Prologue PROLOGUE
A Broom

Foretells changes to come.

When the taste of cinnamon touched the tip of Anne’s tongue, she knew that someone had spoken her name. As soon as she became aware of the spicy sweetness, Anne opened her eyes and glanced around the room like a dowsing rod, searching for the source of the sensation.

But all she saw were her sisters, Beatrix and Violet, sleeping soundly where they had fallen in a state of blissful exhaustion several hours earlier. The three little witches had discovered an enchanted cloak packed in their mother’s trunks and filled the evening hours taking turns throwing it across their shoulders and turning themselves into pirates and princesses. They’d only stopped when Violet, who’d insisted on playing the part of a court jester, had collapsed onto a pile of old quilts in the corner of the attic and closed her eyes “for only just a moment.”

Looking toward the mountain of calico and gingham fabric, Anne saw that Violet was still wearing the tattered cloak, which looked comically large now that she’d turned back into a young girl.

A soft snore echoed against the rafters, and Anne turned to see Beatrix curled up on a tufted pillow next to a shelf of books. Her hands were still wrapped loosely around the corners of a fairy tale collection that their mother had tucked to the very back of the stack because she didn’t want her daughters to think they were destined to grow warts on their noses like the witches who glared at them from the colorful illustrations.

Yawning, Anne started to ease back into the worn curtains that served as her makeshift bed, but the flavor of cinnamon returned, so strong this time that she nearly sneezed.

Something was amiss.

As quietly as she could, Anne rose from her velvet cocoon and tiptoed toward the spiral staircase across the room. Violet and Beatrix didn’t appear to sense anything, but that didn’t surprise Anne. She was always the first of the three who felt a shiver crawl up her spine just before someone dropped a porcelain cup or heard a popping noise in her ears when a friend whispered a secret that wasn’t theirs to share. Violet and Beatrix weren’t usually far behind, but the sisters were so often in step when it came to everything else that this slight discrepancy had caused poor Anne quite a bit of concern. She’d only managed to push her fears to the back of her mind when their mother had pulled her aside and given her hands a reassuring squeeze.

“You each have your own special talents,” her mother had whispered with a smile as she let Anne lick the spoon that she was using to stir a bowl of Black Forest cake batter.

Now whenever Violet took a second too long to recognize a new sign during their tea-reading lessons or Beatrix stepped over a ladybug that would have given her a dose of luck had she taken the time to wish her a good day, Anne remembered the rich taste of chocolate and her mother’s soft words.

Stifling another yawn, Anne extended one of her short, stubby legs out into the darkness, expecting it to land firmly on the ground. But she was on a different flight of stairs now, the ones that would take her from the second floor to the first, and had forgotten that the final step was a bit steeper than the rest.

The house, which had been keeping a watchful eye on Anne since she slipped away from the attic, was ready to catch her when she stumbled. The floor instantly rose to meet her, preventing Anne from falling and hitting her knee against the hard wooden boards. As she straightened herself, she could feel the railing move closer to her hand as well, radiating like a nanny who’d managed to avert disaster at the last moment but was still recovering from the shock of what might have been.

Patting her small hand against the wall, Anne tried her best to reassure the house that she was unharmed. It was protective, and Anne felt a twinge of guilt that she’d frightened the walls so abruptly out of their slumber when she and her sisters had no doubt kept them awake with their playacting upstairs.

Soft fur brushed across Anne’s calf then, and she looked down to find a pair of bright green eyes staring up at her. Anne leaned forward to run a hand along the cat’s spine, but before she could sink her fingers into Tabitha’s inky black coat, she scampered away toward the sliver of light that was peeking around the outline of the door that led to the kitchen.

Anne nearly ran to catch the cat as she trotted closer to the light, but a sudden tingling along her spine told her to pause before the sound of her footsteps could echo down the hall.

“Clara, you don’t know what you’re asking,” a voice said.

The words were strained and somewhat muffled by the door, but it took Anne no more than a heartbeat to recognize who had spoken them.

