Down on the Charm Read online

  DOWN ON THE CHARM

  A Farm to Fable Paranormal Cozy Mystery

  Book 1

  E.L. Wilder

  Copyright © 2019 E.L. Wilder

  This book is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the reader. It is the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, copied, or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

  Cover design by Gemma Thorne

  eBook design by E.L. Wilder

  Faulty Broomstick Publishing

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  For my Better Half,

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  Seriously, your Knack for aligning my wardrobe is pure magic.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  PREORDER BOOK 2

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CONNECT WITH E.L. WILDER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MORE FROM E.L. WILDER

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hazel Bennett pulled her ball cap down a little tighter, making sure her wig was still doing its job, adjusted her chunky sunglasses, and tried to sink into the back seat of her Uber. Now would be a good time for her Knack to manifest itself. Perhaps with a touch of illusion? A smattering of invisibility? A skosh of spontaneous combustion? She wasn’t picky. Though with her luck, she would misfire and set the little Honda Fit alight.

  No, she would just have to cross her fingers and pray for continued anonymity a little longer. They were almost there now. She was almost home.

  “Are you sure I don’t know you from somewhere?” her Uber driver asked again, adjusting the rearview mirror as if hoping for a bit of magic himself—some angle that would reveal her true identity. She hoped the darkened eyebrows and the black hair would be enough to throw him off. It had worked so far.

  She shrugged. “I get that all the time. I have one of those faces,” she said, flashing the least famous—the least Helena Rose—smile she could muster before pressing further back into her seat, hoping it might swallow her up.

  Technically she wasn’t lying. He might know her face. He probably knew her work. Had maybe paid a few dollars to sit in a dark theater and watch her play make-believe for a living. Seen her on late night. Maybe even knew that she’d been born and bred here in Vermont, somewhere between the calm waters of Lake Champlain and the gentle slopes of the Green Mountains. But even if he figured out who she was, he didn’t know her.

  As her Uber rounded the final bend in her long trek home, Hazel’s heart performed a near-Olympian feat of gymnastics, vaulting through her chest and sticking the landing somewhere in her throat. A gold medal performance, she reckoned. It was possible she was being melodramatic. She’d been accused of suffering bouts of extreme prima donna-ness and fits of near hysteria. That last one really irked her. As if she were some bodice-wearing tart from a Victorian novel. But it was a favorite descriptor used in tabloids and on Twitter.

  Especially after the latest incident.

  After she’d boarded her plane, she’d made the mistake of scrolling through her feed and suffered an assault of notifications. Sure there had been some support from fans and the world at large. But #dategate and #Rosewiththorns had been trending. With horror, she’d launched one text to her mother saying only, “Homeward bound,” shut her phone off, and never looked back. If planes had windows that opened, she might have flung the phone out somewhere over the Rockies. Instead, she’d settled for burying it deep in her carry-on and then sticking her nose deep into the pages of a magazine. Not that she could focus on a word of it. But she’d played the part of the diligent reader to perfection, and it had been enough to obscure her face from her fellow passengers.

  Nothing more than acting, she said to herself.

  She caught sight of the sugar maples that marked the turn into Bennett Farms and her heart started its next floor routine.

  “There.” She pointed, grateful to redirect the driver’s attention back to the road.

  A flashy sign caught her eye as they approached.

  Bennett Farms

  Grand Opening

  June 21

  Free to the public

  Music, food, & fun for all ages

  Hazel did a double-take, her jaw dropping. Grand opening? Free to the public? There were so many things wrong with the sentiment that she didn’t know where to start.

  But before she could process it, they had turned onto the dirt road, leaving the sign behind and passing between the maples. The trees were mammoths, centuries old, just like the farm itself, and for a moment it was like they were passing through a tunnel. Her Uber driver slowed at the gatehouse that hunched in the shade of the trees, a quaint stone building with a mossy roof. It was an understandable mistake on his part. As far as gatehouses go, it eclipsed your standard family home.

  “Keep going,” she said.

  A moment later, they emerged from the tunnel and entered another world entirely. Her driver whistled long and low. “Whoa.”

  Whoa indeed.

  The dirt road disappeared into a postcard-perfect vista of rolling fields and grazing sheep. Even though she’d grown up here, everything she saw took her breath away and set her neurons on fire—the shape of each tree, each hill, all of it was etched into the skyline of her memory—the grove of trees where she and her sister, Juniper, had tried to build a clubhouse one summer. The old Skylark Pasture, which they had dared to cross despite the angry bull that guarded it. The eastern-most edge of the Tanglewood, which they were strictly forbidden from entering.

  The road wended toward a sprawling fortress of towers and turrets, slate and weathervanes.

  “Is that your house?” he marveled.

  “That’s the East Barn,” she corrected.

