary to the web of fate, and while they weren’t able to intervene when someone upset the balance, they were able to remove people from the path of danger if it was deemed necessary.
Auntie Tautau worked with the Witches’ Protection Program, which was much like the human Witness Protection Program—only it protected its members more thoroughly. Once the witches in question were removed from their current life and sent into the tumble of changes that the WPP enacted, nobody would ever find the witch again. In fact, our former high priestess and her daughter had been sent into the program, and all we knew was that they were happy and safe. We would never see them again.
We pulled up in front of Auntie Tautau’s house. A cozy cottage, it was nestled in the folds of tangled huckleberry and ferns, rose bushes and vine maple, all surrounded by fir and cedar. A single birch tree grew in the front yard, which was also overgrown.
As we stepped out of the car, Auntie Tautau appeared on the wraparound porch.
The first time I met her, she had been wearing a muumuu, but today she was in a tidy rose-print dress with a wide white bib apron over the front. She was squat and short, sturdier than anybody I knew, with long gray hair that hung to her waist. Today it was in a ponytail rather than a braid, and she was wearing a straw hat with a pink ribbon. A crow sat on the bow. It blinked at me and I realized that it was alive. The first time I had seen it, I had thought it was stuffed. I was wrong.
“Come, come. I found your note the other day and wondered when you would return.” The Irish accent was the same as I had remembered, a thick brogue that rolled off her tongue. She motioned to the door. “Fat raindrops are on the way. Hurry or you’re likely to get drenched.”
Sure enough, as we hustled toward her door, they began to fall—huge fat raindrops that splattered when they hit the sidewalk. We entered the cottage, and once again, the tidiness of the cottage belied the tangle outside.
“Sit. I have tea on the stove.” She vanished through the door to the kitchen.
I glanced over at the fireplace. It was warm and inviting, and the flames crackled along, shifting color as they burned. The room was a kaleidoscope of curios, but each felt secure in its place, like part of a puzzle, and the clutter fell together so seamlessly that it seemed quite organized.