What was Miss McCulloch doing here so late at night? She normally came to visit their mother in the early afternoon when the two of them could talk for several hours over a pot of tea and several scones bursting with clotted cream and raspberry jam. Though other witches sometimes came to call, Miss McCulloch’s visits were the only ones that didn’t cause Anne’s mother’s shoulder blades to pinch together, as if she was bracing herself for a sudden blow.

But since she lived in an entirely different part of the city, Miss McCulloch always left well before dusk. She never stayed as late as this, not even when she and Anne’s mother were so caught up in conversation that they became oblivious to the chimes of the grandfather clock.

“But I do, Katherine,” Anne’s mother replied, her tone firm. “I need to learn more about how it works.”

“You know I can’t share any details,” Miss McCulloch insisted, clearly confused. “It wouldn’t be responsible. That type of magic can be dangerous in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to weave it properly.”

“I understand,” Anne’s mother said, a note of defeat texturing her voice.

“Clara, won’t you tell me what’s been troubling you?” Miss McCulloch begged. “You’ve been acting strangely for weeks.”

“I’m afraid I’ve already said too much,” Anne’s mother replied. “The signs I’ve been trying to untangle are so complex that even one misstep might push everything on the wrong path. I have to be careful,” she sighed. “For their sake.”

Anne’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. She’d never heard her mother sound so serious about a premonition. What had she uncovered at the bottom of a teacup to inspire such a reaction?

“You’re speaking in riddles, Clara,” Miss McCulloch groaned.

Anne heard the creaking of a chair and could picture the older woman leaning back in wonder and frustration.

“I won’t be able to rest until I know they’ll be together again,” Anne’s mother said. “That they’ll have a choice.”

“What do you think is going to drive them apart?” Miss McCulloch asked. “Can’t you tell me?”

“I can only say that—” Anne’s mother began, but before she could continue, the cat whined and thrust her paw toward the kitchen door, pushing it open and casting the bright light on Anne.

“It seems that we have a visitor,” Anne’s mother murmured, the hard expression on her face instantly softening at the sight of her daughter’s white nightgown floating like a ghost in the shadows.

“Yes,” Miss McCulloch said, rubbing a palm against her temple as if in pain. “It would seem so.”

“Come here, sweetheart,” Anne’s mother said, opening her arms wide in invitation.

Anne took two hesitant steps forward and then ran the rest of the way, throwing herself into her mother’s lap and burying her face into the crook of her neck. The earthy smell of marigolds that always clung to Clara’s skin tickled her daughter’s nose, and the familiar scent caused Anne’s lips to curve into a smile.

“What are you doing up?” her mother asked as she ran a hand through Anne’s unruly auburn curls. “Your father told me that you three fell asleep in the attic.”

“I tasted cinnamon,” Anne answered simply.

“Ah,” she replied with a nod. “That explains it then.”

“Her magic’s developing rather quickly,” Miss McCulloch commented, and when Anne turned her head a bit to the left, she saw that her mother’s friend was staring at her with open curiosity.

“Yes,” her mother replied. “I know.”

Anne wanted to ask why her mother looked so scared, but she held back, unsure of how to phrase her question and fearing the answer.

“Katherine, would you mind bringing me that biscuit tin over there?”

Anne felt her mother gesture toward the shelf above the stove, where all sorts of colorful metal boxes and milky glass jars stuffed with dried flowers rested outside the reach of the sisters’ eager hands.

“This one?” Anne heard Miss McCulloch ask.

“Not quite. I want the white one with the orange lilies printed across the sides.”

Miss McCulloch murmured a noise of understanding, and before long Anne heard the clink of a metal lid popping open and smelled a floral, hazy fragrance float toward her little nose.

“What’s that?” Anne asked as she turned around to see what sweet treat her mother had uncovered.

“A biscuit,” Anne’s mother replied as she reached into the tin and pulled out a piece of shortbread with a flower embossed across the top. “But it’s special.”

“What does it do?” Anne asked curiously, her gaze fixed on the treat.

