The Bainbridge Hills Welcome

The tinny scraping of ice against ice set Annabel's teeth into a grin. She enjoyed the manufactured sounds of happiness, they provided the perfect backdrop to the afternoon soiree she was presiding over, and people were almost done with their drinks.

She could soon politely expel them from her property.

Her husband Seward approached her, doing that heinous fake, nasally, high-pitched laugh that Anne hated so much. Properly disguised in her lavendar framed cat eye sunglasses, Anne could roll her eyes in the dramatic fashion that Seward deserved. She grabbed his arm tightly in her well maintained fingers.

"Honey?"

"Yeah, Annie?"

"It's Anne, you know that. And you also know how much that laugh you were just doing makes my forehead vein pulse and sets off a migraine."

Seward flinched, not an endearing look. Anne constricted her fingers around Seward's skinny arm, a cue to remind him to manage that face more effectively. He did a passable job, forcing the corners of his mouth upwards into a smile, his brown eyes crinkling the skin around them like he was actually feeling joy.

Not picture perfect, picture mediocre. But with a husband like Seward, one had to take what wins they could get.

"How much longer are you and your loud friends planning on sitting around, putting your sticky beer bottles all over my Bria Rae sea glass table?"

Seward's smile was plastered to his face, but he drew a sharp whistle of air through his teeth.

"Not too much longer, honey. I think Arnie's gonna host the game tonight at his place-."

"Oh excellent, spill a beer or two on the couch. Remind Olivia that her garage sale knock-offs aren't as precious as she talks them up to be."

Seward nodded.

"Yeah, ok I will."

"Lovely. Start herding your 'boys' out, would you? And pass off that cheese charcuterie board off on one of them."

"Yeah, ok."

Anne's fingers released her husband.

She had her own ball game to host.

Her gold heels punctured the lawn as she made her way towards Fiadh McClannahan. The young woman's curly brown hair, with its outspoken golden highlights which only appeared in the afternoon light.

As Anne kept walking towards the carefully procured white whicker chair that Fiadh was currently using, she felt the presence of Bronwyn at her left shoulder, and Weylan at her right. Her second and third in command; the woman with the sharply edged, platinum blonde hair (not natural, of course, dyed) and Weylan, the dark haired middle-aged man of the group, who always pushed his cat, Clarinet, in a cat stroller wherever he went.

The president, vice-president and treasurer of the Home Owners Association in Bainbridge Hills.

Fiadh sensed the formidable trio coming for her, and stood up to meet them.

"Hi, I apologize for not putting my contact info on the sheet, I didn't know if I wanted to attend the HOA meetings regularly or not."

Anne put on her "people's president of the HOA" voice.

"Oh, honey, no, no. Do not worry about that at all! We should be more worried, I fear we have not given you the proper welcome to our neighborhood."

Fiadh smiled, she seemed more at ease.

"Oh no, this who cookout has been great! I've met a lot of great people."

Anne smiled.

"And I am sure you will meet many more. Did your husband come with you?"

Fiadh's shoulders tensed again.

"Oh, I haven't one. I actually am in the process of finalizing my divorce. My daughter and my close friend came with me to this neighborhood get together."

Fiadh pointed to them but Anne could give a care. She smiled amiably though, like talking kids was Anne's favorite topic on the planet.

"Isn't she a lovely little girl! My own children are out today, one at soccer practice and another at a sleepover, but I look forward to all of our kids playing together, right Bronwyn?"

Bronwyn's face was round, which softened her once beauty-queen worthy cheekbones and jawline. It also gave her a more generous smile than what Anne could ever pull off.

"I love my kid to the MOON! My little boy is such a smart kiddo, I have a private tutor from Stanford come over to help him with his math homework, he's in gifted and talented, wouldn't you know. The teachers all say that if he stays on this trajectory, he is bound to be teaching the class by the time he gets to high school."

She laughed and Anne laughed with her, carefully watching Fiadh as she did so. When the newcomer tilted her head back and joined in the pleasantries, Anne knew they had her.

"Say, Ms. McClannahan-."

"Oh, please, it's Fiadh."

"Alright, Ms. Fiadh, would you accompany us to my kitchen, I've got a special gift set aside for you."

Anne lowered her voice so no snooping housewives would hear her.

"It's a Bria Rae pottery design."

"No, really?! I've noticed you have almost a complete collection of the outdoor pottery ware."

Anne smiled genuinely this time. She was quite proud of her Bria Rae collection. She always put the items behind her metal garden fence when she had one of these parties, but of course, a keen collector could always spot a Bria Rae wherever it was hidden.

All the more reason not to trust Fiadh.

"Yes, I am quite attentive to her magazines, and I subscribe to her online newsletter. If a new collection is coming out, I am the one who knows."

Fiadh smiled demurely.

"I am the exact same way."

They were comparing the items announced in the latest newsletter as Anne opened her sliding glass door and ushered Fiadh inside.

Anne closed her curtains (Bria Rae Happy Roses from her Rosy Home line), and locked the door. She was pleased to see that Clarinet's cat stroller was blocking the hallway to which led to the front door. Weylan was always playing the same game, and he could always see where the next move would be.

