Crochet and Cauldrons: A paranormal cozy mystery (Vampire Knitting Club Book 3) Read online

  Crochet and Cauldrons

  Vampire Knitting Club, Book 3

  Nancy Warren

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Also by Nancy Warren

  About the Author

  Want to know more?

  Chapter 1

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Winters,” I said, walking into the corner grocer at the top of Harrington Street, in Oxford. It was convenient, only up the block from where Cardinal Woolsey’s Knitting Shop was located.

  Our little corner of Oxford was my favorite part of that ancient city. There was one college on the street, but it wasn’t famous. There were no world-class restaurants or fancy hotels. No celebrity had been born or died here. It wasn’t even in the oldest part of the city. What Harrington Street had, was rows of tiny shops and houses that had stood there for about two hundred and fifty years. And one of them was mine.

  I’d only been running Cardinal Woolsey’s for a few months and I was still discovering new quirks and oddities in the neighborhood—and that was just the people! Of course, since I was both young and American, I often had to explain how I came to own a quaint, old knitting shop. The easiest explanation, and the truth, was that I’d inherited the shop when my beloved grandmother died.

  The slightly more complicated explanation, also true, was that before she was all- the-way-dead, one of Gran’s vampire friends turned her. So, I ran the shop with a great deal of interference from a group of bored know-it-all vampires who were crazy good knitters.

  “How’s business, Lucy?” asked Mrs. Winters. She was inclined to be nosy.

  “Fine. I’m thinking of branching into selling designer knitted garments, possibly on the Internet.” The vampire knitting club turned out the most incredible work at warp speed and I hoped that if I could keep them busy enough, they might have less time and energy to interfere in my life. It was a faint hope, but I was clinging to it.

  “That’s a lovely sweater you’re wearing,” she said, peering at me closer. “Did you knit it yourself?”

  I swallowed the urge to snort. My attempts to knit were about as good as my track record at keeping an assistant. Pitiful. The sweater I wore was gorgeous. A deep purple background with an indescribable, but beautiful, geometric pattern of diamonds and squares in complimentary shades. The sweater had been made by Doctor Christopher Weaver, a local GP and vampire. The vampires took turns knitting me sweaters, shawls, and dresses to wear in the store. Every day I turned up in something amazing, which I usually only wore once, as there was always another new creation waiting for me to slip into. That’s why I was thinking of branching out into ready-made items.

  “I need a new assistant, though,” I said, holding up the advertisement I’d made. “Do you mind if I pin the job posting on your community board?”

  I’d also put the ad online and I’d posted a help wanted sign in my front window, but everybody in the neighborhood checked the community board at Full Stop, the grocer’s. It was the best place to find a violin teacher, a roommate, or a job.

  However, pinning a notice up always had a price. Especially as I kept putting up the same one: “Shop Assistant wanted at Cardinal Woolsey’s Knitting Shop. Must be an experienced knitter with retail experience.” I went through assistants the way an allergy sufferer with a bad cold went through tissues.

  I waited. Sure enough, she raised her brows in fake shock. “Good heavens. Another assistant?” She leaned across the counter, past the display of lottery tickets and a plastic basket of mini packs of Chocolate Buttons and Jelly Babies, all ready for Halloween. But her voice was so piercing I’m sure they could hear her at the top of the Radcliffe Camera. “It’s very important to keep consistency. Rapid staff turnover isn’t good for your business’s reputation.” She smiled at me in a very patronizing way. “I’m sure you don’t mind me giving you a hint, my dear. Only, I’ve been in business a great deal longer than you have.”

  I could have told her that my first assistant had been a psychopath, my second assistant had freaked out after seeing my supposedly dead grandmother wandering around the shop, and my third had gone back to Australia to be with her boyfriend, the murderer, but I held my tongue and tried to look grateful for the unwanted advice.

  Then, as though belatedly remembering how I had come to lose my third assistant, she said, “Of course, it’s all been so dreadful with that fuss at the tea shop.”

  It takes a very special person to call two murders a fuss.

  I smiled sweetly. “Can I put up my notice?” It was a Sunday afternoon and I was spending my only day of the week off doing catching-up chores, like vacuuming, and advertising for a new assistant.

  “Yes, of course, dear. And I’ll keep my eye out, too, for the right person. What sort of employee do you have in mind?”

  I knew exactly the sort of person I wanted. I could picture her in my mind. “I’m looking for a middle-aged woman, perhaps someone whose children have grown and is looking for part-time work. She has to be an excellent knitter, of course, have some experience in sales, and if she’s got teaching experience that would be even better. She must be available to work Saturdays.” I pictured a plump woman who wore cardigans that she’d knitted herself.

  She’d be motherly, the kind of person who could dispense life advice as easily as she could turn a sleeve or knit a picture of Santa and the reindeer into a child’s red sweater. Jumper, I corrected myself mentally.

  I felt certain she was out there, my fantasy knitting shop assistant. Until she showed up, I was making do on my own with sporadic assistance from some of the vampire ladies who had never been known locally when they were alive. Naturally, my grandmother was desperate to be involved, but I only let her help with the stock-taking and tidying up once the store was closed and I’d pulled the blinds.

