The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(26)
At the top of the hill she spied a gentleman’s tavern. A man wanting to hide from the truth might spend a night and a day drinking in a place like that, she reasoned. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and peered inside at the half-filled room ripe with the aroma of onions and garlic and sour beer. A handful of men in patch-worn corduroy jackets and dingy white shirts with tab collars loitered at the bar, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and lifting warm glasses of beer to their mustached mouths. A few cocked their heads in her direction, but none let their eye linger for long. Not seeing Jean-Paul among them, she was forced to try the bistro, the general store, and the one small hotel, where she asked for him by name. But all shook their heads, saying he had not been in town for a week or more and, anyway, it was no business of a goatherd’s what a gentleman like Jean-Paul Martel did with his time.
She had never felt more like a stranger. The disguise had done its job, but she’d had little need for the charade. So many faces were unfamiliar to her. Three new houses had been built on the hillside, a perfumery had opened where a flower shop used to be, and a wine merchant on the corner sold bottles from Domaine du Monde that advertised “tastings.”
And then there was Patisserie d’Amour. She knew without entering that Tilda still ran the shop as its secret magic wafted out the door.
The smell of fresh-baked pain au chocolat hit her full in the face. The scent intoxicated, filling her with the same warmth she’d felt the night before. Temptation drifted under her nose, stirring a craving inside her like she’d never known. She yearned to taste the buttery sweetness in her mouth, feel the warm chocolate melt on her tongue, and lick the flaky crumbs from her lips. It frightened her how much she wanted to give in because she understood how the magic worked. Tilda’s magic wasn’t a love spell exactly, but if you caught a whiff of one of her confections and found the lure impossible to resist, it meant she’d tapped into your tastes and desires. But the craving only took hold if there was someone in your thoughts. Someone you were falling in love with. Someone basic and good and reliable, yet filled with surprising stubbornness.
Elena began to cross the street toward the shop, her will not her own, when a horse and wagon thundered past, forcing her to step back. That moment of disruption wrenched her loose from the spell, and she backed away from the patisserie. Covering her nose and mouth with the end of her cloak, she darted off the street and into the nearest refuge.
Elena shut the door to the post office behind her, thankful for the mundane scents of polished wood and paper dust. As she regained her bearings, she decided to question the postmaster. Perhaps Jean-Paul had stopped to check on his mail, and maybe he even mentioned where he was off to next. Two women stood in line to collect their letters, so she perused the notices on the wall while she waited. Curiously, she found it filled with several pleas for information on missing pets.
“There’s been another one,” the clerk said after the other women exited.
She turned, still holding her cloak over half her face. “Another?”
“Killing, that is. This one out near the Lambert place.”
“Who’s dead?”
The man looked up from his work to study her over the tops of his glasses. He straightened and blinked twice in sober appreciation. “Ah, you’re not from around here.” He removed his glasses and gestured broadly with them toward the notices on the wall. “The animal killings. Cats, dogs, rabbits, sometimes a fox turns up. Blood drained right out of them. Puts people on edge the way it’s been escalating lately. People are starting to say they’re ritual killings.”
Horrified, Elena glanced at the notices on the wall with new appreciation. As she read, a shadow crossed her vision, nudging a dormant memory to the forefront. Gooseflesh rose on her skin as she recalled another of Grand-Mère’s rhymes from childhood.
Toss crone’s teeth and mystic rune
’neath Jupiter and crescent moon,
Cast your lot into the fire
Thou spinning heart of dark desire,
Bow before the one bedeviled
On cloven foot and fetlock beveled,
Pas de chat, around you go
Dance before the carrion crow,
Once you’ve done the Danse Démon
By blood and bone your fate is sewn
“Démon dansant,” she whispered. But it was just a fable. A story to scare children. She shook her head to clear it of the frightening image before approaching the counter. “I’m looking for Jean-Paul Martel. Have you seen him today?”
The man scratched his balding head with a pencil. “No, he hasn’t been in for a few days. But if you’re hoping to talk to him about offering your services at the vineyard, you’ll have a tough time with that one. City man. Nonbeliever. The grapes suffer because of it, if you ask me.”
“My services?”
The man slipped his glasses back on and smiled. “My mother worked at La Domaine Blanc as their vine witch for decades. I have her vision but, alas, not her talent with the wine.” He shrugged, as if life worked out the way it was meant to in the end.
A faint purple aura peeked out of his shirt collar, confirming his heredity. Trusting he had a sympathetic ear, Elena tapped her finger on the counter and dared to dig deeper. “How long has the animal killing been going on?”
“There was only one poster on the wall when I arrived five years ago. Back then people occasionally mentioned they’d found a dead cat in the road on their way to the village. About a year ago it began happening more frequently. Now it’s almost weekly. If you ask me, it’s just college boys fooling around with the occult. But they’ll find themselves on the brute end of karma’s bad side one of these days. And when they do, they’ll be lucky if they don’t lose a few vital parts themselves.”