“It makes you forget,” her mother answered honestly. She always told her daughters the truth, especially when it came to enchantments.

“Everything?” Anne asked.

“No,” her mother explained. “Just a sliver of time. Only a few fleeting minutes, really.”

“And what does it taste like?” Anne asked.

“Sugar and sweet dreams,” her mother replied. “Do you still want a bite?”

Ever the careful child, Anne took her time to decide. She wasn’t like Violet, who often answered without giving herself a second to think, or Beatrix, who lingered so long over a choice that the initial opportunity often passed her by entirely. No, Anne somehow always knew just how long to wait before acting.

And she soon decided that she didn’t want to remember what she’d heard while standing on the other side of the kitchen door. Her mother, ever confident and assured, had been frightened, and that made Anne feel so uneasy that biting into the biscuit seemed like a blessing.

After making her choice, Anne nodded and then eagerly slipped the biscuit into her mouth. It crumbled between her teeth, and in an instant she tasted just what it felt like to slip into a long and peaceful slumber.

“Will she really forget?” Anne heard Miss McCulloch ask as her eyes started to close.

“She’ll remember,” her mother said as she pulled Anne closer to her chest and kissed the top of her head. “When the time is right.”


Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1
Lines

Suggest that you will soon go on a journey; straight lines indicate movement toward happiness while wavy lines foreshadow difficulty.

The Quigley witches were pitied for all the reasons that they believed themselves to be exceptional. The humans who neighbored their shop thought that as women who had to work for their livelihoods, they were a sorry lot deserving of consideration, if not respect. To the other witches who roamed the streets of the city, the Quigleys were an anomaly as well, and that was certainly saying something, seeing as most of their kind thought dancing naked around a fire under the light of a full moon was the height of cultural refinement.

Not only had their mother, a talented witch of the Chicago coven, decided to marry a human—an almost laughably ordinary tailor whose greatest claim to fame was his ability to tie a double Windsor knot to sheer perfection—but she had made the unforgivable choice of settling her household outside the magical district and into the rooms above her husband’s shop, which was just a hair’s breadth away from State Street. The Quigley sisters were thus fated to a reputation of unconventionality among their mother’s people before they were even the barest twinkle in their father’s eye.

Even stranger still to both the humans and the witches was the fact that the sisters had decided to continue living in the home above their father’s tailoring business and use the shop below for their own purposes after the tragic deaths of their parents, though each group had different reasons for their confusion, of course.

The humans were still puzzled that three girls of marriageable age and striking looks didn’t immediately sell the house and attach themselves to the first men who happened to take notice of them.

No, indeed, the Quigley sisters had done just the opposite and transformed the once Spartan-looking shop into a tearoom that catered to the ladies who were now beginning to flood the ever-growing department stores taking root downtown. What had once been a quiet, traditional neighborhood of industrious Chicago businessmen was transforming as a new breed of women began to wander about in search of the Crescent Moon Tearoom on their way home after a day of shopping at Schlesinger & Mayer or Marshall Field’s, their colorful skirts and wide sleeves demanding space along the sidewalks and in the streetcars.

The witches were equally dissatisfied with the sisters’ decision to open the shop. Not because they had a problem with women running their own businesses. No, the difficulty with the sisters rested in the fact that they had not situated the Crescent Moon in a closer and more convenient location. Now the witches had to traipse all the way to the Loop and act “normal” as they waited to be served, unless it was the last Thursday evening of the month, of course, when the shop was reserved for the exclusive use of the city’s more magically inclined.

But come they did, even if it meant having to keep their tools of the craft hidden beneath large hats and corsets. This was because the Crescent Moon was not an ordinary teahouse and the sisters could give their customers something much more unusual than a fragrant pot of Earl Grey and platter of pristinely cut cucumber sandwiches: they offered a glimpse into the future.

“A summer wedding, did you say, my dear?” an older woman asked Violet, extending herself over the table to peer into the cup that she had just flipped onto her saucer and spun around three times. She was leaning in so closely that her spectacles, which had been creeping farther down her nose, were about to slip off entirely and fall right into the cup.

