Chapter 1

Now that the tourists had all returned to the mainland, the island was slowly returning to its mesmerizing slumber of long spells of total quiet except for the hungry birds wheeling in an ever-widening circle in the cloudless grey-blue sky. Even the fishermen had deserted the shores and docks for the more lucrative locale of Martha’s Vineyard and the piers close to the Cape Cod seafood restaurants thriving with the weekend crowds from the City of Boston and the residential suburbs.

The cottage that also functioned as a seasonal bed and breakfast was being battened down for the coming winter with the sturdy shutters and exterior doors that were usually installed before any of the owners returned to their full-time residences on the mainland.

The noticeable lack of a younger more nubile generation meant that there was a paucity of young ones to require book learning and they were mostly handled by a few retired teachers that enjoyed turning their hand at their old specialty more for something to keep them active rather that any quest for income.

The owners of Spyglass Inlet were right on that fringe of mid-thirty slowing down that came as a shock to the previously young and adventure seeking. Henrietta and Cordelia Mariner were in their fifth year of running the bed and breakfast and they were considered to be permanent island residents now since they had never once left the island for any reason whatsoever.

It would be nice to describe the two women as being beautiful and in possession of perfect figures, but honesty is the best policy in such matters when viewed in the light of day.

Accordingly, Henrietta as the eldest could be graphically described as being youthful in appearance with ordinary hair of a mousey brown tone that had neither curls nor ribbons. Her face was not particularly impressive and her nose was better suited on a Jewish merchant of the male gender and not a proper American widow of indeterminate means. Her body was passably of interest to a man of middle age searching for a satisfactory bed-mate with a submissive demeanor.

In point of fact, Henrietta did not consider herself to be particularly submissive because she enjoyed riding on top far too much for an obedient spouse.

The fact that she was in actuality of a biological age of 270 was not discernable to the naked eye and she was certainly not going to reveal that fact because her secret of white witchcraft was hidden deep inside her normal exterior of a mid-thirties widow of limited means.

The other owner was her equal partner and somewhat sexier counterpart in the person of her supposed younger sister called “Cordy” by most around her. Her sister was younger but only to the tune of 265 seasons and not the assumed thirty-something that everyone assumed to be the fact.

Cordy was not as accomplished a witch as her older sister Henrietta, but she seemed to be less of an enthusiastic follower of the mystical practice than her older sister except for the celebration of Halloween when she seemed to blossom like royalty in the witchcraft trade being sought after by younger and more sexually involved witches that practiced a mixture of white and black design.

Henrietta frowned on such foolishness because she had seen her best friends burned at the stake or drowned in the river for such nonsense so easily identified because they were so naïve about hiding their magical powers. That sense of pride in magical abilities was the downfall of many a true believing witch and she had vowed to never make that mistake as long as she stayed in her human form.

The pair of attractive females ran the bed and breakfast with a sense of open fairness unlike many of the other tourist oriented private homes available for seasonal rentals.

In addition to the breakfast, Henrietta and Cordy also provided tasty lunches for either eating in the large spacious back porch area or “brown-bagging” it to their mid-day sight-seeing destination wherever that might be.

The women also served a rotating menu of evening meals that were entirely optional at a reasonable increased daily rental fee. Most of the visitors tended to avail themselves of this special service because the restaurant prices in the downtown area were outrageous during the height of the tourist season and seats were at a premium during the peak dining hours.

The visitors to that part of the island were noticeably of a romantic or a geriatric age rather than the other side of the island that tended to cater to families with a fair share of young ones to share in the holiday recreation.

It was never an intentional arrangement; it had just come about in a random fashion like so many other strange environments that pop up without rhyme or reason.

The local police Chief, a retired military man with one prosthetic leg lost in a forgotten battle for Fallujah had an eye for the elder sister Henrietta entirely due to his self-admitted attraction to females with that sort of spirit to “take charge” and lead the way in almost everything she did or said.

In point of fact, the generally sex-deprived Henrietta had succumbed to Police Chief Muir’s persuasive line of chat on his cabin cruiser one moonlit night just a few days before the celebration of Halloween.

Henrietta had been particularly depressed at the time because she remembered her nights of romantic interludes with the American Revolutionary War hero Captain Jones and his many voyages to bring guns and supplies to the forces of General Washington fighting for American freedom. She had been separated from him because of the intense fighting and she was running for her life from the bands of Witch Hunters from the mainland that had tracked her coven to their island lair.

Even with one leg missing, the muscular Police Chief Muir was able to give her all the release she needed under the soothing light of the almost Halloween moon.

Her younger sister Cordy was completely incognito in the household of the island Minister, a well-respected man of the cloth at the time of the Witch trials and Henrietta was suspect mainly because of her connection to the Patriot fighting men and their smuggling ways that tended to spit authority right in the eye in the way of common sense and common good.

The rest of the coven were all tracked down and burned at the stake for the supposed salvation of the community of followers of the Good Book.

Cordy escaped detection despite the suspicions of her minister spouse and she stayed with him until he died out of sheer gratitude.