  Having tacked up my notice and purchased fresh bread and milk for me, and half a dozen cans of tuna for Nyx, my black cat familiar, who is very particular about her diet, I walked the short distance back to my shop, my reusable cloth shopping bag swinging from my hand. Now that my chores were done, I was looking forward to an afternoon studying magic spells, with the help of my family grimoire. My witch cousin and great aunt kept encouraging me to join their coven, but I was hesitant to do so, with so few witchy skills to offer.

  The truth was, I seemed to get thrown into things I wasn’t very good at. For instance, I owned a knitting shop, and I couldn’t knit. I’d tried and tried. Gran said I didn’t focus properly, but I found it very difficult to keep my attention on a couple of metal sticks and constantly looping wool around them while keeping count. I couldn’t figure out how anyone kept their focus. My creations, whether attempts at scarves, socks, or sweaters, all ended up looking like variations of the sea urchin or hedgehog family. Sometimes I thought I should invent a line of knitted hedgehogs. I could really go to town.

  Gran said I came from a long line of illustrious witches. I didn’t know what my descendants might say of me, in the future, but I didn’t think they’d use the word illustrious. My potions didn’t turn out, I’d
forget my spells halfway through, and I tended to blow things up. Not on purpose.

  The only reason I half believed I was a witch was that my cat was clearly a very powerful familiar. I called her Nyx, after the goddess of night and daughter of chaos, and she was well named. She was the smartest cat I’d ever known, and when she was around things happened. I didn’t think she’d stay with me if she didn’t believe I had potential, though sometimes she looked at me sideways out of her green eyes and I could tell she was having second thoughts. If I ever stopped feeding her the best tuna Full Stop grocers had to offer, and tried to put cat food in her dish, I thought she might take off for greener pastures.

  However, I did have dreams that turned out to be significant, though not always at the time, and when my emotions were engaged I made things happen that were mysterious even to me. Not much to hang my pointy witch hat on, but it was all I had.

  How could I possibly turn up to the local witches coven and present myself as one of them? They’d sweep me out with their magic broomsticks. And who could blame them? But it was lonely being the only witch I knew, apart from my cousin and great aunt. So, I was determined to practice until I got my skills to a level where I felt the other witches might accept me. It was a bit like practicing baseball all summer in the hopes of making a team when school started. Of course, that hadn’t worked out for me. After a summer of practicing, I couldn’t ever seem to connect the baseball bat with the ball, and my pitching was worse.

  I was so busy having glum thoughts about my future as a witch, that I failed to notice two people standing in front of Cardinal Woolsey’s. It was a man and a woman, middle-aged and looking as though they had been standing there for a while. The first thought that went through my mind was how tedious it would be to get rid of them. If I explained that I was the owner, and that we were closed, they’d have some sob story about how they desperately needed wool today because… They’d expect me to open up for them. It’s amazing how people had taken the phrase ‘the customer is always right’ to mean the retail world should revolve around their desires.

  I was contemplating simply walking on past, as though my destination were elsewhere, when I realized these two were very familiar. As soon as I drew close enough to be certain, I dropped my bag onto the sidewalk and ran forward with my arms wide open. “Mom, Dad, I can’t believe you’re here.”

  Jack Swift and Susan Bartlett-Swift were rock stars in their field, which happened to be ancient Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology. Being a husband and wife team added glamor to their work as professors. Outside of that, no one had ever heard of them. They’d spent as much of their lives in the Middle East as they had in the States, which is why I ended up spending so much time in Oxford with my grandmother, when I was growing up.

  “You’re both so tanned, you look as though you’ve been on a Caribbean cruise,” I teased.

  Dad said, “We hit a sandstorm coming through Giza. Oh, but it’s good to see you, Lucy.” He enveloped me in a hug. Then I turned from him and hugged Mom, who wore a coat that looked like a giant sleeping bag. It was late October and chilly, but to a woman used to the heat of the desert, it would be freezing here.

  I found my keys and opened the door into the shop, which seemed easier than walking them around to the proper entrance to the flat, which was around the back and down a lane. I realized, then, that Mom hadn’t been here since her mother, my grandma, had passed away. This was going to cause complications. Because, of course, her mother wasn’t actually dead, she was more in the undead category. I wasn’t certain it was a good idea for my parents to discover that Gran was a vampire. And yet, she wandered around whenever the shop was closed, and, sometimes, disconcertingly, when it was open. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop her from showing herself to her daughter and son-in-law. But I’d cross that rainbow bridge when I came to it.

  Mom and Dad travelled light, with a wheeled bag and a backpack each. I carried Mom’s bag for her and led the way upstairs to the flat, where I now lived. I turned on lamps to chase away the darkness of the afternoon. Then, I took Mom’s puffy winter coat and Dad’s ancient wool bomber jacket and hung them in the closet.

  “But, what are you doing here? And why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” I looked from one to the other. “Was it political unrest?” That was usually the only thing that catapulted them out of a dig once they were, well, dug in.