“I said no such thing, as you well know, Mrs. Hildegrand,” Violet said with a smile as she tried to keep the tea leaves out of her customer’s eager grasp.

“Oh, Mary, and you so wanted to see Albert married while the rose garden was in full bloom,” one of Mrs. Hildegrand’s companions moaned. She had brought two this time, both well-dressed, with wide eyes and eager expressions that hinted they would soon become regulars themselves.

They’d visited on just the right day to receive a proper introduction to the Crescent Moon. Spring was the house’s favorite season, and in celebration of the buttercups finally peeling open their yellow petals, it had buffed a fresh coat of beeswax into the floorboards and cracked open the windows to let in a crisp breeze that brushed the lace curtains against vases brimming over with peonies of the softest pink. Now the whole front parlor smelled of sunshine and new beginnings, encouraging more than one customer to ask that their names be jotted down in the reservation book on their way out the door.

“What I see is that your son will fall in love this winter,” Violet continued, tilting the cup to get a new perspective of the leaves that had settled along the bottom. She resisted the urge to pace around the table as she deciphered the messages depicted in the remnants of Mrs. Hildegrand’s tea. Sitting still had never been an easy task for Violet, whose thoughts only seemed to come together when she was moving. But the sisters’ customers rarely appreciated having to crane their necks as Violet made circles around them, and so, not for the first time, she forced herself to remain still. Instead, she settled for tapping her foot as she attempted to focus on the leaves over the sound of her customer’s voice, which was becoming more insistent by the second.

“And if he finds a girl then there will surely be a summer wedding! I see no use in a long engagement. He’s almost thirty, for goodness’ sake!” Mrs. Hildegrand cried, then after meeting Violet’s gaze remembered that the woman telling her fortune was no debutante herself. “Not that you should concern yourself, Miss Quigley. You don’t look a day over twenty, and that’s all that matters in the end, I suppose. You still have some time to catch a husband—if you’re quick about it, of course.”

Violet wanted to tell Mrs. Hildegrand that she had no intentions of catching a marital prospect of any sort. Not when she needed to help keep the shop running like a well-oiled machine.

That thought suddenly made Violet recall that she’d left a bowl full to the brim with cake batter sitting on the kitchen table. She’d mixed in a sprinkle of cinnamon, generous spoonfuls of amber honey, and a few whispered incantations meant to soothe any worries that the Crescent Moon’s guests carried into the shop. But Violet had become so distracted in the front parlor that she’d forgotten to give the batter a final stir and pour it into the pan that was waiting beside the oven. And if the scant crumbs that littered Mrs. Hildegrand’s plate were any indication, their customers were going to be asking for second helpings soon.

Her heart racing now, Violet glanced up and was surprised to see her sister Beatrix waving frantically at her from the kitchen door. One of Mrs. Hildegrand’s companions spotted her as well, and a look of shock immediately spread across her pinched features.

“Don’t be wary, Mrs. Tittler,” Violet sighed as she rose from her chair and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “My sisters and I are triplets.”

“Oh, dear me,” Mrs. Tittler replied with a sigh of relief. “For a moment, I thought you’d managed to duplicate yourself.”

“No, that’s not where my gifts lie,” Violet said before turning back to Mrs. Hildegrand. “Albert will most definitely meet a woman this winter, but only if you give him room to spread his wings. The girl will not be of your station—”

Mrs. Hildegrand looked like she was going to choke on the bite of citrus scone that she’d just swallowed.

“But, I’ll tell you quite frankly, if you manage to push them apart, your son will never marry anyone else. He’s going to lose his heart completely and will refuse to have another… or continue the family business.”

That last bit of information made the old woman’s eyes widen to a shocking degree, and her two companions leaned forward, their hands firmly wrapped around not-so-discreet vials of smelling salts, ready to unveil them if needed.

“Best listen to her, Mary,” one of her friends whispered solemnly.

