I spun around to see a wide-eyed, pink-haired girl with oversized jack-o’-lantern earrings standing behind the counter, looking absolutely shocked to see me.

“I’m sorry. Are you not open?”

“Brynn Warren,” she squealed, “I can’t tell you how happy I am you’re here.”

Now it was my turn to look shocked. “I’m happy to be here. I’m sorry, have we met?”

“Nope.”

I waited for her to say more, but when she didn’t, I nodded, then slowly turned away from the big smile she was giving me.

“Some of them are pretty pungent, but they do wonders for the skin,” she said, her voice still overflowing with excitement.

“Sorry?” I asked, looking back at the girl.

“The soaps. I don’t know if you noticed them,” she said, pointing at the shelf on the wall. “They’re new. And all handmade. I bet you’d recognize some of the ingredients though.” She gave me a big wink.

That was odd. I smiled weakly and tried once again to turn away.

“Listen,” she said, her voice dropping into a more serious tone, “I just want you to know I don’t believe anything they’re saying about you around town.”

A chill ran through me. I truly had no clue who this girl was or why she had been so excited to meet me, but those were things I could let drop. Rumors around town, though, that was a thread I needed to pull. “I’m afraid that could cover a lot of different topics. Who is they?”

“Liz Coleman for one. She was in here yesterday. She’s actually one of our best customers,” she said. “But once she started talking badly about your aunt, I showed her the door. After I took her money.”

I gave her a sideways look. “What exactly was she saying?”

The girl twirled the end of her shiny ponytail. “Well, you know, that the Warrens are a blight on this town. That you make people disappear. That you, I don’t know, destroy crops or something?”

“What?” I practically shouted the word. “That’s ridiculous. Why would we do any of those things? I mean, how could we do any of those things?”

The clerk suddenly looked uncomfortable. I would have thought all the previous stuff would have made her uncomfortable, but I guess we all have different tolerances. She shrugged. “Well, you know.”

I straightened up. Unfortunately, I did know what she was getting at. Witches gotta blight, I guess. But how did she know? What was going on here?

“I don’t believe any of it. I mean, not the part about you guys being . . .” She held up her hands in claws and hissed.

“Cats?”

“No, silly.”

She hissed again.

“Vampires?”

“Now you’re just messing with me.”

To some extent I was. But I didn’t mean to be. It was just all so shocking. This was the kind of gossip people spread hundreds of years ago. Anyone who knew us knew that we only ever tried to help the citizens of this town. We did not make people disappear. Or ruin crops. The mere suggestion was absurd.