The Forester-Smythe Home for Friendly Shadows

Shiloh Forester-Smythe shivered as a ghost moved through her before digging her hands back into the pie crust she was kneading.

Shy was in her twenties, composed of golden curls and a sweet round face and eyes too big and too blue to ignore in most settings. She was short but carried herself as if she were seven feet tall and by the time they left her company, most people would remember her being larger than life. But above all, she was warm. Shy had always been warm and kind since she could remember and that made her what she was: a witch. More specifically, Shy was a healing witch and a kitchen witch. She wasn’t sure which came first, her warmth or her magic but she also wasn’t sure that she cared.

Just as the ghost, an older fellow in his funeral suit, drifted into the living room of the tiny cottage, there was a bang from the front of the house.

 It didn’t take long before arms encircled Shy from behind. She leaned her head back against the familiar shoulder, glad to be tickled by the long black hair that her wife sported loose most days.

“Hello, darling,” she greeted as Danielle Forester-Smythe pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Did you bring my chocolate chips?” Dani had a habit of forgetting why she was at the store when Shy sent her out alone.

Dani pulled back and that was enough to tell Shy what she needed to know.

“What did you do?” she wiped her hands on her apron before crossing her arms over her chest.

             Dani, the antithesis to her wife’s golden brightness, had the decency to look sheepish. “Uh…well…”

             “Spit it out.”

             “Promise you won’t get mad?”

             Shy sighed in resignation, her shoulders dropping. “Fine. What did you do?”

             Dani ducked out of the kitchen quickly, and Shy waited patiently until she appeared in front of her again. This time, her hands were not empty. They were filled with two tiny black kittens, no more than a few weeks old at least, wriggling about and trying to get free. Dani was careful to keep her sharp acrylic nails away from their tender little bodies. Shy was about to say “no”, a firm and fervent rejection of the pets. But then she saw her wife’s face.

Dani had a habit of bringing home lost things, hopeless things. Such were the habits of a necromancer, Shy supposed. If Dani saw a mortally wounded creature, there was very little anyone could do to keep the woman away from it. It was a time-consuming ordeal, raising the dead, but Dani would take all the time needed in order to bring helpless little creatures back. Usually, she didn’t bring them home unless they were likely to die again on their own. Since Shy had known her, Dani had owned no less than five owlets, two fauns, eight snakes, an opossum, and a skunk. Often, they would be released once they were old enough but sometimes, they stayed and become part of the growing family. The skunk, Nike, and one of the owlets, Scylla, were the only “children” the couple had three years into their marriage and Shy had come to love them as much as Dani did, arguably more, with time.

But cats were different, cats meant upsetting the spirits.

Still, with that look in Dani’s eyes, Shy couldn’t bring herself to say no. So, she sighed and nodded.

Her wife, all dark hair and gleaming teeth and willowy limbs, bounced in her excitement. “What should we name them?” she asked, hugging the kittens to her chest. They scratched against her leather jacket with irritation.

Shy tried to contain her smile before turning back to her pie crust. The chocolate chip pie would have to turn into a peach and citrus instead. She moved to start slicing oranges. “I don’t know, darling, are they boys?”

“Oh! Um…” there was a pause, “a boy and a girl.”

“Why don’t you name them? Why do you always ask me to name our fosters?”

She could practically feel her wife’s shrug, “You’re better at naming things.”

Shy had a theory that it was actually because if Dani made her name them, she would get invested faster. Her wife could be clever like that when she wanted to be. And, if that were secretly the case, in this particular case she would be correct. Shy always got attached faster when she got to choose the name. So, she thought for a moment, slicing peaches before she said, “Nyx and Osiris, then.”

Dani surprised her with a kiss on the cheek, grinning and clutching the kittens, “Perfect! I promise, I’ll keep them away from the grumpier spirits until they’re old enough to know better.”

“You better,” Shy threatened with no bite. “Especially the old man. He even hates sweet Nike; I don’t know how he’d react to two raucous little kittens.”

