Steeped to Death, page 1
Steeped to Death
A WITCHES’ BREW MYSTERY
Gretchen Rue
To Nutmeg, my soul cat, you make every day a little brighter and better.
Chapter One
The gas gauge on my car was so far past the “E” that it was trembling into the black no man’s land beyond the red line. As I pulled up in front of a familiar old Victorian mansion, the car gave a shudder, a sputter, and then died with one final sigh.
“You have arrived at your destination,” my GPS assistant announced.
“Yes, thank you. Of course, you said it would only be a two-hour drive, so I planned my gas accordingly. You lied.” I pulled my phone off the dash and slipped it into my purse before looking up at the old house.
It was pretty hard to be mad at the GPS when I should have known better myself. After all, it was hardly the first time I’d driven to Raven Creek, but I’d second-guessed myself after being gone for almost ten years, and decided to trust technology over my own memory.
My memory had no problem recalling the big house or the time I’d spent there. It looked ever so slightly worse for wear since my last visit, but it was still a beautiful ode to a time when houses had their own unique personality rather than being cardboard cutouts where every house on a block looked exactly the same but in a different shade of taupe.
The old house was like something a child might have imagined while building a gingerbread mansion, with asymmetrical detailing that saw towers and turrets at its corners and stunning candy-colored stained glass in almost every window. The pale blue paint on the exterior had started to look gray with age, but the house was still as charming and inviting as ever.
I pushed open the wrought iron gate that had a plaque with the letter “B” embossed on it and hauled my suitcase up the walkway.
The mansion was situated on a hill, giving it an incredible view over the town but also leading a lot of local children to believe it was either haunted or owned by a wicked witch.
It definitely wasn’t haunted, and I can say with complete certainty my Auntie Eudora wasn’t terribly wicked unless she wanted to be. As I hefted my suitcase up the front steps, already out of breath from the incline, a plump orange cat emerged from around the back of the wrap-around porch and settled himself in on top of the welcome mat, blinking up at me with huge green eyes.
“Hello,” I greeted him. It had been years since Auntie Eudora had had a cat, and he’d been a skinny black thing that moved around her house like he was made out of shadows. I didn’t recognize this handsome fellow, but he seemed to be quite at home. I’d have to ask around later to see if he belonged to one of the neighbors, as he seemed pretty well fed.
“Mrow,” he replied, blinking slowly.
“Don’t suppose you want to go get one of the bags out of the car for me, do you?”
“Mrow.” This sounded decidedly like a no. Go figure.
I fumbled through my coat pocket to find the thick envelope Eudora’s lawyer had sent to me. In it was a copy of her will and all the essential information needed to sign over her worldly possessions to me, her brother’s only daughter. I had an older brother, Sam, but he and Eudora had never had the same bond she and I did, not to mention he was happily married and living in Colorado, so Eudora must have known which of us needed the house more.
Inside the big envelope, along with paperwork, there was also a smaller envelope with strict instructions—in Eudora’s writing—that I was not to open it until I arrived in Raven Creek.
I shook the big envelope, and out slid a heavy, ornate metal key. I made a mental note that as cool as the key was, and as safe as Raven Creek seemed to be, it might be high time to invest in a proper lock system for the old house.
I unlocked the door, and before I could set foot inside myself, the orange cat bolted in ahead of me without a moment’s hesitation.
“Hey!”
He did not seem to care that I hadn’t invited him.
I dropped my suitcase inside, and before letting myself get sucked into the memories of the place, I made three more trips back to the car to collect everything else I’d brought with me from Seattle. All the little pieces of my life had been few enough to fit in a Nissan Sentra. I wasn’t sure if that was sad or a testament to my unintentionally minimalist lifestyle.
If I was a minimalist, then Auntie Eudora was a maximalist. By the time I got the last of my boxes inside and closed the front door, I needed to take a seat on the huge maple staircase in the front foyer, to catch my breath.
As I regretted hitting that fast food drive-thru for an extra-large coffee on my drive here, thanks to the extra anxiety and bonus need to find a restroom, I took in the familiar surroundings of my aunt’s home. The walls were all painted in a soft pewter blue, with the original dark wood trim in every room. The lighter walls might have normally helped a room feel larger, but Eudora had covered almost every exposed inch with art. There were old portraits of people we weren’t related to, ancient oil paintings of dogs and horses, of cunning black cats stealing food from banquet tables, and of gorgeous Renaissance women weeping in streams. There were animal bones hanging like streamers, loose bouquets of dried flowers, and framed butterflies wherever a gap in the art allowed for them.
Over the fireplace—a real, functional beast that faced into both the sitting room and the kitchen—was a tapestry, a copy of the famous Unicorn in Captivity piece. I could recall sitting in front of the fireplace for hours, staring up at the tapestry, imagining what might happen if someone simply opened the unicorn’s gate.
The cat trundled into the room and sat down in front of me, his emerald eyes glinting like little jewels in the dim interior light.
“You seem pretty comfortable here, sir.”
“Mrow.”