  Mom classed political unrest with the weather and inadequate funding as irritations that prevented her doing her job properly. My parents were single-minded in their fascination with digging up history. They knew much more about the goings-on in the ancient world than about the modern one.

  But Dad looked at Mom, who shook her head. She looked sort of confused. Had she been drinking on the plane? Mom rarely drank so I wondered if a couple of cocktails at thirty thousand feet had sent her loopy. Something had.

  “I wanted to see you, Lucy.” She put a hand to her brown hair, liberally streaked with gray, which had grown past her shoulders since I’d last seen her. “And I need a haircut.”

  Mom was not a woman who left her job and went to another country to get her hair cut. Apart from looking buzzed, Mom seemed in great shape. She wore her usual uniform of oversized cotton shirt with chinos and desert boots. Since she refused to wear trifocals, she was wearing her medium distance glasses and had both her reading glasses and her long distance glasses tucked into the pocket of her shirt. She never wore makeup and her only jewelry was a plain, gold wedding band.

  My Dad wore pretty much the same uniform, only his shirt was a faded blue denim. He’d given in to trifocals and his new glasses were pretty trendy since I’d helped him pick them out. I’d inherited my blond, curly hair from him, though his was more silver than gold. Years in the desert had given him a rugged, windswept complexion. He looked like an older Indiana Jones.

  They were brilliant archaeologists, and hopelessly impractical about everyday things. I adored them both. “You should have told me you were coming!”

  “Mom wanted to surprise you.” Also, odd behavior. Mom hated surprises.

  “Well, I’m surprised all right. I’m so happy to see you.” Then, I laughed. “I don’t know what we’re doing standing here in the living room. Sit.” I offered them tea. My mother laughed softly. “You’re becoming as English is your grandmother. Don’t you have any coffee?”

  “Of course, I do.” I went into the kitchen and got busy preparing coffee. Mom followed me in. I said, “This must be so hard for you. It’s the first time you’ve been back since Gran died.”

  “Harder for you, I think. I’m so sorry you got the shock of arriving here and finding out she was gone. It must’ve been awful.”

  Oh, she had no idea. Not only had I found my supposedly dead grandmother wandering around, but, with the help of the vampire knitting club, I’d had to solve her murder. Naturally, Mom knew nothing about that. “I got through it.”

  She didn’t waste any time getting to the Mom question I was already dreading. “I understood you staying at the beginning, honey, but why are you still here? You’re twenty-seven years old. What are you doing running a knitting shop?”

  I’d sort of fallen into this new life, partly because Gran had left the shop and the flat upstairs to me, but mostly because I’d grown to like it so much. As crazy as it sounded, I looked forward to the biweekly meetings of the vampire knitting club. They were a strange bunch from very different eras, but they were my friends. I enjoyed running a shop more than I’d imagined, and, if I ever learned to knit, I’d be really good at it.

  “You’d be surprised, Mom. Knitting and crochet aren’t just for little old ladies, anymore. I get students in here, young men and women, there’s even a club that meets in pubs to knit. They’re called the Oxford Drunken Knitwits.” So there.

  “Are you making any close friends?”

  Okay, so most of my friends were celebrating birthdays in the hundreds, but I’d stopped thinking of them that way. “I’m busy
with the shop, but I’m getting out. I’m thinking of taking a class on how to run a small business, and as soon as I get time, I’m going back to yoga classes. You know what Oxford’s like. There are lectures, concerts, theater, book launches, and pub quizzes on all the time, here.”

  I put three mugs of coffee on a tray along with a plate of homemade gingersnaps. Gran knew they were my favorites and she made them for me regularly. When Mom saw them, she put a hand to her heart. “Mum used to make those for us. You found her recipe. I never knew she’d written it down.”

  I smiled and fervently hoped Mom didn’t ask me for the heirloom recipe as I hadn’t got a clue how to make them.

  When we were settled, Mom and Dad side by side on the chintz sofa and me on one of the overstuffed chairs, she went back to her previous one-sided conversation. “Are you sure you aren’t lonely?”

  “Never. Besides, I have a roommate.” Then I raised my voice. “Nyx?” I called out. Normally, the cat hung out with me whether I was home or in the shop. It was strange she wasn’t here now, getting to know Mom and Dad. Especially as she’d be a good distraction from the third degree I was getting.

  Mom and dad looked each other. Dad said, “Who’s Nyx?”

  “My cat. I don’t know where she is. She usually loves meeting new people.”

  “That’s so nice,” Dad said. “You always wanted a cat or a dog growing up. We couldn’t have pets because we were away so much.”

  I hunted around and found Nyx, upstairs, sitting by the window in my bedroom. I normally left the window open for her, but, because it had been cold earlier, I’d shut it.

  “Come and meet my parents.” I picked her up and carried her back down and into the living room, where my parents were drinking coffee, both looking jetlagged. I felt Nyx stiffen in my arms and pull back. I nudged her towards my dad and he held out a hand and stroked her on the head.