Cadenbury Town Does Halloween (Cadenbury Town #7)

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

T he alarm goes off the next morning and I turn it off, but make no move to get up or wake Adhan.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening selling tickets and smiling at the visitors, trying to be happy but I got more than one confused look from the locals.

Adhan came to collect me when the kiosk closed. He held my hand, but I could tell he was still annoyed with me. We went straight to bed, and he kissed me on the head and fell asleep.

He must have moved in his sleep as I’m wrapped up in his arms, like always.

I can’t believe Sal and I scared the young boy. I don’t think I’ve scared anyone in my life, but knowing I did, and to a child, hurts. So does my chest, I have that horrible upset mate pain. I’ve only felt this once before, after our first argument.

“You didn’t do it on purpose,” Adhan says, kissing the back of my head.

“I know, but still,” I reply and move around so I can look at Adhan. “I’m sorry I made you angry and disappointed.”

“I know. All we can do now is hope we run into them and try and make amends.”

“We can,” I look at Adhan. “Will you kiss me?”

Adhan smiles and pulls me into a kiss.

I sigh as everything inside me settles, and the chest pain fades. It settles even more after Adhan makes love to me numerous times. Thank goodness I have the morning off today.

It’s late when we both get up, so much so the kitchen is empty by the time we get down there. Emily, bless her, has left breakfast in the oven for us. We eat up and then tidy our things away.

“Shall we walk into town?” I ask.

Adhan smiles. “Yes.”

We’re happily walking down Main Street, holding hands, chatting and smiling to the townsfolk when I see the family coming out of the museum.

“There they are,” I say to Adhan. “Just by the museum.”

They are stood talking when the younger one sees me and hides behind his brothers.

“Safe to say, he’s still scared,” Adhan says.

“Yeah,” I answer with a sigh.

We stop in front of them, keeping a respectful distance.

“Hello, I’m Adhan Stone,” he says. “This is my partner, Ernest Turnball.”

None of them say anything, not that I blame them. I let go of Adhan’s hand and step forward. “I want to apologise for yesterday. It was never our intention to scare your brother. Sal and Nix told us about you visiting Shattered Glass and when Sal pointed out your brother, we thought we would chat to him.”

“Make a habit of talking to young boys, do you?” the brown haired man says in an angry tone.

I shake my head. “To be honest, we didn’t even give that fact a thought,” I lean a little to the side, to look at the young boy. “I’m truly sorry we scared you. Everyone has told us off and told us how out of order we were.”

“I wanted to make sure you were all alright, especially your brother,” Adhan says. “I also want to offer my apologies. We pride ourselves on being a safe town and to know members of my family caused you all distress is unacceptable.”

“Thank you for your apologies,” the man says.

“I know it won’t make up for scaring your brother, but would you like to join us for coffee and cake in the tearoom?” Adhan asks.

“Clarence and Callum make the best cakes,” I say with a small smile, hoping that will tempt them. “You can meet Mollyanne. You’ll like her, she looks like the evil witch from Snow White and she usually has an animal with her.”

“We met her yesterday and had some of their cakes. Enoch even fed Miles,” the dark haired man replies.

“She didn’t have Miles with her yesterday,” I say, confused.

“As we were leaving the fair we saw her standing by a post, she looked like she was having a funny turn. We offered to drive her home, but she asked us to take her to the tearoom. Miles came running in not long after,” the brown hair man tells us.

“Dammit, I knew she was doing too much,” Adhan said, suddenly looking worried.

I look at the two men and notice Molly’s magic on them. “She gave you protection charms.”

“She gave one to all of us.”

“Will you come and have coffee and cake with us?” Adhan asks again.

The brown haired man looks at the man with him and then the boys. “What do you think?”

“Okay,” the younger one, Enoch, says.

“Thank you, that would be nice,” the brown haired man said politely.

We make our way to the bookshop and Adhan and I walk in first. The bell jingles, announcing our arrival. Alfred is behind the counter serving, he smiles at all of us as we make our way to the tearoom, where I see Molly is indeed seated at a table, this time she has her Crow on her shoulder.