  “Barn,” he repeated dumbly, as if unable to believe the building wasn’t a fortified castle. He stopped the car when the road forked and gawked up at the structure. Now that they were closer, Hazel saw that the barn was a hubbub of activity. Scaffolding hugged large portions of its outer walls and wrapped around one of the back towers. People moved from place to place with purpose, some wearing hardhats, others dressed like farmhands. A construction trailer was planted on the side lawn. What was that all about? she wondered. The East Barn was a lot of things—a place to house more chickens, to store tractors, to hide discarded relics—but a hubbub of anything it had never been. She craned her neck, trying to glimpse a familiar face. Preferably a Bennett. But she saw only strangers. The thought of this many people, this many sets of eyes exploring the darkest corners of Bennett Farms made her more than a little nervous. Think of what they might see, she said to herself.

  “Follow the North Way,” sh
e said, pointing right.

  With the East Barn out of sight, the Uber driver took up his previous activity of inspecting her in his rearview mirror with a frequency that seemed no less safe now that they were off public roads. But for the first time she was grateful for it, because as they crossed the narrowed covered bridge that marked the boundary between the front half and the back half of the farm, he failed to notice the creature that was swinging from the bridge’s rafters. An imp she thought, from the looks of the bright red skin, the pointed ears, and the javelin nose.

  Somehow they crossed the bridge without incident and continued on the road as it bisected endless pastures and woodlands.

  Finally, they crested a hill and she caught sight of what she had come for—an ancient mansion sitting on a lakeside bluff, the waters of Lake Champlain sparkling in the noonday sun and the Adirondacks fading into the distance.

  At the sight of it, she was no longer afraid of being recognized as the jet-setting actress, Helena Rose. Instead, she was afraid of being recognized as Hazel Bennett, the girl beneath the persona. The one she had left behind one hot August night ten years earlier. How much of that girl would be waiting for her?

  “Is that a barn too?” inquired her driver.

  “No,” she said quietly. “That’s home.”

  The Uber closed the distance and climbed the little hill, pulling to a stop in the carriageway.

  Hazel got out, wrestled her suitcase from the trunk, and gazed up at the glory that was Bennett Manor. To anyone else, it might have looked like the setting of a horror movie—a cascade of archways and vaulted windows set in brick and stone, its prime long since passed—but to her it was home. Even the years away could do nothing to change that.

  At least that’s what she was hoping as she started toward the front door.

  “Wait . . . I knew I recognized you!” her Uber driver called from the open passenger window. “You’re Helena Rose, aren’t you?”

  Hazel winced. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him snapping her picture.

  “Hey!” he called. “How ’bout a selfie?”

  “You must have me confused with somebody else,” she replied, with a sugary sweetness she didn’t feel, the refrain a well-rehearsed line. “My name is Hazel. Check your log.”

  He pouted. “No selfie means a bad rating.”

  She ignored him and pulled the front door open. “I’ve been panned by better critics,” she muttered as she ducked inside. She removed her cap and pulled the wig off, releasing a cascade of volcanic-red curls.

  A cat was there to greet her, a white and ghostly thing twining around her ankles. On Bennett Farms, few things said home more than a white cat. They were omnipresent, some of them pampered house cats living in the nooks and crannies of the manor, others dwelling in the countless barns and buildings that dotted the estate. The lineage of this family of cats was as closely entwined with Bennett Farms as were the Bennetts themselves. That’s why a white cat dominated the Bennett Family crest.

  This one was young though. A newbie that would have postdated Hazel’s departure. She stooped down and scratched the cat behind the ears, noting the extra toes on the cat’s forepaws—a family trait.

  “And what is your name, sweetheart?” she cooed.

  “That’s Odysseus,” said a familiar voice. Amy Bennett stood in the broad wooden arch leading from the foyer to the rest of the house. She looked barely a day older than when Hazel had left, except for the webs silvering her coal-colored hair. Young even at sixty. “And be careful. He seems friendly, but he’ll bite your hand off.”

  As if on cue, the kitten sank its needlelike teeth into her flesh. Hazel yelped.

  “How long will you be staying?” asked Amy.

  Hazel could only shrug as she wrestled free from Odysseus’s grip, not daring to look up and meet Amy’s eyes.

  “That’s a small suitcase,” remarked Amy.

  “I packed quickly.”

  The silence seemed like it would stretch on forever, but then Amy finally spoke. “We’ll have to send for the rest.” She broke out her signature crooked grin, a warmth spreading across her face and melting everything that had looked cold and hard a moment ago. “Welcome home, Hazey.”

