“You know, your great-great-great-grandmother Laramie Brunick also had the power to freeze time,” Grammy Jo said with a mouthful of cottage cheese. We all groaned. She’d told the story a million times.
“And so when the townspeople of Uriville decided to burn her at the stake…” Blythe mouthed along with Grammy.
“She decided to play a little prank on them instead,” I mouthed.
“Right before the flames got to her, she froze time and escaped,” Raven silently finished.
Grammy Jo glared at the three of us, clearly not amused. We all smiled into our plates.
“And then she used a spell to change her appearance,” Grammy continued. “She got to enjoy the shame of the townspeople, who all came to believe they’d killed an innocent girl. You know, it was her idea for the town to have a memorial every year. I doubt she dreamed it would grow into a theme park.”
Oh, the great irony of the witchy world of Brunicks.
Momma Tula played silently with her food, pushing her beans around with the tip of her fork. I nudged her with my elbow and she put half a bite in her mouth, slowly chewing the sustenance as if it was a piece of rubber.
“Ohhh, you won’t believe what I saw last night.” Aunt Piper leaned into the table, her plump form resting on the surface. It wasn’t hard to figure out where Blythe got her bubbly personality from. Her mother loved to tell a good story. “I was dream hopping and I ran into Laura Blight’s head. By golly, you won’t believe the things I saw. This woman’s bullfrog hopping mad.”
It was time for the daily rundown of Aunt Piper’s nighttime adventures. Gifted with the ability to leap into people’s dreams, she’d spent many a witching hour combing through the dirty little secrets of Uriville’s sleeping population. Often, the dreams she witnessed were harmless enough. Flying through the sky, swimming in the ocean, walking along the beach. But it was the raunchy and dirty dreams she lived for, the best ones to spill across the evening’s meal.
“Sister, I do believe Laura Blight would rather you not share her private dreams with a table full of her fellow citizens.” Aunt Viv’s extremely thin form wrapped in her customary black turtleneck sweater swayed next to her sister’s. “Maybe it’s best you keep it to yourself.”
“Swaddle-dee-doo,” Aunt Piper said with a dismissive wave of her purple cat-eye glasses that hung from a pearl chain around her neck. “You tell us all the time about your astral projection adventures. Let me have a little fun.” She pouted out her lower lip and gave a little shake of her tightly permed auburn hair.
Aunt Viv’s eyes trailed over my head and glossed over. Not an unusual occurrence for the space-cadet. Sometimes, I wondered if she was astral projecting right now, escaping the madness of the dinner table for some quiet resort. If only I’d been gifted with such a power. It might’ve made these meals more bearable.
Aunt Piper took her sister’s silence as permission to spill, leaning even further into the table, her caramel brown eyes bulging from their sockets. “Laura Blight has a thing for hippies. And by hippies, I mean Andy Jenkings!” She giggled into her fist. “She was dreaming of him taking her for a midnight stroll on a deserted riverbank. Her in a billowy red gown with overflowing cleavage, three sizes bigger than real life, mind you, and him in white cotton pants and shirtless. It was all too much! And it was just getting good when her friddle-faddle alarm clock had to spoil the fun. I tell you, that woman’s in love.”
Raven rolled her eyes. I felt the desire to do the same, but our aunt had focused her bulging eyes on me with an expectant smile stretching her round cheeks.
“Oh…uh…hahaha. That’s a good one, Aunt Piper. What a laugh.”
She seemed satisfied with my reply and nodded her head vigorously. Blythe joined her in the laughter and together they rehashed every little detail of poor Laura Blight’s private dreams. I was pretty sure my cousin was hoping this meant more future business for her little wedding planner company.
My attention strayed back to my mom. Her blonde highlights had grown out and her hair brushed along her exposed collarbone, where a tattoo of three little stars peaked out.
“How’s the food?” I gently asked.
She shrugged. “It’s good.”
From what I could see, she’d mostly pushed the various dishes around her plate. Not much sustenance had made it into her mouth.
“Did you get a chance to look at those old photos Aunt Viv found for you?”
My aunt had found a box of them in the attic yesterday. They were shots from their childhood. Momma Tula featured with her baby blonde hair next to her unruly big sisters. I’d thought maybe they could pull her from her funk. Looking at them even made me chuckle a bit.
“Oh, no,” she pressed her strawberry red lips together, frown lines appearing around her mouth. “I was too busy. I’ll try to get to them tomorrow.”
I held in my disappointed sigh. In four weeks, she’d made very little improvement. If I was ever going to reclaim my position at the Witch Academy of the Arts, we’d have to make some serious changes. Maybe a witchy potion in one of Grammy Jo’s books would help. Anything to perk
her up the tiniest bit.
As if on cue, the thick black cauldron on the stove began to disintegrate in a cloud of gray smoke. Thick green mucus poured through the metal, dissolving everything in its path. The entire room burst into a panic, magic shooting from various hands to save the antique cast-iron stove. It wasn’t until the beast had been subdued and Aunt Viv had managed to halt the damage, did I realize my mother hadn’t even bothered to look up from her plate.
Chapter 3
The only escape from the humdrum of Uriville was a small painted brick warehouse on Cherry Street, with a flashing neon sign in the front and tiny black painted windows. Known as the Jazz Club, it was a hangout for the twenty-somethings of town and didn’t even play jazz music. Ironic, I know. A staccato beat pumped through the speakers as Blythe, Raven, and I walked in, making a beeline for our usual table up the metal staircase and in the rafters.
If anything could wash away today’s glum disappointments, an hour or so of uninterrupted dancing and sipping on a cold hard apple cider might do it. Then again, the Jazz Club had become a sort of magnet to hipsters residing in the nearby cities of Lincoln and Omaha. Tonight, more than a dozen people I didn’t recognize clogged up the dance floor and the various tables surrounding it.