Anne opened her oven. A perfect looking chocolate cake was sitting on the top shelf, frosted and decorated with small blue fondant flowers, finished in a lovely ceramic Bria Rae cake pan. It was from the Spring Blossoms collection, and a rare find. Anne had used a few less than pleasant tactics to get her hands on it. But it was hers.

And of course, Fiadh would not be getting it now.

"Oh Anne, it smells wonderful!"

Bronwyn was lying of course. The cake had been sitting in the oven, cold and soggy, for hours. It was the outer shell to a collection of blood, worms and rabbit heart.

Heavy magic required heavy anatomical debts to be paid. And it required heavy acting to sell the performance that Anne and her coven were just seeking friendship with Fiadh, the new witch on the block.

Bronwyn was playing the role of the friendly hostess marvelously, talking to Fiadh about all the lovely Bria Rae items in Fiadh's own collection. Weylan too was stepping in to close the blinds over the kitchen window, obscuring the moments to come from any prying eyes of the HOA.

Ferocious acts of witchcraft could result in home redecoration not covered in any of the HOA by-laws.

With the final sound of the kitchen blinds clicking softly on the windowsill, Anne started her incantation. It was long, and required several instances of light to medium mutilation of the body, so the sooner it began, the sooner the whole procedure could end.

The meaningless tête-à-tête between Bronwyn and Fiadh ceased as the incantation began to take hold in the fibers of Fiadh's being. All of the witches could feel the electric bond between Fiadh and Anne as the loose air was weaponized and anchored itself into the flesh of the other.

When Anne embarked on line three of the incantation, as rehearsed, Bronwyn and Weylan joined in. Clarinet the cat leaped mechanically onto Weylan's shoulder. The lights were flickering now, all available energy being channeled into the possession of Fiadh.

Anne effortlessly sliced into her palm with one of her Bria Rae kitchen knives (the handles were grooved for maximum grip comfort, and each one had a distinctive painted thumb-print from Ms. Rae herself right at the end of the handle), letting her blood stain the blue fondant a threatening rusty purple.

Bronwyn meanwhile held Fiadh by the arms. The younger witch was straining against the force of the magic being forced within her, but Anne had not become the main mage in the coven simply because of her extensive Bria Rae home collection. She had learned in the bathrooms of her high school and her cavernous home, culling her skills which she had been taught to hate into fine tuned extensions of her loathing. Her magic was drenched in darkness, which made it particularly potent.

Perhaps she had used it as a little extra leverage to turn the coven against their old main mage, but the hag who used to be in charge probably would not have been long for the world anyway, with or without Anne's assistance.

Fiadh's own will would not be long for this world either. Anne could feel it shrinking now, the feeling of shoving against a locked door was dwindling into a feeling of pressing up against a door made of rotten wood, only resisting out of habit and having been locked for many years.

The taking of Fiadh's blood would be the key to the door now.

Anne came at Fiadh with the walk of an alpha wolf, with the stance of someone ready to take what was rightfully hers.

The air snapped like a whip. It was a shifting of the waves.

There was someone else.

Anne whirled around towards the front door.

With quaking knees, limp blonde hair, and a face now drained of color, there stood Steward's friend, Arnold "Arnie" Dearborn.

"Hi, Annie. Uh, Stew said I could use the bathroom?"

The spell was time sensitive. Anne did not have the time to just wait around for Arnie to use her bathroom, to dirty her hand towels (how a man in his forties still did not understand that crumpled towels did not fully dry was beyond Anne), to drip water on her hardwoods.

Anne clenched her fingers into a fist, and then flexed them.

Arnie barely had time to reach for his throat before he died, falling face first onto the hallway floor.

The spell's potency was ebbing, Anne could feel it. Fiadh's door was growing stronger again. Anne could not have that.

With a scream that no one in the HOA would have been able to associate with the normally composed president, Anne leapt upon Fiadh and stabbed the young witch through her yellow checkered shirt, right down to her stomach, where the searching knife blade ceased its exploration.

Fiadh's door shattered against the weight of Anne's insistence. With the addition of Fiadh's blood onto the top of the chocolate cake, the spell was bound and complete.

The air began to lose the feeling of an electrical storm. The lights resumed their pleasant mellow glow.

Aside from the one dead body, and one body that looked dead, the house looked once again like it was fit for a president.

Weylan fetched a bucket and began filling it with water and soap. Bronwyn looked over at Anne.

"Oh, Anne, you really had to do Arnie too?"

Anne's blue eye's were hard. Bronwyn's brown eyes skittered away and she pretended to look for some Lysol wipes.

Everyone's attention was drawn to Fiadh when the young woman took a deep breath.

Anne was the one who broke the tense silence.

"Fiadh McClannahan, embrace the one you recognize as your master."

For a few moments, Fiadh only laid on the floor, her petulant blood staining Anne's lovely white carpet.

Then, she regained her footing. She took shaky, stumbling steps.

She wrapped her arms around Anne in a cold imitation of what a hug should look like.

Anne smiled in a vulgar display of pleasure.

"Excellent. Now let us dispose of Mr. Dearborn."