I was beginning to suspect that Auntie Eudora might have found herself a new pet in her later years and simply forgotten to mention it. “Well, I’m going to have to figure out what to call you, I guess.”
If he was her cat, someone had clearly been taking good care of him, because it had been six weeks since Eudora’s passing, and he looked healthy and happy. Though there were plenty of mice around the property, and he could have just been feeding himself the whole time. Discovering whether he had been hers—and therefore was now mine—would have to wait a little while. For the present moment, I needed to focus on getting my things unpacked and airing out the house a little. It had developed a musty, unwelcoming scent, having been left empty for six weeks, and I knew Eudora would hate that. Her house always smelled of fresh herbs, cups of hot tea, melting candle wax, and unusual incenses.
Right now, it just smelled like dust.
I did a quick tour of the upper floors, trying to decide where to settle myself. Eudora was the type of person who had spent very little time in her bedroom, seeing sleep as a necessary evil that kept her functioning but wasn’t something she enjoyed. Because of that, she had taken one of the house’s smallest bedrooms as hers—I wouldn’t want to take her space anyway.
The mansion had ten bedrooms in total, though many of them had been converted into spaces that housed all her plants. The houseplants, I noted, were also all in great shape, so someone must have been looking after the place before I got here, though Eudora’s lawyer, Mr. Garland, hadn’t mentioned anything.
After wandering for a little while, getting reacquainted with rooms I hadn’t seen in a decade, I found the bedroom where my parents used to stay when we’d come to visit. It was a big room with a lovely four-post bed and a curving bay window that faced away from the town to overlook the woods, and the creek the town got its name from. I plopped down on the edge of the bed and was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable the mattress felt.
The room was homey and inviting, much like the rest of the house, and it didn’t feel wrong to be in it. That was all I needed for a sign from my aunt that this was the right place for me. When I’d been younger, my brother and I used to come here every summer while my parents were busy with work. They couldn’t afford to send us to camp, and Eudora had loved the company. We did that every year until I was fourteen, when my dad got a job in Chicago and we’d moved too far away for regular summer visits. Our trips to Raven Creek became few and far between as Eudora opted to come visit us once a year instead. I’d moved back to Washington with my husband, Blaine, shortly after we married, but in spite of how much closer I was to Raven Creek again, I found myself preoccupied with my job, my friends, and my marriage. Eudora made frequent trips into Seattle, so we remained incredibly close, even though it had been a decade since I’d slept in this house.
When I’d spent summers here as a child, I used to love staying in the attic in an old nursery, where I’d unroll a sleeping bag and sprawl my books and toys out all over the huge open space. Eudora would give me old rugs and blankets and help me build insane forts up there. But now, at thirty-five, I was pretty sure my back and hips would protest if I slept on the floor.
I returned to the main floor, collected a couple of my bags, and began the process of getting unpacked. As I hung my clothes up in my new closet, I stared at the small white envelope I had left at the end of the bed. On the outside, in Eudora’s crisp writing, it said, To Phoebe, to be opened on her first night at Lane End House.
The name Lane End House had always amused me. It was so literal, since the mansion was at the end of the main street in the town. Didn’t grand old mansions usually have more interesting or compelling names?
But no, Lane End House it was, and had been since my great-great-great-great-grandfather had built it almost two hundred years earlier. There was something a little grim about the name too. Lane End House, like End of the Road House. As if when you got here, you knew this was going to be your last stop.
I smiled. Eudora would love that macabre thought. She adored it when children would whisper to themselves about the haunted house and the witch who lived there. She loved to be part of a legend, something bigger than herself, even if it meant the local kids thought she was going to turn them into toads, or something.
I finished putting away my clothes, picked up the letter, and headed down to the kitchen. If there was anywhere in the house to read Eudora’s last words to me, it was in the kitchen.
Chapter Two
The orange cat followed me into the kitchen, where he found a large pillow on the hearth of the fireplace and settled in quite comfortably, blinking slowly several times before resting his head on his paws and settling into a doze.
Definitely Eudora’s cat, then.
An old silver kettle sat on the stovetop as if it was waiting for me, an invitation from my late aunt to make myself a cup of tea. Tea was sort of Eudora’s thing. She had fallen in love with the different types of tea she had experienced during a year-long trip through Asia, where she’d sampled various blends from India, China, and Japan, and when she got back home to the United States, she was fully and deeply obsessed with tea.
She spent the next decade traveling the world, sampling the best blends available from Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa, deciding what lesser-known teas might be popular locally and which unexpected types she might convince hesitant American clients to buy. She learned more about fruity herbal blends with cutesy gimmicks, like adding crushed candy canes to a peppermint tea, to give it an extra Christmassy punch.
After ten years of travel and education, she’d finally decided she was ready to open The Earl’s Study. The local used bookstore in Raven Creek had come up for sale following the death of its long-time owner, and Eudora jumped at the opportunity. She kept the bookstore open, since it was her favorite place in town, and simply converted a cluttered storage space—which turned out to be as big as some of the smaller shops in town—into her tearoom.
