“Your daughter has great taste in cuisine, Mr. Baxter.”
Baxter, thumbing his suspenders, failed to restrain an amused frown. “That she does, but not such good taste in what she chooses to let come out of her mouth. I’d like to put my boot to her behind for telling you all that gory baloney about Wraxall and his daughter.”
“Listen to Dad,” Abbie mocked, looking at Fanshawe. “You should’ve seen how excited he was when we found all those black-magic relics in the basement. ‘The Salem of New Hampshire!’ he said. ‘We’ll make a fortune from all these sucker tourists!’”
“Mind your mouth, girl…”
“Well, it’s true, Dad. For someone who thinks witchcraft is just a bunch of ‘silly drivel,’ you sure jumped all over it.”
“You did a little jumpin’ yourself, missy,” Baxter replied, wagging a finger. “So don’t ya go puttin’ it all on me in front of Mr. Fanshawe.”
Abbie laughed and drifted off her stool. She went behind the bar, to make drinks.
Fanshawe smiled through the vocal volley. “Well, it certainly looks like it’s working; you’ve got a pretty solid business here. But tell me, Mr. Baxter. It can’t all be baloney and drivel, can it?”
Baxter scoffed mildly. “Oh, I’m sure a little bit of that religious mob-law stuff went on,” and then he threw a hard glance to Abbie, who was adding ice to a silver shaker, “but it wasn’t nothin’ like the witch-killing free-for-all that my mouthy daughter here claims. It was just mostly folks gettin’ a little carried away.”
Abbie rolled her gray eyes. “What about the tens of thousands of people who died at the hands of the Inquisition, Dad? Just folks getting a little carried away?”
Fanshawe interjected, addressing Baxter. “But, seriously, did the legal authorities of this town really sentence heretics to death by barreling?”
Baxter stiffened up. “Aw, Abbie, ya didn’t tell Mr. Fanshawe all that morbid nonsense now, did ya!”
Fanshawe laughed. “Don’t blame Abbie, sir. I was the one who insisted she tell me.”
Baxter made a gesture of frustrated resignation. “Oh, jeez. I suppose there’s a hint of truth to it, but there ain’t really no official record.”
Now Abbie began to work the shaker, speaking over the clatter of ice. “The unofficial record, Jacob Wraxall’s diary, testifies that almost a hundred were executed in that fashion, including his daughter, Evanore.”
“Abbie, why do you insist on fillin’ Mr. Fanshawe’s head up with all that grisly poppycock?”
This was the first time tonight Fanshawe felt sexually distracted by Abbie: the way her breasts tossed slightly as she shook the iced tumbler, and suddenly he seemed hotly intrigued by the graceful slope of her neck, the hollow of her throat, her gleaming bare shoulders and skin above her cleavage. Fanshawe could’ve winced when the friction of Abbie’s bra from the shaking seemed to provoke her nipples to hardness.
Jeez… Eventually, he dragged his way back to his focus. “But I am curious about what Wraxall’s diary revealed. You’ve actually read it?”
“Oh, sure,” Abbie admitted. “I’d be happy to show it to you sometime.”
Baxter flapped a hand of disregard. “You can look at it all you want, Mr. Fanshawe, but you’ll be hard-pressed to make out a word of it.”
“It’s true that most of it’s not legible,” Abbie added. “First of all it’s written in a very old style, and the majority of the lines are blurred—”
“Oh, water damage? Silverfish?” Fanshawe presumed.
“Nope. It was mostly because back then the inks of the day were high in iron oxide content—I actually researched this. Proteins in the vellum stock that they used for paper interacted with the iron molecules. It would look great for a hundred years or so, but longer than that the ink would blur and turn yellow. A lot of the books here are like that unfortunately.”
“But you said that most of the diary’s illegible,” Fanshawe pointed out. “Most means not all.”
Now Baxter butted back in. “There’s a tad you can still make out, but you’re guaranteed a whopper of a headache from eyestrain.”
Abbie began to pour the drinks, looking at the shot glasses as she spoke. “Overall, there was a lot of verification of some of the mysteries of the day. There was a spate of missing persons—mostly children and teenagers—but no one suspected that occult ritualism had anything to do with the disappearances. Instead they were blamed on small scattered tribes of Indians who wanted revenge against the Colonists for killing so many of them when the area was first settled.”
“But?” Fanshawe goaded.
“Wraxall’s diary gave the real reason. It was him and Callister Rood, plus the coven members. Every so often they’d snatch a kid to sacrifice as an offering to the Devil. There were also entries about certain seasonal rituals they’d perform in the woods at night, on All Hallows Eve, for instance, and Candlemas, and the last day of April, called Beltane Eve. And the rest of the legible stuff is mostly what I told you about the other night”—she hesitated—“you know, about the incest and the sacrifice of Evanore’s newborns—”
Mr. Baxter groaned, a hand to his head.
“And he did go into some detail about some of his rituals and coven meetings,” Abbie added.
Fanshawe now fell unreservedly prey to Abbie’s sexual aura when she slid him his drink. Damn… Her breasts seemed to lift and then taunt him when she raised her own glass. “To Jacob and Evanore Wraxall,” she proposed with a laugh.
Baxter’s face corrugated. “I ain’t drinkin’ to them!”
“Just kidding! Um, to the Witch-Blood Shooter. Cheers.”
The three of them clinked the tiny glasses.
Fanshawe felt the sweet concoction slam into his stomach. The liquor blended with the sight of Abbie coming back to sit with him made him feel light-headed.
She re-took his hand immediately, which appeared to buff off some of her father’s displeasure with all the “grisly poppycock” she’d revealed. I guess he doesn’t mind his daughter going out with a billionaire, Fanshawe thought cynically. “Oh, what was I going to ask next?” He slid his stool even closer to Abbie and was suddenly luxuriating in her scents and exotic warmth. He looked right at her, helpless. Oh, God, she’s so beautiful…
“Stew?” She was grinning. “What were you going to ask?”
He could’ve twisted his own ear. Idiot! You’re acting like an airhead! “Oh, yeah. You said Wraxall dug up his daughter’s bones—”
“Six-hundred-and-sixty-six days after she was executed,” she reminded with an elucidating finger raised.
“What ya got to understand about my daughter, Mr. Fanshawe,” Baxter stepped back in, “is she likes to over-dramatize things.”
“Whatever,” she sniped.
“I’m just curious,” Fanshawe continued, “as to what Wraxall did with the bones, like…exactly.”
Abbie’s cocky smile challenged her father outright. “Dad, why don’t you tell Stew what Wraxall did with Evanore’s bones.”
“I’ll do no such thing, girl!” Baxter railed. “It’s all a bunch of hokey codswallop anyways.”
Fanshawe went with Abbie’s flow. “Come on, sir. I’d be interested in hearing your interpretation.”
Baxter stewed in reluctance, then resigned to the task. “Aw, well, if ya really wanna know… What he done was he made witch-water out of ’em.”
Of course, the term witch-water rang a loud bell. The glass, he thought. The caption called it a “Witch-Water” looking-glass… But he pretended to be unfamiliar with the term. “Witch-water? What’s that?”