Dani leaned a hip against the counter, her face suddenly serious. “I know cats are different, Shy, I know what it took for you to say ‘yes’, okay? I really—”

“Oh, shut up, you daft, wonderful thing!” Shy cut her off, swiping a sticky finger over her wife’s mouth. “I said ‘yes’ because I wanted to and nothing else. You know I never do anything I don’t want to so don’t read into this too far. I forbid you to beat yourself up about this for absolutely no reason, yeah?” She waited for Dani to nod. “Good. Now, go put the kittens in the workroom where they can’t get into any trouble and then help me with these peaches.”

Dani’s face lit up again, “Peaches, orange, and crème?”

Shy rolled her eyes, leaned in, and pressed a kiss to her wife’s mouth. The woman tasted of the peach juice Shy had swiped there. “Yes, dear, just like in New Orleans. Now, go!”

Once her wife was out of the room, Shy stepped away from the peaches, wiping her hands on her apron. In a few deft motions she had pulled out a jar full of ashes and some choice spices. Without hesitating, she yanked open the door that led to the back of the house, the one they used for Dani’s more… elaborate workings and dumped the mixed ashes and spices into the doorway. She cast her spell quickly before closing the door again and going back to her peaches.

Dani came back a while later, still grinning. “What did you do in here, smells like,” she took a deeper breath, “banishment.”

“No, it does not,” Shy snapped, “I didn’t banish anyone. I just updated our boundaries and made an offering.”

“Ah. So, it’s more ‘leave the kittens alone and you get to stay’ sort of thing?” Dani raised a brow. “You always have loved an ultimatum, Shy.”

A shrug, “We needed to do something, cats are a gamble. They see too much and are too mischievous to leave well enough alone. If they irritate the spirits then we might have bigger problems than grumpiness caused by an ultimatum, Dani. How do you think that kind of energy would affect our clients?”

“You’re right,” Dani conceded, holding up her hands in defeat. “We can’t have anything disrupting the funerals, you’re right.”

Shy nodded once before passing Dani a knife. “Start in on that pile there, I’ll start making the crème. Then you can help me lay the lattice.”

Dani hummed as she worked, losing focus, and staring out the kitchen window at the way the light bounced off of the glass greenhouse that she’d built for Shy for their second anniversary. For that anniversary, Shy had revealed that she’d been taking business classes so that they would finally be able to fulfill Dani’s dream of opening the funerial home. The dream had come true only a couple of months ago when they got their first client—the same old man who now wandered back into the kitchen. His name was Phillip Johnson and he’d died of a heart attack. His favorite thing was sweets, so he often wasn’t far away when Shy was baking. She didn’t mind his presence most of the time, he was quiet and polite if not a little surly.

“Are you ready to lay the lattice?” Dani asked finally.

Shy smiled, “Of course, darling.”

As they wove the strands of pastry into an intricate design on top of the filled crust, Shy found her thoughts wandering. “Do you remember when we did this in New Orleans?”

“I ruined your dessert,” Dani scoffed.

That made Shy’s grin widen, “You really did and I don’t even know how you managed it, to this day! But no, that’s not what I meant. I was talking about what you brought home that day.”

It took Dani a moment but then she was grinning too. “That was the day I brought home Scylla! That cheeky little monster!”

Then they were both laughing too hard to properly continue on the pastry. Every time they would start to calm down, they would remember that night of chaos during their honeymoon in New Orleans when Dani had brought home a newly alive owlet with an anger issue, and then they’d be doubled over again. Their sides ached from the giggling.

Around the women, shadows wandered in, drawn by the pureness of life and love that poured from the couple who owned the house. The couple that left them ashes and candies and let them stay in their little cottage. The couple who had taken care of their bodies and their families after they died. The ones who didn’t mind when they walked through the kitchen, enjoying the scent of ripe peaches and baking pastry. The ones who brought in recently dead, newly alive furry children and named them after gods and monsters.

Shadows danced around the two women, one who radiated worry and warmth and the other who looked cold and dark but whose heart bled for all helpless things. And they orbited around each other, laughing about the past while two new little black shadows played in a room down the hall.