That would be my first stop in the morning. The shop had been closed for six weeks since Eudora’s death, but thanks to two of her most dedicated employees, Imogen and Daphne, had been running smoothly even as Eudora’s health declined. She’d made sure their regular pay continued after she passed, as she must have known things might get messy and wanted to make sure they weren’t left in a lurch. Now, technically, the shop—and all its debts or profits—belonged to me. Best to see where we stood, and reopen as soon as possible. Eudora always gave the implication business was profitable, but I had to wonder how well a used-book and tea shop really fared in a small town, even one as popular as Raven Creek.
Of course, being a tea enthusiast meant she needed to try everything out herself, first, and the open shelving in her kitchen was stocked to the rafters with jar after jar of beautiful loose leaf tea choices. There were metal canisters and glass jars, all with black chalkboard paint labels bearing her distinctive writing, explaining what was in each container.
I grabbed the one sitting next to the stove, marked “Lavender Jasmine” and opened the lid, letting the soothing scent of jasmine tea and dried lavender buds waft out at me. The loose tea had a sweet undertone to it, like vanilla, promising a cup that would be calming and the perfect thing to warm me up on a cool October evening.
I filled the kettle from the old country basin sink and set it on the stove to heat, then used a spoon dangling from one of the shelves to fill up a compostable teabag before setting that in a mug—waiting on the counter—to await the boiling water.
Funny, how everything I wanted or needed seemed to be ready for me on the counter, like Eudora had left it all out for me.
Funnier still that the mug seemed fresh and clean in spite of no one being here to drink from it in six weeks.
Once the water was boiled, I filled the cup and brought it over to the small kitchen table where Eudora’s letter was waiting for me. Enough procrastination—it was time to see what she had to say. I’d been anticipating and dreading this moment since the lawyer had given me her effects. It wasn’t that I was afraid she’d say anything nasty or the letter would upset me, but rather I knew once I read it that would really be it. These were her last words, and once they were read, I wouldn’t get any others.
I’d loved my aunt as if she were a second mother. She was older than my father by ten years, making her almost grandmotherly to my young self, but the truth was she was more vivacious and alive than people half her age. A committed bachelorette, she had continued to take long trips around the world all by herself, even as she approached eighty. Now that I was in my thirties and divorced, I could certainly see the appeal in her embracing and glamorizing her spinster lifestyle.
Her loss had hit me hard, even though it hadn’t come out of the blue. She’d found out about the tumor with enough time to get in a trip to Brazil before telling her family what was going on. She lived another six months after that, ample time to say goodbye, but not enough time in the least.
I wish I could have had decades more to learn from her—she had so much left to give, and I’d wasted so much time away. I hated that I had spent the last ten years living so close to her but not seizing the opportunity to come here.
I sighed and ripped open the envelope. A folded letter fell onto the table, as well as an old Polaroid photo. I flipped the photo over, and a smile came to my lips just as a tear came to my eye. It was Eudora and I at Disneyland. She’d insisted on taking me by myself—no parents or brother allowed. Sam was too old and too cool for “kid stuff” at that point—and footed the entire bill. We wore matching Minnie ears, posing in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, grinning like absolute fools.
Touching the photo tenderly I mentally promised to get a frame for it as soon as the opportunity allowed.
The letter was next, and I took a deep breath before flattening it on the table. As I absorbed the words, I could almost hear her speaking them from the other room.
To my dearest Phoebe,
Did I ever tell you what your name means? I’m sure you must have looked it up at some point, what with the internet and all that silliness. But it means “bright” or “radiant one,” and I think that’s very suiting for you, because knowing you has brought such joy and light into my life. Phoebe was also a Titan, mightier than the gods, who was the grandmother of Artemis and Apollo. I believe you have the capacity for such greatness, though perhaps not birthing gods. We all have our limitations after all.
If you’re reading this, then I’m afraid it means my time has come to an end, and while that seems so far from possible as I write this letter, I still know there is a small lump of cells at the base of my brain that has other plans for my life, and I won’t be able to sneak my way out of this situation.
I’ve been very lucky in my life, perhaps too lucky, and that was bound to run out at some point, though I was sure my end would come hiking back up to the Everest Base Camp or trekking through Malawi. I had so many things left I wanted to see and do, but perhaps you may still have time to see and do them for me.
Of course, you know by now that I’ve left you everything except some money I put aside for Sam. You have always been the most important person in my life (don’t tell your father—he’d be crushed), and with no children of my own, it seemed only fitting to give it all to you. The last time we spoke, you seemed at odds, not sure what to do with your future, and I told you that in time you’d get the answers you were looking for. What I didn’t tell you then was that I hoped I’d be able to give you those answers, at least for the time being.
If you don’t mind me telling you (and you can’t be mad at me now that I’m dead—that’s just how these things work), that stupid husband of yours never deserved you. Cheating with a waitress—honestly, what a cliché! He was boring and beneath you on every level, and you’re better off without him, if we’re both being honest. You might not see it now—fresh wounds and whatnot—but in time you’ll see it my way, I think.