“If you’ll excuse me, ladies,” Violet said as she rose from the table and rushed to the kitchen, leaving the three women to strategize among themselves.

Just before Violet hurried to the kitchen, Anne had been trying to decide if the symbol at the bottom of her customer’s cup looked more like a bat or a sparrow when she suddenly felt as though someone was drumming the tips of their fingers across the middle of her back, a warning that something unusual was about to happen. No sooner had she registered this sensation than the sound of cast iron crashing against the floorboards rattled from the direction of the kitchen.

“Pardon me, Mrs. Brooks,” Anne apologized as she gently placed the porcelain cup on its saucer and rose from her chair. “I’ll return in just a moment.”

Taking care to avoid stumbling over the colorful skirt hems that pooled beside her customers’ chairs and across the aisles between the tables, Anne made her way through the room, pausing only once to look down at the delicate gold watch that she kept pinned to her chest from morning to night. Her sisters often complained that it made her look like a schoolmarm, but time was easy to lose track of in a place as busy as the Crescent Moon, and so Anne thought it best to keep a clock close to her chest, where the clicking of the gears might blend in with the beating of her own heart.

The kitchen was in a state of comfortably controlled chaos when she walked through the door. Peggy and Franny—the girls they had hired to help prepare the tea and refreshments and wait on their customers—were pulling the last of the day’s baked treats out of the oven and boiling hot water for the final rush of customers.

Stuffed to the brim with dried herbs and teapots of every conceivable shape, size, and pattern, the kitchen was a kaleidoscope of colors and aromas. When Clara Quigley had moved in on the first warm spring day of 1873, the house had sensed her magic and started to awake. Every building has its own personality, and this one was eager to please but rather strong-willed when it came to matters of decoration. Made of brick, it was one of the few structures to have survived the Great Fire, and with the memory of the tragedy still as fresh as its new coats of paint, the house was more determined than ever to be beautiful.

After the sisters decided to open their own tearoom nearly two years ago, it had taken all of Anne’s efforts to convince the house, which was partial to towering ceilings and large, open windows, to maintain its original size. But it could not be persuaded to leave the kitchen untouched, and as a result, the room was slightly larger than it should have been, though still cozy enough to trap all the delicious scents that beckoned from the oven and stovetop.

Anne took a moment to breathe in the smell of honey cake and freshly risen raisin bread before turning to her sisters.

Violet, who could normally be found darting between the parlor and the kitchen to check on something or other, was pacing in front of the hearth, anxious but unable to sit still on one of the stools that littered the room. In one hand she gripped a large wooden spoon that she was in the habit of hitting against her palm in moments of particular concern. About every third step, she pushed out her lower lip and shot a strong puff of air in the direction of her nose, hoping to push aside the longer strands of a rather uneven fringe. Violet had burned the locks that framed her face a few weeks ago when she prodded the fire in the stove a bit too roughly. She was glad that her hair was growing out, but it had gotten to the point where she was always having to brush it away from her eyes, which was unfortunate considering her hands were covered in biscuit batter most of the time.

Beatrix, the third part of their matching set, sat unmoving at the oak table, staring at a small piece of paper with fixed attention through a pair of round wire spectacles. Years of reading had made her nearsighted, and though she rarely wore them when working in the front of the shop, her glasses could nearly always be found dangling from a chain around her neck.

Walking closer, Anne couldn’t help but be reminded that the three of them were mirror images of one another—a fury of red hair that balanced out their extraordinarily fair skin and sharp facial features. The only way to tell them apart was their eyes, which were different colors. Anne’s were a light blue, Beatrix’s a deep brown, and Violet’s a striking shade of purple that had earned her name. Their temperaments, on the other hand, were not what you would call identical, and that, along with their eyes, was what allowed the shop’s hired help and the most devoted of their regular customers to keep track of who was who.

“Are you two all right?” Anne asked as she glanced down at her watch to mark the time. “We still have several tables’ worth of customers waiting to have their fortunes read. What are you both doing in the kitchen?”

