Ribbing and Runes

looked up at me sadly. “Will it? Sometimes I think it’s this town. If you’re not some freakish genius, you don’t really fit in in Oxford, do you?”
“Well, I’m no freakish genius. I do okay.”
She snorted. “You’ve got Rafe. And this shop. What do I have?”
“You’ve got friends. Family. You’re part of this shop. You have your witch sisters.”
She began to straighten up the magazines. “I just feel restless. That’s all. Don’t mind me. It’ll pass.” Then she jutted her chin in the direction of the door leading up to my flat. “You’d better get going. Unless you want unsupervised vampires in your attic.”
Immediately, I headed toward the door. “Good point. Bad enough having them in the basement.”
Luckily, two customers came in then, so Violet had something to do. I slipped through the door that connected the shop with the stairs up to my flat. I ran lightly up the stairs and found no one in the living room. I stopped and listened. They hadn’t waited for me. I ran up the second set of stairs and found them in the guest bedroom.
I’d never paid any attention to the hook in the ceiling all the times I’d stayed here, but it turned out that there was a tool inside the cupboard that hooked onto a metal ring. By pulling it, Gran opened a door in the ceiling that pulled down a ladder that unfolded in sections.
“That’s so cool,” I said.
“Lucy, dear, you really must get to know this house better,” Gran said.
Of course, she could have told me about the entrance to the attic. I suspected she’d forgotten about it, too. She said, “I’ll go first. Just in case the floor’s rotted away with age.” I didn’t think she was worried about rotting floors. She was eager to be the first one up there. And, since she’d presumably tucked away whatever was stored up there, it seemed fair she should go first.
Now that Gran was a vampire, she wasn’t at all frail, as she had been when an elderly mortal. Her legs were strong and sleek, and she went up that narrow ladder like a twenty-year-old.
“There’s a light up here somewhere.” Her voice came down to us muffled. There was a rustle and a bang and then, “Ah, here it is.” And then, sure enough, an electric light glowed through the attic opening.
“You go next, Lucy,” Sylvia said, shooing me forward. I was certain she was dying to get up there too but was being polite. I didn’t scamper up as quickly or smoothly as my grandmother had, but I managed. The attic wasn’t that large. It had a peaked roof that appeared to be in pretty solid shape to me. It was cool and dry in here, which seemed good. There were boxes, a couple of trunks, some old, broken furniture, and a few old paintings dotted around.
If we stayed in the middle, we could stand.
While the others climbed up behind us, Gran went straight to a dust-covered trunk, unlatched the brass latch and opened it up. She got to her knees, and I joined her, kneeling down beside her. A faint smell of lavender and a smell like wood chips wafted up.
“It’s lined with cedar,” she said. “It should have kept the moths out.”
I felt like a little girl playing dress-up as we looked through the various items in the trunk. There were old photographs, theater programs and menus, old fashion magazines and commemorative newspapers about Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.
She sighed over a broken watch. “That was the first gift your grandfather gave me.”
The clothing was fun. A velvet coat and an early Chanel suit caught my eye. I imagined I’d come up again when I wasn’t jostling for space with nosy vampires.
“Where’s the dress?” Sylvia demanded. She was much less interested in Gran’s trip down memory lane than I was.
Gran dug down. Her wedding dress was in a linen zip-up bag, carefully folded. She eased it out, and I helped her unzip the bag and remove the garment within. “My wedding dress.” Gran held it out on its padded pink silk hanger. The dress was tight-fitted in the bodice and flared out, coming probably to just below her knee. It looked like something Audrey Hepburn would have worn. I was glad Gran wasn’t planning to lend me the whole dress, because I did not see myself in this. Instead, she turned it around and showed me the back. At first I thought she was showing me the bow, and then the light shifted and I caught the gleam in the buttons. I leaned closer to study them.
“Are they moonstone?” I asked her.
Her eyes were soft with sentiment when she turned to me. “That’s right. And they’re carved—can you see?—with tiny suns and moons. One of my witch sisters gave them to me. I was thinking we could incorporate these buttons into your dress. They’re very meaningful.”
I knew a little about crystals. I had been doing some of my witch studying in between knitting lessons and running a business and traveling with my soon-to-be husband.
I tried to remember what I’d read. “It’s a relationship stone.” Not a bad guess, considering a witch had used the stone on a wedding gown.
“That’s right. Among other things, it should help you have smoothness in your communication.”
I thought about some of the strong opinions both Rafe and I could hold and appreciated that smooth communication could come in handy.
“And the suns and moons are like Rafe and me. A creature of the day and of the night fitting together.”
“Exactly,” said Gran, looking pleased.
Sylvia put her head to one side. “But there are only five remaining buttons. The sixth one seems to have dropped off.”
“Well, can’t we make five work?” I asked. I really liked these buttons and loved the idea that they’d featured on Gran’s dress too.
Sylvia said, “Not with the pattern we’ve chosen. You’ll need at least nine.”
Surely there had to be a way around this. And there was.
Clara said, “I know