  All the fear—about coming home, about whether there was still a place for her on Bennett Farms—evaporated. And just like that she was Hazel Bennett again. Not Helena Rose. Not a woman running away from a dying career and a slew of unfortunate tabloid headlines. She was merely a girl coming home. She let go of a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and let her shoulder bag slip to the floor. “Mama,” she said, nearly gasping the word.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hazel’s mother closed the gap between them and pulled her daughter into a crushing hug with a strength that was surprising for so slight a woman. Hazel buried her face into her mother’s shoulder, taking in everything at once—the familiar smell of cardamom and ginger, the feel of her hair, the sturdiness of her embrace. Still Hazel couldn’t help but expectantly peer over her mother’s shoulder into the receiving hall beyond. The act didn’t escape her mother’s notice (nothing did) and she said, “Your sister is at the East Barn.”

  So Juniper had been somewhere in the middle of that jumble. Had Hazel known, she might have had her Uber driver drop her there. It had been years since she’d seen her sister in person. She thought about dropping her bags right there and setting out on foot to retrace her way to the East Barn. Again her mother seemed to read her thoughts. “She’ll be busy. You’re better off waiting until she comes back for dinner. It’s been like that for months, but your sister’s trying to get the farm ready for the grand opening.”

  Hazel recalled the sign she’d seen on the way in. “Grand opening . . .” she said. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “Your sister is trying to save the farm . . .”

  “From what?”

  “Itself,” her mother replied, trying to smile but only flashing a forced grin that, to Hazel, looked grim. “You should ask Juniper about it when you see her. She can explain it better.”

  “Juniper?” Hazel said. “You call the shots around here.”

  Her mom shook her head. “I may own the farm on paper, my dear, but your sister runs the place. And I trust her implicitly. She has . . . vision.” She shrugged. “I just pay the bills and sign the checks. If you have beef, bring it up with her.” She paused and looked Hazel up and down. “But first, I need to feed you. You’re too thin.”

  Hazel opened her mouth to protest, not about the food—frankly, she was starving—but about her mother’s casual indifference to opening Bennett Farms like some kind of amusement park. As if there weren’t potentially catastrophic consequences to inviting the public to a place where imps performed acrobatics on the daily.

  But her mother’s face was resolute, her arms were crossed, and this conversation was over. So Hazel sighed in defeat.

  “It’s 2019, Mom. Body-shaming isn’t in vogue anymore. Besides, I’m just fit.”

  “Fit to starve, maybe. Besides, it’s been ages since I’ve gotten to make you a sandwich. Do you still like them the same way?”

  “No.”

  “Tough. All I have is bologna and white bread.”

  Her mother beckoned and started off toward the kitchen, Hazel smirking as she followed. She paused on the way to take it all in, pleased to see everything looked the same—the same crown molding, the same furniture, all of it looking as threadbare and worn as the day she had left. Lived in, she said to herself. No Hollywood glam. No Beverly Hills swank. Just centuries of history. Of living.

  She found her mother in the kitchen—once a grand culinary stage now humbled by weathered surfaces and aging appliances. Unruly ivy that grew up the outside of the house covered the windows, washing the room in green light and giving it a secret, cozy feel, even though it was big enough to accommodate an entire kitchen staff. But there had been no staff in the manor for years—not as long as Hazel had been alive.

&n
bsp; Hazel seated herself on a stool at the counter island, running her hands over the chipped black granite. Like the rest of Bennett Farms, it echoed bygone grandeur, the history of the Bennett family recorded in nicks and scrapes.

  Hazel couldn’t help but smile as her mother rummaged through the refrigerator and fished out condiments and fixings and snatched things from the expansive spice rack on the far wall. Hazel had spent countless hours watching her mother cook here—performing that mystical art of measuring and mixing, patting and pinching, slicing and serving, that had never been Hazel’s strength. Her mother might have been born without the mark, but surely she could work magic just as well as any Bennett woman with the Knack.

  Once upon a time, Hazel had fled this house. Her reasons had been many, but, she had told herself, it was at least in part to escape her mother’s relentless preening. But now it felt good to be fussed over. Cared for. Not the way the public fussed over her. Not the way her long string of boyfriends had. Only the way family could. A mother could.

  “What’s your plan?” her mother asked, thin-slicing a loaf of bread.

  “I have no idea,” said Hazel. “I’m working entirely without a script here.” She rubbed the countertop, worrying over a particularly deep scar there. “Lie low until this blows over?”

  Her mother nodded slowly, mouth drawn into a tight smile. She presented Hazel with a plate crowded with a sandwich and a mound of potato chips. “You look just like her,” she said out of nowhere. “Your Gammy.”

  Hazel tried to fight against the corners of her mouth as they tugged down and at the hotness behind her eyes. She had known this was coming, that there was unsettled business—things left unsaid, grief left ungrieved.

  “She had a face for the silver screen if she’d been born in a different place,” her mother said. “And a birthmark to burn at the stake, if she’d been born at a different time.”