“We’re here because the shop is about to erupt into complete disarray!” Violet cried, her arms flailing wildly about her tense body, sending some of the batter that was still stuck to the wooden spoon flying across the floor and straight onto the sleeve of Anne’s crisp white blouse.

At that, Franny and Peggy gave each other a knowing glance and quickly slipped out of the kitchen and into the front room. They could withstand the odd magical happenings that often took place in the shop but like most people—human or not—balked at the idea of getting in the middle of a familial dispute, especially one that involved three witches.

“Oh dear, have we run out of flour again? I thought you’d started ordering an extra supply each week after the last incident, Bee,” Anne sighed, knowing that Violet was particularly anxious when it came to the state of their pantry.

“If only that were the problem,” Beatrix whispered as she pressed the piece of paper she’d been reading on top of the table, her voice so quiet that Anne had to lean in to hear her.

Anne straightened at the sound of her sister’s distress. Beatrix was painfully shy, and she often was at a loss for what to say while reading the fortunes of clients who were too quick to criticize the taste of the tea or her interpretation of their leaves. On more than one occasion, Anne or Violet had gently asked Beatrix to take care of something or other in the back room while they stepped in to decipher the signs that rested at the bottom of a particularly difficult customer’s cup. But her habit of speaking too softly for others to hear hardly ever emerged when she was alone with her sisters or when the three of them were doing a reading together.

“What’s wrong?” Anne asked as she walked toward Beatrix and placed her hands on either one of her shoulders, giving them a reassuring squeeze.

“Violet moved some of the tins last night,” Beatrix began to explain as she nervously thumbed the corners of the paper. “And I didn’t realize before it was too late.”

Anne didn’t bother asking Violet what she’d been doing rearranging their kitchen when she was supposed to be in bed. Ever since they were children, Violet had either slept like the dead or stayed awake long after the moon was high in the night sky. And she often exerted her extra energy moving things around the pantry or linen closets, which sent everyone else into a state of confusion for at least a week because her system of organization was about as obvious as a trunk of trinkets that’d been shaken about on a transatlantic crossing.

“I made sure to leave a note this time,” Violet interjected as she pointed her spoon toward the piece of paper in Beatrix’s hand. Her sharp movement sent another glob of batter flying across the room, this one nearly hitting Beatrix in the spectacles.

“It must have fallen on the floor,” Beatrix said. “I’m so sorry.”

“What’s happened?” Anne asked again, her hands fluttering about her sister’s shoulders. She hated the tension that she found there, knowing that whatever Beatrix had done, she was undoubtedly working herself into knots.

“She’s given the Murray cousins a pot of truth-telling tea,” Violet sighed. “The two of them will be tearing each other’s hair out any moment now.”

Anne resisted the urge to groan, knowing that it wouldn’t help the situation. The Quigleys used truth-telling tea whenever a customer needed to find the right path but wasn’t being honest enough with themselves to make the best choice. When served to the wrong table, however, it could cause long-festering feuds and hidden slights to simmer to the surface.

And though Rose and Liza Murray had a standing reservation to share a plate of scones on the first of every month, their decision to see each other had more to do with figuring out who had been left the most in their uncle’s will than any sense of friendship.

Needless to say, they weren’t the type who should be sipping on truth-telling tea.

“Have they already started drinking it?” Anne asked quickly, the gears turning in her head.

“No,” Beatrix answered. “Peggy brought the pot to the table, and I smelled that something was off when Rose lifted the lid to plop in a few sugar cubes, even though I told her that she should wait until she poured it into her own cup. The tea’s still steeping, so I came in here to see what might have happened.”

“I don’t suppose we can just tell them we’ve mixed up the orders and give them a new pot?” Violet suggested.

“No,” Anne replied. “You know how truth-telling tea works. Once you get a whiff of the scent, it starts to take effect. All their subconscious thoughts are already working their way to the surface.”

“Not that they have very far to go, I gather,” Violet sighed.

“They need to be honest with one another, or the urge to tell the truth won’t wear off,” Anne said. “And then they’ll leave the shop like this, which wouldn’t be fair.”

