THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) by Elizabeth Shawn Read Free Book Online Page A

although Aunt Myrtle insisted it was really quite palatable with a little lemon juice and honey added. I tried that, but even using more than a little of the extras, it was horrible. The overlying taste of peppermint couldn’t change the basic formula. It tasted so bad that I wondered if people wouldn’t decide it had to be healthy on the theory that anything that disgusting must be good for you.
    Binky continued to improve, ever so slightly. I didn’t have to bring her back to the vet’s to realize that she was definitely slow , not just traumatized. ‘Training’ her was going to be mostly a matter of setting up a firm schedule for her routines. Fortunately, she took most of her leads from George. If he peed, she peed. If he pooped, she at least tried.
    We had to protect poor little Fleur so he wasn’t too hassled by her when she spotted him. Being a skunk, even though I think he thought he was a dog like his new daddy, George, he would hop up and down stamping his feet and making odd noises. When that only delighted his attacker, he’d turn his little posterior toward her, huge fluffy tail straight up and menacing. That, of course, did nothing to discourage her, particularly since he had no scent glands.
    We finally had to step in and stop the pup every time they met. It was something we hadn’t worked out, and maybe never would. Fortunately Fleur preferred evening hours to wander around the yard. We just had to be watchful.
    Like Binky, I do best on a set routine. For the most part, I don’t like surprises. Very rarely in my life have they been a good thing. So I was quite content for the next week. The store did well, I spent a lot of spare time with David and the dogs, and I’d lost a pound—probably from drinking that horrible tea. It might, I pondered, be worth gagging my way through a cup or two every week if it continued to make me lose weight.
    Aunt Myrtle got more excited as the big event got closer. Several times she raided my herb garden. Thankfully she always asked my permission , and after watching her almost strip several of my thriving plants, I took over the job and clipped here and trimmed there. The thinning was probably good for the herbs, but I tend to be unadventurous about cutting things back. I like the wild look of an overgrown plant. Mostly, though, I hate to have gone to all the trouble of raising something and then chopping parts of it off, and nothing, including visual evidence, will ever really persuade me that the method isn’t painful.
    The trio’s terrible tea (or terrible trio’s tea) supply must have been bountiful by the date of the party. “Come over and see what we’re doing,” Aunt Myrtle begged me, just after we’d closed the store. “And maybe you can carry that big urn across since you’re coming.”
    David quickly chimed in. “I’ll carry it over. It’s rather heavy and clumsy.” He was making sure he was included in the visit.
    She hustled us across the street. Inside the store all was in disarray. That was normal, but I could see where some effort had been made to clear a space, between the actual store and the huge storage/hidden treasure area behind it, close to the little partitioned-off space where the fortune telling was done. The clearing had been done by the simple expedient of stuffing things in boxes and piling the boxes on top of the clutter already on the various sized tables, then removing the long folding tables and propping them against the wall.
    “See? Here’s where we’re putting the chairs,” Moondance joined us and pointed to the open area. She has a knack of stating the obvious. “We’ll have little tables set around, too, for them to place their tea cups on. We found some old TV trays.”
    “You can put the urn over here, David,” Dora, the only one who seemed to actually be doing anything practical, indicated an empty table. “We washed up a bunch of cups and mugs we dug out of boxes and found here and there.”
    If you were