“Mollyanne what happened yesterday, are you alright cuz?” I ask her in concern, walking over to her.

Molly cackles. “I was feeling my age young’un nothing to worry about, but I made some new friends,” she says looking behind us, smiling at the brothers.

“So we heard. Can we all join you?” Adhan ask.

“You can,” she says smiling.

Adhan brings another table over and we pull the chairs over so we can all sit down.

Cal bounces over. “Hey everyone. What can I get you?”

“Hey Cal,” I say and give Adhan and my orders.

Once we have all ordered he happily goes off to get our refreshments.

“Hello Mr Crow,” Enoch says, smiling at the crow on Molly’s shoulder.

Crow flies up and lands on his shoulder. “Oh,” he breathed out. “You’re amazing,” he said softly, stroking along the bird's side.

A moment later Crow gently nipped the boy’s finger before returning to Molly’s shoulder.

“Really Crow?” I say, looking at the bird, pouting. He’s never sat on my shoulder.

Mollyanne cackles out a laugh. “Cheeky Chops over there seems to have an affinity with animals.”

The boy looks surprised. “I do?”

Molly nods. “You do. You need to meet Elaine and Tink, they are two of the town healers and have some injured animals they are looking after. I bet if you saw the animals, you’d be able to help them get better quicker.”

The older teen looks at his brother. “So cool, dweeb.”

“Are they nice?” Enoch asks shyly.

“Very, you’ll be safe with them,” Molly assures him.

“I really am sorry we scared you so much,” I say. I can’t believe Sal and I scared him so much he now fears other witches.

“You didn’t, the boys already had a fear of light magic users,” the brown haired man says.

“Not dark magic users?” I ask in surprise.

“No, dark magic users have never tried to hurt us. Plus, we have Sly here to protect us,” the older boy says.

“Ebby and his brothers, Xander and Enoch, are from the Anderson line, Sly from the Sherwood line,” Molly tells them.

Before we can reply Cal comes over with a tray loaded with drinks. “The cakes will be with you in a moment.”

“No rush Cal. Where’s Clarence?” Adhan asks.

“No idea, he said he had some things to do today and would be back later.”

“He’s probably buying you something nice,” I say.

Callum sighed happily. “I’ve told him he doesn’t need to keep buying me things, but he just ignores me. He said he likes spoiling me,” the smile falls off his face. “I know it was a few months ago, but I think he’s still affected from when I was injured,” he says softly.

I jump up and hug him. Cal was severely hurt on the story plane after saving Sal’s life. The damage done to him was massive. Thankfully he’s fully recovered now.

“I’ll chat with him, young Callum,” Molly says.

“Thanks, Molly,” he says, pulling back. “I worry about him.”

“I’ll come around and have a good natter,” she assured him.

“Should you though?” he asks in concern. “Clarence told me you had a funny turn yesterday.”

“So much concern. I’m fine, sometimes I remember I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“We’ve created so much work for you over the last few months, sorry Molly,” Adhan says, as I sit back down.

Molly cackles out a laugh. “You’ve all given me something to live for. Life was getting dull but now with the dark witch problems, life is exciting again.”

That seems to catch the two men’s attention as they both sit forward.

“What dark witch problems? I’m Sly by the way,” the dark haired one says.

“The original line dark witches banded together and are trying to kill us, the original true light witches, to get our magic. But in every encounter we’ve had they lose. One is in stasis, two have merged their magic and are now grey and two are dead. They have also involved demons, three of which are dead, one wasn’t called, and we know there is at least one more gunning for us,” I tell them.

Sly looks shocked. “No wonder my father keeps emailing me.”

Just then Sal, Nix and Justice walk over to our table.

“Rhett?” Sly exclaims, looking at Justice.

“Sylvester?” he says in surprise. “I go by Justice Jackson-Stone now. I’m the town doctor.”

“And a grey magic user,” Sly says.