“For them or anyone else,” Violet added.

“What are we to do, then?” Beatrix asked. “When I go back to the table, they’ll expect me to pour the tea.”

Anne lifted her hands from Beatrix’s shoulders and walked toward the metal bins and jars that rested above the stove. As the collection of dried herbs, tea leaves, biscuits, and spices had grown over the years, so had the shelves, thanks to the dutiful efforts of the house.

“What are you thinking?” Violet asked as she hovered behind her sister, trying to guess where her outstretched hand would land.

“If we give them something similar but not quite as stark, that might be enough to satisfy the urge to be honest without causing any damage,” Anne murmured as she reached up to grasp a jar full of small, uniform seeds.

“Fennel tea,” Beatrix whispered with a note of understanding.

“Yes,” Anne said. “After a sip or two of this, they’ll want to flatter one another, but the praise will be genuine.”

“I see,” Violet said. “They’ll tell the truth, but it will be much sweeter this way.”

“That’s the hope,” Anne agreed with a nod as she pulled a clean teapot off the counter with a similar pattern to the one she’d seen on the Murrays’ table and poured hot water over several spoonfuls of fennel seeds. “So, the only thing left to do is figure out the best way to make the swap.”

“What we need is a distraction,” Beatrix said as her eyes drifted over toward Violet.

The Quigleys knew that out of the three of them, Violet was the one who could be most depended on to cause a sensation.

“Leave it to me,” Violet insisted, her wide grin causing two devilish dimples to form on either side of her cheeks.

“Perfect,” Anne said as she lifted the pot and took a moment to breathe in the faint smell of licorice before dropping in several cubes of sugar. The Murray cousins liked their tea so sweet that they wouldn’t even notice the difference in scent.

“I’ll keep the two of them talking until Violet makes her move,” Beatrix said as she rose from the chair, her shoulders a bit straighter now that she knew her sisters were going to help her out of this mess.

Grasping the warm teapot in her hands, Anne followed Beatrix and Violet to the door and waited until she knew that the time was right.

She listened attentively at the threshold, and just as she heard the steady chatter of their customers suddenly ebb, Anne pushed into the room.

Casting a quick glance around the parlor, she saw that everyone was staring at a table of middle-aged women sitting in the corner next to the small fireplace, all gathered around a teacup that Violet was holding like a precious relic. They were packed so tightly around her that Anne was reminded of a flock of hens who’d caught sight of their feed bag.

“A house, you say!” one of the ladies was yelling as if she’d just spotted a gold ring on the sidewalk. “That means a business opportunity!”

Anne recognized the woman and instantly understood what all the fuss was about. When it came to getting advice at the Crescent Moon, Mrs. Richards’ sole focus was unearthing any tidbits that could be passed on to her stockbroker. And she certainly wasn’t the only one in the shop that afternoon interested in keeping her eyes open for a sign that the market was about to shift.

“My husband told me this morning that the stock in grain might fall today,” another customer chimed in from the opposite side of the parlor.

Her comment was the spark that set off a powder keg of excitement, and in a matter of seconds every woman in the shop was engulfed in a vigorous debate about whether to grab her cloak and sell her stock or stay and enjoy her remaining sips of Earl Grey.

Rose and Liza Murray were not immune to the chaos, and once Anne saw that their faces were turned toward Violet and her brood, she glided across the room, grabbed the truth-telling tea with one hand, and set down the fresh pot with the other.

Beatrix cast a grateful smile in her direction moments before the cousins turned their attention back to the table and asked if the tea was ready to be poured.

By the time Anne returned to the kitchen door, the Crescent Moon had settled back into its normal, even rhythm, just as Anne knew it always would.

Though, if she’d taken just a moment longer to breathe in the scent of beeswax and chamomile or listen to the steady chatter that filled the room, Anne might have noticed that the sensation of fingers tapping against her back was still there, subtly warning her that something unexpected was still waiting close to the rim of her own fortune.