He nods. “I am, Sal here is the other.”

I see Sal looking at Enoch. “I'm so sorry we scared you yesterday, it wasn’t intentional. This town is super friendly, and we talk to everyone that I forgot visitors wouldn’t know that. My Jude got angry with me and reminded me that I would cover anyone in boils who tried to do that to our daughter.”

“It’s okay,” Enoch says softly.

“Can we join you, or would you rather we didn’t?” Justice asks.

“Pull up a chair,” Sly says, smiling.

They were just about to sit down when Justice's phone rang. “Sorry,” he says, pulling it out of his pocket. “Jackson-Stone ... is she conscious? .. Okay, I’m on my way. Nix is with me.”

“What?” Nix exclaims, looking at the doctor, worry written on his face.

Justice touches his arm. “I’ll bring him along with me,” he says hanging up.

“What happened?” Nix practically demands.

“Nora fell off the climbing frame,” Justice tells him.

“Come on then,” and with that, Nix runs out of the tearoom.

“Gotta go,” Justice says, rushing to catch up with him.

Adhan has his phone to his ear. “Okay, keep us updated.”

“That Cam?” I ask, as he hangs up.

“Yeah, Nix called him already. He’s waiting next to Justice’s car,” Adhan tells him.

Just then Alfred comes over. “What happened, Justice and Nix ran out of here like there was a fire?”

“Nora fell off the climbing frame, they’re on their way to school,” Adhan tells him. “This is my son, Alfred, he’s married to Justice. Sal here is married to my brother Jude.”

Alfred smiles at them. “We kind of met yesterday when they brought Molly in and I found some books for cutie there,” he says looking at Enoch.

Sly looks at Adhan. “Is everyone in town related to you?”

Adhan laughs. “No, but I have four brothers, all of whom have partners, plus Alfred and Molly. John who works here and Jodie who works at Shattered Glass, plus my Mum, Callum and Clarence, another brother-in-law and a new brother, so there are a lot of us. Cam tells me you’ve looked at the Myers house.”

“It’s just perfect,” Xander said. “And it has a separate building for Ebby to make his chocolates.”

“You make chocolates?” Alfred says happily, sitting down. “Tell me everything.”

Ebby laughs. “Like chocolate, do you?”

“I really do. When you move into the house and get set up, can I come and watch you work and see how chocolates are made?” Al asks him.

“If we move there, you can do more than watch, you can help me make some,” Ebby replies.

“Please move here,” he practically begs.

“Oh, I know, come for a BBQ, we can have one Sunday, then you can meet all the town's true witches properly and we can assure you you’ll all be safe here,” I say. “We can pull games out and play, but beware, the wolves cheat.”

“Wolves?” Enoch asks, sitting up.

“My family are wolf shifters, there are a lot of paranormals and witches in this town. We don’t like many people knowing, so please keep that to yourselves, and I think you’ll find sweetheart, it’s the witches that cheat,” Adhan tells him.

“So we really did see a leprechaun walking down the street the other day,” Xander says.

“You did,” Alfred says happily.

“Puppy, customer’s walking in,” Molly says just as the bell jingles.

“Thanks, Molly,” Alfred says, jumping up and quickly walking into the bookshop.

“Plus, if you come to the BBQ we can tell you everything that’s happened involving the dark witches, and believe me, you’ll want to hear about our adventures,” I tell them.

Molly cackles. “The witchlings have even created a website to rate the encounters.”

“I still think the flying toxic killer puppies were the best,” I say.

“Flying toxic killer puppies? I think we need to hear that story,” Sly says, grinning.

“We can tell you all about it on Sunday. But let me send you the link to the website,” I reply.

We chat about this and that and finally, Ebby, Sly and the boys leave.

“I think they will be a good fit here,” Adhan says, watching them leave. “Even though Sly is a dark witch.”

“They will be. The Dark one is the true witch for the Sherwood family.”

“Dark one?” Sal asks laughing.

Molly cackles out a laugh. “Well, Darkling was already taken.”